“Goodbye Jessica.”
“I’ll call you.”
He nodded and turned towards the staircase without saying another word. Jessica stood outside the door until she couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore and when she was sure he was out of the building, she got in, closed the door and went looking for him outside the window in the study. She watched him walking through the silver gate enclosing the building, a small figure illuminated by the streetlights, his shadow stretching along the floor behind him.
In bed that night all she could do was go over and over every detail of the evening they had spent together, all the things he had said and the way he had said them, all the things he had done and the way he had done them, every gesture, every phrase, every word. And when she thought back at the way he’d touched her shoulder and her arm in the hallway, for some inexplicable reason she was sure he had said I have missed you.
18 December 2000
BROWN WAS sitting at his desk at the station. A bright lamp pointed at the pile of papers he was going through, the only light left in the deserted building.
He had already looked at most of the credit card slips, cursing his declining eyesight, rubbing his eyes, polishing the lenses of his reading glasses.
As far as he could tell, twelve customers had dined at the Gironda more than once between August and September and paid by credit card. It wasn’t great news but it wasn’t terrible either. Twelve men to find and interrogate were better than forty, sixty. Twelve he could manage. With a bit of luck, the man he was looking for had not paid by cash.
Things would be moving at a different pace if the manager of the restaurant had kept any records of his bookings, probably in a different direction.
Something like this would never have happened in the old days. Up until a few years ago every receipt was filed, every invoice classified by month, every little scrap of paper was kept and treasured, possibly buried by time and even more paper but ultimately traceable.
Brown moved some of the credit card slips around the desk to find Kaitlyn’s photograph, the one he had been carrying in the inside pocket of his jacket. She was a beautiful woman, young, most probably intelligent. What had happened here? How could someone walk in, kill her and walk out unnoticed? How could there be no reference, no knowledge of this man at all? The bastard had left no semen inside his victim and he had obviously spent some time wiping surfaces around the house. Traces of blood in her own mouth without any cut or abrasion suggested he had even thought of wiping her tongue with the water from the bath, which made him think the attacker had kissed her and made sure he wiped away traces of his own saliva. Rape victims were very rarely french-kissed. No, Kaitlyn Lynch had kissed someone she knew then something had gone wrong. And Brown had to find out what
This case had grown into a mild obsession, he had to admit, but he knew it didn’t have anything to do with how this woman had died, with any of the circumstances surrounding her death.
In just under a month this office would be nothing but another memory. He would be spending his days in a little property in Florida overlooking the beach, the way his wife Chiara had always wanted.
Brown had been one of the youngest when he joined the force thirty odd years ago. His colleagues didn’t always take him seriously, didn’t always treat him with respect then. But he had kept his head down, worked hard, proved he had every right to be one of them, despite his inexperience. Now most of his associates and the lifelong friends he had made over the years had already left and he was the eldest in his department. Nobody had more experience then him.
He met his friends occasionally at weekends, listened to them moaning about having to spend more time with their wives, about not knowing what to do with themselves. Brown always sat in silence and drank his coffee, but inside he was angry. He would have given his right arm to retire in the knowledge that he could spend every day with his wife. But that was not going to happen. He had nothing but the prospect of the rest of his life pottering by the beach on his own, when he should have spent it with her.
Life had been unfair.
Chiara had raised two kids practically on her own while he worked ridiculous hours, never complaining, never throwing it in his face. All she had ever asked of him was to get back in one piece. When both kids had left home, Chiara had asked him to take early retirement; if they sold the house there would be more than enough in the bank to buy a smaller place somewhere and live the rest of their days in comfort. She would look after him, the way she had looked after their son and their daughter, made sure he ate the right things, perhaps teach him how to cook some of his favourite Italian dishes. But Brown had refused. He wasn’t ready. There was always another case, and another case, and another case.
For six years he had resisted Chiara’s pleading, until one morning he had walked into the bathroom and caught her naked body coming out of the shower. Until then she had remained the Mediterranean beauty he had married, still slimmer than all his friends’ wives, always immaculate, strong and healthy. But something in the light coming in through the small bathroom window that morning had made him see her differently. Her skin was not as taut as it felt under his hands when they made love, her muscles affected by the cruel pass of time. That morning Brown had realised they were both getting old, they were not going to live forever. So he had agreed, given in his notice.
He was working on a big case at the time, and the Chief Inspector had asked him to stay on until all the lose ends were tied up. Nobody could foresee that the case would remain open for months to come.
Then three months ago Chiara had started feeling unwell. Terminal lymphatic cancer. The doctors were amazed at how far she had gone without mentioning any symptoms but once they had become impossible to ignore, she had declined rapidly.
