by Saul Black
Great. Trade one murder case for another. The upside was she could put Adam Grant (as it were) to bed. How would Rachel take it? Probably the outcome her head wanted: her husband’s killer—dead. But her heart wouldn’t be satisfied. Her heart would have wanted something more protracted and personal. To see him arrested, mangled through the machinery of Justice, visibly shackled to what he’d done—and then ended. Victims’ families had the right to be present at executions. Rachel Grant, Valerie thought, was the type who would want to see it all, to savor the desolate pleasure of an eye for an eye. Not only would Rachel have been able to handle it, she would feel short-changed without it. Valerie, of course, would do her best to soften the blow. The moratorium on state executions, thanks to a judicial review and the subsequent legal battle that had been going on for more than ten years, meant that Dwight Jenner wouldn’t have been put to death any time soon, probably not for decades and possibly not before he died of natural causes. Would Rachel want that? Death row wasn’t, to allow hilarious understatement, any kind of fun, but it was still life. You could still eat, talk, read, have a conversation, jerk off, dream. None of which, thanks to Dwight Jenner, was available to Adam Grant. Surely, Valerie would say, it was better to have Jenner gone, regardless of how he’d been done away with? She could picture Rachel’s face on the receiving end of this, the fierce green eyes unable to hide her sense of betrayal. Her ideal was probably to have tortured Dwight Jenner to death herself.
So much for the upside.
The downside was that Valerie was going to have to visit Kyle Cornell and tell him that his half brother was dead. Murdered.
Sophia was still unaccounted for. They’d located her on X-quisite’s CCTV on May 30. A poor shot of her at the entrance booth (still wearing the goddamned shades, though the place was dark enough already) and later at a corner table chatting with Gigi. All you could see was the back of the spectacular blond head. Since then no report that she’d returned or contacted the club for a job. Valerie was pessimistically convinced, courtesy of The Life of Sophia’s latest episodes, that she’d gone back to L.A., which, unless and until she showed up again on the pole-dancing circuit (assuming the LAPD was giving it any attention, which they probably were not) reduced their chances of finding her practically to zero. It hardly seemed credible that the damage done to Dwight Jenner’s body was the work of a part-time dancer, but Sophia was still most likely one of the last people to see him alive.
“This mean anything to you?” she asked Sadie Hurst, having walked over to her desk with the photos of Dwight’s corpse. Sadie’s partner, Rayner Mendelsund, was out on a lead.
“What is it?”
“The Reno body. Well, not Reno. The desert body. Will said you should take a look.”
Sadie was the sort of early-thirties woman you might unthinkingly describe as a girl. Milky blond hair and a sharp, blue-eyed face Will had concluded was “weaselly attractive.” She had a quiet alertness and self-containment. Valerie was openly envious of her dress sense. Sadie had the knack of using the same staple gear as Valerie—jeans, sweaters, T-shirts, a leather jacket—and somehow making it look both effortlessly hip and as if she couldn’t care less.
“Oh,” she said, arriving at the photograph of the carefully made knife wounds on Dwight Jenner’s chest. “Seriously? Fuck.”
“What is it?”
For a moment Sadie sat back in her chair studying the photograph. Then she leaned forward again and placed it on the desk for Valerie to see. “These marks,” she said, indicating the wounds. “They’re a sigil for Lucifer.”
“A what?”
“A sigil. A symbol.”
“Lucifer as in the Devil?”
Sadie shrugged. “Depends which lunatic you consult. According to the less obviously mad, Lucifer’s an entirely different angel to Satan, a good one, in fact—but that doesn’t really matter. What matters here is that you’re looking at work I’ve seen before.” She took a pen and tore off a sheet from her yellow legal pad. Reproduced the symbol as if she knew it by heart.
“Three murders seven years ago. Me and Rayner worked the first two. Made an arrest. Suspect went to trial. Halfway through, with this dude still in custody, a third murder, same symbol—which had never been made public. Our guy walked and the Feds took over. As far as I know they never got anyone.”
