Night Work

by Laurie R. King

  “God no. Sure, you go ahead and tell her we're handling things right. But you might also tell her that I don't appreciate anyone telling me how to do my job.”

  “I'll be sure to mention it. When I saw who had caught the case, I knew it'd be done by the book. What did the scene look like? If you don't mind my nosiness.”

  “Pictures should be ready this afternoon. It was messy—burnings always are. As to whether we're looking at a homicide or not, I couldn't right off tell whether she fell into the stove or the stove fell onto her, if you see what I mean. There was accelerant in either case—it was one of those portable kerosene cook stoves—and there wasn't a whole lot of her left to look at. The whole house nearly went up.”

  “Why didn't it?”

  “The family was home. The sister-in-law was working in the main kitchen, and she saw—”

  “They have two kitchens? Must be a mansion.”

  “Oh no, it's just that they had a separate cooking area in the garden, a shack really—no building permit, of course—where the girl, Pramilla, was working. Sort of what my grandmother would have called a summer kitchen, very sensible in a climate like Fresno, or I suppose India.”

  “I see. Um. Have you talked with the arson investigator?”

  “Not yet. I left him there with Crime Scene, taking a million measurements. He said he'd get back to me. I've got to leave it to him; I'm supposed to be partnered with Sammy.” Sammy Calvo, the department's most politically incorrect detective, who suffered (along with everyone around him) from chronic foot-in-mouth disease, was currently out with the shingles, one of those complaints that seemed like a joke to anyone who had never lived with it. She stifled the flip remark that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy; Boyle presumably was friends with his partner, to some extent at least.

  “Would you like a hand with this one?”

  “I could use it,” he admitted. “But I wouldn't have thought that you need to go around drumming up business.”

  “I've got the two actives, a handful of cold ones, and I'd be happy to give you a couple of hours' follow-up on this one.”

  “Right, then. I have to be in court all day—do you want to give the ME and the arson investigator a call this afternoon, see what they have? You might even go see them, if you have the time.” It being a recognized fact of life that the physical presence of an investigator was harder to ignore than a voice on the phone.

  “I'll stop by if I can, pick up their reports. Anything to keep Reverend Hall off the chief's back,” she told him. The machine on the counter had stopped gurgling, so Kate poured them each a cup of coffee and they went back to their desks.

  One of those jobs came to her, saving her trekking across the city. Amanda Bonner phoned and said that Roz Hall (at the very mention of whose name Kate was beginning to develop a wince) had told her to call and tell Kate what she knew. Kate hesitated, decided that Boyle would be happy enough to hand the preliminary interview over to her, and told Bonner to come down. She was there within half an hour.

  Kate could well imagine that a teenager out of village India would find Amanda Bonner an impressive figure. She herself found Bonner impressive. Six feet tall, a hundred sixty pounds of very solid bone and muscle, she made Kate feel short, pale, flabby, and ineffectual. Her hand was dry and callused when she shook Kate's officeworker palm, and she shed her jacket in the warmth of the small interview room to reveal sculpted muscles beneath a tank top. Kate might have tagged her as a bodybuilder, but Bonner just dropped into a chair with no hint of arrangement or posing except that when she leaned forward to talk with Kate, the top of her shirt fell away from her chest, giving Kate a glimpse of unfettered breasts that were surprisingly generous, with a sprinkling of freckles and a tan that appeared to go all the way down. Kate averted her eyes and sat down firmly in her own chair, pulling up a businesslike notebook and pen to take the woman's statement.

  As Roz had told Kate, Bonner had met Pramilla Mehta over a head of purple kale in the supermarket. She had seen the Indian girl numerous times before that, since Amanda's aging parents lived on the same block as the Mehtas and Amanda stopped in almost every day to shop and cook and generally check up on them.

  “It's a pretty ritzy area, you know. The Mehtas are about the only ethnic people there—aside from the gardeners and cooks. A beautiful young girl wearing a salwar kameez and a dozen silver bracelets sticks out.”

