Good To The Last Kiss: Crimes of the Depraved Mind Series

by Ronald Tierney

  Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

  Great cop motto for a department filled with the over-forty crowd.

  The phone book may have been the hard way, but there was no Darvy McWilliams. McClellan was down to the sixth McWilliams.

  ‘Looking for Darvy,’ he said to the woman who answered. There was a long silence. ‘Darvy McWilliams,’ McClellan said, trying to get a response.

  ‘I heard you. Who are you?’

  ‘A friend of a friend.’

  ‘Mr Whoever You Are, you ain’t never gonna talk to Darvy, you hear what I’m sayin’? The boy is dead.’

  ‘Darvy A. McWilliams, I got here,’ McClellan said, though he was pretty sure there weren’t that many Darvys in the world.

  ‘Mmmn,’ she said. It was the sound of disgust.

  ‘This is the police, ma’am.’

  ‘Then you oughta know. He was dead in his cell. You hear what I’m sayin’?’

  ‘I hear,’ he said softly. ‘I hear.’

  He put the phone back again, gently. He believed the voice, but he’d check it out anyway. Death was a damn good alibi.

  He wasn’t having much luck with the rest of the list either. No answers. Disconnected. He’d already come to Samuel Baskins. This was another of Paul Chang’s suggestions. McClellan had to admit that it had been stubbornness that kept him from questioning this guy earlier – though the likelihood of some guy living in the Tenderloin going all the way up to Russian River – a guy who was too injured to work or pretending to be – seemed pretty far fetched. If the guy was bilking his company, wouldn’t it be better just to play along? His phone line was busy, which indicated he just might be home.

  McClellan ran into Gratelli on first floor between the metal detectors and the elevators.

  ‘How’d it go?’

  ‘Wanted to fix me breakfast,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘Ooh la la,’ McClellan said. ‘What else?’

  ‘He’s looking for a wife.’

  ‘Sounds like he’s lookin’ for a husband.’

  ‘He’s pretty relaxed. Pretty casual. Doesn’t sound like a guy with a tortured libido. Where are you going?’

  ‘Samuel Baskins.’

  Gratelli smiled.

  ‘Do us a favor,’ McClellan said, handing Gratelli a crumpled scrap of paper. ‘Here, why don’t you take our little woman tycoon? I’d probably just piss her off. She’s got some sort of snooty PR agency down on Jackson Square. She’s only gonna be there until six. We better get her now. She’s one fucking busy broad.’ McClellan turned to go, changed his mind, turned back to Gratelli who was trying to figure out the handwriting on McClellan’s note.

  ‘We’re down to the dregs, Gratelli,’ McClellan said. ‘If these don’t lead somewhere, I don’t know where in the hell to go next.’

  Sammie Cassidy met Gratelli in the waiting room and guided him through a maze of workstations to what appeared to be a media room. A huge wall of electronic gear – monitors, CD players, videotape machines, reel to reel tape recorders. He sat on the leather sofa and Sammie sat opposite him on some extremely modern chair, her black suit-coat and slacks blending with the leather on the chair. She looked more tough than snooty – a bit harsh, maybe even hard, in her cropped black hair. But her smile seemed genuine.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ she asked.

  ‘Tell me what you know about her, about her friends, her life,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  ‘You’re friends?’

  ‘Yes. Mostly work-out buddies,’ Sammie said. ‘We met at the gym, hit it off, so we decided to schedule our time at the gym together when we could. After that we’d go somewhere, sometimes. You know, coffee, a juice bar, sometimes for a drink or something to eat.’

  ‘No other times. Like maybe double dates?’

  Sammie’s face burst into laughter. ‘Double date.’ She laughed some more.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m out of touch with this sort of thing. You might even be married for all I know.’

  She seemed to sober immediately. ‘No, I’m not married, Inspector. But we didn’t double date or really even see each other socially.’ She looked at him, as if weighing her words carefully, then obviously decided not to say more than, ‘No, just workout buddies.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just didn’t. I mean. One has friends… for different things. This was just the way we knew each other. She was busy. I am very busy.’ Her look suggested that was more than just an answer to Gratelli’s question. It was a hint for him to hurry up and move on.

