by Saul Black
“What was Lyle Senior doing in the conservatory at two in the morning?” Valerie asked.
“Insomnia,” Lopez said. “Reading. Doesn’t sleep much since he lost his wife. He’ll tell you all about it. Anyway, we were wrapping up when Dispatch called this one in. We were the nearest unit, obviously. My partner forced entry and I came up to find Mr. Grant over there, and his wife, Rachel Grant, with two knife wounds, lying over by the French windows. I applied a compress to what looked to me the more serious injury until the paramedics arrived a few minutes later. Rachel Grant was unconscious by then. They took her straight to the ER.”
“I know you didn’t touch anything,” Will said.
“Aside from checking Mr. Grant’s pulse and taking a towel from the en suite, no, I didn’t touch anything.”
“No one else home?” Valerie asked. “I saw a girl’s room back there.”
“The daughter. Elspeth. All I got from Mrs. Grant was that she’s staying over at a friend’s place.”
“Teenager?”
“You’d figure, from the room.”
“The wife get a look at the guy?” Will asked.
“Unknown. But if it’s the same guy he was wearing a ski mask.”
“The alarm didn’t trip when you forced entry?” Valerie said.
“No, ma’am. From what I can see, they’ve got a top-of-the-line system here. Guess he knew what he was doing. Or it malfunctioned.”
“She say anything else before she lost consciousness?”
“No.”
“No blood-prints on the stairs,” Valerie said. “Either he was extremely careful or he got out another way. Hang on a second.”
She moved around the team and out through the French windows onto the balcony. Black stone-tiled floor with a glass surround. Half a dozen potted plants. As she’d hoped, a brushed-steel drainpipe ran within reach from the gutter above all the way down to the lawn. If he’d bothered with a ski mask then he’d bothered with gloves, but she went over to CSI team leader Rebecca Beitner anyway.
“Check the balcony glass and drainpipe for prints,” she said to Rebecca. “Maybe scuff marks on the wall.”
“Really?” Rebecca said. “Gosh, why didn’t I think of that?” Rebecca looked, as always, sleep-deprived. Frizzy hair and skin so pale you could see the capillary webbing in the orbits of her eyes. I looked completely fucking exhausted even when I was a kid, she’d told Valerie, years ago. Seriously, people used to think my parents had adopted a little Jewish vampire girl. So when I grew up I just chose a job that rationalized the look. It’s like becoming a hopscotch specialist if you’ve only got one leg.
“Apparently he was in next door’s backyard,” Valerie said. “So you’ll need a cordon and sweep there. The alleyway, too.”
“Ex-con with a grudge?” Rebecca said.
“Only if it’s a dumb ex-con with a grudge.”
“Well, they’re not in short supply.”
Valerie returned to Will and Lopez. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to the hospital to talk to the mother. The daughter’s number’s got to be in the cell phone but Rebecca’ll rip your face off if you try’n go near it. Meantime see what these guys turn up here. Call Counseling and have them get in touch with me. I don’t want the kid being picked up in a squad car—” Then to Lopez, “No offense.”
“None taken,” Lopez said. “It’s not a job I’d be volunteering for.”
And this isn’t a job I should even be doing, Valerie thought.
7
Valerie got into her Taurus and took a deep breath. Which was nowhere near as pacifying as a cigarette would have been at that moment. It had been four months. The cravings had diminished but they knew a weak moment when they saw one. It was supposed to be a relief to have quit. In fact it annoyed her. Most of her self-improvements, it turned out, got on her nerves. She took a stick of gum from her purse and folded it into her mouth.
On the one hand, it was straightforward. Four years ago she’d slept with Adam Grant. Ergo, pass the case to a colleague. On the other hand, she’d slept with him literally. Both of them had been drunk, and halfway through the blurred preliminaries he’d had a change of heart. He’d told her he’d never cheated on his wife, and despite him and Valerie having boozily made out and gotten half-naked in her bed, it turned out he couldn’t bring himself to start cheating on his wife right then, either. At the time Valerie had wondered if it was just that he couldn’t get it up. Their foreplay had proceeded through a numb haze, but she was aware that he was much more interested in touching her than he was in her touching him—and she didn’t find him hard when she did touch him. Given the phase she’d been in—a trawl of love-is-dead one-night stands, labored through with detached self-disgust—it hadn’t been a big deal to her.
