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

by Ronald Tierney

  ‘Did you find anything other than blood?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Unreasonably so. Your blood, your hair…’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Enough of that. Did you have a sense of size, height or weight?’

  ‘What I said. I remember. Average. It was. Average.’

  ‘Fat, muscle? What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Solid, I suppose.’

  ‘The butter,’ Gratelli said, his face showing a switch in his thoughts. ‘Could it have been on his breath?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps. Maybe. I don’t know.’

  ‘Cologne?’

  ‘Yes,’ she shrugged, then smiled. ‘Perhaps, maybe. Then again, it could have been my body reacting to the shock. With the medicine I took, sometimes food tasted metallic. Maybe I was smelling myself.’

  The phone rang.

  ‘Bateman Investigations,’ she said, beginning the one-sided conversation Gratelli easily overheard. ‘Oh hi.’ (Pause) Thanks, but I’m afraid I can’t. (Pause) I’m going out of town. (Pause) I know I just got into town. It’s not Iowa City. Going to check on the cabin. (Pause) I know. I know. (Pause) I appreciate that. Thank you.’ She put the phone back down on the desk. She looked at Gratelli whose interest was now obvious. ‘I know. But I need to do this.’

  The phone call over, she took their cups to the little kitchenette and refilled.

  ‘Are you done with the cabin?’ she asked Gratelli when she returned.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gratelli was also curious about the phone call. Who was she telling about a trip to the cabin? Whoever it was must have been angry because the caller had not given Julia a chance to say ‘goodbye,’ or Julia was angry because she didn’t say ‘goodbye.’

  ‘Can it be disturbed? Evidence or something?’ she asked. ‘Paul said he went up there after – I guess it’s been awhile – and it was still roped off, taped off, I think he said.’

  ‘Should be OK now.’ Gratelli looked puzzled. ‘Are you going up there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded but seemed to be thinking of something else. Then she focused again on Gratelli’s presence. ‘Just some things to wrap up. Papers, cleaning. Get it ready to sell. Despite what you may think, I don’t want to live there.’

  ‘You could have someone else do it.’

  ‘I don’t want it haunting me.’

  ‘I could go up with you,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘No, that’s all right.’ She knew she was being stubborn. But it wouldn’t help if she couldn’t face life on her own terms, without her father, without Paul even and certainly without the police.

  ‘We could talk on the way,’ Gratelli said.

  The two of them talked for another forty-five minutes. Gratelli picked up nothing else that was helpful, not even permission to go up to the River with her.

  Earl’s day at the dock wasn’t going well. He’d gotten in late and suffered a barrage of remarks from his supervisor. When he buried himself in his work, his fellow dockhands thought he was trying to show them up.

  ‘You’re moving too fast Falwell,’ said a pot-bellied redhead.

  Earl said nothing, but slowed down some. He was trying to get some thoughts out of his head. For a while, after getting out, Earl was able to work hard, come home tired and forget. Forget the girls, forget the guy on the telephone and the fucking woman who could I.D. him and his Camaro, forget Cobra, forget that kid he killed on the back steps of the apartment building. But last night stirred things up again. Not just the phone call. There was the Chinese guy spying on him and Earl spying on the Chinese guy. The possibilities. What would have happened? What did Earl want to happen?

  The pattern Earl had before getting locked up and screwed over was part of then, not of now. What was now? He didn’t fucking know.

  ‘What’s it gonna take to slow you down, fuck up?’ asked the redhead, his face in Earl’s.

  A couple of others came toward the two of them.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ Falwell said. ‘I just want to do my work and when it’s time to go home, go home. So leave me alone.’

  ‘You keep working at that pace, you might have an accident,’ the redhead said.

  ‘You are an accident, you fat ass. Beat it.’

  This wasn’t the first time they’d been rude to him. But it was the first time he’d been rude to one of them.

