Double Homicide

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Maybe he missed her a little.

  Maybe he was too damned tired to know how he felt.

  The night they met, Mona got picked up by some loser, and Valerie was stuck sitting there by herself. Now, out from Mona’s shadow, she seemed more visible and Steve noticed her. Dark hair cut in a page, pale oval face, maybe ten extra pounds, but the distribution was pretty good. Big eyes, even from a distance. She looked forlorn and he felt sorry for her, sent her a complimentary cosmopolitan. She glanced over at the bar, raised her eyebrows, and came over.

  Definitely good distribution.

  They went home together to her apartment in the East Village, because she had an actual room as opposed to his curtain-partitioned space in the two-roomer on 33rd that he shared with three other guys.

  The whole time, Valerie stayed forlorn, didn’t talk much, but sex switched her on like a light and she made love like a tigress. Afterward, she took a joint out of her purse and smoked it down. Told him she was a sculptor and a painter, a Detroit girl, NYU degree, no gallery representation yet but she’d sold a few pieces at street fairs. He told her what his day job was, and she looked at the ashes left by the doobie and said, “You busting me?”

  He laughed and revealed his own stash. Shared.

  They were married three months later in an impulsive civil ceremony that proved yet another disappointment to Katz’s family. Valerie’s, too, as it turned out. Her dad was an attorney. She’d grown up in a borderline social set, had given her parents nothing but problems.

  At first, their rebelliousness seemed enough to cement the relationship. Soon it wasn’t, and within a year they’d settled into mutual avoidance, polite asides, occasional sex of diminishing ardor. Katz was enjoying police work well enough, but he never talked about work to Valerie because talking seemed wimpy and, besides, cruelty upset her vegan soul. Also, her career was going nowhere fast, and his being content with his own job didn’t seem to help.

  The night things changed, he was working the latter half of a double shift, partnered with a ten-year vet named Sal Petrello. Quiet night. They’d chased a few kids who were obviously planning mischief out of the park, helped a German tourist find his way back to Fifth Avenue, investigated an assault that turned out to be a middle-aged couple bickering loudly. Ten minutes before midnight a call came in: male mental case, running around naked near Central Park West and 81st.

  When they got there, they found nothing. No maniac, naked or otherwise, none of the witnesses who’d called it in, no people at all. Just darkness and foliage in the park, the sounds of traffic from the street.

  “Probably a fake-o,” said Petrello. “Someone screwing around.”

  “Probably,” Katz agreed. But he wasn’t sure. Something was tickling the back of his neck—so insistently that he actually reached back there to make sure no bug was exploring his skin.

  No bug, just an itchy feeling.

  They searched for another five minutes, came up empty, called it in as a fake-o, and started to leave.

  As they made their way back to the car, Petrello said, “Better this way. Who needs lunatics?”

  They’d almost made it when the guy jumped out and planted himself in front of them, blocking the pathway. Big muscular guy, square-faced and heavy-jawed, with a shaved head, pecs like sides of beef. Naked as a jaybird.

  Excited, too. He howled and slashed at the air. Something shiny in his left hand. Petrello was closer to him and drew back, reached for his weapon, but not fast enough. The guy slashed again and Petrello screamed, grabbed his hand.

  “Steve, he cut me!”

  Katz’s gun was out. The naked loony was grinning, moving toward him, stepping into filtered street light, and now Steve could see what was in his hand. Straight razor. Pearl handle. Rust-red with Petrello’s blood.

  Katz kept his eye on the weapon while sneaking a glance at his partner. Sal had one hand pressed tight over the wound. Blood was seeping out. Seeping, not spurting. Good, didn’t look like an arterial cut.

  Sal groaned. “Motherfucker. Shoot him, Steve.”

  The maniac advanced on Katz, waved the razor in tiny concentric arches.

  Katz aimed at his face. “Freezedon’tmove!”

  The loony looked down at his own crotch. Real excited.

  Sal screamed, “Shoot him, Steve! I won’t say nothing. Jesus, I need a Band-Aid. Would you shoot him, for chrissake!”

