K is for KILLER

by Sue Grafton

  “He didn’t do anything. It’s his attitude. I hate guys like him. Little banty roosters who push their weight around. Hang on a sec.” He slid a fat cassette into a slot and depressed a button on the soundboard, leaning forward, his voice as smooth and satiny as fudge. “We’ve been listening to Phineas Newborn on solo piano, playing a song called The Midnight Sun Will Never Set.’ And this is Hector Moreno, casting a little magic here at K-SPELL. Coming up, we have thirty minutes of uninterrupted music, featuring the incomparable voice of Johnny Hartman from a legendary session with the John Coltrane Quartet. Esquire magazine once named this the greatest album ever made. It was recorded March 7, 1963, on the Impulse label with John Coltrane on tenor sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.” He punched a button, adjusted the studio volume downward, and turned back to me. “Whatever he said about Lorna, you can take it with a grain of salt.”

  “He said she had a dark side, but I knew that much. I’m not sure I have the overall picture, but I’m working on that. How long had you known her before she died?”

  “Little over two years. Right after I started doing this show. I was in Seattle before that, but the damp got to me. I heard about this job through a friend of a friend.”

  “Is your background in broadcast?”

  “Communications,” he said. “Radio and TV production; video to some extent, though it never interested me much. I’m from Cincinnati originally, graduated from the university, but I’ve worked everywhere. Anyway, I met Lorna when I first got down here. She was a night owl by nature, and she started calling in requests. Between cuts and commercials, we’d sometimes talk for an hour. She began to drop by the studio, maybe once a week at first. Toward the end, she was here just about every night. Two-thirty, three, she’d bring doughnuts and coffee, bones for Beauty if she’d been out to dinner. Sometimes I think it was the dog she cared about. They had some kind of psychic affinity. Lorna used to claim they’d been lovers in another life. Beauty’s still waiting for her to come back. Three o’clock, she goes out to the stairs and just stands there, looking up. Makes this little sound in her throat that’d break your heart.” He shook his head, waving off the image with curious impatience.

  “What was Lorna like?”

  “Complicated. I thought she was a beautiful, tortured soul. Restless, disconnected, probably depressed. But that was just one part. She was split, a contradiction. It wasn’t all the dark stuff.”

  “Was she into drugs or alcohol?”

  “Not as far as I know. She blew hot and cold. She was nearly hyper sometimes. If you want to get analytical, I’d be tempted to label her manic-depressive, but that doesn’t really capture it. It was like a battle she fought, and the down side finally won.”

  “I guess we all have that in us.”

  “I do, that’s for sure.”

  “You knew she did a porno film?”

  “I heard about that. I never saw it myself, but I guess the word was out.” , “When was it shot? Any time close to her death?”

  “I don’t know much about that. She was out of town a lot on weekends, Los Angeles, Sun Francisco. Could have been one of those trips. I really couldn’t say for sure.”

  “So it was not something you discussed.”

  He shook his head. “She enjoyed being tight-lipped. I think it made her feel powerful. I learned not to pry into her personal affairs.”

  “Any idea why she did the film? Was it money?”

  “I doubt it. Producer probably cleans up, but the actors get a flat rate. At least from what I’ve heard,” he said. “Maybe she did it for the same reason she did anything. Lorna flirted with disaster every day of her life. If you want my theory, fear was the only real sensation she felt. Danger was like a drug. She had to boost the dose. She couldn’t help herself. Didn’t seem to matter what anyone said. I used to talk ‘til I was blue in the face. It never made any difference as far as I could see. This is just my observation, and I could be all wrong, but you asked and I’m answering. She’d act like she was listening. She’d act like she agreed with every word you said, but then it washed right over her. She went right on doing it, whatever it was. She was like an addict, a junkie. She knew the life wasn’t good, but she couldn’t make the break.”

  “Did she trust you?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Not really. Lorna didn’t trust anyone. She was like Beauty in that respect. She might have trusted me more than most.”

  “Why was that?”

