Night work (36 page)

"This is hopeless," she began to say, when
simultaneously her beeper went off and her eye snagged on a name. The
name had to be a coincidence, if an odd one, and the number on the
pager display was her own. Still, she tugged the piece of paper out to
mark the place before she went back to the pay phone.

Annoyingly, the number was again busy. She hung up, waited half a
minute, and tried again. This time Lee had it on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi babe, it's me. I got your page--I tried to reach you myself ten minutes ago. What's up?"

"When are you coming home?" Lee's voice sounded
either tired or stressed, and Kate's fingers whitened on the
receiver.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Just--" Lee bit off a sharp demand, and went on
with deliberate calm: her reasonable therapist's voice. "I
just need to know when you'll be back."

"I could be there in forty minutes, less if Al lets me stick the flasher on. What do you need?"

"It's not that urgent, I'm just trying to organize
something and it was stupid to make arrangements for a ride if you were
about to walk through the door, is all. You sound like you're
occupied."

"I am, but it's nothing urgent. I'll drop Al at the--"

"Kate, stop. It's fine. It's just that Jon is out
with Sione and I hate to beep him, but Maj called up all in a dither
about something Roz is doing, so I told her I'd go over and hold
her hand. It's nearly Mina's bedtime, or she'd come
here. I could get the Saab out, but I know that--"

"Lee, no, that's a really terrible idea. I'll be home in half an hour, surely it can wait that long?"

"No, no, I don't want you to break off, I only wanted to
know if you happened to be about to drive up any minute. I'll
call a cab."

"Promise me you won't try to drive?" Lee
hadn't driven a car since she had been shot, and although her
legs were stronger, their reaction time was undependable. On city
streets, in city traffic, it would be criminally foolhardy.

"I promise."

Maj in a dither didn't sound like anything worth breaking
speed limits for; indeed, considering the frequency of Roz's
passionate causes, it didn't even sound like something worth
missing her coffee for.

"But Maj is okay?" she asked Lee, just to make sure.

"Oh yeah, I'm sure she is. Just upset." Lee
herself sounded calmer, and Kate's grip on the phone relaxed.

"In a dither, huh?"

"Completely ditherized. What does that word mean, anyway? How's your day going?"

"I'm playing tag with some evidence the FBI might think
I should have turned over to them, hoping it gives me some meaning.
Doesn't look like it, though."

"Another productive day."

"That's how it goes. But I met a woman who could be a
poster girl for the black and beautiful campaign, whose goal in life is
to manage a Safeway store."

Lee, after a silent moment, asked, "Have you been drinking?"

"Iced tea, I swear."

"Is Hawkin with you?"

"Yes, Mother."

At that Lee finally laughed. "Yeah, right--why I should trust him to keep you in line I can't imagine."

"You're sure a cab is okay, hon?"

"Cost a fortune, but I'll let Maj pay half."

"Couple of hours. Less if Roz shows up--I won't
stick around for that stage of the conversation, thank you."

"Okay. Well, if I'm back in town before--what does
that make it, eleven?--I'll call there, give you a ride
home."

"If it's convenient, that'd be great. Don't work too hard."

"Never."

"Sure. Why don't I tell Roz to just chill out, while
I'm at it?" But she chuckled as she said it, and they
talked about nothing in particular for another minute or two before
they hung up and went their separate ways.

Back at the table Kate finished her tepid espresso in one quick
swallow, then reached out and pulled the puzzling sheet from its
neighbors. She turned it around and laid it in front of Hawkin, tapping
the name that had caught her eye.

"Don't you think that's odd?" she asked him.

He looked down at the name and his eyebrows went up. He nodded his head slowly.

A white car had been rented the previous morning to a woman named Jane Larsen.

Chapter 22

"DID JAMES LARSEN HAVE a sister?" Kate asked her partner.

"We've never come across one."

"I don't know which I like less, the idea of coincidence
or the thought of some seventy-five-year-old avenging mother on the
scene. Talk about Disgruntled Ladies."

"Do you have Emily Larsen's phone number with you?"

