by Saul Black
“If you’re going to keep these hours,” Laura said quietly, “what’s the point of me being here?” She was eating McDonald’s fries and chicken nuggets.
“I have dedication,” Valerie said.
“You have a sadistic desire to make the rest of us look bad.”
“Someone has to.”
“What’ve you got?”
“The rewards of detection. You should try it sometime. Now shut up and get on with your nuggets. I’m in the zone.”
It had been too much to hope. The rest stop footage of Dwight Jenner buying his Marlboros showed his right hand only. If he was wearing a wristwatch it was on the left, unseen. She looked again at the actual watch in its sealed bag. A distinctive design. The face was composed of two concentric circles, an outer white one containing the numerals and a pale coppery one inside it. Hour, minute, and second hands were metallic red. It looked, in fact, like something from the fifties. The strap was pale tan leather and appeared new. It had barely been marked by its time on the ground—with the exception of one small, faded brown droplet splash. Blood was where her mind had gone, immediately, though unless they were extremely lucky that wouldn’t be DNA-friendly. Practically the first forensic fact you learned was that DNA identification relied on nucleic cells, which ruled out three of blood’s four major components: red blood cells, platelets, and plasma. The fourth component, white blood cells, did contain nuclei, but since there was only one white to every six hundred red, you needed a lot more than a drop to score.
There was, however, a legitimate alternative.
She took a photo of the watch with her phone camera, dropped the watch itself at Forensics, then drove out to see Kyle Cornell.
Well, yes, a legitimate alternative.
He wasn’t going to see it that way.
Did she?
No. It was the work. The necessary work. And afterward she’d go straight home and make biology with the man she loved. Thinking only about the man she loved while she was doing it.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Her high school Shakespeare was for shit—except for those quotes that reflected badly on her ability to remember them.
The great thing about cigarettes, she thought, as the city’s storefronts and digital hoardings went by, was that when you reached a tricky mental juncture you could distract yourself by lighting one. Small wonder she’d been on two packs a day.
Flamingo was an aggressively hip cocktail bar on the corner of Haight and Belvedere, and either coincidentally or via sexual radar Kyle looked up and saw her as she walked in. His face said annoyance and excitement. It also said he wouldn’t appreciate her flashing her badge under his manager’s eye. So she took a vacant seat at the bar and waited. She’d give him, she decided, five minutes. Meantime his shift-mate, a beautiful young Japanese girl with a bleached-blond skinhead, tattooed forearms, and eyes the color of espresso, came over to take her order. Fuck the white wine allowance, Valerie thought. She ordered a Moscow mule.
Halfway through it (oops, slower, Valerie) Kyle got a gap between customers and approached her.
“Seriously?” he said.
“Don’t get excited. Something I want you to take a look at.”
“That’s how it starts.”
She took out her phone and selected the picture of the watch. Enlarged it so the face was clear.
“This Dwight’s?”
Kyle leaned closer. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt and faded Levi’s. No jewelry. Good call, Valerie thought. Jewelry—even a ring—on a guy this good-looking would be overkill. Forget the accoutrements. Just give the eyelashes and the smile and the easy muscles room to do their thing.
“Looks like it,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re certain it’s his?”
Kyle straightened. He hadn’t had to do more than glance at the image. “No,” he said. “I’m not certain. I’m sure he’s not the only person in the world with this particular make of watch. But if it’s not his, he’s got one exactly like it. Used to be his dad’s, or so he told me. And his grandfather’s before that. Lund and Blockley.”
“Sorry?”
“The make. Lund and Blockley. It’s written right there in the middle. Don’t you have a magnifying glass? I thought all detectives had those.”
Valerie drag-enlarged and scrutinized the image, embarrassed that she hadn’t noted the make. But there it was, in microfine italics just below the hands’ axis. Lund & Blockley.
“Dwight got it valued,” Kyle said. “Eight hundred bucks, guy said. Always amazed me he never sold it. Again: Where’d you find it?”
