“You will. I know you will.” As she said it, speaking softly, he felt her touch his cheek, felt her move toward him, an invitation to intimacy.
“I shouldn’t do this,” he said. “I shouldn’t bring my troubles home. It’s a bad idea.”
“You don’t do it often, Frank. This is something special.”
“Why should it bother me, that she told me about her father?”
“Maybe it’s because of the responsibility. You already have so much responsibility, just doing your job, trying to—to insulate yourself from the pain you see, all the time. So when it’s someone you know, it’s worse. It’s got to be worse.”
“There’s no family—no one who cares what happens to her body, not really.”
“God, that’s the saddest part of it all, really. She was so beautiful, so desirable. She drove men wild—every woman’s dream. But—now—there’s no one who really cares. You probably care more than anyone. And you hardly knew her.”
As he listened to her, the image of Meredith’s father came back across the years: Johnny Powell, a big, blustering bully. Then, a soundtrack overlay, today’s telephone conversation replayed: the hallway phone, the confusing noises in the background, the bleary voice of Meredith’s father.
“Maybe it’s her father. Maybe that’s what’s really bothering me—that I’ve got to see him tomorrow.”
She touched his cheek again, came closer. Her voice was husky, deepened by desire as she said softly, “Don’t think about it now, darling. Not now.”
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17
2:20 P.M. “CALL ME Johnny, Frank. Everyone in the block called me Johnny. Don’t you remember?”
Aware of the effort, Hastings glanced at the other man, then spoke coldly. “All right. Johnny.” He returned his gaze to the freeway: six lanes of traffic flowing north from the airport toward San Francisco.
Meeting the flight from Los Angeles, he’d had no difficulty recognizing Powell: a hulking wreck of a man, red faced, with a paunch so huge that it dwarfed his arms and legs and drew his shoulders and head forward, as if the whole body was needed to support it. His thick, graying hair was badly cut, his shapeless blue polyester jacket and mismatched trousers were wrinkled and stained. Close up, the face had the texture of badly kneaded dough; the flesh was a solid network of broken blood vessels. The eyes were moist and rheumy: faded blue, edged with mottled white. The large, shapeless lips were slack; the flesh beneath the jowls sagged pendulously. It was the face of a lifelong drinker, a man who had long ago surrendered.
“Where’re we going now, Frank?” Powell’s voice was permanently roughened: a panhandler’s voice, thin and whining. The eyes were in constant, restless movement. Con man’s eyes.
“We’re going to the funeral home.” He was aware that he was speaking curtly. “Then I’ll take you to the hotel.”
“Will we—” Powell coughed: a harsh, wet rattle, deep in his chest. “Will we—see her? Is that why we’re going to the funeral home?”
“No, we won’t see her. It’s just that you have to sign some papers. If you—” He was forced to pause. “If you want her embalmed, that’s a decision you have to make. It’s a financial decision.”
“Financial?”
“It costs extra, to have her embalmed.” He looked at the other man, another sharp glance, without compassion. “Your wife and Kevin, they died. Haven’t you been all through this?”
“Well—ah—no. Not like this. I mean, there was always—you know—Meredith. She took care of it. I—you know—I always did whatever I could. But plumbing—you know—the work’s always spotty, when you’re a plumber.”
“I always thought plumbers made good money.”
“Well, sure. When you work, you make good money. But I’m—you know—I’m sixty-seven years old. I got Social Security, and that’s it, Frank. That’s the whole story.” Powell coughed again, deeper this time—a spasm that wracked his whole body. Then, recovering, noisily swallowing the phlegm, he began to speak.
But Hastings cut him off. “I’ll vouch for the fact that she has assets, so there shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Ah—” Powell nodded, coughed again, nodded again. “Ah, that’s good, Frank. I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel, to know I’ll be able to—you know—do something nice for Meredith. It—” He blinked, snuffled. “It means a lot to me, I’ll tell you that.”
Once more Hastings glanced briefly at John Powell, then returned his eyes to the traffic. He would wait in silence for what he knew would surely follow.
