LoveMurder

by Saul Black

  She shut it down. As you shut down all such imaginings, in the beginning. In the beginning you did the procedure, you did the work. In the beginning you dealt with the solid, the material, the evident. It was only later (much later, if you were unlucky) that you had to use your imagination. It was only later that you had to, as her grandfather had described it, dance. Elizabeth’s bare underarms made Valerie remember Nick kissing hers only hours earlier. Shut that down, too, the wretched parallels, the dismal equalizations. It didn’t mean anything. The world was just contingently crammed with opposites. The world wasn’t, when you got down to it, meaningful.

  “From the imprints it looks like he used plastic cable ties on the wrists,” Laura continued. “Maybe curtain cord on the ankles, but he took them when he left. According to Ricky all the knife wounds are nonfatal. Clear ligature marks on the neck. It’s a no-brainer strangulation.”

  Beyond the body Valerie was absorbing the room’s details. A pair of white Nikes with orange laces under a cane chair. A hair dryer on the oak dresser. A New Yorker on the window seat. A cheval glass. With the exception of the bedclothes twisted on the floor, the place was tidy. So no big struggle. Could’ve coldcocked her then tied her down. Or held the knife to her. The plastic cuffs were designed so you only needed one hand to work them. Or maybe she had struggled but he’d straightened the place up when he was done? Chloroform? Get toxicology. Or maybe she’d let him tie her up? Consensual bondage turned homicide? (It wasn’t that, she thought. Unless she’d lost all her instincts, she knew it wasn’t that.) No forced entry. So he picked or tricked his way in. Or again, was let in. Because she knew him. Please let her have known him. Please shrink the pool of suspects.

  Valerie looked again at the body on the bed. Reminded herself that she wasn’t looking at a person. She was looking at a victim. Personhood had been removed and couldn’t be reinstated unless they caught the individual who’d done this. When that happened the dead woman could be Elizabeth Lambert again. Until then she was just the work, the mystery object, the Case.

  “Here you go,” Laura said, handing Valerie a clear plastic evidence bag. In it was a slightly creased single sheet of white paper, bearing a few lines of printed text.

  FAO: Detective Valerie Hart

  Dear Valerie,

  Katherine Glass stays in prison, more people die. You know who I am, but I’ve left you Danielle’s ring by way of substantiation. They’ll all get fair warning, as Elizabeth did. (Look carefully, please.) No videos yet, but there will be. This one is just to open the channel. You’ve been waiting for this. More to follow.

  That was all. Valerie stood still.

  Katherine Glass. Six years. Now.

  You know who I am.

  Yes. She did. Instantly, at the cellular level.

  “Jewelry?” Valerie said.

  “One ring, left index,” Laura said, handing Valerie a second evidence bag with the ring in it. “Rose gold with a red stone. A ruby, I think. Who’s Danielle?”

  “Danielle Freyer. One of their victims. His and Katherine’s.”

  “There are a lot of rings like this, Val.”

  “It wasn’t public. Only us and the family knew. She was still wearing it when they filmed her. But we’re going to get a DNA match here anyway. He wants us to know it’s him. Get the lab to rush it, will you? I’ll call Deerholt and tell him to push.”

  “Well, at least we know he’s crazy.”

  “How so?”

  “If he thinks Katherine’s getting out.”

  “That’s smoke. He’s not crazy. Katherine said he was the smartest man she ever met. And since she’s the smartest woman I ever met…”

  “What about the ‘fair warning’ thing?”

  “God knows.”

  “Shit. Your weekend.”

  “Yeah, my weekend.” She pulled out her phone. “Give me a second. Tell these guys not to remove anything just yet.”

  She called Nick. “Do something for me, will you?” she said after she’d brought him up to speed.

  “What?”

  “Go to the winery. Go to dinner. Check into the B&B. It might be late, but I’ll get there.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment.

  “I know how lousy this is,” she said.

  “You going to talk to her?”

  Ah. Of course. That was what the pause had been: him thinking about Katherine Glass. Or rather, him thinking about what Katherine Glass had meant to her.

