Night work (23 page)

I beg you, girls of Jerusalem,

If you find my love,

What will you tell him?

Tell him...

(Beloved's voice drifted off, and the five girls paused,
paying attention at last and waiting for their companion to continue.
Finally, the distraught figure in blue climbed slowly upright, swayed,
straightened, and continued.)

Tell him.I am sick with love.

With that phrase, in swept Lover, as heedless of Beloved's
distress as the girls had been, and flung strong arms around half-bare
shoulders. Beloved cried out, in pain or in pleasure, but then to cover
it up, began again to praise Lover, to flirt and act the coy and
lighthearted one. All the while the oboe continued to sound its
plaintive note, while the audience wondered when Lover would wake up to
the realization that something was desperately wrong, would find out
what had taken place and rise up in fury to take revenge on the guards.

Night fell again on the embracing couple, with no moment of
revelation. The third lighting of lamps came, and a figure lying alone
on the stage. This time, however, it was not the slim figure of Beloved
who woke alone, but the strong one, Lover, waking alone in the warm and
flickering light. But before Lover could do more than sit up and glance
about, rubbing a sleepy eye in puzzlement, Beloved erupted back onto
the stage, whirling like a dervish, like a small blue tornado, leaping
and shouting over the quick beat of the music and holding up some
object before her in triumph and adoration. Only when the dance brought
Beloved to the very front of the stage, dropping down on both knees to
face them, did the audience see clearly the object being held up: a
dagger, gleaming silver and stained with blood. Beloved lifted it high,
shouting in exultation, paused a moment with it in both hands, then
drove the shining knife into the boards of the stage before whirling
around again to face the still-seated Lover.

said Lover, sounding a bit dubious.

You are as lovely as Jerusalem,

You are...

You are...

You are terrible,

(Lover whispered, drawing back from Beloved, as the realization struck)

Terrible as an army with banners.

Turn your eyes away

they disturb me.

But...

But your hair...

Your hair flows

like a flock of goats

spilling down the side of Mount Gilead.

Torn between these sudden, conflicting visions of Beloved, Lover
shifted away while at the same time holding one hand outstretched.

Who is this that comes like the dawn

Fair as the moon,

Bright as the sun,

Terrible as an army with banners?

Beloved rose and walked slowly over to Lover, leaving the bloody
knife quivering in the stage, and then solved Lover's dilemma by
dropping down, knee to knee, and bringing their mouths together in a
kiss.

"Love is stronger than death," chanted the voices as the
light dimmed over the embracing couple. "Passion fiercer than
hell, it starts flaming..."

The last thing to be seen on the stage as the light dimmed was the dagger, silver and red in the narrow spotlight.

"WHOA," SAID KATE UNCERTAINLY when the clapping had eventually died and the curtain calls ended.

"My God," exclaimed Roz. "That was superb.
Dramatically and theologically, to say nothing of psychologically. And
the virgin's dance with the dagger! I wouldn't have
thought--"

"Virgin?"
Kate asked in disbelief. "You think that girl was meant to be a virgin after all that?"

"Not
virgo intacta"
Roz said dismissively.
"The warrior-virgin, a goddess archetype. What an
interpretation--straight out of Pope."

Kate was completely lost. She could not begin to imagine what the
pope could have to do with this particular version of the Song of
Songs, but she could see that Roz was not about to pause and explain.
She looked as exultant as the man/woman on stage had been, her eyes
dark with several kinds of arousal, the enthusiasm coming off her in
waves.

Kate knew her well enough to see that there would be no rational
explanations until her passion had subsided--at which time there
would probably be more rational explanation than Kate actually wanted.
Still, Roz was a pleasure to watch, and her excitement was contagious.

Then the pager in Kate's pocket began to throw itself about
furiously, if silently. Lee heard her exclamation of disgust, turned to
look at her, and diagnosed the problem in an instant.

"You're being buzzed?"

