Every Wickedness (6 page)

An astrologist from Mill Valley postulated the Spiderman to be a Capricorn, a hyper-organizer with a strong need for control, a man not crippled by fear; he would lack buoyancy but struggle to project a normal facade. He could be compensating for an absentee father.

A psychologist specializing in Adlerian birth order professed the killer to be the oldest in a family, dethroned from his favoured position by the birth of siblings, admiring power and striving to regain it.

They could both be right. Or nuts. Either way, the field was still too broad, and they weren’t even within sniffing range. Neither the press nor the public would let up.

The click of the VCR brought Kearns back to reality. He turned to Fuentes. “We need a suspect.”

“We need the Spiderman,” Fuentes emphasized, then realized his slip in using the name.

“Oh, sure. Be greedy. Until this creature decides to walk in here on cloven hoof, a suspect will do
nicely. At least it might keep the bloodhounds off our backs.”

Back in his office, Kearns retrieved the salami sandwich from his wastebasket, blew some pencil shavings off the kaiser roll, and polished off the remains in three bites.

T
he twin spires of Saints Peter and Paul impaled the sky over North Beach. As Beth passed in front of the Romanesque church, she took in the details of the architecture. She had been inside once, nearly a year ago with Ginny, and remembered the ornate altar inlaid with mosaic and framed in white Carrara marble. The peacefulness she had expected from a place of worship had been conspicuously absent as parishioners crammed the pews, greeting each other in Italian or Chinese. Tourists had stood at the back of the church, coming and going as they pleased, according as much reverence to the Mass as an excursion to Disneyland. A visiting missionary delivered a twenty-five-minute homily about the evils of materialistic society, and concluded with a plea for generous donations to his outreach program. Beth hadn’t returned to Saints Peter and Paul or any other church.

She paused before one of the newsstands on Washington Square, paid for a
Chronicle
and
New York Times
, then pushed open the lower half of the Dutch door to Mama’s Girl and went inside. From her table by the window, she could watch a cluster of Italian men playing
bocce
in the park across the street as a handful of Asians practised Tai Chi nearby. From
this vantage point too, Beth could flag down Ginny coming out of Mass — Saints Peter and Paul was right next door.

She ordered an Evian and unfolded the
Chronicle
. Pictures of the Spiderman’s victims were plastered on the front page beneath the headline SPIDERMAN SNARES MODEL. Sardonically, Beth supposed Devereaux ought to be congratulated for her journalist coup. Everyone was using the arachnid metaphor. Everyone except Jim Kearns. Beth understood Kearns’s feelings about Devereaux and shared them. The woman’s job title was tough to pin down — not quite journalist, nor solely a morning-show host but a curious combination of both. Beth supposed Devereaux would be pleased with being labelled a Media Personality. Her television show, “Devereaux Direct,” aired each morning; she wrote a weekly newspaper column bearing the same title, and occasionally, her strident voice could be heard from some local radio station, shrieking about some Important Issue. These days, it didn’t seem to matter what switch you flipped or what page you turned to — there was Devereaux. Beth couldn’t understand why San Franciscans even cared what the woman had to say.

But they did care. That was the problem. And right now, Devereaux had more credibility than the police.

Today’s editorial slammed Kearns’s forum, citing it as a feeble attempt to appease frightened citizens
while telling them nothing new. By the third paragraph, Beth had the gist of the piece, and she flipped back to the front page.

With a mixture of fascination and revulsion, Beth read the
Chronicle’s
latest instalment about the killer and his victims. Natalie Gorman’s photo was, to Beth’s mind, inappropriate and sensationalistic: in it, Natalie wore a black lace bustier, her claim to fame as a Victoria’s Secret lingerie model. The news article included a map of the city, with bright green arrows pointing to the locations where each victim had been found. Anne Spalding, like the others, had been reduced to a jumble of words and a diagram. Beth read and reread the article, hoping to learn more about the woman that she hadn’t taken the time to know.

Beth became so engrossed in the summary of the murders and the lives of the victims that she was unaware of the passage of time. Her rumbling stomach and the appearance of the waiter offering another mineral water brought her back to reality. It was six-thirty. Beth accepted the drink, thinking Ginny should be along any second.

