A Grave Talent (33 page)

"You'll never paint again!" he shrieked at her, and the heavy gun jerked slightly toward her, and then all three of them could see his mind reassert itself and take control of the hand's movement. He looked at her in astonishment and began to laugh, the madness and hysteria all the way up to the surface now.

"You think I'm going to kill you, you stupid bitch? That's what you want, isn't it? But I'm not going to make it that easy for you. You're going to wish you were dead--it'll make being locked up for ten years seem like a fairy tale because you're going to live knowing what your precious painting did, you're going to have to live knowing that because of your precious fucking painting people died, that those hands you're so proud of might as well have been around those skinny soft little throats and on this gun, and you're going to have to live knowing that precious little Jemma and Tina and Amanda who tried to bite me, the little bitch, and what's the other one's name? Samantha and now your good friends Lee and Casey, all of them died because of your precious fucking painting hands, and even if your hands can hold a brush when I'm finished with you, all you'll be able to paint is blood and death, and you did it all, you did it, Vaunie, it was you."

And he turned then and many things happened simultaneously, as his gun lowered onto Lee and Vaun cried out and Kate finally made her move, diving low for his knees, and the high upper window blossomed in glittering fragments into the room and two guns went off. Then there was blood like paint spattered across the room and there was death and there was the sound of two women groaning in deep and eternal agony, and then came the sound of more smashing glass and the absurdly unnecessary flat buzz of the breached house alarm, and then running feet and shouts and the wail of distant sirens, and Hawkin pulling Kate off Lee and muffling his partner's choking groans in the hollow of his shoulder, and the sirens louder now and the sudden silent chasm as both house alarm and siren shut off, and the calm rush of the ambulance men, and Hawkin holding Kate back--and then Lee was gone, and it was over, over, it was over.

THE ROAD

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Works of art are always products of having been in danger,

of having gone to the very end

--
Rainer Maria Rilke
, letter

There was also a nun, a Prioress
and thereon hung a brooch of gold full sheen, On which there was first writ a crowned 'A,'

And after
Amor vmcit omnia

--
Geoffrey Chaucer
, Canterbury Tales,
Prologue

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Tyler's Road was a very different place in the June sunshine. Even the redwoods through which Kate had run that disgustingly wet night seemed more benevolent. The roses along the fence were a glory of color, the rusty shed roof had disappeared beneath an expanse of green, and brilliant flags flew from every fence post, each printed with a helm, a lute, or a quill and proclaiming the boundaries of the Medieval Midsummer's Night Faire.

There were still a few press vans, Kate was amused to see, although they were vastly outnumbered by the buses, bugs, pickups, vans, station wagons, and just plain cars of the participants, which even at this early hour lined both sides of the narrow road for nearly a mile on either side of the Barn. She parked her own car at the suggestion of a longhaired boy in jester's motley and began to walk toward the sounds and, soon, the smells of Tyler's Barn. There was a steady flow of longhaired, bearded, long-skirted types whose costumes ranged from monastic robes to gowns that would have seemed modern in Marie Antoinette's France, with a scattering of self-conscious families in shorts and cameras. She herself was dressed in proper period style, thanks to the bullying of one of Lee's clients--but as a young man, in tunic and lightweight leggings. No ruffs or farthingales for her, thank you.

As she neared the entrance gate she fished out from the leather pouch at her belt the pass that had come in the mail and handed it to the gatekeeper, a vaguely familiar woman in rustic brown who stamped her hand with something that was either an octopus or a musical instrument. Behind the woman stood a mountainous figure in green tunic and leggings, leaning on a rough staff the size of a young tree, a walkie-talkie grumbling from his hip. She looked at him more carefully, and at last knew him by the earring.

"Mark Detweiler?"

He looked at her with uncertainty.

"Kate Martinelli. Casey?" she suggested.

"Casey Martinelli!" he boomed, and crushed her hand in his. "Good to see you. I wouldn't have recognized you in a million years. How've you been?" And then his face changed as he remembered, and still booming he continued, "I was so sorry to hear about your friend, we all were. Is there--"

She interrupted quickly, not wanting to hear it.

"Thanks, no, I'm fine, have you any idea where Tyler is, or Vaun Adams?"

He looked furtively to either side and bent down to whisper in her ear.

"Vaun was around. She's helping Amy with the cart rides, or maybe doing faces, I'm not sure which. Tyler's around." He waved vaguely into the multicolored swirl of humanity. Kate thanked him and began to turn away, but was stopped by his booming voice. "Tell you who I did see, though," and he waited.

"Who?" she obliged.

"Your partner." Seeing her confused look, he repeated it. "Your partner. Al Hawkin."

"Al's here?" She was surprised. This didn't seem his sort of show, but then, maybe he was here for reasons similar to hers.

"Got here about half an hour ago, with the most gorgeous wench--oh, sorry, we're not supposed to call them wenches this year. What was it now?" He scratched his grizzled head in thought, pushing the feathered cap awry. "Oh, right. Buxom ladies, we're supposed to say. Anyway, she's a looker. They went towards the food tents--see the white ones?"

