To Play the Fool (21 page)

"I'm sorry, Al."

"American justice, don't you just love it. I was looking at the stuff your friend in Chicago sent."

"Did it come? Was there anything?"

"Two blots on Saint Erasmus's past. A DUI when he was
twenty-five--forty seven years ago--and then ten years later
he plead guilty to assault, got a year of parole and a hundred hours of
community service."

"Any details?"

"Not many. It looks like what he did was pick up a chair in a
classroom and try to brain somebody with it. They were having an
argument--a debate in front of a class--and it got out of
hand. The gentle life of the mind," he commented sardonically.

"Damn the man, anyway," she growled. "Why the hell did he have to run off like that?"

"Exactly."

"What?"

"Why did he run?"

"Oh Christ, Al, you're not going to go all Sherlock
Holmes on me, are you? The dog did nothing in the night," she
protests. "Precisely," says he mysteriously."

"You are in a good mood, aren't you?" observed Hawkin. "Have you eaten anything today?"

"Now you sound like my mother. Yes, I had a couple of hot dogs from the stand in the park."

"There's the problem. You've got nitrates eating your brain cells."

"Since when do you care about nitrates? You live off the things."

"No more." He placed one hand on his chest. "I am pure."

"First cigarettes and now junk food? That Jani's a powerful woman."

Al Hawkin stood up and lifted his jacket from the back of his chair.
"Come on, Martinelli," he said. "I'll buy you a
sandwich and you can tell me about the Brother Erasmus fan club."

Some might call him a madman, hut he was the very reverse of a dreamer.

It was now two weeks since John had been killed, thirteen days since
his funeral pyre had been lighted, and Kate woke that Tuesday morning
knowing that her case consisted of a number of details concerning a
fine lot of characters, but the only link any of it had was a person
she would much prefer to see out of it entirely.

Kate had been a cop long enough to know that likable people can be
villains, that personality and charisma are, if anything, more likely
to be found attached to the perpetrator than the victim. She liked
people,- she sent them to jail: no problem.

But damn it, Erasmus was different. She could not shake the image of
him as a priest, but it wasn't even as simple as that. She had,
in fact, once arrested a Roman Catholic priest, with only the mildest
hesitation and no regrets afterward. No, there was something about
Erasmus--what it was, she could not grasp, could not even begin to
articulate, but it was there, a deep distaste of the idea of putting
him behind bars. She would do her job, and if necessary she would
pursue his arrest to the full extent of her abilities, but lying in bed
that Tuesday morning she was aware of the conviction that she would
never fully believe the man's guilt.

Well, Kate, she said to herself, you'll just have to dig
deeper until you find somebody else to hang it on. And with that
decision, she threw back the covers and went to face the day.

Her hopeful determination, however, did not last the morning. When
she arrived at the Hall of Justice she found two notes under the
message clip on her desk. The first was in Al Hawkin's scrawl,
and read:

Martinelli, you're on your own again today, I'm
taking Tom's appointment with the DA. Back at noon, with any luck.

--Al

The other had been left by the night Field Ops officer:

Insp. Martinelli
--
3:09 AM., Tuesday. See the woman 982 29th Ave., after 11:00 A.M. today. Info, re the cremation.

At five minutes after eleven, Kate was on Twenty-ninth Avenue,
looking at a row of pale two-story stucco houses with never-used
balconies and perfunctory lawns. Number 982, unlike most of its
neighbors, did not have a metal security gate in front of the entrance.
It did have a healthy-looking tree in a Chinese glazed pot sitting on
the edge of the tiled portico. When she pressed the doorbell, a small
dog barked inside, twice. She heard movement--a door opening and a
vague scuffle of footsteps above the noise of traffic. The sound
stopped, and Kate felt a gaze from the peephole in the door. Bolts
worked and the door opened, to reveal a slim woman slightly taller than
Kate, her graying blond hair standing on end, her athletic-looking body
wrapped in a maroon terrycloth bathrobe many sizes too large for her.
Kate held out her identification in front of the woman's bleary
eyes, which were set in rounds of startlingly pale skin surrounded by a
ruddy wind-roughened forehead and cheeks. Ski goggles, Kate diagnosed.