“Could this be your guy?”
“Not unless he’s working from the afterlife. He died of pancreatic cancer four years back. So either the MO got out and you’ve got a copycat, or it’s the original perp still rocking in the free world. Who’s the victim?”
“Dwight Jenner. The guy who killed Adam Grant. Did the other victims have their hands and feet amputated?”
“No. And they were all female.”
“So not quite the MO. How busy are you?”
Sadie smiled. Made a gesture miming tied hands.
“Do you want in?”
“Obviously.”
“Well, it might not come to that. If the Bureau’s happy it’s their guy, fuck it, they can have it. It’s on Nevada turf anyway. Jenner killed Adam Grant, and Jenner’s history, so technically I’m done.”
“You don’t look done.”
“My looks are deceptive.”
Valerie got halfway to her desk before she stopped, turned, and went back to Sadie.
“What was your guy’s name? The one who walked.”
“Webb…” Sadie narrowed her eyes, searching her memory. “Grayson Webb.”
“And the trial?”
“Would’ve been winter of 2000—no, actually it was after New Year’s. Early 2001.”
Valerie made a note on the same sheet on which Sadie had drawn the symbol. Folded it in half and headed back to her desk.
“I told you you didn’t look done,” Sadie said.
* * *
There were, of course, coincidences. This wasn’t one of them. Valerie called the DA’s office. The information she got gave her a satisfying flush of confirmed intuition. The state prosecutor on the Grayson Webb trial was Logan Myers, now retired. He had been assisted by Sylvana Bianchi, still in office, and one Adam Douglas Grant, now deceased.
The satisfying flush morphed into a constellation of unjoined dots. Dwight Jenner murders Adam Grant. Okay. Then Dwight Jenner is murdered by someone with a previously established MO (more or less): the symbol or “sigil” (Valerie enjoyed the acquisition of a new word) for “Lucifer.” Said MO is central to the trial on which Adam Grant worked. Leaving aside the copycat option (info did leak, but somehow she doubted it in this case), that left the conclusion that the original “Lucifer” was up to his old tricks—with a difference: Dwight Jenner was male, and the MO had now grown to incorporate the amputations. Plus two luminous facts: (1) Jenner was connected to Grant, and (2) Grant was connected to the failed prosecution of the original murders. The notion that there was no connection between the two murders was, to put it mildly, a stretch.
Valerie called Vic McLuhan at the Bureau’s local office over on Golden Gate Avenue and gave him the story. An hour later he called her back.
“Case is still open,” he told her. “But he’s been cold since the third victim in early 2001. Well, cold, as in, we haven’t found any bodies that fit either the MO or the physical evidence gathered from the first three. Which means either he stopped until now, assuming this latest is him, or he’s got better at it and we just haven’t found the other victims’ remains—or the MO got out and someone’s aping his style.”
“Could it have got out?”
“Any boat can leak, Val.”
“But the timeline’s atypical, right? I mean assuming he’s just started up again, why the long gap? The pattern should be acceleration.”
“We can’t assume he has just started up. He could have killed plenty in the last sixteen years.”
“You’re not exactly blowing the Bureau’s trumpet here,” Valerie said.
Vic laughed. “You know how many unsolved murders we’ve g
ot that are linked by DNA?”
“No.”
“Neither do I, exactly, but it’s close to two thousand. And that’s based on a sample check ignoring cases where we don’t have the luxury of DNA. It’s a floor figure, not a ceiling.”
“But your guy wants the bodies found, surely? Otherwise why leave the Lucifer signature? You don’t write anything unless you want it to be read.”
“Yeah, maybe. But you should talk to Profiling. They’ve got a lot better at not blowing their own trumpet, too. And if you’re right about wanting the bodies found, why bury your guy in the middle of nowhere? I take it, obviously, that there’s no perp DNA on offer?”
“Not according to Reno.”
“That doesn’t count for much. We’re going to have to send our people over. Either way it doesn’t seem it’s your problem.”
