The probate case I was working on was ridiculous but modestly profitable so I’d taken it. When their old man died, leaving two thousand dollars and a shotgun to his daughter, his son came to me and said he wanted to contest it. This seemed curious to me because the son was a prominent psychiatrist in Iowa City. He’d grown up here with his old man and his sister. It was the latter he was after. According to him, the old man had always favored her. She got all the new clothes, all the money to go east for college and, more than anything, all the love and support because she reminded his father of his late wife. He was close to tears while he was telling me, biting his lip and twisting his hands. I felt like the shrink listening to a patient. I wouldn’t be recommending his services to anybody I knew.
When I heard Jamie say, “Oh, hi, may I help you?” I raised my head and stared straight into the eyes of Sarah Powers. She and another girl stood in the doorway of my office, both looking nervous.
“Hi, Sarah.”
“Hi.” Sarah wore a blue work shirt and jeans. She held a cigarette aloft with great delicacy, the ash at least half an inch long.
“Let me help you with that,” Jamie said. Seconds later she slid an ashtray under the cigarette. Sarah flicked the ash and thanked her.
“This is Glenna, Sam. I wondered if you’d talk to us. Glenna knows something about what happened the night Vanessa died.” Glenna was a thin, tall girl with blond hair in a ponytail and quick, suspicious brown eyes. Her T-shirt read S TOP THE WAR NOW!
“Sure. Come on in.”
Jamie dragged an extra chair in front of my desk so both girls could sit. Glenna’s fringed buckskin shirt had to be damned hot on a day like this. When she sat down she leaned back and dragged a package of Winstons from the front pocket of her jeans. The pack was pinched by now so that when she got a cigarette out she had to straighten it up.
“Glenna just came to the commune a couple of weeks ago. She’s a real good cook. She made a pumpkin pie last week that knocked everybody out. Plus she’s got her college degree. But she dropped out of society just like the rest of us because it’s all such bullshit.”
That remark caused Jamie to show some interest in the conversation. She stopped her typing to listen. The remark caused me to force a somber look on lips that wanted to smile. The casual way so many of them said “we dropped out of society” had always struck me as funny. They shopped at grocery stores, they had cars that needed repairs, some of them had to pay light and gas and phone bills, and they weren’t averse to going to doctors or free clinics. They’d dropped out of the parts of society they didn’t like but they were very much still citizens.
“And she saw Vanessa go into that barn.”
I straightened up. This required full attention. “What time was this, Glenna?”
“She says it was right after supper. She was going to the barn to see if this kitten had come back. She found this little black-and-white one-”
“Sarah, why don’t you let Glenna talk?”
Sarah blushed bright as an autumn apple. “I’m sorry. But she’s shy. She asked me to do the talking.”
“I’m sorry. I need to hear it from her.”
She took a deep breath. “She, uh, thinks you’re like, you know, one of the pigs.”
“Why, that’s not true, Sarah. Mr. C isn’t a pig. You shouldn’t say things like that,” Jamie interjected.
“If that’s true, she should tell me I’m a pig herself.”
“You’re a pig,” Glenna said.
“All right, now that we’ve got that established, how about telling me what you saw that night.”
“I’m only doing this because I know Neil never murdered anybody. That’s something only pigs do. Neil was transcendental and so am I.”
“Good enough. So what about Vanessa that night?”
“I saw her behind the barn. She was arguing with Richard.”
“You could hear them arguing?”
“No, but it was obvious. She sort of shoved him once and started to walk away but he grabbed her by the arm.”
“They didn’t see you?”
“I was over by that old silo. They couldn’t see me in the shadows. Plus it was starting to get real dark.”
“How long did you watch them?”
“Probably ten, eleven minutes, something like that. Until she ran inside the barn and he went in after her. That time I did hear them-at least, I heard him shout her name. I didn’t want to get involved because Richard thinks we spy on him anyway. He can get real paranoid.”
“Why didn’t you come forward before?”
This time she took a deep breath. When she exhaled the sound was ragged, anxious. “I got in a little trouble in Iowa City. I’m on probation. I don’t want to get hassled by the pigs again.”
“What happened in Iowa City?”
“They can’t take a joke is what happened in Iowa City.”
“That doesn’t exactly tell me anything.”
“Go ahead, Glenna. Tell him.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sarah.”
“Sure it matters. So please tell me.”
“I puked into this bucket and then threw the bucket at a cop. I got vomit all over him. All we were doing was trying to take over this dean’s office. This dean was a real pig.”
The hell of it was she seemed to be serious. I wasn’t sure how to deal with someone who didn’t understand that throwing a bucket of puke at somebody just might be considered an aggressive and unlawful act. “Can’t imagine why the cop’d be pissed off about that.”
“I’m glad you never try to be sarcastic. I told you he’d be a pig, Sarah.”
As I’d said so many times, most of the hippies I’d met over the past few years I’d liked. I agreed with them about the war, about the materialism of our society, about the alienation so many of us felt. Just as there were a few hippie haters in town, there were also a few hippie lunatics and right now I was sitting across from one of them.
“All I care about right now is that you’d be willing to testify to what you just said. Under oath.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hey, Glenna, you promised me you would.”
“I said I ‘might.’ But I don’t like this jerk. At all.”
“Forget about him. He doesn’t matter-no offense, Sam. What matters is that you’re willing to admit the truth to the cops. And save my brother’s reputation.”
“Well, if I do it, that’s the only reason I’ll do it.”
“That’s all I care about,” I said. “Sarah, I’ll leave it up to you to hold her to this. The first thing I need to do is talk to Richard. This doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“See what I mean, Sarah? That’s why I didn’t want to come here. He’s already making excuses for Richard. They’re big buddies.”
“She hates Richard, Sam. She thinks she should be running the commune.”
Somehow that’s not a surprise, I thought. But I didn’t say it, of course, not with Rasputin sitting directly in front of me.
“He thinks he’s so cool,” Glenna said.
“She used to live with Richard.”
“He doesn’t believe any of the things he says about the revolution,” Glenna said, managing to light a cigarette while saying this. “He has two credit cards.”
“Maybe he needs them,” Sarah suggested quietly.
“You think Lenin had credit cards?”
“I need to get out of here. I have some appointments. One of them will be to go see Richard. In the meantime, Sarah, I’d appreciate it if you’d make sure that Glenna is willing to tell her story to the authorities if need be.”
“That’s cool. Now he’s not talking to me. He’s only talking to you.”
