Wyoming Avenue was in the section of South Saint Louis that was a gridwork of streets named after states. As if that weren't confusing enough, the streets all looked alike, all straight and narrow, all lined with similar flat- roofed brick row houses or flats, with tiny square front yards bisected by short strips of concrete leading from steps to sidewalk. It was an old section of town that hadn't changed much in twenty years. Many of the houses had been in the same families' possession for twice that long, and it wasn't unusual to find people who had lived in the same shotgun flat for a quarter of a century without ever having signed a lease, paying monthly rent to the same landlord when he came around on the first to be sure the lawn was mowed or the walk cleared of snow. 'Scrubby Dutch' the predominantly German Catholics of the area were sometimes called, and Nudger had often seen elderly women bent over scrubbing the curbs in front of their flats, or taping plastic flowers on the branches of dead shrubbery. There was plenty of front-yard religious statuary here, and more than a few plastic flamingos perched inelegantly on long spike legs. There were rough neighborhoods in the area, populated by rough folks, but for the most part it was one of the more stable sections of the city.
Laura Cather lived in a typical flat-roofed building on a drab, treeless stretch of Wyoming east of Grand. Nudger rang the bell to her second-floor flat and heard someone descending the stairs to her separate entrance. Taut white sheer curtains parted on the door's window, and a bespectacled blue eye peered fishlike out through the glass at Nudger before the door swung open.
Laura Cather was an emaciated-looking faded blond woman still in her twenties. She was narrow of bust and hip, and her blouse and slacks hung from her frame as if from a misshapen hanger. Her bare arms were a few ounces from bone. The only substantial things about her were an old- fashioned silver brooch whose weight was pulling the material of her blouse crooked, and her wide, round tortoise-shell glasses that threatened to slide down her narrow nose and shatter at Nudger's feet.
'I'm Nudger,' Nudger said.
She smiled with terrible, yellowed teeth. Despite it all, she was somehow wanly pretty, like an ethereal consumptive. 'I know,' she said. 'Coreen Davis described you. Won't you come up?'
Nudger followed her up the rubber-treaded stairs to her flat, which was larger than he'd imagined. Or maybe it seemed that way because of the bare wood floors and paucity of furniture. There was a worn modern sofa on one wall, on the opposite wall a director's chair with red canvas next to a squarish plastic table. On the far wall was a card table that managed to support a portable electric type writer and some stacks of papers. There was a chipped white- enameled kitchen chair at the table, and a sheet of paper protruding rigidly from the typewriter's platen. Laura Cather had been busy when Nudger arrived.
'I'm typing resumes,' she explained, noticing his curiosity. 'Have a seat, please.'
Nudger watched her settle her frail body on the couch as he sat down in the director's chair. He felt like yelling 'Action!' to begin their conversation.
'Coreen thinks I should tell you about Claudia Betten- court,' she said. 'If she thinks that, there must be a sound reason.'
'There is,' Nudger said. 'Coreen Davis doesn't want Claudia to be hurt. Neither do I.'
'Nor I, Mr. Nudger.'
'What's the connection between you and Claudia?'
'I used to be a social worker for the Department of Corrections, a public employee doing pre-sentencing investigation. That was before the federal government decided policy was more important than people and cut our agency's funds.' She waved a pale, thin hand in a casual gesture of helplessness. 'I've been out of work for almost a year. I'm not bitching, because I'm not an isolated case.'
Nudger was suddenly uneasy. His stomach let him know it was there. 'You said pre-sentencing. Was Claudia convicted of some crime?'
'I'll tell you about Claudia Bettencourt,' Laura said, in the tone that people use when they're about to begin at the beginning. 'She was raised by a foster father who abused her as a child. Not sexually, but he beat her. That leaves its mark, Mr. Nudger. It stays in the mind and body like an infectious disease. Real child abuse isn't what most people imagine. It's not some frazzled parent losing control under stress and lashing out in a fit of temper. It's systematic and frequent. And unbelievably violent. It's not a bloody nose, it's blood on the walls. And the sickening truth is that neither the victim nor the perpetrator can help what's happening, or prevent it from happening again.'