“Well, yeah, but the victim’s my doer for the Adam Grant murder. Can you keep me in the loop?”
“Fair enough. We’ll see what we’ll see.”
Valerie hung up and considered her options.
Go and tell Rachel Grant that her husband’s killer is dead.
Go and tell Kyle Cornell that his half brother is dead.
Don’t tell anyone anyone is dead and go get a massage instead.
Sometimes she gave herself alternatives like this just as a reminder that she was, existentially speaking and contrary to all habits of behavior, free. One of these days, she thought, she’d surprise herself. She’d shock the world.
But not today.
She drove over to the Grants’ house in Pacific Heights and, having rung the doorbell, prepared herself for the pugnacious nurse. But the door was opened by Hester Fallon, Adam Grant’s sister, who was talking on her cell phone as she opened it. She beckoned Valerie into the hall. She looked very tired. She was still in the new world of her brother’s death, draining herself to cope with it. The first fatigue was trauma. The second was the persistence of the mundane in spite of trauma. A stubborn, demanding contradiction. It had been six weeks.
“Listen, hon, I have to hang up. Someone’s here. Aha … Okay … I’ll let Rachel know. See you soon. Bye.” She hung up the call. “Detective?” she said.
“Hi, I was hoping to talk to Rachel.”
“She’s not here,” Hester said. “She took Elspeth out on the boat this morning.”
“There’s a boat?”
Hester smiled sadly. “Adam was nuts for the water. Ever since we were kids. He bought it when he moved over to Willard and Gould. It’s not a big boat.”
A slight note of apology. As if Hester didn’t want anyone thinking her late brother was bothered about status. “He’d have been out on it every day, given the choice,” she added. She was still, Valerie saw, getting used to talking about Adam Grant in the past tense. She had a pleasant, high-cheekboned face. Almond eyes. Like her brother.
“Is Rachel well enough? The nurse…?”
“The nurse is gone. Rachel decided she didn’t need her anymore. I don’t know that she should have done that, though I have to confess we were all glad to see the back of her.”
“I’m not surprised,” Valerie said. “But should Rachel be driving a boat?”
“No, she should not. They told her she’d be okay to drive a car by now. They didn’t say anything about a goddamned boat. Still, you can’t tell her anything. She goes her own way. They should be back at…” Hester looked at her watch. “Six. It’s just past four now. You’re welcome to wait if you like, but I’ve got a couple more interviews to do.”
“Interviews?”
“Housekeeper,” Hester said. “I got sick of telling Rachel she can’t handle this place by herself, especially given … I mean everyone’s been trying to pitch in, but she’s resisting. In the end I just called the agency. And landed myself the job of weeding out the undesirables. By the end of today I’m going to have three candidates. If she doesn’t like any of those I’m giving up. The fact is they should never have got rid of Isabella in the first place.”
“Isabella was the former housekeeper?”
“She was a marvel. But Adam didn’t get along with her.”
“No? How come?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I never got to the bottom of it. Some people just rubbed him the wrong way—”
Hester stopped, snapped out of dreaminess, looked at Valerie as if recognizing her for the first time, as if, during the preceding banalities, she had forgotten who Valerie was, why she was here, what had happened. Now it looked as if someone had, via an invisible choke chain, yanked her back to reality.
“What’s happened?” Hester asked. “Did you find him?”
“I really need to speak with Rachel first.”
“Tell me. For God’s sake just please tell me.”
Valerie considered. Hester would find out soon enough, and in any case she had a right to know. Fuck it.
“Confidentially,” Valerie said. “Understood?”
“Yes. What?”
“The body of a man we believe to be Dwight Jenner has been found.”
Pause.
“He’s dead?”
“Yes.”
Hester opened her mouth—then closed it without saying anything. Valerie gave her a moment. Let the information settle.
“Good,” Hester said, looking away. “I’m glad he’s dead.”
She wasn’t made of the same psychic stuff as her sister-in-law.