She thanked him again and set off, aiming well downhill from the blazing white canvas from which all the smells were drifting. She wasn't sure she wanted to see him, not quite yet. Later in the day perhaps, after she had talked with Vaun.

Inevitably, perverse fate decreed that the first familiar face she saw was that of Al Hawkin, dressed in twentieth-century open-necked shirt and tan cotton trousers, standing by himself across a clearing and listening to a quartet of three recorders and a viola da gamba. She had not seen him for nearly two months, since the night he had come to the house with the intention, she had realized only recently, of apologizing for his failure to send the marksman up the neighbor's tree in time to save Lee's spine. Kate had been in no state to receive him or his guilt, being on the edge of exhaustion and frantic with worry over yet another infection that was trying to carry off what was left of Lee, and had thrown him out with scathing, bitter words.

Those words hung in front of her now and she hesitated, tempted to duck back behind the tent, but was stopped by the absurdity of it. He saw her then, half raised a hand in greeting, and waited until he saw her start toward him before moving from his post. They met halfway.

"Hello, Al," she said with originality.

"Kate," he answered. "How are you?"

"I am well," she said, and was vaguely surprised to find that she meant it.

"And Lee?"

"You saw her a couple of weeks ago, I think?"

"Ten days ago. She was due to be discharged the following day. How is it going?"

"She's much happier at home, sleeping well. And she seems to be doing better just generally."

"Changes?" He was as sharply perceptive as ever and picked up the nuance of hope in her voice.

"The doctors say they aren't sure, but you know doctors. She says there's some feeling in her right foot, and the other day she moved it in reflex."

"Oh, Kate. That is good news. I'm very glad to hear it."

The sincerity behind the hackneyed phrases stung her eyes, and she looked away at the musicians. Some people were beginning a dance.

"Al, I'm sorry about how I acted when you came to see me. I didn't mean it, I hope you know that."

"I do. I chose a poor time to come. Forget it. I'll come to see her sometime, shall I?"

"She'd like that."

"Tell her I said hello, and that I'm glad to hear she's doing better."

"She's sure she'll be jogging by Christmas. Of course, she never jogged before--I don't know what her hurry is."

He smiled at her, hearing what lay behind her feeble joke.

"Buy you a beer?"

"A bit early for me."

"You have to get into the medieval spirit. They drank it all day--no coffee, can you imagine? and no tea other than herbs that they drank as medicine--and got a large part of their vitamin and caloric intake from beer. Why, do you know, court records show that the lady's servants--the women, mind you--were each issued something like three gallons a day?"

"Must have been a jolly castle." She wondered at this arcane expertise.

"With busy toilets. Speaking of which, I wonder where Jani could be? Oh well, she'll find us."

And so saying he casually draped an arm across Kate's shoulders, and she was so astonished she could only lean into him as they meandered downhill and joined the line for paper cups (printed with a wood-grain design) of surprisingly decent dark beer.

They found a quiet corner atop a pile of large wooden crates and sat looking at the pulsating, growing crowd of medieval merrymakers. The beer went down well as they sat in the shade on an already hot morning with the taste of dust on their tongues. Kate swallowed and gave herself over to relaxation, feeling small pockets of unrealized tension give way. It was the first alcohol she'd had since what she thought of in capitals as The Night. To drink would have been an act of cowardice, until now.

She didn't realize she had sighed until Hawkin turned to her.

"I almost didn't come," she said, as if in explanation.

"I was a little surprised to see you," he agreed.

"Some of Lee's clients are with her today. Jon Samson, as a matter of fact--one of her most devoted. Silly to call them clients, I suppose. If anything, they're the therapists, both physio-and psycho-."

"Friends, maybe."

"Friends. Yes. I don't know what I would have done without them."

"Are you coming back, Kate?" he asked abruptly.

"You know, until ten minutes ago I wasn't sure."

"And?"

"Yes. Yes, I do believe I'm coming back."

"Good." He nodded and drained his cup. "Good. How soon?"

"I'll have to arrange care for Lee." He waited. "Jon offered to move in for a while, to take over the front rooms. I'd have to get in a bed, arrange a relief schedule for him." Hawkin waited. "A few days. Four. Maybe three. Why?"

"I could use you now," he said. His fingers fiddled with the waxy rim of the cup, uncurling it, and his eyes scanned the crowd, and his face gave away nothing.

"Isn't this where you start lighting a cigarette?" she said suspiciously.

"Gave them up."

"Why do you need me now?"

"I've been given the Raven Morningstar case."

"Oh, Christ, Al, give me a break!" Ms. Morningstar had been found, very much murdered, in her hotel room in the city the week before. Ms. Morningstar had a list of enemies that would fill a small telephone book. Ms. Morningstar was one of the country's most outspoken, most eloquent, most militant, most worshipped, and most vilified radical feminist lesbians.

"You might be of considerable help."

"Oh, I can imagine. You could nail me up on the doors of the Hall of Justice and let them throw things at me while you slip out the back."

