“The videotapes of the rental lot need to be gone over, the car found and checked for prints.”
“I’ve already sent agents to get that under way.”
“Traynor’s own history needs to be looked into, in case this is the work of one of his victims, parents at the school, that kind of—”
“We are assisting Detective Hillman with that line of inquiry.”
“Which leaves the interviews of our own pool of suspects here.”
“Suspects.”
“Possible suspects, should I say? Nothing on any of them except opportunity.”
“And an agreement with the philosophy of the group calling itself the Ladies.”
“What philosophy? That some men are lowlifes and need to be stepped on? I don’t know too many people who would disagree, cops included.”
“Alibis,” Marcowitz merely said, a cool word to let the air out of her heated digression.
“We were told that your people were taking over there. That’s why Al and I took the time to go hunting down the car.”
“The preliminary interviews are under way. I understand you yourself give Rosalyn Hall an alibi.”
“That’s right. I talked with her on the phone at about ten-forty Saturday night.”
“Did she phone you?”
“I phoned her, returning her call. On her home number, not her cell phone,” she added before Marcowitz could ask.
“Any reason to think she was actually at home when she took it?”
With an effort, Kate reined in her patience. “I heard the dog—all right, I heard a dog,” she corrected herself before he did. “But no noises to indicate she wasn’t at home. I suppose it’s conceivable that she had the call forwarded to her cell number, but the delay in ringing is usually noticeable. Does she have call forwarding on her home phone?”
Marcowitz did not bother to answer. “What had she called you about?”
“Nothing, really. Just to ask if I’d gotten a manuscript she’d left at the house, and to talk about how things were going. Just conversation.”
“At twenty minutes to eleven?”
“Roz is a night owl.”
“So she arranged for you, a friend and investigating officer, to give her an alibi on the night a man was attacked, wanting only to talk about her Ph.D. thesis.”
Put that way, the call sounded far too convenient for words, but Kate could only shrug and say, “It’s awfully elaborate. And shaky. How could she know when I would call?”
“It wouldn’t matter when you called, would it? If she was home at ten-forty, and she left immediately after you hung up, granted she would have to move fast, but she could conceivably have been present at the Traynor assault. The silent alarm was triggered at eleven twenty-seven.”
“Barely. And she didn’t know I was going to call, she wouldn’t have had any reason to wait around at home.” Unlikely did not make an alibi, and they all knew that, but Kate had done what she could. “Have you talked with Roz, or Maj?”
“I had another agent take their preliminary statements. Maj Freiling was not cooperative, and Reverend Hall seemed more interested in making a speech. My colleague decided to suspend the interviews for the time being, thinking that if a second attempt has similar results, we can bring them in for questioning.”
“I’d be very careful about that,” Kate warned him. “Roz Hall is a woman of considerable influence—I wouldn’t try to mess with her unless you’ve got a warrant in your hand. Which I don’t think you’re going to get, at this point. And dragging in Maj, who is seven months’ pregnant, could be even worse. You could find yourself knee-deep in lawsuits.”
Marcowitz might not have heard her, for all the reaction he showed. “There is one thing I had hoped you might help us with, Inspector, until you went incommunicado on us. Statements must be taken from the residents of the women’s shelter run by Diana Lomax, and she strongly requested that you be the one to take them, having been there before.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I will accompany you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
“The women in there are very uncomfortable when men invade their private space,” she objected. “It really would be best if-—”
“I will go with you.”
“Don’t you at least have a woman agent you can send instead?” she suggested, trying not to plead.
“They are busy, I am not, and you need backup. Either I go with you, or Inspector Hawkin and I will do it ourselves.”
“Two men, yeah, that’d be great. Okay, but you have to let me do the talking, and if Diana Lomax refuses, then we wait for one of your women agents. When do you want to go?”
“Now.”
“Right now? I—” Kate stopped, and shrugged. “Okay. Just let me make a couple of calls first. Five minutes?”
Only one call proved necessary, since Lee was home so Kate didn’t have to hunt down Jon.
“Hi, babe,” she said. “I thought you guys’d be out shopping,” that having been the plan when Kate left the house that morning.
“Finished early, we got some gorgeous little artichokes that I’m fixing right now.”
“Hell. Will they be okay cold?”
“You’re going to be late,” Lee said in resignation. “Well, if you get a chance, give me a call later, let me know when you’ll be getting in.”
“I’ll try, but don’t wait up for me. Things may drag on.”
“You astonish me,” Lee said sarcastically.
“I try. Enjoy the artichokes. Love you.”
“Me too you.”
They hung up together and Kate looked up to see Marcowitz standing iron-spined ten feet away, having heard every word.
“Shall we go?” he said.
Kate responded by taking her holstered gun from her desk drawer, putting on gun and jacket, and following him to the elevator and the parking lot. He was driving.
Marcowitz did not ask for directions, and did not need them. He drove with watchful confidence, although as far as Kate knew he had only been in San Francisco a couple of months. She considered asking the Man in Black a question about his background, then decided against it, and sat in silence.
He pulled up near the shelter, put on the parking brake, and then said something that had Kate open-mouthed in astonishment.
