Dante's Dilemma Read online

  According to Boris, Division IV of the jail, which houses all of its female prisoners, was a windowless brick structure surrounded by a sixteen-foot razor-wire fence. Boris pulled up to the visitor’s entrance on South Sacramento and idled the town car while we waited for Hallie’s associate to show up. Under the court order, I was not entitled to meet with Lazarus alone, a courtesy extended to Brad Stephens before Hallie assumed command of the case. The only good news was that Hallie wouldn’t be making an appearance. If I had to bet, she was already at her parent’s place, helping to prepare mouthwatering dishes for the family’s Christmas feast, a bitter contrast to the takeout I planned on ordering for myself.

  So it was a shock when Boris informed me a few minutes later that the person exiting the cab pulled up behind us was a diminutive woman wrapped in an ankle-length fur coat.

  “You sure?” I said to him, feeling my insides clench. I remembered just such a coat, bought on a fall shopping expedition to the Water Tower when Hallie and I were still on good terms. “What else can you see?”

  “Like Yelena when she is mad.”

  A moment later, Hallie rapped harshly on the curbside window and told me to get out.

  I hopped like a coolie to her summons, completely forgetting about the season. Two steps out the car door, my heel slipped on a slick sheet of ice. Before I knew it, I was sprawled on the ground face up with my backpack still attached to my shoulders and my cane rolling off in another direction. Probably because she knew how much I hated being helped, Hallie watched without comment while I attempted to right myself, offering assistance only when my slapstick efforts appeared to be going nowhere.

  “C’mon, Yertle,” she said, taking me by the arm and yanking me back to my feet. “Don’t you know better than to wear loafers in this weather?”

  I was too embarrassed to tell her about the missing shoes. “Thanks for rushing to my aid. Why are you here? I thought Carter would be doing the babysitting this morning.”

  “He came down with the flu, and all the other associates were already flying off someplace or pretending not to hear their cell phones. Here’s your cane.”

  I used it to steady myself while I leaned down to pat my trouser leg, which felt torn and a little damp. Beneath it, my knee was tingling.

  “Oh, hell,” Hallie said. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing.” I reached into my overcoat and pulled out a handkerchief.

  “Give me that and I’ll take a look.”

  Hallie squatted and rolled up my pant leg to get a better look. I thought the setting was innocuous enough to try to clear the air. “About that time in the County Building—” I began.

  She cut me off brusquely. “This isn’t the time to discuss it.” She dabbed at my leg with the handkerchief. “You’ll live. It’s only a surface cut.”

  Hallie patched me up with a Band-Aid—her voluminous purse always seemed to hold more items than a Home Depot—and stood, returning my handkerchief to me. I balled it up and shoved it back into my pocket. “Thanks again. Sorry to be such a nuisance.”

  “It’s your forte. Let’s get going. We’ve wasted enough time and there are a million other places I’d rather be today.”

  She and I both.

  Half an hour and numerous security checks later—my cane, as usual, requiring two x-rays and a manual check before it could be cleared—Hallie and I were seated at a table in a small, chilly room, waiting for Lazarus to be brought in. It was a long wait. As the minutes ticked by, I set up my digital recorder and put a fresh CD in, tested the table top, aligned my cane along one edge, folded and unfolded my arms, roamed my eyes unseeingly around the room, and repositioned my backpack several times at my feet, all without prompting a snippet of conversation from Hallie.

  When I could stand the silent treatment no longer, I said, “If we were alley cats this would be a staring contest.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself that I’m looking your way.”

  I was about to reply with something equally snotty when the door buzzed open and Rachel Lazarus was brought in.

  Hallie introduced us, we shook, and I frowned.

  It’s been said that Ray Charles sized up women by feeling their wrists, from which he was able to deduce critical details like breast-to-hip ratio and willingness to join him in the sack. I was no such wizard, but I’d learned to gather what I could from a handshake. Rachel Lazarus’s fingers were thin to the point of emaciation, like twigs wrapped in a layer of cellophane. Her skin was dry, cold, and flaky. As she sat down, she was overcome by a fit of coughing that lasted several minutes.

