Night Work

by Laurie R. King

  “So you didn't call your husband on Monday?”

  “Oh no, I sure didn't.”

  “And you didn't talk to anyone else who might have told him where you were? A neighbor, maybe? Or a friend you saw in the street?”

  “I didn't see anyone, no.”

  “Where were you on Monday night, Mrs. Larsen?” Kate slipped the question in as if it had no more weight than the others, and Emily answered it before her lawyer could stir in her chair.

  “I was staying at a shelter that Carla set up for me. I'm still there.”

  “And did you leave at all, any time after, say, six on Monday night?”

  “No, I don't think so. No, I'm sure I didn't—there was a meeting and then I stayed up talking to some people until, golly, near midnight.”

  Kate slapped her notebook shut before Carla Lomax could voice an objection.

  “We'd like to borrow the keys to your house, Mrs. Larsen. We need to do a search, to see if your husband may have had visitors or something. We won't disturb anything, and we'll be out of the way before you get back.”

  Carla Lomax automatically began to protest Kate's need for a warrant, but Emily, in a rare gesture of assertiveness, overrode her. “I really don't mind, Carla. I think I'd rather they were in and out before I got there. Instead of standing there watching them go through his stuff, you know.”

  Another indicator that Emily was more than she appeared, this ready grasp of the intrusiveness of a police search. Kate studied her thoughtfully as Emily took a set of keys out of her purse and handed the whole ring over to Kate. Kate wrote out a receipt for them and stood up to go.

  “I'll phone you later this afternoon,” Kate told the woman, “to make arrangements to get these back to you and let you know how things are going. Will you be at the shelter?”

  “Oh. Well, I suppose I could meet you at the house, when you're finished, if I can get a ride. There's no reason not to go home now, is there?”

  Looking at Emily Larsen's bleak attempt at a smile, despite the woman's deceptions Kate could have sworn that she was only now coming to realize that her husband was out of her life. “We have no objection to your returning there, if that's what you're asking, and I would be happy to arrange a ride if it would help. Thank you, Mrs. Larsen. Here's my card, let me know if I can do anything for you. Ms. Lomax, could I have a word, please?”

  Carla Lomax followed Kate out to the hallway, shutting the office door behind them.

  “I'd rather not tell you the location of the shelter,” she began immediately, but Kate put up a hand to stop her.

  “I wasn't going to ask you, although I probably know already. What I wanted to say, Carla,” she said mildly, letting her gaze stray to a child's drawing of a purple cat on the opposite wall, “is that your client seems to know more about her husband's death than she was willing to say, and it might be a good idea for you to have a little discussion with her on the difference between not answering a question and obstructing justice. Before we get into the realm of actual perjury, that is.”

  Kate gave her a smile as insincere as Emily Larsen's declaration of ignorance, and left.

  Back at the Hall of Justice, Kate handed the Larsen keys over to Crime Scene, booted up her computer, and got to work. Hawkin came in an hour later sucking at a peppermint, his thinning hair giving off the aura of the lemon shampoo he habitually used after witnessing an autopsy. She asked him what the pathologist had found.

  “Rigor might have been delayed by fat, might have been speeded by a struggle, but the internal temp confirmed time of death between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty Monday night. Cause of death strangulation. No obvious sign of drug use. So far absolutely zilch at the crime scene. Not even a tire track. Oh, and the tech was right, that was a taser burn on Larsen's chest. Person or persons zapped him, cuffed him, tied a red cotton scarf around his neck, and pulled it tight. Exit one wife-beater.”

  The lab work—blood, organs, fibers, and fingernail scrapings—would take days; there was no need for him to tell her that.

  “Speaking of the wife,” Kate told him, “I think there's something hinky about her.”

  “Hinky?” Hawkin had gone to the coffeepot and paused in the act of holding the carafe up to the light to judge its drinkability. “What's ‘hinky’ mean, anyway?”

  “Odd. Strange. Out of whack. You know.”

