Night Work

by Laurie R. King

  “Okay,” said Kate with satisfaction. “What apartment are you in, Sergeant?”

  “Number three-fourteen.”

  “We'll be there in twenty minutes.”

  The woman in apartment 314 did not look the type to drive a flashy car. Nor did the modern furnishings fit with the small woman dressed in jeans, a vastly oversized sweatshirt, fuzzy slippers, and plaster. The last item covered her left arm from knuckle to elbow, and half a dozen stitches had recently been removed from the still-swollen cut on her left eyebrow. That whole side of her face was yellow-green with fading bruises and she held herself stiffly, either from fear of causing pain, or from fear itself.

  Kate and Al introduced themselves to Martina Wiley, who had answered the door with the air of a family friend and then took them across to the breakfast nook to meet the woman.

  “This is Rachel Curtis,” she said. “Rachel, these are two detectives from San Francisco, Kate Martinelli and her partner, Al Hawkin. They're investigating the murder of your neighbor Matthew Banderas.”

  Rachel Curtis flicked a glance at Kate and then Al, but kept her attention on the woman who had taken on the role of savior. Kate was distracted for a moment by the contrast between the cop and the victim, who might have been handpicked to illustrate the word opposites. Wiley was big, black, strong, and bristling with intelligence and energy. Curtis was about five feet tall and thin to the point of anorexia, with dark brown chin-length hair, pasty white skin, glasses, and no more energy than yesterday's pasta.

  Kate shook herself mentally, and sat down in a chair across from the battered woman.

  “Rachel was beaten and raped eleven days ago,” Wiley told them bluntly. “She never saw her attacker, didn't recognize his voice. She was stopped in a parking lot by a man with a gun and a mask, who put a pillowcase over her head and drove her away. He raped her, dragged her out of the car, kicked her four or five times, and walked off.”

  Kate and Al looked at each other, and Kate cleared her throat. “Did he say anything at all?” she asked the woman. Slow tears had begun to dribble down Rachel's battered face, which Kate imagined had happened more or less continuously for the last week and a half.

  “He said, ‘Hold it’ when I got to my car and then, ‘Get in the passenger seat.’ And then later, when he'd … Afterward, he told me not to move. Then he smashed the windows of the car and banged it with something hard, and after that it went quiet. I was lying on some rocks or sticks that were hurting me, and it was cold, so when nothing happened for five or ten minutes I figured he'd gone so I started to sit up and pull the thing off my head and then he was there shouting and kicking me. I curled up again and put my arms around my head, and he stopped, and then after a minute he told me not to move at all, and if I did he'd kill me. And then he said something about nothing being mine, and that was all. I must've laid there for at least an hour, but when I finally pulled off that pillowcase he was gone and my car was there. The tires were flat and all the glass was gone and the body smashed up, but he left the key and I could get one of the doors open, so I drove to the nearest road and found a gas station and a phone.”

  “What do you think he meant by nothing being yours, Ms. Curtis?” Al Hawkin asked. He had taken care to remain, literally and figuratively, in the background. Some rape victims could not stand being around men for a while, others found men more comforting than their possibly judgmental sisters. Rachel Curtis seemed oblivious of pretty much everything outside of her misery and Martina Wiley, and looked at him uncomprehendingly. Al tried again. “Can you try and remember his exact words?”

  “They were, ‘You don't own anything,’ or, ‘You don't own everything.’ Yes, I think it was that: ‘You don't own everything, you bitch.’ And then I heard glass break again. I think he was smashing the headlights.”

  “I see,” Hawkin said, and he did. They thanked the woman, apologized for bothering her, and walked with Martina Wiley out onto the third-floor covered walkway, where they could talk away from the victim's ears.

  “Sounds like Banderas?” the sergeant asked them. “I looked up his sheet after I saw the paper this morning.”

  “Or a close copycat,” Kate agreed.

  “So what was that question about the car?”

