A Grave Talent km-1

by Laurie R. King

  However, several glasses of an excellent Pinot Noir smoothed things over, and by the end of the meal even Lee had relaxed. She shooed them off to the fireplace with a tray of coffee while she did a preliminary cleanup, and Kate put some sticks together and produced a merry blaze that added to the gemütlichkeit.

  Hawkin sat with Vaun at opposite ends of the long linen-covered sofa and propped his feet up on a stool with the attitude of a man resting from a heavy burden. He perched his cup and saucer on his stomach and closed his eyes. Vaun pulled one leg up under her and considered him, head tipped to one side. Kate drank her coffee and wondered what the artist's eyes were seeing, the effects of late hours and human ugliness that his job had carved into his face, the bone sheathed in muscle, the skull beneath the skin. She looked from him to her, and abruptly, disconcertingly, she knew that Vaun was looking at this man Hawkin not as an artist, but as a woman, with interest. The thought so surprised her that she put her cup down with a rattle and broke the tableau. Hawkin opened his eyes and looked at her, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he had followed her thoughts, impossible as it might be. Vaun uncurled to lean forward and fill her cup from the carafe on the table, and paused to look questioningly at Hawkin, who held out his cup to her. She poured, looked the same question at Kate, who shook her head, and they all settled back as Lee came in and took the chair between Vaun and Kate.

  Twenty minutes of light conversation followed, Hawkin's entertaining story of a rock star and his current and equally famous lady friend who found themselves tumbling out the front door of the poshest hotel in town, stark naked and screaming obscenities to the amusement of passersby and the horror of the management. Hawkin told a good story. Even Vaun laughed and showed a faint flush of color in her cheeks, though whether it was from the wine or from Hawkin's story, or from his presence, Kate could not be sure.

  As the laughter of his audience faded, before there could be any anticipation of what he was going to say, Hawkin put down his cup and turned to Vaun.

  "It's decision time," he said, and before they could tense up, continued, "let me go over what we've got, first," and he told them of the week's findings. Kate had heard it before and had passed on abridged versions, but Hawkin laid it out in a clear series of interrelated steps, ending with Dan Whittier's garage. He waited for a moment to let it all settle in and then sat forward, elbows on knees, and studied his palms and interlinked fingers as he continued.

  "When we made this plan for a publicized outing, we had almost nothing on Lewis, and the purpose of drawing him to Vaun was as much to incriminate him as it was actually to lay hands on him. That situation has changed. It will take several days for the full lab results, but I think that mail truck will provide enough evidence to nail him.

  "How, then, do we take him? He could be in Mexico, but I don't think so. I think he's in the Bay Area. If we took the place apart, plastered the newspapers and the notice boards with the drawings, we'd probably find him. I'd like to do it that way. There's a very good chance we'd have him in two or three days."

  "And the other chance?" Vaun smiled, but he was not looking at her.

  "The other chance is that we miss him or that he's already out of the area and will go to ground when he hears there's a manhunt out for him. Which leaves you in an extremely difficult position." Now he looked at her, with a sad, lopsided smile. Kate had told him that Vaun intended to paint no more, and it had hurt him, she knew him well enough now to see, although he had said nothing. "You could probably afford to hire a bodyguard, but I don't imagine you'd care for that much, not for any length of time."

  "No."

  "Now, I wouldn't normally ask someone else's advice on this kind of thing, but in this case I need your cooperation, and I want to know how you feel about it. Do we continue with the idea of a trap, or do we drop it and hunt him down?"

  Vaun did not hesitate.

  "I would like to go on with it."

  "Somehow I thought you would." He grinned at her, then became brisk. "Right, tomorrow you three go out and wander around, pose for a couple of pictures and answer some questions from our pet reporter, come back here in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Trujillo or one of his people will bring that gorgeous car of yours up from Tyler's and leave it down the street with its cover on. Sunday there's a nice article and photograph of Vaun, and in the article two pointer arrows for Lewis to follow: first, that you're staying in the Russian Hill area with a couple of friends, and second, that you'll be meeting with reporters at an unspecified place on Tuesday morning. That will give Lewis two options, either to wander around the neighborhood with several hundred others, all of whom hope to catch a glimpse of you, until he recognizes the shape of your car, or to call the paper to find out where you'll be meeting with the reporters on Tuesday morning. We'll set up a trace on any such call, and if we don't get lucky, we'll wait for him to show his head Tuesday morning. If none of the three brings him to us, on Wednesday we'll go after him. What's wrong?"

