by Simon Wood
CLOSURE
Fabian’s words echoed in Jude’s head. “Ms. Hennessy, I’ve found him...the man who fits the description.”
She’d waited such a long time for this news. Now that it had come, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it. Potentially coming face-to-face with her sister’s killer seemed like a cruel taunt. She removed Fabian’s business card from her pocket and checked the address against the one on the office building in front of her.
The Argus building looked squashed by its neighbors. It couldn’t have been any wider than forty feet and looked to be an afterthought compared to the GAP store that ate up most of the block and the Metropol Hotel that made its presence felt with its art deco construction and abundant marble. The Argus held its own, though. It wasn’t as tall, showy, or palatial, but it didn’t have to be. The building was understated, in keeping with Fabian’s business. She pushed on the revolving door and let herself in.
The cramped foyer was crammed with a pair of sofas on either side of a coffee table and a uniformed doorman sitting at an uncluttered reception area. She approached the doorman and asked for Fabian.
He called up to Fabian before escorting her to the elevator. Unlike most elevators, this one required the doorman to swipe a card key before pressing the button for the fifth floor.
Discreet and secure, Jude thought. Fabian took no chances. She wondered what the other businesses in this building did to eke out a living. All too quickly, the elevator reached its destination. She said a brief prayer before the door opened.
The doors glided back and a slight man, no more than five two, stood waiting for her. He looked well into his fifties, but he somehow retained a boyish quality.
“Jude Hennessey?”
“Mr. Fabian?”
He put out a hand. “Yes, nice to meet you.”
Fabian escorted her from the elevator. He had the whole fifth floor to himself, but considering the small square footage, it wasn’t an extravagance. Fabian kept the decor tasteful and attractive. Generic art hung from the walls, and the furniture was a couple of notches up from Ikea. He showed her to a conference table in the middle of the room.
“Coffee? Tea?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Then we’ll proceed.”
Fabian slid a folder over an inch thick in front of him. He opened it and positioned it so as to keep the contents out of Jude’s sight.
“To start, could you tell me a bit about your sister?” he said.
“You know about my sister.”
“Not really. I know about the circumstances of her death, but not about her as a person. Before I tell you what I’ve learned, I want to hear about her from you.”
“My sister was killed four years and two months ago.”
“Stop. You’re getting ahead of yourself. Tell me about your sister’s life, not her death. We’ll come to that when we get there. Who was she in life?” He smiled. “Start with her name and go on from there.”
She felt like arguing, but why bother? She’d waited so long to reach this point that this distraction was nothing. Besides, it would be good to talk about Kirsten. The people close to her had tired of her tales about Kirsten and didn’t listen anymore. Especially Tom. He’d left her because of them. Through thick and thin—what a joke. If Fabian wanted to hear well-trodden reminisces, then so be it.
“My sister’s full name was Kirsten Elizabeth Hennessey. She was my younger sister by one year. Most people took us for twins, we looked so alike, and I suppose we were, in a lot of ways.”
Fabian smiled, and she smiled back. A tear leaked out. She palmed it away.
“Do you have a picture?”
Always, Jude thought and produced one from her purse. Fabian took the snapshot and gave it an appraising glance.
“I see the likeness. She was very beautiful.”
Recalling Kirsten’s life came easy after that. The stories, the facts, the private jokes, and the kept secrets poured from Jude without interruption or prompting. Kirsten was one of those people who left an indelible mark on people’s lives.
After a half hour of careful listening Fabian said softly, “Now, tell me how she died.”
Rain, Jude thought. She always remembered the rain. It was as if the heavens had cried at Kirsten’s death.
“I only have the police account to go on,” Jude said. “Not that they witnessed it either.”
“I understand. Just tell me what you believe to have happened.”
“It was late. Around ten or so. Kirsten was working part-time at a Starbucks to put herself through college. Her shift was over, and she was trying to get to the BART station to catch her train. It was raining. She was waiting at a crosswalk at Market and Sutter when a drunk driver missed the corner and plowed into her. Well, the cops assumed it was a drunk driver from the skid marks. It had to be a drunk, right? What kind of sober person drives over someone and doesn’t stop?”
“Did Kirsten die instantly?”
Jude blew her nose and shook her head. “They estimated she lay there dying for an hour before anyone noticed.”
She tried to hold back the tears but couldn’t. Her body jerked under the force of the sobs. Fabian rounded the table and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He muttered words of comfort that she barely heard, but his tone was soothing and the tears ebbed. He handed her a fresh Kleenex and returned to his seat.
“Thank you. I realize how hard it was for you to say all that.”
Fabian opened the folder on the desk. He picked up the first sheet off the pile and slid it across the table. Jude glanced over the details. The layout was similar to a police rap sheet. It featured both face-on and profile shots of a bedraggled-looking man in his fifties with thick features and thinning hair. A brief résumé of crimes followed.
“Is this him?”
“That’s Herman Meadows, arrested four times for DUI. He’s served time twice. He’s in AA, but I wouldn’t classify him as a recovering drunk, not according to his sponsor, anyway. His license is currently revoked, but that hasn’t stopped him from driving.”