A few people meandered along the sidewalk, Ginny not among them. Beth wasn’t particularly surprised — Ginny was frequently late. In the past, she’d run the gamut of excuses.

“There was this great vintage clothing shop on the Haight, Beth. Had to stop.”

“Mama needed help rolling lasagna dough. How could I turn down my mother?”

“I just started my period. No lectures about being late, okay?”

Beth had heard them all, some of them twice, so she was certain Ginny would concoct some intriguing tale this time. Perhaps she’d been overcome by a need to make her confession and was whispering a list of venial sins to a priest right this moment. Quickly, she dismissed this notion. It was far more likely that Ginny was grilling the priest about his single male relatives. Though Beth’s friend might be infuriating, she was never dull.

At six forty-five, Beth ordered a fruit salad. By 7:10, she was worried enough to consider going next door to explore the church, pew by pew.

Just then she spotted her, a flurry of colour carrying a violin case across Washington Square. Ginny’s diminutive height didn’t get her noticed in a crowd, so she made damn sure she got herself noticed. She clad herself in anything that was a direct assault on symphony black and white. Today’s ensemble was a caftan, its spectrum of colour reminding Beth of a jungle parrot. She breezed into the restaurant, then plunked onto the bleached wooden chair opposite Beth.

“Oh-oh,” Ginny said, adjusting her tie-dyed outfit. “You’re not happy. You know tardiness is part of my appeal, Beth.” An oversized raffia shoulder bag and the violin case thudded onto the floor. Ginny, resembling a reincarnation of Mama Cass, propped her granny glasses on top of her head.

“And you’re in too good a mood,” Beth countered, “so it’s obviously not your period this time. For God’s sake, where were you?”

“Confession?”

“Try again. I saw you running across the square.”

“Okay, there was this really cute guy sitting beside me at Mass — the Saturday night Masses get all the single people — so after the recessional hymn, I followed him.”

“You what?” Beth had long since gotten used to Ginny’s unpredictability, but this bordered on lunacy.

“All the way down to Duds and Suds on Columbus.” Duds and Suds was a combination café cum laundromat where singles congregated. “I have to strike while my iron’s still plugged in. Ya gotta love a guy who comes for a dose of religion between loads of wash.”

“Irresistible. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You kept me waiting here for over half an hour while you chased some stranger through North Beach?”

“Not an ordinary stranger, Beth. He could have been The One.”

“Ginny,” Beth sighed, “to you, any man who owns a Gillette razor could be The One. What happened?”

“His roommate was already folding the whites by the time I got there. Why are all the cute ones gay? Oh, well. Did you eat?”

Beth nodded. “Fruit salad.”

“That all?” Ginny signalled the waiter, flashed him a wide smile, then ordered the black bean soup and the pasta of the day.

“Why the violin?” Beth asked when Ginny had finished ordering.

“Practising with Dieter tonight. You remember, the cellist I played the duet with in the West Marin Festival? Maybe later he’ll pluck my strings.”

The waiter set a basket of bread on the table. Ginny tore into a slice.

“Ginny, you’ve got to be careful,” Beth cautioned.

“Why? These pesky extra pounds are here to stay.”

“No. I mean, you can’t go following strange men, especially now. And what about this Dieter?”

“Hey, why not? Nice Catholic boy, a musician. He could be a contenda.”

Beth thrust the
Chronicle
in front of Ginny. “Virginia Rizzuto, get serious. Look.”

“You flatter me, Beth. Those women are gorgeous.”

“Those women are
dead
. I don’t relish the thought of seeing your photograph in the
Chronicle
alongside theirs, Gin.”

Ginny glanced at the photos, her gaze lingering on Natalie Gorman. “Well, I wouldn’t be in my underwear, that’s for sure. Mama would have a stroke.”

“Gin—”

“Come on, Beth. Lighten up.” The waiter returned with Ginny’s soup and set it on the table. “This city’s
always been home to society’s fringe groups. The Symbionese Liberation Army, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple — now we’ve got the Spiderman.”

“You’re minimizing the danger, Gin.”

“And you’re exaggerating it because of Anne,” Ginny said, raising her voice. “Beth, we’ve had this conversation before. I’m not about to change my lifestyle because of the Spiderman. I know about bad people doing bad things. I’m sorry about Anne, and I’m sorry about Natalie Gorman, too, but face it, she was stupid to cross that park at night. Any tourist guide will advise you to stick to the main roads. But the odds of the Spiderman harming me are slim.”