“By the way,” Powell said, “since we’re speaking of money, I was wondering, Frank, whether you could see your way clear to …”
4:00 P.M. Even when the weather was gray, Granville had discovered, enough people came to Golden Gate Park over the weekend to keep him in food through Tuesday.
And in the summer, even with the fog in, the food could last until Thursday, for him and Chum. Sometimes the food spoiled before they could eat it all.
He set his plastic trash bag on the grass and bent over the large green-painted steel barrel, yellow-stenciled CCSF. The barrel was lined with plastic. Things had gotten better since they’d started lining the green steel barrels. Cleaner, and better. And healthier, too. Healthier for him, and healthier for Chum. Only a few months ago, Chum had gotten sick a lot, thrown up a lot. Or was it a few years ago?
Beside the barrel, weighted down with a rock, neatly folded, someone had left a copy of the Sunday Sentinel. The Sunday papers, he knew, had been out only since noon. So someone had paid a dollar for the paper and then left it under a rock.
All his life, even when he was very small, he’d been able to read. They’d all been surprised, how well he could read.
4:45 P.M. Granville tucked the funnies under the edge of his sleeping bag and opened the main news section. They were the only parts of the paper he ever read: the funnies and the main news. And only on Sundays. He could get the daily paper. There wasn’t a day that he couldn’t get the daily paper. But it was too much, to read the paper every day. It took too much time.
On the top half of the front page there was nothing that he recognized, only names of places he didn’t know, pictures of people he couldn’t recognize. But at the bottom of the front page there was a picture of a dog. It was a small dog with large ears. And soft eyes, too—soft eyes, and a mouth that smiled. He looked at Chum, curled up beside him on top of the sleeping bag. Had Chum ever smiled? He couldn’t remember.
He returned to the newspaper, and began reading the large letters of the headline: HAVE DRUG LORDS PUT PRICE ON PRINCE’S HEAD?
Price on Prince’s head? He looked at the picture again. What did it mean? If he read the story, took the time, he could find out. He knew he could find out, if he took the time. But already the leaden gray clouds of the sky overhead were darkening. In another hour the words would be invisible.
While he thought about it, he would turn to the second page.
Near the top of the second page—no, the third page—there was a picture of a woman. She was a very beautiful woman with blond hair. She was smiling directly into his eyes. Now she was smiling.
It was the same woman he’d seen in the park. Naked. Leaves matted in her hair, eyes open wide, staring at the sky. Insects crawling on her white skin. Then she hadn’t been smiling.
But now she was smiling. At him. Just for him.
This, he knew, was a sign.
Today was Saturday, in the late afternoon. Two days ago—on Thursday morning, early, he’d found her. And every day, every hour—ever since—he’d thought about her. It was as if she’d come into his life through a door that was closed, but unlocked. Somehow she’d gotten tangled in his thoughts, even tangled in his dreams. When he wasn’t thinking of Chum, he was thinking of her, the woman with the leaves in her beautiful blond hair.
Carefully he creased down the newspaper and settled himself against the base of the big pine tree that just fit his back. He turned the newspaper
for the brightest light, then began to read: POLICE SEEK CLUES IN MURDER OF MEREDITH POWELL.
MONDAY FEBRUARY 19
9:20 A.M. STANDING AT Hastings’s window, Friedman pointed to the long gray arc of the Bay Bridge, partially obscured by the low-lying winter fog that covered the bay. “Look at that. There’s a goddamn tanker truck jackknifed on the bridge, westbound. It just came over the radio. The whole upper deck’s closed just past Treasure Island. This hasn’t happened in thirty years, according to KGO. Apparently one of the tanks ruptured. It could take two hours to clean it up. And they might close the lower deck, too, because diesel fuel is dripping down.”
Standing beside Friedman, Hastings watched the flashing lights of emergency vehicles going eastbound on the bridge, heading for the accident scene. Except for the emergency trucks, the upper deck was deserted, an eerie sight in the morning mist.
