LoveMurder

by Saul Black

  He looked up at her over his glasses. “It better be good,” he said. “I’ve got a gal here with Lara Croft boobs. In a Lycra halter top.”

  “Just come and look.”

  He joined her. Watched.

  “P. C.… S…?” he read. The initials stenciled on the guy’s overalls. “Looks about the right age and build. What’s the gizmo?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s got white powder in it.”

  Valerie Googled “P.C.S. San Francisco.” A first page of twenty hits. Personal Computer Services. Portable Cooler Supply. Pure Country Station. Pet Care Select. Primary Cosmetic Surgery. Pest Control Solutions.

  “There,” she said, clicking on the link. The uniform and logo didn’t match, and the beaming controller lady in the picture looked considerably more high-tech tooled-up than the guy in the video.

  “I don’t like him,” Will said.

  “Me neither. And why’s he on foot?”

  “Keep the vehicle off camera.”

  “It’s 4:12 P.M. on the coffee shop clock. Elizabeth got home around six.”

  “Enough time to get in and get ready.”

  “The backpack’s wrong, too. Get on to P.C.S. Find out if they had anyone in the neighborhood. I’m going to get an enhancement and print of this and head back there. Jog some memories. Call me if anything else shows on the footage.”

  Thirty minutes later she was back in Noe Hill, doing door-to-door with the cleaned-up photo. Six queries in, she got a recognition.

  “Yeah, I saw this guy. I talked to him.”

  The interviewee was Bernice Ashton, a spacey, big-eyed young mother with a toddler of indeterminate sex on her hip. The kid had longish dark corkscrew curls, but something made Valerie think it was a boy. Bernice and her husband lived three doors up from the coffee shop, on the opposite side, ground-floor apartment of a three-story just like Elizabeth’s. She’d asked the guy if there were vermin in the neighborhood. Ants, he’d said. Farther up the block. “I was worried it was rats or something,” Bernice said. “Ants I can deal with, but rats? Forget it. This is the murder—right? He a suspect?”

  Beyond what the picture already told them, there wasn’t anything by way of physical description Bernice could add. Dark hair and beard, shades, cap. Valerie asked about the accent. “Gosh, I don’t know. I mean, he sounded well-spoken. I guess local. I mean, definitely not foreign or anything. We only exchanged like two sentences.” The kid on her hip had his fingers wrapped up in her hair and was gently but insistently pulling. Bernice winced, reached up on maternal autopilot, and began untangling herself. It always amazed Valerie the way mothers seemed to accept the demotion of their bodies to the status of just another toy for their kids, a sort of experimental play station with things you could pull or push, pinch or squeeze or bite or suck on. It was no wonder so many of them looked like they were at the end of their rope. Would that happen to her if she and Nick had a child?

  “Did you see him come back this way later?”

  “No, but I was inside after that. I wouldn’t have.”

  The rest of the footage would show that, one way or another.

  “All right,” Valerie said. “Thanks for your help. Here’s my card. If you remember anything else about him, give me a call. Any time, day or night.”

  She worked her way up the block, all the way back to Elizabeth’s, with no further results. A uniformed officer was on guard duty at the secured scene—the same officer, Rockwell, who’d been first on the scene, and who’d removed Elizabeth’s gag. She saw him tense slightly when he recognized her. She felt sorry for him but knew that if she referred to it directly it would probably embarrass him all over again. So instead she smiled and said: “You must be getting sick of the sight of this place by now.”

  He was relieved, and a little awkward in his relief. But visibly grateful. “I’m not complaining,” he said. “Fresh air beats the squad car.”

  “You got keys?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She was at the side gate that separated the driveway from the backyard when her phone rang.

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Pest Control Services didn’t have anyone scheduled to visit that area,” Will said. “Our boy’s not wearing their official gear, and that gizmo isn’t theirs either. In fact they said it looked homemade. I’ve checked all the other companies offering the same service—ditto.”

  Valerie had the key halfway to the padlock on the gate. She stopped.

