LoveMurder

by Saul Black

  But the mind was treacherous. In the hour that followed, Valerie wasn’t free. Her body wanted what it wanted—and it was good—but the intensity responsible for her pleasure was lawless: images rose and drifted and dissolved. More than once Katherine’s smiling face bloomed, like the image of a golden demon or angel. She saw her watching from the bedroom chair, one hand between her spread legs. The wiser Valerie knew it was nothing, just more of Napoleon’s white horse. But still, she felt herself shutting it down, working to let pleasure’s drug pull her into the salving thoughtlessness of her body. And so she went, alternating between delicious oblivion and mild fracture as she and Nick, sometimes urgently and sometimes languidly, changed positions, until her third orgasm, when Nick, having held back for as long as he could, joined her. The last image in her head was of Katherine bent over them as they had ended up (in a sixty-nine, as they had begun), her white hand wrapped around Nick’s cock, guiding it as Valerie sucked him, the blond hair and green eyes (Will’s phrase, bitch eyes, was in the mental mix) very close to her, filled with understanding, with intimacy, with something like triumphal joy.

  He said everyone wants what we want but most people are too chickenshit to get it. Scared of getting caught. I said SHE got caught and he said she got careless.

  I can’t sleep so well for thinking of how it’s going to be. Leave all this shit behind. The last ten pounds are the hardest. Everyone knows that.

  No time tonight. Have to memorize. We’re close, he says.

  36

  The following day McLuhan took Valerie aside after the morning briefing. He looked tired.

  “Listen,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “There are gaps in Glass’s work. Our guys are telling me that in what she’s showing you can get close to the information she’s come up with. Close, but not all the way. Especially with the numericals. There are only two explanations. Either she’s leaving out crucial steps on purpose, or she’s getting the information from somewhere else.”

  “Leaving them out on purpose fits her,” Valerie said. “It’s her involvement insurance.”

  “I know. But we’re putting more energy into the alternative. It’s not just her correspondence, nor the handful of people who’ve been granted visiting access over the course of her incarceration. It’s potentially anyone who’s been into either Chowchilla or Red Ridge during her time there. That’s hundreds of visitors to the entire prison population over six years. Not to mention staff. We’ve looked at the correctional officers, but so far no one flags.”

  “It doesn’t help us, though, does it? I mean, are you suggesting we stop using her? My sister would be dead.”

  “I’m aware of that. But here’s what doesn’t go away: Why the fuck would she be helping us? You really buy the boredom story? The revenge story?”

  “More the boredom than the revenge,” Valerie said. “Have you met her?”

  “No.”

  “You have to understand what she’s like. Her mind’s a computer on coke. It’s bad enough in prison if you’re a moron. For someone like her … I don’t think she has any interest in helping us beyond the fact that it’s a lifeline to everything she’s lost. It’s a reengagement.”

  “With you.”

  “With the world. She hasn’t asked for anything.”

  “She hasn’t asked for anything yet.”

  “Are you saying we stop using her?”

  “I’m saying I know how difficult it would be for you if we did stop using her. I’m saying there’s a dependence. A dangerous dependence.”

  Valerie felt her face warming. She hadn’t seen this coming, that it was about her credentials. She took a moment before answering. “With respect, the Bureau’s got nothing. I know the resources are going in, but so far we’re no closer to this guy than we were six years ago. The only reason my sister’s alive right now is because Katherine Glass gave us her location. I’m not stupid, Vic: I know she’s not doing this out of the goodness of her heart. She might well have an agenda beyond her own boredom or a need for revenge, but until we know what it is, she’s pretty much the only thing standing between the next potential victim and death. That doesn’t go away, either. If you had any grounds to show she’s misinforming us—any grounds beyond the gaps she’s left in her work—fine. But you don’t. I mean, you’re telling me you don’t. If there’s an alternative to using her at this stage, tell me what it is.”

  “I’m not saying there’s an alternative. I’m saying I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t like it either.”

  “You sure?”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “There’s a fascination there, right?”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I put her away, in case you’ve forgotten.” Valerie’s voice was even, but the images from last night’s sex with Nick flashed. “Don’t make me say you’re just pissed because she’s doing our job for us,” she said.

  “And don’t make me say that while you’re jazzing on your supernatural connection with Miss Glass we’re putting in thousands of hours on the donkey work of elimination.”

  For a moment they looked at each other in deadlock. Valerie had an image of him as the sort of father who would scare a daughter’s boyfriend shitless: the heavy eyebrows and dark bushels of hair up each nostril.

  Then the tension went out of him. He put his hands in his pockets. “Okay,” he said. “Jesus, forget it. I was just trying to say be careful.”

  Valerie softened. He was obviously exhausted. There were pressures coming down on him from the directors. How old was he now? Fifty? It occurred to her that he wasn’t going any higher in the Bureau. She wondered what he would do when he retired. The things that men like him did, she supposed: bought a small boat, watched the ball games, kept up with current affairs. But all with the sadness of having lost the life of urgency, the life of knowing what you did made a difference.