  I sent a quizzical look in Hallie’s direction. “Rachel, are you ill?” Hallie said.

  Rachel apparently nodded yes. “It’s just the cold. I always get bronchitis this time of year.” Her voice was low, hoarse and barely audible.

  “Have they given you something for it?” I asked.

  “I’m taking a round of antibiotics.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s it. And some Tylenol.”

  Hallie caught on to where I was going. “Rachel, we don’t have to do this today if you’re not up to it.”

  “I’m all right,” Rachel said. “Though I wouldn’t mind borrowing your sweater.”

  “Of course,” Hallie said. “And you can keep it when we’re through. Mark, are you ready to begin?”

  I said yes and slid into my standard introduction, explaining who I was, what I was there for, and obtaining Lazarus’s permission to use a tape recorder.

  I then sought her agreement on some preliminaries. “Usually, when a person speaks to a psychiatrist, what they say will remain strictly confidential. Unfortunately, I can’t promise you that today. In fact, it’s very likely that whatever you tell me will be talked about a great deal at your trial. I need to be sure you’re aware of that, and that you’re still willing to go ahead.”

  “Is that the psychiatric version of a Miranda warning?” Rachel asked with a hint of amusement.

  I smiled at her. “That’s a good question. Actually, it is similar, though I won’t be asking you the same questions as the police.”

  “And if I don’t agree to talk to you,” Lazarus asked. “What happens then?”

  “Nothing. Except that I won’t be able to testify at your trial. As Ms. Sanchez has no doubt explained, I may be able to offer a professional opinion that will help you.”

  “Or not.” As one of the Chicago professors had mentioned at the party, Lazarus was no dummy.

  “That’s true. And it’s another thing I need to be sure you understand. I’m not here as your therapist. Much as I may want to help you, that’s outside my role.”

  Rachel sighed. “That’s what Dr. Stephens said, too. All right, I’ll answer your questions. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t judge me too harshly.”

  There wasn’t much chance of that.

  I established that she wasn’t taking any medications other than the Tylenol and antibiotics she’d already mentioned, and that she felt clearheaded enough to proceed. I also gave another part of my usual speech—that because I was blind and couldn’t see her, she needed to answer all my questions aloud and not with a shake or nod of the head. Then it was time to get down to business.

  I didn’t have much time, but there were a few things about Lazarus’s childhood I wanted to confirm.

  Lazarus was born in 1970, and like me, grew up on the East Coast, in a suburb of Long Island. Her father worked for an investment firm in Manhattan and was rarely at home. Her mother was a homemaker.

  “Tell me about your relationship with your mother.”

  “It was the usual, I guess,” Lazarus said matter-of-factly.

  From what I knew already, it was anything but usual.

  “You told Dr. Stephens that your mother shouted a lot.”

  “That’s true. It wasn’t her fault. She had a lot to deal with, raising us kids with my father
away on business so much of the time. She didn’t make friends easily and was lonely. She always wanted us to stay close to home. We weren’t allowed to play at friends’ houses or go on sleepovers or things like that. She said we were her best friends.”

  “What about your own friends? Were they allowed to play at your house?”

  “Not really. Mom didn’t like having other children around. She said the noise gave her migraines. And besides, she didn’t have time to be babysitting someone else’s kids.”

  “You also mentioned to Dr. Stephens that your mother had a lot of rules.”

  “That’s right. But they were all very normal and reasonable. Like making my bed every morning and not letting my room get messy. My mother liked a well-kept home, and she had traditional views, not like some other parents who were too permissive.”

  “How good were you at following the rules?”

  Rachel gave a rueful little laugh. “Not very, I’m afraid. I was an absentminded child—pretty airheaded in fact—so I had to be reminded all the time about what was expected of me.”

