Night Work Read online

  “You know,” Maj said, going back to Kate's original remark to show that it did not bother her fragile, hormonally ravaged pregnant self, “the whole anti-male paranoia just gets to me. I wouldn't mind if this baby were a boy. You can't just say that men are violent, period. It isn't their sex that condemns men to brutality, it's their history.”

  “It's not men I mind,” Lee noted. “It's mankind I can't stand.”

  “Hey,” Kate objected, straight-faced. “Some of my best friends are males.”

  Their laughter was interrupted by the doorbell, and Kate went to let in Mina, being dropped off by the neighboring friend's mother. While the mothers chatted briefly, Lee got out an antique globe puzzle that had belonged to a great-aunt and showed Mina how it worked. When the mother left and with Mina in the room, the evening's talk slid on to less loaded matters than abortions and the iniquity of men.

  Before long, however, Mina abandoned her attempt at reassembling the various layers of the globe. She wandered over to sit on the sofa beside Maj, who put out an arm and drew the child in to her. Almost instantly, Mina's eyelids began to droop, and her thumb went briefly into her mouth before she remembered that she was too old to suck her thumb.

  “You tired, sweet thing?” Maj asked her. Mina's head nodded against her adoptive mother's shoulder. “Me too,” Maj said. “Can you help your fatty ma up?” With Mina pulling (and Roz behind her adding an affectionate but only half-joking shove), Maj maneuvered herself upright and waddled off to use the toilet for the fourth time that evening. Roz bent down and picked up Mina, who snuggled happily into her other mother's arms and fitted the top of her head into the hollow of Roz's chin. Roz's arms went around the child with fierce affection, and by the time Maj came out of the bathroom, Mina's legs were limp in sleep.

  Lee watched the family leave with envy in her eyes.

  What Hell have we made of the subtle weaving

  Of nerve with brain, that all centers tear?

  We live in a dark complex of rage and grieving.

  The machine grates, grates, whatever we are.

  Lee locked up behind their guests and came back to the living room, moving in the careful rhythm of footsteps alternating with the tap of the rubber crutch ends that was such a contrast to her brisk, firm step of two years before. Kate was already seated at the dining table, pulling folders out of her briefcase, and Lee hesitated.

  “Will it bother you if I watch the tape of that TV program Roz was on? I didn't get a chance to see it earlier.”

  “'Course not. This is just paperwork, to keep me from getting too far behind. Was there any coffee left?” she asked, pushing back her chair.

  “I think so. You want me to—?”

  “You sit. You must be tired from cooking. Can I put that in for you?” Kate gestured to the tape sitting on top of the television set. At Lee's thanks, she fed it into the player, carried the controls across to Lee, and stooped down to gather up the scattered pieces of the globe puzzle that Mina had abandoned, putting them on the low table in front of the sofa. When she came back from the kitchen with her coffee, Lee was on the sofa putting the world together and Roz was on the television preparing to set it aright.

  The program was a panel discussion on, according to the sign in front of the moderator, WOMEN AND RELIGION IN THE 21ST CENTURY. Kate had missed the introductions of the first two women, a nun with Hispanic features and light blue habit followed by a tall woman with long blond dreadlocks and a patchwork blouse. Roz was the third (Roz in a navy jacket and green shirt, with the white square of her pastor's collar dominating her image). The fourth was a black Lutheran pastor, also in a collar, and the last panelist was described as a “neopa-gan follower of the goddess.”

  “Any particular goddess?” Kate asked.

  “All of them,” Lee explained.

  “Who is the second woman?”

  “A practitioner of wicca.”

  “What's that?”

  “She's a witch.”

  “Oh. Right.” Kate watched for a minute, then settled down determinedly at the table with those two staples of a cop's life, coffee and paperwork. She listened with half an ear to the far-ranging discussion, which ran the gamut from child care to radical feminist theology and from counseling a congregation's menfolk to raising the inner Feminine. This last exercise seemed to be the prime interest of the witch and the goddess worshiper, and their descriptions of the empowering energies— which they called “raising shakti”—by chanting the name of Kali or Durga during the act of sex had Roz looking interested, the nun looking fastidious, and the poor Lutheran minister looking as if she might stand up and flee. Lee chortled at the moderator's attempts to keep the subject a little closer to the audience's sense of reality, until finally Roz took pity on the woman and stepped in to bring the topic back to a more manageable track.

