I SAW RUTH RAYNOR HUDDLED IN AN ORANGE PLASTIC chair in the far corner of the windowless room, a small figure in a blue denim skirt, a pink blouse, and sandals. Her back was against the graffiti-scarred blue and white walls, and she clutched a wad of tissues. Her paper-white face contrasted with the purple bruises visible at her neck.
She stared at us without recognition, her eyes like those of an animal caught in a trap, waiting for rescue or death. Her father cried out and moved toward her. Bill Stanley restrained him.
“Not now,” Stanley ordered. “Just me and Jeri.”
“I’m hired?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah. You’re already in it, so everything you know is covered by attorney-client privilege. Come see me Monday morning and we’ll hammer out details. For now I want you to listen in. Let me do the talking.”
I nodded. Stanley and I stepped into the tiny room and he shut the door. Ruth looked up at us and she finally recognized me. “Jeri, is Wendy okay? She was crying. I couldn’t make her stop crying. The police took her away. They said they’d call Mom and Dad. I gave them the phone number. Is she okay?”
“She’s with your mother.”
Stanley positioned a plastic chair and sat down facing Ruth. “Mrs. Raynor, I’m Bill Stanley. I’m an attorney. Your father has retained me to defend you.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Ruth protested, her eyes wide. “I told the police that.”
He cut her words off with a sharp wave of his hand.“You tell the police nothing. Zip, zero, nada. Those cops out there are the enemy. They will use anything and everything you say to put you in prison for the murder of your husband. You don’t want to go to prison, Mrs. Raynor. You don’t want Wendy to have to come visit her mom in prison.”
Tears trickled from Rum’s brown eyes as Stanley’s harsh words hit her like body blows. She dropped the wad of used tissues in her lap and reached for a fresh supply from the box on the floor.
“You understand what I’m saying?” Stanley leaned forward and his voice softened. “You don’t talk to the cops. In fact, you don’t talk to anybody but me. Only to me. Or Jeri. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” Ruth whispered.
“Good. Now, I want you to start from the beginning, and tell Jeri and me exactly what happened this evening. Take your time, don’t leave anything out.”
Ruth drew in a breath and began, her voice shaky. “We had dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Kevin brought us home.”
“Who’s we?” Stanley asked. “Who’s Kevin?”
“Wendy and me. Kevin is my older brother. He’s a Navy officer. He’s here on leave.” Ruth took another deep breath. She appeared calmer now that she was talking. “The three of us spent the afternoon at Children’s Fairyland in the park at Lake Merritt. Then we went over to Alameda, where my parents live. We had dinner. Mom and Dad and Kevin and I played cards while Wendy watched a Walt Disney video. Then Kevin brought Wendy and me home.”
“What time was this?” Stanley asked.
“I’m not sure,” Ruth said. “About eleven, I think. All I know is it was way past Wendy’s bedtime. She fell asleep in Kevin’s car. He carried her up to the apartment. We put her right to bed and—” She stopped and frowned. “Kevin left.”
Why the pause? If Bill Stanley had noticed, he didn’t give any indication. “What happened then?” he asked.
Ruth huddled back in the chair. “I took out the trash.” When Bill Stanley asked her why, she shrugged. “I noticed the garbage can under the sink was full, so I took it out to the trash chute in the hall. I left the door to my apartment open. It’s only a few steps. While I was walking back to the apartment, the elevator door opened, and Sam—” She stopped and shuddered.
While Ruth composed herself, I recalled the layout of the third-floor area she’d described, from my visit on Friday afternoon. Coming out of the door of Ruth’s apartment, unit 303, I had faced the short hall that led back to the trash chute and the stairwell. To the right of that hallway was the elevator door, perpendicular to the wall that held the doors to units 301 and 302.
“So he caught you in the hall,” Stanley was saying.
Ruth nodded and continued her story in a halting voice. “I ran for the apartment but he got there before I could shut the door. He grabbed my arm. I broke away and got into the apartment. I tried to shut the door, but he pushed me out of the way and got in.”
“He forced his way into the apartment,” Stanley said. “Had he been drinking?”
Ruth nodded. “I could smell beer on him.”
“What did he say? Did he threaten you, physically, verbally?”
“He said he wanted to see Wendy. I told him it’s late, she’s in bed, she’s asleep. He’s got visitation, but it’s supervised, every other Saturday, at my parents’ house. Plus I’ve got a stay-away order against him. I reminded him about that. He just laughed. He said if he wanted to come see me and Wendy, he’d just do it, and he wouldn’t pay any attention to any damned court orders.”
Despite my efforts to transform myself into a fly on the wall, Ruth now looked at me and said, “He was really mad about Jeri.”
“About Jeri?” Stanley repeated the words and glanced over his shoulder at me.
Ruth nodded. “Sam’s hiding some money, over a hundred thousand dollars. Blair and I asked Jeri to locate the money. Sam found out. He even threatened Jeri. You must be getting close. Sam was really angry. He said I’d better call off the detective or I’d be in more trouble than I already was.”
“Let’s get back to tonight,” Stanley said. “Where were you in the apartment? The hall, the kitchen, the living room? Draw me a picture. Jeri, you got a pen and some paper?”
