“Ms. Jensen?”
“Yes?”
“Cheryl Jensen?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Lieutenant George Hastings. I’m a police officer in St. Louis, Missouri.”
“How did you get my phone number?”
“The phone company gave it to me. They usually cooperate with us.”
“You’re not going to ask me for a donation, are you?”
“To what?”
“A police union or something like that.”
“No. I’m investigating a matter in St. Louis that involves people working at St. Mary’s Hospital. These include your ex-husband.”
“Raymond?”
“Yes. Raymond Sheffield. You were married to him, weren’t you?”
“Yeah . . . What’s this about?”
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss it. But we’re interviewing a lot of people. Just getting background on witnesses. Nothing special.” Hastings was quiet, waiting to see if the woman would push him.
Then she said, “Well, I’m in the grocery store right now. Can I call you back later?”
“No, I’m afraid that won’t work for me. Listen, I promise I won’t be long.”
“Well, all right. What do you want to know?”
“How long were you married to Raymond?”
“About three years.”
“When did you divorce?”
“We separated, gosh, almost three years ago. The divorce was granted about a year and a half ago. A couple of months before he moved to St. Louis.”
“What do you do now?”
“I work at Cambridge Bank of Massachusetts.”
“Doing what?”
“I help them sell their financial products. It’s called financial planning.”
“Did you go to school for that?”
“I went to college, but I didn’t study business or banking.”
“What did you study?”
“Arts and sciences.”
Hastings hesitated.
And the woman said, “Well, it was a two-year program. Suffolk Community College.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I was going to finish, do four years. But then I met Raymond and he was going to medical school, so I quit and got a job at the bank. The bank’s been pretty good to me.”
“Sounds like you like the work.”
“I do. The people are great.”
“Did you go straight from high school to college?”
“No. After high school, I joined the army. I was in four years.”
“Did you like that?”
“Not really. Lot of dirtbags in the army. Sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
“I mean, some of them are good people, serving their country. But some are just dirtbags.”
“How so?”
“Well, I had one sergeant tell me he could get me transferred to West Germany if I’d be his girlfriend. And he was married.”
“That’s not nice.”
“No, it wasn’t. And he was black, too.”
“Oh,” Hastings said.
“Sorry. That must have sounded terrible. I’m not prejudiced. I mean, I try not to be.”
“Of course,” Hastings said. “So you got out after four years.”
“Yeah. I’d had enough.”
“When did you meet Raymond?”
“About a year after I got out.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I was at a club with some girlfriends and he started talking to us and . . . I don’t know, we just started talking. He seemed nice. He didn’t drink. He wasn’t loud. He didn’t, you know, come on too strong.”
“He was a gentleman.”
“Yeah. I was used to bozos getting drunk and saying, ‘Yo, Cheryl. Take your top off.’ And he wasn’t like that. And he didn’t, you know, push things.”
“You mean he didn’t try to rush you into bed?”
“Not at all. He wasn’t pushy like that.”
“That’s good.”
“He was nice. Always polite. Always asked me how my day was. Attentive, thoughtful. You know.”
“Sure.” Hastings paused. “Old-fashioned, you mean?”
“Yeah. That’s what he was. Old-fashioned.”
Hastings wondered if she had been raped while she was in the army. Or if she had been otherwise abused. He said, “Did you both want to wait until you were married?”
He bit his lip after, fearing that she would say he was getting too personal.
But she said, “Well, I don’t think I did. But he wanted to. Like you said, he was old-school.”
“Okay. So you did wait?”
“Yeah.”
“I know you’re divorced now, but I presume you were happy at first.”
“Yeah. I thought so. I quit school and started working fulltime at the bank. And he was in medical school. He studied a lot. Usually, at night, he’d go to the library to study. So sometimes I wouldn’t see him until late.”
“How late?”
“Sometimes pretty late. Midnight, maybe even later. Usually I’d be asleep when he got home.”
“Oh.”
“Well, it was okay. I mean, I knew his schoolwork was important to him.”
“Did you and he socialize with the other medical students?”
“A little. Not much, though. I felt out of place.”
“Why?”
“Oh . . . I don’t know. They’d all been to college, even the wives of the other students. And, well, I just felt uncomfortable.”