"None of them would throw things at you," he said matter-of-factly. "There is, after all, a certain amount of renown attached to a female police officer who forces her superiors to give her an extended leave in order to nurse her wounded lover, lesbian variety, and who furthermore makes noises that the departmental insurance policy should be made to include what might be termed unofficial spouses." He did look at her finally, with one eyebrow raised, to gauge her response. She stared at him, openmouthed, for a long minute, until she felt a sensation she'd never thought to feel again. A great, round, growing balloon of laughter welled up inside her and finally burst gloriously, and she began to giggle, and laugh, more and more convulsively, until in the end she lay back on the crates and roared, tears rolling down into her hair. His growing look of alarm only made it worse, and it was some time before she could get out a coherent explanation.

"When I... that first day, in your office... you so obviously didn't want to be burdened with me--no, I understood, I was being set up in a prominent place on the case because there were kiddies involved--" She realized where they were and lowered her voice. "And any case with kiddies has to have a little lady in it, and little old Casey Martinelli was that lady, there to look cute and pat the kiddies on the head. And now"--she started to laugh again--"now I'm the department's representative to the chains-and-leather dyke brigade." She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and suddenly the laughter disintegrated and she heaved a sigh. "Ah, well, as they say: only in San Francisco."

"So when can you be there?"

"Jesus Christ, Al, you don't give up, do you? Today's Saturday. I'll be in Tuesday."

"Make it Monday."

"Nope. There's people I can't reach on the weekend-- have to do it Monday morning."

"Monday afternoon, then."

"All right, damn it! Late Monday afternoon."

"I'll set a press conference for three o'clock."

"A press--you utter bastard," she swore angrily, and an instant later realized that she was cursing at the man who was still her superior officer.

He swung his face around, looked directly at her, his gray-blue eyes inches from her brown ones, and grinned roguishly.

"That's what all the girls say, my dear."

A voice came from behind them, a voice low but penetrating, the voice of a woman accustomed to public speaking.

"I go away. I stand in line for one half hour with anachronistic music in my ears for the dubious privilege of using a porta-potty disguised as an eleventh-century privy. I come back to find my escort has disappeared, and when I manage to track him down, I find him guzzling beer and staring into the eyes of another woman."

Despite the words, the voice did not sound troubled, and the face, when Kate hitched around to face it, was only amused.

Kate nodded seriously.

"You just can't get good escorts these days," she told the woman.

"My dear," shouted Hawkin happily, "this is Casey Martinelli. Kate, this is Jani Cameron."

"Kate," said Kate firmly, and held out her hand. Another, smaller hand waved up from behind the crates, thrust vaguely in Kate's direction. Kate stretched and shook that one too.

"And that's Jules," added Hawkin. He slithered down from their impromptu seat, swore at the splinters, and helped Kate get down undamaged.

"Jani is the world's foremost authority on medieval German literature, and Jules is going to be San Francisco's youngest D.A. You needn't worry about Kate, Jani," he added offhandedly. "She's a lesbian."

Kate buried her face in her cup, which was already empty, and so missed the woman's reaction, but when she looked back the child was examining her with considerable interest. Finally, with the academic air of someone discussing the historical development of the iota subscript, she spoke.

"Are you, in fact, a lesbian, or more properly speaking bisexual?" she began. "I was reading an article the other day that stated--"

There was a rapid dispersion of the party toward the food tents, with Jules and her mother in the rear in intent conversation (consisting of a firm low voice punctuated with several
But Mothers)
and Hawkin and Kate in front, he grinning hugely, she decidedly pink, from the beer and the sun, no doubt, but smiling gamely.

At the food tents Kate allowed herself to be steered past the Cornish pasties (beef, vegetarian, or tofu) and tempura prawns (medieval Japanese, she assumed) to the sign that advertised the dubious claims of something called "toad in the hole," It turned out to be a spicy sausage in a gummy bread surround, but when she had washed it down with another beer and followed it with strawberries in cream (poured, not whipped, and with honey, not sugar--authenticity reigned in the strawberry booth), she was content.

The three adults sat on a bench in the shade of a colorful tarpaulin while Jules stalked off to try her hand at a game suspiciously like the ancient three-cup sleight-of-hand con game. Hawkin smiled almost paternally as the child stood gazing in intense concentration at the current players, a metal-mouthed page girl amid the lords and ladies who swept up and down the avenues among the stalls of crafts, foods, and games. The three of them chatted comfortably about Tyler, festivals, minor gossip concerning the department, the development of music, and the production of beer. At the end of half an hour Kate realized that Jani was someone she could easily come to like, and furthermore she saw that Hawkin was very much in love with her. She was quiet, even aloof, in manner, but listened carefully to words and currents, and when she spoke it was precise, to the point, and, like her daughter, not always politic. She and Hawkin argued, laughed, and touched, as if old companions, and other than a twinge of pain at the thought of Lee in the mechanical bed at home, she was glad. Eventually Jani stood up, gathered her brocade skirts, and went off after her daughter, with an agreement to meet Hawkin beneath the golden banner in half an hour to watch a demonstration of swordplay.