In answer Kate fished the little thing out and shut it off. The
number it displayed was that of Al and Jani, and she could only squeeze
Lee's hand in apology, turn her over to Jon yet again, and
(because she was not on call and Lee had pointedly refused to bring her
own cell phone) go searching for a pay phone. She stood in the lobby
with one finger pushed against her free ear and the receiver jammed up
to the other, half shouting to be heard above the departing audience.

"Is that Jules? Oh, Jani--hi. Al paged me. What? I
can't-- He's where? Hold on just a second." She
fished out a pen and a scrap of paper. "What was that address
again? Okay. Right. But we're not on call, did he tell you why
they called us? It's
who?
Oh, Christ. God damn it. Oh,
I'm sorry, Jani. Thanks for the message, I'll probably get
there before he does. Say hi to Jules for me."

Kate hung up and stood for a long moment with her hand still tight
around the receiver, her eyes shut. Fury and confusion and dread all
pushed at her, and useless self-criticism, but above all came sorrow,
for the loss of such a thing of beauty.

Laxman Mehta had been found in an alley behind a bar in the Castro.

Dead.

Strangled.

And wearing handcuffs.

THE FADING COLORS AND images of the dance she had just seen jostled
in her mind with the reality of what Kate was seeing. It was night
here, too, the alley dark and filled up with flitting, shifting
shadows, and there were the uniformed guards of the city's peace,
moving about the alley as if it was a narrow stage depicting gritty,
urban life. Her imaginary song of the city was as ominous as any of the
oboe's notes, and the setting considerably uglier. All it needed
was a bloody knife sticking out of the alleyway.

Kate shook her head to clear it of fantasy. No knife here, no
theological speculation about virgin goddesses, no costumes and
beautiful sets. Just brutal death, and a crowd of people. The ops
center seemed to have pulled out all the stops on this one, and called
in everyone from foot patrol to the lieutenant. Most of the personnel
were standing around with nothing to do, since a scene had to be worked
in sequence. Press photographers snapped away at the teams leaning
against the wall and laughing, and she sent a uniform over to have the
technicians take their waiting out of sight. Then Kate went forward to
look at the body.

A person would never know that this had been a beautiful male
creature. ("Black am I, and beautiful" echoed in
Kate's ears in painful contrast to the swollen-tongued,
dark-faced figure at her feet.) Between the distortion and suffusion of
the strangulation and the postmortem trauma of being (apparently)
dragged and kicked, the only thing Laxman Mehta looked like was dead.

She did not even bother to pull back the remains of his shirt to
look for a taser burn. It was possible that an experienced pathologist
in a brightly lit morgue would be able to pick out the difference
between one slightly red area and another, but Kate couldn't, and
certainly not in a dark alley.

The flash of cameras and a raised chorus of voices from the street
made her look around to see Al Hawkin letting himself through the
screens Kate had ordered put up. Nothing like a body behind a Castro
district leather bar to pique the interest of readers over their
morning coffee.

"You must've driven like a maniac," she greeted Al.

"Got lucky with traffic. Was the press here when you arrived?"

"Yeah, but the foot patrol had them under control. No scene contamination except for the guys who found him."

"Talked to them yet?"

"They're inside with the patrol. I told him to get them
some coffee. Kitagawa caught this one. I guess he's the one who
called you?"

With the possibility of a serial killer on their hands, word had
been spread throughout the Bay Area that any dead male who had been
strangled, showed taser marks, or had a history of abuse against women
should be brought to their attention. She and Al had decided to keep
the tenuous link of candy in the victims' pockets to themselves
for the moment. Leaks were all too common, and it was good to sit on
one mark of the killer--if mark it was.

"Yeah. I told him we'd assist. He said he'd get
Crime Scene started here, then go tell the family and seal the
guy's rooms until they can get over there." Al dropped his
voice further. "You look at the pockets yet?"

"The ME did. Didn't find any candy exactly, but he found
a little plastic bag of something that looked like seeds and
stuff."

"Seeds? Like sensemilla, you mean?"