“Still, Gin, you don’t have to go tipping the scale by following some stranger.”

“The Spiderman won’t get me, Beth. I’m not his type. You, on the other hand …”

“What do you mean?”

Ginny chomped the pointed end of a crusty roll. “Sometimes,” she said between chews, “you’re too polite for your own good. Guy stands on your doorstep with a set of ten-year-old encyclopedias, and you’d let him in because it’s cold outside.”

“I would not.”

“Beg your pardon? How many times has that McKenna character screwed you around with the rent?” Ginny paused, and when Beth didn’t answer, she said, “See? What did I tell you? Good manners are for family and close friends.”

“Thanks, Ginny. I feel much better.”

“Listen, just take some of your own advice. Be careful.”

“Anne was careful. He got her anyway.”

“I know,” Ginny’s voice softened, “but she wasn’t abducted from anywhere near your house, and she wasn’t killed there, either. You’ve got to let it go, Beth. Don’t give this stranger so much power over you.”

Beth nodded, not so much in agreement, but more to signal the end of the conversation. She let Ginny eat her soup in peace.

Had she been obsessing about this killer? Since Anne Spalding’s death, Beth had thought of little else. She wondered where Anne had met the killer, and why, after fleeing from a husband who had beaten her senseless, she would trust another man so soon, and so completely. Was Anne that hungry for male companionship? Or was the Spiderman so damnably slick?

Since Anne’s death, during many sleepless nights, Beth imagined footsteps padding across her spare room carpet. One night she sat up in bed, certain she saw Anne sitting on the upholstered chaise in Beth’s bedroom. Once, she even heard her speak. “I can’t go to my room, Beth.
He’s
there.”

So many times, Beth remembered Anne coming down to the kitchen for a late-night snack while Beth sat at the living room desk, buried under her accounting ledgers. She had hardly looked up when
Anne had passed by, so concerned was she with maintaining her privacy. She had provided Anne with a place to stay and wanted no involvement. No responsibility. If only she’d been more sympathetic, more open, perhaps Anne would have confided in her, told her something about herself. Maybe then Beth would have information to share with Jim.

“Mmm, that was good.” Ginny’s soup bowl was whisked away, replaced by a steaming plate of fusilli. “Banzai!” Ginny said and buried her fork in the pasta. Pomodoro sauce spattered across Natalie Gorman’s picture. Mouth full, Ginny gurgled, “Enough about murders and such. Tell me what’s new with you.”

“I got another anonymous note yesterday.”

“Oh, hell. More bad news? No wonder you’re paranoid. What’d this one say?”

Beth explained, then told Ginny about Kearns’s reaction.

“He’s right,” Ginny said, wiping her mouth. “It’s not the Spiderman’s style. The guy writing those notes isn’t some fang-toothed stalker. I’d stake my life on it. More likely someone who’s already in your face, gauging your reaction to his literary creativity.”

In your face
. Beth thought of Bobby Chandler, who certainly had been in her face, in her yard, in her life lately. Was Bobby capable of such maliciousness? The mental image of the skateboarder with the lopsided grin didn’t jibe with the steely coldness of the two notes. Still, Bobby was fourteen, and weren’t all
teenagers equipped with enough angst to baffle Freud? The memory of her own adolescence made her wince. Thank goodness for the advance of years.

The pomodoro sauce dried a rusty brown on the newsprint. The slain model’s face appeared spackled with blood.

“You must come across the occasional kook in your store, Beth. What about one of your customers?”

“Like Horace Furwell?”

“Is that the pervert you were telling me about?”

Beth nodded. “Not to hear him tell it, though. He thinks his bordello project will catapult me onto the pages of
Architectural Digest
.”

“Like you need his help getting there. Listen, Beth, any guy who wants a designer of your calibre to turn his bedroom into a replica of a whorehouse has more than a screw loose. We’re talking the whole toolbox. I’d steer clear of that bozo. Next subject. When do you see your new man again?”

“Monday night,” Beth replied, feeling her mood lighten. “I can’t wait.”

“That good in the sack, huh?”