  ‘You guys work out a lot together?’

  ‘I go every day. She went three times a week.’

  ‘You must be very fit,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘I try to be.’

  She was getting very agitated. Gratelli changed his tack. ‘You ever notice anyone hanging around the gym or maybe outside? Anyone you might think is suspicious especially now that you know what happened?’

  She softened again. ‘I’ve thought about that,’ she said. ‘I can’t bring anybody to mind.’

  ‘She ever talk about anyone or anything that was troubling her.’

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘How about going back a bit?’

  ‘No. There was some guy in a laundromat she had to testify against. She was a little worried. The guy she used to work for was trouble, I understand.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Hitting on her. Pressuring her. Sexual harassment. But that was a long time ago, now.’

  ‘What about David Seidman?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Your impression of him.’

  ‘I don’t have one. She said he was a nice guy. I don’t think she was in love with him. Inspector, listen. I’d love to be able to help. We weren’t confidantes. We didn’t double date and we didn’t talk about our sex lives. We worked out, talked about diet, sometimes about our careers, women trying to make it. We weren’t giggling schoolgirls talking about crushes. Fortunately, our conversations weren’t that trivial.’

  A young man was outside the glass doors of the office trying to get Sammie Cassidy’s attention. She waved him off. ‘I have to go,’ she said to Gratelli. She stood.

  ‘One more thing?’ Gratelli asked, rising to face her.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Where were you on that night.’

  ‘What? The night she…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she shook her head. ‘What on earth…?’

  ‘I’m asking everyone.’

  ‘I worked here until ten.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I had a late bite at Beetlenut’s. Went home.’

  ‘Alone?’

  She was silent for a moment, brown eyes glaring. ‘Yes. Alone.’

  ‘That’s me. Now, how about you?’ the man behind the door asked.

  McClellan was out of breath. He’d climbed three floors of the tenement-styled apartment house to be confronted by a terrier of a man who wore some sort of back and neck brace.

  ‘McClellan, Mr Baskins. I’m with the police.’

  ‘What’s your business, officer?’ Baskins was as prissy as he was curt.

  ‘Seems like I’ve got a Mother Theresa complex today and I’m visiting the sick, crippled and the dying.’

  Baskins looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged. ‘I give, officer. This is what I need, another surreal day. One that makes no sense at all. There has been a succession of these, lately. And you are quite effective.’

  ‘What?’ McClellan asked.

  ‘Never mind. Just tell me why are you here. I don’t have an automobile. I don’t play my music loud. I don’t have any pets. I’m in bed by nine. What could I have possibly done?’

  ‘Do you know a guy named Ezra Blackburn?’ McClellan asked, head shaking ‘no’ in disbelief at one more nut case.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  �
�You two guys would really hit it off.’

  Baskins sighed deeply, folded his arms and stared at McClellan as if daring him to continue in this absurd conversation.

  ‘How about a Julia Bateman? You know a Julia Bateman?’

  ‘No. Am I supposed to know these people?’

  ‘Bateman was a gal who parked out front here waiting to get a good look at you, thinking maybe she might catch you jumping rope, bench pressing five hundred pounds or carrying a refrigerator back from K-Mart.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.’

  ‘Well I think that’s probably the case, Mr Baskins. Been nice talkin’ with you.’

  Out on the streets, McClellan saw a guy he used to arrest regularly when he was in burglary.

  ‘Hey, Barnaby. How they hangin’?’

  ‘Low as they go, Governor.’ Barnaby looked up. ‘Oh, sorry didn’t recognize you. You been eatin’ well.’

  ‘How about you? You rich yet?’

  ‘You know me, man. Rich one day, homeless the next.’

  ‘You gotta home now?’

  ‘Just got out. Lookin’ for one. You got something for me?’

  ‘Nah. Take care Barnaby. Get a job.’