  “I never came on to her, so I wasn’t any kind of threat. With no sexual investment, she couldn’t lose with me. She couldn’t win, either, but that suited us both. With Lorna, you had to keep your distance. She was the kind of woman, the minute you got involved, it was over, pal. That was the end of it. The only way you could hold on to her was to keep her at arm’s length. I knew the rule, but I couldn’t always manage it. I was hooked myself. I kept wanting to save her, and it couldn’t be done.”

  “Did she tell you what was going on in her life?”

  “Some things. Trivia, for the most part. Just the day-to-day stuff.

  She never confided anything important. Events, but not feelings. You know what I mean? Even then, I doubt she ever really leveled with me. I knew some things, but not always because she told me.”

  “How’d you get your information?”

  “I have buddies around town. I’d get frustrated with her behavior. She’d swear she was playing straight, but I guess she really couldn’t give it up. Next thing you know, she’d be picking up guys. Twosomes, threesomes, anything you want. People would see her and make a point of telling me, worried I was getting in over my head.”

  “And were you?”

  His smile was bitter. “I didn’t think so at the time.”

  “Did the rumors bother you?”

  “Hell, yes. What she did was dangerous, and I was worried sick. I didn’t like what she was doing, and I didn’t like people running in here talking about her behind her back. Tattletales. I hate that. I couldn’t get them to quit. With her, I tried to keep my mouth shut. It was none of my business, but I kept getting sucked in. I’d be saying, ‘Why, babe? What’s the point?’ And she’d shake her head. ‘You don’t want to know, Heck. I promise. It’s got nothing to do with you.’ The truth is, I don’t think she knew. It was a compulsion, like a sneeze. It felt good to do it. If she held off, something tickled until it drove her nuts.”

  “You have any idea who was in her life besides you?”

  “I wasn’t in her life. I was on the fringe. Way out here. She had a day job, part-time at the water treatment plant. You might talk to them, see if they can fill you in. Most times, I never even saw her before three a.m. She might’ve had some other kind of life entirely when the sun was up.”

  “Ah. Well. Food for thought,” I said. “Anything else I should know?”

  “Not that I can think of offhand. If something occurs to me, I can get in touch. You have a card?”

  I fished one out and placed it on the console. He looked at it briefly and left it where it was.

  I said, “Thanks for your time.”

  “I hope I’ve been of help. I hate the idea someone got away with murder.”

  “This is a start, at any rate. I may be back at some point.” I hesitated, glancing at the dog still lying there between us. The minute she sensed my look, she rose to her feet, which put her head just about level with the stool where I was perched. She kept her eyes straight ahead, gazing intently at the flesh on my hip, possibly with an eye toward a late evening snack.

  “Beauty,” he murmured with scarcely any change of tone.

  She sank to the floor, but I could tell she was still thinking about a jaw full of gluteus maximus.

  “Next time I’ll bring her a bone,” I said. Preferably not mine.

  I headed home through the business district, following a trail of stoplights that winked from red to green. The storefronts had been secured, plate-glass windows abl
aze with fluorescent lighting. The streets were bleached white with the spill of illumination. I passed a lone man on a bike, dressed in black. It was almost 1:30 a.m., traffic minimal, intersections wide and deserted. Most of the bars in town were still open, and in another half hour or so, all the drunks would emerge, heading for the various downtown parking structures. Many buildings were dark. The homeless, bundled in sleep, blocked the doorways like toppled statues. For them, the night is like a vast hotel where there’s always a room available. The only price they pay, sometimes, is their lives.

  At 1:45 I finally stripped off my jeans, brushed my teeth, and doused the lights, crawling into bed without bothering to remove my T-shirt, underpants, and socks. These February nights were too cold to sleep naked. As I eased toward unconsciousness, I found myself mentally replaying select portions of Lorna’s tape. Ah, the life of the single woman in a world ruled by sexually transmitted diseases. I lay there, trying to think back to when I’d last had sex. I couldn’t even remember, which was really worrisome. I fell asleep wondering if there was a cause-and-effect relationship between memory loss and abstinence. Apparently so, as that was the last thing I was aware of for the next four hours.