'Did Claudia abuse her own children?' Nudger asked, remembering his conversation with Ralph Ferris outside her door.
'She did,' Laura Cather said, not simply looking at Nudger, but studying him. 'She was one of the smart and brave ones; she tried to get help. But four years ago, while she was undergoing therapy, her three-year-old daughter, Vicki, contracted influenza. A simple case of the flu. Only the child was found in a coma one winter morning with her bedroom window open. She died two days later of pneumonia.'
'Are you saying Claudia deliberately left the window open?'
'I'm not. But that's what her husband claimed when she was tried on a child-abuse charge, a second-degree murder charge.'
'What was her defense?' Nudger asked. He felt hollow yet heavy, as if the thin canvas of the director's chair might at any second rip to dump him onto the floor. Maybe he could have Laura Cather play that last scene a different way. Take Two, with feeling.
'At first she denied opening the window. Vehemently denied it, as the lawyers say. Her lawyers advanced the theory that maybe the husband or one of the other kids opened the window and forgot it. Or maybe the sick child herself had climbed out of bed to open it. They do that sometimes if they have a fever, trying to cool off. But the prosecution kept pounding away at Claudia, and eventually she didn't know herself whether she'd opened that window. Child abuse is an emotional issue, Mr. Nudger, and Claudia had a history of it. The jury knew that history and voted to convict. I was assigned to conduct the pre-sentencing investigation, learn what I could about the defendant and make recommendations to help the judge decide how severe her sentence should be.'
'What did you find out?' Nudger asked.
'That Claudia Bettencourt-or Ferris, as she called herself then-was an intelligent, disturbed woman who was not innately violent. Her past wouldn't let go of here. Her younger sister had also been abused, and was a diagnosed schizophrenic who killed herself in a period of depression. Claudia was haunted by her childhood and doomed to emulate it through her daughters. Unfortunately, it's not an unusual situation, Mr. Nudger. I recommended leniency and therapy. The judge agreed. Claudia stayed out of prison. She was placed on probation and saw a court-appointed psychiatrist for several years.'
'Did the psychiatrist help her?'
'Dr. Oliver helped her only to an extent. She understands her past now, and she's no longer compulsively violent. Toward anyone. She loves her children, as she always did.'
'But she doesn't love Claudia.'
Laura Cather smiled her frail and gentle smile at Nudger and nodded, pleased that he understood. 'Claudia can't shake the guilt,' she said, 'because Ralph Ferris won't let her. He's the one who needs mental therapy now, but the law doesn't demand it.'
'And Claudia can't forget Ralph Ferris because he's got custody of their daughters. He's a part of her life whether she likes it or not.'
'Exactly. And he sees to it that she doesn't like it. He's never forgiven her, or acts that way. If he's so sure she deliberately left that window open to punish their daughter for some minor childhood transgression, maybe you can't blame him.'
'I can blame him,' Nudger said. 'He's perpetuating pain.'
'I've told Claudia to limit her involvement with him, send someone to get the children when she has visitation rights. Her psychiatrist told her the same thing when she was seeing him. Ralph won't cooperate. He demands to deliver the children to her door himself. He occasionally comes to see her alone, or taunts her over the phone. There's no way to stop him. No way, Mr. Nudger. No way even to know if he's still a grief-sick father or simply a mean and vengeful bastard. But I know which way I'd bet.'
Nudger sighed. The world was a swamp, and understanding was quicksand. And sometimes the log you were standing on turned and gave you a crocodile smile.
'Two years ago Claudia tried to commit suicide by slashing her wrists,' Laura Cather said. 'Coreen Davis found her, slowed the bleeding, and got her medical aid in time to save her. It wasn't one of those Russian-roulette
