Night work (30 page)

The brief introduction was relatively intelligible, as academic
writing went. Roz seemed to be looking at ways in which the
warrior-goddesses of the ancient Near East (Ishtar and Asherah Kate had
heard of, though not Anat or Hathor), their stories, songs, and
characteristics, welled up in the tales and ideas of the Old Testament.
After a general introduction, however, the writing seemed to become
more technical and heavily footnoted, sprinkled with Roman numeral
references, foreign phrases, capitalized abbreviations, and words like
Masoretic and Septuagintal. Lee might make sense of it, Kate thought,
but for someone who hadn't done any scholarly reading in too many
years to count, it did not look like easy bedtime reading.

Thumbing through the thick document, Kate spotted a few pages that
were not text. Some were reproductions of archaeological reports,
alternating with pen-and-ink sketches and photocopies of photographs.
One picture showed a sculpture of a female head and torso with glaring
eyes, her sharp teeth pulled back from a grotesquely long protruding
tongue, with a variety of objects in her four hands. The caption said
"Durga," and Kate figured she was an Indian goddess like
Kali because of the multiple arms. Not a warm and friendly goddess,
though. Even Mutton would hesitate to give those hands an affectionate
tongue-bath.

The door opened and Roz came back in. Kate let the thesis fall shut
and moved away so Roz could resume her place and her breakfast.

"Sorry, Kate, but Jory is not the most competent secretary
I've ever had, and I have to have a report together by this
afternoon. Look, I'm really sorry about going over your head. I
just didn't think."

"Don't worry about it," Kate heard herself saying.
"I'm sure it'll work out. Finish your breakfast, your
granola will get soggy."

"Granola never gets soggy," Roz pointed out, taking up
her spoon. "It's like wood fiber, needs to go rotten before
it gives up its cellulose. Did you come to see me about Pramilla Mehta?
And what can I do--to help rather than hinder?"

"Just back off, and I'll call if you can help. No,
it's not specifically about her, though it may have to do with
her husband's death. I wanted to ask, what do you know about a
Web site called 'Womyn of the evening'?"

Kate, watching Roz carefully, saw the wariness descend.

"I've heard of it," Roz told her, which Kate
decided meant that she knew the site but hesitated to admit it until
she could see where this was heading.

"Your church's site and that one are linked through a
third site that gives information on self-defense for women. Dirty
self-defense--eye-gouging, breaking eardrums, biting off various
body parts." She was being deliberately abrasive, but Roz did not
react, merely responded.

"It's a nasty world."

"And attackers deserve to lose ears and penises, and habitual abusers deserve to be killed."

"Is that what their Web site's line is?" Roz said
evenly. "If that's true, I may have to ask them to sever
the link with our church."

"Roz, you can't expect me to believe that there's
a Web site with a provocative name two steps away from yours that you
haven't visited."

For a moment Kate thought that was precisely what Roz would assert,
which meant that unless Kate could get a warrant to find what sites
Roz's computer had visited, and she could prove that only Roz
used the computer, she might as well walk away now.

But Roz relented. "Yes," she said. "I have glanced at the Web site."

"I have three murders on my hands whose names were on that
site. I'm not going to ask you why nobody happened to bring this
to my attention, not at the moment anyway, but I'm troubled by
the fact that the only link we've been able to find between two
of the men is that Web site. A Web site that your church is closely
tied to."

Roz finally flared up. "Neither the church nor my own parish
has anything to do with that list. You can hardly hold us responsible
for the killing of three men just because we share a link on the
Internet."

"I don't hold you responsible," said Kate evenly.
"But I think you should brace yourselves for when the media finds
out about it."

Roz half rose in her chair, putting both palms on the littered desk
as if about to come over the top of it at Kate. "You
wouldn't. If you dare to leak any of this--"

"I won't have to leak anything, Roz, you know that.
It's surprising that no enterprising reporter has come up with it
already."

"Kate, if I find that you--"

Kate's composure abruptly snapped. "Don't, Roz. Do not threaten me."

