A Grave Talent (20 page)

"I told him that he'd been more help than I could have dreamed of and that the only thing we were missing was the photograph. He said that he'd try to think of someone who might have one, and if we had no luck he'd be more than happy to come down and try to make an ID. I thanked him and said we'd be in touch."

Hawkin had sat and listened quietly to her narration, his face growing more strained with every sentence. He now took a cigarette out of its soft package, tapped the end of it squarely on the principal's desk, twice, put it to his mouth, lit it precisely with one match, shook the match out and put it carefully into the ashtray he'd found in a drawer, his movements those of a technician defusing a bomb.

"Classic," he commented, then, "damn, damn, damn. How many other people have made Andy Lewis angry over the last eighteen years? Get a hold of Trujillo--"

"I talked with him again after the sheriff's news and told him to increase the guard on the road as much as he could and stop every male of about thirty-five to forty who wanted to leave."

"Good."

"I take it the coach didn't have a photo?"

"If he does, it'll take days to unearth. Eighteen years ago Lewis was a bit over five ten, one seventy-five, brown hair and eyes, no marks but a tattoo on his upper left arm, something snaky."

"Except for the tattoo it'd fit half the men on Tyler's Road. Maybe more than half."

"Christ, what I'd give for a fingerprint or a fuzzy picture."

"I just may be able to oblige you," she said with ill-concealed glee. "Andy Lewis had a driver's license."

"Hot damn, you don't mean we're going to get a break with this?"

"Trujillo tracked it down. They'll send the photo to the office. I wouldn't count on much, though. DMV photos aren't exactly the greatest."

"I won't cancel the search through the Shapiro archives, then."

"The what?"

"Never mind. Anything else?"

"Not much. There's nothing of interest about Ned Jameson. Average grades, some trouble as a kid but nothing nasty, just paint on walls and a shoplifting charge when he was fifteen. I was just going to try the co-op again when you came in."

"Your ear must be falling off," he said by way of praise. "Do you have their address? Let's go by and play nasty cops. I need to growl at somebody. Call Trujillo once more and let him know where we're going. Tell him I'll call him from home tonight, and have him start inquiries on the Road for a man with a tattoo."

Hawkin did not growl at the blushing Mrs. Piggott, nor at Mr. Zawalski, who fluttered them to the car. He did not even growl when the trio of hippie farmers at the co-op produced a hand-scribbled list of drivers that seemed to put Ned in the clear for at least two of the killings. It was not until the new-age farmers responded to his query about restaurants with the name of a vegetarian health-food place that he finally exploded, cursed tofu, beans, and goat's milk violently, and only subsided when, cowering, they threw him the name of an Italian place that they vowed had no tofu, ferns, or posters of Venice on the walls and was responsible in its choice of veal calves.

It wasn't a bad dinner. They parked immediately outside the windows so as to keep an eye and ear on the car. Hawkin talked about his childhood in the San Fernando Valley and about his kids, and asked nothing in return. Neither of them drank wine; both of them ate meat. The zabaglione was followed by thick demitasse cups of espresso romano.

Outside the restaurant it was almost dark, the air cool. Hawkin stood and lit a cigarette.

"Look, Al, I don't mind if you smoke in the car."

"It's a filthy habit," he said.

Kate was anxious to go while the coffee still surged in her veins, but Hawkin seemed in no hurry. He took his time and snuffed the end out thoroughly in the planter box.

"You look tired, Casey. Do you want me to drive?"

"It's all right. I don't mind driving."

"I'm quite competent behind the wheel. I got in the habit of letting my partner drive some years ago, and as you know I catch up on my sleep, but I am perfectly able to get us home in one piece."

"Really, Al, I'm fine."

He looked at her, then shrugged and walked toward the car. She unlocked the passenger door, and held the key in her hand. The exhaustion rolled up like waves and beat against the wall of her determination. Why do this? She knew she could make it home. Hawkin knew she could. So what was the point?

She handed him the keys.

"You drive for a while, please, Al."