  “Okay,” she said. “We need to know if Elizabeth replaced any of her locks recently.”

  “Because?”

  “Because the one I’m looking at is brand-new. So is the key.”

  Will’s silence for a moment. Him working it out. “He bolt-cut his way in?”

  “And put a fresh padlock on the side gate. Maybe. We need someone down here with magnification.”

  “I thought Sherlock always carried a magnifying glass?”

  “Talk to the sister again. And the upstairs neighbor. Look at the rest of the footage and see if he shows up going back the same way.”

  Rebecca Beitner came down. Black light and magnifier. While she worked, Valerie went back into Elizabeth’s apartment and retraced her original sweep. Nothing new.

  “Val?” Rebecca called.

  Valerie went out to join her.

  “You’re good,” Rebecca said. She handed Valerie a Baggie and the magnifier. Without the magnifier the Baggie would have appeared empty. With it, Valerie could see two tiny metal fragments, perhaps a little wider than a human hair.

  * * *

  Later that night, at Cassie’s after the party, Valerie and her sister lay sprawled in lounge chairs in the backyard, a big, lawned rectangle bordered by shrubs and jasmine, with a few small apple trees and the kids’ swing set. It had been after ten when Valerie had shown up, and half the guests had already left. Nick, who had been there since seven, had drunk himself comatose on lethal margaritas mixed by Cassie’s husband, Owen, and since Valerie and Cassie were now halfway through their third bottle of champagne, it was obvious no one was driving back to Cole Valley tonight. Their mother had made up the pull-out in the living room before she’d left. Owen was in the kitchen, washing the last of the wineglasses to the sound of Billie Holiday. Nick was asleep on the grass, lying on his back with one hand in his pocket. It was dark, but still warm. A few stars were out. The air was soft, edged with the scent of the trellised jasmine.

  “I’m glad you came,” Cassie said. “I know it’s not easy.”

  “Easier than turning forty,” Valerie said.

  “Rubbish,” Cassie said, raising her bare leg, “I’m in hot shape for an old gal. Even Owen still wants to have sex with me. I love the bracelet, by the way. You must have spent hours choosing it.”

  “Very funny. Let me see it.”

  Cassie held out her wrist. It was a rose-gold chain with little green stones set between the links. It looked pretty against Cassie’s tan.

  “Green tourmaline,” Cassie said. “I like the names of gemstones. Carnelian. Peridot. Chalcedony. I think I’m going to take up jewelry making when I turn fifty. I can see myself with a little workshop out back here. Don’t you think?”

  Valerie lit a Marlboro. Cassie topped up their glasses with the last of the champagne.

  “How’s it going with you two?” Cassie said.

  “It’s good.”

  Cassie observed the passed-out Nick. “A fine figure of a man,” she said.

  “He’s not at his best at the moment, I admit.”

  A little pause.

  “He’s one of the good ones, Val,” Cassie said.

  “I know.”

  “I know you know. You know what I’m saying to you.”

  “Yeah: don’t fuck it up.”

  “Exactly. Don’t fuck it up. I know what you’re like. The goddamned job.”

  “I did that already. I’m not doing it again.”

  “The worst mistakes are the ones that don’t
quit after one attempt.”

  “I’m not going to fuck it up.”

  A pause. “We might have a kid,” Valerie said.

  “What?”

  “Assuming I’m physically capable.”

  “Jesus. When?”

  Valerie didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “Soon. Not another year. Well, definitely not another two years. However long it takes.”

  She felt Cassie working it out. “However long it takes you to catch this fucker.”

  Valerie didn’t need to confirm the reasoning.

  “Why do you do this?” Cassie said.

  “Do what?”

  “Why do you make everything depend on things like that? It’s like some sort of dumb superstition. It’s idiotic.”

  “It’s just clearing the decks.”

  “You don’t need to clear any decks. Just walk off the deck. Let someone else clear it. Christ, I can see I’m wasting my breath.”

  “You’re wasting your breath.”

