It was eight-thirty by now, time to leave for my appointment with Tom Grant. I made another quick call to KSTS-TV; this time Goodhue was resting until her eleven o’clock broadcast and couldn’t be disturbed. I remembered what she’d said the other day; “Nobody, absolutely nobody, disturbs me in my dressing room.” Although I could understand her need for that quiet time, it still irked me that she hadn’t phoned as promised, and I fretted about that all the way to Pacific Heights.
The night was clear and unusually warm; the streets of Pacific Heights were hushed, set apart from the rest of the city by that silence that often envelops privileged neighborhoods. Outside the Gate, the foghorns bellowed—a dolorous and faintly menacing reminder that the fog had not left for good, was merely waiting in abeyance at sea. As I crossed the sidewalk from my car to Grant’s house I heard other sounds: a cat fight somewhere up the hill; the breeze rustling the leaves of the eucalypti in the vast military reservation behind the homes; the wail of a siren down near Lombard Street.
Then I heard yet another noise: footsteps running and stumbling. As they came closer, they were punctuated by a harsh gasping and sobbing, and I realized the sounds were coming from Grant’s property. I hurried up to the gate just as his secretary, Ms. Curtis, burst through it and let forth a wild high-pitched scream that escalate in shrillness until it set a chill skittering across my shoulder blades.
She was dressed much as she had been two days before, but the primness and stiffness were gone. Her face was gray and twisted; her eyes were glassy and jumpy. I grabbed her arm, and they focused briefly on my face, but she didn’t seem to recognize me. Then she turned her ankle and the scream cut off as she pitched forward. As I caught and steadied her she said between gasps, “The police! Call the police!”
I glanced around. People were looking through their windows on the other side of the street, but—as in Hank and Anne-Marie’s neighborhood—they weren’t about to come outside when someone was screaming. I eased Ms. Curtis though that gate. She stiffened and shook head. “I can’t go back there!”
“Here—sit down.” I guided her onto the wall of one of the raised flower beds, then went to shove the gate closed. When I turned, she was hunched over, arms wrapped around her midsection. “Tell me what happened,” I said tensely.
“She moaned. “Tom. He’s in the studio. He . . . I think they’ve killed him.”
I note her use of the plural, but now wasn’t the time to questions her. “How do I get to the studio?”
“Path around the house.” She motioned to the left and behind her.
“You go inside. Call nine eleven.”
She remained where she was.
“Can you do that?”
She nodded.
I hurried across the courtyard and followed a bricked path to the rear of the property, where a second courtyard overshadowed by another acacia tree lay between the house itself and the wall that bordered the Presidio. It was very dark back there, even though the moon silvered the bricks, but in the far right-hand corner of the lot I saw a small structure faced in the same brown shingle as the house and overgrown with broad-leaved ivy. A faint light shone through its one narrow window.
I moved slowly toward it, aware of the clicking of my heels on the bricks. Around me everything seemed to have stopped moving; even the breeze had died, and the eucalyptus leaves no longer rustled. No sounds came from the small building.
The door was ajar, spilling a fine line of light onto the bricks. Warily I pushed it all the way open. The faint squeak of its hinges made me start.
Before me lay a room with a large central worktable; the wall behind it had drawers at the bottom and tools suspended from a pegboard above them. The other walls were bare, painted white. An odor filled the room: metallic, sickly, sweet. The odor I’ve come to think of as the smell of death.
I stepped inside, moved past the cluttered worktable. Grant lay on the floor behind it. He was on his back, his left arm flung out beside him, his right raised above his head as it to ward off his attacker. Blood covered his face, hands, casual tan clothing. It had spattered over the drawers and pegboard. As I moved I saw his forehead was caved in, white bone showing.
I wanted to grip the worktable for support, but I knew better than to disturb the scene; Ms. Curtis had probably done a good bit of damage already. I turned away briefly, breathing shallowly through my mouth. When I felt steady enough, I went over to the body and checked to see if there was any pulse. Of course there wasn’t.
Something on the floor a few feet away caught my eye as I straightened. I leaned out, staring at it. It looked to be a partially finished fetish—a heavy gridwork of metal with feathers sticking through the spaces between the rods—and it was covered with drying blood. Grant had been bludgeoned to death with one of his own hideous creations.
Trophies and dead things . . .
The phrase seemed eerily apt here in this workshop-turned-abattoir, where Grant had fashioned his sick fetishes from animal and bird corpses and where, in turn, someone had fashioned his death.
And then I remembered another phrase form the quatrain: nets to catch the wind. Grant had also fashioned such nets, fed his ambition by fanning the greed of his clients and using it against the wives and children they had once loved. And now?
Nothing, I thought as I hurried back to the house. Nothing but empty nets—a life that had produced nothing of value, that would not be long remembered beyond the last obituary.
