Follow the Money

4


Rebecca Steele lived in New York City and hadn’t seen her father in years. I’d gotten the number from Steele and I sat at my desk and stared at it. I started dialing and then set the receiver down. I had no idea what I was going to ask her. I made a list of questions, trying to make sure I covered everything. Three thousand a week and I didn’t know how to make a phone call. Somebody was definitely getting screwed.

Ten minutes later she answered the phone and I introduced myself. She seemed neither surprised nor supportive, and maintained a controlled ambivalence toward my questions. She said, “I’m not sure what I can tell you that hasn’t already been told a hundred times.”

Perhaps, but I wanted to hear her say it anyway. I scanned my list of questions. “Your parents split up for a time, about a year and a half before the incident.” It was a question I’d gotten from reading the newspaper articles. I felt funny saying ‘incident’, but I didn’t want to say ‘murder.’ I wasn’t sure what to say. “Do you recall that?”

“Sure.” She answered like she was on autopilot.

“Do you know what that breakup was about?”

“Not really. They weren’t fighting or anything. Mom just left and went to New York. She spent about a month here with the family — with her family.”

“Sure.” The distinction between her mother’s family and her father’s was clearly important to her.

“And then they got back together. I don’t know what it was about. I was thirteen, I hated my parents anyway, so I never asked about it.”

“So, at the time of the, murder, you hadn’t noticed any renewed animosity between them?” There, I’d said it — murder — but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Not at all. They were busy like always. Dad had just gotten back from Alaska a few days before. He was just in town for the weekend before going back to Washington.”

I struggled for another question and had to change the subject. “Ok, let’s talk about Matt Bishop. Was he a boyfriend of yours?” It was the first thing that came to mind.

“Oh, God, no. Nothing like that.”

“How did you know him?”

“He was just a kid that was around.”

“Y’mean just a neighborhood kid that you knew from where you lived?”

“Right.”

“My impression is that Matt did not belong to the same, shall we say, social strata as your family.”

“Certainly not.”

“But you still hung out with Matt and his friends.”

“Not really, no. He was just one of those kids that was always around. He had a crush on me and he used to go out of his way to talk to me.”

“And you invited him over to your house?”

“I wouldn’t say that. If a group of kids came over, he might be in the group. But then he started just coming around.”

“But you still used to let him in.”

“Yeah. I regret it now, of course, but I was an awkward teenager. I mean, it’s easy as an adult to think you’d just tell the guy to f*ck off, but when you’re fourteen or fifteen you don’t behave that way.”

“I understand.” She seemed to be talking more. I kept my questions short and tried to let her ramble.

She went on. “Truth be told, he seemed dangerous. So he was kind of exciting. Toward the end, it got kind of weird though. He started writing me notes and leaving them in my bag. They got kinda sexual, y’know.”

“Did you have that kind of relationship with him?”

“You mean sexual? God, no. I mean, he was the kind of guy you could be dirty around, so we would joke about stuff. He took it too far though, writing me really disturbing notes.”

“Were they threatening?”

“Not threatening so much as just really perverted.” She paused, thinking. “Well, I dunno, maybe in retrospect it was threatening. Like I said, I was just a kid.”

“Do you have any of these letters?”

“No, I threw them away as soon as I got them. I wish I hadn’t.”

“How did your mom and Matt first start fighting?”

“I think the first time it happened was when we were having some people over for dinner. Matt was at the house and wouldn’t leave. I remember Mom doing one of those things where she said, the guests will be here in two hours, your friend needs to go home now. You know, saying it to me while he’s sitting right there. Only Matt didn’t leave, she came by again and then told him to leave directly. He wouldn’t. It turned into this fight between them where she told him she would call the police if he didn’t leave immediately.”

“And he left?”

“Yeah, after she threatened him. Then Mom told me she didn’t want him around anymore.”

“But he kept coming by.”

“Yeah, I never told him outright that she said he couldn’t come over anymore. I mean I was fifteen, I didn’t want to have to say, ‘my mom says I can’t be your friend anymore,’ y’know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.”

“So he kept coming by when my folks weren’t there. Oh, another reason my mom didn’t like him was because he used to scare Shawn. He would chase him around, make him cry. Matt thought that was pretty funny.”

“When did he do this?”

“All the time.”

I realized I was out of questions again. I sat there for a second, my brain racing to think about what I hadn’t covered yet.

“Hello?”

“Um, yes, I’m sorry, I was just making some notes. I, uh, wanted to ask you about why your father immediately suspected it was Matt.” It seemed like a stupid question.

“Well, for all those reasons, I guess. Dad said that Matt called the house a bunch of times that day and Mom had gotten into a fight with him over the phone. I suppose that was probably why. Also, they never found the murder weapon. I mean, that alone is pretty strong evidence it was someone else. Not necessarily Matt, but someone.”

