Good to the Last Kiss (8 page)

‘Julia?’

She didn’t hear Thaddeus Maldeaux come. Nor did she hear him speak. A nurse had taken two dozen cream colored French tulips from him. She would find a vase and return. He pulled a chair up, beside her bed.

‘I don’t know if you can hear me,’ he said touching her hand. ‘I should have gone with you. Or better yet, you should have run away with me.’

He waited. The nurse came back in, put the vase on the rollaway table. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she said and left again.

‘It’s tough,’ Maldeaux said softly. ‘The world is a strange place, Julia. Sometimes it is so beautiful it takes your breath away. Sometimes it is so horrid . . .’ he said, voice trailing off. He looked at her. There wasn’t much to recognize. Swollen, blue, distorted face. ‘And you never know when something dark and foreign and deadly will strike. You know, under the sea there are wondrous things we’ve never seen, most of us. Colors and shapes of living things that would amaze us, take us away from our normal daily lives. There is a turtle I saw that looks like a leaf. A harmless leaf. But it is hungry. Like all of us, we do what we must to survive. And so a fish goes by, thinking it is a beautiful day in its vast watery neighborhood and the fish does not see what it is who lies in wait.’

He leaned over the bed, whispered in her ear.

‘You’ll survive, Julia. Then you need someone who can help, who can tell the difference between turtles and leaves.’

SIX

I
t was all so real. Julia Bateman could smell home – the place where she grew up. There was a crispness in the morning air. It carried the scent of the sun burning dew off the grass. She stood behind her aunt’s white frame farmhouse.

She was on the highway now, the rolling blacktop that rose and fell between the Amish farms. They waved to her. The women in their long dresses waved as if they knew her, loved her. The men too, in their dark clothes, waved, welcomed her.

She could feel the breeze in her hair. She was gliding across the ribbon of highway in the sun. How was she moving? She didn’t know. She looked down. There, in her blue Miata convertible. She didn’t have that car in Iowa. Then, as if by magic, the landscape changed. She was on the highway along the ocean now.

She’d done this before. Repeatedly. Even asleep, she knew it would be the same as it was before. Driving up Highway One along the California coast. It was all too familiar now. The carefree feeling she had was giving way now to a sense of anxiety. Into the pines. Getting darker. She was frightened. There was her Aunt’s house, only it wasn’t white anymore. It was dark and dingy looking. What was it doing there, half hidden, lurking in the trees?

Julia Bateman was in the house. There were pictures. Her sister, her father. She didn’t have a sister. It was a picture of Julia. A picture that was supposed to be her mother; but it wasn’t. It was Julia Bateman staring back through the dusty glass. In the hall now. A long hall. Thin, wind blown drapery drifted in like ghosts from doorways she hadn’t known were there. Something was going to happen there. She knew it. It was terrible. She couldn’t look. She put her hands over her eyes.

‘Oh God, no!’

She smelled something like ammonia. Julia Bateman opened her eyes to see her legs stretched out under a white blanket. Beside her were machines with tubes that stretched out and into her. She remembered now. She was in the hospital. She took small comfort in the knowledge that she was alive.

‘We thought we lost you yesterday.’

Julia looked over by the window. It was Paul Chang.

‘You’re going to be OK, Jules.’ He came to her, sat on the bed. ‘I’d hug you but I think it might hurt right now.’ He patted her hand. ‘Don’t try to talk. We’ll have plenty of time for that.’

A woman came in. About Julia’s age. A sturdy woman with dark, short-cropped hair.

‘Jules?’ she said, edging to the bed. She seemed almost frightened and the emotion seemed not to suit her.

Julia’s eyes seemed to show recognition for a moment. Then the eyes went dull again.

‘Hey Sammie, how ya doin’?’ Paul said quietly.

‘Paul.’ She responded warmly, but her eyes were on the patient.

‘How’s she doin’?’

The answer was in the silence.

Too much time to think. Earl unbuttoned his jail shirt and looked down at his chest, hoping they wouldn’t keep him in too long because he’d be missing his weights. It took less time to lose muscle than it took to gain it.