Kate didn't, but she got it from information, and Emily
answered, the noise of canned television laughter in the background.
Kate identified herself, asked how she was doing, and then asked her
question.

"No," Emily said, sounding confused. "Jimmy never
had a sister. He has a brother who lives back East, Philadelphia I
think, but we haven't heard from him in years."

"Is the brother married?"

"Not that I knew of. Jimmy always said Danny was too mean to get married."

"Do you have his last address, Ms. Larsen?"

"I have an address, sure, but like I said it's really
old. We haven't even gotten a Christmas card from him in maybe
five years."

"It'll have to do." The telephone went down and
Kate was treated to several minutes of laugh track and manic gabbling
before it was picked up again. Emily gave her an address and phone
number, and Daniel Larsen's full name, and then asked Kate the
inevitable question.

"What do you want to know this for?"

"Oh, a woman with the same last name has popped up in a
related matter. Probably nothing. Thanks for your help, Ms.
Larsen."

"Any time. Say, while I have you on the line, can I ask you something?"

"What's that?"

"Do you need to report when a credit card's missing?"

The question dropped into Kate's mind with the slow electric
tingle of discovered evidence. "Is this one of your credit cards
we're talking about?"

"It was Jimmy's. I mean, I could sign on it, but he
didn't want me to have my own in case I used it. I forgot all
about it until the other day when the monthly bill came and I realized
the card wasn't with his other stuff that I got back, and when I
went looking for it I couldn't find it."

"Did he usually carry it with him?"

"I guess."

"Is anything else missing?"

"Oh heavens," she said with a little laugh,
"I'm losing all kinds of things. The therapist I'm
seeing says it's a common sign of stress, to lose things."

"What have you lost?" Kate's voice remained light, but it was an effort.

"All kinds of things," Emily repeated, beginning to
sound embarrassed. "I brushed my hair in the guest bathroom and
forgot, so I couldn't find my brush for two days. I left my
housekeys in the market, talk about stupid, I had to go back for them.
Now it's my whole wallet. I can't think where I could have
left that. Isn't that silly? Hello? Inspector, are you
there?"

"Yes. Sorry, Ms. Larsen, I was thinking. I'm sure
it'll turn up. You probably just left it somewhere, maybe last
night?"

"I wonder... You know, I was at the shelter on Friday
night, they invited me up for dinner. I wonder if...I'll
call and ask them."

"Actually, Emily, I'm going over to the shelter first
thing in the morning. Rather than bother them tonight, considering how
busy they always are in the evenings, why don't I just ask for
you when I'm there, maybe take a look around to see if your
wallet fell into the back of the sofa or something?" If the
missing wallet was of any importance, the last thing Kate wanted was
for its thief to be forewarned that she was coming.

"Would you? That'svery nice of you.It's green,
looks just like leather, with a gold clasp along the top. Jimmy gave it
to me for my birthday three years ago."

"I'm glad you're keeping in touch with the
shelter," Kate said with elaborate casualness. "I saw Roz
the other day myself, she was saying that she wished she could spend
more time there."

"Roz was there Friday, but she had to run. She asked
Phoebe--you know, Carla's secretary?--to give me a ride
home, though, and she did, which was nice of her, it's really out
of her way. The insurance company is still dragging their feet over
replacing Jimmy's car."

Kate made sympathetic noises, and then nudged Emily a little further
down the evidence trail. "That explains why I couldn't
reach you--I didn't want to call too late."

"Yes, it was after eleven when we got home. I hated to have
Phoebe come all the way down here, considering how busy she is, but the
buses don't run as much that late."

"I see," Kate said, afraid that she was beginning to.

"What did you want?" Emily interrupted Kate's thoughts to ask.

"Sorry? Oh, you mean the other night. It was nothing, just
clarification of a detail. We worked it out." She wished the
woman luck with getting the insurance company to replace the trashed
car, and hung up before Emily could ask again about canceling the
credit card.

Hawkin had paid and was standing near the door, so she waited until they were in the car to tell him what Emily Larsen had said.

"His credit card and her ID, both gone missing," Hawkin mused. "What you might call thought-provoking."