  The maniac laughed. Eyes still on his erect member.

  Katz said, “Put the razor down. Now.”

  The maniac lowered his arm, as if to comply.

  Laughed in a way that curdled Katz’s blood.

  “Oh, God,” said Sal.

  He and Katz stared, unbelieving, as the crazy man made a quick downward chopping motion and left himself minus an organ.

  The department sent Katz and Petrello to shrinks. Petrello didn’t mind because he was getting paid anyway, planned on taking some serious leave. Katz hated it for all sorts of reasons.

  Valerie knew what had happened because it was in the Post. For once, she seemed to want Steve to talk, so finally he did.

  She said, “Disgusting. I think we should move to New Mexico.”

  At first, he thought she was kidding. When he realized she wasn’t, he said, “How can I do that?”

  “Just do it, Steve. It’s about time you were spontaneous.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She didn’t answer. They were in their apartment on West 18th, Valerie chopping salad, Katz fixing a corned beef sandwich. Cold beef. Valerie was okay with his eating meat, but she couldn’t stand the smell of it cooking.

  Several frosty moments later, she stopped, came over, put her arm around his waist, touched her nose to his. Withdrew, as if the gesture hadn’t worked for either of them.

  “Let’s be honest, Steve. Things haven’t been going so great between us. But I’m going to believe it’s not us. It’s the city sucking out our energy. All the spiritual pollution. What I need at this point in my life, Steve, is serenity, not toxicity. Santa Fe’s serene. It couldn’t be more different than here.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “When I was in high school. My family took a trip. They went shopping at the Gap and Banana Republic, typical. I hit the galleries. There are tons of them there. It’s a small town with great food and clubs and most of all art.”

  “How small?”

  “Sixty thousand.”

  Katz laughed. “That’s a block here.”

  “My point exactly.”

  “When were you thinking of doing this?”

  “Sooner the better.”

  “Val,” he said, “I’m years from a serious pension.”

  “Pensions are for old sick people. You’ve still got a chance to be young.”

  What did that mean?

  “I’ve got to do it, Steve. I’m choking.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long.”

  That night, after she’d gone to bed, he got on the Internet and found the Santa Fe Police Department Web site.

  Dinky little department and the salary scale didn’t match NYPD. Some nice things, though. Lateral transfers possible, a sixty-mile vehicle take-home policy. One opening for a detective. Lately, he’d been thinking about trying for detective, knew he’d have to wait in line at the Two-Four or any of the neighboring precincts.

  Sal Petrello was telling people Katz had frozen, that it had only been luck that the loon had sliced off his own dick and not one of theirs.

  He played with the computer awhile longer, pulled up some color pictures of Santa Fe. Pretty, that was for sure. No sky could be that blue, probably trick photography.

  More like a village than a city.

  Probably boring as hell, but what fascinating things was he doing in the big bad city anyway? He turned off the lights, got into bed, snuggled next to Valerie, put his hand on her butt, and said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

  She grunt
ed, removed his hand.

  Most of what they owned was crap, and what they couldn’t get rid of at a sidewalk sale they left behind. After packing clothing and Valerie’s art supplies, they flew to Albuquerque on a warm spring day, picked up a rental car at the airport, and drove to Santa Fe.

  The sky could be that blue.

  All the space and the quiet threatened to drive Katz nuts. He kept his mouth shut. Last couple of nights he’d been dreaming about the maniac with the razor. In the dreams, not such a happy ending. Maybe he really did need to cleanse his soul.

  They rented a house off St. Francis, not far from the DeVargas Center. Val went to buy art supplies, and Steve dropped in at the police department.

  Teeny little place, plenty of parking out back. Relaxed pace. So quiet.

  The chief was a woman. That might be interesting.

  He picked up an application form, took it home, found Valerie all excited, emptying a bag full of paint tubes and brushes onto the folding table they ate on.

  “I went back to Canyon Road,” she told him. “There’s an art supply store there. You’d think it would be expensive, but it’s like two-thirds of what it cost me back in New York.”

  “Great,” he said.