"Inspector Kate Martinelli, SFPD. I received a message that
you have information pertaining to the cremation that occurred in
Golden Gate Park two weeks ago. I hope this isn't a bad
time."

"Oh no, no. I was up. The friend who was watching my dog just
brought her back. Come on in. Would you like some coffee? It's
fresh." She turned and scuffled away down the hallway, leaving
Kate to shut the door.

"No thank you, Ms... ?"

"Didn't I leave my name? No, maybe I didn't.
I'm Sam Rutlidge. This is Dobie," she added as they entered
the kitchen. "Short for Doberman."

Doberman was a dachshund. She sniffed Kate's shoes and ankles
enthusiastically and wagged her whip of a tail into a blur, but she
neither jumped up and down nor yapped. When Kate reached a hand down,
Dobie pushed against it like a cat with her firm, supple body, gave
Kate a brief lick with her tongue, and then went to lie in a basket on
the lowest shelf of a built-in bookshelf, surrounded by cookbooks. Her
dark eyes glittered as she watched them.

"That's the calmest dachshund I've ever seen," said Kate.

"Just well trained. Sure you won't have some?" She
held out the pot from the coffeemaker. It smelled very good.

"I will change my mind, thanks."

"Black okay? There isn't any milk in the house, none that you'd want to drink, anyway."

"Black is fine. Do I understand that you've been away, Ms. Rutlidge?"

"skiing. I've been in Tahoe for the last couple of
weeks, I got back after midnight last night. It was stupid to call at
that hour, I guess, but somehow you don't think of the police
department as working nine to five."

"The department works twenty-four hours. Some of us are
allowed to sleep occasionally. How did you hear about the
cremation?"

"I was reading the papers. I'm always so wired when I
get in after a long drive, especially at night, there's no point
in going to bed, since I just stare at the ceiling. I make myself some
hot milk, soak in the bath, read for a while, just give myself a chance
to stop vibrating, you know? So anyway, I went through my mail and then
started leafing through the newspapers--the neighbor brings them
in for me--and I saw that article about the body being burned, the
day I left."

"You left for Lake Tahoe on the Wednesday?"

"Early Wednesday. I like to get out of the Bay Area before the traffic gets too thick."

"You didn't see any news while you were at Tahoe?"

"I was too busy."

"So you read about it at--what, one or two this morning?"

"About then. Maybe closer to three."

"What made you think to call us?"

"Well, the first papers were really general, and aside from
the fact that it was so close to here, I didn't really think
about it. I mean, I don't know any homeless people."

Kate made some encouraging noise.

"Then for a couple of days, there wasn't anything, or if
there was, I didn't see it--I wasn't reading very
carefully. Then on Monday, there was another article, with a picture,
and as soon as I saw the man, it all came back to me."

"Which man was this?"

In answer, the woman stood up and went out of the room. The dog
raised her sleek head from her paws and stared at the door, attentive
but not concerned, until Sam Rutlidge came back with a section of the
paper, folded back to a photograph. She laid it on the table in front
of Kate and tapped her finger on the bearded man who was standing on a
lawn in front of about twenty other men and women, reading from a book.

"Him. I saw him coming out of the park, not far from the place
where they... burned the body the following morning. I saw him
Tuesday morning. And he seemed really upset."

"What time was this?"

"About quarter to ten. I had an ten o'clock appointment
and I was running late because of a phone call, so I was in a hurry. I
usually go up a block to the signal or down to Twenty-fifth to get onto
Fulton, but I was in such a rush and it would've meant turning
the car around and there was a truck down the block, so I just went
straight down to Fulton and turned left as soon as I could." She
glanced uncomfortably at Kate the defender of law and order.
"I'm a careful driver,- I've never had a ticket.
Looking back, I know how stupid it was, to shove my way in when the
traffic was thick and the pavement was wet from the fog, but as I said,
I was in a hurry and not thinking straight. I cut it kind of close, and
one of the cars slammed on its brakes and honked at me as I moved
through his lane to the outside lane."

"Don't worry about it," Kate said. "I'm not with the traffic division."