  “What happened when you broke the rules? Did she punish you?”

  Rachel tittered nervously. “Oh, sure. But I usually deserved it. I was pretty disobedient, and like I said, always forgetting what I was supposed to do.”

  “What kind of punishment are we talking about?”

  “Oh, you know. Nothing too physical. Back then, a lot of parents hit their kids.”

  In fact, during her sessions with Brad Stephens, Lazarus had revealed significantly more than an occasional slap on the wrist. On various occasions, her mother had gone after her with a broom handle, a hair dryer, a rolling pin, and a pair of scissors, which she had used to cut off all her eight-year-old daughter’s hair. Lazarus had also been locked in her room for hours, denied meals, and been required to keep a diary detailing her transgressions and apologizing for what a “bad” person she was. That she was able to excuse her mother and blame herself was symptomatic of her issues.

  Lazarus had one sibling, a sister two years her junior.

  “What about your sister, Laura? Did your mother punish her, too?”

  “Oh, no. Laura was always good. As my mother used to say, I was the one who needed straightening out.”

  Laura was killed in a car crash when Lazarus was twelve.

  “Tell me about the accident,” I said.

  “It was after school. Laura and I were fooling around on the backseat, and we got a little . . . rambunctious, as my mother would say. She always wanted us to act like little ladies. She . . . reached around to stop us and I guess lost control of the car. I don’t remember too much after that, just a lot of noise and waking up in the hospital the next day.”

  Lazarus had spent the following year of her life recovering from two broken legs and a shattered pelvis.

  “That must have been hard on you.”

  “I guess it was. I couldn’t go to school and missed all of seventh grade. My friends couldn’t come over and I was alone a lot. But it was OK because Mom was there to take care of me.”

  “But it wasn’t really OK, was it?” I prodded gently.

  “You shouldn’t think badly of her. I was frequently disobedient and, well . . .”

  “And what?”

  “I was responsible for what happened to Laura.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Of course. I mean if we—that is, I—hadn’t been making a scene in the car, the accident wouldn’t have happened and Laura would still be alive today. It should have been me.”

  According to police reports, Lazarus’s mother was over the legal limit when she drove her children home from school that day. Remarkably, she walked away from the accident without a scratch or an apparent sense of guilt, although she was able to play the grieving mother long enough to evade a DUI conviction. And all too typically, she made her bedridden daughter into the scapegoat for the accident. Wrapped up in his work or too cowardly to get involved, Lazarus’s father had done nothing to stop the torrent of verbal and physical abuse, even declining to intervene when Lazarus re-broke one of her legs after a “fall” down the stairs.

  “And your schoolwork after the accident, how did that go?”

  “All right, I suppose. I was able to start eighth grade with my classmates.”

  In fact, it had gone significantly better than “all right.” Five years later, Lazarus was the valedictorian of her high-school class. She attended Smith on a full scholarship, graduating in 1992 summa cum laude with a double major in history and European studies. Predictably, her mother didn’t attend the commencement ceremony because she was feeling “unwell.” Lazarus’s father was absent too, on a business trip to Japan. A few years later, when Lazarus was a college senior, he died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

  “Are you and your mother in touch today?”

  “No. I tried to call her after . . . after I was taken into custody, but they’d confiscated my cell phone and she refused to pay the long-distance charge. It’s been so hard for her since Dad died. There wasn’t as much money as she thought, and she’s had to struggle to make ends meet. She can’t really afford to help me out.”

  “Has she communicated with you in any way?”

  “She wrote me a letter saying how upset she was about Gunther’s death. She liked him so very much. And the notoriety has caused her so much grief. She can’t go anywhere without reporters following her and asking questions. It’s very embarrassing to be the mother of a murderess. And now, she won’t have anyone to take care of her when she’s older. She couldn’t even think about visiting me in prison. It’s too far away and the shame would be too great.”

  Given what I surmised about Lazarus’s mother, I wasn’t shocked.

