Good to the Last Kiss

by Ronald Tierney

  It was possible to climb that way and return by that route without leaving much if any imprint.

  Gratelli took a deep breath and went inside the cabin. The question of the rapist’s access was immediately answered once Gratelli got beyond the living room and headed toward the bedrooms where the police officers who had agreed to meet the two big city cops were engaged in a heated discussion, punctuated by nervous laughter.

  Consciousness seemed more accessible to Julia Bateman, though not necessarily more desirable. She was now able to mentally separate the two worlds, the one lit inside her mind, the other outside. And to some extent, now, she was able to choose which one to inhabit.

  Earlier, she had heard the nurses talk about a reduction in morphine and was able to conclude that was what accounted for her rise into the real world. She had also heard them tell the doctor that ‘the patient’s heart beat and blood pressure were nearly normal and continuing to improve.’ Julia was, however, indifferent to the news.

  At the moment she was being given a sponge bath. They’d begun by gently dabbing her face with warm water sending periodic needle pricks of pain that spread like tentacles into her brain. It was less painful when they gently swathed the warmth on her chest and belly. Then the warmth disappeared as the moisture evaporated and she would chill in one spot and become warm in another.

  She chose not to open her eyes, but merely to feel the not altogether unpleasant sensation. Whoever it was worked in silence. And when the bath was completed, Julia felt the cool sheet again cover her. Then another layer – a cotton blanket – was tucked up under her chin.

  Julia could feel herself drift again, her body tingling against the cool sheets. She was sure she could hang on to consciousness, but allowed herself to drift, feeling a comfortable warming of her body.

  As a child, in the early summer, she’d play all day, forgetting how the weak sun could still sting her skin with a light pink blush. She would shower and climb naked into her bed. This is how her flesh was now – warm and cool, safe and secret. She was completely aware of every inch of her body.

  In those adolescent days, she discovered the strange pleasure her nakedness gave her – the slight swell of her breasts and the electricity of her nipples against the starched sheets, the secret touching.

  Dark now. Heavy quilt over her. Sounds. Sounds overhead awakened her. She opened her eyes, but couldn’t see in the darkness. At first Julia Bateman was frightened, but she was sure it was a raccoon, perhaps a possum. The area was full of nocturnal creatures. She closed her eyes. The sound again.

  The cabin had a flat roof, so the sound was not far away nor was there much in between her and the sound to buffer it. Couldn’t be raccoons, she thought. It was a heavy sound. A bear? Surely not. There were brown bears in California, but weren’t they in parks?

  Her .32 revolver was in the desk drawer. The telephone was on the desk. The desk was in the living room. She decided not to turn on the light. If it were a bear, it probably didn’t matter. If it were a burglar, the light would let him know her whereabouts.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d been in danger. Hang around Turk and Eddy Streets in the city for a few years. Anybody who could do that would be able to stay cool in a volatile situation. Her bare feet touched the cool wooden floor. Her arm went out to feel for the doorway. She moved slowly into the hall.

  A patch of starry night showed itself in the skylight. Suddenly her naked body was bathed in light. She looked up again, but was blinded by the light. There was a creaking sound, then a loud crack. The light went crazy and something huge was sucked into the cabin. Nearly on top of her. She heard breathing. The light came at her and she saw nothing else.

  Inspector Mickey McClellan was holding the long suction tube of a portable vacuum cleaner as Gratelli came into Julia Bateman’s bedroom.

  ‘I see a broken skylight. I don’t see any glass,’ Gratelli said.

  ‘This is why.’ Mickey waved the tube. ‘This is why we got no evidence,’ McClellan said.

  ‘He cleaned up afterward,’ one of the Gurneville deputies said.

  ‘This guy was thorough,’ McClellan continued. ‘He took the bedclothes, vacuumed the mattress and carpet and probably the body.’

  ‘What about the bag?’ Gratelli asked, nodding toward the little red vacuum.

  ‘This is priceless Gratelli, tell ’em.’ McClellan nodded to the deputy who spoke earlier.