  "Nothing's wrong," said Vaun, "it sounds fine. It's just… it's so difficult to tie all this together with Andy."

  "He's a bastard, Vaun," said Hawkin in a hard voice. "He's a monster inside a man's body, a creature who thinks nothing of strangling cats and dogs and little girls and sending other people to prison and into madness, so long as he has his revenge."

  "Oh, God, I know, I know. You have to stop him—we have to stop him. You have to remember, though, he was my first lover, and to a part of me he'll always be that. For heaven's sake, Al, don't look so worried. I won't go all sentimental on you. I'll do what needs doing."

  "Are you sure? It's not too late to back out."

  "I am sure."

  He studied her face for some hint of the future, and sighed.

  "All right. I just need a word from you to get the machinery moving. Where do you want to go tomorrow?"

  Lee cleared her throat. "There's a lovely show of Postimpressionists at the Legion of Honor, if you haven't seen it," she suggested. "Or some gorgeous Tibetan sculptures at—"

  Vaun set her cup down with a crack and stood up, thrust her hands into her pockets, moved over to stand at the gap in the curtain and peer with one eye out at the city spilling down at her feet.

  "I couldn't do that," she said lightly. "I could never look a Cezanne in the face again if I performed this farce in his presence. No, some place that can't be spoiled." She turned to face them, an odd expression around her gaunt eyes and mouth, an expression that in another, less invariably serious face might have been read as deadpan humor. She met Hawkin's eyes and jerked her head slightly to indicate the curtain behind her.

  "I think, if you don't mind, I would like to go to Alcatraz."

  29

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  After Hawkin left they dispersed upstairs, each to her separate room. Kate stripped and put on her warm robe, and went to run herself a long, hot bath. She had not slept well in many days, partly because of the omnipresent responsibility down the hall, but mostly because she did not like to sleep alone. She was tired, and edgy, and unhappy because she was not in top form and tomorrow would need her full attention. She ran the bath very hot, soaked until it cooled, and then half drained and filled it again with hot water until she felt rather boiled. She then took a rough washcloth and methodically scrubbed every reachable inch, and shampooed her hair three times, and shaved her legs. She then turned the shower to almost straight hot, and when her skin was numb with the heat she flipped it to cold and screamed silently for a count of ten. She turned it off and leaned against the tiles in relief for a moment before reaching for her towel.

  She dried her hair, did her nails, cut her toenails, brushed and flossed her teeth, put on her bathrobe again, and went down the dim, carpeted hallway to her room. The heat and the water had emptied her, and she felt hollow, and more at peace than she had for many days. She could sleep now.

  At the end of the hall a flickering light showed under Vaun's door, and the low mutter of th
e television. Kate stopped outside Lee's closed door and saw from the blue-white light under its edge that the reading light was on. She heard the sound of a page turning, and a minute later the tap tap tap of a pencil on the oversized artist's board that Lee used as a desk in bed, and a grumble as she complained to the author about whatever article she was reading. Kate smiled, reached out for the doorknob, and then slowly let her hand fall away.

  In her own room she exchanged the robe for an oversized T-shirt and a pair of soft running shorts, in case of nocturnal emergencies, and crawled into her bed. Sleep came to her quickly and pulled her down into a place that was thick and black and heavy and dreamless.

  Hours later a small sound broke sleep's hold on her and she struggled up from the depths, automatically fumbling for the gun on the table next to her as the door whispered open across the carpeting. She had the sights trained on the gap before she was yet awake, and Lee's outline stepped into them.

  "Oh, Christ, hon," Kate blurted out. "Don't do that to me." She put the gun carefully on the table and sat up. "What's wrong?" she whispered.