  The redhead was in his face. Earl couldn’t understand what the guy was saying after the first few obscenities. What the redhead was doing was sweating and spitting. His mouth became an ugly gaping hole and his tongue just a wiggling piece of red flesh. The guy’s breath smelled like garbage. It was like the gaping garbage mouth was going to eat him.

  Earl punched him. Seemed like he punched him before he even thought about punching him. The guy’s face spurted blood. The face didn’t go away and Earl punched it again. He didn’t know how many times he punched the face. Suddenly he was being pulled backward by tentacles curling around his body, tightly around his arms and his neck and his waist, tugging at him, pulling him away.

  It didn’t matter what the weather was in San Francisco. More than likely, a few miles north or south, the sun would be shining and all those who believed California was the land of golden light generally had their preconceptions reinforced.

  The light came in with some force, through the blues, yellows and reds of the stained glass window. It was a small church. McClellan’s body was not there. His family was. Beth and her two college-aged kids, a blond boy and a blonde girl – the ones whose photos were in McClellan’s wallet that night – sat in the front pew.

  There were others in attendance. Aside from the dozen members of Homicide and the lieutenant, there were maybe a dozen more. Gratelli guessed them to be family.

  It was Gratelli’s time to speak. He hadn’t wanted to, but Beth had indicated if he didn’t, no one would. And it was important, she said, that someone say something.

  ‘Despite the raunchy, hateful words he had for the general population and every single adult member in it, he held out hope for the young, the very young. He was able to see the last glimmer of innocence in the eyes of children. That was enough to keep him going. He thought perhaps this one or that one would make it. Maybe this one or that one wouldn’t be corrupted by greed or stupidity or fear. For all his pessimism, he still held out hope that the world would be what it was supposed to be. He ran out of hope.

  ‘Mickey McClellan is dead. He wasn’t as tough as you thought he was, as he tried to be. The world didn’t turn out right and he lost all hope that it ever would.

  ‘I wish I could tell you otherwise.’

  Gratelli sat down. The minister stood, went to the front of the congregation.

  Gratelli heard only the first few words before he tuned out. ‘We must all have hope, Inspector…’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  T he building wasn’t remarkable. Big, brick and slightly down from the peak of Nob Hill. It had been a men’s club. Still was for the most part, though now you could see women scattered about at the tables. If you looked more closely, the older men still sat together, accepting the inevitable women members but not in the depths of their old-family, old-moneyed hearts.

  The interior was quality but had never been trendy. Because both Thaddeus Maldeaux and David Seidman were far from first generation members, they seemed oblivious to the power around them and uninterested in the menu open before them.

  ‘We didn’t do anything, David.’

  ‘She fell for you,’ Seidman said.

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘You have that way about you, Teddy.’

  ‘What way.’

  ‘Getting what you want.’

  ‘I don’t want Julia.’

  A young black man in a white jacket filled their water glasses.

  ‘I’m a smart guy,’ Seidman said. ‘Reasonably bright, I mean.’

  ‘More than reasonably. Look at you. Look at your record in court. Look at your political standing. You’re going to be mayor, I’m sure. Then may
be governor or senator. If we can get you out of those little tanning booths, the sky’s the limit. Maybe president.’

  Seidman wasn’t smiling.

  ‘If you’re going to get cancer, you might as well get it right on the beach. As you know San Franciscans aren’t too keen on guys with tans.’

  There was another long, dark, brooding silence.

  ‘I’m not seeing her, David,’ Maldeaux said sternly. ‘Get that through your little obsessed brain.’

  ‘I know. I’m over it. Day by day it’s easier. I’m not even angry with you. But you pointed out to me… oh nothing. It’s so strange, you and me. It’s like you skip through life. Wherever you go, the rain falls on the other side of the street. Somehow, somehow I’m always struggling to keep up.’

  Both went silent as the waiter came, took their order.

  ‘Police have any leads on this strangler?’ Maldeaux said after the gentleman left and in a tone that indicated he wanted to change the subject.

