His hand fell away before reaching the empty pocket, and he raised his face and looked straight at her for the first time.
"I want you to go back to San Francisco."
Until that moment, Kate had managed to forget the question that had been asked at the door of her mud-spattered car the evening before. It had not been difficult to push it away, given the burden of extreme exhaustion, followed by the shock of Lee's appearance and then the heaviest sleep she'd had in weeks, but suddenly all she could see was the knowing look of accusation in the broadcaster's face and the shape of his leather glove spread out against the handle of the car. She waited, and although it was Lee who asked him why, he answered as if Kate had spoken.
"A whole lot of reasons. You need to see your doctor. There're at least three cases pending that one of us needs to work on. And —"
"Pardon me," Lee said. "Doctor? Kate? Have I missed something here?"
"She hasn't told you why she's not at work?" Al asked.
"No," she said slowly. "Somehow it hasn't come up yet."
"It's nothing, Lee," Kate said. "I got hit on the head, and until the headache goes away, I'm on medical leave."
Al Hawkin kept his mouth firmly shut at this vast understatement. Lee looked at him, but he gave nothing away. Finally, she struggled to her feet, picked her way over to where Kate sat, and reached out to pull off Kate's hat. Four weeks of hair did little to cover the scar, and she grunted in pain at the sight.
Kate picked the cap out of Lee's hand and pulled it back over her scalp, ignoring her. "Don't lie to me, Al. What is it?"
"I don't know how to say this."
"Jani wants me gone."
"That's part of it."
"And there's talk."
Hawkin exhaled. "Shit. You heard."
"I haven't heard anything, except one of the most offensive questions I've ever been asked by a newsman."
"Yes, that would be where it'd surface. That's undoubtedly where it started."
Lee said in a plaintive voice, "I'm really sorry, but I'm not following any of this conversation."
"Sweetheart, you'd have been better off staying put with your aunt Agatha. Maybe I should go and stay with your aunt Agatha. I was asked yesterday if I knew where Jules was."
"Why would you - Oh. Oh God, Kate, he couldn't have meant… Al?"
He stood up and went over to the window, his hand patting the front of his shirt again before he remembered and thrust both hands into his pants pockets instead. His voice was harsh, painfully so, when he began to push the words out. "I should have known it was coming. I should've gotten you out of here earlier. I mean, of course you're going to be a target. Even before, you would've been, but now, when half of San Francisco knows about the leathers and the bike, you're meat to their gravy. And Jules taking after you, that haircut she got, and the two of you riding around town on the motorcycle."
Lee positively radiated bewilderment, but neither Kate nor Al could spare her a thought. "Al, does Jani think —"
"Jani's not thinking at the moment, but no, not really."
Which meant that she did indeed think something like that, or at least have her doubts.
"And D'Amico?"
"Florey doesn't listen to gossip. Besides, if he thought there was the least chance, he'd've had you down answering questions."
"And what —"
He whirled around, looking very large and extremely angry. "Martinelli, if you ask me whether I believe those filthy rumors, I swear I'll throw something at you."
Kate took what seemed like the first breath in minutes and felt her eyes tingle with relief.
"Thank you, Al."
"But when you get home, I'd leave that leather outfit in the closet for a while, and drive something with four wheels."
"Okay."
"You'll go?" He could not hide his astonishment.
"I don't have any choice. I'm not doing any good here, and if I stay, it'll only make things worse for everyone. It's already enough of a circus." Maybe I can do my Pied Piper act now, she thought bitterly, drag all the reporters back to San Francisco.
"I don't like it," he said unexpectedly.
"Al, she's your wife. And Jules… Jules is your daughter. But you've got to promise me, if there's anything I can do, you'll call."
"I'll call anyway. Look, I've got to go. I'm late for a meeting with the FBI; they've got a profile to go over."
"Another one?"
"Yeah. As if it does us one bit of good to know that there's a seventy percent chance he wet his bed as a kid and an eighty percent chance his parents were divorced."