  “Not until I know more,” Valerie said. Even as she said it she felt sick and thrilled. She wanted to see what the years inside had done to the most hated woman in America. A part of her wanted to see if she’d changed. But immediately she thought that she knew Katherine Glass would not have changed. It was a reflexive certainty, whether she liked it or not. The white skin and green eyes and pale blond hair and that tranquil, knowing mouth. Katherine Glass was a question the universe had asked her. Valerie wasn’t sure, six years later, that she’d ever really answered it.

  “Will you go up and wait for me?” Valerie said.

  Another pause. She pictured Nick’s face, the dark features, the look of amused patience, the cop intelligence behind it, the knowing the world’s ugly things, the willingness to take them on, without hysteria. She loved him. It still shocked her, that she had this love in her life, this certainty. Katherine had said to her: The Devil has a question for love.…

  “Okay,” he said. “But what if the chambermaid wants to have sex with me?”

  “Fine. But not in my shoes or demi-bra.”

  “You say that, but I look good in them.”

  When they hung up Valerie looked at her watch. It was a quarter after noon. She had time.

  “How do you want to do this?” Laura asked her.

  “With OCD,” Valerie said. “I’ll come back here when these guys are done.” She caught herself. “Sorry. You don’t mind if I lead on this one, right?”

  “When it’s literally got your name written all over it?”

  “Okay, so get everything you can from the cleaning lady and track down the upstairs neighbor. Do we know where the victim worked?”

  “ID card in her purse says Environmental Protection Agency. Press officer.”

  “I’ll talk to them. We need her movements for the last forty-eight hours minimum. Cell phone?”

  “Bagged.”

  “Get it straight to tech. Let me know as soon as it’s unlocked. Maybe she got her fair warning via voice mail. Let’s get some uniforms down here and we can start door-to-door. Anyone with a view. What’s out there?”

  “Back garden.”

  “I’ll take a look. Street cams?”

  “Nope. We’re blind on these blocks apart from possibly the coffee shop.”

  “Well, let’s get that, at least. When the blues get here I’ll get them to check private residences. Maybe a neighbor’s got one that’ll give us something. Next of kin?”

  “Ed’s on that.”

  “Will he handle it?”

  “Yeah. He’s got Sondra’s parents staying this weekend. He’ll take anything.”

  “It’s an ill wind.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means something has to be really fucking bad for it not to benefit someone. In this case, Ed. Thanks to this he gets time off from his in-laws.”

  Can’t stop thinking about him. He’s with me like an invisible person. No headaches for four days. He says don’t write it down but I’m scared I’ll lose it even though by the time I’m done I know it like a nursery rhyme. I’ve been waiting my whole life. Like I just now learned to breathe right. He told me stop eating crap and so I bought gourmet coffee and a fish called place. Some salad with that red stuff in it but it’s bitter. There’s nothing else except seeing him. Both of them. He just touches me and it all opens up like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

  The place fish tas
ted watery.

  I’m going to do my exercises now.

  5

  Eight hours later Valerie stepped out onto Elizabeth Lambert’s back porch, lowered her protective mask, and breathed deeply through her nose. California dusk, the sky soft silver-blue with a band of faint pink in its lower reaches. The garden smelled of its dry red soil and cooling concrete.

  She’d spent the day doing the work, building the picture, beginning the investigation—but with a stronger-than-usual sense that the bulk of it was a waste of time. If the perp was who he claimed to be he’d have the routine angles covered. He’d have the obscure angles covered. He’d have angles covered that wouldn’t even occur to them.

  Nonetheless. Laura Flynn had called with the latest on the upstairs neighbor: Gianni Galliano had his last forty-eight hours accounted for. He’d either been verifiably at work (Realtors Corven & Mylett on Market Street) or at his girlfriend’s apartment in Pacific Heights. The girlfriend, a junior in a business law firm, confirmed his alibi, and Laura believed her. According to Galliano, he’d last seen Elizabeth three days ago, when they’d crossed in the downstairs hall. Nothing unusual to report, except that she seemed in a better mood than usual.

  The unlocked cell phone said the last call Elizabeth had accepted was from the caller ID “Nancy Treece.” (Dismally, of course, there were three subsequent missed calls from caller ID “Mom.”) Door-to-door revealed Nancy as a neighbor from the next block, who, as far as Valerie could tell, might well have been the last person (killer excepted) to see Elizabeth alive.