Fabian peeled off six eight-by-ten shots and slid them across the table. The pictures showed Meadows going into a bar, drinking, then getting behind the wheel of a decrepit Oldsmobile Cutlass. Jude’s anger raged. This man was a danger to himself and everyone around him. He’d gone to prison because he was a menace to society, and here he was repeating history. How did a person like that live with himself? He probably didn’t. Maybe that was part of the reason he drank. Disgusted, Jude shoved the pictures back at Fabian.
“When were these taken?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Did he do it? Did he kill my sister?”
“Is that important?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Hennessy, you know that’s not the service I offer. I’m not the police.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“—But, you hoped it would lead to the person responsible.”
“Yes.”
“If it sets your mind at rest at all, I can tell you that Herman Meadows was a suspect in a fatal hit-and-run in ’98, and the night Kirsten was killed, he was witnessed drinking in a part of the city which would have brought him down Market Street to get him home.” Fabian looked at Jude with unflinching calm.
Jude wondered if he was humoring her, twisting the facts to pacify her.
“Is he the one?” she insisted. “I know that’s not what you do, but what does your gut tell you?”
Fabian fidgeted then exhaled. “I don’t believe so. But that’s not the point.”
“You provide closure in cases where there can be no closure,” Jude said, paraphrasing his company literature.
“That’s correct. What I do is track down someone who could be responsible. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.” Fabian paused for a moment before saying, “Do you wish to carry on? I understand if you don’t.”
“Yes, I’d like to carry on.”
“Good.�
�� Fabian left the table and returned with a leather pouch. He unzipped it and placed the pistol before her.
***
Meadows wasn’t hard to find. He maintained a simple existence. He slept in his grimy apartment on Geary, emerged around eleven, ate breakfast at the crappy diner, and spent the rest of the day traipsing from bar to bar until it was time to go home and collapse into a stupor in order to start the same sorry affair the next day. Jude knew this from Fabian’s file notes, but she spent three days tailing Meadows to be sure. Fabian coached her in surveillance techniques, and she took to them quickly. Meadows never noticed her, though she gave him plenty of golden opportunities. Twice she ended up nose-to-tail with him in stop-and-go traffic, and once she ended up behind him in line in a 7-Eleven. Luckily, Meadows was too drunk to realize he was being followed.
Fabian had suggested she spend the time following Meadows to get the measure of the man she was going to kill. Jude sure got a read on Meadows, but not in the way Fabian had intended. The exercise only served to create hate. The more she saw how Meadows lived, the more she wanted him dead. On the first day, he drove from an Irish pub on Valencia to a bar in the Tenderloin. During the journey, he ran two stoplights and clipped the sidewalk virtually every time he made a right turn. Only the luck of the devil or the hand of God prevented a fatality. As she bore witness to him pinballing his way through the city, one thought remained front and center in her mind—where the hell were the cops? She’d gone home at the end of the third day knowing that she would put Meadows out of his misery.
Thursday was a glorious day, although the Tenderloin reeked of urine and worse. She waited in a red zone for Meadows to emerge, but a meter maid forced her to move at the risk of being towed. She left her car one block over and paced the street in front of his building for over half an hour before he stumbled outside. He ignored his Oldsmobile and walked to a liquor store to load up with two six packs and a couple of bottles of cheap whisky.
How much does this guy drink in a day? Jude wondered. No wonder he looked a decade older than Fabian’s file listed.
Meadows returned home to stash his booze before getting in his car. She followed him to Columbus and Broadway, a lovely neighborhood for strip clubs, porn shops, and, oddly, destination bookstores. Meadows started his productive day in a strip club. There was probably a drink special, Jude decided.
Yes, most definitely, today was the day she’d rid the world of Herman Meadows.
While he got his rocks off, Jude weighed her choices: kill him on the street, in his car, or at home? A street kill begged for witnesses, but she would have her opportunities. On several occasions, he’d ducked into alleys after dark. Fabian had provided a silencer as well as a gun; nobody would hear the shot. Audacity might be the perfect recipe for success. She discounted killing him in his car. With the nonexistent parking situation in San Francisco, an abandoned car would draw attention quickly. She leaned toward killing him at his home. She’d ventured inside his building. His neighbors were too strung out to notice anything suspicious. It seemed the building supervisor wasn’t a reliable presence considering that half the hallway lights were out and urine stains dotted the tile floor.
Jude removed Kirsten’s photo from her purse. The snapshot was one of the last ones taken of her before she was killed. It was a candid pose of her standing on Pier 39 with Alcatraz tiny in the background. That day seemed like a lifetime ago.
“This is for you,” Jude murmured.
Saying this brought her no joy. For the first time, she considered Kirsten. During her four-year quest to find Kirsten’s killer, she’d never once considered her sister’s wishes. Would she have wanted Jude to waste her life like this pursuing a killer that couldn’t be found? What was she doing this for anyway? Justice for Kirsten? Or simply revenge? The sour taste at the back of her throat told her it was the latter. She wasn’t a crusader against injustice—just a killer waiting her turn.