  When the alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., I rolled out of bed before my resistance came up. I pulled on my sweats and my running shoes, then headed into the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth, avoiding the sight of myself in the mirror. One ill-advised glance had revealed a face fat with sleep and hair as stiff and matted as a derelict’s. I’d snipped it off six months before with a trusty little pair of nail scissors, but I hadn’t done much to it since. Now the sections that weren’t sticking straight up were either flat or adrift. I was really going to have to do something about it one of these days.

  Given the four hours of sleep, my run was a bit on the perfunctory side. Often I tune in to the look of the beach, letting sea birds and kelp scent carry me along. Jogging becomes a meditation, shifting time into high gear. This was one of those days when exercise simply failed to uplift. In lieu of euphoria, I had to make my peace with three hundred calories’ worth of sweat, screaming thighs, and burning lungs. I tacked on an extra half mile to atone for my indifference and then did a fast walk back to my place as a way of cooling down. I showered and slipped into fresh jeans and a black turtleneck, over which I pulled a heavy gray cotton sweater.

  I perched on a wooden stool at the kitchen table and ate a bowl of cereal. I scanned the local paper in haste. No surprises there. While floods threatened the Midwest, the Santa Teresa rainfall averages were down and there was already speculation of another drought in the making. January and February were usually rainy, but the weather had been capricious. Storms approached the coast and then hovered, as if flirting, refusing us the wet kiss of precipitation. High-pressure systems held all the rains at bay. The skies clouded over, brooding, but yielded nothing in the end. It was frustrating stuff.

  Turning to happier items, I read that one of the big oil companies was talking about building a new refinery somewhere on the south coast. That would be a handsome addition to the local landscape. A bank robbery, a conflict between land developers and opposing members of the county board of supervisors. I scanned the funnies while I sucked down my coffee and then headed into the office, where I spent the next several hours assembling the balance of my tax receipts. Obnoxious. Having finished, I pulled out a standard boilerplate contract and typed in the details of my agreement with the Keplers. I spent the bulk of the day finishing the final report on a case I’d just done. The closing bill, with expenses, was something over two thousand bucks. It wasn’t much, but it kept the rent paid and my insurance intact.

  At five, I put a call through to Janice, figuring she’d be up by then. Trinny, the younger of the two daughters, answered the telephone. She was a chatty little thing. When I identified myself, she said her mother’s alarm was set to go off any minute. Berlyn was making a run to the bank, and her father was on his way home from a job. That took care of just about everyone. Janice had given me the address, but Trinny filled in directions, sounding pleasant enough.

  I retrieved my car from the public lot several blocks away. A steady stream of moving cars spiraled down the ramp as shoppers and office workers headed home. As I drove up Capillo Hill, the very air seemed gray, sueded with twilight. Streetlights flicked on like a series of paper lanterns strung festively from pole to pole.

  Janice and Mace Kepler owned a little house on the Bluffs in a neighborhood that must have been established for merchants and tradesmen in the early fifties. Many streets overlooked the Pacific, and in theory the area should have been pricey real estate. In reality there was too much fog. Painted exteriors peeled, aluminum surfaces became pitted, and wooden roof shingles warped from the constant damp. Wind whistled off the ocean, forcing lawns into patchiness. The neighborhoods themselves were comprised almost entirely of tract housing – single-family dwellings thrown up in an era when construction was cheap and the floor plans could be purchased by mail from magazines.

  The Keplers had apparently done what they could. The yellow paint on the board-and-batten siding looked as if it had been applied within the year. The shutters were white, and a white split-rail fence had been constructed to define the yard. The lawn had been replaced by dense ivy, which seemed to be growing everywhere, including halfway up the two trees in the yard.

  In the driveway, there was a blue panel truck emblazoned with a large cartoon replica of a faucet. A big teardrop of water hung from the spout. MACE KEPLER’S PLUMBING • HEATING • AIR was lettered in white across the truck body. A small oblong emblem indicated that Kepler was a member of PHCC, the National Association of Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling Contractors. His state license number was listed along with the twenty-four-hour emergency repairs he provided (water leaks, sewer drains, gas leaks, and water heaters) and the credit cards he took. These days doctors don’t offer services that comprehensive.