They’d spent a few strange minutes lying side by side, discussing whether he was going to leave—then both of them had rather absurdly fallen asleep. Valerie had been woken later by the sound of him falling over as he was trying to step into his pants. They’d laughed, and the laughter was the first truly sympathetic moment in the whole encounter. He’d finished dressing, sat on the edge of the bed, and held her hand for a moment, apologized for being a waste of time—then left. Valerie had found herself liking him. But liking him had reminded her of how little she liked herself, and she’d spent the last hour of darkness after he’d gone lying on her bed wondering how much longer she was going to carry on living like this, in empty self-loathing, while the window paled from twilight to dawn and the alcohol in her blood resolved itself into yet another a thudding hangover.
She and Adam Grant had glimpsed each other a couple of times since then, professionally, shared a smile, conceded the moment had passed—and that was all. It had been more than a year since she’d last seen him.
Now he was dead. And she was going to break the news to his widow.
Wonderful. Her history was a swarm of flies, never far away. Always close enough to resettle on her skin. To remind her of what she’d been.
She sat with her hands on the Taurus’s wheel, chewing her gum joylessly. Option one was simple: Call Captain Deerholt, explain through clenched teeth that she had a personal history with the victim (and by shameful extension, victims) get him to turn the case over to another team, and, for the ensuing investigation, stay the fuck out of it.
Option two … Well. Option two was to just keep her mouth shut and carry on. There was absolutely no reason to think that an abortive one-night stand from four years ago would have any bearing on Adam Grant’s murder. The overwhelming likelihood was that the investigation would reach its end without it ever surfacing.
But the trouble with absolutely no reason to think and overwhelming likelihood was that the universe had no respect for such things. The universe was perverse.
There was, of course, Nick to consider. Valerie and her husband had drawn a line under the past (her past, since his was infuriatingly innocent) because to do otherwise would have made their shared present at best drearily haunted and at worst simply untenable. Nick knew what she’d been like in the years between their breaking up and getting back together. He knew, because Valerie had told him, that there had been plenty of guys. He knew that she had been, in the words of her own choosing, “a robotic alcoholic slut.” In theory, Adam Grant having been one of the guys shouldn’t matter.
But in theory and shouldn’t matter were treated by the perverse universe with the same contempt as absolutely no reason to think and overwhelming likelihood. Aside from the professional view Nick would take—namely that personal history disqualified her from the job—his heart wasn’t immune: It was one thing to know there had been plenty of guys. It was another to have one of them brought back to center stage, even as a corpse.
Fuck it, she thought. Do one interview with the wife and see how you feel after that. If you don’t like it you can pass it on. You can always say you didn’t recognize Adam Grant at the scene. Deerholt will believe you because Deerholt (along with every
one else at the Shop) knows the fucking mess you were back in the days of robotic alcoholic sluttery.
More because she was irritated by her uncertainty than because she’d really decided anything, Valerie started the car, reached again for the cigarettes that weren’t there, sighed, then pulled away into the deceptive dawn quietude of Pacific Heights.
8
“Barring infection, yeah, she’ll survive,” Dr. Sheila Tabor told Valerie thirty minutes later in the corridor outside Rachel Grant’s room at California Pacific. “The abdominal wound just missed the liver but punctured the stomach. We repaired that. The shoulder … That’s a little more ambiguous. It’s possible there’ll be lasting nerve damage there. Aside from that, she’s stable.”
“Conscious? I need to talk to her.”
“She’s only just out of recovery, so she’ll still be groggy. Pain meds, too, obviously.”
“So that’s a yes.”
“It’s a yes, with the caveat that she’s not exactly sharp. You planning on telling her her husband’s dead?”
“Someone has to.”
“Do me a favor,” Tabor said. “Hold off as long as you can. Shock isn’t on the list of things she needs right now.”