So his lawyer didn’t like him. Stand in line, he thought. If there were things about Earl Falwell people didn’t like, Earl was the first to learn them. Hell, his dad didn’t like him well enough to stick around or to contact him once he left. And that pissed his mother off, because, if the truth be known, she sure as hell wished the old man would have taken Earl with him.

His stepfather wanted Earl out of the house the moment the toad moved in.

People didn’t like him when he was a little, pimply mouse of a kid. Now that he was strong, they didn’t like him any better. Now they were scared of him. He could see it in their eyes.

Outside, in the world, he could fool people sometimes. When he first met them, he could act all nice and shit, like he cared about what was going on in their lives. Give them something.

That’s how he did it. That’s how he got the girls to go with him. Meet them at the mall, maybe the beach at San Gregorio or somewhere on the streets in San Francisco. Down around Turk Street they were kinda scuzzy, but they weren’t all that bad when they were young. They’d talk to him. He was always shy with women. Came in handy. Made them feel comfortable. Then he’d find out what they’re into. Rock bands mostly. Then he’d say he had these tickets to this or another concert. Whatever was in town or coming to town, some group they’d die to see.

Only he didn’t have the tickets with him, he’d tell them. He’d have to go get them. That would always work. And they’d go with him. He’d get them out somewhere. Always somewhere different. Hell, he didn’t even remember where a couple of them happened. He remembered it would be someplace in the middle of nowhere. And that’d be it.

What he really wanted was a woman, not some girl who barely had her pubes; but the young ones were easier. He didn’t feel so awkward around them. And they trusted him. Most of the time, they didn’t even see it coming.

McClelland and Gratelli met with Judge Wharton the next morning to get the warrant to search Julia Bateman’s San Francisco residence. However they decided to go to the cabin in the woods first.

McClellan drove. Gratelli, this time, rode shotgun, the unmarked Taurus making them look like a couple of hardware conventioneers in a rental.

They drove without conversation, up Highway 101, choosing speed over the beautiful but tortuously slow Highway One. They bypassed Mill Valley, Novato and Petaluma before having to exit at Cotati, where still another bypass would get them around thriving and trendy Sebastopol.

Gratelli would have preferred the scenic route. McClellan seemed immune to anything aesthetic. Once out of San Francisco, it didn’t matter that much to Gratelli. The sky was a cloudless, hazeless blue and the sun through the glass warmed him, enticed him to relax. He allowed Puccini’s ‘Un bel di’ to creep in and sweep out the debris that littered his mind. It was as good a way as any to spend a Friday afternoon, a fine way indeed to reduce the tension before gliding into a weekend.

Gurneville, the closest town to the crime scene, was one dot on the map beyond Forestville. It wasn’t until then that McClellan spoke.

‘You know where I can find a cheap apartment?’

‘The Tenderloin,’ Gratelli offered as a joke.

‘Too expensive. I checked.’

‘Who’s interested?’

‘Me,’ McClellan said, eyes still on the road.

‘Yeah, why is that?’

McClellan didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Gratelli regretted asking. He had pieced together the signs. It was the breakup of a twenty-five-year marriage. That many years was a near record in the police department, where male officers, and now female officers, accumulated multiple spouses. But when a marriage lasted beyond the second decade, there was another dangerous time. When the kids left. When they were on their own. Nothing to hold the shaky partnership together. The years of late hours, mediocre pay, lack of communication, pent-up anger, disillusionment took its toll on the most well-intentioned, devoted families.

Even now, McClellan couldn’t talk about it.

‘Why in the hell would that dink want to move way up here? Christ, a woman alone in a cabin in the boonies, she’s asking for trouble.’

‘Un bel di’ was irretrievable. Fitting for Julia Bateman, Gratelli thought. The aria from
Madama Butterfly
was the song of innocence and the prelude to the grim, ironic realities of life and death. And Gratelli’s quiet afternoon escape was over. They neared the cabin.

As Inspector Mickey McClellan went with cops from Santa Rosa and Gurneville inside Julia Bateman’s cabin, Gratelli wandered the outside perimeter of her property. There wasn’t much of it. The cabin itself was set into the hill, the front jutting out, leaving only a modest yard in front before it was cut off by the gravel road.