  “What was your relationship with Pramilla Mehta?” Kate asked.

  “Friendship, basically. Older sister stuff. If you're asking if I slept with her, the answer is no. Frankly, she wasn't my kind. For one thing, she was straight—or at least, she was too young and confused to think about being anything else. Personally, I prefer the strong, confident type. Don't you?”

  Now Kate was certain that the gaping shirt had been no accident, though she kept her face as straight as Pramilla's orientation. It happened often enough, women flirting with her, since everyone in the city who read a paper or watched the news knew who and what Kate Martinelli was. All she could do was ignore it, as she had a dozen times before. No different, really, from a straight male cop with a female witness coming on to him. Amusing, but she mustn't show that; a smile would either offend or be taken as an encouragement.

  “How did you communicate with the girl?” Kate asked. “I thought she didn't speak much English.”

  “I've traveled all over the world, and had a lot of experience in talking to people whose language I don't speak. It's mostly a matter of not being embarrassed about making a fool of yourself with sign language and asking for words. And besides, Pramilla understood a lot, and as soon as she realized that I wasn't going to make fun of her like her family did, she relaxed and could speak a lot better than when she was worried about getting it right.”

  “But I would expect that a lot of what you understood about her life was reading between the lines,” Kate suggested.

  “That's true. And I'm sure I read some of the more subtle things wrong. But then, that happens even between people who speak the same language, doesn't it?”

  “Did she tell you that her husband hit her? In so many words?”

  “One day she had a bad bruise on her cheek. I asked if Laxman had done it, and she nodded.”

  “Nodded, or shrugged?”

  “That sort of Indian wag of the head. It means, ‘Oh yes, but never mind.’”

  It could mean any number of things, thought Kate to herself. “And the other abuses? You told Roz that Peter's wife, Rani, pinched her.”

  “And slapped her a couple of times. It's fairly traditional in families like that to find a younger relative imported as a servant—or an older one, which the Mehtas have as well. Slave is more like it, because they aren't usually paid wages, just given a bed and food. Pramilla at least had Laxman's allowance.”

  “Have you met Laxman?”

  “Not directly. I've seen him a couple of times, once with her in the market telling her what to buy, and once when they were getting off a bus. He was carrying this tiny parcel, a pie or something in a bakery box, and he got off first; she was behind him with this great armload of string bags of vegetables and two grocery bags, and she stumbled coming down the steps and nearly dropped the lot. He just shouted at her—in Hindi so I couldn't understand the words, but it was obvious that he was giving her hell. Then he walked away leaving her to carry the rest.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do? Nothing.” Bitterness crept into Bonner's voice. “Pramilla had made it clear that it only made more problems for her when I tried to interfere. If I'd seen Laxman actually hit her, I would have stepped in, called the police, the whole nine yards. But since I didn't, I thought it would be better for her if she made the decision to leave him. She had my number, she knew I would come to her any time of the day or night. I even gave her a hot-line number, in case she wanted to talk to someone who understood better than I.”

  “Understood …?”

  “Her situati
on and her language. But as far as I know, she never called. Not then, anyway.”

  Kate lifted her eyebrows in a question. After a minute, Bonner reluctantly dredged up the rest of it. “I think she may have tried to call me, just before she was killed. I was out shopping for my parents, and when I got home there was a hang-up message on the answering machine. Nobody there, and when I tried to do that star sixty-nine thing to call back, it wouldn't go through. And then that afternoon when I went to take the groceries to my folks, there were all these police cars down the street. I can't help but wonder …”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Well.”

  Had Pramilla Mehta been religious? Kate wondered as she walked Amanda Bonner to the elevator. Would she have said that fate—karma—kept her friend Amanda from being there when she needed her? And what about her death; would a fifteen-year-old girl agree that death was nothing, reincarnation all? Or was that a Buddhist conceit, not a Hindu one?