  Valerie had called her. She was out of the city, up in Deer Park collecting some of her belongings from a second home she co-owned with her estranged husband. She’d come by two days ago to make use of Elizabeth’s scanner. The two women had spent an hour or so together, chatting. They’d finished the better part of a bottle of white wine, then Nancy had left. What was this about? Was Elizabeth okay? I’m sorry to have to tell you, Valerie had said, but the body of a woman we believe to be Elizabeth Lambert has been found in her apartment. As yet we have no official identification, so I must instruct you to keep this confidential until we’ve had confirmation from the next of kin. (In Elizabeth’s passport the original next of kin details had been crossed out—obliterated, in fact: love gone wrong—and replaced with those of “Gillian Rose.” Relationship: “Sister.”) Ed Pérez, Laura’s partner, was on his way out to Sausalito to give Gillian the bad news. Valerie waited out Nancy Treece’s silence, the stammered disbelief, the tears stacking up, the fracture, the second wave of disbelief, the thrill in spite of everything (the amoral thrill that was nothing more than the human response to anything—anything—that said the world was not predictable, that life could still surprise you, that all the information was not, in fact, in), then made an arrangement to meet with her tomorrow. Deer Park was—oh, sweet irony—practically next door to Calistoga; it would rationalize driving up there tonight for a few hours with Nick, even if she’d have to leave him again in the morning.

  Elizabeth’s colleagues at the Environmental Protection Agency hadn’t—at first—had much to offer. Elizabeth was quiet, well-read, plain, ironic, took a conversational French class on Wednesdays, Pilates on Fridays, went to museums and galleries, had no enemies that they were aware of, and had, until recently, seemed resigned to life as a terminal single since her divorce a few years back. The hot rumor, however, was that a week ago, Elizabeth had spent the night with office heartthrob Luke Russell, a man fourteen years her junior. He’d invited some of them over for his fortieth birthday and Elizabeth had still been there when the last of the guests left. She’d been evasive when the girls quizzed her the next day, but there was a smile on her face as she dodged the questions.

  Great. Could Valerie talk to Mr. Russell?

  Not in person. He’d been away on vacation at his sister’s place in L.A. since the party. Wasn’t due back until Monday.

  Valerie called him. Not surprisingly, he told her he’d been in L.A. since last weekend. Movements for the last two days? Accounted for. He’d been with his sister and her family all day yesterday.

  Could they verify that?

  Of course. Look, what is this about, Detective?

  Motions, motions, motions. She’d spent the day going through the goddamned motions.

  You know who I am. You’ve been waiting for this.

  Rebecca Beitner, head of the attending CSI, joined Valerie on the back porch. Rebecca had a very thin, very pale face and bulbous blue-gray eyes that always looked short of sleep. Not unreasonably, since she was always short of sleep. Elizabeth’s body had been removed and the team had just finished working through the area it had covered on the bed. The death space.

  “Well, it’s an embarrassment of riches,” Rebecca said, lowering her mask. “We’ve got fingerprints all over the scene. I’m guessing there’ll be good stuff from under her nails. If he didn’t use a condom we’ve got that, too. She’s going to be covered in him. If this is your guy, we’ll know.”

  “I already know.”

  “You going to talk to Glass?”

  “I imagine I’ll have to. Oh joy.”

  “You know they moved her, right?”

  “She’s not at Chowchilla?”

  “They’ve put her in the new place. There’s no room at Chowchilla.”

  Valerie knew about the facility at Red Ridge built five years ago to cope with the expanding female population on death row, but she didn’t know it now contained Katherine Glass.

  “I’ve never been up there,” Valerie said.

  “Looks like a modernist bunker,” Rebecca said. “Apparently Katherine reads all day. Literature.”

  Reading. Remembering Katherine’s vast and casually accessible frame of reference, Valerie felt her scalp prickle. Katherine wasn’t supposed to be like that, armed with understanding. Katherine wasn’t supposed to have insight, depth, imagination, empathy. There were so many ways Katherine wasn’t supposed to be, given the one significant way she was. But there she’d sat opposite Valerie in the interviews—in defiance of all the rules.