“Before we go in,” he told her, “I just wanted you to know that my mother was beaten to death by her boyfriend when I was twelve. Just in case you don’t think I’m sympathetic to the women who come to a shelter.”
Without waiting for a response, he got out of the car and started walking toward the group home. Kate scrambled to follow.
“I’m sorry,” she said inadequately when she had caught up with him.
“I didn’t tell you that as a play for sympathy,” he said stiffly. “Merely so you know where I’m coming from on this.” And he turned and pressed his finger on the doorbell, then stepped back so that her face would be first at the door.
The shelter was bustling; that was apparent even on the wrong side of the sturdy door, with the children inside working off a day shut up in classrooms, their voices raised and bodies racing. One of them answered the bell, and Kate leaned forward to speak to the small face, only to have the door slammed on her nose. The sounds of an altercation arose from inside, which after a minute Kate decided was an older child giving the younger door-opener hell for a lack of caution.
She and the FBI agent waited as the shouts moved off and relative silence fell, and Marcowitz was putting out his hand to ring the bell again when a single adult set of footsteps approached. The locks clattered and Diana Lomax stood before them, thunderclouds of disapproval on her brow.
“Hello, Ms. Lomax,” Kate said. “This is agent Marcowitz of the FBI. Sorry, but we need to ask the residents some questions.”
“This is not a good time.”
“It won’t take long.” I hope, Kate added under
her breath.
“All right, if you absolutely have to. But the agent can wait outside.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Marcowitz said, firmly but without the body language of the affronted male, remaining behind Kate instead of pushing forward and crowding his targeted foe with raised shoulders. Kate couldn’t help giving him points for his reasonableness, and even Diana Lomax seemed to think again.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But you’ll have to stay in my office. I won’t have you intruding on the privacy of the residents.”
“Fine,” he said, and she then let them in, locking the front door behind them before leading them down the hall to the office. Before Kate went through the door, she glanced ahead into the kitchen, source of a rich fragrance of Italian herbs, and spotted Crystal Navarro standing before a huge bowl of lettuce and tomatoes, looking in alarm at their passing. Kate raised her hand as a greeting, and followed Lomax and agent Marcowitz through the door marked office.
“May I ask what this is about?” Lomax demanded as soon as the door was shut. Marcowitz took his time in perching on the arm of the sofa, where he crossed his arms in a display of authority that Kate knew from experience left his right hand just inches from the butt of his gun, and met Lomax’s angry gaze.
“Three nights ago while she was here for dinner, Emily Larsen’s wallet disappeared from her purse.” He paused for reaction, of which there was none. “Yesterday the identification taken from that wallet was used in the commission of a crime.”
Lomax waited, then asked, “Is that all?”
“It’s enough to tie this shelter to three murders and one attempted murder.”
Lomax stood without moving for a long moment, then reached for the phone on the desk (Marcowitz’s hand twitched, but he did not draw his gun). She dialed seven digits, and said to whoever answered, “Inspector Martinelli is in my office with evidence that links the shelter to a series of murders. I think Carla should be here.” She waited for the response, said “Thanks,” and then hung up.
She did not seem very upset, concerned rather than worried. She left her hand on the telephone for a minute as she stared unseeing into space, then gave herself a shake and walked around the desk to sit in her chair. Had she pulled open a drawer and reached inside, Kate knew that the agent would have drawn on her, but she merely played with a pen that lay on top of the desk and chewed at her lip. Kate shifted on her feet near the door, and Lomax’s eyes immediately came up.
“I don’t know if I need a lawyer or not while I’m talking to you, but Carla will want to be here, just in case. Do you two want a cup of coffee or something while we’re waiting?”
Before Marcowitz could refuse, Kate said, “That’d be nice.”
“Crystal’s in the kitchen, she’ll show you where the cups are. I have to ask you not to question her, however.”
“Nothing more urgent than where to find the milk,” Kate agreed with a smile. No reason not to keep this friendly. Marcowitz might doubt, but Kate knew, as surely that the sun was going down outside the house, that Diana Lomax would not produce a gun—or cause others to produce theirs—in a house filled with her women and children. Marcowitz was safe on his own, and in the few minutes they had before Carla Lomax arrived with her legal objections, Kate might nose something out. Ignoring her temporary partner’s glare and keeping her voice and stance as casual as she could, she said, “Marcowitz, you want anything?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Kate paused at the door to ask Diana, again with great care to be offhand, “You mind if I take a look around? I didn’t really get a chance to see it the other day.”
To her surprise, Lomax nodded. “Sure, look around. Not in the residents’ rooms, though. Not without a warrant.”
If they’d had enough evidence to back up a warrant, the FBI man wouldn’t be sitting on the arm of the sofa. A missing wallet would only made a judge laugh. But being given permission to roam opened the place up—not to a full search, perhaps, but to a close scrutiny. She ducked out of the room and did actually go into the kitchen for coffee, keeping one eye on the hallway the whole time so she could see if the office door opened, but it did not, and Kate nonchalantly thanked Crystal before going back up the hall to look into the other three rooms that opened off it.