“If some photographer is smart,” Friedman said, “he’ll hire a helicopter and get some file footage of that. It’d be money in the bank, that bridge without any cars. Perfect for yet another movie about how the world ends.” He turned away from the window, sat down, and removed a cigar from the pocket of his perpetually ash-smudged vest.
Still at the window, Hastings said, “I keep forgetting your career in Hollywood.”
Friedman snorted. “Career? Is that what you call it?”
“What’d you call it?”
“My father called it a dodge.” Friedman shook his head, regretting the memory. “Me, I thought I was just doing what came naturally. Sometimes it even seemed like there was a muse out there. Maybe I should’ve stuck with it. But—” He lit the cigar, flipped the smoking match into Hastings’s wastebasket. “But the first thing I knew, I was thirty years old, and I’d spoken exactly seven lines for the cameras. That’s when your career is supposed to take off, you know. When you have lines.”
“You were married.”
“Definitely, I was married. Dan was two years old when I packed it in.”
As he sat behind his desk Hastings smiled: a wry, reflective smile. “You and acting, me and football. When you’re young, everything seems possible.”
“Except that you did it. I had seven lines. You played cornerback for the Lions.”
“Tailback.”
“Okay, tailback.” As he spoke, Friedman opened a file folder he’d tossed on the desk, then put on his reading glasses. But, plainly reluctant to surrender their conversation to the rigors of business, he asked, “How’s it going with you and Ann? Her ex-husband still giving you trouble?”
Hastings nodded stolidly. He knew where their conversation was going. Friedman made it his business to lecture Hastings regularly on the conduct of his personal life.
“As a matter of fact,” Hastings answered, “Meredith’s shrink reminds me of Ann’s husband, the society psychiatrist. Both of them have pokers up the ass.”
“The solution, of course, is to marry the girl. What’re you waiting for, someone better to come along? It’ll never happen.”
“Listen, Pete, we’ve had this conversation before. If you’d just listen—just once, listen—you’d realize that—” His telephone warbled: the inside line. Grateful for the interruption, he answered on the first ring.
“This is Canelli, Lieutenant.”
Looking through the glass partition toward the squadroom, he saw Canelli standing at his desk, facing him. Like the sotto-soft pitch of his voice, Canelli’s expression was broadly conspiratorial. “We’ve got a confessor, Lieutenant. The first one.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s the one at Segal’s desk.” Surreptitiously, Canelli moved his head. Seated at Segal’s desk, Hastings saw a man who had probably fallen as far down as he was going to fall. A medium-size mongrel dog lay on the floor beside the man.
“That bum?”
Reacting to Hastings’s obvious exasperation, Canelli’s face immediately registered mild consternation. “Yessir. His name’s Granville Foster.”
“Is that dog on a leash?” At the question, grunting, Friedman shifted his bulk in the chair, giving himself a view of the squad-room.
“Yessir. It’s—well—there’s a piece of rope. Do you want me to—?”
“Have you talked to this guy?”
“Sort of. He’s a little crazy, I guess. But, on the other hand, he seems to track pretty well, even though he’s not very smart, that’s for sure. But then I remembered that case three years ago, maybe, when it turned out that the guy who—”
“You did talk to him, then.”
“Yessir.”
“So what’d you think?”
“Well, it’s like I said, Lieutenant—” Acutely ill at ease now, Canelli was squirming, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I was remembering that case three years ago, or whatever it was, when it turned out that the guy who found the victim was the perpetrator. So I thought I should—”
“This guy found her?”
“That’s what he says, Lieutenant.”
About to admonish Canelli for not getting to the point sooner, Hastings decided instead to simply sigh. “If he discovered her, then obviously we’ve got to hold on to him.”
“Yessir.” Canelli’s voice registered contrition; his eyes were anxious. “That’s why I wanted to—”
“I’m going to go out in the field pretty quick.” He shot an inquiring look at Friedman, who nodded. “You report to Lieutenant Friedman.”