Where some men might have shown triumph, Hawkin's eyes held only approval and warmth. He nodded, took the keys, and drove with easy concentration towards the freeway.

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Kate drowsed as the white lights sailed past and the red ones blurred and swam into each other. The car was warm and smelled of coffee and, not unpleasantly, of tobacco. She punched up the pillow and settled her head back into it.

"You awake?" said Hawkin softly, without taking his eyes from the road.

"Yes."

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can try," she said, rousing herself slightly.

"Are you a lesbian?"

Kate examined her reaction to the question. Nothing. Mild surprise perhaps, which was very interesting. "Are you asking as a cop, as a man, or as a friend?" she wondered.

"Mmm. Let's say, as a friend."

"Al, as a friend, I hope you won't be offended if I say that I don't think we know each other well enough for you to ask me that question. Try it again in a couple of months." She settled back and closed her eyes.

"And as a man?"

"You didn't ask me as a man."

"And if I had?"

"If you had, my answer would have been somewhat different."

Neither of them mentioned the third possibility.

"A couple of months, huh?"

"Maybe more. Maybe less if we have another case like this."

"God forbid!"

"Not offended?"

"Of course not."

Hawkin drove in silence for several miles, thinking. He was not all that concerned with her answer to his question and had asked it only because he thought it might be necessary to provide an opening for her to talk about herself. She had not chosen to take the opening, but it hardly mattered. The initial move away from the strictly professional had been made, and that was what he had been after.

The road cleared at a well-lit junction of sweeping concrete roadways, and he looked over at his partner. She was asleep, her full lips curled in some secret amusement. The precise nature of the joke, if joke it was, he could not know, but it made her look very young and wise, and made his own mouth curl into a smile as well. Kate slept for an hour and took the wheel to drive across the lighted bridge into the city. She waited in the car while Hawkin went up to get the DMV photo from the office, and when he came out onto the street she could see from his face that it was even worse than she had anticipated.

"The picture's bad?" she asked as he climbed in.

"In a very good light you can see that he has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and brownish hair. Do you know where Susan Chin lives?"

"Our artist? No."

He gave her an address.

Susan came to the door of her small apartment. She had obviously been in bed when Hawkin called and did not invite them in. She squinted at the photograph and looked at him dubiously.

"You did say it wasn't very good, but this is ridiculous."

"Can you do it?"

"You want me to use this to make a series of sketches, one of which might remind somebody on that Road of one of their neighbors? To extrapolate out from it, intuitively?"

"Exactly. Can you do it?"

"Haven't the faintest," she said cheerfully. "Well, it's an interesting problem. Makes a change from computer-generated IdentiKit drawings."

"Good luck."

They left the young artist standing in her doorway peering at the photo in the light of the bulb over her door. Kate dropped Hawkin off at his house and drove home.

The garage door rattled down behind her. She leaned forward and turned off the ignition, and felt the strength that had kept her moving throughout the long day ebb away into the silent garage. She sat at the wheel and thought about the motions of moving her right arm down to push the button and disengage her seat belt and moving her left arm down to pull the door handle and drawing first her left foot and then her right out and onto the concrete floor and standing up, but somehow sitting and breathing were about all she could manage at the moment.

The sound of a door opening, feet on a wooden staircase, slight scuffs on the slab floor, the click and pull of the car door coming open, Lee's voice, dark and restful.

"Sweet Kate, you look all done in."

"Hello, love. God, it's nice to sit still."

"I started a hot bath when I heard you come in, and the oil's warming for a massage."

"You will kill me with pleasure."

"I do hope not."

A light finger brushed the back of Kate's neck, and then the scuffs and steps retreated upstairs. In a minute Kate followed.

There was a bath that was almost too hot for comfort, and a large mug of something that tasted of chicken and celery, and thick warm towels, and then strong fingers probing at locked muscles and easing the tension from neck and back and legs until Kate lay groaning with the sweet agony of it, and when she was totally limp and the hands had moved on to wide, firm, integrating sweeps, she spoke, halfway to sleep.

