Winter of frozen dreams (12 page)

A loud knock at the door startled her. The rap repeated, louder, authoritarian. Maybe it was the mailman with a book she had ordered. She answered the door.

Standing red-faced and grim were two police officers, one of them a woman. Their shoes were wet with snow.

"Are you Barbara Hoffman?" The question sounded formal and stupid.

"Yes."

"We have'a warrant for your arrest."

The Miranda rights were read, slowly, carefully, and, yes, Barbara understood. They were charging her with the murder of Harry Berge.

The policewoman accompanied her to the bedroom. Barbara changed clothes. She asked if she could take her medication with her—a doctors prescription for Valium— and was told yes. She asked if they had been following her for the past three weeks, and the cop said she wasn't familiar with the investigation. Had the phone been

tapped? Barbara wanted to know. She got the same response.

The phone rang. It was Al Mackey. Barbara explained the situation, and he said he'd meet her downtown.

They led her down the back steps, their heels clicking on the terrazzo tile stairs where Harry Berge's body had thudded.

In the rear lot was a squad car. Barbara was driven to headquarters and arraigned for murder one.

PART II Departures and Delays

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On January 19th, the day after Hoffman's arrest, Sergeant Jerome Gartner was called by Lulling and asked to search the snowbank in the parking lot behind 638 State Street. Although the snow had been searched twice with no result, Lulling was convinced blood had stained the snowbank where Barbara left the body overnight.

Officers Arnold Malesack and Joe Rut accompanied Gartner to the scene. They sifted through the snow piled four feet high along the cyclone fence and next to the green Dumpster. After fifty minutes of diligent scraping Gartner spotted what looked like blood two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half inches above the ground.

The crew took pictures of the discovery, took measurements to determine its precise location in reference to the rear door of 638 State Street, and collected ten bottles of the substance.

At the lab, when it had warmed up enough to liquefy, the substance was checked with a Hemastix. The positive reaction indicated blood. The evidence was labeled and packaged and sent to the state crime lab for more extensive review.

Within three weeks the state crime lab tested and evaluated the blood. It matched Harry Berge's blood type.

On a frigid January morning Barbara Hoffman was freed from custody upon posting a $15,000 cash bond. Her

lawyer at the proceeding was Donald Eisenberg, and he smoothly handled the throng of reporters awaiting her release. Eisenberg, who had played football at Tulane, shielded the slender Hoffman with a shoulder and directed her through the mob like a veteran blocker. People pushed, jostled for a view. The pop of flashbulbs illuminated the hallway. Video cameras recorded the event for the evening news. Microphones were thrust at the accused, and questions were shouted. Hoffman appeared wan and fragile. She clutched the sleeve of her lawyers suit, and he could feel the fear in the pressure of her fingers.

"We'll hold a press conference in fifteen minutes at my office/ 7 Eisenberg announced. He stiff-armed a path to the outside, where he and Barbara burrowed into the backseat of Al Mackey s waiting Cadillac.

After two days of incarceration, chewing Valiums to get her through, Barbara was not prepared for the onslaught of the media. Now she hid in Eisenberg's office, drinking coffee, prepared to duck behind the potted ferns if her privacy was invaded. The citations on his walls—the diplomas, awards, letters of appreciation and merit, a certificate signifying that Donald Eisenberg had argued before the United States Supreme Court, a photograph of a boyish, crew-cut Eisenberg chatting at a cocktail party with John and Jacqueline Kennedy, another posed with Justice William O. Douglas, a framed newspaper headline declaring an acquittal for Keith Deer—were impressive. The wet bar, the exercise bike in the corner, the mammoth oak desk in the middle of the room, cluttered with documents, yellow legal pads, and law books and flanked by a dwarf orange tree that rose from an earthenware jug, added to the lavish ambience. The blinds were shut. Barbara stood in her stockinged feet. The room seemed like a cave, the lamp on the desk a torch, and an observer in an adjoining office who caught Barbara in a moment of contemplation wondered if this place seemed a trap or a tunnel to safety.

Barbara stepped to the door, opened it a crack. Eisenbergs voice rose, stentorian above the noise of the media

throng. Coffee and doughnuts were being served. Eisen-berg apologized for the fact that Barbara would not be answering their questions today, but the trauma of imprisonment on bogus charges had disoriented and fatigued her. In a couple of days, he promised, she would permit interviews.