  "Nothing's wrong." The door closed and Lee moved surely through the dark room. "Move over."

  "Lee, what are you doing? We agreed—"

  "I didn't agree, you told me, and now I've decided you were wrong. Move over."

  "Look, sweetheart, Vaun's just down the hallway and I promised Al—"

  "You and Al didn't talk about our sleeping arrangements, and Vaun couldn't give a damn."

  "But what if she—"

  "If she comes in during the night she'll figure we're sleeping together. I don't think there's much that can surprise that lady."

  "Aren't you going to let me finish a sen—"

  "No. Shut up."

  Kate shut up and moved over, and during the time that followed she made a considerable effort to maintain an awareness of the world outside the door, but there were moments when she would not have heard Andy Lewis come through the house if he'd been wearing cleated boots and sleigh bells.

  Some time later Kate lay limp and purring, and spoke into Lee's shoulder.

  "What was all that hostility about?"

  "What hostility?" Lee said drowsily.

  " 'What hostility?' I like that. And what have you done with your beeper?"

  "On the table next to your damned gun. And I wasn't hostile, I was healthily sublimating my hostility into a libidinous outburst. If you'd been Jack Zuckerman I would have been hostile."

  "I'm glad I'm not Jack Zuckerman. I'm always glad I'm not Jack Zuckerman. Who is Jack Zuckerman?"

  "He wrote an attack in the Psychotherapeutic Journal on that article I did for them last month. A brilliant piece of writing. His, I mean. Nasty, snide, but slippery, nothing to respond to. Leaves the reader with the distinct impression that Lee Cooper is a well-meaning amateur who would be better off leaving people's heads to the big boys like himself who know what they're doing."

  "Remind me to thank him for giving you some hostility to sublimate."

  "Oh, he'd like that. He has a special place in his heart for me, because he knows that his ex-wife told me all the more sordid details of their relationship when she was working herself up to leave him, and he hates knowing that I know. He also thinks that I convinced her to make the break."

  "Did you?" Kate was not interested, but she enjoyed lying on Lee's shoulder and listening to her talk.

  "Of course not. I didn't have to. Look," she said abruptly, "what are we going to do about Vaun?"

  "Well, I was sort of hoping to help keep her from getting killed," said Kate mildly.

  "Yes, but after that?" Kate smiled to herself at Lee's casual dismissal of obstacles and wished she were as sure of the outcome as Lee seemed to be.

  "All right, I'll go for it. What are we going to do about Vaun?"

  "I'll have to talk with Gerry Bruckner again, see if he's come up with anything." Lee was lying staring up at the gray square of ceiling, and had her arm been free she would have been tapping her teeth with a pencil eraser. "Maybe she should go to him for a while."

  "If she wants to," Kate added, even more mildly. Lee laughed.

  "I'm doing a Hawkin, aren't I? Go here, go there, do this. I do know one thing that might help her, and that would be if you would allow her to be your friend instead of doing your armadillo routine."

  "My what?"

  "Don't get all huffy, you know what I mean. Two people in the last couple of weeks have held out a hand to you in friendship, and with both of them you pretend not to see it and curl into a well-armored ball. First Hawkin, and now Vaun. Both of them would be good friends for you."

  "I thought you didn't like Hawkin," said Kate, sidestepping.

  "Like doesn't enter into it. I respect him. I trust him."

  "Really?" That surprised Kate.

  "Oh, yes. He may be hard on you, but he won't hurt you. But I do think that if you allowed Vaun to make you her friend, it would do her a lot of good. Probably more good than anything Gerry Bruckner or I could do for her. Professionally, anyway."

  "All right. When the next few days are over, I promise to be less armadilloish. Armadilloid? Can I go back to sleep now? It's been lovely, but unlike some people in the room I don't function well on four hours a night."

  "Shall I stay?"

  "Yes. Yes." Kate molded herself up against Lee, but it was like trying to relax beside a quivering spring.

  "What's wrong, sweet Lee? Jack the Sugarman?"

  "Partly that, yes. He's right, you know."

  "No."

