Night Work

by Laurie R. King

  Just before his release from jail, according to the neighbors, Emily had packed her bags and been driven off by a woman in a Mercedes; she had not been seen since. Or heard from: Emily's few acquaintances did not know where she was, her sister in Fresno hadn't spoken with her since early March, and their father, in a rest home near Fresno, neither knew nor was he interested.

  When Emily Larsen had not shown up at her house the following morning, Kate had asked the phone company to preserve the records of the incoming calls for a few days, and then made out a request for a search warrant on the records for the Larsen phone. It was the previous month's phone bill that gave the missing woman away. Four days before her husband was released from jail, Emily had made a telephone call to a lawyer's office in San Francisco. Kate, working her way through the calls, heard the greeting “Law offices” and knew she'd found the wife. She identified herself, asked to speak with the partner who was representing one Emily Larsen, declined to be called back, and settled in with her heels on the desk to wait. She listened to the piano music of call-holding coming through the receiver, understanding that legal dignity required that a cop be made to wait. She'd done the same herself to lawyers. With the phone tucked under her chin, she sat tight and glanced through a stack of memos and Daily Incident Recaps that had been accumulating on her desk. The recaps, in addition to the usual list of attempted robberies, hit-and-runs, and sexual assaults, included the laconic description of assault by a chronic urinator who was proving a nuisance to passersby— particularly those on bicycles. The memos included one decree (what Kate reckoned was the thirtieth such issued) that department personnel were not, under any circumstances, to make jokes about the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, or duct tape, or the color purple. Another memo was the announcement that an unknown group had been plastering up flyers seeming to advocate the extermination of all male children, which caused Kate to read it more closely and shake her head. She was looking at a third memo bearing a stern reminder concerning the cost to local supermarkets of the oversized plastic shopping carts favored by the homeless, when the music in her ear cut off abruptly and a woman's voice spoke in her ear.

  “Inspector Kate Martinelli?”

  “That's right.”

  “Carla Lomax here. I believe we've met, at a fundraiser for the teen shelter. I certainly know your name.”

  And reputation, Kate thought. In fact, she'd counted on it. “Good, then you'll know I'm not the bad guy here. I'm trying to reach one of your clients, Emily Larsen.”

  “What makes you think—”

  “She called this number on March sixteenth, a few days before her abusive husband was freed from jail. A day or two later, some woman came to the house and drove Emily Larsen away. Her husband has died. I need to talk with her.”

  “What happy news.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That the bastard is dead. It makes my job a lot easier, and Emily's life. Not that she will see it that way, poor thing, but truth to tell she would have gone back to him eventually, and eventually he would have killed her. Much better this way.”

  “Um.” In Kate's experience, lawyers did not speak so frankly, certainly not to a cop. “Right. You are representing her, then? May I have her address, please?”

  “I am representing her, yes, and I think it would be better if I continued to do so by asking you to come here to interview her in my presence. She's living in a shelter, and it's better if the residents don't feel invaded. I could bring her to you, if you'd prefer, Inspector.”

  Kate reflected for a moment before deciding that if the much-abused Emily Larsen had nothing to do with her husband's death, it would not help matters to drag her downtown, whereas if she did, keeping the first interview away from police territory would give the woman a false sense of security that might come in useful later.

  “I'll come there,” she said. “What time?”

  They agreed to two o'clock at Lomax's law offices south of Market Street. Kate took her heels off her desk, brought the paperwork for that report and a couple of others up to date, and went home for lunch, a rare occurrence.

  At two o'clock, while Al Hawkin was bracing himself for the first cut of the pathologist's knife into the body of James Larsen, Kate rang the bell at the entrance of the anonymous building. As Kate thoughtfully eyed the dents and bashes in the surface of the stout metal door, the speaker set over the bell crackled to life, and the same secretarial voice she had heard before declared, “Law offices.”

  “Inspector Kate Martinelli to see Ms. Lomax.” She lifted her face to the camera lens concealed in the reaches of the entranceway, and was buzzed in.