  ‘Best we can tell Inspector, the perpetrator not only stole the bag but he sucked water through the tube there and dumped it in the commode. Then damn if he didn’t wash the commode.’

  ‘Nobody searched outside?’

  ‘No, Inspector. We waited. We saw the tattoo there and well, you know, we had that other kid, that other homicide up here earlier. We waited for you.’

  McClellan pushed the switch on the vacuum with his foot. ‘Me,’ he said over the whir, ‘I figure the maid did it.’

  Everybody but Gratelli started laughing.

  SEVEN

  David Seidman spent Saturday and Sunday mornings at Julia Bateman’s bedside. Paul Chang did the same in the afternoons. Sammie stopped by both days, stood awkwardly for fifteen minutes or so and excused herself. She didn’t so much leave the room as escape it. Otherwise, nothing changed. The nurses had cranked up the bed, putting its inhabitant in a sitting position. Julia’s eyes were open. She didn’t speak.

  Sometimes she looked in Paul’s direction, but with little interest. Either she didn’t know him or wasn’t much interested in his being there. Not knowing which, Paul assumed it was the former.

  ‘I called your father,’ Paul said Sunday afternoon. He waited. No response. ‘He’s coming out. He’ll be here around ten in the morning.’ No response.

  ‘I’m watering your plants,’ he continued, ‘checking the mail, things like that at the apartment and things are going OK at work. I can handle it for awhile. Keep things going. So don’t worry, Jules.’

  Julia Bateman didn’t appear to be worrying.

  ‘I checked your cabin Saturday morning. Tried to, anyway. The cops wouldn’t let me in.’

  Paul was sorry he mentioned the cabin. He hadn’t intended to bring up what had happened, even indirectly.

  ‘I told your father he could stay at your place, but he decided to stay downtown somewhere. I told him he could reach me at the office on Monday.’

  Paul felt silly just babbling on when he couldn’t be sure she heard or understood a single word he was saying. He sat the rest of the afternoon in silence, his hand touching hers.

  Pauli Vincente Gratelli awoke Monday morning as he always awoke, eyes sealed shut by the too plentiful secretion of some chemical or another. There were mornings he would have to pull the lids apart and brush away the grit to be able to see.

  It was as if nature intended his slumber to be more permanent. This morning, the seal required intervention and though he didn’t remember dreaming – he never remembered – his unusually tired body suggested the night had been restless.

  He imagined that it had something to do with the killings. Gratelli was usually able to shed the more gruesome aspects of his work when he was off duty – something he’d learned to do only in the last five years or so. Perhaps it was the age of most of the victims. These weren’t exactly children, but they were young. That made things more difficult. Perhaps it was Julia Bateman’s battered body and shocked numbed mind that made it worse. In homicide, the victims are usually dead and beyond pain. Not alive, suffering.

  He closed his eyes to redirect his thoughts and get a fresh start on the morning. Official police work began after his morning coffee and the Chronicle.

  His bed occupied a small, windowed alcove in the smaller of the two bedrooms in his small apartment. He knew the temperature outside was probably around fifty degrees; but the sun was warm on his face and bare arms.

  He wiped at his eyes one more time, threw the covers back and slid a bony leg over the side, eventually bringing himself to a
sitting position, where he’d turn off the alarm he’d beaten by at least fifteen minutes and where he’d remain until he felt his blood circulating to his feet.

  When he was satisfied that his feet were ready to support him, Gratelli reached down and aligned his slippers, then slipped his feet into them. The bedroom was carpeted, the bath and kitchen weren’t. He pushed himself off the bed, moved to the closet where he grabbed his robe from the hook on the back of the door and headed to the kitchen.

  He ground the coffee beans, drew water from the faucet into the ancient percolator, started the gas burner with a match – all in the morning ritual. Next he went to his wall of shelves in the living room selecting Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, letting the music begin while he went to the front door for his morning paper, a continuation of his ritual – a ritual only slightly modified by the loss of his wife to ovarian cancer ten years ago. His family suggested he move to a new place, even if it was just down the hall. Find a nice widow somewhere and start a new life. He liked it the way it was. He didn’t want a new life. Anna was his wife. She was still his wife. He liked being where he was. He liked the memories the apartment, the furniture, even the percolator gave him.