  “I don't know. You've been watching that TV cop show again, haven't you? You're worse than Jules.”

  “What's wrong with the way Jules talks?” Hawkin's brilliant teenaged stepdaughter was undeniably a handful, but Kate was very fond of her.

  “Nothing, unless you want English. So, Ms. Larsen's hinky. Would you care to elaborate?”

  “I was about to, until you started going hinky on me. She looks like a typical Betsy Homemaker whose husband liked to slap her around on Friday nights, but she's hiding something about the murder itself. I mean, I'd say she's honestly sorry about his death, God knows why, but she's more annoyed by the actual murder than horrified or in denial or any of the usual reactions. Plus that, when I asked if she knew who did it, she suddenly went all big-eyed and innocent. Even her lawyer thought it was weird.”

  “Big-eyed and innocent like she did it, or like she knows who did?”

  “I think she knows, or suspects anyway. She herself has an alibi—there was a meeting Monday night at the shelter, and after it broke up she sat around until nearly midnight talking. I've been trying to find out about her, but there's not much there. She's never been arrested, never even had a traffic violation.”

  “People close to her?”

  “I was just getting started on tracking down her family, but she doesn't seem to have had any real friends. Not among the neighbors we talked to, anyway.”

  “Doesn't sound like the kind to know a couple of guys who'd be willing to bash the hubby for three hundred bucks. Still, you never know. See what you can find, and then tomorrow we can go back down and talk to the neighbors again. Those people across the street should be back by then.”

  “So should Emily Larsen.”

  “We can talk to her, too.”

  They settled in for a session of keyboards and telephones. Hawkin was on the phone to James Larsen's supervisor at the airport when he heard a sharp exclamation from Kate's desk, and looked up to see a triumphant expression on her face. He finished the call and hung up.

  “Was that a ‘bingo’ I heard?” he asked, scribbling a note to himself.

  “My Catholic upbringing showing. Emily Larsen's brother is one of your basic bad boys. Name's Cash Strickland. In and out of trouble since juvy, just got out of prison in January for aggravated assault. The original charge was murder one, but he got off with a hung jury, and the DA took a plea instead of working through a retrial on the murder rap. Strickland's on parole in San Jose.”

  “Nice and close. Want to go talk with him tonight?”

  Kate glanced at her watch. “The traffic will be hell, and I wanted to be home for an early dinner. Roz Hall and her partner, Maj, are coming over.”

  “The minister and the monkey's mother.”

  “Right. In fact, I'd bet Roz knows about women's shelters. Maybe I'll pick her brains over dinner, see what she knows about one Carla Lomax, attorney-at-law.”

  “Now, that ought to make Lee happy,” Al said dryly.

  “Some casual, general conversation, that's all.”

  “Sure. Tomorrow, then. We can do Larsen's neighbors on the way back. Want me to call Strickland's parole officer?”

  “I'll do it—he's a guy I knew when I worked down there. What do you think—make an appointment with Strickland, or sneak up on him?”

  “I'd say talk to the PO, find out what he thinks. Of course, if you make a date with Strickland and he bolts, that tells us something, too.”

  “True. What did the airport supervisor say?”

  “He gave Larsen back his job when he got out, and Larsen lasted exactly one week before showing up drunk. The su
pervisor fired him.”

  “All in all, not a great month for Jimmy Larsen,” Kate commented, and picked up the phone to call the parole officer assigned to Emily Larsen's brother with the violent past, the brother whose life went far to explain his sister's easy familiarity with arrest proceedings and the terminology of alibi and search.

  For a long time we shall have only to listen,

  Not argue or defend, but listen to each other.

  Let curses fall without intercession,

  Let those fires burn we have tried to smother.

  The reappearance of a witness to one of Kate's other cases delayed her, and in the end she was late anyway to Lee's dinner party. Only a little, though, and by cutting the interview short and dodging through traffic in a manner that would have had Lee pale, she pulled up in her driveway only half an hour after she had said she would be home. Roz's car was parked down the block, a bashed-up red Jeep Cherokee that still showed the signs of the rock face that her assistant pastor had misjudged the previous summer, driving through Yosemite with the youth group on a camping trip. Roz had no doubt found better use for the insurance check than paint repair.