  “I think what my colleagues are saying is that women have an immense source of inner power, a strength and energy we rarely tap into, because from childhood we are taught to keep it closed inside, even to deny its very existence.” This was not at all what her colleagues had been saying, and Roz knew it, but she ruthlessly overrode their attempts to interrupt; Roz had the ball now, and she intended to run with it. “Because the energy—the shakti—is so tightly repressed, when it does find an outlet, it tends to blow, to erupt as rage. Come to think of it, that's exactly what happens in the Indian stories about the goddess Durga—or Kali, who personifies Durga's wrath: she gets drunk on battle, goes insane when she is finally released to shed blood. Which should, as myths are meant to do, make us stop and think: If we as women ever decided to stop being patient and forgiving and nurturing, to decide that it's time to begin with a clean slate, it might well feel to men as if Kali had been loosed. It's been said that if womankind ever truly sets her mind to freeing the shakti within, the blast of accumulated rage will scorch the earth.”

  She was good, Kate had to admit, mixing together lessons in women's psychology and Eastern theology but in a tone of light conversation, and managing to subtly correct the goddess worshiper at the same time. “Do you suppose that last remark of hers was actually a quote?” she wondered aloud.

  Lee shook her head. “Not for a minute. That's a patented Roz Hall trademark, issuing a pronouncement as if it's some sage's wisdom. You've got to love the woman.”

  The moderator certainly did, and the Lutheran pastor. The nun stepped smoothly in when Roz paused for breath and made a remark about pacifism and Christian forgiveness, and the discussion rapidly shot off onto the question of whether a feminist could be a Christian, and vice versa.

  Kate pulled her attention away from Roz Hall's passionate espousal of the cause of feminist churchgoers and stuck her nose back into her reports, and although the tape ended before her work did, she had enough of her paperwork out of the way to feel justified in putting it back into her briefcase and turning off the lights as soon as Lee's going-to-bed noises had died away in a last gurgle of water through the old pipes.

  But the evening stayed with her, and behind the televised discussion of women's rage lay that look Roz had given her, a look that said none of them were all that far from being an Emily Larsen.

  Not even Kate.

  The next morning Kate was in the kitchen with the morning Chronicle gathering crumbs beneath her plate, bent over a review of Song that was tied (as Jon had predicted) to a front-page report on the right-wing Christian protest outside the theater, when she heard the sound of a key in the front door, and looked up to see Jon breezing through. He was singing, some cheery and inane song of an early sixties girl group, and Kate's heart sank. The door to his basement apartment closed on his chirpy lyrics, and Lee came in, her eyebrows up into her hair.

  “Was that what I thought it was?”

  “I'm afraid so,” Kate answered.

  Jon was in love again.

  Every three or four months during the entire time he had lived with them, Jon would meet The One. For a couple of weeks he would d
rive his housemates crazy with golden-oldie love songs, long murmuring telephone conversations rising from his rooms in the basement, and a return to girlish giggles and dramatic bouts of despair over his appearance, his clothes, and his lack of a future. More than once Kate had longed to shoot him.

  The aftermath of these great passions would almost have been a relief, had he not been so pathetic and their guilt over feeling relieved so strong. He faded before their eyes into a small man with a brave mustache, who dove back into his increasingly unnecessary labors for Lee, cooking elaborate meals, urging his charge out so he could drive her all over creation, redoubling his efforts in the men's choir and the gym and the volunteer work in the hospice.

  No, all in all, Jon Samson singing love songs was not a sound guaranteed to gladden the hearts of his housemates.

  Kate kept her mouth firmly shut. Lee was the one who bore the brunt of Jon's moods, since she was around him all day and Kate was not. And Lee was the one who had to decide if and when she was ready to do without his services, not Kate. So Kate said nothing, just stuck her coffee mug in the dishwasher, kissed Lee goodbye, and strapped on her gun to go to work.

