by Sam Ripley
‘Fair? You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘I can see we’re not going to get very far today,’ he said. ‘But call me when you feel a little calmer.’
He stood up to go.
‘And – Kate,’ he said. ‘You did a great job this morning. I know you did everything you could to save that child.’
She bit her lip, almost tasting the blood beneath the skin.
‘Do you know who – who – she was?’ she said, softening.
‘We’re not 100 per cent, but we have an idea. Got reports of a missing child from a young couple over in San Feliz. We need a positive I-D before we can say for certain.’
‘And how she died?’
‘Again, it’s too early. She’s been taken off for a post-mortem now. But it looks like she died in the ocean, either from hypothermia or drowning.’
‘Was it one of the parents, do you think?’
‘They’ve been brought in for questioning, but we don’t think so. Broken to pieces, poor kids. Normally the little girl slept in a cot in the parents’ room, but that night they wanted a little privacy – their words – so they moved the baby into the next room. In the middle of the night the mother went in to the spare room to check on the baby and discovered it was missing from the cot. It was a one-storey house, you know the type and –‘
‘Jesus, but who would do a thing like that?’
‘You know what’s out there, Kate.’
‘I know, but a baby – why, for god’s sake?’
She thought of the feel of the little girl in her arms, her flesh cold, wet and clammy. She remembered her glassy eyes staring into nowhere.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she said urgently.
‘What is it?’ said Josh, his eyes searching the room for one of his deputies.
She looked at him and changed her mind. She wasn’t ready to tell him. Maybe she never would.
‘I’m going to spend a few days at my mother’s house, so I’ll be there if you need to get hold of me.’
***
Earlier that day, after she had put the phone down from 911, she had walked into the bathroom to get a small towel with which to cover the dead child. She couldn’t bring her back to life, but at least she could give her a little dignity in death. As she opened the door to the bathroom cupboard to grab a towel she spotted, on the shelf above, a clutch of pregnancy test kits. She took hold of the towel and was about to walk out of the room when an overwhelming compulsion came over her. It was irrational, inappropriate, just plain stupid. She was due to have her period any time now. She was just late. But the urge was so strong that neither logic nor decorum could defeat it. She knew she should head back down to the beach, but what she had to do would only take a matter of minutes.
She sat on the edge of the bath, her hands shaking. She felt nervous, a little nauseous. She took a deep breath and stood up, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes. A mass of white hair. Her pale skin an even more ghostly white. She stripped off her wet clothes, quickly towel-dried her face and body and threw on a pale grey bathrobe. Then she locked the door and took out one of the testing kits from the cabinet. All the other times had been negatives, so what made her think this was going to be any different?
She unwrapped the box and automatically went through the procedure. Who needed instructions anymore? Then she sat on the john, waited and remembered the first time she had seen him.
A body had been found by a hiker just off one of the trails in the hills behind the observatory. A white male, roughly 45 years old. Badly decomposed. No dental records. No DNA matches. So she had been called in to do a facial reconstruction. First of all she had made a negative image of the skull from alginate, into which she poured plaster. Into the copy of the skull she had then placed a series of pegs, the depth of the pegs calculated according to the sex, age and racial origins. She worked out the detail of the facial structure – the jaw and set of the teeth, the shape and projection of the nose, the nostrils, the width of the mouth, the projection of the eyes, the shape of the eyelids, the size and shape of the forehead. Then she rolled out strips of clay, which she then moulded onto the skull, until she had pieced together a portrait of the unknown dead man. Many of her contemporaries worked with computer modelling, but Kate preferred the ‘British’ method, which she had learnt in Manchester, England. She liked the sticky feel of clay between her fingers, the features forming in her hands, the very real sense of giving birth to an unknown identity. For all her scientific training, she felt she was still an artist at heart.
She recalled that just as she had been working on the dead man’s lips, delicately shaping them with a scalpel, she had got a phone call in her lab. She had ignored it – her assistant Tom Horking was on vacation and her fingers were covered in clay – but then her cell rang.
‘Okay, okay,’ she had said to herself, tearing off a piece of paper roll. ‘Dr Kate Cramer, hello.’