  “It would appear that Ms. Curtis had the nerve to park in Matthew's favorite though officially unreserved spot. His girlfriend said that he and Rachel may have had an argument over it about two weeks ago, after which he seemed to be, in her words, ‘like, satisfied.’”

  “Some argument,” Wiley mused, looking down three floors at the unimaginative condominium garden. “And now Banderas is dead. Are you thinking Rachel could've pulled it off? Because I can't see what she has to do with your other case, assuming there is a link. And besides, look at her, she's a basket case. I mean, she might've shot him if you'd put a gun in her hand, or run him down if she saw him walking down the street, but from what I heard, it wasn't exactly like that, was it?”

  “It certainly was not,” Kate told her. “If—and we don't have any evidence so far except the record both victims have of crimes against women—if this killing is related to the murder of James Larsen, then this woman couldn't have done it. Not with that arm and those injuries.”

  “So you've maybe got somebody picking off the bad guys. Well, honey, better you than me. Personally, I'd be real tempted to look in the other direction for a while, maybe even offer a few names and addresses of my own, you know? Hey,” she said more seriously, “that was a joke. Let me know if I can do anything to help.”

  But it had not been completely a joke, all three of them knew that, because any cop who had held a badge for more than a few months well understood the urge for a more simple and direct form of justice than the law could provide. Retribution, vigilante justice, call it what you would, it was a deep and powerful temptation, every so often when a known villain was finding a crack to fall through.

  Well, here were two men who had run out of hiding places. And two detectives who had the job of finding the person or persons who had taken on the role of judge and executioner.

  They talked for a few minutes with Wiley, the easy cop talk of a shared language and similar view of the world.

  Wiley was more than interested to hear of Melanie Gilbert's reticence over her lover's bedroom habits, and promised to pass on the word to their sex crimes detail that an interview there might be of value. Sure, Banderas was dead, but clearance rates were law enforcement's bottom line, and the statute of limitations on that string of rapes was by no means expired.

  Two young women carrying expensive tennis rackets came out of a door on the other side of the courtyard, talking loudly and happily until they glanced over and saw the three police detectives. Kate wondered idly if Rachel Curtis had been a happy tennis player two weeks ago.

  Martina Wiley seemed to read her mind. “Rachel will be all right. She's a strong person who's been knocked for a loop by this, but I think she'll find her anger in a couple more days, and that'll help. I worked sex crimes down south before coming here,” she explained. “You get to have a feel for how people will react.”

  “I hope you're right,” Kate told her.

  “We'll see. Good to meet you two. I'll be talking to you soon.” They shook hands and, thus dismissed, Kate and Al made their way down the stairs, dodging a man with a bicycle coming up, a man with a dog going down, and the postman with an Express Mail envelope, special Sunday delivery, also heading up the stairs.

  They let themselves back into the Banderas apartment. It smelled unoccupied already, of dust and stale air despite the lingering scent of yesterday's coffee, and would in a few days be cleared for removal of the victim's effects by his family. Kate had wanted to check a couple of the files in his laptop, but before she had gotten any further than booting it up, someone pounded on the door, bypassing the winsome-voiced doorbell for the sake of directness.

  Kate opened it to Martina Wiley. She was holding an opened Express Mail envelope i
n her rubber-gloved hands, the envelope they had seen in the postman's hand five minutes before.

  “It's for you,” said Wiley. She carried it over to the dining table and, using the tips of her gloved fingers, she turned the envelope over above the table to allow a folded piece of paper to fall out. Touching only the extreme corners, she pulled it open, and they read:

  Be strong, Rachel Curtis, it was not your fault. He will bother no woman again.

  —a friend

  “Oh, shit,” said Kate.

  Al Hawkin, looking over her shoulder, could only agree.

  We have to reckon with Kali for better or worse,

  The angry tongue that lashes us with flame

  As long-held hope turns bitter and men curse,

  “Burn, baby, burn” in the goddess' name.