  “I am being careful,” she said, not without a pang of guilt. “And I appreciate the concern. Let’s just catch this fucker.”

  “Yeah,” McLuhan said, without conviction. “Let’s do that.”

  * * *

  She put it off as long as she could. She told herself, in fact, that she would drive up to Red Ridge tomorrow. She went over to Union City to check on Cassie, who was discharged from the hospital around three in the afternoon. The house’s atmosphere was renewed. When Owen hugged her, she could feel the new, shocked tenderness in him. Death had come close and ripped the layers off everything. Now, because Cassie had not died, the preciousness of the world with her in it dazzled him like fireworks dazzled the innocence of children. Suddenly there was beauty everywhere. Suddenly life—from the sunlight on the lawn to the fibers in the hall carpet—was denuded and exalted. The humblest details were sources of joy—because his wife was alive, right there, in freshly laundered Levis and a white T-shirt, her hair tucked behind her ears, her eyes holding all their history and her voice, which he’d thought he’d never hear again. There couldn’t be a clearer demonstration that humans only ever truly valued life when they’d narrowly missed losing it. It should happen to everyone, Valerie thought. Everyone, just once, should get this reminder.

  Cassie, too, moved with a new awareness. When she put her hand on Jack’s shoulder; when she tilted her face up to catch the window’s sun; when she cut a slice of the lemon meringue pie her mother had made and bullied Valerie into tasting it. The horror was still there, Valerie could tell, but Cassie’s survival of it had given the ordinary goods of her life back to her revealed for what they were, fabulous treasures beyond price.

  Vincent, the youngest, was manifestly untouched by his mother’s brief absence from home. He went about the important business of his life of toy cars and cookies and Nickelodeon in contented obliviousness. But Jack stayed closer to Cassie than usual. The curious ruck in the fabric of the home hadn’t gone unnoticed. He didn’t, of course, know what had
happened, beyond the “car accident,” but Valerie could see in his face there were silent questions being asked. There was a hint of suspicion, as if something huge and dark had passed in his peripheral vision, and though it had passed, and he’d more or less missed it, it had left him with a confused sense that the world might not be the way it had always seemed.

  Valerie spent an hour with them, and before she left spoke to the two assigned officers in a way that made it clear that if anything happened to this family on their watch their lives wouldn’t be worth living. To their credit, the officers looked like they believed her.

  She was getting in her car when her mother came out and stopped her.

  “Valerie?”

  She turned.

  Her mother put her arms around her. She’d been in tears, continually, over the last seventy-two hours, and her face was wet with them now.

  “Come on, Ma, it’s okay.”

  Mrs. Hart clung to her daughter. Struggled to get the words out.

  “We don’t appreciate you,” she said.

  “I’ve been telling you that for years,” Valerie said, giving her a squeeze.

  “When I think … When I think that if you hadn’t…”

  “Ma, come on. It’s over.”

  “You’re always so strong,” her mother said. “Even when you were a little girl…” But the words “little girl” fractured her again.

  “You’re embarrassing Officer Wilson,” Valerie said. “You don’t want him to see you like this, do you?” But she held her mother, thinking, as she did so, that she felt newly small and frail in her arms. She smelled, as always, of Shalimar and coconut oil shampoo. She was sixty-eight, but the little flames of sensuousness and female vanity were still there. Valerie liked that they were. She dyed her gray hair a rich auburn and referred to women of her own age (and younger) as “elderly,” as if she didn’t belong to that category. Valerie and Cassie teased her about it, but really, they loved her for it.

  “I give you such a goddamned hard time,” her mother said, snuffling. “About the job. But I know that if you didn’t do what you do…”

  “I’m no good for anything else, Mom. You know that.”

  Mrs. Hart held on for a moment, then said: “I just wanted to say thank you.”

  It hurt Valerie. All the love she took for granted. She thought of her mother dying. Being gone. Surprised herself with the sudden bleakness it brought up, as if with that loss there would be nothing between herself and the keener air, the cold wind that found everyone, eventually.

  “Thank you,” her mother said. “I love you, hon.”

  Five minutes later, heading back to the station, she thought: It’s not me you should be thanking, Ma. It’s the woman up in Red Ridge. Sadist. Murderer. Monster. Katherine fucking Glass.

  She took a right.

  37

  “This puts us in a peculiar position, doesn’t it?” Katherine said. “I can imagine the mixed feelings for you. But they’re mixed for me, too. This morning I woke up not quite knowing where I was. Who I was, even. Like those first mornings in foreign hotels. I had to lie there for a while, letting my dismal history find me in the confusion. If they hadn’t come to shake down my cell I don’t know how long it would have lasted.”

  Valerie sat opposite her in the now familiar visiting room. Katherine looked slightly different. There was a wide-awakeness and luminescence to her, as if she’d caught up on much-needed sleep. All the details of her—teeth, fingernails, eyelashes—looked as if they’d just that minute arrived in the world.