  When Emily Larsen opened the door to Kate and Al Hawkin two hours later, Kate almost did not recognize her. Her hair, though still a dull black, had been professionally styled and the gray roots were gone. She also wore a defiant if amateurish splash of makeup on eyes and mouth, and her caricature housekeeper dress had been exchanged for slimming khakis and a flowered blouse. More than exterior changes, however, were the set of her shoulders and spine and the way her eyes met theirs without flinching. She stepped back to invite them inside, and was speaking before she had shut the door behind them.

  “I'm really glad you came by this morning. Here, come on back to the kitchen, I've got some coffee on.” The house was tidier than it had been when they had shone their flashlights through its windows on Tuesday night, although Emily had not been able to do anything about the wear on the shag carpeting and flowered upholstery. The design sense of the residents leaned more to framed photos of children than to paintings, the living room had no fewer than three large arrangements of fake flowers, and one corner was haunted by a four-foot-long black ceramic panther with a chipped ear. The dust of print powder still lay over everything, and the house smelled unoccupied. “Can I take your jackets?” Emily was saying. “No? Well, sit down, I've got a confession to make.”

  To a police officer, the word confession has a fairly specific meaning, but the lighthearted way Emily Larsen said it did not encourage Kate to reach for her notebook to take down her words, and Al showed no sign of wanting to stop the woman and read her her Miranda rights. Instead they sat with their coffee cups on the Formica table in front of them and waited.

  “I wasn't very up-front with you yesterday, Inspector Martinelli. You knew that, didn't you? Carla told me what you said, but I had to, well, mislead you, like, until I was sure what was goin' on.

  “You see, I've got this brother, he's three years older than me, and he has this really bad temper, you know? And I was scared that he'd gotten piss—that he'd gotten PO'd with Jimmy and … done it to him. I couldn't reach Cash until last night—that's my brother's name, Cash—I couldn't get ahold of him to ask him if he'd … had anything to do with Jimmy's death. I didn't really think he did, you know, but he has a record, and he and Jimmy had a … an argument a while back, so I knew you'd think … well, not you personally, but the police, you know? But anyway, I talked with him and he told me it wasn't him. And he has a good alibi, too. He was in an AA meeting until eleven. So that's okay, then. I mean, Cash has done some really stupid things in his life, but at least this isn't one of them.”

  “We'll have to speak with him, though, Ms. Larsen,” Al told her.

  “Of course, he said you would. He works for a company, they clean offices at night. He said he'd be home in another hour, if you want to see him. Do you want his address? He lives down in San Jose.”

  “Thank you. However,” Al continued, “the fact remains that someone killed your husband, and did so not in his usual surroundings. Someone either kidnapped your husband and took him to San Francisco, or else arranged for him to be there. The phone company's tracking down the last incoming call he had, but we also need to have a word with your postman about any mail he might have delivered.”

  “Oh. Sure. I mean, would you like me to ask him about it?”

  “That's okay, Ms. Larsen,” Al told her gently. “We'll take care of it.”

  For some reason, Kate had been anticipating a hulking bruiser of an ex-con, a younger, fitter version of James Larsen, but the man who opened Cash Strickland's door and invited them inside was not even as tall as his sister, and equally round-shouldered. The man's explosions of temper must be rooted in his resentment at the world's treatment of him rather than in any habitual aggressiveness; from his hangdog look, he might as well have been wearing a HIT ME sign pinned to his back.

  Still, alcohol combined with chronic resentment made for a volatile mix, and both detectives kept one eye firmly on the ex-con as they introduced themselves and entered his apartment. Their free eyes flicked over the sparsely furnished room, and Al stuck his head into the adjoining rooms to be sure there were no unfriendlies waiting behind the shower curtains. Strickland knew what Al was doing, and waited politely until Al had made his reconnaissance before offering them seats on the thrift-store sofa and plastic chairs. A well-thumbed Bible lay on the coffee table beside a couple of folded newspapers. On one wall hung what Kate had seen advertised as a “sofa-sized oil” depicting a tree-shrouded lake; on another Strickland had thumbtacked up the poster of a mewing kitten on a tree branch, with the inspirational caption “All God's Creatures Need a Hand.”