  Half a mile north of this address, law offices meant marble, polished oak, smoked mirrors, abstract art, and a size-five receptionist with a daily manicure. Here it meant industrial-quality carpeting, white walls in need of a touch-up, museum posters in drugstore frames, and a size-sixteen secretary with short, unpainted nails on her skilled hands. She also had a waist-length braid keeping her graying brown hair in order, no makeup to speak of, skin too pale to have spent time out of doors, and a large basket of toys next to her desk. The woman fixed Kate with a gaze that had seen it all.

  “Have a seat,” she offered, though it sounded more like an order. “Carla will be here in a minute.”

  “That's a good security setup,” Kate commented, remaining on her feet. “Do you have a lot of problems here?” SoMa was not the most crime-free part of town by any means, and that door had been the victim of at least one determined assault.

  “It's because we have security that we haven't had problems.”

  “Angry husbands?”

  “And boyfriends and fathers. They pound away until the cops get here, making fools of themselves for the camera.” She glanced at the monitors with amused but slightly bitter satisfaction, and Kate, reflecting that the odds were high the woman had once needed the services of a women's advocate lawyer herself, moved around the desk as if the glance had been an invitation. Peering over the secretary's shoulder, she saw the displays of four security cameras. Two showed a small parking area; as Kate watched, a light-colored, boxy Mercedes sedan at least ten years old pulled through an opening gate on one screen and parked on one of a half-dozen spaces shown on the next. From the car stepped two women, the driver sorting through her keys as she approached the building until the all-seeing secretary pressed a button and freed the door.

  Kate walked up and down for a few minutes, trying to get an impression of the law offices. Casual seemed to be the unifying decorative theme, beginning with the untidy forest of objects on the receptionist's desk (two spindly plants; a flowered frame with the picture of a young girl; a delicate terra-cotta Virgin and Child; a figurine of an Indian goddess with a black face and golden crown; a three-inch-tall carved box representing a heap of cheerfully intertwined cats; a sprig of redwood cones; and a chipped coffee mug, stuffed with a handful of pens and pencils, that proclaimed “When God created man, She was only joking”). The works of art on the walls were similarly eclectic, with museum posters (Monet and Van Gogh) adjoining framed crayon studies (stick figures and box houses) and one competent and very original tempera study of a woman and two children, done with a deft hand in pleasing tones of green and blue. In the corner were the initials P W, and Kate was just thinking that Lee would like this when Carla Lomax came into the room to shake Kate's hand and lead her back into the building. As Kate followed, she glanced into the other rooms. There looked to be a couple of other partners in the firm, neither of them at their desks. Between two unoccupied offices was a meeting room with a large round wooden table that took up so much of the floor space, it must have been assembled in the room. On the wall a striking black and white poster caught Kate's eye, the blown-up photograph of a woman with a swollen mouth and two black eyes, a bandage on her scalp, and a cast on one hand, gazing tiredly at the camera. Underneath her image were printed the words, But he loves me. Kate wasn't sure if it was meant to be a j
oke; if so, it was a bleak one.

  Carla Lomax stepped into the next office, sat behind her desk, and waved Kate at a chair across from her. Again Kate remained on her feet. Two could play games in the world of legal give-and-take.

  “I thought we might have a word before I bring Emily in,” Lomax told her. “Just so we're in agreement here.”

  “What is there to agree about?” Kate asked, half turned away from Lomax to study an attractive arrangement of framed photographs of the City at night, gaudy North Beach, Chinatown shimmering in the rain.

  “Emily Larsen has just lost her husband. She does not need to be harassed.”

  Kate took a step over to the next display of photos, an assortment of scenes from foreign countries: a woman in a market, brilliant colors in her shawl and a bowler hat on her head; three thin but laughing children playing in a street with a bicycle rickshaw behind them; a woman seated at a backstrap loom, a weaving of vibrant oranges, pinks, and greens emerging from the threads.

  “These are nice,” Kate commented. “Where are they from?”

  “Bolivia, India, and Guatemala.”