  “Wait, I’m not finished.” She inspected a tube of cadmium yellow. Smiled, put it down. “While I’m waiting I notice a check taped to the wall behind the register. Old check, the paper’s yellowed. From the fifties. And guess whose it was?”

  “Van Gogh.”

  She glared. “Georgia O’Keeffe. She used to live right there, before she bought the ranch. She bought her stuff right there, the same place I did.”

  Katz thought: As if that would help.

  He said, “That’s awesome.”

  She said, “Are you patronizing me, Steve?”

  “No way,” he insisted. “I think that’s really cool.”

  Bad liar. Both of them knew it.

  It took her three months to leave him. Ninety-four days to be exact, during which Katz got a Police Officer III job and a promise to be considered for the detective position within sixty days if no one with more experience showed up.

  “I’ve got to be honest,” he told Lieutenant Barnes. “I did undercover but no real detective work.”

  “Hey,” said Barnes, “you spent five years in New York. I’m pretty sure you can handle the stuff we get.”

  On day ninety-four, he came home to find Valerie’s stuff gone and a note on the folding table.

  Dear Steve,

  I’m sure this will be no surprise, you’re no happier than me. I met someone and I want a chance to be happy. You should also be happy. Think of me as helping, not hurting you. I’ll pay half of this month’s rent plus utilities.

  V

  The someone she’d met was a guy who drove a taxi during the day and claimed to be a sculptor. That was Santa Fe, Katz had learned quickly. Everyone was creative.

  Val and Taxi lasted a month, but she had no desire to come back to Katz. Instead, she embarked on a series of affairs with similar types, keeping no permanent address, painting her terrible abstractions.

  A small town meant running into her all the time. The guys she was with always started off nervous about meeting Katz. Then, when they could tell he wasn’t going to hit them, they relaxed and got the same sly, contented look on their faces. Katz knew what it meant; he’d experienced Val as a tigress.

  He wasn’t getting laid at all. Which was fine. He had no libido, was into his new job. Wearing a blue uniform that fit better than his NYPD duds, driving around and getting to know the lay of the land, enjoying the company of a series of easygoing partners, solving problems that could be solved.

  Paying rent on a too big place seemed foolish, but inertia stopped him from taking the initiative to move. Then one night he got a call to check out an intruder at the Rolling Stone Marble and Granite Yard. Mostly, those were false alarms, but this time he caught some kid hiding among the slabs. No big deal, just a loser looking for a place to sniff coke. Katz arrested him and handed him over to Narco.

  The owner of the yard, a big, heavy, florid man named Al Kilcannon, showed up as Katz was trundling the kid off. Heard Katz talk and said, “You from the city?”

  “New York.”

  “Is there another city?” Kilcannon was from Astoria, Queens, had worked with some Greeks in the stone business. Ten years ago, he had moved to Santa Fe because his wife wanted peace and quiet.

  “Same deal here,” said Katz, sticking the kid in the back of his cruiser and slamming the door.

  “She like it?”

  “Last time I talked to her she did.”

  “Oh,” said Kilcannon. “One of those—what, an artist?”

  Katz smiled. “Have a good evening, sir.”

  “See you around, Officer Katz.”

  And he did, a week later, the two of them bending elbows at a bar on Water Street. Kilcannon well in his cups, but a good listener.

  When Katz told him he was thinking of moving, Kilcannon said, “Hey, you know, I’ve got a place out back of the yard. Nothing fancy, my kid used to live there back when he was in college and hated my guts. Now he’s living in Boulder and the place is empty. I’d be willing to make a trade: two hundred bucks a month, including utilities, if when you’re there you watch over the place.”

  Katz thought about that. “What about when I’m sleeping?”

  “Then you’re sleeping, Steve. The main thing is someone’ll be there.”

  “I’m still not clear what you expect me to do.”

  “Be there,” said Kilcannon. “A cop being there will be a terrific deterrent. Leave your cop car where it can be seen from the street. I got big-time inventory; for me it’d be cheap insurance.”