"Yes, well. It was stupid. I wouldn't have hit the car,
but I did scare him, and he went past, shaking his fist out the window
at me. And then I saw that man." She pointed toward the
newspaper. "I noticed him because he seemed to be shaking his
fist at me, too, but as I went by, I could tell he wasn't even
looking at me. He'd have had to turn his head to see my car, and
he hadn't; he was looking straight ahead."

"What was he looking at?"

"Nothing, as far as I could tell. He was coming out of the
park on one of the paths, not quite to the pavement, and he was holding
that big stick of his, shaking it, sort of punching it into the air as
he walked along."

"You'd seen him before?"

"Oh yes, he's a regular in the park. We call him 'the Preacher.""

" 'We' being..."

"There's a group of us who run three times a week and then go for coffee. We tend to see the same people."

"Did you ever talk with him?"

"The Preacher? Not really. He'd nod and wave and one of
us would call hi, but nothing more. He struck me as kind of shy. Always
neat and clean, and polite. Which is why it was so odd to see him
behaving that way. I mean, some of the street people are really out of
it,- they really should be on medication, if not hospitalized. Of
course, thanks to Reagan, we don't have any hospitals for the
marginally insane, only for the totally berserk. But I don't need
to tell
you
that."

"Would you mind showing me just where you saw him?"

"Sure, I need to take Dobie for a walk, anyway. Just let me
get some clothes on. Help yourself to more coffee. I'll just be a
few minutes."

It was with some irritation that Kate heard a shower start, but Sam
Rutlidge was as good as her word, and in barely seven minutes she came
back into the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a UCSF sweatshirt, her wet
hair slicked back and a pair of worn running shoes in her hand.

"Sorry to be so long," she said, dropping onto a chair
to put on her shoes. "I hate getting dressed without having a
shower first. Makes me feel too grungy for words."

"No problem. Dobie's a good conversationalist."

Dobie had, in fact, only eyed her closely. Now, however, she emerged
from her basket and went to stand at her owner's feet, tail
whipping with enthusiasm. When the woman rose, the dog turned and
galloped like a clumsy weasel down the hallway to the front door.
Rutlidge put on a jacket and took down a thin lead to clip to
Dobie's collar, and down the steps they went.

They walked down to Fulton, where Rutlidge paused and pointed.

"I turned onto the road here," she said. "Moved
over into the right lane, the other driver accelerated to pass me, and
then I saw the Preacher. Just about where that crooked 'No
Parking' sign is. See it? He was walking toward the road at an
angle, as if he was headed to Park Presidio."

"Was he carrying anything other than his staff?"

"Not that I saw, but then I couldn't see his right hand, just his left, and that was holding his stick."

"What was he wearing?"

Sam Rutlidge wrinkled up her forehead in thought while Dobie whined
restlessly. "A coat, brownish, I think. It came almost to his
knees. Some dark pants, not jeans, I don't think. Dark brown or
black, maybe. And he had a knit hat, one of those ones that fit close
against the skull. That was dark, too. I only saw him for about two or
three seconds. I don't think I'd have given him a second
glance if it hadn't been that his anger was so obvious--and
uncharacteristic."

"Okay. Thank you, Ms. Rutlidge, you've been very
helpful," said Kate, polite but careful not to appear overly
enthusiastic or grateful. "I'll need you to sign your
statement when I get it drawn up. Could you come by and sign it?"

"Tomorrow's not very good. I'll have a long day at work."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a technical writer. Boring, but the pay is good. Do
you want my number there? You can call me and arrange a time to
meet?" They exchanged telephone numbers and then Rutlidge and her
small sleek dog turned right toward the signal where Thirtieth crossed
into the park, while Kate walked to the left until she was across the
street from the point where the dirt path met the paved sidewalk,
marked by a post with a crooked NO PARKING sign. There was no need to
cross the road and follow the path through the trees, no need to look
for scraps of yellow on the trees. She knew where she was. She stood
looking at the park, at the path along which an angry Brother Erasmus
had stormed on a Tuesday morning two weeks ago, leaving behind him the
area that, twenty hours later, would be surrounded by great lengths of
police tapes. Behind those bushes, sometime that morning, John the
nameless had lain, bleeding into the soil until the life was gone from
him.