  I pulled into the gravel driveway and parked my vehicle behind his. I left the car unlocked and peered briefly into the backyard before I climbed the low concrete steps to the front porch. Somebody in the family had a passion for fruit trees. A veritable orchard of citrus had been planted at the rear of the lot. At this season all the branches were bare, but come summer the dark green foliage would be lush and dense, fruit tucked among the leaves like Christmas ornaments.

  I rang the bell. There were muddy work shoes by the door mat. There was only a brief pause before Mace Kepler opened the door. I had to guess he’d been alerted to watch for my arrival. Given my incurable inclination to snoop, I was happy I hadn’t paused to riffle through his mailbox.

  We introduced ourselves, and he stepped back to admit me. Even in his leather bedroom slippers, he was probably six feet four to my five feet six. He wore a plaid shirt and work pants. He was in his sixties, quite hefty, with a broad face and a receding hairline. His deeply cleft chin seemed to have a period buried at its center, and a vertical worry line, like a slash mark, dissected the space between his eyes. On residential jobs he probably hired younger, smaller guys to navigate the crawl space underneath the house. “Janice’s in the shower, but she’ll be right out. Can I offer you a beer? I’m having one myself. I just got home from a hell of a day.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I hope I haven’t picked a bad time.” I waited by the door while he lumbered toward the kitchen to fetch himself a beer.

  “Don’t worry about it. This is fine,” he said. “I just haven’t had a chance to unwind yet. This is my daughter Trinny.”

  Trinny glanced up with a brief smile and then went about her work, pouring a cocoa-brown batter into a nine-by-thirteen aluminum cake pan. The hand mixer, its beaters still dripping brown goo, sat on the kitchen counter beside an open box of Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix. Trinny tucked the pan in the oven and set a timer shaped like a lemon. She’d already opened a cardboard container of ready-mix fudge frosting, and I’d have bet money she’d helped herself to a f
ingerful. While my aunt had never really taught me to bake, she’d warned me repeatedly about the ignominy of the commercial cake mix, which she ranked right up there with instant coffee and bottled garlic salt.

  Trinny was barefoot, wearing an oversize white T-shirt and a pair of ragged blue jean cutoffs. Judging from the size of her butt, she’d conjured up quite a few homemade cakes in her day. Mace opened the refrigerator door and took out a beer. He found the flip in a drawer and levered off the cap, tossing the bottle top in a brown paper trash bag as he passed it.

  Trinny and I murmured a “hi” to one another. Berlyn, the older daughter, emerged from the hallway, wearing a pair of black tights with a man’s white broadcloth dress shirt over them. Again, Mace introduced us, and we exchanged inconsequential greetings of the “hi, how are you” type. She was intent on rolling up her sleeves as she crossed into the open kitchen. She paused beside Trinny and held her arm out for assistance. Trinny wiped her hands and began to roll up Berlyn’s sleeve.

  At first glance, they were sufficiently similar to be mistaken for twins. They seemed to favor their father, both big girls and buxom with heavy legs and thighs. Berlyn was a dyed blonde, with big blue eyes framed in dark lashes. She had a clear, pale complexion and a lush full mouth, vibrant with glossy pink lipstick. Trinny had opted for her natural hair color: a double fudge brown, probably the shade Berlyn was born with. Both had bright blue eyes and dark brows. Berlyn’s features were the coarser, or perhaps it was the bleached hair that gave her the appearance of tartishness. Without Lorna’s delicate beauty in the family for contrast, I would have said they were pretty in a slightly vulgar way. Even knowing what I knew about Lorna’s promiscuity, she seemed to have had a classiness about her that the other two lacked.

  Berlyn moved over to the refrigerator and pulled out a diet Pepsi. She popped the tab and ambled out the back door onto a wooden deck that ran along the back of the house. Through the window, I watched as she settled on a chaise made of interwoven plastic strips. It seemed too chilly to be sitting out there. Her eyes caught mine briefly before she looked away.