They glared at each other over Roz's life's work, and in
the end the minister gave ground before the cop. Her gaze wavered and
Kate could see her decide that this was not the best way to handle the
situation. Her hackles went down, her palms came off the desk and went
back to her lap as she settled down in the chair. She even tried for a
crooked smile.

"No. Sorry, I know you wouldn't do that to me.
God--you of all people wouldn't turn a friend over to the
media sharks. I apologize."

"Actually, Roz, they may be the least of your problems.
Because of the Internet aspect, the FBI is now going to take over a
large part of this investigation. Al and I are still involved,"
she added with satisfaction-- Roz Hall was not the only skilled
manipulator in the room--"but it's out of our hands
now. I'll do as much as I can to run interference with them, but
they'll want answers, and if I can't get the answers for
them, they'll come to you direct. One of the things they'll
ask you is, Do you know who submitted the names of James Larsen,
Matthew Banderas, and Laxman Mehta to the Web site?"

"No," Roz answered--too quickly, Kate thought.

"Would you tell me if you did?" Kate demanded.

"Probably not."

"But you do know who has been responsible for the actions of
the group known as the LOPD." Kate made it a statement, and Roz
did not try to deny it outright.

"I may have heard some rumors, but they are not connected with these deaths, Kate. I swear I do not think they are."

"Give me their names, I'll ask them. Myself, not just
handing the names over to the feds," Kate offered, but Roz was
shaking her head before the sentence was finished.

"I can't do that, Kate, I'm sorry."

"You're willing to play God, condemn to death men even the courts can't? To be an accomplice?"

"I told you, I don't know who put their names on the
list, I don't know who killed them." This time Kate let the
silence stretch out, until Roz gave way and broke it. "As for
playing God, it works the other way, too. Even if I knew, it would be
playing God to turn the killers in. If what you're saying is
true, they've chosen to become judges in a society that refuses
to take that responsibility. I'd have to think long and hard
before I could decide they were wrong."

"Judge and executioner," Kate pointed out.

"Judge and executioner," Roz accepted. "The ultimate in responsibility."

"I thought God wanted us to practice forgiveness."

"There are times when God would have us practice justice instead."

"Or revenge?"

"There are times to turn the other cheek, and times to get out
the whip and overturn the tables of the corrupt in the Temple. This may
be one of the second."

"And you wouldn't tell me who's doing it."

"If I knew, I would regard it as privileged information."

"The FBI is going to turn you inside out."

"They can try."

"There are better causes to choose if you want martyrdom, Roz."

"Not very many. Kate, my church does not have ritualized,
formal confession like the Roman Catholics do, but if someone were to
tell me of their involvement in this, as an ordained priest I would
regard it as inviolable. To you or to the FBI.

"All of which," she hastened to say, "is theoretical. Since I don't actually know anything."

"Tell me about your Ph.D. thesis."

"My what?" Roz asked, thrown off balance by the abrupt change in direction.

"Your thesis. About women's rage."

Roz flushed, an interesting reaction. "In the Old
Testament," she said with force. "It's largely about
how the pre-Israelite goddesses influenced the developing cult of
Yahweh. It's a Ph.D. thesis, for Christ sake. You should know
they never have anything to do with real life."

Kate nodded as if Roz had actually told her something, and then
abruptly stood up, thanked Roz, and left. She was not certain just what
she had accomplished--other than severely disconcerting the woman
behind the desk. Still, it was not easy to throw Roz Hall, and surely
having done so counted for something.

Chapter 17

OVER THE COURSE OF that damp morning, the FBI's information
came dutifully in, as trickles or in undigested lumps. Five additional
men on the Web site list that Kate had uncovered had died in the last
few months, and several others were simply missing. Late in the
afternoon came news of a cluster of three men, from Georgia up through
the Carolinas, that gave Kate a nasty feeling, since all of them just
disappeared from their daily lives into thin air. In one case a badly
decomposed body had been found out in the woods by the first hikers of
spring. It was suspected to be the missing man from South Carolina; DNA
testing was under way.