“Again: Doesn’t matter. But I can tell you it wasn’t on Dwight’s wrist.”
Valerie looked at him: Let’s be honest with each other. Can we?
“What is it?” Kyle said. (Okay. Honesty.)
“I think something might have happened to Dwight.”
“Something like what?”
“Something like nothing good. There’s a stain on the watch strap might be blood.”
“His.”
“Kyle!” the Japanese girl called. “Two mojitos and an old-fashioned. You can flirt later.”
Kyle’s response was to close his eyes for a moment, then open them. He’d had a lot of practice, Valerie thought, in not losing his temper.
“Give me a minute,” he said. “Would you?”
And here was the mutual ease again. The vodka had gone straight to her thighs. She’d drunk the rest of it while they were talking. Fuck. Don’t order another one.
“Sure,” she said.
It was ten minutes. She spent them (a) not ordering another drink and (b) calculating exactly how much to tell Kyle Cornell.
“Look,” he said, when he’d squared a break and they’d moved to a vacant table, “are you going to be straight with me?”
“I’ll give you everything I can.”
“So, no, then.”
She leaned forward in her seat toward him. Their hands were only inches apart on the table. A blue floor lamp’s light shone on his left side.
“The guy who put Dwight away was murdered eight days ago,” she said. “Dwight, I’m sorry to tell you, is the prime suspect.” I’ll give you everything I can. Which didn’t—yet—include the fact that Dwight wasn’t a prime suspect but a known perpetrator.
“He wouldn’t kill anyone,” Kyle said. “It’s not in him. Obviously you’ll say what do I know. Fine. Just remember I said it.”
“I’ll remember,” Valerie said. “Meantime we know that the victim and Dwight had a woman in common.”
“Sophia.”
“Sophia. Dwight’s been AWOL since August first. Now his watch turns up at the victim’s country house with blood on it that may or may not be his. Whoever this woman is, it doesn’t look to me like she’s doing your brother any favors.”
“Apart from the obvious ones.”
“And maybe those aren’t favors.”
“You think she’s a hooker?”
Valerie pulled up the picture of Sophia in black lingerie, bent over Adam Grant’s desk. “This look like Dwight’s regular speed?”
Kyle looked. Raised his eyebrows. Gave a nod of no-brainer male approval. Then looked back at Valerie. “I guess not,” he said. “But like I said, he told me she was a pole dancer. Those girls aren’t known for being plain and fat.”
Valerie returned her phone to her pocket. She could have chosen one of the CCTV stills, where Sophia wasn’t half-naked and sticking her ass out. But of course that wouldn’t have kept sex humming quietly between them. Really drank that mule too fast.
“I take it you don’t recognize her?” she said.
“Unfortunately, no, I don’t.”
“And that’s really all you’ve got for me? She’s a dancer?”
Kyle leaned back in his chair. Appraised Valerie. The look now said: I’d still rather have you. Followed by one of resigned capitulation.
“A former dancer,
” he said. “Way Dwight told it, she looked like she had money, or had got money from somewhere. The clothes, the way she carried herself. Smart, too, according to him, but then relative to Dwight most people were. He thought I was a genius.” A smile.
“Stop fishing,” she said. “We both know you’re in no doubt of your abilities.”
“Yeah, but what kind of half-black guy would I be without a chip on my shoulder?”
Please, Valerie thought, can we stop getting along? She looked down at the tabletop to conceal her own smile. When she looked back up at him his face said he knew it was working. The charm.
“How did Dwight meet her? He must have told you that.”
“In a bar. I don’t know which one. Genuinely. Not this one, at any rate.”
“She picked him up?”
“And gave him the night of his life.”
“That doesn’t seem odd to you?”
A broader smile this time. “You mean what’s a woman like that want with a lowlife like my brother?”