  “My partner and I trade off,” said Katz. “I don’t get to take the car home every day.”

  “No sweat, Steve. When it’s there, it’s there. The main thing is you’ll be there and everyone’ll know it. No pressure, but it could work out for both of us. It’s even got cable.”

  Katz finished his drink. Then he said, “Sure, why not?”

  Since he’d lived here, he’d caught a would-be marble thief, a real moron attempting to single-handedly make off with Kilcannon’s last slab of Norwegian Rose. Nothing else, other than stray dogs and one weird situation where a coyote mom had actually made it all the way down from the Sangres and whelped a litter between two pallets of Brazilian Blue.

  A good deal for him and Al, he figured. If you didn’t mind living like this.

  He lay on his bed, not the least bit tired. He’d coast through tomorrow on adrenaline, collapse sometime in the evening.

  But he fell asleep despite himself. Thinking about Valerie. About why her name had been in Larry Olafson’s Palm Pilot.

  6

  Breakfast was a quick affair for the two detectives. Darrel had been the one to get up early and hit the computer. He’d found a recent address for Bart and Emma Skaggs.

  “Over in Embudo. Got a unit number, so they’re in an apartment,” he told Katz. “Far cry from running cattle.”

  “Embudo’s pretty,” said Katz.

  “It’s an apartment, Steve.” Anger flashed in Darrel’s eyes.

  “You don’t like our vic.”

  Darrel stared at him. Pushed away his plate. “Let’s get going. The highway should be nice and clear by now.”

  Embudo was fifty miles north of Santa Fe, right where the highway meets the roiling Rio Grande. Nice little greenbelt town, really more like an oasis in the high desert. Even when the drought was heavy, the river kept the environs lush and moist.

  The Skaggs residence was a room over a garage out back of a roadside shop that sold vintage clothing and chilis and pickled vegetables and yoga tapes. The owner was a spaced-out white-haired woman in her fifties with some kind of middle European accent who said, “They clean for me and I give them a deal on the rent. Nice people. Why are you here?”

  “We like nice people,” said Two
Moons.

  Katz examined a packet of chili spices. Blue ribbon prize at last year’s show.

  “They’re good,” said the white-haired woman. She wore black yoga pants and a red silk blouse and twenty pounds of amber jewelry.

  Katz smiled at her and put the packet down and hurried after Two Moons.

  “Police?” Emma Skaggs opened the door and emitted a sigh. “Come in, I think we can find some room for you.”

  The place was no bigger than Katz’s shack, with the same space heater, hot-plate setup, and a bathroom in the back. But the lower ceilings and tiny windows cut into what looked to be real adobe walls gave it a prison-cell feel. Some attempt had been made to warm it up: worn pillows on an old clumsy Victorian sofa, dog-eared paperbacks in a cheap bookcase, threadbare but nicely dyed Navajo rugs flung across the stone floor, a few pieces of Pueblo pottery on the kitchenette counter.

  A photo over the bricked-up fireplace showed scrawny-looking cows grazing in a yellow meadow.

  A toilet flushed in the rear bathroom, but the door stayed closed.

  Emma Skaggs cleared newspapers off two folding chairs and motioned the two detectives to sit. She was a short, lean, sun-whipped woman who looked her age, with dyed-red hair and wrinkles deep enough to hide gemstones. Blue jeans stretched over hard hips and a knitted wool sweater. It was cold inside. Her chest was flat. Her eyes were gray.

  “You’re here about Olafson,” she said.

  Katz said, “You heard.”

  “I watch TV, Detective. And if you think you’re going to learn anything valuable here, you’re wasting your time.”

  “You had conflict with him,” said Darrel.

  “No,” said Emma Skaggs. “He had conflict with us. We were doing fine until that bastard came along.”

  “No love lost.”

  “Not a flicker. Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks, ma’am.”

  “Well, I’m gonna get some.” Emma made the two-stride journey to the kitchenette and poured herself a cup of black. Dishes were stacked in a drainer, cans and bottles and canisters were ordered neatly, but still the place was cluttered. Too much stuff for too little room.