I found Ms. Curtis sitting in one of the clients’ chairs in Grant’s office, staring at the telephone on the desk. “Did you call nine eleven?” I asked her.
She looked up as if surprised to see met there. “I . . . couldn’t.”
“I will.” I punched out the three digits, gave the operator the necessary information. Then I sat down on the other chair.
Angela Curtis had been crying. The tears had left a tracery of pale brown mascara on her cheeks. I fished in my bag and handed her a clean tissue. “When did you find him?
She scrubbed at her face, made a weary gesture. “Just before you arrived. I’d been to a movie on Union Street. Tom told me to go; he had someone coming, and he didn’t seem to want me around the house.”
When I’d spoken to him on the phone, Grant had mentioned an interview he had scheduled after his dinner appointment. Perhaps he planned to replace Angela Curtis and was talking with a job applicant; that would explain him not wanting her around. But why send her to a movie? Why not just send her home?
“Why did you come back here?” I asked.
“I live here.”
How convenient for him, I thought. A secretary who lived in; no wife to potentially demand her share of the community property. And you could be sure he’d made no promises or statements that would give rise to a palimony suit.
She sensed my thoughts, because she said, “It wasn’t like that. It was just . . . easier if I lived on the premises.” Then she scrubbed at her face some more, balled up the tissue, and tossed it in the wastebasket. “Oh, God, who do I think I can fool? Of course it was like that. What idiot would believe otherwise.”
I said, “Ms. Curtis, what happened when you came home?”
“I went out to the studio, and Tom was . . .” She shook her head, swallowed.
“Earlier you said ‘they’ killed Tom. Who did you mean?”
She shook her head, distracted. “I said that?”
“Yes. Do you have reason to believe it was more than one person? Suspect someone?”
“I guess I mean his clients. They took and took, and then they weren’t satisfied.”
“Did Tom ever mention an old friend named Perry Hilderly to you?”
She shook her head.
“There was a seminar Tom participated in at the Cathedral Hill Hotel the last weekend in May. Are you sure Hilderly’s name didn’t come up in connection with that?
“I’m positive.”
“And you don’t suspect any one of his clients in particular?”
“I suspect all of them. Any of them. I’m not blind to what Tom was, Ms McCone. The reason his clients weren’t satisfied was that he’d conditioned them to selfishness and cruelty. Simple stimulus-response. Someone tries to take something from you—even something that’s rightfully theirs—and you lash out, take it back, hurt them in the process. Afterward they would turn on Tom; often they didn’t even want to pay his fee.” She paused, then said as fresh tears welled in her eyes, “I knew exactly what he was, but that didn’t stop me from loving him.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“And then the police arrived,” I said to Hank.
We were sitting at the round table in All Souls’ kitchen—a place where we’d sat for many an hour over the years, rehashing aspects of his cases or mine, drinking wine or coffee, chatting or talking seriously. Tonight the conversation was of the serious variety. I’d called his flat as soon as I’d left the crime scene, but reached only his answering machine; I’d then called the co-op and found he was working late again. Now that I’d told him all I could about Grant’s murder, a lethargy was descending on me. I felt as if I’d been without sleep for days.
He asked, “Who’s the investigating officer?”
“Leo McFate. You remember him—the one when I was on that case for Willie—”
“I remember. An asshole. I thought he’d transferred to the Intelligence Division.”
“He did, but he’s back on Homicide now. Better he had stayed in Intelligence—he’s a sneaky bastard, and that’s a sneaky detail.” The Intelligence Director of the SFPD had come under criticism for spying on environmental, gay and peace organizations that in no way posed a threat to civil order or the public safety. In the sixties operatives infiltrated meetings of civil-rights workers and antiwar demonstrations; a year ago it had been revealed that—despite a 1975 Police Commission ruling against such activity—during the 1984 Democratic Convention the division had spied on such diverse groups as Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, the National Lawyers Guild, and an independent taxi drivers’ association that had threatened to strike just as the delegates began to arrive in the city. To me, it seemed a part of the department that McFate was especially well suited to.
Hank said, “I’m surprised he isn’t up in Sacramento by now, doing something ‘important.’ ” McFate was a social climber with political aspirations.
“Yes, and I’m of two minds about whether I’d want him there destroying the state, or down here annoying me.”
“I don’t suppose he let you stick around Grant’s very long.”
“He got me out of there as fast as he could. Took a statement, told me to come down to the Hall and sign it first thing tomorrow. He didn’t seem particularly interested in Grant’s connection to Hilderly, or that Hilderly was one of the sniper’s victims. In fact, when I offered to share anything that I might turn up in the course of dealing with the other heirs, he told me that wouldn’t be necessary.”
“What’s his problem, anyway?”