  “You all done here?” she asked Rebecca.

  “We’re never done, but yeah.”

  “Tell the blues I’m going to be here awhile.”

  “Val, I know the note said to look carefully, but…”

  “It’s not that I don’t think you got everything.”

  “It’s not that I don’t love you, but…”

  “Shut up. You know I love you.”

  Rebecca shrugged: knock yourself out. “Tell me you didn’t have any kind of Saturday night planned, at least?” she said.

  Valerie looked at her watch: 8:20 P.M. Even with another hour here she could be in Calistoga by midnight.

  “Oh,” Rebecca said. “Poor Blasko.”

  “I’ll make it up to him,” Valerie said. “One of these days.”

  “If you want to pull an all-nighter here, I can go take care of him for you.”

  “I don’t think he’s ready for the whole Jewish—” Valerie stopped. She’d been looking down at the step. Next to Rebecca’s foot was a thin deposit of white powder in the shape of a right angle. It looked as if it had been imprinted by the corner of a box. “Hey,” she said. “What’s that?”

  Rebecca pulled a pen flashlight from her apron pocket. Both women got down on their haunches.

  “Could be uncut coke or baking soda for all I know,” Rebecca said. “I don’t recommend tasting it.” She pulled out an evidence packet and spatula. Scooped a little of the powder, deposited it, and sealed the bag.

  “There’s more,” Valerie said. “Give me the light a second. Here. Look.” A very fine trail of the powder led to the iron gate at the side of the building. As far as the flashlight told them it stopped a few feet beyond.

  Look carefully, please.

  Was this it? Was this what she was meant to find?

  “Tell the lab to call me as soon as they know what it is,” she said.

  “Fine
. I’ll log this, then we’re heading out. Have a good one. Let me know if you find any more…”—sarcastic wide eyes—“you know … clues.”

  The CSI team were done for the day but everyone knew enough to assume the autopsy might prompt a second sweep. Therefore the scene would be held. Officers at the front and rear of the building. All the doorway evidence had been gathered, though Gianni Galliano had agreed to stay at his girlfriend’s until the site was formally released.

  All right, Valerie told herself, stepping back inside the kitchen, it’s all yours. Now, what the fuck are we looking for?

  6

  If his note were to be believed, some form of advance warning to Elizabeth. There was nothing like that on the unlocked cell phone. The laptop, iPad, and desktop had been removed for analysis, but Valerie couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be something old-school, physical. Another note? A letter?

  She went through Elizabeth’s wardrobes and drawers, checked all the pockets and purses. Nothing. She sorted through the mail, opened and stacked on the kitchen counter. Con Edison. AT&T. Chemical. Amex. A filing cabinet in the bedroom revealed Elizabeth as an organized keeper of records, with files labeled and alphabetized. All the usual stuff: medical insurance, DMV, paid bills, bank and credit card statements, lease contract for the apartment. There were old Christmas and birthday cards in a box under her bed. Handwritten letters from her college years. At a glance nothing unusual, but Valerie bagged them anyway, to look through later. Photograph albums. Elizabeth’s life in snapshots, the family Polaroids, teen poses, endless prosaic group shots, barbecues, Thanksgiving dinners, college, graduation. What looked like a stint teaching nursery or kindergarten: a very young Elizabeth in a classroom with children barely up to her knee. Three, as far as Valerie could tell, boyfriends. Eventually the boyfriend, who became the Husband. Our Wedding, a separate album, silver inscribed and bound in olive-green velvet. Ornamental gardens. Elizabeth in a white tiered lace dress arm-linked to a tall, nondescript guy in a morning suit with a moppy head of dark hair and a weak chin. More life. An apartment. Skiing trips. Friends who didn’t look like close friends. Then a drop-off. Ten years ago, Valerie estimated. The impact of digital, yes, but also the loss of will. Half an album in which the Husband—she remembered the crossed-out name in the “next of kin” section of Elizabeth’s passport and her colleagues’ mention of a divorce some years back—didn’t feature at all. As soon as Ed called in the positive ID, they’d have to talk to him, wherever the hell he was.