Night work (41 page)

"I need you to do something for me, sweetheart. Did you know
Roz has called a press conference in the morning about the Mehta
family?"

"God, do I ever. Maj was on the phone most of the evening."

"Well, there may not be anything that any of us can do, but
Roz might just possibly listen to you." Lee started to protest,
but Kate pushed on. "Carla Lomax and her secretary were the ones
behind those murders. We haven't actually arrested either of
them, because Carla ran in front of a bus while I was chasing her and
is still in recovery and Phoebe's disappeared, but they will be
charged with Larsen and Banderas for sure, as well as a man in
Sacramento and probably in a
few
days Laxman Mehta, although
the investigation's still going on. Oh yes, and the attempted
murder of a guy named Traynor in San Jose."

Lee was fully awake now. "God, Kate, that's--what,
five assaults? Why? And what does Roz have to do with it?"

"They began with straightforward revenge, it looks like, and
from there decided to become vigilantes. And I believe that the reason
Roz is so hot to get Mehta is that she knew, on some level, that the
two women were involved in something. I think we'll find that she
introduced them to the idea of the goddess Kali as a feminist avenger,
and they ran with it. Sweetheart, blackmail her, for my sake. Play on
her guilt, her responsibility for twisting those two women. Even if
it's not true, it'll make her slow down and think. Yes,
love," she said over Lee's protests, "I know
it's unscrupulous and unfair and everything else, but Roz is
about to set loose a tornado on the city that'll make it nearly
impossible to investigate the Mehta case with any hope of conviction,
and might well drive the Mehtas back to India and out of our
jurisdiction. And you can tell her that, too, if she'll shut up
about it; tell her anything, just so she gives me time."

Kate felt as if her voice was at the end of a dim corridor, echoing
and growing fainter, but she waited until Lee had agreed to try, agreed
to reach Roz early in the morning, before she let herself go. The last
thing Kate said before sleep claimed her was, "Could you change
the alarm clock to eight?"

Chapter 25

IT WAS NOT EIGHT, she saw, it was twenty past seven, and
it
was not the alarm, but the telephone.

"Martinelli," she croaked into the receiver.

"It's me, love," Lee's voice said into her
ear, "I thought you should know that I just got to Roz's
house and she isn't home. We're heading over to the church;
I'll ring you back as soon as we find her."

"You blessed among women," Kate said, already on her feet. "I love you.

"I know you do. Now go have a shower."

Kate's shower lasted perhaps ninety seconds and then she was
pulling on clothes over her still-damp skin and running a comb through
her wet hair. She trotted downstairs and had just poured herself a cup
of very stale coffee when the phone rang again.

"Roz's secretary said that Roz phoned Peter Mehta at
about quarter to seven this morning. They had a short talk and then she
just drove off, about five minutes ago."

"Okay. She may have gone over there for a private talk, a
little last-minute conflict resolution." It would be like Roz,
but it made Kate uncomfortable to think of Roz facing the furious Peter
Mehta by herself. "Look, I think I'll run by there, see if
I can get her to leave him alone. You stay put, I'll phone you
when I find her."

"There's coffee in the--"

"Got it. "Bye."

She took one large swallow of the hot greenish substance and abandoned the cup.

The Mehta house was about ten minutes away on a good day. Kate made
it in eight, charging up the hills and squealing around the corners,
and even managed to punch in Hawkin's pager number at an
unavoidable red light to leave a message.

Still, Roz had gotten there first. Her Jeep was in the driveway but
there was no sign of her, or of Mehta. Kate eyed the drawn drapes, and
decided that she did not really want to be in there alone with an angry
man who met police officers at the door with a club in his
hand--the memory of the last time she had ventured into an unknown
situation with minimal backup was all too clear in her mind and on her
scalp. Feeling a little abashed, she put in a call for assistance, but
did not wait for the patrol car to arrive.

The doorbell brought no immediate response, nor did a heavy fist on
the door. If the family heard her, they probably thought she was just
an early reporter. She eyed the sturdy wood briefly before deciding
that, even if she could think of an excuse, her shoulder would shatter
before the door budged, so she headed around the house toward the
remembered kitchen door, where she might well find the family at
breakfast, Roz with a cup of coffee in her hand, beaming at them all in
her inimitable friendly manner, creating reason and compromise out of
angry divisiveness as she had so often done.