Even so, the cabin was almost invisible from the road, hidden by pines of various heights which canopied a wilderness of ferns and other greenery below he couldn’t identify. If the lights were on inside, then perhaps someone could detect human existence. Otherwise it was doubtful, especially doubtful in the dark. The drive might give it away, though it was narrow and was slightly overgrown from disuse.

An automobile parked in the drive might call attention to itself by reflecting a headlight. However, Julia Bateman’s blue Miata was parked around the curve and in a space under the house. Had it been moved since the crime?

The doors and windows to the cabin had not been jimmied. There were no footprints, no broken twigs or squashed plants. No sign anyone had tried to peek in the windows. If the brush had been beaten down, it wouldn’t have surprised him. In fact, he was surprised that the local police hadn’t tromped around the grounds.

How did the rapist get in? Not likely through the windows and not likely through either door unless they were left unlocked or Julia Bateman had let him or them in herself. Possible. She hadn’t yet spoken a word on the subject. What was also possible was a climb up the hill to the roof. Stones had been embedded along one side of the incline toward the back of the cabin to inhibit erosion.

It was possible to climb that way and return by that route without leaving much if any imprint.

Gratelli took a deep breath and went inside the cabin. The question of the rapist’s access was immediately answered once Gratelli got beyond the living room and headed toward the bedrooms where the police officers who had agreed to meet the two big city cops were engaged in a heated discussion, punctuated by nervous laughter.

Consciousness seemed more accessible to Julia Bateman, though not necessarily more desirable. She was now able to mentally separate the two worlds, the one lit inside her mind, the other outside. And to some extent, now, she was able to choose which one to inhabit.

Earlier, she had heard the nurses talk about a reduction in morphine and was able to conclude that was what accounted for her rise into the real world. She had also heard them tell the doctor that ‘the patient’s heart beat and blood pressure were nearly normal and continuing to improve.’ Julia was, however, indifferent to the news.

At the moment she was being given a sponge bath. They’d begun by gently dabbing her face with warm water sending periodic needle pricks of pain that spread like tentacles into her brain. It was less painful when they gently swathed the warmth on her chest and belly. Then the warmth disappeared as the moisture evaporated and she would chill in one spot and become warm in another.

She chose not to open her eyes, but merely to feel the not altogether unpleasant sensation. Whoever it was worked in silence. And when the bath was completed, Julia felt the cool sheet again cover her. Then another layer – a cotton blanket – was tucked up under her chin.

Julia could feel herself drift again, her body tingling against the cool sheets. She was sure she could hang on to consciousness, but allowed herself to drift, feeling a comfortable warming of her body.

As a child, in the early summer, she’d play all day, forgetting how the weak sun could still sting her skin with a light pink blush. She would shower and climb naked into her bed. This is how her flesh was now – warm and cool, safe and secret. She was completely aware of every inch of her body.

In those adolescent days, she discovered the strange pleasure her nakedness gave her – the slight swell of her breasts and the electricity of her nipples against the starched sheets, the secret touching.

Dark now. Heavy quilt over her. Sounds. Sounds overhead awakened her. She opened her eyes, but couldn’t see in the darkness. At first Julia Bateman was frightened, but she was sure it was a raccoon, perhaps a possum. The area was full of nocturnal creatures. She closed her eyes. The sound again.

The cabin had a flat roof, so the sound was not far away nor was there much in between her and the sound to buffer it. Couldn’t be raccoons, she thought. It was a heavy sound. A bear? Surely not. There were brown bears in California, but weren’t they in parks?

Her .32 revolver was in the desk drawer. The telephone was on the desk. The desk was in the living room. She decided not to turn on the light. If it were a bear, it probably didn’t matter. If it were a burglar, the light would let him know her whereabouts.

This wasn’t the first time she’d been in danger. Hang around Turk and Eddy Streets in the city for a few years. Anybody who could do that would be able to stay cool in a volatile situation. Her bare feet touched the cool wooden floor. Her arm went out to feel for the doorway. She moved slowly into the hall.