  On the way back to his car, McClellan passed a few massage parlors. Vietnamese, most of them now. He pushed the button by the door. He heard the buzz. He walked to a small wooden counter surrounded by struggling tropical plants. ‘Cho Cho here?’

  The woman nodded.

  In the little room, McClellan tried to forget about everything. Just a few minutes of escape, he prayed. A moment or two when nothing mattered. Rest. He felt the healing hands. He hoped he wouldn’t feel guilty afterward. Be quiet, he told himself. Retreat.

  FOURTEEN

  F rom the air, Iowa’s farmland looked like a quilt on an unmade bed. The pattern was not composed of the neat, flat squares and rectangles of Kansas, Illinois or Indiana farms. The land in Iowa rolls. Circular and oval patches are not uncommon – showing a tendency toward independence if not creativity, showing a willingness to work with nature not impose itself upon it.

  The ride from the airport in Cedar Rapids to a farmhouse just outside Julia’s hometown of Iowa City was full of slow rises and gentle falls. The blacktop curved sometimes over and sometimes around the smooth swells of earth.

  It was mostly quiet with Royal Bateman behind the wheel, alert for the slow-moving, horse-drawn Amish carriages. Julia huddled inside a blanket, alone in the back seat. She took reluctant comfort from the land just now beginning to show rows of green sprouts in the rich dirt. The only sounds were the wind whistling in the window gap her father always maintained to keep the air fresh, the steady drone of the engine and the occasional rattle of her wheelchair.

  She had ridden in the back seat of a Ford, several of them over the years, looking at the back of the same head many times, so many times. This Ford was fairly new, but blue and large like the others. The familiar head was covered with silver not black hair and there were deep, rut-like wrinkles cross-hatched on the back of his neck.

  ‘Harriet’s a nurse,’ Royal said finally.

  ‘I know, Dad,’ Julia said, catching herself before saying ‘Daddy.’

  ‘Stay there a few weeks, you’ll be ready to come home with me. I can’t take care of you as well as she can. I have to work. This is the busy time.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course you know. I’m just worried you’ll think I’m deserting you or something. Harriet can be a pain sometimes.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I like her. I like her place if I remember it right.’ Already her language seemed to simplify itself. Simple sentences conveying simple messages.

  ‘She’s happy to have you. She’s looking forward to your coming, you know,’ Royal continued.

  ‘Me too.’ It was still a little painful to talk. To take a breath.

  ‘She’ll never say it, of course.’

  It seemed odd to Julia that her father, so anxious in San Francisco and even on the plane to Des Moines, now seemed so relaxed, so in charge.

  There’s a smell about old houses, especially farmhouses, that suggests a memory of all the freezes and thaws, of all the wet and dry spells. Harriet’s home, perched on a hill that sloped down to a white gravel road, had that scent about it. Julia took a deep breath, drank it in. She could feel herself relax.

  Funny, how sometimes smells were more powerful than sight to illuminate memories lying in wait all these years in darkness. She always knew when her father had his hair cut. There was a lotion he used, and a powder – the unpronounceable, the very foreign and in her youth, the very exotic Pinaud. The scent lingered at least for the day.

  Her mother’s kitchen had a distinctive scent – apricots in the morning, especially before the afternoon when harsher, meatier smells took over. Her mother would boil dried apricots to spread on her toast. Lilac recalled her grandmother. These scents came back to her vividly.

  Harriet’s farmhouse smelled of cold and emptiness. Disuse. It was a house that had less and less about it as time went on. In fact, land no longer connected Harriet’s house with its farm history. The adjacent space had been parceled off to the Amish families as Harriet needed the money. Her late husband’s medical bills pretty much wiped out the savings. It didn’t make much difference, though. Harriet had no special need to spend. With the exception of food, there wasn’t anything in the house that wasn’t at least thirty years old.

  For Julia, it was painful to see the farm dwindle.

