(2011) The Gift of Death (16 page)

‘
Why?’

‘
One of my men called in two hours ago with the information on a middle-aged white male who had been beaten to death next to his vehicle on the highway into New Mexico. He hasn’t been formally identified, but documents on his person show him to be a Charles Garrison, born May 13 1955. Whoever did it must have taken all his cash, but left everything else including his wallet.’

‘
Fuck.’

‘
Sorry?’

The line started to break up again.

‘
Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this straight away?’

‘
The reception is really bad –‘

‘
Never mind. Thanks.’ He cut the line. ‘Fuck,’ he said to himself again, running his hand through his hair in frustration and leaning against his car.

‘
Is there a problem?’ Jennifer said walking up to him.

‘
Garrison is dead. Beaten to death in New Mexico.’

‘
What is going on?’ she said, her voice tinged with a note of fear.

‘
I haven’t got a fucking clue,’ he said. ‘But I do know one thing. We’re being fucked with. Whoever is doing this is having a fucking great time watching us fuck around. Shit.’ He banged his fist against the bonnet of the car, causing a slight indentation. He brought his knuckles up towards his mouth. ‘Fuck, that hurt.’

He remembered the lock on the door, the map on the floor by the TV. Had someone broken into Garrison’s house in an effort to find out where he had gone? His death was certainly no coincidence. But the events of the last three weeks just didn’t seem to hold together. He tried to separate each one in sequence so as to try and gain an overview.

First Kate discovers a dead child floating outside her beach house. Then she finds out she is pregnant. Cassie Verlinger, the blind girl, is sent a package of fingertips and then Jordan Weislander opens up his icebox to find a tongue nestling amongst some cuts of veal. Now Garrison, a criminal who served time in the same prison as Gleason, is murdered, beaten to death. And then what about those other cases that had been reported to his office – the murder of the child porn enthusiast, Raymond Cutler, and the weird overdose of that drug dealer in Silverlake?

What was happening to LA? Sure, it had always been a violent city. Now it seemed like it was fast mutating into the crime capital of the world. At particularly difficult or stressful times he had wondered whether it was all worth it. Certainly he’d had that argument with Kate many times. She felt like she couldn’t take it any more. At the time, he was pleased that she had made that decision to resign from her job. Although she didn’t have to experience some of the vileness he encountered during the course of his work, he could tell that at times it was too much for her. He always maintained that he wanted to carry on. He was doing a public duty. But now? He felt like he was drowning in a tide of evil, a filthy darkness filling up his lungs. He thought of Kate. Kate and the baby she was carrying. He couldn’t let her die. Even if they never really communicated again – and, shit, why should she want to talk to him after Jules – he vowed he would protect her. And his baby. He thought of that baby girl Kate had found in the sea and was surprised by a wave of emotion that was almost too much for him to bear.

‘
Josh – are you okay?’ asked Jennifer, touching him lightly on his shoulder.

‘
Sorry, yep, fine. Just a bit freaked out.’ He coughed.

He called Helen on his secure line and told her the news. He gave her Garrison’s address and asked her to send over a fingerprint and forensics team.

‘
And what about the addresses of the remaining four men?’

‘
I’m told they will be with us in the next thirty minutes.’

‘
You may need to put some pressure on. We need that information now. Otherwise –‘

‘
Yes, sir?’

‘
I don’t know. But I’ve got a feeling there’s something else to this case besides Gleason.’

17

The sun was beginning to set over the mountains as Kate and Cassie drove towards Hollywood. The sky split into fissures of bright yellow, bruised purple and burnished orange, and the light cast upon the hills in the distance seemed to turn the rocks a blood red. By the interchange of Hollywood and Vine hordes of tourists meandered up and down the sidewalk, some hunting out the hand and foot prints of their favourite celebrities, others moving with an aimlessness approaching catatonia. Los Angeles had a lot to answer for, thought Kate to herself, selling as it did the empty promise of the American dream through the medium of motion pictures. Perhaps mass entertainment was just as bad as organised religion.

Certainly her father used to think so – it was one of the topics guaranteed to light up the dinner table. ‘Escapism turns folks’ brains into mush,’ Saul would say. ‘Oh, don’t be such a prig,’ her mother would reply. ‘What’s wrong with taking people out of their lives and giving them the chance to dream?’ Dad said he could list a dozen or so reasons, and so the argument would start.

‘
What are you thinking about?’ asked Cassie from the passenger seat.

‘
I was just thinking about my dad. He hated the entertainment industry.’

‘
But your mother used to –‘

‘
I know, I know,’ she laughed. ‘I think it was one of those life-long differences of opinion that kept their relationship going.’ She thought of her own relationship with Josh – her former relationship with Josh, she corrected herself – and the things they used to argue about. No, she wasn’t going to allow herself to go there. She had promised not to think about him.

‘
You said that you were a photographer now. Is that for a magazine?’

Everyone assumed that. But she’d learned not to be offended.

‘
No. I show my work in galleries.’ That sounded so pretentious. ‘I mean, I take photographs that my gallery then sells.’ Even though her work had been written about – and highly praised – in critical journals, she was careful not to define it as art. Well, at least not to other people. ‘It’s in Santa Monica. The Sansom. Have you heard of it?’

‘
No, sorry.’

Suddenly Kate felt foolish. Why on earth would she have heard of it? What a stupid thing to say. But she felt apologising would only make it worse.

