Never Enough
It was not hard to reconstruct what she had done with his body after she’d killed him.
She had slid a black plastic garbage bag over his head and had tied the bag shut with blue nylon cord. She had covered the body with towels. She had put the towel-covered body into a children’s sleeping bag later identified as having come from her daughters’ room. She had wrapped the bag in sheets of polyethylene and had sealed the sheets with adhesive tape.
She had brought a rug into the bedroom from the living room and had rolled her husband’s body up inside it. She had covered each end of the carpet with black plastic garbage bags and secured the ends with adhesive tape. She had sealed the entire roll with more adhesive tape. She had wrapped more polyethylene sheeting around it and had taped that shut. She had tied four cushions to the outside of the carpet.
On the third day, she had dragged it into the living room. And then she had called the workmen to take it away.
Investigators who opened the packing cartons that had been sent to the storeroom with the body found them filled with blood-soaked sheets and towels and other bloody debris. At the bottom of one, they found a broken lead statuette. A thick coating of dried blood covered its base. Alongside were the broken figurines of two little girls. Bent metal screws that had attached the figurines to the base indicated that they’d been broken from it forcefully, as would have occurred if Nancy had used the figurines as a handle while she’d swung the statuette down at the head of her immobile husband, shattering his skull five times with the heavy lead base.
When he returned to Ruttonjee at 9:00 a.m., Ira spoke to a police officer who said that Nancy would shortly be transferred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kowloon, which had a “custodial facility.” He found both a representative of the United States consulate and a young lawyer from the Hong Kong firm of Mallesons Stephen Jaques standing at the end of Nancy’s bed.
The woman from the consulate said she would be available to answer any questions that might arise but that U.S. officials would have no direct involvement in the case. The lawyer told Ira that Mallesons had been contacted by Skadden, Arps and that a Mallesons partner named Simon Clarke was prepared to act as Nancy’s solicitor and would meet them at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Nancy herself was not speaking. She remained flat on her back, her eyes wide open, her face devoid of expression. Ira said good morning. She did not respond. He reached for her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.
As they left the ward for the trip to Queen Elizabeth at noon, Ira was almost swept off his feet by a clamoring horde of cameramen and photographers. The crush of press was even worse than it had been outside the emergency room. The attendant pushing Nancy’s wheelchair followed a phalanx of uniformed police to the elevator as Ira scrambled to stay close behind.
All day Friday, Hong Kong police evidence technicians combed through the bedroom in which Rob had died. They found bloodstains on walls, heavier bloodstains on the bed, bloodstains on the headboard of the bed, and more bloodstains on various pieces of furniture and spattered across the screen of the television set. The heaviest staining was on a section of carpet at the foot of the bed. It appeared that someone had attempted to conceal this by covering it with a new rug.
The police also noted that the portion of bedspread that had hung down from the footboard of the bed had been sheared off and was not in the bedroom. Given its proximity to the heavy staining on the carpet, police concluded that when they found that portion of the bedspread they’d find that it, too, was heavily stained.
There were no smears of blood on the walls, as there would have been if a bleeding man had been standing up and moving as he fought for his life. No blood spatters were found more than four feet above the floor, indicating the victim had been lying down when he was struck. There were no spatters of blood on the ceiling, indicating that the assailant had used not a long weapon such as a golf club, but a short, heavy weapon, such as a lead statuette.
The Sydney-based law firm of Mallesons Stephen Jaques was growing rapidly into one of the largest and most respected in Hong Kong. As a full partner, Simon Clarke had just cause to believe himself to be among the more sought-after of the territory’s five thousand solicitors. He was a chipper, cordial thirty-nine-year-old Australian who’d been in Hong Kong since 1994, first with Jewkes Chan and then Kwok & Yih before Mallesons. He specialized in representing multinational corporations seeking to assure themselves and others that none of their business practices, no matter how unfavorably construed, would be seen as having drifted across the fine line that separated innocent avarice from white-collar crime.
Because he had no experience with homicide, Clarke quickly obtained the services of someone who did. In the British legal system, which by and large remained in force in Hong Kong, the client hired a solicitor, who could do everything except try a case, and the solicitor hired a barrister, who represented the client at trial. Even before meeting Nancy, Clarke had contacted Alexander King, a highly regarded forty-eight-year-old barrister who’d worked as a criminal defense lawyer in England, a Crown prosecutor in New Zealand, and who’d been doing criminal trial and appeal work in Hong Kong since 1986.
The two attorneys were waiting in a conference room off the lobby of Queen Elizabeth Hospital when Ira returned to see Nancy early Friday evening. Ira wrote a check for twenty thousand dollars to get the ball rolling. It was the first of many such checks to Mallesons, none of them for a smaller amount.
Nancy was wheeled into the room. Except for her tremors, she seemed frozen into the chair. Her gaze was blank. She did not speak. Ira explained about her emotional condition. Clarke stood and stepped toward her.
“Are you able to understand me?” he said. “Blink if you can.”
Nancy blinked.
He explained who he and Alexander King were and why they were there. Then he asked, “Do I have your full attention?”
Nancy blinked.