I quickly pulled the requested items from my bag and handed them to Ruth. She sketched her one-bedroom apartment, then used the pen as a pointer. “When he got into the apartment, he grabbed my arm again and pulled me into the living room. He looked around and said it was a dump. I told him it was my dump, and to get out. That’s when he said he wanted to see Wendy.”
Bill Stanley shifted in the hard plastic chair. “Okay, we know he threatened you verbally. What about physically?”
“He kept squeezing my arm. So hard I thought he’d bruise it.” Ruth held out her left arm and examined it as though she’d never seen it before. On the flesh of the forearm, near the elbow, I saw faint purple marks complementing the darker ones at her throat
“When I tried to stop him going into the bedroom where Wendy was, he slapped me. Then he shoved me away. I fell and banged my knee. Hard. It really hurt.” Ruth sensed Stanley’s impending question about physical evidence, so she pulled up the hem of her blue denim skirt and discovered another purple mark.
“I got to my feet. Sam was grinning. I wanted to wipe that grin off his face.” Her lips clamped tightly together at the memory. “Then he said I’d better behave myself. If I didn’t quit hassling him, he’d beat me bloody. If I didn’t call off Jeri, he’d take Wendy and he’d hide her and I’d never see her again. He laughed. He said, ‘I might even take her now.’” Ruth stopped, hands stilled in her lap.
“What did you do then?” Stanley asked.
“That’s when I got the gun.”
“Where did you keep it?”
“In the kitchen, in the cabinet above the refrigerator. I didn’t want it when Daddy bought it for me. But he said I needed it for protection. I kept it clean and I never kept it loaded, but the shells were right there next to it.” Ruth sounded detached, as though she were describing something that happened to someone else.
“Sam went into the bedroom and I went to the kitchen. I pulled up the stepstool so I could reach the cabinet. I got the shells and the gun, and I loaded it, right there at the kitchen counter. Then I went out into the hallway, just outside the bedroom. When Sam came out I pointed the gun at him. I told him I’d kill him before I’d let him take my little girl.”
I leaned back against the wall, folding my arms across my chest. I didn’t like the way this sounded. I couldn’t tell what Stanley thought about it. His face was blank, neutral, as he listened to Ruth’s story.
“First he laughed,” Ruth said, “and said I’d hurt myself. I told him I knew how to use a gun. Besides, at that range I couldn’t miss. I backed up, toward the living room. I had the gun in my right hand. The phone’s on the counter, so I picked up the telephone with my left. I told him to get out or I’d call the police. He was really angry. His face got red, almost as red as his hair. He swore at me, the way he used to do when he beat me.” She took a deep ragged breath.
“He acted like he was going to leave. Then he knocked the phone out of my hand and he was trying to get the gun away from me. It happened so fast, it’s all jumbled together. I know the gun went off. It was so loud, my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear anything else. His lips were moving and I couldn’t hear him.”
Ruth’s hands moved to her bruised throat, tears in her eyes. “He had his hands around my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I must have passed out. There was this red fuzziness, blurring my vision, and a rushing sensation, like I was on a train. Then I heard crying. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling. I realized I was in the hall of my apartment. Wendy was standing there in her pajamas, crying.”
Ruth stopped and covered her face with her hands. It took her a few minutes to pull herself together sufficiently to go on.
“I sat up,” she said, “and put my arms around Wendy. My poor baby. I couldn’t get her to stop crying.”
“When did the police show up?” Stanley asked. “How did they get into your apartment?”
“They were there really fast. One of my neighbors must have heard the shot when the gun went off. While I had my arms around Wendy, a policeman walked into my apartment. I guess my door was open. I heard voices outside, all talking at once. The policeman had his gun drawn. That frightened Wendy. He put away his gun and asked me what was going on.”
Ruth shook her head. “I’m all confused about things after that. I don’t know how long I was out. I felt cold and woozy. Maybe I was in shock. I just don’t know. All of a sudden there were policemen everywhere. One of them helped me to my feet, and another one took Wendy and asked if there was some relative he could call, so I gave him Mom and Dad’s number. They wiped my hands with some wet cotton balls.”
While Ruth looked down at her hands, Stanley and I traded glances. Gunshot primer residue was obtained by wiping the hands with nitric acid, to collect the barium and antimony left from the discharge of ammunition. Ruth had already said the gun went off during her struggle with Sam, and since it was her weapon, her fingerprints would be on the gun itself as well as the shells inside. I asked the question that had been uppermost in my mind. “Ruth, when it was over, where was your gun?”
She looked confused. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there on the floor beside me. The police were looking for it too. They said Sam was dead. I know they think I shot him. But I didn’t. Or at least—” She stopped and her mouth formed a shocked circle. “Oh, Jeri, what if I had some of kind of blackout? What if I followed him outside the apartment and shot him? I can’t remember anything between the time he choked me and when I woke up to Wendy crying.”
Stanley waved his hands. “Let’s not get into guessing games. Your story’s fine as it is. Just remember, you talk to me or Jeri, no one else. I’ll do the rest.” He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Time to see what the cops have.”
“I have one more question.” I pushed away from the wall, fixing Ruth with a steady look. “Was there anyone with Sam? Did you see anyone else, or hear another voice?”
“I don’t know,” Ruth said. “When Sam stepped off that elevator, all I saw was him.”