  “Did you take them?”

  “Yes,” the lawyer said. “Inspector Martinelli—”

  “Ms. Lomax, how much criminal law have you done since you passed your exams?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Mostly family law, right?”

  “I know my law,” Lomax said, offended.

  “I'm sure you do. But please, rest assured that so do I, and I don't go around screwing with family members; it jeopardizes both my job and my cases. Let's just bring Mrs. Larsen in and let me talk with her, and then I'll let you both be.”

  As Kate had suspected, Carla Lomax was more at home with the intricacies of divorce, child custody, and restraining orders than she was with Miranda rights and criminal investigations. The lawyer hesitated, but in the end she stood up and went to fetch Emily Larsen.

  Kate continued to wander around the room, moving from the photos to a display of ethnic dolls and trucks on a low shelf (the better to distract the children of clients?), an impressive bookshelf of legal and psychological tomes, and finally a glass case containing female figures from all over—a grimacing Aztec goddess giving birth to the sun, a multiple-breasted female who looked vaguely Mediterranean next to a woman in wide skirts holding a pair of snakes, the Polish Black Virgin, and the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. Prominently displayed in front was a crude dark-skinned figure six inches tall, with many arms, bare breasts, and a protruding tongue: wild-eyed and wild-haired, the figure wore a necklace of grinning skulls and held a decapitated head in one of her hands. Kate, nonplussed, could only wonder what Carla Lomax's troubled clients made of their lawyer's art collection.

  The door opened and Carla came in with Emily Larsen, and Kate shook her hand and introduced herself, sitting down with the two women in a group of chairs and making remarks about the weather and traffic to put Emily at ease.

  In fact, though, Kate was always uncomfortable around victims of chronic spousal abuse, those walking reminders of the vulnerability of women—particularly those weighed down with children. Intellectually, professionally, she fully understood that a person's willingness to put up with abuse had its roots deep in childhood, when a groundwork of self-contempt and a deep sense of worthlessness was laid down, feelings that made it nearly impossible to stand up to bullying. As a person, however, as a woman, Kate felt primarily frustration and impatience, and even a tinge of completely unfounded revulsion, at their weakness, their willingness to crawl back like beaten dogs to lick the hand of their tormentor. When confronted by a woman who persisted in an abusive relationship, Kate inevitably found herself stifling the question, Why hadn't the woman just hauled off and brained her husband with a skillet?

  But then again, maybe this one had.

  Everything about the recent widow in front of Kate was apologetic and unassuming, from her limp handshake to her slumped shoulders. The heavy frames of her cheap glasses nearly hid the washed-out brown of her eyes, her face was a pale contrast to the flat black of hair that showed gray at the roots, and the drab cotton dress that hung over her dumpy figure had been washed to the point of colorlessness. Kate began by expressing her sympathies over the loss of her husband; Emily Larsen responded by wincing, her eyes filling. Kate sighed quietly to herself.

  “Ms. Larsen … Emily. I believe that Ms. Lomax has told you that your husband was killed, on Monday night or Tuesday morning? That he was murdered?”

  Kate waited for a response from the woman before she went on, expecting either a meek nod or silent tears. What she saw instead made her sit back sharply, the usual string of questions cut short. A small grimace had puckered up Emily Larsen's mouth—brief, but clear. Why on earth would the woman react to Kate's words with disapproval? But what else looked like that? Could it have been an objection to the tasteless word “murder”? Kate wondered. She wished Al were here. With all her instincts set to quivering by that involuntary moue across the woman's face, she would have to proceed very carefully.

  “Were you and James separated, Mrs. Larsen?”

  “A trial separation,” Emily admitted in a small voice.

  “Your husband had a history of abusing you. Was that the main reason?”

  “I was … yes.”

  “You were afraid of him, I do understand. He hit you, didn't he?”

  Emily glanced at Carla, mouth open as if to protest, but she subsided and only nodded.

  “Did he hit your kids as well?”

  The woman looked up quickly. “Never. He wouldn't. Jimmy's—Jimmy was a good man. He loved us, he really did. He just … lost control sometimes.”