I smiled. “Well, part of it stems from the fact that a while back he came on to me and I rebuffed him. But the real problem is that—even though he’s seen around town with some of our most eligible women—underneath he doesn’t like or trust any of us.”
Hank grunted disapprovingly—whether at the concept of McFate coming on to me or at that of a man who didn’t like women, I couldn’t tell.
I said, “I’m curious about Hilderly’s estate. What happened to Grant’s share, sine he didn’t live to sign the waiver?”
“There’s a clause in the original will to the effect that if any of the beneficiaries didn’t survive until the final distribution of the assets, his share would be divided among the remaining beneficiaries. Fortunately, Hilderly copied it in the holograph, so Grant’s share won’t be paid into his own estate.”
“Which is probably substantial, anyway. I hope he left something to Angela Curtis. Even though she loved him, it couldn’t have been easy putting up with him. She deserves recompense.”
“You really disliked him, didn’t you?”
“He wasn’t at all likable. Those fetishes—” I broke off into a shudder and then a yawn.
Hank looked at his watch. “Almost one-thirty. You want some more wine?”
“Half a glass. I’m still too wired to sleep.” I stared out the window at the lights of downtown as Hank went to the fridge and poured from the jug. “Hank, what about these snipings and Grant’s murder? Even the sniper striking at your house was too coincidental for my taste, and now one of Hilderly’s heirs has been bludgeoned to death.”
“That’s the problem, though.” He returned to the table and set down our glasses. “Ballistics show the snipings were all done with the same gun. And Grant’s murder wasn’t a shooting. In fact, it sounds like a crime of passion, not at all premeditated.”
“I know. I could tell McFate was looking at Angela Curtis for it, but I doubt he’ll even try to build a case. There were no traces of blood on her, and if she’d done it, she’d have been covered with it.”
“You said it looked as if Grant was killed a while before you got there. She could have showered and changed her clothes.”
“And then waited for me, since she knew I was due at nine, and faked hysteria.” For a moment I reviewed the scene when I’d arrived at Grant’s. “No, I don’t think so. Her emotional reactions seemed genuine. For her sake, I hope somebody remembers her from the movie theater.”
We sipped wine in silence for a few minutes. I was still thinking about the snipings. Something was eluding me there—some connection I should have made. But I couldn’t force it. It would come together in its own good time or not at all.
After a bit Hank stirred and took our empty glasses to the sink. “Better get going, huh? It’s already well into tomorrow, and I’ve got a full schedule.”
I stood, stretched. “Me, too—I’ve got to be in Berkeley at nine, which means going to the Hall to sign my statement at seven-thirty, latest.”
“What’re you doing in Berkeley?”
“Talking with the man who edited the magazine Hilderly worked for. I’m hoping he can give me some insight into Perry’s past, his connection with Grant.”
“Shar, you’ve already located the heirs—”
“I thought we agreed I’d pursue this until we were certain Hilderly wasn’t under duress or unduly influenced when he wrote the holograph. Besides, the Hilderly angle is one that McFate seems determined to ignore in investigating Grant’s murder.”
Hank hesitated, then nodded. “Keep on it a while longer, then.” As we went down the hall and I picked up my jacket from where I’d left it on Ted’s chair, he added, “You always get so personally involved in your cases.”
“And you don’t?”
“Good point. Just be careful. Don’t tread on any sensitive toes at the Hall. You’ve got a license to protect, and I’d miss having you around here.”
As we started down the front steps I smiled up at Hank. “I will tread as lightly as Ralph and Alice—without leaving half the trail of destruction.”
I didn’t sleep well or long, due to recurring nightmares in which feathers and bone and blood spatters figured prominently. By seven-twenty I was at the Hall of Justice and had affixed my signature to a typed statement about Grant’s murder. Leo McFate was nowhere to be seen; the officer with whom I dealt said he’d been there all night and had gone to the Intelligence Division—his old stomping grounds—only minutes before my arrival. Greg was in his cubicle, however, sitting through a mound of paperwork. I went over there and tapped on the glass. He looked up and motioned for me to enter.
“You’re here early,” he said as I sank onto his visitor’s chair.
“I could say the same for you.”
“Been here since six. Pressure’s coming down about these snipings. I hear you had quite an evening.”
“McFate’s already reported on the Grant case?”
He nodded. “And did a fair amoun
t of grumbling about how my former lady friend had managed to foul up one of his crime scenes.”
My face became hot with anger. “Damn him!”
“Consider the source.” Greg harbored no more goodwill toward McFate than I did.
“I’d rather not.” I dug into my bag, where earlier I’d placed the pouch containing the gun I’d found at Hilderly’s flat. Greg raised his eyebrows when I set it on the desk blotter. Quickly I explained how I’d come to have it. “Could you ask the lab to bring out that serial number?”
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