‘Detective Josh Harper, I’m heading up the John Doe investigation, and I’m standing outside your lab. What have you got for me?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said what have you got for me? A face, an image, whatever it is you have I need it now.’
If there was one thing that annoyed Kate it was the assumption that you could do her kind of work quickly.
‘I’m afraid this is not a fast food outlet, Detective Harper,’ she had said.
‘Look – I’ve got a body with no name, no identity, and I’ve been –‘
‘Well, if you don’t let me get on with my job –‘
‘Cut the bullshit, Dr Cramer. When can I have a result? That’s all I need to know.’
Kate had remained silent.
‘Hello?’
‘You will get the ‘result’, as you call it, when it’s good and ready,’ she had said coldly, cutting the line.
The mobile rang again, but she ignored it. Asshole. Probably some alcoholic, middle-aged man trapped in an unhappy, sexless marriage and surviving on coffee, take out, and Pepto-Bismol.
She had worked for a half an hour more, washed her hands and checked herself in the mirror. Earlier she had scraped back her hair, fixing it in place with an old rubber band. Should she wear it loose over her shoulders? Nah, she was only going to get a salad. Then she’d be back at her desk.
She had keyed in her passcode at the secured exit, but just as she had gone to turn the handle she felt the door being forced towards her. She had pushed back, but she had not been strong enough.
‘What the fuck …’
‘Dr Cramer, Detective Harper,’ he had said, brandishing a badge.
‘Exactly what do you think you are doing?’
‘Trying to get what I need to do my job, ma’am, that’s all.’ His accent was vaguely Southern. Texan, maybe?
‘I told you on the phone that it’s not finished.’
‘Can you not show me the work in progress,’ he had said, smiling, a glint of mischievousness in his black, snake-like eyes.
‘Tell me one good reason why I shouldn’t call security?’
‘What, and go to all that trouble? Don’t forget we are all working on the same side, Dr Cramer.’
She gave him one of her withering, icy stares.
‘Okay, but remember, I’m only doing this because I pity you,’ she had said. ‘This way.’
She accompanied him to her work desk, where she showed him the model. She talked him through what she had done, tried to make him aware of the intricacies of the process, the importance of not rushing. She caught him looking at her, eyeing her severe hairline. If only she had taken her hair out of that goddamn rubber band, she had thought, before telling herself not to be so pathetically, adolescently stupid. The man clearly was – what was the expression her father always used – a fuckwit. Yet, there was something about him. What was it?
‘Well, thank you Dr Cramer, that was – interesting.’
‘No problem.’
‘An
d – sorry to ask you this again – but when – realistically - do you think you might be able to release the image to me? I need to get it out to the media as soon as I can.’
‘I’ll do my best, okay. I can’t promise, but if I work around the clock you’ll have it by tomorrow a.m.. Is that quick enough.’
‘I guess it will have to be,’ he had said, his dark eyes glinting again.
She accompanied him back to the door of the lab. He stopped and turned towards her.
‘Look - sorry I behaved like an asshole earlier. But can I take you out to dinner to make up?’
Of course, she had wanted to say ‘yes’. Instead, she looked straight through him, keyed in her code on the security pass and opened the door for him.
‘I don’t think that’s such a great idea. Let’s stick to being professional, shall we Detective Harper?’
And with that he had walked out. Not the most promising of beginnings, thought Kate. Maybe she should have taken her own advice. Then she would never have found herself sitting on the john, waiting for the result that would change her life.
***
She had taken a deep breath as she had picked up the kit. She had closed her eyes for a moment of two. On opening them she had seen the two distinctive pink lines that confirmed that she was pregnant. She should have felt overjoyed. After all, Kate had been trying for a child for two years. But instead she had just felt flat, numb.
What a time for it to happen, she had thought. Just my fucking luck.
How many attempts had there been? First of all naturally – god, those were the days - and then with IVF. They had both been optimistic at first, confident that it would work for them. But as time had dragged on the process seemed to eat away at the foundations of their relationship, undermining it like a plague of termites burrowing beneath a wooden-frame house. From the outside it still looked handsome, healthy, but inside it was decaying. Perhaps she had placed too much pressure on Josh to have a child. Perhaps lovemaking had come to be associated more with mucal temperatures, menstrual cycles and medication than raw passion. Perhaps she had mutated into one of those neurotic women – the type she vowed she would never turn into – that obsess over baby-making to the detriment of everything else.
