Red Light (13 page)

Merci,
not a good judge of the cost of clothing, estimated several thousands of
dollars on the first twenty hangers—dresses by designers of whom she was only
vaguely aware. A smart red leather outfit with gold buckles on the straps still
had a price tag attached! $1700.

The most Merci had
ever paid for a dress was $335 a little over two years ago. It was long, black
and simple, worn just once.

The smell of perfume
wafted up as she lifted the hangers. After dresses came the skirts, then the
blouses, then the more casual tops. On the other side of the closet were coats
and jackets, pants, some frankly provocative leather and vinyl items. Merci
wasn't sure how they were put on. She wanted to be able to imagine herself in
such a thing, but couldn't.

You don't touch. You don't kiss. You don't dream.

A scared, sexless
cow, she thought: There're worse things to be, aren't there? Maybe she
would
be heading up the Homicide Detail by age forty.

She had an urge to
try on some of Aubrey Whittaker's clothes, just see how they looked. The red
leather getup would be the one. She ranked this among the top ten most stupid
ideas she'd had in her life. Banished it. Banished it again.

The sweaters were
folded and stacked on the left side of the top shelf. Black cashmere, black
cotton, black angora. No black wool. On the right-hand part of the shelf she
found some knit caps and berets, pairs of knit gloves and three mufflers. Lots
of wool there, but only the gloves were black, and no Orlon in the mix
according to the labels

She checked the dry
cleaning next. Nothing that matched what the lab had found.

Then she searched the
laundry basket in the corner: lots of underwear and clothes but no wool. She
noted the shoes and boots, the sandals and slippers, the 240-count box of
condoms beside the leather thigh-highs. What a thing to do for a living,
thought Merci. She figured that Aubrey Whittaker had probably spent more time
in sexual intercourse in one year than she herself would in her whole life. She
felt about this, in indefinite ways.

You don't plan. You don't dream. You don't do anything.

The dresser on the
opposite side of the room contained more underwear than Merci thought one woman
would ever own. You name it. Aubrey had it. But the socks were cotton or
cotton/Lycra. The athletic clothes were more of the same.

Underneath the Lycra
shorts in the top drawer she found a stack of opened mail. It looked like
mostly greeting cards. She sat in the chair in the corner and turned on the
reading lamp next to it. She checked for return addresses on the colored
envelopes, none. She checked the postmarks—Santa Ana. They were addressed by
hand in small, neat print that immediately sent her heart into a quick acceleration.
She put them in chronological order and started with the earliest.

Blue envelope, matching
blue card with a bird on it.

Hang in there.
Rough times, but worth it.

—A Supporter

Green envelope,
matching green card with whale on it.

Sometimes it's
hardest to do what's right.

—A Supporter

Red envelope,
matching red card with a pine tree on it.

The heart heals
best in the broken places.

—A Supporter and Fan

They
were all in Sergeant Mike McNally's neat printing. She should know.

Her own card would
read:

My trembling heart
says fuck you, you two-timing asshole, eat

shit and die.

—Merci Rayborn

White envelope,
matching white card with a cactus on it.

Proud of what you
did today. Thanks.

—MM

Yellow envelope,
matching yellow card with a bumblebee

on it.

I can't express
how highly I think of you.

—Not So Secret
Admirer

"I
could vomit," she said to no one. She heard a cabinet shut out in the
kitchen, Paul trying to figure the struggle between a live man and a dead woman
lying ten feet away.

She
put back the cards and found another collection in the drawer, under the
workout T-shirts.

The
envelopes were legal size, plain white. Same postmark, no return address. They
were addressed by computer or a good typewriter, she couldn't tell which.

The writing inside was
typewritten or computer-generated, Double-spaced, a common-looking font.

November 11

Dear Aubrey,

Just wanted you to know
you did the right thing. Moladar needs to go and you need to help me get him.
It might not fee like it now, but you're doing the RIGHT thing. When we've
taken care of him, it's going to help us take care of YOU.

Take Care

Mike

November 17

Dear Aubrey,

Funny to write a fan
letter to someone I hardly know. It's got to be a first. I don't mean to harp
on things, but I wanted you to know how PROUD I am of you and what you're
doing. Every once in a while when I'm around a person I get a strong feeling
that there's some kind of blessing in store for them. I feel they're going to
get out of their trouble, rise and fly, become the great person they were
destined to become. I see that in YOU. I'm thankful to have some small part in
it. It's a pleasure just to watch. I'll help you think of a plan when this is
all over. I want very badly for you to be free of the chains that hold you. I
want to see you FLY up into the sun and disappear into its light.

All Best,

Mike

Merci shook her head and
dropped the first two letters to the floor.

November 28

Dear Aubrey,

Had a nice
Thanksgiving dinner and I said the prayer before the meal. I thanked God for
all the blessings in this world, for this life around us, for the bounty and
the goodness. I thanked God for people like YOU. I hoped you were doing
something that would bring you nearer God. I wished you could have been with
us. Though I've got no idea what my fiancee would think of that! Some things
are hard to explain! I'm just fantasizing now, but I hold you in my thoughts.