"Hawkin asked me tonight if I was a lesbian."

The sweeping hands checked only slightly.

"And what did you say?"

Odd, thought Kate muzzily, how hands can be amused when a voice isn't.

"I told him to ask me again when we knew each other better."

This time Lee laughed outright, and then the towel began to wipe the last of the oil from Kate's skin.

"How utterly un-Californian of you, Kate."

"Wasn't it?"

The hands finished and soft sheets and warm blankets were pulled up to Kate's neck.

"I have some work to do. Give me a shout if you need anything. Now, go to sleep."

"I'll work at it."

Kate's breathing slowed and thickened, and a few minutes later the bed shifted and then the room clicked into darkness. Lee's soft curls formed a halo against the hall light, and she closed the door gently and went downstairs, an expression of fond exasperation on her face.

Several miles away Alonzo Hawkin lay on the sofa in his living room, a glass balanced on his stomach, his eyes on the large, delicate fish that performed their glides and pirouettes for his amusement, his mind on the events and the texture of the day. He was, for once, satisfied.

It was almost magical the way one day's work could on occasion, on very rare occasion, transform a case entirely and bring its whole setting and landscape into focus. That morning--yesterday morning, now--he had walked down the stairs with a huge sheaf of unrelated papers and more questions than he could begin to even ask, and Andrew C. Lewis was just one name in a hundred others. Sixteen hours later he had trudged back up those stairs, bone weary, with two things: a name and a direction. His weariness he bore like a badge of accomplishment, and he felt himself a fortunate man. A break.

The police artist Susan Chin was not the only one he had disturbed that night. First was Chief Walker, from whom he had asked two things: the whereabouts of Andy Lewis's aunt and her family, and further information concerning the reliability of Lewis's alibi the night of the murder eighteen years ago. Hawkin would have preferred to do that himself, but as it was not strictly his case, it would be hard to justify another couple of days up there. Next week, maybe, but not now.

Then he reported in. The man listened, concealed three yawns, grunted approval, and went back to bed.

Then the hospital: no change. Hawkin heard the first prickle of worry in the back of the doctor's voice, but as there was nothing he could do in that department, he pushed the thoughts away and called Trujillo.

That young man sounded older than he had a week before. He confirmed that a guard was now installed next to Vaun's bed instead of in the corridor, with orders not to step outside the door, and not even to close the bathroom door when he needed to use the room's toilet. She was not to be out of his sight.

Trujillo was disappointed that the photo was bad, though not surprised, and agreed to set Susan's drawings up in the main room to guarantee the most contact.

He then told Hawkin that he was not sure how much longer he could keep control. The Road's uneasiness was nearly to the breaking point. He'd had to let two families with children leave during the day (one of the men was black, the other in his late fifties) to take refuge with suburban friends, and the efficient bush telegraph had spread the news clear up to old Peterson's place that Vaun's near death was not being treated as a suicide. Trujillo had spent the day going up and down the Road--Tyler had been forced to suspend the anticar rule--reassuring people and reminding them to inquire first before they let fly with buckshot or bullet. The bedrooms at Tyler's were full tonight with nervous residents (peasants come to the castle during a siege, thought Hawkin with amusement, right down Tyler's alley), and he, Trujillo, would be staying there too. Sharp-nosed newsmen were back to camping outside, and it was only a matter of time...

There had been no immediate response that afternoon to the tattoo inquiry, although only a couple of dozen people had been asked. Hawkin told him in all honesty that he was doing a fine job. The younger man responded to the confidence in Hawkin's voice, and after a few minutes Hawkin told him to go to bed.

After that he went and took a long, mindless shower, wrapped his stocky body in his favorite soft and threadbare kimono, and settled down with a glass.

The time with the Jamesons had proven a gold mine. He now
had
Vaun Adams; he could now see her walking the halls of that unremarkable high school, an extraordinary teenager with an aura of untouchability and genius to keep the world at bay. And her short liaison with clever, nasty, sophisticated Andy Lewis--even that was not as completely unlikely as it had first seemed.