  ‘He’s not a strangler,’ Seidman said. ‘He breaks their necks.’

  ‘The paper says…’

  ‘Homicide doesn’t want to correct the general impression. We’ve gotten a dozen confessions. Only the killer knows how it was really done.’

  ‘Oh. No leads, though?’

  David sighed. He seemed uninterested. ‘No more deaths.’

  ‘You were saying something about a Jerry Falwell?’

  ‘No, no. Not Jerry. Earl, I think.’ Seidman shook his head, trying to dispel something from his brain. ‘Doubt it. Boy just came through again. Just like last time, he got in a fight, pounded some guy’s face until it looked like raw meat. Homicide still gets an alert – as do we – when he comes through the system.’

  ‘Nothing to tie him with…’

  ‘Probably no connection. Listen, I’m sorry for all that whining.’

  ‘I’m a friend, right? That’s what it’s about.’

  ‘Of course. When I get hold of something, it’s hard to let go.’

  ‘I know,’ Maldeaux said. ‘You don’t like to lose. That’s why you do, my all too serious friend.’

  The salad came.

  ‘We’ll talk about something a little lighter, what do you say?’ Seidman said.

  ‘The fellow across the way won’t be bothering you,’ Paul Chang told Julia Bateman.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ There was a stack of old invoices, checks and checking account statements in front of her.

  ‘I talked to him,’ Paul said, thumbing through an old copy of Newsweek magazine.

  ‘You did? Why? I mean, what a strange thing to do.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘He’s terrified you’ll report him. He’s had a brush or two with the police.’

  ‘Then he should stop, shouldn’t he?’

  ‘He knows it. He’s tried to stop. He’s seen five therapists.’ Paul flicked through a few pages, saw the story on the killings. He checked the date. The magazine was three months old. ‘He can’t help it. Actually, he didn’t know you were home.’

  ‘He keeps track of that?’ Julia asked sharply.

  ‘Said he’s careful not to stand by the window when someone can see him.’

  ‘I thought that was the point.’

  ‘Not for you to see him. He knew you’d been gone. Didn’t know you were back.’

  ‘Why does he do it in the window then? He wants someone to see him?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently Mrs Clark in the apartment right below you not only likes our friend to do it, she does it for our friend. Mutual.’

  Julia couldn’t help but laugh. ‘God, why don’t they just do it together?’

  ‘Spoil everything. Take all the fun out of it. It’s just how life works sometimes. I sort of understand it.’

  ‘You would,’ she said. ‘You find that all pretty interesting, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. The world is willing to talk about everything in their lives. Really, think about it. Go into detail. But not sex. That’s why the twists and perversions. It’s the taboo that forces people to hide their little private fetishes, where they have a chance to fester. No one wants to talk about it.’

  ‘I’m putting the cabin on the market.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I figure it’ll take a few days to get it ready, get it listed. All that stuff.’

  ‘You can have somebody do that, you know?’

  ‘Not all of it. I have stuff there.’

  ‘We’ll go up some afternoon,’ Paul said.

  ‘I’m going up this weekend.’

  ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘No. Stay here. What have we got that’s active? Anything?’

  ‘We can still bill for Baskins. I completed the stake out – with a little help from some friends. Apparently his injuries are for real. We’ve got an appointment with Mr Harvey on another injury case. And three autos we’re to locate. I’ve been working on them. Listen, let me come up with you. It’s exciting up at the River this time of year.’ He grinned. ‘And I’m a free man.’

  ‘Free or not. I want to go up. I want to face it. I need to.’

  ‘You can stay at a hotel or a bed and breakfast up there.’

  ‘No, I need to stay there,’ Julia said.

  ‘One moment you’re Zazu Pitts and the next you’re Sylvester Stallone. What happens if Sylvester becomes Zazu in the middle of the night and you’re up there all by your lonesome?’

  ‘I don’t know much about these things,’ Gratelli told the clerk at the men’s fragrance counter at Macy’s.