  “And this deck. Fucking hell. Katherine Glass.”

  “We’re not having this conversation again,” Valerie said, closing her eyes.

  Cassie was silent for a few moments. Then she said, with an almighty effort at reasonableness: “You know why you’re back in this with her?”

  “I’m back in this with her because he sent me the note. Naming her.”

  “That’s superficial. You’re back in this with her because you’re afraid of her.”

  “I’m not afraid of her.”

  “You’re afraid of her and it’s not acceptable to you that there’s anything you’re afraid of.”

  Valerie didn’t answer.

  “You don’t feel justified unless you defeat the things you’re afraid of. I know that feels like some sort of fucking medieval nobility to you, but you’re wrong. There’s nothing shameful in walking away from what you’re afraid of. Some things are worth being afraid of.”

  “Not this thing.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Fine, then give me my bracelet back.”

  They fell silent again. Valerie finished her cigarette, felt Cassie letting it go.

  The door to the sunroom opened and Owen stepped out.

  “Jesus,” he said, “I wish you guys would stop working so hard. You’re making me look bad.”

  13

  Forty-two-year-old U.S. Postal Service mail carrier (and former assistant postmaster) Raylene Ashe was in the middle of feeding her late father’s tropical fish when the doorbell rang. It was just coming up on eight fifteen in the evening.

  “Balls,” she said, more or less to the fish. “If that’s Jessica back again I’m going to throttle her.”

  Jessica Bradley was one half of the retired couple who lived across the street. The Bradleys had been friends of her father’s (her mother had died of liver cancer when Raylene was just seventeen) and Jessica had decided, when Raylene moved back to Portland two years ago to help her sister care for her dad, to take her under her wing. The husband, Karl, was undemanding: Raylene exchanged pleasantries with him if they happened to be out in their front yards at the same time, and that was as far as it went. But Jessica had taken to coming over to chat on an almost daily basis, frequently (as she had a couple of hours ago) pouncing on Raylene with baked goods the second she got home from work. Superficially, she was a sweet and well-intentioned old lady. Not so superficially, she was an indefatigable narcissist who saw in Raylene a captive audience for her endless narratives of self-congratulation. “Watch out for Jessica,” Raylene’s father had warned her. “The woman’s a goddamned psychic vampire. You think Karl’s quiet? Not by nature. He’s been drained.” The Bradleys had been in a state of nervous excitement all day because their son Christopher was arriving to drive them up to their daughter Janine’s in Seattle for their grandson’s twelfth birthday party. Raylene had heard the details more times than she cared to remember.

  She headed for the front door, mentally scrabbling for a reason not to invite Jessica in. She hadn’t come up with one by the time she got there and opened it.

  Turned out she didn’t need one.

  Just beyond the edge of her front porch a blond, bearded guy was kneeling over the prone body of a dog, a pale Labrador. There was blood on the animal’s fur, and on the guy’s hands and pale-green T-shirt. He looked up at her as she stepped out. Unnaturally blue eyes staring out from a face in shock. There was a canvas man-bag on the ground next to him.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Could you … I’m sorry, but my dog’s been hit and my phone battery’s dead. I need to get him into a … I guess I need a taxi.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Raylene said, coming down off the porch. “How did this—”

  “He never runs into the road like that,” the guy wailed. “I should’ve had the leash on. Oh, God.”

  “Didn’t the driver stop?”

  “He didn’t stop. I can’t believe he didn’t stop. Please, could you call a cab for me? I mean, maybe there’s an animal ambulance service or something?”

  Raylene wasn’t given to panic. Her brain was already working. The dog was probably in shock. She would call. And bring a blanket. Should she offer to drive them herself?

  “Where’s the nearest vet?” she said. The guy was walking his dog, so he must be local.

  “My regular’s downtown but they’re not twenty-four hours. Do you have … If you can get online … Just put in—”

  “Okay,” Raylene said. “I’m on it. Hold on.”

