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

by Ronald Tierney

  Harriet disappeared. It was quiet. Very quiet. Julia remembered that Harriet had no radio, no television. Her only contact with the world was the Sunday edition of the Des Moines Register .

  Oddly, the sweet smell of the butter as she brought toasted bread to her lips was repugnant. Was she so unused to fresh food she would have to learn to like it over again? Maybe it was sour. She smelled it again to see if she could detect it being spoiled. ‘Off’ the farmers might say. A wave of nausea spread through her body.

  Later, Harriet said that Royal would be back for supper. ‘Another good thing about having you here is that I’m more inclined to see your father. He’s in need of regular cooking. If it were left up to him, he’d starve to death.’

  In the afternoon, Julia wrapped a cotton blanket around herself and sat on the porch staring out at the farm across the road and the outbuildings visible to the west. Nothing seemed threatening.

  No sign of street crazies yelling obscenities. No electronic madness. No noise except for the wind in the trees and the occasional slam of the wood-framed screen door. It was not likely that people in the nearby farms and towns had heard very often of AIDS or the humiliation of big city poverty or days when the air was too brown to breathe, let alone jog. Here, only the infrequent sight of an automobile stirring up the dust from the white gravel broke the fairy tale spell.

  None of this dispelled the pain in her body when she moved, but it was a relief from it.

  In Harriet’s hands and on Iowa soil, Julia could feel the healing begin.

  It wasn’t until the third day that she realized the room she slept in was the room Harriet’s husband had died in. She recalled the last months of Everett’s death, of Everett getting thinner and thinner, moving from the rocker to the bed, a handkerchief to his mouth, withering away. Perhaps this was the official room of transition, Julia thought. Her returning, Everett’s passing.

  When the family visited Everett, they would go in briefly. Say hello, be social until Harriet suggested the kids go outside. Julia and her cousins would have to recite some event of the week – what they learned in school or Sunday school.

  Everett would nod. Toward the end, he would merely stare. Julia remembered it was like the light going out inside the old man. Little by little the light dimmed. Then it was gone.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said under her breath. Her grandmother died in this room. And her mother spent time here before she made her last trip to the hospital. A return home was not just a return to a place, but to a history. She hadn’t prepared herself for the memories. Not all of them were pleasant.

  On the night of Julia’s fourth day, the dreams started. Vivid and sensual, they began with an immense sense of all is right with the world. Julia would be in a small boat floating on a quiet lake. Then the sky would darken. Finally she would not be able to see. Something would nibble at her. And inevitably she would either be dismembered or devoured.

  There were variations. In all of them she was alone. She was confident that this pleasant and overwhelming sense of well being was eternal. Then, of course, something or someone – in the darkness – would begin to tear at her body.

  Harriet was the kind of person who did things for people but didn’t like to be done for. Except for the dreams, Julia’s first two weeks back were nearly bliss – a complete vacation. She did nothing for herself to speak of, wasn’t allowed to help. Some days she sat on the back porch, a place used later in the season to shuck corn, snap the green beans and shell peas, preparing the harvest for canning; where onions, turnips and carrots as well as white and sweet potatoes were dusted off and busheled for the cellar.

  By the third week Julia was on her feet assisted by a cane. She moved slowly and haltingly. But she moved.

  Royal came for dinner every evening and complained about gaining weight from Harriet’s cooking.

  ‘A man’s not supposed to be a bag of bones,’ Harriet said.

  ‘It’ll cost me a fortune to have my buttons moved,’ he said, enjoying the audience for their small and loving squabbles.

  When asked if she had any calls, Royal told Julia that a fellow named Paul had called several times and so had a ‘David,’ and that both had been told Julia would call them when she was well enough.

  ‘I’m well enough, Dad,’ Julia said.

  ‘It’s too soon to even be thinking about that place,’ Royal said. He said it with the tone that implied this was the final word on the subject. He went about eating quietly.