Valerie opened her hands. Saw Kyle note the wedding ring. Yes, let’s not forget that.
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Kyle said. “Sure, it’s hard to picture her and Dwight shopping for curtains together, but clearly that wasn’t what she had in mind. You’re a cop. You know this city’s full of crazy people. Some of those crazy people are women. I doubt Dwight was worried what the agenda might have been. I doubt he was concerned with the psychology.”
“Let’s note that you didn’t tell me any of this before,” she said.
“Hey, I was still getting to know you. Intimacy breeds honesty.”
“So there’s more to tell?”
“Unfortunately for me, no. That really is everything I know. Now you’ve got no incentive to come see me.” Pause. Smile. “No police incentive, I mean.”
Okay, she thought, time to go. Before I discover I am, in fact, completely fucking insane. She got to her feet.
“You really think something’s happened to him?” Kyle asked.
Valerie shrugged. “He’s not in any of the Bay Area hospitals, I can tell you that.”
She turned to go.
“Hey,” Kyle said.
She looked back.
“I get off in two hours.”
Well, I asked for that.
“I don’t,” she said. “But thanks for your help.”
25
August 13, 2017
Dan Kruger’s office was no smaller than Adam Grant’s but testified to an even greater commitment to minimalism. The wall of books was screened by opaque glass, matched by the glass of the big desk. Bare cherry parquet with a demonic sheen. The two large canvases appeared, at first glance, blank—until you shifted your angle and saw that they were in fact shades of the very palest creams and grays. No family photographs. The room’s only concession to color was the client seating, three chairs of tubular steel and dark green leather. Kruger’s chair was white leather, so clean it made Valerie wonder if he ever actually sat in it.
He wasn’t sitting in it now. He was leaning against the edge of the desk with his hands in his pockets. A dark blue suit, white shirt, green tie exactly the shade (by design?) of the client chairs. Either way his wardrobe somehow set off the whiteness of his close-cropped hair. Valerie couldn’t tell if it was premature gray or a self-inflicted bleach job. He was altogether a striking physical specimen, tall, muscular, with light blue eyes that managed, weirdly, to be both calm and fierce. The big windows behind him showed San Francisco sunlit, occasional details—cornices, skylights—picked out as if with tenderness.
“I’d hate to think you were wasting my time almost as much as I’d hate to think I was wasting yours,” he said. “You already showed me the photographs. I don’t know the woman.”
“Yes,” Valerie said. “But that’s not what I asked you. I asked you if Adam told you he was seeing her. Seeing anyone other than his wife, in fact.”
Kruger took his hands out of his pockets and rested the heels of them on the edge of the desk. He’d come straight from the gym. Smelled freshly showered and cologned. A little aura of wholesomely spent male energy. “Nope,” he said.
Valerie looked at him. Really?
“Scout’s honor,” he said. Then smiled. “You sure this is a smart line of inquiry?”
“What?”
“Adam’s alleged infidelity?”
Her body heat went up—but she did her best to look puzzled. “I don’t follow you,” she said.
Kruger held the smile, then eased himself away from the desk and walked around it, lowered himself into his chair. Valerie was thinking that for the right kind of guilty client this was exactly the sort of guy they’d find reassuring: strong, merciless, in it purely, purely for the money. He gave the impression of mild amusement at his own professional acumen, as if he knew he could win your case with less than half the weapons in his arsenal.
“Adam wasn’t the only lawyer in Carlton’s that night,” he said.
Shit.
Her stupidity hit her. The slap she knew she deserved. Serves you right. How many times hadn’t she said that to herself? Put it on her headstone. The perfect epitaph.
Still, she said nothing. Just continued with what she hoped was a look of bafflement.
Dan Kruger laughed, gently, dismissively, a laugh that said he had bigger fish to fry—unless he discovered frying this little fish might come in particularly handy. “It’s a funny thing,” he said. “As these things always are, if you’ve got the right sense of humor. I saw you and Adam tête-à-tête at the bar. I was going to come over and ask him if he knew he was fraternizing with the SFPD, but I got a call, and when I looked again you guys had gone.”