I thought about the prosecutor’s argument. Claiming Steele had sat in the bathroom while his wife lay dead on the floor and washed the solid steel kitchen knife under the tub faucet. Then going calmly downstairs and putting it away. All before he called the police. The image of Steele rinsing the blood off the knife while his wife was dying on the floor made me shiver.

It also made me say, “But people generally don’t kill people because of an argument over the phone.”

“Most people aren’t Matt.”

“Well, there must have been a little more to it than that.”

“There were other things, but Dad didn’t know about them at the time. For one, Matt used to tell me about how he broke into houses in the neighborhood. He thought that was real cool.”

“You mean he was a burglar?”

“The impression I got was that he got a thrill out of going into houses when people weren’t there, that’s all.”

“So you’re saying he may have broken into your house?”

“I’m saying, well, maybe that’s what I’m suggesting, but there’s more to it. I lost my house keys about two months before. I always suspected that Matt might have taken them. I kept them in a zipper compartment in my school bag, so they wouldn’t have fallen out.”

“Are you sure he took them?”

“No. It was just a feeling I had. I know it sounds like bullshit, but the police found the side door to the garage ajar that night. They didn’t see tracks in the grass or anything, and no forced entry, so they didn’t say anything. It was only vaguely mentioned in the police report. But they did say they locked it back up to secure the crime scene. Anyway, two days later my grandpa went to the house with us to get clothes and personal stuff and he found the same door open again.”

“I see. Did anyone ever check that door for fingerprints?”

“I have no idea.” Her voice spoke in a series of descending tones. I got the impression she was exhausted by the whole subject. “The upsetting thing was that there were things missing from the house when we went back to get stuff. Personal things, you know, stuff of my mom’s.”

“Like what?”

“Well, she had some old boxes of family pictures that I wanted, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. She also kept an old cedar hope chest way in the back of her closet, and that was gone too.”

“Did you ever find them?”

“No. I even asked dad about them later and he had no idea what she’d done with them.”

“Maybe someone took them. I mean, afterward, if someone came into the house.”

“We suspected that, but it just seemed too weird. I mean, it was all stuff she would have wanted and no burglar would have taken just that, you know what I mean?” She was silent for a second. “It’s too bad, I really would have liked those things. Especially the cedar chest and the pictures.”

“So, your father suspected Matt right away, because of all of these different things, and he told you to find out where he was that night.”

“Right.”

“What did you do?”

She let out a heavy sigh, the remnant of a deep and silent breath. “Well, I didn’t get any sleep that night. I waited as long as I could, until about seven or seven-thirty, and then called his house. When his sister answered, it was clear to me that she had no idea what had happened. I asked for Matt and she said he wasn’t there, that he hadn’t come home the night before.”

“I see. Now you told your dad and his lawyer this?”

“Yeah, I told the lawyer everything. I talked to him a bunch of times. I didn’t even testify at the trial.”

“What?” The sharpness of my voice surprised me. “You mean you never took the stand?”

“No. In fact, I was in New York during the trial. The lawyer told me to stay in New York. He said the prosecution would try to make me testify against my dad and try to get me to say my parents had a bad relationship and all that.”

A chill ran through me. I rubbed the back of my neck and leaned back in my chair. Garrett Andersen had intentionally told a potentially key witness to flee the state to avoid helping the prosecution?

“So he told you to make yourself unavailable to testify?” I couldn’t help but ask again, just to make sure I heard it right.

“Oh yeah, we had a very specific talk about it. This was months before trial. I was going to be living with my mother’s family anyway; New York was naturally where I’d end up.”

It sounded better the second time. She was moving anyway. That wasn’t exactly fleeing the state.

“Anyway, I did end up telling the police about what Matt’s sister said. I don’t think they believed me. When Dad testified at trial, he wasn’t allowed to tell them about the conversation.”

I thought about that for a second. Was it hearsay? Steele couldn’t repeat the contents of the conversation between Becky and Matt’s sister because it took place out of court? I didn’t remember the rules of evidence. Why was I so stupid? The line was silent and I wondered how long I’d been thinking. I had to focus. I tried to come up with something to say, but the conversation had lost its momentum.

She could tell I was out of questions and she broke in. “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, but this should all be in the reports you have.”

“Right. I don’t mean to keep you. I think that’s all I need for now.”

“Okay.” She paused for just an instant. “Good luck.”

I began to say goodbye when I realized she’d already hung up. I turned around to stare out the window and think about what she said when my eyes ran over the open boxes of the “file” spread out on the floor.

In one of the boxes was Steele’s old day planner. After listening to Becky Steele describe how busy her parents were, I decided to flip through it and get a sense of what Steele’s life had once been like.

It was strangely voyeuristic, a glimpse into the daily routine of a wealthy and powerful man. Yet the entries were often cryptic, filled with abbreviated names and other shorthand that made it difficult to figure out exactly what the appointments were. For example, the last meeting he had during his trip to Alaska, just before the murder, read: 3 P.M., Fairbanks Hotel, Gary R.

Not particularly helpful.