“How did he—”
“Really, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything more yet. Not until I’ve spoken with Rachel. The boat … Is it a city mooring?”
Having emerged, briefly, from her dream of exhaustion, Hester appeared to have slipped back into it.
“What?” she asked vaguely.
“I’d like to speak to Rachel as soon as possible. Where’s the boat kept?”
It took a few moments. Hester knew it was at Pier 39, but had to consult her phone for the details. Mooring E11.
“But they might be on their way back by now,” she said, as Valerie headed toward the door.
“It’s okay, I’m going to call her. One other thing: Do you have contact details for Isabella? The housekeeper?”
“Isabella…? No, I don’t know. It was months ago. Why?”
Yes, Valerie thought. Why? Because Adam Grant’s secret life remained unexposed? Because there was no limit to her indiscriminate curiosity? Because it bothered her that there might still be someone who could identify Sophia? Maybe Isabella walked in on Adam photographing his lover, bent over his desk, blindfolded and tied to the bed, bare-assed on the kitchen worktop. Adam didn’t get along with her. Probably not, if she’d been an eyewitness to his infidelity.
“Nothing important,” she said. “We just need all the details of everyone whose name comes up in an investigation, no matter how peripheral. Bureaucracy. You know how these things are.”
Hester nodded, though it was obvious her head and heart were elsewhere. Back with the vividly refreshed fact of her brother’s death.
“I don’t have a number,” she said. “I don’t even know her surname. But I guess you can call the agency. Hold on a second.” She consulted her phone a second time. Gave Valerie the number. Bay Domestic. Market and Dolores.
“Great,” Valerie said. “I’ll do that.”
35
Rachel Grant wasn’t answering her phone. It was past 5 P.M. by the time Valerie arrived at the marina to discover the boat was still out. But the late afternoon was blue-skied, warm and soft, with a salt breeze coming off the bay, so she bought herself a bottled water and sat down on a bench to wait.
She’d been sitting only five minutes when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number.
“Valerie Hart.”
“Hey, Detective. It’s Dan Kruger.”
Instant irritation.
“Yes?” she said.
“How’s the investigation going?”
She didn’t answer straightaway. For no reason other than that she could ima
gine exactly the sort of conversation Kruger had in mind: bullshit cat-and-mouse, a reiteration of the original threat.
“Incomplete,” she said.
“Did you find Sophia?”
“Not yet.”
“But you’re still looking?”
“Yes.”
Pause. She could feel him winding up to something elaborately understated.
“Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” he said. “When we spoke a few—”
“Dan,” she interrupted, with facetious gentleness. “Do you have anything you’d like to add to your earlier remarks? Anything new, I mean? As opposed to some slicker version of the original attempt at intimidation? Because if you don’t, I really feel like I can save us both some time.”
“Really? And how is that?”
“Well,” she said, “it goes like this: Fuck off.”
She hung up. Reckless, yes, but irresistible. Every now and then the world of men used to the luxurious exercise of power concentrated itself into a single intolerable individual. When that happened, something essential in her reacted. Let Kruger do what he had to do. She’d deal with it. And if it got her kicked off the case, fine. She’d have her dignity. To say nothing of the pleasure she had at this moment, the image of him staring at his phone in disbelief.
Why, in any case, was Kruger making such a fuss? She hadn’t, until now, mistrusted the idea that he wanted to keep Adam’s name out of the dirt. But maybe there was more to it? Did he know Sophia? Was he involved with her? It seemed ludicrous. Every time this woman’s name came up in the investigation it added to the list of guys she might have been fucking. She was either sexually voracious or possessed of some strategy that depended on calculated promiscuity. If she (and Jenner) had been blackmailing Adam Grant, could that somehow have compromised Kruger? Valerie let her mind wander into grander theories: that Sophia specialized in high-profilers, that she’d uncovered malpractice or corruption at Willard & Gould, that there was more at stake than a lawyer’s reputation. Was there some fuckup—or cover-up—in the original prosecution of the Lucifer murders?