But what to do about the maddening shadow figure of Andrew C. Lewis? Hawkin's eyes were caught by the enthusiastic rooting of the eel-like loach in the gravel, and his mind wandered into a side track. What, he mused, does that C stand for? Charles? Clifford? Coleoptera? The father's name on the transcript had been Edward, or Edmund... He caught himself angrily and dragged his wayward thoughts back to the problem at hand. Lewis was on Tyler's Road; Hawkin knew it in his very bones. If he had not made a break for it by now, he wouldn't, not until he knew for certain that Vaun was not about to die. Perhaps not even then, if he felt sure enough that he had covered his tracks. Andy Lewis was not a man to panic blindly. How best to find him? And, once found, how to tie him to the wispy bits of circumstance, how to weave his involvement into a fabric strong enough to hold up in court? How to spin a sliver of wood, a hypothetical tattoo, and a deliberate concealment of identity into a rope strong enough to hang a man? Best would be if Lewis could be forced into an incriminating bolt--that would help to solve both problems at once. Hawkin lay there considering and discarding options and ideas, building up a plan around the geography and the psychological makeup of his prey and the people he had to work with.

The level in his glass went down very slowly, but eventually it was dry, and he sat up.

Twenty-four hours, he thought. If nothing's happened in twenty-four hours--no photograph has appeared, no description has clicked--I'll bring down the retired sheriff and Coach Shapiro and anyone else I can find and drive them up and down Tyler's Road in Trujillo's shiny new wagon until one of them says, "Say, wait a minute..." Tomorrow night I'll decide whether or not to turn Tyler's Road inside out. The thought of that possibility gave him a moment of pleasurable anticipation, seventy-four longhaired adults and twenty minors dragged in and printed and grilled until something gave under the pressure.

(I wonder what that C stands for? he thought in irritation.)

Yes, something will happen. If not tomorrow (today!) then Wednesday for certain. As for Monday, he could end it content that he had done all he could.

He put his glass on the table, said good night to the fish, and went to bed.

He was not to know until the sun rose that succumbing to the day's all-too-rare glow of satisfaction had been a mistake.

Two hours to the south a woman with black curls lay in a hospital bed, her hands tucked neatly beneath the crispcov ers, her remarkable ice-blue eyes staring, unblinking, up into the dim room. The hour was very late, or very early, but a disturbance down the hall and the rapid departure of a much-attended gurney had brought her eyes open some minutes before. One could not say that she was awake, exactly; only that her eyes were currently open, where before they had been closed.

The room's machinery had been edged back from the bed, save for the tall pole with the intravenous drip and the rolling cart with the monitor, whose wires were connected to little round sensors taped onto the woman's chest. The tracery of the heartbeat was slow but regular, and the cart would be removed later that day.

The woman did not know that, though. There was considerable debate over what she did, or would, know. The bruised puffiness of her mouth had subsided, the marks of her resurrection were fading, but Vaun Adams had given no sign of anything other than a mere physical presence. The words "brain damage" and "oxygen deprivation" had slid into the room and been carried away again, but they waited just outside her door and would return.

The room was lit solely by the corner reading lamp that sent its beam across the guard's paperback novel and laid a stretched circle of light along the wall and across a corner of Vaun's bed. She gazed passively up at the reflection of her face in a bit of polished metal overhead, distorted but familiar. One tiny part of Vaun saw it and recognized it, but that part was disconnected from her now, in abeyance, hiding.

The brain of the woman who had been Vaun Adams and Eva Vaughn was not physically damaged, not badly at any rate. Her mind, however, and her spirit--those had been severely wounded. The spark of being that was Vaun Adams, the spark that had flamed into being as Eva Vaughn, lay smothered beneath a burden that had finally proven intolerable. Vaun was covered by a blanket of despair, a thick, gray blanket that was crushing her, stifling her will to move and create and live, a thick gray blanket that said, "Enough."