  “You're here about Jimmy, aren't you?” he asked them.

  “That's right, Cash,” said Hawkin.

  “Em told me you'd been askin' her questions. I hope to God you don't think she had anything to do with it. She wouldn't hurt a fly.”

  “No, she has an alibi for Monday night. She seems to think you do, too.”

  “I was at my AA meeting. Had dinner with my sponsor, helped set up the chairs at about seven-thirty, maybe seven-forty-five, stayed at the meeting until it finished about ten. I helped clean up afterward. Came back here, changed my clothes, got to work at eleven.”

  “Anybody see you come home?” Hawkin asked. Not that Strickland could have driven to San Francisco and back in an hour, but leave no stone criminal unturned was Hawkin's motto.

  “Couple of my neighbors were sitting outside havin' a smoke and a brew. Guy in two-thirty-four—his wife won't let him smoke inside 'cause of the kid,” he explained.

  “Tell me about your brother-in-law,” Al requested.

  “Jimmy?” Strickland said, surprised that the questions about his alibi were over already. “What do you want to know?”

  “What kind of a person was he?”

  “He was a—” The reformed convict caught himself. “He was an awful man. Real horrible to my sister. More times than I can count I told her to leave him, take the kids and get away, but she wouldn't do it. I mean, any man that'd do that to a woman. You know he used to hit her?”

  “We are aware of that. And that your sister finally left him just before he got out of jail this last time.”

  “None too soon.”

  “Do you know who would want to kill him?”

  “I will admit to you that it passed through my mind, a couple of times when I was a drinking man. Not now, though. But I don't know enough about him to know who else there might be. Somebody he punched in a bar, maybe?”

  “Did he get into fights, then?”

  “No, not really. Saved it for his wife. Only time I saw him get into a fight with someone his own size was when he was giving Emily a hard time in a restaurant and this other drunk started callin' him names. Coward and stuff. So Jimmy punched him, they both fell over each other, and that was the end of it. Kinda funny, at the ti
me. Now I have to say it was just pathetic.”

  Strickland's self-consciously pious remarks should have struck a note somewhere between comical and suspicious, but for some reason they sounded more dignified than anything else, perhaps even a touch brave. Kate was surprised to find herself hoping that Strickland was one reformed drunk who stayed that way, and even Hawkin's final questions were more gentle than a cop normally put to a recent ex-con.

  Strickland gave them his sponsor's name and phone number, telling them that the man was expecting their call. When they were through, he showed them to the door.

  “I hope you catch whoever did it,” Strickland admitted reluctantly. “Jimmy was a no good—well. But Emily loved him, and if he'd got sober, who knows?”

  Kate wished Cash Strickland luck when they left, and Hawkin shook his hand.

  Strickland's AA sponsor and alibi provider was an undeniably upright citizen. He even owned his own insurance business, and although he freely admitted that he had a record for drunk driving, he had been sober now for twelve years and four months, and had acted as sponsor for Cash since the man had asked him at a meeting back in early February.

  Cash Strickland's alibi stood, as did that of his sister, Emily, leaving Kate and Al with empty hands and facing the fact that they would have to begin from scratch, as if the days between the murder and walking out of the San Jose insurance office counted for nothing.

  Until, that is, the phone company came across with the address for the final call to have reached the Larsen telephone.

  It had been placed from a phone located on the wall of a laundromat six blocks from Carla Lomax's law offices.

  And two blocks from the women's shelter that had given refuge to Emily Larsen.

  There are times when

  I think only of how to do away

  With this brute power

  That cannot be tamed.

  “I could just arrive on their doorstep,” Kate said to Carla Lomax over the phone. “I do know where the shelter is. I'm trying to be cooperative about this and talk to the director first, but if the only choice you give me is between waiting until I can dig up the name and phone number on my own or just driving over there and asking, then I'm sorry, I'd rather not waste my time.”