Hastings said, “Well, I’m sure Raymond wouldn’t have married you if he thought you were dumb.”
“No, I don’t think so. I just felt out of place. And I guess I was hurt.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t make much of an effort to help me fit in with them. To help me feel better about it. Like what you said. About not marrying me if he thought I was dumb. He never said anything like that to me.”
“Perhaps he was preoccupied with his studies.”
“Maybe. But he could have been nicer.”
“Made you feel more appreciated?”
“But he must have liked you if he married you.”
“That’s what I thought. At first. But after a while, I started to wonder why he did marry me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because—well, I don’t know.”
Hastings said, “You can tell me.”
“Well, he never would say much to me. I mean, after we were married. Before, a lot. But not really after we were married. Even when he was home. He’d come home and I’d cook dinner for him, and we’d sit at the table together and he . . . he just wouldn’t talk to me. Just sit there in silence. It was like I wasn’t there. Once, I was trying to talk to him and he said, ‘Excuse me, I’m eating my breakfast now.’ Eventually, I started to ask him if I’d done something to make him mad. He’d just look at me and shake his head. And that was it. It gets in the air, something like that. It hangs over you.”
“What?”
“You know. Bad feelings. Anger.”
“I’m sorry.”
She went on as if she had not heard him. “You know what made it worse?” she said. “What made it worse was when we were at some sort of party or someplace in public, he would talk to me. You know, the way a husband speaks to a wife he cares about. He’d do it in public but not in our home. Now what was that about?”
Hastings thought, He was performing. Playing a role. Hastings said, “I don’t know.”
“I mean, you hear stories about guys getting married so their wives can put them through medical school. But . . .”
“Do you think that’s what he did?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like he got any money out of me. But after all that, I never knew why he married me.”
“Did he abuse you?”
“Abuse me—you mean like hit me?”
“Yeah.”
“No. He never did anything like that. He wasn’t physical.”
“Were you intimate?”
A pause. Then she said, “You mean like in bed?”
“Yeah.”
Hastings readied himself to tell her that everything she said would be held in confidence. An old trick. But before he could say anything, she answered him. The human need to unload can be powerful.
She said, “No. Not very much. He was weird that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think—I don’t think he liked it very much. He had trouble . . . sometimes he couldn’t . . .”
“Couldn’t get an erection?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m no supermodel, but I’ve got a good body. It’d never been a problem before. I mean, with me and other guys.”
“I understand.”
“Sometimes I think he did the weird things to cover that up.”
“What do you mean ‘weird things’?”
“Oh . . . it’s kind of embarrassing.”
“It’s just us here.”
“Well . . . one time he put on this Oriental mask. He was naked except for this mask. I guess he thought I’d like it. But I didn’t. I didn’t like it at all.”
“Did it frighten you?”
“Yeah. A lot. So I told him to stop it. To take it off. And he got really mad. He said I was provincial or something.”
Hastings said, “Prosaic? Did he call you that?”
“Yeah. That was the word. I’d never heard it before. He was always using these big words, you know, showing off. He never called me stupid. I mean, he didn’t use the word stupid. But he was all the time letting me know I was. And I didn’t know. I don’t know anything. I’m not smart. I don’t know what to say at parties when his friends are bringing up books and movies I never heard of. I told them I liked Gone with the Wind once and they all looked at me like I was retarded.”
“Him too?”
“Yeah. Him too.”
“Who filed for divorce?”
“I did. But I think he would have if I hadn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t like me. He not only didn’t love me, he didn’t even like me. Why would you marry someone you don’t even like?”
“I don’t know.” Hastings said, “Did you ever ask him?”
“I did, but he wouldn’t give me an answer.”
“You said he never abused you.”
“Yes.”
“Was that the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Were you ever scared of him?”
There was silence. And Hastings was afraid he’d lost her. “Ms. Jensen?”
“Once,” she said. “I had this squirt gun and I squirted water on his face. Just, you know, horsing around, trying to have a little fun. And he got so mad. He ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed into my face, ‘Don’t you ever do that again!’ I’d never seen him like that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like that. I didn’t know what I thought he would do then.” Her voice broke. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay. Ms. Jensen, if—”
But she had clicked off the phone.