  ‘What’s there to know?’ said a blond youth cheerfully. ‘Find one you like.’

  ‘You have Old Spice?’ Gratelli asked the clerk, whose answer was a ‘you know better than that’ glance. ‘I didn’t think so. Listen, I’m trying to find a cologne or after shave that smells like butter.’

  ‘Butter?’ the clerk asked.

  ‘Yeah, butter.’

  The clerk looked as if he’d been offered a dish of onion ice cream.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Subtle kind of thing,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘The butter, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is it that you want something that smells like butter?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m trying to get a date with Mrs Butterworth.’

  ‘OK,’ the clerk said. ‘You’ve smelled it yourself, this scent?’

  ‘No. Someone described a smell, a scent whatever you call it. And it was something like butter.’

  ‘And it’s a cologne.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘Could be suntan oil, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe. How much you know about this stuff?’ Gratelli said, waving his arm over the dozens of bottles on the counter top.

  ‘I know the brands, but I’m not a perfumer.’

  ‘Oh? I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘You’re pretty serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me make a call for you.’

  Gratelli hadn’t spent much time thinking about Earl Falwell. Neither had the nearly defunct task force. But the system was still in place. They had been notified of Earl’s assault arrest and had forwarded a copy in an envelope to ‘Inspectors McClellan and Gratelli.’

  Gratelli, noting how much impact McClellan’s death had upon others, wasn’t all that interested in Falwell; but he thought that maybe it was worth checking some things. Search the apartment again, for example. Maybe because of the suddenness of his arrest and the length of time since he had been a suspect – not to mention the halt in the killings – the apartment might reveal something it hadn’t earlier. Gratelli had no problem getting a new warrant to search Earl Falwell’s apartment. And he coaxed Barnaby Richardson from Narcotics to help him search. Richardson could find a flea in the desert.

  Very little, if anything, had changed in Earl Falwell’s apartment in the back of a Victorian home on Stanyan. Gratelli stood
there for a moment, having his Xerox copy of the view he had earlier. The other cop was already into the search.

  Physically Barnaby Richardson was an unlikely officer of the law. The small physique, elfin face and mental agility, however, made him an excellent undercover agent and his ability to ferret out hiding places had no match.

  ‘A cave dweller, hmm?’ Richardson said, shortly after entering the dark interior. The narcotics cop went immediately to the shelf holding the CDs. ‘A trophy hunt, is it?’ he asked, referring to the usual practice of a serial killer which was to keep something that belonged to the victim.

  ‘Whatever,’ Gratelli said. ‘It’s been a long time since the last kill – that we know of. We found no trophies the first time we searched. Maybe you’ll have more luck.’

  Richardson didn’t seem to be too interested in which CDs Earl collected. Richardson was more interested in what was inside. Wearing latex gloves, he went through each one, putting each one back, very carefully. When he was done he made sure they were all neatly aligned.

  ‘You notice anything, Gratelli?’

  ‘The place is dark. Not much here to reveal what kind of person he is – other than he’s nocturnal.’

  ‘He’s neat,’ Richardson said. ‘Very neat. Here’s a kid you say isn’t too bright, leaves no clues at the scene.’

  ‘Maybe it’s neatness, not brightness.’

  ‘Sure. Also means he’s careful.’

  Gratelli covered the more traditional hiding places, checking out walls and floors in the closet, up and underneath the drawers in the bureau, heating ducts, under the carpet. He checked the bathroom tiles. Using Richardson as a model, Gratelli was careful to put each item back where it had been found.

  ‘Well, what have we here?’ Richardson said from the kitchen.

  He emerged with photographs.

  Gratelli’s countenance brightened. ‘Photos?’

  Richardson’s face held less promise. ‘Interesting, but not what you’d hope. Even so…’

  Gratelli looked. Polaroids, not of the victims, but of Earl Falwell himself. Oiled and naked. ‘Not a hair on his body,’ Gratelli said, flipping through the photos showing Earl in various poses.