"I'm glad they're keeping you in on it, Al."
"I had to call in a lot of favors," he admitted, and it dawned on Kate that one of the conditions they had made was her departure from the scene.
"Take care of yourself. And Jani," she said.
"You'll drive back?"
"I'll leave tonight."
"Watch the snow on the passes." He walked over to kiss Lee on the cheek, nodded to his partner, and went out. The door clicked; his steps faded.
"That was generous of you, Kate," Lee said.
Kate was on her feet. "Shut up!" she screamed. "For Christ's sake, just shut up!" She caught up a glass from the table, turned, and threw it with all her strength across the room, straight at the mirror above the cheap chest of drawers, then flung herself out the door.
Downstairs, panting, she told the startled desk clerk, I'm leaving. Get my bill together. And you'll have to add something for a broken mirror."
JANUARY
SIXTEEN
It was a long and mostly silent drive to San Francisco. They stayed the night in Ashland, waiting for the snowplows to clear the road ahead of them, and it was an equally long and silent night. Kate seemed uninterested in how Lee had come to appear out of nowhere, seemed only half aware of her explanation of seeing a week-old newspaper on a trip into town for supplies. She could not rouse herself to give Lee anything but the most perfunctory account of her injury and the shooting of Weldon Reynolds, which simply seemed too far away to be of concern to anyone.
Eventually, Lee recognized the symptoms, and she forced herself to draw back. Kate was not still angry; she wasn't even sulking. She was merely hungover from the excesses of emotion, burnt-out and drained in every way, and fortunately Lee had the sense, and the experience, to see that Kate merely needed solitude, or as close to it as she would get with a passenger in the car. Lee wrapped herself in patience, biding her time, and allowed the miles to pass while she waited, with growing apprehension, for Kate to make the first overture.
The closer they drew to the city, the worse the traffic grew, until halfway across the eastern segment of the Bay Bridge they came to a halt. Kate stirred, looked in the rearview mirror, and spoke for the first time in two hours. "What the hell is going on? Traffic should be dying down, not getting worse. What day is this, anyway?"
"I think it's Saturday."
Kate grumbled and threw occasional complaints at the grateful and relieved therapist at her side, who worked hard to preserve a detached air and paid no attention to the roadways outside until, once they were back on the ground and nearing the city center, a rapid movement came spilling in front of them. Kate slammed on the brakes, cursed, and laid on the horn simultaneously; at the same moment Lee began to laugh.
"What?" Kate demanded. "The whole goddamn city's gone nuts, and you're laughing?"
"Sweetheart, we're the ones who are nuts. Look at what they're wearing. This is New Year's Eve."
Kate leaned forward to examine the costumes, an equal number of men in diapers and in bedsheets, all of them carrying various noisemakers.
"Thank God," she said. "I thought the place had gone off the deep end for sure."
On Russian Hill, every house was lit up, including their own, which would have surprised Kate except that she had spotted Jon's car down the hill. She eased the Saab in between a convertible Mercedes and a Citroën DCV, coasted into t
he garage, and hit the button to shut the door behind them. Jon was already on the stairs. His skin looked brown even under the fluorescent lights of the garage, and he was wearing an apron and carrying a wooden spoon in one hand and a pot holder in the other.
He was at the passenger door before Kate had the key out of the ignition. "Lee! Oh my God, girl, look at you. You look like a woodsman; all you need is your ax. Where's your - Will you look at those. Have you taken up beadwork in your old age, my dear? Oh yes, give us a hug." Kate smiled at the sight of her two housemates pounding each other's backs (Jon holding the beaded arm braces now as well as the cooking utensils) before she went around to open the trunk and begin the process of unloading. When her head emerged, Jon was holding Lee at arm's length, still exclaiming. "I love the macha look; it reminds me of the seventies. Do you need a hand here? My God, she's walking. Look at her, Kate; it's a miracle of the blessed Jesus. We'll go dancing next week - can I have a date, dear? How superbly retro, dancing with a woman. God, you look great. You're glowing. Isn't she positively glowing, Kate? Hello, Kate, darlin', you look tired." Kate could see him hesitate, consider words of sympathy and expressions of horror, and then decide that this was not the time - for which she was grateful.
