To Play the Fool (26 page)

Fortunately, it was too late to return the calls. However, she no
longer had much of an appetite. She poured herself a tumbler glass of
raw red wine, drank it up as she stood in the kitchen, filled up the
glass again, and took it to bed.

Things looked rosier in the morning, as she lay with Lee's arm around her shoulder while they drank their morning coffee.

"You see," Kate was saying, "what I had hoped to
do was assemble enough quotes of my own to meet him on his own ground.
I even got a book of quotations and started it off--The vow that
binds too strictly snaps itself and 'I hate quotations. Tell me
what you know," that kind of thing. But I can't do it. I
just don't have time to memorize the whole damn book."

"You saw the notes, that Eve and Philip Gardner called?"

"I did. I'll call them later."

"She's only here for another month, did you know that?"

"So she told me. About six times. I don't know what I can do, Sawyer won't see her."

The phone rang.

"Oh hell, it's not even eight o'clock."

"Let the machine get it," Lee said, but Kate was already stretched across to the telephone.

"Yes?" she demanded. "Oh, Al. Hi. Yeah, I was
expecting someone else. What's--Who?" Kate became
quiet and listened for a long time, unconsciously disentangling herself
from Lee's embrace until she was sitting upright on the edge of
the bed. "What do they think about her chances?" she said
finally, listening again. "Okay. Sure. Do you have someone at the
hospital? Good. See you there, twenty minutes." She hung up and
went to the closet.

"That wasn't about David Sawyer, was it?" Lee asked.

"David... Oh. No, it's another case--fifty
suspects and now one of the family decided he knows which of his
cousins did it and so he took a shot at her early this morning. Several
shots, through the wall of her bedroom, and one of them hit her.
They're all nuts, the whole family. No, I won't bother with
breakfast."

The shower went on and, after two minutes, off again. Kate emerged,
her hair wet but her clothes on, kissed Lee absently, and left. Lee
listened to her lover's feet on the stairs, the familiar pause in
front of the closet while the wicked gun was strapped on, then the
front door opened and closed. A car started up on the street outside,
where Kate had left it instead of rattling the garage door late last
night, and she was gone. Lee sighed and set about the laborious
business of the day.

Not that night, nor the next morning, but the following day over dinner the conversation was resumed.

"You know what you were saying the other day about trying to
put together a bunch of quotations to throw back at David
Sawyer?" Lee began.

"Fat chance of that now. There're two more members of
that woman's family in jail now,- they were going at each other
with chains in the dead woman's front yard. There used to be a
rose bed. Do they give prizes for the most dysfunctional families? This
crew would take the gold."

"I was wondering if there would be any reason you
couldn't have Philip Gardner and Eve do it for you? Come up with
zinging quotes, that is."

"He's still in jail."

"I know he's still in jail,- is there any reason why you
can't have a conference of half a dozen people? Using the two of
them as translators, like you thought of before, only in two-way
translation, into and out of Erasmusese?"

"There are problems in allowing civilians--friends--in on an interview," Kate said slowly.

"Insurmountable problems?"

"I'd have to talk to Al," Kate finally said.

"Do. Because if you have to argue with him using his own
language, you'd better have someone who speaks it as well as
Philip and Eve do."

"You're right. In fact--no, maybe not."

"What?"

"I was just thinking that he and Beatrice seem very close. If
she'd be willing to help us, it might make it less adversarial. I
don't know if that would help or not."

"I think it would be a good idea."

"I'll have to talk to Al about it. I could probably find
Beatrice before Friday night, although I suppose we'd have to do
the interview on Saturday anyway to work around Dean Gardner's
schedule. I'll talk to Al," she said again finally.

Al agreed, with strong reservations but a willingness to try
anything that might loosen David Sawyer's guard. Philip Gardner
agreed,- Eve Whitlaw agreed. The conference was set for ten
o'clock on Saturday morning, regardless of whether Beatrice had
prior commitments.

But when Kate went to Sentient Beans on Friday evening to talk to
the homeless woman, Beatrice was not there. Beatrice had not been there
the week before, either.