  “When he was drinking.”

  Another nod.

  “Did you ever get the feeling that your husband was involved with someone outside the home?”

  “Involved? You mean, like with another woman?” The very idea was enough to shake Emily Larsen in a way nothing else had.

  Kate hastened to reassure her that her loving husband hadn't been taking it elsewhere, so far as she knew.

  “Not necessarily a woman. Gambling, maybe, going to the races, perhaps something mildly illegal that he wouldn't have wanted you to find out about?”

  “I really don't know. There's nothing I can think of, and Jimmy never went away much except to work and bowling and stuff. And someone having … you know, an affair, they always say they're working overtime, don't they?”

  “Did your husband ever have money that wasn't explained by his salary?”

  “No,” Emily replied, reassured that Kate wasn't about to spring a rival on her, but obviously bewildered by the questions. Kate let it go. A baggage handler behind the scenes at a busy airport might have opportunity for crime, but if Larsen had indulged in smuggling or rifling bags, he had kept it from his wife. Kate would try another tack.

  “Mrs. Larsen, did your husband come up to San Francisco a lot?”

  “No. He never did.”

  “Never?”

  “Except for the airport, of course, and to Candlestick or whatever they're calling it now. He mostly liked football, but he'd go to baseball games if he could get cheap tickets. And if he was going to Oakland, he'd go through the City even if he came back around the Bay. To save on the bridge fare, you know? Jimmy hated to pay the fare.” Toll on the Bay's various bridges was collected only one way, although as far as Kate knew, it was cheaper to pay it than to drive clear around the Bay. James Larsen may have been one who resented the fare enough to spend the gas money, and an hour longer on the road, to avoid paying it.

  “So you have no idea what he was doing in the Presidio on Monday night?”

  Emily shook her head, as much in wonder as to indicate a negative. “It seems a strange place for Jimmy to go.”

  “Was he a golfer?” Kate asked desperately, thinking of the Presidio golf course—although Larsen had not been dressed for golf any more than he had been for jogging. Emily looked as if Kate h
ad suggested nude sunbathing or jai alai, and told her no.

  No drugs on the body, no unexplained cash, no extramarital entertainment on the side. Larsen's death was proving more and more enigmatic. “Mrs. Larsen,” Kate said finally, “do you have any idea why someone would have wanted to kill your husband?” she asked, and for the second time Emily Larsen's answer gave Kate a jolt. This time the woman looked directly into Kate's face, her eyes theatrically wide.

  “No. Of course not,” she said. “Who would want to kill Jimmy?”

  She had all the guile of a child, her lie so blatant Kate couldn't help glancing at the lawyer. Carla Lomax was sitting motionless in her chair, working hard at not reacting to her client's words, but Kate had the distinct impression that the lawyer was as dismayed by Emily's response as Kate was.

  At that juncture Kate had two choices. She could press Emily Larsen until the woman came clean or broke down—or, more likely, until Lomax put a halt to it. If Kate knew what was going on, if she even had a clear suspicion of what lay behind Emily's odd evasiveness, she would not hesitate to push, but there were times when it was better to pull away and go do some research, and all Kate's instincts were telling her this was one of them. Find out who Emily Larsen was and what pushed her levers, and with that weapon in hand, come back and pin her to the wall.

  Kate arranged an expression of openness on her face, and nodded as if in acceptance of the answer. “When was the last time you talked to Jimmy?”

  “About, oh, a week ago?” She looked at Carla Lomax, who knew better than to give her an answer. “It was—oh right, it was last Tuesday. I called to let him know I was okay, and not to forget that the gas man was coming the next day to check a leak I'd smelled. We didn't talk much. I asked him how he was and told him I was okay, and he said when was I coming home and I said I wasn't, and then he started getting mad and so I just hung up on him,” she said proudly, and then spoiled the effect by letting out a sad, deflating little sigh halfway to being a whimper, and adding parenthetically, “I don't even know if he stayed home to let the gas man in.”