“All right: listen very carefully and remember this. Don’t talk to anybody. I repeat: do—not—talk—to—anybody. Don’t talk to the police. Don’t talk to any doctors or nurses. Don’t talk to any psychiatrists or psychologists. From this moment forward I do not want you to talk to anyone in the world—including your father—unless I personally give you permission. Don’t forget that. Nothing could be more important. Blink if you understand.”
Nancy blinked.
Simon Clarke turned to Ira. “Do not ask her what happened,” he said. “Do not ask her what she did. She has already told you what she’s told you. Leave it at that. And tell everyone you talk to the same thing: do not ask Nancy any questions. From now on, only I ask the questions.”
Ira went upstairs with Nancy to her room, which was really a cell. There were bars on three sides. A police matron sat at a desk just outside the door. Among her tasks was to accompany Nancy to the bathroom when necessary. A small metal nightstand and a narrow cot with a mattress no thicker than Ira’s thumb were the only pieces of furniture in the room. Now Ira knew what “custodial facility” meant.
Nancy lay rigid, trembling and staring into space. Ira sat at the edge of her bed.
“I don’t know if you can understand me, sweetie,” he said. “But please don’t kill yourself. That would make everything worse. Remember how much the children need you. We’re all doing everything we can to help you. So please don’t do anything to harm yourself.”
She squeezed Ira’s hand when he said that. But she said nothing, not a word.
Connie realized that she hadn’t packed enough clothes for Isabel and Zoe. She walked to the apartment from the hotel on Friday evening, prepared to ask the police officer guarding the door if she could be permitted inside—under supervision—to gather some clothing.
But there was no police officer guarding the door. Connie used her key to open it. There were no police inside the apartment and no tape or signs or other indications that any of the rooms were off-limits. Connie went into the girls’ bedroom and opened the clothes cl
oset.
The stench hit her hard. It forced her backward, hands covering her mouth and nose. She flipped the light switch outside the closet door. She saw two black plastic garbage bags on a shelf. Those bags had never been there before. And whatever was inside them was producing the stench.
She ran back to the hotel and called the police. Two officers arrived within the hour. They took the two garbage bags out of the closet. One of the officers opened a bag to look inside. He immediately dropped it and raced to the bathroom to vomit.
The bags were filled with blood-soaked towels, pillows, and other matter, possibly organic.
Ira woke up worried at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday. He knew, of course, that he’d be worried—or worse—for the rest of his life. But he’d been awakened by a specific, immediate worry that was now flitting about just below the level of his consciousness.
He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Then he remembered: the newspaper. Parkview hung the new day’s edition of the South China Morning Post on the doorknob of every occupied room in the hotel. Given Friday’s press frenzies, Ira was sure there would be a front-page headline and story about Rob’s death and Nancy’s arrest. He didn’t want the children to see that story. He walked down the hall to take the newspaper off the doorknob outside their suite.
He’d been right:
TOP US BANKER BLUDGEONED TO DEATH
The wife of Merrill Lynch executive Robert Kissel is arrested after his body is found at the luxury Parkview apartments
A prominent American investment banker has been found bludgeoned to death and dumped in a storeroom at the luxury Parkview residential complex in Tai Tam.
The body of 40-year-old Robert Kissel, Asia-Pacific managing director of global principal products for Merrill Lynch, was found wrapped in plastic sheets and rolled in a carpet in the room under block 15 of the estate.
He had been dead for three to four days and sources said it was suspected he had been beaten with a golf club.
His wife, Nancy, 39, also an American, has been arrested for murder and last night was under police guard in the custodial wing of Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
She went to Western police station on Thursday morning, alleging she had been assaulted by her husband on Sunday afternoon.
She was taken to Queen Mary Hospital for examination but disappeared soon after.
A colleague of Mr. Kissel’s contacted police later that afternoon to report he had not been seen since Sunday.
Officers of the Western Division Crime Squad led by Detective Chief Inspector See Kwong-tak visited the couple’s flat in block 17 late on Thursday night and questioned Mrs. Kissel.
While questioning her, police found a key to the couple’s rented storeroom.
At about 11.45 pm, the officers opened the storeroom and discovered Kissel’s body.
A post-mortem examination revealed that he died from severe head injuries, which sources indicate may have been caused by a golf club. It is believed the couple have three children, although it could not be established whether they live in Hong Kong.
Sources claim the pair argued last Sunday.
The post-mortem results led police to classify the case as a homicide.
Detectives were searching the Kissels’ flat and the storeroom for further evidence and the murder weapon last night.
Police are investigating whether accomplices might have helped move the body.
The storeroom is located 100 metres uphill from the estate’s block 17.
In 2000, Kissel joined Merrill Lynch from Goldman Sachs, where he co-headed the bank’s Asian special situations group.
A spokesman for Merrill Lynch said the firm’s head office in New York had been informed of Kissel’s death, and that he had been a well-liked figure around the office.
“He was very well respected, both in the firm and in the industry,” said R. G. Rosso, Merrill Lynch’s head of marketing communications for the Asia-Pacific region.
“He will be missed.”
26.