There was more to it, his complacency said. Valerie kept her mouth shut, but in spite of her efforts it was clear he could see her discomfort.
“Of course that would have been the end of it,” Kruger said. “Except I had an early flight the following morning. Cab took me right past your building. Guess who I saw staggering out just after five A.M.?”
Four years ago. Lawyers, like cops, required a perversely talented memory. Kruger was a man who never mislaid his wallet, never forgot an appointment, never missed an opportunity to file away a snapshot detail that might, one distant day, be put to his service. Valerie found herself at a perfect impasse. Saying nothing was as incriminating as saying something, saying anything. The simultaneous need for and absence of a response filled her, stalled her, mapped her body at what felt like the cellular level. A detached part of her marveled at how rarely this happened: speechlessness.
Kruger let the moment stretch, relaxed into it, savored it. Then made a slight movement with his hand, a bored colossus shooing away a fly. “Don’t sweat, Detective,” he said. “I outgrew sadism years ago. For the record—for your peace of mind—Adam’s story when I quizzed him about it was that nothing happened. You went to dinner, drank late, shared a cab, he walked you up to your apartment, he left.”
And still Valerie found herself without words. What she wanted now was to turn and walk out of the room. That would be an admission of something. But so was standing here like a moronic mute.
“Anything you want to add?” Kruger asked.
Suddenly, boredom released her. Mental math had, in fact, been going on. There was no way of knowing whether that had been Adam Grant’s story. And if it hadn’t been, there was no way of knowing what Dan Kruger planned to do with whatever story he’d really been told. She shrugged, gave him a little indifference of her own, and quite deliberately used his own version of the earlier negative: “Nope,” she said.
“Good. Glad to hear it.”
She turned to go, but he got to his feet and came toward her, hand outstretched. They hadn’t shaken hands when she’d arrived. She took it—back on guard. His grip was stronger than she liked. The moment when he should have let go came and went.
“Let’s be clear about this,” he said. “I know you’ve got a job to do. I als
o know you’re one of the good ones, one of the best. Your record speaks for itself. But Adam was a good friend and a good man.”
Pause. He still had her hand in his.
“I want you to get Jenner. But I don’t want Adam’s memory dragged through the shit. You’re a smart enough professional to avoid that. Rachel and Elspeth have suffered enough. Do we understand each other?”
Valerie tightened her own grip. Now that the words were available it felt good to say them. “Let’s be clear,” she said, with a smile. “I’m going to pursue any line of investigation I believe will lead to the resolution of this case and the conviction of Adam Grant’s murderer. Whatever the consequences. To anyone. That’s my job, and that’s what I’m going to do. So, yes, I have a strong feeling that we understand each other.”
For a moment they stood in silence, eyes locked. Then Kruger released her hand. She turned, walked to the door, exited without a backward glance.
26
August 2, 2017
Fuck. Fuck.
This is what it’s going to be like, she thought, interrupted halfway through applying the day’s lipstick by the realization that she’d forgotten the sigil. This is what it’s going to be like: hours of blithe complacency—then the drenching shock of your own incompetence. She was an idiot. She deserved everything that was coming to her.
She wanted to take the makeup off, now, since putting it on had been so wildly precipitate. Instead she completed her bottom lip, tore out of the bathroom, and raced downstairs.
Her purse was still on the Volvo’s backseat. Of course it was. It had been sitting there, innocently guilty, all night and half the day. She opened it, scrabbled through the contents, found the folded piece of paper with the hand-drawn copy of the symbol she’d made. No time for fun and games with the chiminea now—but setting light to it indoors was out of the question. The odor of burning would linger, especially in a house like this, where mere empty space smelled as if it had been piped in from some dimension utterly unsullied by life.