  The Amish had been farming it for years. Harriet’s deed now showed little more than forty feet behind the house and the long slope that ran down to the road in front. But she had a view worth a fortune. She knew it. The picture from her living room window was rolling Iowa land at its most beautiful. Above it, there was a lot of sky.

  In cities like San Francisco, it is easier to forget about the sky.

  Harriet too seemed to be dwindling. She had always been smaller than her brother Royal, but she seemed to be losing her physical presence more quickly. Their coloring, too, was different. But their common origins could not be questioned. Squareness of face and the deep-set wrinkles tied them together immediately. It was clear they came from the same stock. That’s how Royal would have phrased it.

  She spoke even less than her brother. Those who did not know her well thought her a sour, bitter woman. Those who knew her knew better. While she was, as the Batemans and many Iowans were, conservative with most of their resources, especially money – and had no tolerance of waste – they were generous with their time and energy. Knowing just how untelling Harriet’s face could be meant the slightest variance would reveal a lot.

  It appeared to Julia that Harriet was thrilled with the idea that she nurture Julia back to health. And, like Royal, Harriet would see that this time Julia would remain on Iowa soil.

  Harriet had cleared out the first floor parlor for the bedroom so that Julia wouldn’t have to maneuver the steps.

  ‘I aired it out for two days,’ Harriet said, ‘so it shouldn’t be too stuffy in there.’

  ‘Thank you Aunt Harriet.’

  ‘Too early for much out of the garden,’ Harriet said busying herself with unnecessary pillow fluffing. ‘But we’ll get your strength back.’

  The tomatoes that came from the Ball Jar were sweet. The creamed corn was heaven. The secret was a dash of sugar, though Julia wasn’t supposed to know. She wouldn’t be able to chew the steak she saw sizzling on the broiler. Having guessed as much, Julia was served ground beef. Julia hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d sworn off red meat altogether and had given serious thought to becoming a vegetarian.

  Royal and his sister ate quietly. Julia remembered it was all right not to speak. Such silences were taken as rude among most of her city friends; but here long, quiet periods were signs of comfort. Perhaps some of the quiet came about because neither Royal nor his sister would want to remind her of the ordeal. They were being respectful.
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  But in Iowa words like ‘plain’ and ‘quiet’ and ‘simple’ were qualities, virtues even. That Grant Wood came from Iowa was not lost on Julia. It amused her and comforted her. She had to hide her smile because of the question it would pose and from the pain it would cause her to stretch her mouth muscles any further than it took to slip in a bite of skinless stewed tomatoes.

  Royal left at sundown.

  It was warm enough to leave the windows open and Julia luxuriated in the soft cool breeze that passed through the screens. In the morning, she looked out of the window. She could see the laundry hanging out to dry to the side of the farmhouse across the road. Not much in the way of color. Black and white, mostly, waving in the breeze like cartoon ghosts. A large chestnut-colored horse stood ready in front of a black carriage, unattended. The sky was blue. The sun was out. White puffs of clouds moved so slowly they seemed to have been hung there, so much laundry on the clotheslines. The picture could have been from an illustrated children’s book, showing America in the 1800s.

  She slipped on the blue terry cloth robe that hung on the hook behind the door, and rolled out toward the sounds in the kitchen and the smell of oatmeal.

  ‘You used to like it with raisins,’ Harriet said.

  ‘I still do.’

  ‘Good, because that’s the way I made it.’

  The brown sugar was on the table and so was a pitcher of cream. Real cream, no doubt. Harriet had never succumbed to margarine or two percent milk or sweetener – at least not by the time Julia packed up and headed West. Apparently, Harriet remained among the unconverted.

  The bread was homemade. There was just one place setting on the oak table in the kitchen. A bowl of oatmeal, pitcher of milk and a clump of pale butter on the bread plate. There was a tall glass of orange juice beside it.

  ‘I had mine a few hours ago,’ Harriet said.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Approaching six,’ she said. ‘I thought it might be good if you slept in after the trip.’

  ‘Thank you for letting me sleep.’ Julia was happy the light sarcasm would go unnoticed. It was still hours earlier in California. She’d adjust.