True Best,

Mike

Dec. 3

Dear Aubrey,

You're right, I am a
dark cloud and if you want to call me D.C. that's fine with me. At least you
see what's inside me. Sometimes I think I'm a dark cloud trying to be a sunny
day, but you know, all the stuff I see all day makes me serious and then I get gloomy
and then I get sad. There's actually a lively HEART in here somewhere, though I
don't feel it all the time. Anyway, just was thinking about you and wanted to
communicate. I hope you don't find these cards and letters to be a nuisance.
Sometimes when I write to you I feel like I'm writing to someone I've never
seen or met, someone I never will see or meet, some ideal kind of woman you
have in your head but never really see. It's strange, what emotions do to the
way you feel. Your bones and blood feel different inside. Like your body is
running on a different kind of fuel. I've never been good at expressing myself
but it's easy for me to write to you. Easy to just say what's on my mind. Like
I said before, when I see you I see a person who's going to FLY

someday. Someday soon.
It's nice to see you starting to doing it. Nice to see Aubrey Whittaker growing
into who she can be. I'll do everything I can to help you.

Your D C.

Dec. 5

Dear Aubrey,

I have to say that what
you talked about yesterday disturbed me QUITE a lot. It's one thing to joke a
little about my fiancee and what she should or shouldn't be doing for me, but
that crack about exposing "my relationship with prostitute" to the
people I work with sent a bad shiver down my spine. I HOPE you were just
joking. You've got sharp tongue and a fine mind, young lady, so I'm going to
give you the benefit of the doubt. But some places you have to go carefully.
I'm proud of my relationship with you—because I'm proud of you—but there are so
many ways it could be misconstrued by my co-workers, not to mention my fiancee.
Anyway, I don't mean to OVERREACT to what you said. I just want you to know
that I hold all my relationships—ours, all of them—sacred. Don't mess with
that.

Always Your Friend,

D.C

Merci read the letter
again. She thought: I don't mean to get overly SUSPICIOUS, but I wonder if this
WHORE was talking about blackmail.

Dec. 8

Dear Aubrey,

I'm really sorry for
blowing up on the phone, but when you talked about "payment for what I'd
been getting" I just saw red. I thought what I was "getting" was
being offered free of charge. I've treasured every minute of it! You can't
charge people money for EVERYTHING, you know. And

please, don't even joke about my fiancee, or the
people I work with, anymore. Those areas are off-limits for some things. If
I've been taking advantage of you in some way, I'll be the first to "make
a payment" to make it right, but I honestly don't see that I have. What
have I taken? What could I owe? You know, we need to talk. Will call soon. I do
honestly miss you in ways I've never missed anybody. I really AM looking
forward to dinner at your place.

Your Admirer,

Mike

You
missed her and you were afraid of her and she was yanking your chain. And three
nights later, thought Merci, just after the dinner she made for you, she was
dead.

Merci
felt like taking a scalding shower with oven cleaner and a wire brush. It was
like all of Mike's earnestness and naivete and colossal stupidity had turned
to tar and she'd been dipped in it.

Means,
motive and opportunity, she thought. The three textbook requisites for
homicide, and Mike had them all.

She collected the
letters and put them back. In the same drawer, close to the back, she found an
unlabeled VHS tape. She actually shuddered, thinking what you'd get on a
private video belonging to Aubrey Whittaker. She took it and went to find her
partner.

He
was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, facing the still-open drawers
and cabinet. No overcoat now. His elbows were on his knees and his face rested
on his fists and he didn't move when she came in. There was a little dustball
directly in front of him.

"Why
the lower two drawers?" he asked quietly. "Why the cabinet under the
sink? There's a struggle of some kind in the kitchen, between who and who we
don't know yet, but the stuff on the counter is fine. The upper drawers aren't
open. The toaster and spice rack and utensils weren't disturbed. The counter TV
wasn't knocked down. The notes and cartoons stuck to the refrigerator with
magnets weren't knocked off. But the wood screws on the cabinet handle were
wrenched out. The metal runner on the drawer was bent too bad to close. There
was some real strength there. Something fierce between them."

She
went with the obvious. "They hit the floor fast, and that's where they
fought."

He
shrugged. "I told myself that. I just couldn't picture it. Two grown
humans. Not children. Not snakes."

Merci
tried to picture the scene, but it wouldn't form for her, either. Hess had
taught her to picture things. She could do it, but she couldn’t do it well,
yet.

The obvious again:
"CSIs must have dusted the living shit out of it.”

"They got the
handle, the drawers—zip. Wiped clean."

"No,
I mean
everything.
Everything lower than the top of the cabinet. Two
people fight like that, how's the winner going to remember everything he
touched? That's good paint. The floor's got a good finish. The appliances are
perfect. They'll hold prints."

Zamorra
was nodding. He looked back at her, then down at the dust ball on the floor in
front of him.

"That,
they didn't do. Coiner and O'Brien were thorough, exhaustive. I didn't see
anything in the file about the drawers that were open, the bottom of the
refrigerator, the trash compactor, the dishwasher, the floor. Look at all the
good surfaces in here that weren't tried."

She
did. Some were dusted. Some were tagged where the prints been lifted. Some were
not.

"Even
the best CSIs miss things," she said. She'd requested Coiner and O'Brien
because they were the best the department had. Her people. She would trust them
with her life.

"It's
not a criticism," he said. "This little ball of dust here, it's what
I got out of the corners, from under the reefer and the compactor and
dishwasher. I'm going to cut Gilliam loose on it. Just eyeballing, I see a
couple of clothing fibers that don't look like the others. Months old,
probably. But if there was a struggle in here, something came loose. It's worth
a try."

Zamorra
stood, then bent over and used his pen to slide the dust ball into a plastic
bag. He looked at it, then at Merci.