And yet she still couldn’t forgive him for what he had done. Jules. God, she hated that name.
It made perfect fucking sense now, of course. She had discovered the truth about Josh and Jules less than a month ago, just after their last session with the fertility clinic. The drive back in the car was silent, the air poisonous with unexpressed emotion. At the beach house she had noticed that Josh didn’t want to meet her eye. Finally she could bear it no longer and asked if there was anything wrong. Initially, he had said no, he was just beat, that was all. Working long hours on a case of child pornography and internet paedophilia. That was enough to send even the sanest amongst us into silent mode, she had said to herself. Yet – there was something that wasn’t quite right. She had seen Josh handle difficult, disturbing, outright obscene and sick cases before and he had never been like this. She had got the feeling that he would much rather be some place else. Over supper, on the terrace overlooking the ocean, she had asked him if there was anything else bothering him besides the investigation. He had looked down at his steak and had said that he thought maybe they should give the fertility clinic a break for a while. It had been getting too much for him - all those tests, the pressure, the emotional highs and lows.
‘And maybe it’s not such a good idea, anyway,’ he had said, as something of a throwaway remark, pouring himself another glass of Rioja. ‘I mean, we’ve both got our careers to think about - your photographs, the exhibition. Maybe there’s a reason why we can’t have kids.’
‘What?’ she had said, nearly choking.
‘Just that I think we should have a rethink about a few things.’
‘Josh, it’s a bit late to start saying that now.’ She hated the sound of desperation in her voice.
‘I know, but –‘
‘But what, Josh? I thought we were both into this. Don’t you want a child now? Is that it?’
‘Yeah, sure, but maybe we should wait a couple of years.’
‘I’m thirty nine, Josh. I know you say I don’t look like it, but there’s no way I can wait. I need to do this now, you know that.’
‘That’s the problem, though, isn’t it,’ he had said, his voice taking on an edge of bitterness. ‘It’s always what you want, what you need.’
‘Excuse me?’ She had never seen him like this before, his eyes hard and ugly, his voice harsh and accusing. ‘What is it, Josh. I know there’s something else.’ Was he actually squirming in his seat? ‘Or someone else.’
There had been a long, horrible, ugly pause. Please god, no.
‘Josh?’
‘It’s been hard, Kate, you know that.’
‘Oh, no, please, no.’
The food in her mouth suddenly tasted rotten.
‘It doesn’t mean anything. Nothing. Just a fling. Sex, that’s all.’
‘Is that not enough?’
‘Come on.’
‘Who is she? What’s she called?’
He hesitated.
‘Jules. She’s called Jules.’
‘And what does she do?’
‘Why do you need to know? You don’t need to know.’
‘I asked what does she do?’
‘She’s a chef.’
‘Where?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Where?’
‘At the Amalfi, downtown.’
‘I see – just round the corner from your office.’
‘I guess, but –‘
‘Can you please go now.’
‘Kate, let’s talk this through. Come on –‘
She had looked at him with cold, bare hatred. ‘Just go. Please.’
He had touched her on the shoulder – a caress that made her shrink into herself - and then he had let himself out.
God, that had seemed so long ago. Yet it was only a month. She started to go over it all again in her mind – were there signs she should have seen, hints she should have taken notice of, things she should have done differently? – but then the doorbell rang. The emergency services had arrived. She knew Josh would be amongst the throng. She quickly pulled on some dry clothes and ran to the door, realising the terrible ironies of the situation.
She had been left by the father of her child on the same day it had been conceived. And today – the day she had discovered she was pregnant - she had found a dead baby floating in the water outside her house.
As she opened the door she felt an overwhelming sense of terror, as if a murderer was stepping into her home. The skin on the back of her neck prickled.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘The body is on the beach. This way.’
3
He sat in his car, watching for signs of life. Or what passed for life these days. Los Angeles seemed to attract scum like a decomposing corpse bred maggots.
City of angels? City of sinners, more like.