Eisenberg sounded confident. He joked with the reporters, referred to them by name. The diamonds and gold that studded his fingers flashed in the TV camera's klieg light as he gesticulated. Eisenberg derided the DA, contended the accusations were vague and circumstantial, and predicted the indictment would be dismissed for lack of evidence. Al Mackey, he pointed out, would assist the defense.

At that comment the print reporters snickered. They knew there was room for only one lawyer at a defense table occupied by Donald Eisenberg.

Soon the coffee urn was empty, the doughnuts eaten, and the story covered. The party dispersed.

The media attention disconcerted Mackey, and he looked exhausted by the commotion. Eisenberg seemed refreshed. Unabashedly he rated his performance as excellent. He snapped the blinds open, tossed off his jacket. There were legalities to specify and settle. Eisenberg was a late addition to the case, and there were things he needed to understand. There were also practicalities Barbara needed to accept.

In taking Hoffman as a client Eisenberg risked a grave ethical consideration—conflict of interest. He was legal counsel to Sam Cerro. One of his junior partners, Charles Geisen, was legal counsel to Ken Curtis. Cerro and Curtis owned Jan's Health Spa and other parlors, and the Eisenberg firm had handled the articles of incorporation for those enterprises. Geisen was listed as acting attorney for most of those businesses and registered as the agent with the secretary of states office.

Furthermore, the law firm had negotiated other business and real estate transactions for Curtis and Cerro. Barbara Hoffman's employment by these men and her

statement to Davies that she thought the Berge death was related to the massage parlors would have caused Eisen-berg serious reflection. Geisen's contact with Doyle one week earlier concerning a possible deal—information provided by Curtis and unnamed others detrimental to Hoffman in exchange for a plea bargain arrangement for Sam Cerro—presented Eisenberg with a predicament. Could the law firm represent Cerro's interests and Hoffman's interests without a conflict?

Courthouse observers familiar with the case speculated about Eisenbergs dilemma. Dropping Cerro as a client would resolve the situation, but the connections with Cerro were deep and lucrative. Declining the Hoffman case would be a great sacrifice. The media coverage promised to be extensive, and it was accepted opinion that Eisenberg basked in the presence of a microphone and a camera lens. His reputation could only be enhanced, and a cursory glance at the complaint against Hoffman would give him confidence he could win. The case was sad, sordid, and sensational. Its components—sex, money, murder—guaranteed prurient interest, regular slots on the six and ten o'clock news, front-page articles, courtroom sketches, a huge gallery, quotes, and press conferences. Many observers felt a victory might catapult him to national prominence and the recognition he thought his abilities deserved. He needed Cerro, he wanted Hoffman, and he decided to keep them both.

To alleviate any concern about a possible conflict, Eisenberg asked Barbara to sign an affidavit affirming her knowledge of the unique circumstances and stating her wishes to retain Eisenberg as her attorney.

Without looking to Mackey for advice, Barbara agreed to sign the necessary papers if it would assure her of Eisenbergs representation. She knew Al Mackey didn't have the stuff to save her. Maybe Don Eisenberg did.

For days following Hoffman's arrest Madison's newspapers and television sensationalized the story. "Beneath City's Tranquillity Lies Sleazy Underside" read headlines in the Capital Times. The shock and outrage of the community was recorded. Conservatives and religious fundamentalists used the murder charge as an example of the decadence and corruption the massage parlor atmosphere fostered. Ken Curtis and associates incurred a new wave of intense scrutiny and public demands for censure.

In Stoughton, where Harry Berge had resided for the final ten years of his life, the reaction was disbelief. Neighbors emphasized Berge's kindness, his extreme shyness, his lonely routine. Many refused to accept that he and Hoffman had been intimately involved and dismissed talk of his visiting massage parlors.

"If he was involved in that sort of thing, he was doped," remarked an acquaintance.

Others viewed the situation cynically, commenting that if Harry Berge had as intimate a knowledge of the massage parlor world as the newspapers reported, then anyone could be leading a double life. Everyone had taken Berge for as straight and naive as he'd appeared.