‘
In fact, I’m meant to be working on a series of photographs for a new exhibition.’

‘
What’s it about?’

‘
Waves.’ The answer sounded trite, pathetic. ‘Waves as they swell, as they grow and as they break and die.’ That didn’t sound much better.

‘
That’s what you were doing when -’

‘
When I found the little girl. Yes.’

The two women fell silent. Kate thought about the parents of Sara-Jane. She wondered how Susan was getting on. Perhaps she’d recommend a doctor for her, after all. But Susan would probably feel as offended as she herself had done when Dr Cruger had suggested she see a shrink. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. In fact, she hadn’t yet done anything about finding another doctor for herself. That was another thing on her list.

‘
I think we’re nearly here,’ said Kate, turning down onto West Sunset Boulevard and then onto Tamarind Avenue.

She glanced in the rearview mirror as she parked. The constant presence of the unmarked car, with the two protection officers, made her feel a little safer.

‘
Are you sure you’re going to be okay with this?’ asked Kate. ‘There’s no need for you to come in with me.’

‘
I think I’d like to,’ said Cassie, forcing a weak smile. ‘Really I would.’

‘
If at any stage you want to leave, just let me know and we’ll go. Okay?’

‘
Okay.’

They walked arm in arm down the street until they came to an apartment building that looked like it had been built in the thirties or forties. The kind of place, Kate thought, that used to house aspiring actors and actresses who had travelled from Kansas or Alabama or Portland or wherever in search of fame. She remembered the story her father used to tell of a woman born in London who came to New York and then LA in the hope of becoming an actress. After one failure too many she had climbed up to the Hollywood sign and thrown herself off, killing herself instantly. She had been cremated in the cemetery that stood at the end of Tamarind Avenue, the other side of Santa Monica Boulevard. Saul often used to take her to Hollywood Forever cemetery and show her the graves and niches of the stars in the hope that the repetition of such sorry tales would squash any ambitions she might have had to become an actress.

‘
Here we are,’ said Kate, running her finger down the series of names by the door. ‘Apartment 312.’

She pressed the buzzer and waited. A moment later the door opened and the two women stepped into a nondescript stairwell, furnished with a table covered with free-sheets and fliers and a couple of mountain bikes. Across the hallway there was an elevator so narrow it looked as if it could only hold two people. Kate looked at it with suspicion and fear, the light of its call button an evil red eye.

‘
It’s only two flights up. Do you mind walking?’ asked Kate.

Kate guided Cassie up the stairs and along a narrow corridor that, on one side, opened onto and overlooked a central courtyard.

‘
Remember, she’s likely to be as distressed as you are,’ said Kate, stopping on the corridor and squeezing Cassie’s hand a little tighter. ‘By the sounds of it, Roberta’s been trying to forget her father just as much as you have.’

‘
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live with that monster,’ said Cassie, almost in a whisper. ‘Let alone be the daughter of such a man.’

‘
It’s good that she agreed to see us,’ said Kate. ‘But she knows something is wrong and I suppose she wants to find out more. I think she also feels a certain gratitude towards Bill Vaughan. She knows that he spared her a great deal of heartache. When I mentioned on the phone that I had worked with him on the case she seemed to open up.’

They continued to walk along the corridor until they stood outside 312. They pressed the bell and a moment later the door opened. Kate had never met Roberta before and she was immediately struck by her. A slight creature she looked more like a girl than a woman. She had light auburn hair, pale skin and a few oat-coloured freckles around her nose and mouth. She smiled as she stretched out her hand to greet her callers, but Kate noticed that there was a sadness in her light blue eyes.

‘
Hi, I’m Kate Cramer and this is Cassie. Cassie Verginer.’

‘
Hi, there.’ She looked down to the ground, as if she were a little ashamed. ‘Come on in. Sorry everything is a bit of a mess, but I’ve only just finished work.’

Roberta led the way into a sparsely furnished lounge consisting of a blue Futon and an old wooden rocking chair. She caught Kate looking at the storage crates in the far corner of the room.

‘
I’ve been here for two or three months, but I still haven’t had time to unpack. Sorry, there’s not much room, but please sit down.’

Kate guided Cassie towards the sofa and then took a seat next to her.

‘
Would you like some coffee? Tea? Juice?’

‘
We don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ said Cassie.

‘
No, it’s fine. I’ve got some coffee on the go anyhow.’

Roberta disappeared into the small kitchen to make the coffee while Kate and Cassie remained sitting in silence. A few moments later Roberta returned with a tray of coffee and biscuits.

‘
I really admire your kind of work,’ said Cassie. ‘When I was losing my sight I had the most wonderful care from the nurses at the clinic. Not just with physical things, you know, but in terms of support. It must be terribly draining, though.’

‘
Yes, it is, at times,’ said Roberta, sitting down in the rocking chair. ‘Of course there are moments when you think it’s just too much, and it is tiring, but the rewards are high. Obviously I’m talking about the personal rewards, not the financial ones.’ She gestured around the apartment with a thin smile of apology.

‘
Did you always want to be a nurse?’ asked Kate.

‘
I’m not sure. But I do remember dreaming about being nurse when I was a little girl. I would dress up in a little outfit my best friend’s mom made me and pretend that I was helping someone get better. For some reason, in my head it was always a lady who was ill. Of course now, I realise what I was doing was trying to bring my own mother back.’

‘
You never knew her?’ asked Cassie.