Leaving the kitchen, the office was the first room on her left. She turned to the door directly across the hall from it, marked training, and found behind it a tiny windowless room with two long folding tables, two computers (one so old she wondered if it was compatible to anything at all), and an electric typewriter. If this was the shelter’s sole job training, she decided, it was a miracle that any of the residents found employment.
The next room, behind the sign meeting room, was much larger. Although it, too, had no outside windows, since the building was attached to neighbors on both sides, it did have a piece of stained glass set into the end wall that separated it from the entrance foyer. The pseudo-window, combined with several airy watercolor prints on the pale green walls, added to the impression of space, and the room’s random assortment of love seats, armchairs, backless hassocks, and a couple of wooden rocking chairs were arranged against the walls in a wide circle around an oval braided rug that reminded Kate of her grandmother. Kate didn’t need the disproportionate number of tissue boxes to tell her this was the room used for group therapy. It was functional but comforting, the color and prints on the wall so similar to those in Roz’s church offices that they might have been chosen at the same time.
Kate went back out into the hallway, checked the office door to be sure it was still closed and silent, glanced into the entrance vestibule with its hodgepodge of outdoor clothing, children’s equipment, message board, and stairs leading up to the bedrooms, then reached for the fourth doorknob, the room adjoining the office. She turned the knob, and stepped into the shelter’s chapel.
This was no ordinary chapel, however, with an altar at one end and pews all in a row. This one looked more like a teenager’s bedroom, had the teenager been tidy and interested in religion and spirituality instead of handsome actors and rock bands.
The wall to Kate’s right represented more or less the Roman Catholic faith. Its central figure was the Virgin Mother rather than a bleeding Christ, but the steadily burning candles in tall amber glasses were those of Kate’s childhood, and the inspirational pictures pinned up all around the Virgin were those she remembered from Sunday school and from the edges of her mother’s dresser mirror. Sayings, scraps of prayer, and biblical quotations fluttered gently in the air rising off the candles, and on the floor at the Virgin’s feet stood a large pottery bowl spilling over with small pieces of paper, folded or crumpled into thumbnail-sized wads. Feeling far more guilty than any police investigator should, she glanced at the empty doorway before reaching for one of the scraps. Thank you Mother for Rebecca’s math grade, she read, and on another, Please help me get the job in your Son’s name we pray. She put them back and stood up to study more closely the offerings and exhortations around the Virgin. The simple name Mary, written on a three-inch-square yellow Post-it and heavily decorated with an elaborate green vine with purple and lavender flowers, had been stuck to the wall over the Virgin’s halo like a miniature illuminated manuscript. Other Post-its, torn-off squares of typing paper, and wide-lined sheets from children’s schoolbooks had quotes ranging from reassurance that God notes the sparrow’s fall to the command (which reminded Kate of her recent discussions with Roz, and which seemed remarkably inappropriate in a shelter for battered women) If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Around the bowl of prayer-wads, offerings had been laid, many of them floral and either wilted or artificial. They were interspersed with coins, a cross-stitched bookmark, and a string of lumpish beads made of the bright oven-baked plasticine that Kate recognized from Jon’s experiment with Christmas ornaments. It was all sweet and rather pathetic, and Kate turned away to see what else the room contained.
Four ba
ckless benches of polished oak had been arranged in an open square in the center of the room, facing the four walls. The Virgin Mary’s shrine wall was to the right of the door; the wall with the door in it bore only a plain wooden cross with a tall candle in front, dignified and simple to the point of starkness. The left-hand wall, across the room from the Virgin, was mounted with a deep wooden shelf about six feet wide, roughly three feet off the floor. On the shelf was propped a painting done on cheap canvas-board, a crudely done landscape of hills, trees, and river, with an angel flying in the clouds over it. The angel did not appear aerodynamic nor the landscape very probable, but there were half a dozen other pictures leaning against the wall to choose from, and Kate put her empty cup down on one of the benches and went to flip through them. They included an intricate mandala, a Star of David, the enlarged photograph of a tropical island, and three framed prints: a Berthe Morisot mother and child, an old-fashioned painting of children splashing in a river, and a famous Eva Vaughn study of three children, the original of which Kate had actually seen in the artist’s studio. She greeted it like a friend and thought about putting it up in place of the nonaerodynamic angel, but resisted the temptation.
This left the fourth wall, which was completely concealed by a heavy, dark red velvet curtain that stretched from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. She pulled the left edge away from the wall, saw that there did indeed seem to be something other than blank wall behind it, and found a curtain pull. She tugged at the cords, the drapes obediently parted, and then Kate was stumbling back, badly startled.
For a brief but intense moment, she thought that she was being attacked by a wild woman with blood on her teeth. She could almost smell the blood, splashed around the woman in a pool, and then the hallucination faded, leaving her to gaze in mingled amazement and horror at the image before her.
The painting on the wall was enough to give a man nightmares. It showed a woman of sorts, but this was a woman who would have caused a playboy to shrivel, would have given pause to the most ardent feminist, would have had a Freudian rapidly retracting that plaintive, worn, masculine query concerning what women wanted.
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