  Julia watched how the temples above the ear pulsed as he ate.

  Dinner was generally quiet, unlike it had been when her mother had been alive. Harriet, much more than her brother, lived by the motto the Batemans passed along to their children, ‘think your share and say nothing.’

  By dinner’s end, Royal announced that in another week Julia would be ready to move into town.

  The week that followed Julia readied herself mentally to return to the big, square white brick home on Church Street in Iowa City – the home she lived in from age eight to the day she was married. No doubt to her old room. Two years ago, when her mother died and her father tried to convince her to move back home, the idea of living in that house was the furthest thing from her mind.

  Today, it wasn’t. It didn’t seem exactly right that a thirty-six-year-old woman would move back in with her father, but considering the alternative, it didn’t seem all that wrong either.

  Rain fell on the Sunday Royal moved her to Iowa City. Her room was very nearly the same as it had been while she lived there. A sewing machine had been moved in and had settled in the corner that once held Julia’s record player. The Moody Blues poster had been taken down. The accents had been taken, but the sense of the room was still the same. Julia moved toward the closet. Her clothing had been removed. Hanging on the long transverse pole were items of greater value – a wedding dress and a tuxedo in a coffin of thick clear plastic. There were other pieces of clothing – a fur wrap and a long, dark fur coat.

  It was late in the afternoon when she went back up, telling her father she needed to nap. As painful as it was, she investigated the boxes that were in the deep, slant-ceilinged recess of the closet. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but was obsessed with the search anyway.

  Several of her dolls – none of which she’d ever played with – were in a box within a box. All in perfect condition. Some would fetch some serious dollars from those who collect such things. Stacks of birthday cards. High school yearbooks. Her diary, still locked. Key missing. She picked it with a sewing needle she found in a box by the sewing machine.

  Most of the entries were short and terse, not the romantic ramblings she expected of her teen-aged self. The longest passages were about her desire to emulate Jacques Cousteau. Despite being thousands of miles from any ocean and about as landlocked as you could be, Julia remembered her fascination with deep sea diving and how her father encouraged her to do something more practical. Nursing would be nice, he suggested. Her mother had been asked to agree and she did.

  There was mention of Donnie Patton ever more frequently. His eyes. His voice. The long talks. About the future. About dreams without stunting compromises with reality. Then suddenly Donnie Patton appeared no more. She had put him and the event by the Cedar River back and out of her mind. Nothing else appeared either. The remaining half of the diary was blank.

  That evening, at dinner, Royal let it slip that she had received more calls. From Paul, mostly. But there were a few from David Seidman and one from a fellow with a strange name he couldn’t recall. Royal had told them Julia was not yet ready to talk, to be reminded of what happened.

  ‘I was here. How did I miss the calls?’

  ‘I had them transferred to the store – automatically. The phone company calls it something…’

  ‘Call forwarding.’

  ‘I didn’t want you thinking about it all,’ Royal said, not apologetically, nor even sympathetically. His voice had the hard, cold ring of authority. Ab
solute authority.

  Not since leaving home had Julia ever permitted such control over her life. Now, she was quiet. Inert, really. She wondered why she hadn’t thought much about Paul and David. Especially Paul, who had been such a close and understanding friend. She would call them. Later.

  ‘You best let these things go,’ Royal said as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘You’re here now, where you belong.’

  At first, staying in her old room was comforting. The house, which hadn’t changed, gave her a sense of security even when Royal left for work as he did invariably at six forty-five every morning of the week except Sundays.

  Julia prepared dinner and more than once Royal remarked she was as good a cook as her mother. She was sure he didn’t mean it, but was pleased that she could be helpful. A few times she mentioned she ought to get a job.

  Usually, he wasn’t encouraging. However the last time, over Sunday afternoon dinner at Aunt Harriet’s, it was apparent he had given it some thought.