The gate in the high wooden fence was latched. Kate cursed under her
breath, made sure her gun was secure in its underarm holster, and
scrabbled up to pull herself over. She paused to peer over before
committing her heel to the fence top, lest Mehta be standing there with
his club--or a shotgun--but the empty driveway stretched out
along the wall of the house to end at the burnt-out patch that had been
Pramilla's kitchen, and her pyre. Kate continued pulling herself
up, and over, and landed on the other side only slightly bruised and
winded.

Kate was not aware of sliding her gun out of its holster, but
somehow it was in her hand as she moved briskly down the concrete drive
and rounded the corner of the house, and then the world blew up in her
face.

Twin shrieks of pain and terror soared above the breathy
whump
of exploding gasoline. Without thought Kate hit the hard ground
rolling, and felt more than saw the expanding cloud flash over her head
and puff out, leaving at its source a dancing pond of flames from which
two figures trailed streams of fire. Mehta's arm was alight to
his elbow, but he was already pulling off his dressing gown and beating
at the flames with it. At his feet, wavering in the heat, lay a compact
black shape that a part of Kate's mind registered as a taser.

Mehta was up and out of danger, but not Roz. She was lying with her
legs deep in the very hottest part of the flames, writhing feebly and
trying with a clear lack of coordination to pull herself away. Her
trousers were burning and her cries of terror and pain seemed to fill
the air. Kate's gun went into its holster as she ran to grab Roz
under the arms to drag her back from the worst of the flames, but the
fire followed them, loath to let its prey go, and Roz still burned.
Casting around desperately for something to smother the flames, Kate
spotted the mildewy cushions of the lawn furniture; she snatched them
up and threw them over Roz; the stubborn flames hesitated, then
billowed up again around the thick pads. It was a nightmare, this
heaving tangle of flowered cushions and squirting blue fire and
flailing limbs, and as Kate jerked off her jacket to beat at the fire,
an exquisite pain wrapped around her left arm, and she beat on until at
last the fire on Roz flared and died out.

Roz's high-pitched mewls of agony were audible even over the
dying roar of the flames, but then Mehta's voice came shouting,
taut with pain and what might have been rage but Kate knew was in truth
fear.

"What are you doing? That madwoman attacked me, she tried to
burn down my sleeping house, let her burn, she ought to--"

His voice strangled at the sight of Kate's drawn gun. "What are you doing?" he said again, openly afraid now.

"You brought her here to kill her, you bastard. Set her on
fire like you did Pramilla, knocked her helpless first like you did
with Laxman. You thought we'd count your brother's murder
as just one more of the series. Was it a million dollars your father
left him, or was it maybe a little more? Peter Mehta, you are under
arrest for the murder--"

That was as far as Kate got before the back door of the house
crashed open on its hinges and Rani Mehta charged out, as vengeful as
Kali and every bit as bent on destruction. She ran full tilt across the
brick patio at them, oblivious of the gun, heedless of any official
warnings, intent only on the rescue of her husband. She threw herself
at Kate, shrieking and clawing, and Kate, in an agony of conflict,
simply could not bring herself to shoot the woman at point-blank range.
Instead, she curled over to protect her face from those fearsome nails,
switched the gun into her left hand, and then rose up and drove her
right fist directly up into the woman's plump chin with all the
strength in her arm.

Rani sagged, and in that instant Kate yanked her handcuffs out and
slapped one end around Rani's waving wrist, and then she felt
Mehta beginning to move toward her and she let go of Rani to turn the
gun on the husband. Unlike his wife, Mehta was very aware of the threat
in Kate's hand, but it was Rani whom Kate had to neutralize, a
recovering Rani about to launch a second attack. Kate shouted at her,
"I'll shoot your husband."