  Investigating the life of the dead man took up the rest of that day and several of the following. The department in Los Angeles sent someone to notify the Banderas family of the death, and on Sunday evening a brother flew up to identify the body and make funeral arrangements, and to begin the process of clearing out the apartment. The brother was a devout and conservative born-again Christian, a lay preacher in his church, and was so offended by his black-sheep brother's video collection that he had to arrange for the complex's gardener to come in and remove it from the premises. Some of them were a little rough even for the gardener.

  The videos offered them a tentative and theoretical link with the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, since the group's first victim, Barry Doyle, sold several of the same titles, but credit card receipts at catalogues and video places closer to home accounted for most of them, and the frail link dissolved.

  The note received by Rachel Curtis was duly transported to the lab, which told them precisely nothing: dropped in a mailbox in Oakland, the stamp wetted by bottled water rather than someone's revealing saliva, by a person wearing gloves, on paper produced by the ton, both paper and printer different from that used by the Ladies on their victims. They spent a fruitless hour debating why, if the two murders were linked, Emily Larsen had not received a note, telling her that she was safe. Was the murderer's technique becoming more refined? Or was it simply that Emily knew who her abuser was, and would know that she was now safe, but Rachel, who had known only a faceless rapist, did not?

  They did not find what had called Banderas away from his date with Melanie to end up at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. He had crossed the Golden Gate Bridge just at dusk, when the tollkeeper took his money and reminded him cheerfully to turn on his headlights, and he flipped her the finger before laying rubber in his acceleration. Not that he seemed to be in a rush; he was just being a jerk, she said, adding philosophically, people were, some of them.

  Two people might have seen Banderas enter the park around the Legion. One elderly woman, cursed with failing night vision and hurrying to get home before full dark, thought she might have seen the flashy Banderas car parked next to a light car, white or tan, but it was neither of the two makes she knew—Volkswagen and Volvo—although it was closer to a Volvo sedan in shape. And it might have been light blue, or that metallic gray.

  The search went on, their steps continually dogged, or preceded, by reporters covering the same ground.

  It was all very frustrating and grueling and normal, and Kate dragged herself home each night worn-out but unable to sleep. Finally on Tuesday, trudging through the front door to yet another warmed-up meal, Lee met her in the front hallway with a pair of running shoes in her hand.

  “You going jogging, love?” Kate asked, dredging up a joke.

  “No, you are.”

  Kate moved around Lee and began to unload herself of what felt like a hundred pounds of briefcase, handbag, Beretta with its holster and two magazines, handcuffs, and assorted loose folders, heaping them precariously on the small many-drawered desk next to the stairs. “Not tonight, Lee. I'm tired.”

  Lee had somehow moved around to block Kate from the rest of the house. She held out the shoes, practically shoved them into Kate's chest, and said, “Go.”

  “Oh Christ, Lee, don't do—”

  “Go. Now.”

  Kate glared at her determined lover, slapped the drawer shut on her holstered gun, snatched the shoes out of Lee's hand, and stormed angrily upstairs to change into shorts and sweatshirt. Several slammed drawers and loud curses later she pounded resentfully down to the main level and out of the house into the cold night air. The crash of the heavy front door was probably felt by the next-door neighbors.

  Red-faced and too worked up to bother stretching, Kate shot down the precipitous side of Russian Hill, in and out of the illumination from the streetlights, moving at a rate that risked a mighty fall. With the luck of the mad, her feet managed to miss the patches of loose gravel and the raised edges of paving stones, the passing cars were always just through the crossings or else down the block, and the clots of people and the dog-walkers were always on the other side of the street.

  Gradually, as her resentment cooled and her muscles warmed, she found her pace, and in the end she ran a lot farther than the original spiteful six blocks she had intended. She circled around the base of Russian Hill and came up the steep wooden stairs of Macondray Lane, at the top of which she stopped, bent over with her hands on her thighs to catch her breath. She cooled off by jogging slowly down Green Street and doing some belated stretches, and when she reached her front door, she was considerably more rested than when she had started out.