Of the five known dead, three had clearly been murdered, two of
those gunned down in New York a month apart by the same gun, and no
suspects identified. There was one accident on the list (and reading
the faxed report of the man's blood alcohol level and the absence
of skid marks or mechanical failure, Kate had to agree that he had
simply passed out at the wheel and gone off the road and into a bridge
support at high speed) and another man had committed suicide, but if
the suicide was not actually assisted, his family swore he had been
more or less driven to death's door and handed a gun. For weeks
before he had put a bullet in his head, the convicted child abuser had
been the object of a barrage of letters, photos, and phone calls,
threatening, taunting, and merciless. At home and at work, his
colleagues and his neighbors included, the pressure had been
unrelenting and around the clock. Until he killed himself.

In the three weeks since his death, his family had received nothing further.

The fifth death, the third confirmed murder victim, was close to
home, both physically and in regards to their investigation. His name
was Larry Goff, and he had died in Sacramento, less than three hours
from downtown San Francisco, with strapping tape on his wrists.

Goff's wife, Tamara, according to the Web site and the
Sacramento detective Kate talked to, had been to the hospital emergency
room five times in two years for treatment of chronic
"accidents," and had separated from her husband, with a
restraining order in place. In early November, Goff was accused of
kidnapping their two children--picking them up from school on a
Friday afternoon and taking them for the weekend without telling his
wife. He brought them back to her on the Sunday, and when arrested he
claimed that she had given him permission, but the kidnap charges
stood. He was granted bail, and the subsequent investigation had been
wending its slow way through the court system when Tamara was found in
her bedroom one morning in December, dead of an overdose of
prescription pain pills. At the time of death, she had a fresh plaster
cast on one arm and two broken teeth in the left side of her jaw. There
was no indication of suicide, and nothing to show that she had been
force-fed the pills. She was simply in pain, and she made a mistake.

Tamara's sister claimed the children, and with the pending
kidnap charge hanging over their father, the courts granted her
temporary custody. Then two weeks later, a few days before New
Year's, Goff was found in a hotel frequented by prostitutes,
bound, gagged, and strangled to death. His wallet and watch had been
missing, though not his gold wedding band. Police investigators
determined that he had been lured to the room by a woman the manager
had not seen before, although he surmised her profession by her
clothing. Once in the room, she and possibly an accomplice had
overpowered Goff, killed, and robbed him.

"Do you have a copy of the autopsy report in front of you?" Kate asked the Sacramento detective over the phone.

"Sure. You want me to fax it to you?"

"That would be helpful. I'm looking for any red mark on the torso. A taser burn."

A minute of silence broken only by distant voices and the sound of
pages turning was ended with a "Nope. Don't see anything
like that here. There were some marks--you can see them in the
photographs-- but they looked more like immediately premortem
bruising."

"Okay. You haven't seen anything else with that MO?"

"No, and we've been watching, since it's such an
oddity. I mean, how many hookers use strapping tape for bondage games?
Hairy guy like Goff, he'd have little bald patches all over him.
Imagine explaining that to your girlfriend back home."

Kate had to laugh at the image.

"You'll see when you get the photos that his
beard's kinda mangy looking. That's from cutting away the
tape. In fact, I heard about your duct-tape guys the other day, and I
was going to call you--different stuff, I know, but close. Then
something came up and I forgot about it."

"That happens," Kate said. Not to her, damn it, but she
tried to keep the irritation from her voice; there was no point in
alienating a colleague, particularly one who had a file she wanted to
see. "Did you develop any suspects?"

"Nada. We thought at first it might be revenge, you know,
since the wife died, but as far as anyone knew, Tamara had no contact
with prostitutes, was never arrested, our informants had never seen her
on the streets, so it wasn't some friends doing a little payback.
This was Tamara's second marriage, so we looked at her first
husband, just in case, but he's out of the picture, happily
remarried and living in Miami, no indication that he was away at the
time of the murder. No brother or father around that we could find, not
even a mother, though a friend of Tamara's said there is one
somewhere. The two kids are with Tamara's sister now, she's
looking to adopt if she can talk the ex-husband in Florida into it. His
wife doesn't want them, and only one of them is his, the
other's Goff's."