  "Yes, he is. I was overreaching myself in that article, trying to say something about theory without the foundations to hold it steady. Since I came back from New York I've been concentrating on therapy, on helping people keep their lives together. I don't regret it—it's important work, and I've learned so much."

  "But."

  "Yes. 'But.' I told you that I've been having nightmares about being eaten. I don't know how much longer I can go on without giving some attention to myself. What I've learned is too one-sided. I have to take it and work with it, test it, build on it, or else make up my mind to dump it and stick to straight day-to-day therapy. That's what Jack was saying, in his own sweet way, and he's right."

  "You want to leave San Francisco?"

  "Not without you. Never without you. And not perma nently. A year, maybe. Gerry Bruckner invited me to his place for a couple of months; then I'd like to spend three or four months in New York, maybe six months in Zurich."

  "I'd have to quit my job."

  "A leave of absence?" Lee suggested. "But look, love, this is a lousy time to bring it up, and I'm sorry. We'll talk about it another day. Go to sleep."

  "You said it was partly that. What else?"

  "Nothing specific, just nerves. What the next few days are going to bring."

  So, Kate thought, she's not so casual and confident after all.

  "I think you should go away for a few days, until it's finished."

  "I won't do that. You know I won't leave. It's just that waiting and uncertainty are difficult."

  "Are you scared?"

  Lee did not answer.

  "It isn't right that you should be in this. You don't have the training or the background for it. I'm going to tell Hawkin to move Vaun out of here."

  "No! No, Kate, you can't do that; you must not. Yes, I'm frightened, but not for myself. Why would Andy Lewis want to hurt me? No, it's you. I'm often frightened for you, you know, when you're off at night or when you go all silent about a case and I know it's coming to a head. It's the cop's wife syndrome, that's all. I worry about you, but you must not change the way you do your job because of me. Please?"

  "I still think you should go away for the next few days, until it's over."

  "Not just yet. Vaun needs me. I'll be okay. But, you be careful, promise me that."

  "Dear heart, with all the people who will be watching the house, we're safer than we would be driving to San Jose."

  "
Promise me."

  Kate wondered at the urgency in Lee's voice, and relented.

  "I promise. When this is over I'm going to make them give me a week off and you can have someone else see your clients, and we'll go somewhere. Baja? Go lie on the beach for a week and drink margaritas? And listen to some overweight mariachi band singing about doves?"

  "And play with the parrot fish and get sunburned. Yes, I'd like that. I love you, Kate. Thank you."

  "For what?"

  "For bribing that Todd kid to get into my teaching section at Cal. For calling me one nasty gray morning in Palo Alto. For loving me."

  They lay together in the dark, Lee's hand on Kate's hair, smoothing it gently. She felt Kate relax, and heard her breathing slow, until finally Kate gave a twitch and slipped back into sleep.

  Two hours later Kate was awakened again, by a small noise and a change in Lee. It was still as black dark as the city ever is.

  "What—?"

  "Shh!" Lee hissed, and Kate heard then the sound of a door closing and the nearly inaudible but somehow distinctive movement of Vaun coming down the hall and going down the stairs.

  "What time is it?" Kate whispered.

  "Just after four."

  "I'd better go see what she wants," said Kate. She started to throw off the covers, but Lee stopped her.

  "Let her go. If she needs something she'll ask, but give her a bit of rein. I'll get up in a while and make myself a cup of tea, if she wants to talk. Go back to sleep."

  Kate got up and put her T-shirt and shorts back on and went down the hall to the toilet. The hall light was on downstairs, but no sound came up. Well, she couldn't get out without Kate's knowing it, and Lee was right to say she shouldn't hound the poor woman's steps. Maybe she wanted to watch a video. Kate went back to bed and eventually to sleep. Lee got up a while later, made herself tea, and took it into the living room. There was no sign of Vaun, which meant she was in the therapy rooms.

  At six-thirty Lee was still curled up on the sofa, with a journal and a cup of coffee now, when she heard Vaun come out of the rooms, go into the kitchen and pour herself some coffee, and then start up the stairs. Lee looked up from her reading.