  She hurried back inside and went down the short hall into the kitchen, where her laptop was open on the breakfast bar. Before fish-feeding duties had interrupted her she’d been looking at microwave ovens on Amazon, since the one her father had had for years had gone kaput a week ago. She Googled “24 hour emergency vet Portland.” The usual top five ads, with, underneath, a dozen full listings. The nearest looked like the VCA Southeast.

  She carried the laptop into the living room and set it down next to the phone. She got halfway through dialing before something made her turn around.

  The guy was standing a few feet behind her, with the canvas bag over his shoulder and a gun in his hand. Pointed at her.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he said.

  The impulse to scream tightened in her throat. Her mouth opened. But her brain stopped her. Her brain insisted the only thing preventing him from pulling the trigger was her not screaming. She did, in fact, make a small sound, the very beginning of what would have been her scream. Then the neural embargo fell. Very quietly, she said: “Please, don’t.”

  “Lie down on your front,” he said. His voice was calm, polite authority.

  She just stood there. Her limbs were haywire. Heat filled her face. Her body was a warm mirage. A sound came from the hallway: the dog letting out a sigh.

  “Please,” she began again—but he took two quick steps toward her, raising the gun to the level of her face.

  “Do exactly as I say,” he said. “Get down on the floor. On your front. Hands behind your back.” And then as if in afterthought: “Or I will shoot you in the head.”

  The words. Each one of them a nail driven in to force her to accept this was real. This was really happening to her. This was the only real thing. Her whole life up until this point had been a dream. Because none of it could help her. Not her father’s laugh nor her mother’s face with a smudge of icing sugar on her cheek. Not the idle hours with her sister, Allie, the two of them lying on their bellies in the yard in summer, flipping through music magazines and arguing over which celebrities were hot. Not all the days and weeks and years of going about her business, buried in work, occasionally noticing the beauty of a blue sky or leaf shadows on the sidewalk. Not dreams, not friendship, not love. It all rose up, precious and illusory and useless, because here was suffering, here was death, and nothing—nothing—had power against it.

  It was barely a couple of seconds, but a dreary logic worked through her: if she lay down he woul
d do something—tie her up, knock her out—to give his power leisure. He would rape her. At the very least he would rape her. But if she didn’t lie down he would kill her. He’ll kill you anyway. You’ve seen his face. Not all rapists are murderers. This one is. It had layers and conflicts and dead ends, this logic. Its strongest force insisted the only thing that mattered was the prevention of her death. And if she didn’t lie down her death would come not in an hour or a day but now. Now.

  She got down on the floor. It was almost impossible, to volunteer the action, to put herself further into his hands. But not dying—now—overrode everything. She told herself she would survive this. There would be time. Seconds, minutes. Time would furnish her with a way of surviving whatever happened. Whatever happened she would, when it was over, be alive.

  Unless he kills you.

  He knelt and put his knee on the back of her neck and pressed the gun’s barrel to her skull.

  “Hands behind your back, please,” he said.

  Her hands were heavy things. All the weight of her will was in them, saying: don’t … don’t … don’t … Her arms moved slowly, bewildered, not understanding how they could be asked to do this impossible thing. She thought she was going to pass out. A part of her wanted it, to be sucked into unconsciousness, to be taken out of the equation, to be gone.

  She heard the soft sound of his other hand going into the canvas bag. His silence was concentrated, a dense energy that filled the room. The room itself was in bright shock, all its details fierce with helplessness. Her father’s brown suede Barcalounger. The rickety standard lamp she hadn’t had the heart to throw out. Her own black knee-high boots standing by the kitchen doorway, one upright, the other half flopped over.

  Something made of tough plastic snapped around her left wrist. A sound like a zipper, then another snap around her right.

  The pressure came off her neck but was transferred almost immediately to her calves. He knelt on her with both knees now, a sensation so intimate and intense it triggered a wild reflex in her. A roar of misery pulled itself out of her throat and she began to struggle crazily against him. Her body had this extraordinary capacity, it turned out, to take the law into its own hands, regardless of logic.