  The memories were not sad. They gave his life meaning, a richness it might not otherwise have.

  Gratelli usually chose comic opera to start the day. The days were often tragic enough. He sat at the small chrome table with the black top in the tiny kitchen and went methodically through the paper. It seemed an emptier paper without Herb Caen – another break in the rhythm. He read the back of the style page next. He’d begun to like the columnist who resided there. A little wit, humor and intelligence before he went back to the front page.

  The story was a few pages in and small which meant the reporters had not yet tied Julia Bateman with the others. It didn’t mention her name, but did mention a San Francisco business woman was raped and beaten at a weekend cabin three miles outside of Gurneville.

  ‘Oops,’ he thought. The last sentence read: ‘Gurneville police said they would not comment about any possible connection between this and the recent spate of savage murder-rapes in the greater Bay area.’

  Gratelli took another sip of coffee, letting the music take his mind off it for the moment.

  Aerosmith’s Love in an Elevator was abruptly cut off by a hand crushing the snooze button on the digital clock radio. Paul Chang turned back to the center of the bed where he saw the body of his blond-headed friend.

  ‘Come on, wake up Bradley,’ Paul said, nudging the bare shoulder.

  ‘What?’ the head turned slowly, groggily toward Paul.

  ‘Wake up. You’ve got two hours to get home, get ready and get to work.’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Seven,’ Paul said, trying to figure out whether he loved Bradley or merely loved Bradley’s blond hair. It didn’t matter now. For now all he wanted was Bradley to get out of bed, get dressed and be gone. There was still an hour before Paul would have to get ready. And he wanted to fill that time with sleep.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ Bradley said, crawling out of bed, standing, disoriented for a moment. ‘I’ll call you Wednesday or something.’

  Paul watched as this handsome specimen of naked humanity moved across the room then disappeared into the hallway. Paul was glad that Bradley wasn’t the type requiring polite chatter over a cup of coffee the morning after. The last things that Paul remembered were hearing the water run in the bathroom and feeling Chat, his Burmese cat, hop on the bed to steal the warmth of the former occupant.

  When he woke again, Julia was on his mind. He must have dreamt about her, but he couldn’t remember. He thought about her trips to Russian River, thought about the time he spent with her at the cabin. How wonderfully relaxed she became, reading and looking at the river. Julia’s eyes always made her seem open and vulnerable no matter what she said or how she acted while working. At the cabin, she was a kid again – laughing, joking – and between the two of them they were able to erase a couple of decades of existence.

  The cabin wouldn’t be the same. And now, Julia’s eyes seemed more empty than innocent.

  ‘You are doing fine. You’re over the hump.’

  Julia Bateman recognized the voice and now saw the face of the doctor, a face that seemed too young to belong to a doctor. It didn’t seem serious enough. Dark curly hair and big white teeth showing in a wide smile – a look more appropriate to an aerobics instructor or an activities director for a cruise ship.

  ‘I’m making my rounds,’ the doctor continued. ‘I’ll be back in a little while.’ He patted her forearm. ‘Listen, you’re going to have a heavy day. A couple of police officers will be up this morning. And I understand from one of the nurses that your father will be here too. If all this gets to be too much let us know. OK?’

  She felt herself nodding as if someone else were controlling the movement.

  ‘Good,’ the doctor smiled. ‘See you in a little bit.’

  Early in Gratelli’s career he would spend an hour or so at Caffe Trieste before duty. He’d smoke several unfiltered cigarettes and down a cup of espresso, the small china cup rattling on its small china saucer as he replaced it on the false marble-topped table in front of him.

  He no longer smoked, could no longer take that strong a dose of caffeine and no longer desired the company of people that early in the morning. He now took his coffee to go.