  “Arden said you were asking to see me,” Valerie said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, of course I want to know all about it. What happened? Wasn’t he there?”

  “Apparently not,” Valerie said. “Guess he got lucky.”

  “Incredible,” Katherine said. “That’s God with the coin.”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Who was the woman?”

  “Just a woman. Like they’re all just women.”

  “Did you get to her before any damage was done?”

  “Before any lasting damage was done, yes.”

  Katherine looked at her and smiled. “Don’t fret,” she said. “It’s not as if I expect you to thank me. I do realize my balance in the moral account will be forever negative, no matter how many damsels I save from distress. Perhaps if my heart were in the right place it would count for something, but unfortunately I am what I am. I did toy with it, mind you.”

  “With what?”

  “Repentance,” Katherine said. “All extremes end up very close to their opposites. Morality’s like that. The worst kind of sinner is only a hairsbreadth away from the best kind of saint. They travel far enough, they bump into each other, eventually, back to back. What follows depends on whether they turn and face each other. It depends on what sort of conversation they have, like Jesus and the Devil in the desert.”

  In spite of herself, Valerie understood. Katherine had this knack for making the worst kind of sense. It gave you something, a wretched insight, but it was exhausting.

  “Where was it, by the way?” Katherine said.

  “Where was what?”

  “The scene of the crime. He cheated, incidentally, with that. There was an extra cipher. Eratosthenes. Not terribly cleverly hidden, but still, I wasn’t expecting it. I was looking for the name of a location.”

  Valerie didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said: “It’s okay with me that you enjoy this. You have all this extraordinary intelligence, knowledge, and yet you’re in here and I’m out there. If I were in your shoes I’d probably feel exactly the same.”

  “It’s not that,” Katherine said. “It’s not that at all. It’s just the habit of talking to myself. I’m sorry. Without Agent Arden there’s no one else in here worth talking to, except Warden Clayton, and she doesn’t like to do more than dip a toe in the water with me. She knows there are sharks down there. She’s a morally middle class thrill-seeker. For a while I thought of seducing her. You know, as a project. If you don’t have a project in a place like this it’s not long before they find you dead by your own fingernails. Plus she’s got those Amazonian boobs. She’s open to it, but only as a fantasy. She wouldn’t risk anything that interfered with her game plan, which is some trivial little adventure in contributing to black advancement. She’s too terrified of making her mommy and daddy feel like they made all those sacrifices for nuthin. She wants achievement—but she wants it for herself. She wants to sit on her achievement like a smug bear on its stash of honey. Luckily for her, she has the advantage of a political rationale. She’s a greedy little soul blessed by the injustices of history. If she were white everyone would know she’s a monster-cunt of ego. But she’s black, so no one sees it. Or rather, they feel guilty if they do. They start wondering if they’re racists. Smart black people get away with murder. At least I’ve got the decency to be in jail.”

  Listening to Katherine, Valerie thought, was like being stuck on a sickening ride you couldn’t jump off. But again she was struck by her uncanny choice of words. Hadn’t she, Valerie, mentally used the phrase “game plan” when speculating about Warden Clayton?

  “I have digressed,” Katherine said. “I’m sorry. I worry about my mind. Eratosthenes, for the record, is credited with the idea of longitude and latitude, you see? If the Bureau monkeys had spotted the cipher they would have gotten the location themselves. The coordinates weren’t even scrambled. They were just there, in the correct sequence. I wasted some time, initially, because I thought it was just ‘Erato,’ in Greek mythology the Muse of lyric poetry. It’s sometimes thought her name derives from the same root as ‘Eros,’ which would yield an approximate translation of ‘lovely’ or ‘desired.’ Which is where my own monster-cunt ego got rather in the way, as you can imagine. Anyway, I got there in the end. The photograph of the needle gave me a migraine, too. But it’s ‘angels.’ The cipher. How many angels c
an dance on the head of a pin? A question wrongly attributed to Saint Thomas Aquinas. You’ll ask me if he studied medieval philosophy. Answer is I don’t know. He was, by his own account, an autodidact. You look different, by the way. Have you had some sort of uplifting trauma?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Valerie said. “Just work. What’s an autodidact?”

  “Self-taught,” Katherine said. “I’m not kidding, you look radiant. You’re a woman of such wealth. A job you love and a man you love. What more could you wish for? You can see how your presence here throws my own risibly stark life into such brutal relief. I ought to want to pluck out your eyes.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Katherine smiled. The smile. “No. I don’t. Superficially, because they’re lovely eyes—you’ve got those unjustly long lashes, too, like a deer, but without quite the innocence—and I’m hopeless in the face of beauty. But really because I’m fascinated by you. Having a genuine nemesis is psychologically compelling. We’re like the saint and sinner I mentioned before, so close to each other by having traveled to almost the same point from opposite directions.”

  “We’re not anywhere near the same point,” Valerie said.

  “Come on,” Katherine said. “Think about it.”