Kate stood listening to the angry young owner, feeling the cold begin to gather along her spine.

Praised be God for our Sister, the death of the body.

"You scared her off." The young man behind the wooden
bar was gripping the latte glass as if he were about to throw it at
her. His name was Krishna, but he had obviously been named after one of
the god's more violent manifestations.

"Could you explain that please, sir?" Kate asked politely, keeping an eye on the glass.

"You probably did it on purpose. That's harassment. You could tell her nerves were bad."

"Are you telling me you haven't seen Beatrice Jankowski
since the night I was here? That was nearly a month ago. I've
seen her since then."

"She was in once," the man said grudgingly.

"Twice," said a woman's voice from behind him. The
woman herself appeared, carrying a tray of clean cups, which she slid
into place beneath the bar. She was very small, with hard, slicked-back
unnaturally black hair, at least a dozen loops and studs in her ears
and one through her nose, and kind, intelligent brown eyes. Kate
recognized the guitarist from the night she had come here. "We
didn't see her last week, and we haven't seen her since
then, but she was in a couple of times after you were here."

"How do you remember when I was in? One face on a busy night."

"I noticed you. Beatrice talked about you. But we were a
little concerned last week when she didn't show, and we've
been keeping an eye out for her in the neighborhood. She's not
around."

"You haven't filed a missing-persons report?"

"For a homeless woman? Who'd listen to us?" snorted the man.

The woman answered Kate as if he--her husband?--
hadn't spoken. "I decided that if she didn't come in
tonight, I would report her missing. I called the hospitals, but
she's not there. My name is Leila, by the way."

The man turned to her, his grip on the glass so tight now that white
spots showed on his knuckles. "You called the--I thought we
agreed--"

"Oh, Krish, of course I called. What if she was sick or something?"

"But she was here two weeks ago?" Kate asked loudly, to interrupt the burgeoning argument.

"Just like always," Leila said.

"And she said nothing to indicate that she would not be here?"

"No. In fact, she said, "See you next week, dear,"
just like she always does. Did." Leila was worried now, taking
police interest as evidence that something was very wrong.

"I wouldn't be too concerned, not yet. I just wanted to
pass on a message from a friend of hers who's in custody."

"Brother Erasmus?"

"Yes. You know him?"

"Not personally. Though I feel like I do, since she talked about him all the time. She went to see him in the jail."

"I know. But not for a while, apparently, because he was asking about her," she embroidered.

"How long? Since he's seen her?"

It was in the small beat before Kate answered that she acknowledged her own apprehension.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'll have to check."

The stark possibilities lay there, and nothing Krishna or Leila
could add changed them any. Finally, she asked for the use of their
telephone and began to cast out her lines of inquiry.

The logs at the jail revealed that Beatrice Jankowski had last
visited David Sawyer on Wednesday the ninth of March, two days before
she had not appeared at Sentient Beans to wash her clothes and sketch
the customers.

A call to the morgue confirmed that there were no unclaimed bodies
in San Francisco that remotely matched Beatrice's description.

Al Hawkin was not at home and had not yet arrived at Jani's
apartment in Palo Alto. Rather than beep him, she left brief messages
at both numbers, on his machine and with Jani's daughter Jules,
and then went back out into the coffeehouse, where she found Leila
cleaning the tables.

"Did Beatrice leave anything here?" she asked.

"Probably. There's a little cabinet in the back we let her use.

"Does it lock?"

"There's a padlock. We kept one key, gave her the other."

"Just the two keys?"

That's all."

"May I have the key, please?"

Leila let a cup and saucer crash down onto the tray. "Oh God. What did you find out?"

"Not a thing. I'm not going to open the cabinet, and
I'll give the key back to you if Beatrice turns up. I'd
just be more comfortable keeping it in the meantime."

Leila dug into the deep pocket of her baggy black silk pants and
drew out a fist-sized bundle of keys. She flipped through it, unhooked
a cheap-looking key, and handed it to Kate. "There's
nothing much in there. Her sketch pad and box, a few clothes, odds and
ends."