  ‘In a little while, Julia,’ Royal said. ‘If you like. Maybe you could work for me. Maybe help us modernize the business a bit. Get us a computer or something. You know about those things, I imagine.’

  Julia hadn’t been to the nursery since she got back. But it was another familiar place, another place to reconnect her to the past rather than the future. She could almost smell the Spruce and Hemlock, the flowering crab apple trees, the lilacs.

  ‘I meant something kind of temporary,’ Julia said, ‘while I try to figure out my future. I still have a business there.’ Strange how ‘there’ was a distance now measured in time as well as miles. As the familiarity of home invaded her senses, San Francisco seemed to recede. It wasn’t as real. On one hand she understood that it provided insulation from the horror. On the other, it frightened her. A strange fear. It was as if she were losing who she was.

  Royal’s face went hard. He looked at Harriet. Her solemn face didn’t betray a thought or feeling.

  ‘Paul called last week.’ She could sense her father tensing as she spoke. ‘We’re just talking right now. He’s kept everything up. He’s very good.’

  Harriet got up and put on the coffee.

  ‘You don’t take oak trees or maples and put them in the desert, Julia. And you don’t take palm trees and plant them in Ottumwa.’ She had heard this before. Royal believed that people, like plants, did their best in the geography of their origin. ‘That city is no place for you. I should think that would be quite obvious by now.’

  The remainder of the evening was quiet. Royal didn’t finish his plate and resisted the blackberry pie. Harriet packed the pie, along with some other items from her garden, into the cardboard box Julia put into the backseat of the Ford Victoria.

  ‘Why don’t you come into town for dinner one night this week,’ Julia asked Harriet.

  ‘I’m not much for coming into the city, anymore,’ Harriet said. ‘Iowa City is a little too busy for me. I get into Kalona once a week. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘Cheese,’ Julia remembered. Kolona was small by any standards. The clearest memory Julia had of the Amish town was of the black horse-drawn wagons backed up to the old brick building where they made cheese. She remembered the smell of horses and milk.

  FIFTEEN

  T he neighborhoods around the Bateman’s Church Street home in Iowa City suggest the pleasant perils of the 1950s families – the Cleavers, the Nelsons – missing cookies, lessons about telling small lies and other minor misunderstandings. Nice, modest, well-kept homes, kept but not manicured lawns, splashes of garden color. Quiet. Safe.

  Within walking distance of her home was Hickory Hill Park. There was a cemetery near. Despite having lived there all of her childhood, she could never remember its name. Just as she was about to look up and see the name above the gate and memorize it, the large statue visible ahead always stole her gaze and her thoughts.

  For the most part, it was a relatively normal little cemetery – concrete stones embedded in little mounds of green lawn. Around them were narrow avenues that would curve and, eventually, lead visitors back to the tall iron-gated entrance. Fresh cut flowers and patriotic flags were plentiful despite the fact that it wasn’t the Fourth of July or Memorial Day.

  Julia found the walk through the cemetery both appealing and profoundly sad. Towering over one black-topped avenue was the Black Angel. Her head down. Her dark, weathered bronze wings folded over her like a large, heavy cape.

  The Black Angel frightened her when she was a child. She would have nightmares that heaven was far less desirable than people made it out to be. Now, looking at the face, the posture, the cape-like wings, Julia didn’t feel fear at all.

  The expression on the angel’s face wasn’t what she had remembered. She wasn’t sure if she had ever seen the angel’s face before. The angel’s eyes showed not so much sadness as compassion. The angel’s wings spoke of protection. The face of the angel showed determination.

  Julia sat on the ground beneath it and began to cry. She knew she wasn’t done yet. It wasn’t over.

  The next few days she was drawn back again to the Black Angel, wanted to hide under the shroud-like wings. She looked forward to the walks and to her stay with the angel.