“I’ll do my best,” Valerie said. The two women exchanged a look: the prosaic ugliness their jobs entailed.
“One other thing,” Valerie said. “I’m going to get an officer here on watch. Your patient’s the eyewitness to a homicide, and for all we know this was a targeted hit rather than a break-in gone wrong. There’s no guarantee he won’t try again. No visitors without my clearance, and the officer’ll need a photo ID checklist of all hospital personnel likely to be entering the room. Who do I talk to to arrange that?”
“Actually I’m not sure. I guess Harold Yang. He’s the chief medical exec, but I doubt he’ll be in this early. Meantime you can talk to Mike Langley. Ask at the desk and they’ll page him when you’re ready. Right now I’m due back in theater.”
Dr. Tabor walked away, orange Day-Glo Crocs squeaking on the gleaming floor.
Valerie entered Rachel Grant’s room and took a seat by the bed, where the woman lay with her eyes closed and her arms outside the covers. Apart from the whisper of medical technology the place was silent.
Rachel Grant was slender but with a look of supple athleticism. A face of elegant prettiness complemented by short dark copper hair niftily chopped to yield a tousled effect. Even bereft of makeup and denuded by trauma an attractive woman. An IV fed into the back of her left hand, the index finger of which was clamped with the standard monitor peg. No jewelry, apart from a wedding band.
Wedding band.
Your husband is dead. But look on the bright side: He loved you enough not to fuck me when he had the chance.
Before opening her mouth Valerie made a final mental check that she really did want to go ahead with this, got the same ambivalence (and irritation) as before—and made the same decision.
“Rachel?” she said.
No response.
Valerie placed her hand over Rachel Grant’s. Gave it a slight shake. “Rachel?” she repeated, a little louder.
The eyes opened. Green, intelligent—but for the moment, uncertain.
“Rachel, can you hear me? I’m Detective Valerie Hart, San Francisco—” She stopped herself just before “Homicide,” adjusted. “San Francisco Police Department. Rachel?”
Rachel turned her head on the pillow. The green eyes found Valerie’s. Focused. Valerie watched her reconstructing her history, her identity—and the bad dream of what had happened.
Then the recognition that it hadn’t been a dream at all.
“My husband,” Rachel said.
I’ll do my best. So much for that. It wasn’t the first time Valerie had had to break the worst news. Every time it was the same: You searched for a way to soften the blow. And in the end there was nothing but the violent fact. The violent fact was the gentlest thing you had to offer.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. Adam was dead by the time the medics arrived. I’m so sorry.”
For several seconds Rachel Grant just stared at her. Valerie had seen this before, too: the recipient of the worst news trying desperately to make the truth a lie, a trick, an illusion, a joke in the most hideous taste. Anything but what it was. Anything but the truth. The only honorable thing the bearer of the worst news could do was not look away. So Valerie didn’t.
Rachel Grant’s face burned through the last of its disbelief, lost its composure, seemed, by degrees, to collapse. Tears welled. The calm mouth wobbled. To Valerie it was as if the features were struggling to find a different logic, one that would accommodate this new deformed reality. Another person’s grief was ugly. And to the detached part of you, the ugliness was fascinating. This was Being Police: You looked at horror and didn’t hate yourself for not being horrified. If you couldn’t do that you couldn’t be Police. It was a necessary condition of the job.
Rachel Grant closed her eyes. Swallowed. Valerie continued holding her hand. It felt hot.
“Elspeth,” Rachel Grant said. “My daughter…”
“If you give me the number I can call her.”
“She’s at…” But Rachel Grant couldn’t, for a moment, continue. With her free hand she covered her face. Her body shook with sobs. “Oh, God. Oh, God…”
“Take your time,” Valerie said.
“My phone…”
“Your phone’s with the CSI team for now. Does Elspeth have a cell phone?” Valerie took out her own phone. “She’s probably still sleeping, right? But if you have the number for where she’s staying … Or the address?”