She had died seventeen days before Kaitlyn’s death. He had taken the case to get his mind off things, to ignore the guilt, the unfairness of what had happened. Now he wished he could work forever. What was the point of quitting now that he was alone? What was the point of moving away from anyone he knew now that he didn’t have anyone to share this last adventure with? His kids blamed him for what had happened to her, he would probably never see them again.
Brown took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes and tried to relax in his chair. He was tired but he knew going home now would be a waste of time; he knew he would toss and turn in bed, grieve, think about his wife.
He kept telling himself that closing this case would somehow validate his reluctance to retire while she was alive. He was good at his job. The people of San Francisco needed him —though maybe not as much as Chiara did while she was still alive. And he had denied her his company for many years, so many years.
He looked at Kaitlyn’s photograph again. There was a man that needed to be brought to justice out there and he had to find him. It had to be him. He had to find him.
Perhaps then he would start sleeping again.
20 December 2000
JESSICA AND William were standing next to each other, looking at the wall in front of them. The large room had white walls, white ceiling and bright artificial lights shining through white glass, so that nothing would distract the eye from the paintings. It was so bright it almost convinced you it was the sun shining from the outside, but it wasn’t a sunny day, it was cloudy again and there were no windows in the room.
She had wanted to come back here for a long time, that much she knew, but she wasn’t sure anymore why earlier that morning she had called him and asked him if he wanted to go with her downtown, at The Galleria in Port Street.
William had met her in the small cafeteria on the second floor of the three-storey building in the afternoon, they’d had a coffee and she’d found she couldn’t tell him why of all places she had decided to meet him here, and he had not asked her. But now, standing in front of the paintings she knew so well,
looking at the small tag with Kaitlyn’s name printed in dark red, she waited for him to ask her something, to ask her about her and at the same time she hoped he wouldn’t.
They stood by each other for a few minutes longer, then William wandered off in silence to another painting, and another one, and another one, every single one of the paintings Kaitlyn had left in her garage, all the ones she had donated to the gallery the same day she had signed the contract for the apartment in Nob Hill. When they found themselves by each other’s side again, it wasn’t William who spoke, but Jessica.
“I don’t know why I asked you to come here today, it was a mistake.” She said without looking at him.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“This work, these paintings... You see that name? That’s my sister. I have been here with her many times before... It’s not the same without her. I only understood paintings when she explained the way she could see them... This doesn’t make any sense now.” He took a step closer to her and she finally turned to look into his eyes and tried to smile, despite the sudden urge to shout and cry like a baby. “...I don’t think I should be here. I can’t breathe. Take me somewhere else, William. I don’t know where to go.”
He took her hand and walked her outside without saying a word. They entered a small bar a few blocks away from the gallery where they sat across from one another on dark oak benches that crowded the wall opposite the counter. Celtic melodies came from the speakers. The dark walls were almost completely covered in paintings, colourful, bright, without frames.
Jessica sat, elbows on the table, hands cupped under her chin, looking up at the walls while William paid for a couple of beers. She tried to take in the colours, the different imagery on the canvases around her, tried to concentrate on something else, anything that would help calm herself down. Breathe Jessy, breathe.
William sat down in front of her, passed her a beer and, despite herself, she started talking to him.
“I’m sorry. There’s something you should know and I should have told you this morning, when I asked you to meet me at the gallery. Actually, I should have told you a while ago. I guess I’ve always found it easier to bottle things in rather than spill them out. It’s not one of my best assets.” She half smiled. She wasn’t looking at him directly, but could see the shape of him out of the corner of her eye. “My sister died two months ago. We were very close. Very close... Too close.” She shook her head. “I found her with her wrists slashed in my bathtub... She was staying with me for a few months. It’s not been easy.”
Jessica found she could not bring herself to talk about a murder. If she never spoke of it out loud, then it would be as if Kaitlyn had not been killed by a stranger who was still at large, it would be a chapter of her life with a beginning and an end.
“Things were good for her, she had plans for the future. I thought... The most unexpected thing... finding her there like that... That’s why I had to move out... I had to... I want to stop thinking...”
Then she couldn’t speak anymore because if she did she would start crying. And she wanted to be strong. She had to learn to be strong. William reached for her hand across the bench, pulled the bottle of beer free from her fingers and held his on hers. “I am sorry,” he said. “I am so sorry. Believe me, I know how it feels.” Jessica looked up at him, looked at his hand, his fingers wrapped around hers and she thought about Lisa, about the day of the funeral outside the cemetery. She thought about the suffocating rage she had felt hearing those same words coming out of her mouth and wondered why she couldn’t feel the same way now, wondered how she could be so sure that William did know, that he knew exactly how it felt, that he wasn’t just saying it to console her, like everybody else.