  Less appealing were the errands that took her from the solitude of the house. The pharmacy and the food co-op were more civilization than she cared to encounter. Some people in town still knew her. She could see the concerned look on their faces when they noticed her. Though her face and body were nearly healed and her walk almost normal, many had to have known her story – or part of it. Human nature being what it is, Julia imagined that what part of the story they didn’t know, they invented.

  Those she knew, who insisted upon engagement, she would engage briefly. She would be polite with them; but she would excuse herself quickly with one alibi or another. The horror came when she came face to face with Wayne in the Co-Op. He had rounded the corner by the wine. They had come face to face. There was no way out – for either of them.

  ‘Julia? For heaven’s sake,’ Wayne said. ‘I heard you were here. How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Good. You look fine,’ he said.

  Funny, she thought, how after all these years, she could still detect when he was being insincere. But something had changed.

  ‘How have you been?’ she asked, looking around, hoping to see something or someone to rescue her. She could be insincere too. Insincerity was important in awkward moments like these.

  ‘Fine.’ He nodded. There was a kindness in his face she didn’t remember.

  ‘You staying?’

  ‘I… am visiting… visiting my father.’

  ‘How is he?’ Wayne asked.

  ‘The same. He doesn’t change.’

  ‘No,’ Wayne laughed awkwardly. ‘No I’m sure he hasn’t. Well, I’ve seen him, of course. From a distance. I’ve never gotten up the courage since… since the divorce.’

  Oddly, Wayne, who once dominated her life physically and emotionally, seemed powerless. The look on his face she thought was kindness now seemed more like uneasiness. He seemed as troubled and embarrassed running into her as she was meeting him.

  ‘Yes. I’m kind of in a hurry, Wayne. I’m glad you’re fine. You’re looking great. Happy even.’ She looked around for a passing life raft.

  ‘Thanks to Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘I know, I know. Sounds crazy. I won’t bore you with it. Just wanted to let you know that I’m not that person anymore. I’ve asked for forgiveness from God.’

  ‘That’s good, Wayne.’

  ‘I should have asked you too.’ He looked nervous. ‘For forgiveness, I mean.’

  ‘Long time ago,’ she said. ‘Got to go.’

  ‘Something to think about,’ Wayne said. ‘The Lord, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nearly running back into one of the aisles.

  When she found the mayonnaise, she headed toward checkout. Wayne and a woman about his age and two little blond b
oys were gathering the bags. They seemed happy in the world they created.

  Julia felt like an impostor. She was only pretending to live here. Only pretending she was one of them.

  Iowa City was a wonderful place; but she couldn’t shake the notion that she had come back to ghosts, that she hadn’t come here to live at all, but to die quietly, passively, defeated.

  She knew at that moment, she would return to San Francisco. It was only a matter of telling her father. She had to go back in order not to be defeated by the evil that sent her away. She had to go back because that was her home.

  SIXTEEN

  I t was a routine call for Gratelli and McClellan. There was no reason to believe that it was related to the others. Just a call. A suspicious death. The grandchild of the owners of an old Edwardian in the Haight found the body. Gratelli and McClellan had the luck of the draw. They were back on other cases now that the trail grew cold on the tattoo artist killings and Julia Bateman was back in the Midwest. The task force was still in place, but only nominally. The media had refocused, without the periodic infusion of fresh kills.

  McClellan stood above the remains. Not much there. He stood, staring. Almost transfixed on what was little more than a skeleton. The skin of the face was stretched over the bones like thin, worn leather over wood. But all flesh beneath it was gone. The physical matter of this former being was being slowly absorbed.

  Gratelli knelt down. There were leathery patches of flesh on the rest of the body. Enough to identify it as a female. A nude female. And there were marks, indistinguishable now, where a rose might have been etched.

  ‘She’s one of them,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘Earth comes. Takes you away,’ McClellan said. ‘Not a bad thing.’

  Gratelli looked back at the house. A young boy, maybe two, stood in the doorway, above the steps. Eyes open wide, thumb in his mouth. Face blank. He was the one who found her, Gratelli was pretty sure.