  I’d heard everything I needed to know about Lazarus’s upbringing. It was now time to move on to her marriage.

  TWELVE

  Rachel Lazarus was two weeks into her PhD program at the University of Chicago when she happened upon a flyer in the dining commons advertising a lecture by a then up-and-coming young professor named Gunther Westlake. Being at the university exhilarated her. It was such a far cry from her all-woman’s college in the sleepy center of Massachusetts. She adored the school’s imposing, gothic-style quadrangles, the bohemian cafés and restaurants of surrounding Hyde Park. It would still be a few years until Hogwarts made its debut in a series of popular books, but to Lazarus the university seemed every bit like an exclusive boarding school, set down in a mythical kingdom and populated by creatures whose brilliance she could only guess at. Even the run-down apartment she shared with two other graduate students in the Shoreland, a gritty former hotel that had once been the domain of Al Capone, seemed like a dream come true.

  Drawn to the lecture as much by the topic—“The End of the Cold War: Fact or Fiction?”—as by the photograph of the firebrand who would be giving it—Lazarus had arrived early at Harper on a Thursday evening in October and taken a seat in the front row, where she could take in the full sweep of the leaded glass windows rising up nearly thirty feet in what had once been the university’s main library. She had put on what she assumed was appropriate wear for such a serious topic—a modest blouse and skirt, dark hose, low-heeled pumps—but couldn’t help adding a bright, multi-colored scarf she’d purchased in Paris the month before, a trip she’d financed by waiting tables all summer. It added, she felt, a touch of sophistication, a sign that she wasn’t like the other students now entering the cavernous room and filling the chairs behind her, dressed down in jeans, tee shirts and the ubiquitous Birkenstocks. Tattoos and body piercings were just becoming the rage, but she thought they were low-class. Four years at Smith had left her decidedly cold to the radicalism of her classmates, and Chicago’s reputation for civilized, right-of-center discourse was a major reason she had chosen it over other places to study.

  Twenty-three years old, slender, dark-haired, and delicately featured, Lazarus felt—and no doubt looked—beautiful.

 
So it was no surprise to her that, while the talk was going on, she noticed Gunther Westlake’s eyes straying several times in her direction, particularly after he had drawn another round of enthusiastic applause with his skillful lampooning of the feckless liberals who dared to imagine that the former Soviet Union was dead and over with. She felt as though she was being singled out for special recognition, invited to share in his well-deserved triumph. Westlake’s specialty was sociology, but he seemed as intimately versed in European history as any of the professors she had studied under at Smith. Indeed, there didn’t appear to be any academic subject he wasn’t conversant with. His scholarship and rhetorical mastery dazzled her. Added to that, she liked his looks. Shorter and slenderer than average, bespectacled, and with the slightly comical halo of hair that would later be caricatured in publications like The New Republic, he seemed both physically unthreatening and a bit like her father, whom Lazarus had worshipped when she was a child.

  In short, she was ready to be swept off her feet.

  “You stayed around after the lecture?” I said.

  “Yes. I was hoping to get his autograph. He offered to buy me dinner. I thought he was just being kind, so I made an excuse. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was . . . flattered.”

  “So you went out with him that night?”

  “And many nights afterward.”

  “He—that is, Westlake—was married at the time?”

  “Yes, but in the process of getting a divorce. His first wife had left him six months before. She also taught at the university, and Gunther said she was jealous of his success. I wish now . . .”

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  “I wish I had talked to her, found out more about him before we got so involved. But she had already taken another teaching position across the country and, well, I couldn’t very well approach her, a complete stranger. Besides, I had no reason to think Gunther was being dishonest with me.”

  “Did he pressure you into having sex?”

  “No. I wanted it, though I knew it was tricky. This was the early nineties. The university didn’t yet have a formal rule banning relationships between professors and students, but it was frowned upon. I didn’t care. By that time I was already having doubts about getting my PhD. Gunther thought it was a waste of time, given that there were so few tenure-track positions in history.”