"Not much we can do about it tonight, though," Kate said hopefully.

After a minute, to her relief, Hawkin nodded his head in agreement.
They had been on the road for eighteen hours, since the San Jose people
had made the connection between their hospitalized pedophile and the
SFPD's dead bodies, and Kate for one knew that her day was not
over yet.

"That car was rented out to Jane Larsen at around ten
a.m.," Al noted. "We might find the same staff on duty that
time tomorrow."

"How 'bout
if
I take you home, pick you up in the morning?"

"More driving for you--you could just drop me at the Hall, I'd use an unmarked."

"It's only twenty minutes to your place, Al, and not much farther in the morning."

"Then I accept. Might even see Jani today, awake."

The apartment Al shared with Jani, a professor of medieval history,
and her teenaged daughter, Jules, was north of Jani's work and
south of his. Kate and he talked mostly about Jules on the short drive
there, about her brilliance and her resilience in recovering from the
traumatic experiences she had been through over the winter.

"I finally managed to call her the other day," Kate told
him. "It was good to talk to her. I told her we'd go
bowling in a week or two."

"She'd like that. She misses you. You know, the other
day she told me she was thinking of writing to that bastard in prison.
She didn't say anything to you about it, did she?"

"God, no, she didn't. She isn't serious, is she?"

" 'Fraid so. She thought it might, and I quote,
"aid the healing process." I don't know if
she's insane or incredibly well balanced."

"Lee would tell you that at a certain point, the two are the same."

"Thanks a ton. Meanwhile, what do I tell Jules?"

"Oh no, I'm not going to touch that one. You're
the dad here." And then, for the first time and tentatively, she
told him about Lee's decision. "Lee wants to try for a
child. She has an appointment at the clinic in a couple of weeks."

"Hey," Hawkin said warmly. "That's great. Really great news."

"Not news yet, just an intention, and if you'd keep it
to yourself." You'd think she'd get used to the
invasions of the world into her private life, Kate thought to herself,
but sometimes it felt like living in a house with glass walls, and all
the world outside with rocks in hand.

"Sure. Can I tell Jani?"

"Of course--but let's have Jules out of the loop
for a while, okay? We can tell her when there's something to
tell."

"I hope it all goes smoothly. Give Lee my best, would you?"

"God--I nearly forgot. Would you dial a number for me?"

Lee was still at Roz and Maj's house, and sounded relieved to
hear from her. Whatever the crisis was, Lee was already tired of it and
glad of an excuse to leave. Kate told her she'd be there within
forty minutes.

"I think Roz is off on one of her campaigns," Kate told
Al in explanation. "She gets involved in some cause or another
and everything gets thrown up into the air until she loses interest.
It's kind of hard on Maj."

"What is it this time? Handicapped parking permits for the
meals-on-wheels delivery folk? City investments in anti-gay
corporations?"

"I don't know. Yet."

"Well, I hope you get some sleep. See you at nine? We can get some coffee on our way to the car place."

"Jani still can't stand the smell, huh?"

"You notice I didn't have any tonight--I don't like sleeping on the couch."

Kate hoped this was not a sign of things to come.

She dropped Al off, made a U-turn in the quiet night street, and
headed back north. When she pulled up in front of Roz and Maj's
house, the red Jeep was not on the street, and when Maj opened the door
it was obvious that she'd been crying earlier in the evening. She
seemed calm now, and so Kate ruthlessly extracted Lee from the troubled
house; in truth, Maj seemed nearly as relieved at her departure as Lee
was herself.

Kate settled Lee in the passenger seat, tossed the cuffed crutches
over the back, and drove briskly away before Roz could arrive and
precipitate them all back into the crisis. Lee drew a deep breath, blew
it out with feeling, and let her head drop back against the headrest.

"Might be easier if you could charge them by the hour," Kate offered by way of sympathetic opener.

"I love Roz," Lee said tiredly, "but the woman can be a fucking maniac.

First Al, now Lee--two people who never cursed letting fly with
easy obscenity, and both in the same day. A third one and San Francisco
might well slip into the sea.