  Kate let herself in, settled for a quick scrub of the hands in lieu of a shower and a change of clothes, and slipped into the empty chair while the entree was still on the table. She glanced uneasily at Lee, and decided to opt for humor: She seized her spoon and twisted her face into a parody of winsomeness.

  “Please, Mum, may I have some, too?”

  Lee was not amused, but she relented enough to take Kate's plate and fill it. Kate said hello to Roz and Maj, asked after Mina-the-monkey (who was two doors down the street at the moment, dining with a friend from school on the forbidden fare of fish sticks and chocolate cupcakes) and the baby (a seven-month lump under Maj's dress, which a recent sonogram had revealed was to be another female addition to the all-woman household). She then dutifully turned to the other two places to greet Jon and his companion, a long-ago lover turned friend named Geoff DeRosa.

  Kate had lived under the same roof as Jon for almost two years, and was occasionally struck dumb with wonder that in all that time she hadn't murdered him. Yet. Jon had been a client of Lee's in her previous life, before they had all become tied together by the bullet that nicked Lee's spine, and he had expiated his guilt feelings over the minor role he played in leading a killer to her door by turning the tables and becoming, over Kate's profound misgivings, his therapist's caregiver. He was strong for his size, a necessary consideration in the early days of Lee's care, and he worked cheap, an even more necessary factor. And if he drove Kate crazy with his continual presence, his endlessly mercurial relationships, and his deep devotion to bad music, he amused Lee, and in the end that was the most important consideration of all. Kate had grown to tolerate him, as she would have an irritating lapdog snuffling around the rugs; they occasionally even had moments of honest connection. Brief moments.

  “I thought you were going to be out tonight,” she said to him, and then hoped she hadn't sounded too disappointed. Jon took the question at face value.

  “Later. Geoff has tickets for the opening of Song.”

  “A new play?” she asked around a mouthful of still-warm scalloped potatoes.

  “You haven't heard of it?” Jon sat back in amazement, an emotion every bit as real as the one manufactured by Emily Larsen. Kate chewed politely and waited for the rest. “You will hear about it soon—the Bible bashers are up in arms. It's bound to be in the paper in the morning. Probably even the TV news.”

  “And why is that?” she prompted obligingly.

  “Because it's from the Good Book itself. They've taken the Song of Songs and set it to music and dance.”

  Light began to dawn. “I suppose it's X-rated?”

  “What else would be the purpose?” Jon answered, fluttering his eyelashes and murmuring in a dramatically throaty voice, “‘Oh, comfort me with apples.’” Geoff giggled in appreciation.

  “You know,” Roz broke in, “there's actually a long tradition of using the Song of Songs for what you might call bawdy purposes. The early rabbis had to pass an injunction against singing it in alehouses. It is pretty dirty.”

  “I don't remember it as being dirty,” Kate objected. Her own childhood Catholicism was long lapsed, but the idea of using the Bible to make a smutty play tweaked some vestigial nerve, leaving her mildly affronted. Roz took her objection as a request for further enlightenment, and went on with her lesson in Bible studies.

  “The Song is generally regarded as symbolic of God's love for His people, but in fact it's probably an adaptation from a royal marriage-slash-battle ritual. Capture your bride and then screw her.”

  “Ooh,” Jon trilled. “Kinky.”

  Lee ignored him, and asked Roz, “Are you serious?” It was not always easy to tell with Roz, but the woman shrugged.

  “It's part of what I'm working on in my thesis,” she said, a trifle defensive—as Lee had once commented, Roz tended to hide her academic side like a dirty secret. She had been working on a Ph.D. for the last few years, in addition to being a full-time ordained minister in an alternative church composed mostly of gay and lesbian parishioners and spending long hours as unpaid advocate for a long list of causes. Maj referred to these, half despairingly, as her partner's Campaigns.