  She paused in front of her door to pick a frail pansy from Jon's windowbox, carried it through to the kitchen, presented it wordlessly to Lee, and then put her arms around her partner. The two women stood in the silent embrace, wrapped up in each other, restored. It was Lee who moved first to break it off, by murmuring Kate's name with a question attached to it.

  “Yes?” Kate responded into the hollow of Lee's throat.

  “My love, you really, really stink.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “I know,” and she went off to luxuriate in a long, hot shower.

  Dinner was not reheated leftovers. Dinner was a more or less vegetarian stroganoff with red wine, eaten by candlelight. Kate had not realized how starved she was until her plate was empty—for the second time. She drained her glass, sat back in her chair, and closed her eyes, feeling the hum of satisfaction running through her very bones.

  Of course, she was fully aware that underlying the entire string of events from the moment she had come in the door was that ominous little phrase, “Honey, we need to talk.” She had been neglecting Lee, and at a time when there were issues standing between them, issues that would rapidly calcify if left to themselves, requiring major demolition efforts later.

  But Lee was right, and Lee was good, and Kate would not force Lee to do it all herself. Besides which, she did want to talk to Lee.

  Talking to Lee had become a high priority in Kate's life, ever since the long, lonely months of fall and winter when she had feared she was losing her beloved. Talking, and laughing and loving and just being with her, and if it cut into the hours Kate could spend working a case, it also seemed to make her more rested, more what Lee would call “centered,” and with that came increased efficiency in her working hours. So Kate told herself, at any rate, and so she would believe.

  It had been eight months before, at the end of summer, when Lee had left her, pushing Kate away in a particularly brutal manner. Kate thought it final. Instead, with the new year came a glimmer of hope, shining through a hellish and highly personal case involving the kidnapping of Al's stepdaughter Jules, and when that case came to an end, miraculously Lee was still there.

  A new Lee, a different Lee from the wounded, angry, and confused person who had fled north to her aunt's island on the Canadian border. This was closer to the strong and purposeful woman Kate had first met, but with a depth and stability that only the profoundly damaged attain. Lee had all but died, and then over the next two years she had been reborn. Kate did not yet know jus
t what her lover had become, or what their relationship would become. All she knew was that Lee still chose to be with her; the rest of it would find its way.

  “God, that was good,” Kate said with a sigh. “Would you marry me?”

  “I'm already married to you,” Lee pointed out.

  “Would you marry me again, then? Maybe if we do it twice, you won't need to do anything drastic like running off to your Aunt Agatha's to get my boneheaded attention.”

  “That isn't exactly why I did it,” Lee protested.

  “No, but that was one of the results.” Kate pulled her napkin off her lap and dropped it onto the table, pushing her chair back and walking slowly around the table toward Lee. “You have my attention, my complete attention, and nothing but my attention.” At the last word she reached Lee. Bending down, she slipped one arm behind her lover's back and one under her knees, and picked her up. The romance of the gesture was undermined by the involuntary grunt of effort she let out and the way she staggered across the room, accompanied by Lee's giggling shrieks of alarm and protest. At the sofa, Kate stumbled and, although Lee did end up on the cushions, Kate fell on top of her in a tangle of limbs and a brief crack of skulls.

  They disentangled themselves and sat for a minute, rubbing their heads and recovering their breath.

  “So much for romance,” Kate grumbled. “I think I have a hernia or a slipped disk or something.”

  “Poor dear,” Lee cooed, and took Kate's head in her hands to kiss her bruise. The kiss lingered, and moved down to the lips, and suddenly Kate sat up.

  “This is where Jon comes in,” she said warily. “Where is he?”

  “I told him if he didn't take the night off and go away, I'd fire him.”

  Kate reflected ungratefully that if he did walk in now, the momentary embarrassment would be well worth the result, and then Lee was kissing her and she thought no more for some time.