  Assuming, of course, that the hang-up call was from Pramilla. The Mehta phone records would tell, although it would not be a kindness to confirm Amanda's fears. Maybe she'd just let it go.

  Just after midday, Kate and Al drove up to talk with Matthew Banderas's boss, Janice Popper. The software company was in an uninspired strip of businesses just off the freeway, clean and tidily landscaped and working hard to appear both cutting-edge (a modern tangle of sculpture out front) and reassuringly stable (thick carpeting in the entrance foyer). They identified themselves to the receptionist, who picked up the phone and announced their arrival. Popper came out of the back and greeted them, ushering them back to her office with a declaration that Kate had heard dozens of times before in similar circumstances, although she freely admitted that very occasionally it was true.

  “I don't think I can help you much,” Popper told them. “I didn't really know the man.”

  “That's fine,” Hawkin said, settling into his chair across the desk from her and presenting her with a genial smile. “We just need to be thorough. Let's see. You 've only had this job a few months, is that right? Did you work for the company before that, or were you hired from outside?”

  “Nine weeks now, and I was headhunted. Brought in from outside. That may have been one of the problems, with Matthew, that is. He applied for this position, although he wasn't really qualified. His experience was almost exclusively in sales, not general administration.”

  Janice Popper was a small, thin woman with a number of nervous habits involving her fingers, which made Kate wonder if she'd recently given up smoking and had to find something to do with her hands. Right now she was tugging irritably at the sleek dark brown hair that fell along her jawline, trying to tuck it behind her ear—without success, as it was about half an inch too short to stay tucked—and adjusting her titanium-framed designer glasses as if they were bothering the bridge of her nose.

  “When did you find out about his criminal record?” Al asked her.

  “My second week here. I never had a proper handover because the guy who did this job before me had a heart attack and wasn't up to briefing me, and personnel records were secondary to active contracts and ongoing negotiations. It took me a week or so to get my feet under me, begin to get a handle on the shape of the company. After that I started taking appointments with personnel, people with problems or urgent suggestions, wanting transfers or raises, that kind of thing. Most of them, of course, just wanting a chance to size up the new boss and make an impression. Banderas came in around the middle of that week, maybe Thursday. I always have my secretary give me a file on an appointment so I know something about them—single or five kids, war veteran or university graduate, anything like that. Nothing confidential you know, just background. So I open the file for my ten o'clock or whatever it was and see that Matthew Banderas was on record as a sex offender. I left the door wide open during that appointment, I can tell you.”

  “You said you had decided to fire him?” Hawkin asked.

  “Not for that,” she quickly said. “I'd have no right to fire him for a past offense, either legally or ethically, no matter how uncomfortable it made me feel. No, he was falling down on his job. The sales numbers just weren't coming in, and numbers are the bottom line. We work by salary plus commission, and we couldn't afford to pay somebody who wasn't bringing it in.”

  “But he'd been okay before you came?”

  “Not really. He'd been slipping for some months.” She paused, choosing her words. “I ran an analysis on his sales, trying to track it down, thinking I might help him out. I found that almost all of his successful sales contacts were men.” She shook her head. “There's just too many women in charge of buying to write off that whole side of the market.”

  “He alienated women buyers, then?”

  “Somehow, yes.”

  “Any way of finding out how?”

  “I wouldn't want to ask them directly, if that's what you're saying. It's hardly a great sales technique, to remind buyers that you had a rep who was not only a prick but a rapist to boot, who on top of that managed to get himself murdered.”

  “On the other hand,” Kate suggested, “it might clear the air if one of your female sales reps had a few woman-to-woman talks with people who turned Banderas down. Might get across the message that it wasn't going to happen again.”

  Popper sat still for a moment, staring at Kate and thinking. Her right hand came up to tuck the uncooperative lock behind her ear, and she nodded.