  Gratelli stood on the sidewalk. His building – the one with a few storefronts and a few apartments above them that he’d inherited from his father – was behind him. He waited for Mickey McClellan. They took turns with the city-owned car. Last night was McClellan’s.

  It was a morning cool that had a little bite to it. It wasn’t raining and you couldn’t really call it a fog, but there was dampness in the air. The people on Grant Street walked briskly, shoulders hunched, defending the body against the cold.

  He wished he’d put on his raincoat. Gratelli had only a few moments to tap his feet and jingle the change in his pocket before he saw the Taurus rounding the corner and heading his way. He had hoped they’d be issued a Caprice, one of those monster comfort cars. Some of the cops had Caprices. The Caprice reminded him of the big, old round Buick his Uncle Frank had back in the late forties.

  McClellan’s eyes were puffy and pink. There was a sleep crease on the side of his cheek. His flesh had the look of having had a fresh and rough scrubbing. Mickey hadn’t been up long, nor was it likely he’d gotten much sleep before that. It was also likely that McClellan had remained in the city over the weekend rather than going home. The tell-tale signs would have disappeared during the hour drive in.

  ‘You have the papers?’ Gratelli asked, choosing to avoid any question about his partner’s condition and the causes thereof. Mickey didn’t take too kindly to kidding, especially in the morning.

  ‘On the way,’ McClellan said, glancing over his left shoulder and pulling away from the curb. ‘I was running late.’

  Gratelli thought about asking Mickey to stop by the Opera House to pick up his tickets for Thursday’s performance, but wasn’t sure if the office opened that early or if it opened at all on Mondays.

  ‘No hurry,’ Gratelli said, rubbing his hands and settling into the warmth.

  Julia Bateman sipped orange juice through a clear plastic straw. There was another container filled with something gelatinous on the shelf-like table that had been rolled up to her bed.

  She felt less groggy. She seemed to be able to trace the internal route of the juice as it entered her system and seemed to activate her body as it passed through her. It startled her consciousness to the next higher level.

  ‘Are you feeling better,’ asked the redheaded nurse cheerlessly.

  Julia nodded. She figured if she lied the nurse would leave sooner. The fact was that she was sore all over. Muscles. Bones. There were organs in her body she couldn’t recall ever being a
ware of. She was aware of them now. And they hurt.

  The nurse checked the clear plastic bags suspended above Julia’s bed. The liquid drained down through plastic tubes, one of which went through a little machine that had a small, slowly blinking red light. The nurse adjusted something on the machine.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ the nurse asked.

  Julia shook her head ‘no.’

  McClellan pulled to the curb on Hayes Street in front of a bookstore advertising rare books and across from Bateman’s apartment house. He pulled the official papers from the breast pocket of his gray suit.

  ‘Wait,’ Gratelli said. ‘That’s the kid who was with Bateman’s D.A. friend.’

  McClellan looked at the person exiting the apartment house. ‘The slant?’

  ‘The young fellow from the hospital.’ Gratelli rarely chastised his partner for the ethnic slurs but he’d be damned if he’d just agree with terms like ‘the slant.’

  ‘That’s what I said, the slant.’

  ‘Is there anybody in this world you do like, Mickey?’

  McClellan thought awhile.

  ‘Dogs,’ he said.

  ‘Any human beings?’

  ‘No.’

  They waited a moment for the guy to turn and walk into the little parking lot beside the building. He got into a mint VW Bug with tinted windows. As he backed out of his spot to head on to Ivy Street, a little alley behind the building, Gratelli wrote down the license plate.

  ‘You wanna run it now?’ McClellan said.

  ‘Might as well.’

  Gratelli and McClellan sat quietly and waited. Some young, well built guys went into the gym next to the parking lot. Some other guys left, looking fresh and pink.

  ‘Makes you sick, doesn’t it?’ McClellan asked.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘People spending so much time trying to make themselves pretty.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me.’

  ‘Every damned one of them is a jock sniffer, bet you my next paycheck. Jesus.’