Would Kirsten have gone to these lengths for her if she were in Jude’s shoes, or would she have buried her sister and moved on? Kirsten had always been so forgiving. Somehow, Jude knew she would have moved on. She was just that kind of person. Jude fidgeted in her seat, suddenly unsure. Maybe moving on was the right thing to do. Sure it was unfair, but that was life. Injustice stalked the innocent every day, and that was never going to change. She grasped the key to start the ignition, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wasn’t ready to walk away or follow through. She’d stick it out just a little longer until she figured out what to do.
By the time day gave way to night, Jude had flip-flopped several times on her choice to kill Meadows. As she followed him from bar to bar, he’d do something to trigger her disgust or pity. When he hit the road at one in the morning to head home, Jude still didn’t know what she wanted to do.
Meadows turned onto Larkin from Market, taking a route past where Kirsten had died. Jude shivered when she reached the spot.
On Larkin, Meadows’s driving deteriorated. It hadn’t been good, but now the drunk couldn’t maintain a straight line to save his life. The Oldsmobile wandered into oncoming traffic and Meadows overcompensated. The Cutlass lurched hard right, riding over the sidewalk. The car struck a newspaper box, ripping it from its anchors. Then Meadows proceeded to plow into anything and everything on the sidewalk, felling a tree and half a dozen parking meters. A fire hydrant ended the trail of destruction. By then, the Oldsmobile lacked the momentum to shear it off. Meadows stumbled from his vehicle, seemingly unhurt by the crash.
Jude witnessed the carnage with sickening awe. Her foot came off the gas and she pulled up behind the wreckage. Fabian had warned her not to engage Meadows unless she intended on going through with the kill. She slipped from the car without the weapon.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
As she approached, her feet clinked on spilled quarters and dimes from the parking meters. Meadows, too drunk or too dazed, didn’t answer. She asked him again. He turned to face her, almost lost his balance, and grabbed the Oldsmobile’s roof for support.
“I’m okay,” he slurred. “I think I got a blowout.”
“Yeah, it looked like it,” Jude replied, amazed at Meadows’s nerve. “Would you like me to call nine one one?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“A tow truck then?”
“No, I’ll take care of it in the morning.”
“I don’t think you can leave the car like this.”
Meadows cast a look over his busted Cutlass, bleeding radiator fluid and hissing steam. “I guess not.”
He extracted a McDonald’s napkin, scrawled something on it, and stuck it under the windshield wiper. “That should do it.”
“Can I give you a ride?”
Jude didn’t know why she offered him a ride. She guessed Fabian would not have approved, but screw him. She’d handle it her way.
Meadows smiled and accepted the offer. The stench of alcohol filled the car’s interior. It wasn’t just his breath. He was so drunk that alcohol mixed with his fetid body odor was leaking from his pores. Jude cracked a window.
“Where can I drop you?”
She set off in the direction of his address even before he told her.
“That was some blowout,” she remarked.
“It happens.”
“Yeah, must have been a hundred proof.”
Meadows breathed hard, sounding like a leaky steam line. “What are you saying?”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“What of it?”
Jude shrugged.
Without provocation, Meadows trotted out a drunk’s tale. He cataloged a series of personal calamities that had led to two broken marriages, a wrecked career, and his dependent relationship with the bottle. Jude felt a pang of sympathy, but it was fleeting. Meadows took no responsibility for his mistakes.
“You have no idea what it is to be me,” Meadows ranted. He stuck his face in hers. She gagged on his rancid breath. He’d failed to notice she
’d doubled back. They were on Market again and approaching the spot where Kirsten had died. “If you knew I was drunk, why’d you give me a ride?”
To learn one thing, she thought. “Where were you on October 27, 2006?”
“Christ, I don’t know.” Meadows took in his surroundings. “Hey, where are we?”
Jude pointed at the corner as the car slipped past. “That was where my sister was killed by a drunk driver. Was it you?”
“You’re crazy, do you know that?” Meadows tapped his temple. “You’re cracked in places.”
“Just answer the question.”
Meadows wrinkled his face in confusion but saw the benefit of answering. “I don’t know what I was doing that night. All I know is that I didn’t run someone down that night, that corner, ever. Okay?”
Jude believed him. To live his life, she guessed he had to lie most days, but she knew somehow he wasn’t lying now.
“Okay. I’m sorry. You were drunk and it just brought something out in me. I’ll take you home now.”
“That’s okay. I understand,” he said in a fatherly tone. “The bad things stick and don’t wash off.”
He was right. The bad things did stick. Kirsten’s death had left a stain that couldn’t be removed. Jude eyed Meadows with something bordering on respect. She was wrong to blame him for Kirsten.
They drove the rest of the journey in silence, except for the occasional sliver of small talk. The trip came to a swift conclusion and she pulled up in front of his building.
“Thanks,” he said, sounding sober, and opened his door.
Jude wondered if she’d scared him straight tonight. It was a nice dream.
He went to leave but stopped. “You got a little squirrelly on me.” He laughed nervously. “Scared me, if I’m being honest.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Everyone needs to go off the rails now and again. It teaches you what’s important.”
Jude nodded. She understood all too well.