"More like caraway or something--and some little colored
thingies mixed in with it. Like those sprinkles you put on top of
kids' birthday cakes, you know?"

Al shrugged his shoulders. "Doesn't sound much like
caramel chews and chocolate bars to me, but we'll see what the
lab says. Are they about finished here?"

"I think so." Kate signaled that the body could be
bagged and taken away, and walked with Al toward the kitchen entrance
of the bar. "Al, one thing. You didn't meet him, but that
was one gorgeous young man when he was alive."

"Why, Martinelli, I didn't know you cared."

"I'm not interested, Al, but I'm not blind. I
remember thinking at the time that he'd cause a riot in a place
like this."

A stranger might be excused from thinking there was already a riot
going on inside. It occurred to Kate that the insulation in the walls
and windows must have cost a pretty sum; from the outside all she had
heard was the muffled hum of a beehive with an underlying thudding
sound of a beating heart. Inside, Al had to shout in her ear to be
heard.

"Is Kitagawa still here?"

"He's gone to notify the family," she shouted in return. "He said he'd bring back a photo."

The bar was just what the Christian Right had in mind when it
referred to the hellfire sins of San Francisco, Sodom-by-the-Bay. Had
one of their straight-ace photographers made it inside the door, he
could have shot a random roll that would have scared the socks off
Middle America and made them join in fervent prayer for an earthquake
along the San Andreas Fault.

Kate, though, had no problems with the place. Were it not for the
stink of sweaty males with booze and controlled substances oozing from
their pores, she might even have enjoyed it, if for nothing more than
the display (using the word in more than one sense) of black leather
fashions and the impressive creativity of the human male when it came
to threading sharp metal objects through parts of his anatomy. Put one
of those gigantic car-lifting magnets in the ceiling and switch it on,
she reflected, and half the men here would slap up against it,
spread-eagled like flies on a windshield.

"What are you grinning at, Martinelli?" Al yelled in her
ear. She just shook her head and pushed forward toward the bar.

There were two men working, expertly banging down full glasses and
change with one hand and scooping up empties and money with the other,
bantering at the top of their lungs with the customers and singing
occasional snatches of music with the recorded cacophony belting out of
the speakers. Kate, the only woman in the place as far as she could
see, leaned against the corner of the polished wood and waited for the
nearer bartender to approach. When he did, she flipped open her badge
holder to identify herself and in one smooth movement the man's
hamlike hand shot out and folded the ID shut and back into her palm
before anyone noticed it.

He leaned across the bar at her. "You want to shut the place, Martinelli, or you want to talk to me?"

Kate drew back to study his face and realized that she knew him--or at least, she'd met him. She thought.

"Dimitri?" The man who had passed through her kitchen
some months before, working on some project with Lee and Jon, had left
her with the impression of a retired wrestler in a tweed jacket, not
this slab of muscle glued into a garment that was more than half
missing. He had also been lighter by about six ounces of surgical
steel, some of which Kate had to deduce by the shapes of the hoops and
bumps under the sleek leather. He grinned at her with perfect white
teeth and pulled up the top of the bar to let himself out. Nodding
amiably at Hawkin behind Kate's shoulder, the bartender paused to
swat a willowy figure on one half-protruding and nicely shaped buttock
and, when his victim whirled around, Dimitri jerked his thumb in the
direction of the huge mirror in back of the bar. The shapely man
extricated himself from his companions and made for the service side of
the bar, leaving Dimitri to push his way through the crowded room with
Kate and Al Hawkin on his heels.

The office was also heavily insulated, and a relief. He waved them
to a tight circle of half a dozen chairs and continued on through a
narrow door, leaving it ajar so he could talk.

"You're here about that boy in the alley?" he called to them.

"You know anything about it, Dimitri?"

"Only that two of my customers stepped out for a breath of air
and had the shock of their lives. Your nice patrolman took them home,
by the way--one of them couldn't stop crying and began to
need his asthma inhaler. I have their address for you."