  “I have heard that the production is gorgeous,” Maj commented, since the academic discussion seemed to have reached a dead end. Geoff, it seemed, knew one of the costume designers, which was how he got opening-night tickets and an invitation to the party afterward. Roz, hearing this, declared that she had been looking for someone to help out with a church play, and before anyone quite knew how, she had bullied Geoff into bringing his designer friend by the church the next day to talk about some volunteer work, and then Maj stepped in even more firmly and diverted the conversation into a discussion of the various ethnic dance techniques and costumes used in Song, while Kate dedicated herself to her plate; both enterprises ran empty more or less simultaneously.

  Kate cleared the plates, set some coffee to brew, brought in the glistening fruit tarts Lee had made for dessert, laughed at jokes and told one of her own, and began to feel a part of her relax a fraction under the sheer normality of an evening spent among friends. Maybe she wouldn't ask Roz about Carla Lomax after all.

  When the tarts had been reduced to a few crumbs and Jon and Geoff had left for Song, Kate laid a fire in the fireplace. The four women took their cups (herbal tea for Maj) and moved to the sofas. Kate carried Lee's cup, waited until her lover had settled herself and tucked the cuffed arm crutches out of the way, and then handed Lee the coffee and sat down beside her. Maj eased herself into the overstuffed cushions across from them, and sat back into Roz's encircling arm, just as Lee was settling back against Kate, giving a little sigh of satisfaction that sent a brief electrical shiver up Kate's spine that was as powerful as lust, but more cerebral: hope, perhaps.

  “Do you mind if I put my feet up on the table?” Maj asked. “I know it's rude, but my midwife tells me it helps my circulation.”

  “Of course not,” Lee said. “Can we get you a pillow or something?”

  “No, this is fine.” Maj reached out and turned a magazine facedown before she threaded her bare feet, covered in thick black stockings that reminded Kate of rest homes, out over the low table and onto the magazine. She balanced her cup and saucer on her protruding belly, and grimaced self-consciously. “It's not all fun,” she commented. Indeed, once Kate focused on her, Maj did not appear her normal collected self. She looked pale, even wan, and had not had her usual appetite at dinner.

  “Seven more weeks,” Roz said, rubbing her partner's arm by way of encouragement; Maj appeared more depressed by the remaining time than encouraged.

  “I was very impressed to see the mayor the other night,” Kate told Roz. “Don't tell me you have him making points?”

  “God, no. It's part of his PR, going to school things. Keeping in touch with the community
and all that. Someone suggested this because of the school's high test scores and great ethnic balance, that's all.”

  Kate could well guess who that someone had been, and she wouldn't have been surprised if points had indeed entered the mind of that savvy politician. Of both savvy politicians—Roz was well on her way to becoming a force to be reckoned with, and beyond the borders of the city, or even the state. She looked to be the gay equivalent of what Cecil Williams had become for the African-American community, a charismatic voice, reasonable yet devoutly committed, San Francisco's representative lesbian.

  Roz simply had everything going for her. She was articulate, deeply committed, passionate in her causes but capable of choosing reason over rhetoric, communication over in-your-face confrontation. Despite her relatively moderate public stance and her willingness to compromise, there was no doubt whatsoever where she stood. Even the most radical of gay rights advocates admitted her to their fold, and she had been instrumental over the last few years in engineering seemingly impossible agreements between opposing sides. Enormous of heart, possessed of a cutting intelligence, charismatic, articulate, and tireless, Roz was, in a word, compelling, and Kate was no more immune to her charm than anyone else. Including the mayor, who had once called Roz the nicest woman he'd ever been stabbed by.

  Kate had only met Roz a year before, in the course of an investigation that took her to Berkeley's so-called “holy hill,” the site of a number of theological seminaries. Roz had been wearing her clerical collar and her guise as a late-blooming grad student, and only some months later did Kate discover that Roz and Lee had, as they say, history.