“We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. I can take you home.”
She shook her head again, took a deep breath. “It’s ok. We can stay. I don’t want to be alone... Not just yet.”
He smiled, put the beer bottle back in her hand, raised his to her and drank.
“I’m sorry, William. Of all the places I could have chosen today... I don’t know why I asked you to come here, really. Kaitlyn, my sister, she was a painter. She owned part of that gallery and she I knew she wanted to get more involved. So I gave them all the paintings I found in my apartment... I thought she would have liked that, her own exhibition at last. They’ve been up for a week and, I woke up this morning and all I could think of was coming to the gallery. I wanted to see her... I can see her in there... I miss her so much. I know it’s not normal but she was the only friend I had.” Jessica stretched her legs along the seat, held the beer close to her chest, her head against the wall looking ahead. “It’s the strangest thing, you know? To grow up with someone, to share your life with someone, childhood, teenage years, all that, always with this same person... School, all the shit that goes on in your family, problems, doubts... This one person knows you better than anybody else and she’s always there. And then suddenly she’s not there anymore... You know what it feels like? It’s like... It’s like I don’t know myself anymore, because this person that knew me so well is not here anymore. It’s like I can’t be anybody because she’s not here and it doesn’t matter who I am anymore... I know I’m not making any sense.”
“You make sense to me.”
She twisted her head a little, just enough to be able to see him without moving away from the wall. How could she talk to him like this? How did he do this to her?
“I am not crying,” she pointed out. “I haven’t talked about my sister without crying for a long time.”
“I can help you,” he said and she believed he could.
He was wearing a dark blue jumper very tight around the shoulders. Jessica wondered how it would feel to rest her head there, or maybe farther down, on his chest; she wondered if his skin had a particular smell, tried to imagine his hand on her face, caressing her cheeks as she lay down next to him. Could she always feel this calm next to him? Could she ever be close enough to him, close enough to make him feel this calm seeping through her pores?
“How can you do this to me?”
“I told you I can help.”
“Yes, you did. You did...”
She closed her eyes for a few minutes and in her mind she could see again some of Kaitlyn’s paintings. She had liked seeing them hanging in a room of their own, spread apart, intermittent flashes of colour. Kaitlyn would have loved it. It was exactly what she wanted to do with them. It was how she had intended to set up her website —no gimmicks, no frills, no menus and submenus, just a straightforward white canvas to display her work.
“Did you like them? Her paintings?”
“I did, I really did. She was very talented. Believe it or not, there was a couple I contemplated buying.”
“You should go back and do it. It’s for a good cause.” He looked puzzled. “Kaitlyn didn’t leave a will, so... I instructed the gallery to donate any profit made from her work to go to Unicef. They’re only keeping a small percentage.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“It’s not my money. I wouldn’t feel right taking it. As I was going through her bank statements trying to sort out what was left of her finance, I found out she had been giving them money every month. I thought she would have wanted to give them more.” She turned to look at him and found him smiling at her, lovingly, the way a proud father looks at his beautiful child. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Just, the more I know you, the more I like you. That’s all.”
“And I like you. Very much.”
He drank some beer, then stretched out his legs along the seat the way she had, head against the wall.
“I think I’d like my money to go to Childhelp, if anything happened to me right now.”
“Right now?”
“Well, yes... It might be a different story a few
years down the line. I might be married.”
“With children?”
He sighed, waited a few seconds before he answered. “It’s a nice thought, but maybe not in this lifetime... There’s just so much damage that can be transferred across.” He looked at her straight in the eyes. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I think I do, I used to feel the same.” Before therapy, before Lorna helped her to see the love she could have transferred instead of just hurt and disappointment. “Now I’m not so sure. What does Childhelp do?”
“Prevention and treatment of child abuse.”
He let the words hang in the air, without adding any more and they watched each other in silence for a while, sideways. If they were starring in a romantic movie, this would be the moment they moved closer and kissed passionately, with their eyes shut. But the kiss didn’t come. Not then.
”William?”
“Jessica?”
“Will you come have a coffee at my place when we finish the beer?”
“I’d love to.”
SHE WAS there with him, not in the spare room, but in their room, a new one fitted with the old furniture. She lay naked on the bed, one hand behind her head, her thick long chestnut hair covered the pillow. She was thin, so very thin. She didn’t have any curves, her breasts two tiny lumps on her chest. She was now thirteen. He had noticed other girls already had breasts at this age, but not her. She refused to grow up. She was still too young. Forever. Young.
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