IRA KNEW THE TIME HAD COME TO TELL THE CHILDREN. He brought Isabel, the oldest, to his room after breakfast. He’d spent a lot of time on the phone with his second wife, whose psychological insights he valued. She’d given him what she called a “script” containing precise language for him to use when breaking the news. His son, Ryan, the medical student, would be arriving at midday. He and Ira had agreed that given Ryan’s training in child psychology it would be better for him to tell Zoe, six, and Ethan, four. He could stay with them after he told them to gauge their reactions and he could offer further solace and reassurance when needed. But nine-year-old Isabel was all too likely to overhear a stray phrase or to stumble inadvertently upon television news coverage, no matter how assiduous Connie was in shielding the children from all media. And Isabel would start asking questions. The answers, carelessly worded, could worsen the unavoidable trauma.
“I need to tell you something, Isabel,” Ira began. “Your mommy and daddy had an argument—a fight, the way people sometimes have fights—and Daddy did not survive.”
Did not survive. That was the key phrase, Ira’s second wife had told him.
“Your daddy did not survive, and Mommy is very sick. She’s in the hospital to get better and you won’t be able to see her for a very long time. But you’re safe. Nothing will happen to you or Zoe or Ethan. All the people in the family who love you are going to take very, very good care of you. You’ll always be safe.”
“Is Daddy dead?” Isabel asked.
“Yes, he is,” Ira answered.
Her eyes filled with tears and she was silent for a moment.
“Uncle Ryan will be here soon and he’ll tell Zoe and Ethan all about this, so you don’t have to worry about them. You have no responsibility for telling them. Do you understand that?”
“Yes. Can I go back to my room now?”
Zoe and Ethan were jumping on the beds when they got there. Isabel ran in and joined them, giggling and shouting. To judge from outward appearances, it was as if Ira had said nothing at all.
Despite his arduous journey from Cincinnati, Ryan went straight to the Parkview Hotel on Saturday afternoon and plunged into childcare alongside Connie. At what seemed the proper moment, he sat down with Zoe and Ethan and carefully and lovingly told them what they needed to know, emphasizing, as Ira had, that they were safe and loved and would always be safe and surrounded by people who would love them and take care of them.
As a hard rain fell, the rest of the Kissel family arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday afternoon. Bill, Andrew and Hayley, and Jane and Richard had all flown to Tokyo from their different points of origin. After gathering there, they’d flown to Hong Kong together. Bill was heavily sedated, and Andrew was even edgier than usual, perhaps suffering from abrupt cocaine withdrawal. Bill had booked rooms for them all at the five-star JW Marriott in Pacific Place, in the Admiralty section of Central. But as soon as they’d dropped off their luggage and freshened up after the four-and-a-half-hour flight, they took taxis to the Parkview Hotel to see the children. In keeping with family custom, they brought plenty of presents.
They’d all been talking about the children. What should they do with the children? Clearly, they’d have to bring them back to the United States. But where should the children live? Who should have custody? Bill had strong feelings about the matter and, as usual, he was determined to get his way. Upon their arrival, he booked a conference room at the Marriott for a meeting the next day at which the Kissels and the Keeshins would discuss the question of the children. Or—as Bill saw it—a meeting at which he would explain to Ira and his son the way things were going to be.
Chaos ensued upon the Kissels’ arrival at the Parkview Hotel. The children tore the wrapping paper off their presents. Bill began roughhousing with Ethan on the floor. The girls resumed jumping on the beds. Andrew took one, then the other, and twirled them around at top speed, laughing as they screamed. Bill produced even more presents. The children shrie
ked louder. “Let’s make this a special time!” Andrew shouted, clapping his hands. “Let’s have a celebration!”
Ryan was dumbfounded. What was the message this kind of behavior was sending these poor kids? Daddy’s dead so we get lots of new presents, hurray!
On Sunday morning, Ryan paid his first visit to Nancy. She was lying on a cot pushed against the back wall of the cell. Her hair was a mess, something Ryan had never thought he’d see. When she realized he was there, she rose slowly from the cot. She moved feebly toward him, hunched in apparent pain. Her breathing was shallow. Her hospital-issue slippers scraped across the concrete floor. They didn’t say much. Ryan followed the instruction to not ask her what happened. And Nancy didn’t seem to want to talk. She did ask about the children. Ryan told her they were fine.
Later, he would recall the ten minutes spent with Nancy as the most awkward of his life. “There was nothing to say. Nothing.”
As he was leaving, Nancy suddenly remarked, “Someone in Vermont is going to be very worried about me.”
Rain was still falling at midday Sunday when Ira and Ryan arrived at the Marriott to meet with the Kissels. They were wearing whatever clean clothes they’d been able to find: jeans and T-shirt for Ryan, polo shirt and wrinkled slacks for Ira. The Kissels walked into the conference room dressed as if for a Goldman Sachs board meeting. They also brought a lawyer with them.
Ira walked up to Bill, put his arms around him and hugged him. Bill stood stiffly, his face reddening. He was not a huggable man in the best of times, and he clearly wanted no part of an embrace from the father of the woman who’d killed his son.