Barbara Hoffman was portrayed as a mysterious vixen. No one at work knew much about her. She was competent, quiet, aloof. Residents of 638 State Street were quoted about the number of men who visited her apartment, the odd hours of their comings and goings. Rumors circulated about her sexual prowess and audacity. A couple of female counselors, as the women were referred to at Jan's Health Spa, consented to be interviewed and confirmed that "Barbie" was known as the queen of the parlors. Men adored her touch. She had an aptitude for handling kinky customers. A special "quiet" room had been constructed at Jan's so that the pleasure of pain could be administered without alarming the more traditional patrons, and Barbara was the room's most frequent user.

She had boasted that she earned over $23,000 a year working three days a week at Jans. Yet no one really knew Barbara Hoffman. She had no close friends. She existed in shadow, permitting only an oblique glimpse. Despite thousands of words, the print and electronic media could not define her, and she coolly deflected all inquiry and examination.

The adversity encountered in the past month, the anxiety regarding the murder charge, had, from Davies s point of view, pushed Davies and Barbara closer together, closer than ever before. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for February 16th, and the immediate goal was to survive the next few weeks intact, until things were cleared and charges dismissed, Jerry Davies told Dr. Paul Slavik at the Group Health Cooperative. He consulted the physician because of his anxiety and stress, and Dr. Slavik gave him a prescription for Valium.

Riding out the turmoil was not easy, and Daviess optimism ebbed. Nights were especially difficult. Visions of December 23rd ambushed his sleep. Moments of that convoluted evening shot into his head, pierced his consciousness like arrows. Some nights he could almost feel his brain bleed thoughts, a scramble of images leaking out of his head and onto the pillow. He saw Barbara scooping clumps of snow over the corpse with her hands; he felt the bedsheets that had enshrouded Harry Berge, creased and as stiff as sandpaper; he saw the dull light of the dashboard on the corpses frozen, stubby toes.

Some nights he lay awake pondering Barbaras predicament. The machinery of circumstance had run amok. It would grind him and Barbara, crush their hopes like tiny peppercorns, and Barbara would be assigned a jury of her peers.

"I'm anxious like I never was before," Davies told the

doctor, during a second visit. Worry had written its signature. The crinkled mat of Daviess forehead, the pensive eyes, the cheeks grown gaunt were indication enough that things were not right.

The physician renewed the prescription for Valium that he had issued one week earlier. He didn't increase the dosage—two-milligram tablets to be taken as needed—but he upped the quantity from ten to thirty pills. Davies needed to relax.

It was neither a lie nor a self-deception that his relationship with Barbara had improved. She had taken an indefinite leave of absence from EDS Federal. Davies used accumulated sick days to take time off from work. From New Year's Day through the preliminary hearing in mid-February they spent more time together than in the prior six months combined.

Less than two weeks after Barbara Hoffman was released on $15,000 bail, the twenty-four-hour protective surveillance on Jerry Davies was suspended. The decision infuriated Chuck Lulling.

The states case against Barbara Hoffman, Lulling reasoned, was anchored on the testimony of a timorous Davies. His statements verified that Barbara said there had been a body in her apartment, established its location in the parking lot, and detailed its journey out to Tomahawk Ridge. Davies also confirmed Hoffman's elaborate efforts at concealment of the deed and at erasing their connection to the body. Her subterfuge with the invention of Linda Millar was bolstered by his words. His rendering of the history of their love affair cast serious suspicion on Hoffmans character, and the insurance policies added an invidious motivation for her involvement with both him and Berge. Like a skillful hunter, Hoffman had set Berge up, and Davies was her next prey.

Without Davies, however, the charges withered from solid to circumstantial. Anyone as intelligent as Hoffman would be cognizant of Daviess value to the prosecution. What he remembered or forgot or misconstrued would make a major difference in how the case was presented and judged.

The insurance policy blended an unsavory spice into the stew. It provided an incentive to do more than merely warp Daviess recollection of the past. More than $13,000 had already been invested in the shipping clerk from Spring Green. Because it was term life insurance rather than whole, the money was irretrievable unless Davies perished. Then Hoffman would reap a windfall. The temptation to eliminate a damaging witness and to secure a bundle of insurance bucks with the same lethal maneuver had to tantalize Barbaras imagination. Manipulation of Davies s emotions and memory was safer but not certain; killing guaranteed a double reward.