Rani caught herself, and looked down at the gun, seeing it for the
first time. She followed its aim, and in that moment of hesitation,
Kate reached out with foot and hand to trip the big woman onto the hard
knobs of the heavy cast-iron chaise lounge; Rani's sharp cry of
pain overrode the click of the cuffs over the metal frame. Gulping to
catch her breath, aware of her own complete dishevelment and three of
the Mehta children with the old servant Lali staring at her aghast from
the doorway of the house, Kate panted her way through the arrest
procedures. Even if she had carried a second set of cuffs, she could
not have brought herself to clamp a handcuff over the raw and blackened
skin of Mehta's right arm, but she did pat him down and kept an
eye on him, as well as on the house behind him, until the sirens drew
near, cutting off on the residential street, and the doors of several
cars slammed in the street. She made Mehta go with her to the gate and
unlatch it, and there she turned him over to a pair of uniforms to
await the paramedics. She would meet up with him later, when a doctor
had cleared him for interrogation.

She ignored Rani and the rest of the family, going to kneel at last
by Roz's side. Roz was wearing her clerical collar; her face was
as white as the plastic strip. She was conscious but shivering, crying
and tight-faced with shock. When the paramedics arrived, Kate insisted
that they take Roz first, leaving Mehta for the next ambulance.

On their way to the burn center, Kate sat holding Roz's
unscathed hand with her own. Roz's pain came in waves, indicated
by a clenching of her grip. At the height of one spasm, she turned her
head and gasped, "Talk to me."

"About what, Roz?"

"Anything. Take my mind off this."

Kate seriously doubted that words alone would make much progress in
pain management, but if words Roz wanted, then words she would have.
And, Kate figured, the stronger the better.

"We caught Carla Lomax," she told her, and waited for
Roz to ask what Carla had been caught for. Roz did not ask, which
confirmed a number of Kate's suspicions. "And Phoebe
Weatherman is on the run. Did you actually know, Roz? Or just
suspect?"

The searing agony from Roz's legs was clearly battering at the
woman, on the edge of overwhelming her. It was, Kate tried to reassure
herself, a far better sign than lack of feeling--the fire had not
gone deeply enough into Roz's skin to destroy the nerves. Roz
held herself rigid and spoke in short gasps, but her words and thoughts
were clear, as if willpower and grammatical precision were enough to
keep the pain at bay.

"I told you. I did not know. I suppose. I did not want to. If
I had. I would. Have told you. I said I wouldn't. That was a lie.
I do not condone. Murder. As a way of solving problems."

Oddly enough, Kate believed her.

"Phoebe's gone. Underground. You won't...
catch her." The last phrase coincided with a sudden buildup of
pain, and Roz panted and groaned in the back of her throat until the
wave had passed. When her eyes came open again, they were commanding
Kate to continue, and Kate realized that words were indeed an effective
analgesic; they'd certainly taken her mind off her own pain for a
moment or two. And from a more selfish point of
view,
taking
into account Roz's temporary dependence on rigid order, questions
put to her were likely to be answered before Roz stopped to consider
what she was doing. Reluctantly, then, Kate continued.

"You don't have any idea where Phoebe has gone?"

Roz shook her head.

"Roz, she's killed three people."

"Kate. I do not. Know."

Kate decided that was all she was going to get at the moment, and
she sat looking at Roz and thinking about going underground, and about
choosing invisibility as a way of life, as a form
of
self-defense. At the thought, and at her growing awareness of the
community of invisible women out there, waiting to enfold Phoebe
Weatherman, she had to smile in spite of the pain shooting up her arm.
With a glance at the paramedic, she leaned over to speak quietly in
Roz's ear.

"And what about the LOPD? That's Maj, isn't it?"

In Roz's pinched features, alarm mingled with the pain, and Kate hastened to explain herself.

"I figured it out when I realized that the reason we
didn't focus on Phoebe Weatherman was because she was just a
secretary. Of course, she wasn't 'just' anything, but
she was invisible--like the Web site said. And like Maj always
seems to be. Roz, I promise you, anything you say to me in the current
circumstances will be completely inadmissible. There's not a
judge in the country would allow it as testimony. So you're safe
to tell me: I know Maj has had nothing to do with the murders, but she
is behind the actions of the Ladies, isn't she? She's
written all over it, her kind of humor." I can't...