"Hello, Jon," she said, sidling past them with her arms full of bags and packs. "It's good to see you."
The next day was Sunday, but Kate managed to track down the surgeon who had pieced her head together. He was at the hospital checking up on a trio of drunk-driving injuries from the evening before and agreed to see her.
When she saw him, their conversation consisted of "Does that hurt?" (No.) "What about that?" (Yes.) and "Any fevers or headaches?" (No, and Not for ten days.) With a warning to avoid hard things with her skull for a while, he scrawled a note allowing her back on limited duty. She took it, and broke out in a cold sweat.
She walked back to the car, unaware that she was getting rained on, and drove out of the parking garage, fully intending to go home. Somehow or other, she didn't get there. Instead, she drove out to the coast highway and parked, watching the waves pound furiously at the shore. The car shook with the gusts of wind, and the windshield became opaque with spray. After a while, she got out and walked into the maelstrom.
An hour later, face scoured raw and her entire body feeling cleansed, she unlocked the door and got back in. As she drove home, she tried not to think about Monday. Monday, when she would go back to work, to find that the storm of publicity and the lightning strikes of filthy rumors had moved south, directly into the Hall of Justice. How many obscene notes would be waiting for her? How many photographs confiscated from the collections of pederasts would find their way into her papers, appear on the walls of the toilet cubicles? How many disgusting objects could her colleagues come up with to torment a lesbian rumored to know more than she was telling about the disappearance of a child?
Kate did not know if she could summon the strength to cope with another campaign of whispers. She actually hoped, prayed, for a relapse, a headache powerful enough to justify her absence. However, Monday dawned with nothing worse inside her skull than the muzziness of a sleepless night. She put on her holster, feeling weary to her bones and cold with dread, and went to work.
Kate's finger hovered over the DOOR CLOSE button on the elevator, but it did not actually make contact, and the door slid open at the fourth floor. She stepped out and walked down the hall to the Homicide Department. Inevitably, the first person she saw was Sammy Calvo, who could be offensive even when he was trying to be friendly. She braced herself, and he looked up from his desk and smiled at her.
"Casey! Hey, great, glad you're back. It's been really dull around here without you."
"Er, thanks. I guess."
The phone in front of him rang, cutting short any further, more devastating phrases. Kitagawa appeared next, his nose in a file until he was almost on top of her.
"Morning, Kate. How's the head?"
"Doing better, thanks."
"You still on leave?"
"I'm on a limited medical for the next three or four weeks."
"Right. When you get a chance, let's go over the cases you were working."
"Sure. I mean, fine." He put his nose back into the file and went out. However, his attitude meant nothing, Kate told herself. Kitagawa would have been polite to Jack the Ripper.
Tom Boyle caught her as she was stowing her gun and her lunch in a desk drawer.
"Hi, Kate, how you feeling?"
"Fine, Tommy boy. How was Christmas?" she ventured.
"Nuts, as usual. My brother-in-law broke his wrist playing kick the can in the street after dinner, and Jenny's grandmother cracked her dentures on a walnut shell in the fruitcake. How was yours?" He seemed to catch himself, and looked uncomfortable. "Oh, right. I don't suppose you had one, really."
"No, I didn't," she agreed.
"I think we'll go away next year, just Jenny and the kids and me. Disneyland or something. How's Al doing?"
"He's hanging in there."
"Yeah. Not much else he can do, is there? Well, I gotta go. See you."