"It's good of you to let her use it."

Leila actually blushed. "Yes, well, I've been there
myself, and she's getting too old to live out of plastic
bags."

Kate opened her mouth to ask if Beatrice slept here occasionally,
then closed it again. Time enough for questions that might compromise
the insurance and zoning. She merely wrote out a receipt, pocketed the
key, thanked Leila, and went back out to her car.

In the Homicide room, at her desk, on that Friday night, Kate sat
for a long time and stared at the telephone. She did not want to pick
it up. She wanted to go home and rub Lee's back or watch some
inane musical video or listen to Lee's voice reading from a
novel. She did not want to make these telephone calls because she was
afraid of what she was going to learn, and when she learned it, she
knew whom she would blame.

Kitagawa and O'Hara came in then, speaking in loud voices, and
in order to avoid having to talk to them she picked up the receiver and
tucked it under her ear. She began to look up the telephone numbers and
then made her calls.

After the fifth call, a faint hope began to stir: Maybe she had been
wrong. Alarmist. But the optimism was premature: At the seventh morgue,
this one in Santa Cruz, they had a Jane Doe, Beatrice's size,
Beatrice's age, with Beatrice's hair and eye color.
She'd been found four days ago up in the hills, by hikers. Dead
at least three days before that. Not pretty. Sure, there'd be
someone there all night.

Kate sat and rubbed her eyes, hot and gritty and wanting nothing but
to close for a long time. Too late to phone Lee, let her know she
wouldn't be in? Yes, it really was. Lee used to sleep very
little--four, five hours a night. Now she needed eight hours, or
she ached. Sometimes took a nap. Why are you thinking about that? Kate
asked herself. Christ, this is a shitty job.

Phones had been ringing on and off. Now Kate heard her name called, and she automatically picked up the receiver.

"Martinelli. Oh, Al, thanks for calling. Sorry to wreck your
weekend. Yeah, she disappeared, but I think I found her. The Santa Cruz
morgue. Yeah, I know. I'm going down to see her. Want me to call
you from there? You don't have to come. You're sure? You
promise Jani won't hate me? Well, leave her a note, maybe
you'll be back before she wakes up. I'll leave now. Right.
Bye."

It was like old times, driving a sleeping Al through the rain into
the Santa Cruz Mountains. This time, however, their goal was not the
forest site of three murdered children, their first case together a
year earlier, but the sterile, temporary repository of one elderly
woman.

When Kate rolled to a stop and pulled on the parking brake, Al woke
up, ran his hands over his face, and bent forward to look at the
windshield. "It's deja vu all over again," he
commented.

"How about next year, come March, we arrange a case that takes us to Palm Springs or something?"

"I'll put in a voucher for it tomorrow. Do you know where--"

"Through there."

Into the cold, inhuman space that smelled of death, up to the body, leaning over the gray face: Yes. Oh yes: Beatrice Jankowski.

"I hadn't realized how old she was," Kate said bleakly.

"She had false teeth," commented the morgue attendant.
"Taking them out makes anyone look shriveled up. Is her family
going to want her shipped, do you know?"

"I don't know if she had a family."

"We'll hang on to her for a while, then."

"Do you have a copy of the autopsy report?" Al asked.

"I don't think so. You'd have to check with the
investigating officer. I think that was Kent Makepeace. I can tell you
it was homicide." He reached down and turned Beatrice's
head to one side, revealing the damage beneath the clotted gray hair on
the right side of her skull, between the ear and the spine.
"Somebody hit her, hard."

Many of his acts will seem grotesque and puzzling to a rationalistic taste.

The mere fact that an identity had been given to a body in the
morgue hardly justified rousting the investigating detective out of his
bed at four o'clock on a Saturday morning. Even Al Hawkin had to
admit that. So he and Kate found an all-night restaurant and ate bacon
and eggs in an attempt to fool their bodies into thinking it was a new
morning rather than a too-long night, and at six they made their way to
the county offices. At 6:30, Hawkin succeeded in bullying an underling
into phoning Makepeace. At seven o'clock, they were in his office
being shown the case file.