Valerie observed as Rachel Grant’s motherhood kicked in. It was extraordinary, and, at the species level, simply impressive. The woman’s husband was dead—murdered—but that horror had to be shunted aside to establish that her daughter was safe. The maternal priorities, even in moments of extremis, endured.
“She’s at her friend Julia’s. Let me call her.”
“Absolutely,” Valerie said. “If you give me the address I’m going to have officers and a counselor go over there and collect her.”
Elspeth, not surprisingly, didn’t answer her cell. It was only just eight thirty and she was a teenager. Valerie imagined the girl’s world of playlists and gossip and crushes and tweets, her inability to imagine anything beyond it—and the new beyond it she was about to meet.
Calling Julia’s parents wasn’t straightforward, since the number was in Rachel’s absent phone. Valerie had to get it from Rebecca. Awkward minutes. Elspeth was woken and put on the line. Valerie watched as Rachel forced herself to hold back the tears.
“Honey, listen … Something’s happened. I’m hurt and in the hospital … No, no, I’m fine. I’m going to be absolutely fine. The police are going to come to Julia’s and bring you to see me…” Her jaws tightened at what Valerie knew must be the obvious question. “No, Dad’s … Dad’s not here. Just get dressed and wait for the officers. No, no, don’t worry, sweetheart. Just wait for the officers. They’ll bring you. Everything’s … everything’s going to be okay.”
Rachel hung up the phone and handed it back to Valerie.
“I’ll be just a moment,” Valerie said, getting to her feet. Best not to make the call in Rachel’s presence: Listen, be gentle with this kid. Her dad’s been stabbed to death and her mom’s a fucking wreck …
She’d just got off the phone with the duty officer at the station when Rebecca Beitner called.
“We found the knife.”
“Where?”
“Flowerbeds under the balcony. Looks like he took a tumble getting down. We may actually be looking for Forrest Gump.”
Valerie went back into Rachel’s room and resumed her seat. Tears still hurried from Rachel’s eyes. Valerie handed her the box of tissues from the nightstand. Small gestures. Superficially worthless gestures, which in fact performed the humble miracle of forcing a person to keep going, through the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the
days.
“I have to ask you a few questions,” Valerie said, taking out her notepad.
Rachel didn’t answer.
“I know this is the last thing you feel like doing right now. I’m sorry. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Still no reply. Rachel just lay there, clutching the tissue. Her nostrils were raw.
“Could you tell me what happened? Could you tell me what you remember?”
It took a long time. Rachel kept breaking down. There were short periods when she seemed to get herself under control, or when the act of retelling exerted a numbing self-mesmerism, as if she were recounting a story that belonged to someone else—then she’d realize that it wasn’t someone else, it had really happened to her—and she’d fall apart again, unable to continue. Valerie made the notes when there were notes to make, waited when there was only Rachel Grant’s silence.
In spite of how long it took, the story was straightforward. In the late afternoon Rachel had driven Elspeth over to her friend Julia Klein’s home about fifteen minutes away for a sleepover. She’d had coffee with Dina Klein, Julia’s mother, then picked up groceries for dinner with Adam, gone home, opened a bottle of wine, and started preparing the meal. She’d watched TV until he came home around 7:00 P.M., earlier than usual, since a child-free evening was a precious commodity. They’d had dinner (Adam had drunk the bulk of the first bottle and the better part of a second), watched half a movie, then retired around 11:00 P.M. (Rachel didn’t say so, but Valerie inferred—this was one of the moments of breakdown—that they’d had sex.) Adam fell asleep. Rachel read for an hour or so, then she, too, fell asleep. She got up in the small hours to use the bathroom—and when she came out, the intruder, armed with a knife and a hammer, was in the bedroom. (Valerie pressed for a description, but it was the usual helpless blur. Aside from the observation that he was wearing dark clothes—black running gear was how Rachel described it, a zip-up top with a roll-neck—sneakers, and a black ski mask with white around the eyeholes, the physical details were useless. A guess at around six feet tall and slender build. Oddly—to Valerie’s mind—he wasn’t wearing gloves. Which at least yielded a racial elimination: He was white.)