Something was very odd here. Everyone was entirely too friendly. The messages on her desk, when she sorted through them, not only contained nothing filthy, but there were two generic greetings and a casual invitation to lunch from another detective, a woman Kate had worked with on a vice case some months before. Finally, when it began to seem that every person in the building - uniform, plainclothes, and support staff alike - was finding some reason to pass by her desk and say hello, she went to hunt down Kitagawa. She cornered him outside the interrogation rooms, ushered him inside one, and shut the door behind her.
"All right. What's up?"
"Ah, Kate. Is this a good time to —"
"I want to know why everyone is so goddamned cheerful around here. Everyone in the building knows that I'm fine, Lee's fine, Jon is just dandy, and Al's as well as can be expected. Not one person has mentioned that Jules is still missing. Why the hell not?"
"They are probably aware that the subject causes you discomfort."
"Since when do my feelings —" She stopped. "Al. Al had something to do with this."
"He made a couple of phone calls, yes, to let us know that you might be back."
"What else did he tell you?"
Kitagawa squinted down at the form in his hand, although as far as Kate knew, he'd never had anything but perfect sight.
"You know," he said in pedantic tones,"the police, perhaps more so than other people, do not care for outsiders tormenting one of their own. Even when that member has not fit in terribly well before, if another group who is perceived as "the enemy" begins pursuit, we have an extraordinary urge to close ranks around our threatened member."
Kate stared at him, openmouthed.
"An interesting insight into group dynamics, don't you think? Although you, with your background in sociology, would know all about it." He smiled, then reached past her to open the door, leaving her standing there.
When Kate went home that night, she told Lee about the conversation, and about a day surrounded by the gruff support of her colleagues.
"God," said Lee. "I couldn't think what was worrying you. I didn't even think of that. You must feel relieved."
"Relieved? I feel like I'd just heard the sirens start up in response to an "officer down" call."
That night, for the first time since late August, Kate slept in the main bedroom.
For three and a half days after that, Kate succeeded in enduring the unremitting friendliness of the San Francisco Police Department. Then on Friday, in the late morning, there was a telephone call for her.
It was Al. He said, "We've had a letter."
SEVENTEEN
"You're not to know," Al said quickly. "Don't react to what I say. If the FBI or D'Amico find out I've been talking to you, they'll shut me out completely."
"I'm… glad you've had good weather." She smiled stiffly at Tom Boyle, standing next to her desk, and
willed him to move away.
"There's someone near you. Okay, just listen. We had a letter, just a brief one, claiming to be from the Strangler. He said Jules wasn't one of his." Something of Kate's psychic message must have gotten through to Boyle, because he moved away.
"Surely you must be getting a hundred letters a day, saying all kinds of things," she protested in a low voice.
"He gave some details it would be difficult to know, unless he's got access to FBI records."
"My God," Kate whispered, trying with difficulty to keep her face straight. "Have you seen it? The letter?"
"A copy of it."
"And?"
"It's an identical typewriter to the original burial letter. And it has the right flavor. Indignant that he would be credited - his word - with a kill he didn't do. Plus that, it was mailed in the same way he sends the funeral money, to an apparently random name with the address of the police station, so it doesn't catch the attention of the post office until it reaches the local branch."
"Did it say anything else?"
"It said, I quote, 'I don't know why you're trying to credit me with the missing California girl. Asian girls don't have any curl in their hair.' The Strangler always takes a snip of hair from the back of the head, and there's never been a breath in any of the reports about it. So watch yourself with that knowledge, too."
"What's the reaction up there?"
"It's got everyone standing on their head. D'Amico thinks the Strangler's cracking, that this is the first step to turning himself in. There're three psychiatrists shouting at one another down the hall right now."
"What are you going to do?"
"What I've done all along: keep an open mind, and look at everything. All I can do."
"Any way I can help?"
"I can't think of a damn thing."
Neither could Kate. She asked after Jani, Al asked after Lee, neither listened to the other's reply, and both hung up feeling, if anything, more depressed than ever.
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