“Yessir.” A pause. Then, tentatively, Canelli said, “The way I figure this guy, I’ve got to let him keep the dog with him if we want to get anything. I just wanted to tell you.”
In spite of himself, Hastings chuckled. “It’s whatever you think, Canelli. I’ll fill Lieutenant Friedman in. He’s crazy about dogs.”
“Yessir.”
As Hastings cradled the phone, Friedman raised a long-suffering hand. “Don’t say a word. I’ve got the picture.” He glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to get some stuff ready for the DA on that Benefiel thing. So—” He pointed to the file folder he’d brought. “So let me tell you what I’ve got on Meredith Powell.”
“Right.” Hastings flipped his notepad to a fresh sheet.
“What I’ve got,” Friedman said ruefully, “isn’t a hell of a lot more than what we had on Friday. Beyond what you found at her flat, there really isn’t much that the lab turned up. Nothing hidden, no surprises. And, yes, I made sure they did it right. There’re lots of prints, of course, which they’re classifying and trying to match up. The ME didn’t have much to add, either, beyond what you eyeballed at the scene. She was asphyxiated because of strangulation—manual strangulation. Assuming she had a normal dinner at seven o’clock, and extrapolating on the body temperature, they figure she died about midnight, give or take. As for the car, there’s a little more there, but it doesn’t change much, doesn’t elaborate much on your guesses. However, there were smudges on the wheel and the door handles.”
Hastings’s interest sharpened. “Gloves?”
Friedman nodded. “Looks like it.”
“Premeditation …”
“I’ve always figured it might be premeditation,” Friedman answered.
“Oh?” It was a skeptically ironic question.
“Just a guess, of course.”
“A guess. Yes.”
“Anyhow,” Friedman continued briskly, “there was also debris from the park that was found in the trunk. Along with—” He coughed delicately. “Along with some fecal matter and some urine, which we also knew about. So the way it looks to me, she was killed elsewhere and taken to the park, where she was dumped. The guy used her car, obviously. He wore gloves. He also probably wrapped the body. Maybe he’d already selected the spot. He took the body out of the trunk and put it on the ground. He rolled it out of its covering, whatever that was—a tarp, or plastic sheeting, maybe. He put the tarp back in the trunk. Then he got out of there. He got rid of the tarp and her clothes and her purse. Then—surprisingly—he drove her
car to her garage and drove it inside, using her opener. Then he split. At least, that’s one version, assuming that Lee Persse’s story is credible.”
“Why do you say ‘surprisingly’?”
“Why wouldn’t he just ditch the car?”
“Because,” Hastings answered, “he figured that if he put the car back where it belonged, maybe she might not be missed for a while. Days, maybe. And even when she was found, there was a chance she wouldn’t be identified.”
“An outside chance,” Friedman answered dubiously.
“But, nevertheless, a chance.”
Friedman shrugged, glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’d better start working on that thing for the DA. However—” He shuffled his notes. “However, there’s one more thing.”
Hearing him say it, Hastings looked suspiciously at the other man. Yes, Friedman was doing it again: saving the snapper for his exit line, working his audience.
“Well,” Hastings asked dryly, “what is it?”
“Her building,” Friedman answered blandly. “I finally got something on the ownership. It’s owned by a real estate holding company based in New York. The name of the company is Allegro.” Still building the suspense, he paused. Hastings stoically refused to take the bait. Finally Friedman continued. “Allegro bought the building four years ago, from a local company. There’re three units—three floors, I gather, plus garages on the ground floor. About two years ago Allegro decided to turn the building into condos. They sold two of the condos during the next year, but didn’t sell the top-floor unit.”
“Meredith’s unit.” In spite of himself, Hastings’s voice registered taut anticipation.
Friedman nodded. “Meredith’s unit. Allegro still owns it.” Savoring the moment, Friedman began gathering up his papers as he said, “I can see that you’re trying to visualize her checkbook. And the answer is that, no, she didn’t write any rent checks to Allegro—or to anyone else, that I could see.”
“Is Allegro cooperating?”
A Death Before Dying (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries) Page 15