  “You may be right. We'll run a trial, and tell you what—if I find anything out about Matthew, I'll pass it on to you.”

  “One other thing,” Hawkin said, interrupting the forward shift in her body's position that presaged their dismissal. “Who else knew about Banderas's history?”

  “I have no idea. No, really—I don't,” she insisted. “I would guess that either everybody knew, or nobody. It's the sort of thing that tends to spread, but I haven't been here long enough to develop my own network within the company, and I've been too damn busy to ask around about him. Why don't you talk to my secretary—she's been here forever.”

  Both times Popper had said the phrase “my secretary,” she had looked as if she were biting into something unpleasant, leading Kate to suspect that the secretary had been inherited with the job, and that Popper was none too pleased about it. She was probably temporarily dependent on the woman—and the woman's own “network” of knowledge and contacts— but somehow Kate thought that would not continue for long.

  The woman in the outer office was pale, slow-moving, spoke with a trace of Texas in her voice, and was at least a decade older than her thin new boss with the nervous fingers.

  “Oh, indeed,” she told them. “Everybody knew. Everybody that mattered, that is. I made sure the new girls all heard, just so they wouldn't accept rides from Mr. Banderas, if you see what I mean. Not that he ever seemed to look close to home—as far as I know he never gave any of the girls here so much as a glance— but I thought it was good to be careful.”

  “Did you tell anyone outside of work?”

  “I may have mentioned it to two or three friends,” she replied stiffly, “but I wouldn't have told them his name.”

  “Has anyone ever contacted you, inquiring about Banderas?”

  “No.” And, her prim expression added, she would not have told them had they asked.

  Hawkin thanked her in his warmest fashion, which made no impression at all on her disapproval. As he and Kate left, he glanced at his watch.

  “Too late for lunch?” he asked, sounding hopeful.

  “Didn't you eat?”

  “I had a late breakfast. I don't really eat breakfast at home these days. Jani turns green if she's around anything but dry cereal and herb tea before noon. Morning sickness—though I don't know why they call it that, since it lasts most of the day.”

  “Let's go eat, then.”

  It was coffee that Al seemed to crave even more than food, since Jani's hormones had abruptly found the merest whiff of the stuff inst
antly nauseating. He seized the cup as soon as the waitress had filled it, drank half of it down, and sat back with a sigh of contentment.

  “Is Jani okay other than morning sickness?”

  “She's fine. She's even gaining a little weight, though I don't know how since she never seems to eat. She went in yesterday and heard the baby's heartbeat. Said it sounded like a bird's.”

  “I'm glad for you both. For all of you.”

  “Jules said to say hi, by the way. So,” he said in an abrupt change of subject, “how do we tie these two bastards together?”

  Two men who lived their lives miles apart, both literally and figuratively, brought together by the means of their deaths.

  “Could it be a coincidence, that they both had a history of abusing women? A more or less random stalker?”

  Al was shaking his head, not so much in disagreement as an expression of bafflement. “What're the odds? A blue-collar baggage handler in his fifties who beats his wife in South San Francisco and a young hotshot software salesman with a bachelor pad and a habit of raping strangers?”

  “We need to take a closer look at Matty's victims. Maybe one of them has a brother who works at the airport.”

  “Be nice.”

  “Hey. Things happen sometimes.”

  “I'll hold my breath,” Al said sourly.

  “We're going to need to do all the airport interviews again, as well as follow-ups with all the people who worked with Banderas or lived near him,” said Kate, making notes.

  “The women, for sure.”

  “What about handing some of it over to what's-her-name—Wiley? She seemed good.”

  “If you think you can talk her into working with us instead of going it on her own, sure. She struck me as a one-man show. One-woman show.”

  “I'll talk to her.”

  “If she's available this afternoon, you could drop me back at the software place, I could get started on those.”

  “Might be better tomorrow,” Kate said. “I need to be back in the City before five. I've set up a couple of interviews on another case and I'd like to clear them up.”