Hawkin ran a hand through his hair, took out his cigarettes, and nodded for her to continue.
“I asked him if maybe he could explain that statement. He asked me if I had a few minutes, and I assured him that I had all the time in the world.”
Kate looked back at her notes, remembering that at this point in their conversation the retired sheriff had excused himself and laid down the receiver. She had heard footsteps going across a room, followed by an unintelligible mumble, and a door closing to shut out the sounds of children. Footsteps again, the scrape of a chair, and then his voice had come again. She found her place on the page.
“‘First of all,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that I’m not the kind of person who sees bogeymen in the woodwork and criminal psychoses in every kid who cracks somebody over the head. I’m sure that anyone who’s ever worked with me would tell you the same thing that’s on my first academy evaluation: I don’t have a lot of imagination, and I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.’ He sounded like that, too,” Kate added. “Slow and thoughtful.
“‘Andy Lewis and his mother moved here when he was nine. It’s a small town, and I live here, so I’d always hear when people came in or out, you know? Well, a couple of weeks later I had a phone call from the sheriff where they used to live, down near Fresno, a guy I’d met a couple of times. He told me, just casually you understand, that if people started reporting dead pets, I should keep an eye on the Lewis kid. Yeah, I know, I thought it sounded kind of crazy too, and I told him so, and he kind of laughed and agreed with me, and that was the end of it.
“‘Then about four or five months later an old lady found her poodle strangled. She’d thrown some kids out of her yard the week before. Four months later a cat and its kittens were found strangled, two days after their owner had shouted to a gang of kids to leave them alone. That time I remembered the phone call. Andy Lewis was in the gang, he had scratches on his arms, but what kid doesn’t? And his mother said he’d been home all night. About two or three times a year, after that, somebody would make Andy Lewis mad, and one morning they’d find their dog or cat dead or their bird cage opened. No sign of a break-in, but in the country people are careless about locking doors and windows. I even began checking for fingerprints, on the collars and stuff, but nothing. Never anything I could prove, and never a valuable animal or livestock, but it made me nervous, especially the way he wasn’t in a hurry about it. Nothing pointed to him, there was always a gap between the insult, if that’s how he saw it, and the revenge. If it hadn’t been for the phone call, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to put it together. As I said, it made me nervous. And when I found that he didn’t go bragging to his friends, well, that made me very nervous.
“‘He was cool, he was patient, and he was smart. Except for once, once that I caught him, I should say. You’ll understand when I say that by the time he was a teenager I was getting more than a bit concerned about him and keeping my ears flapping and my eyes open for anything concerned with Andy Lewis. That’s why I was onto him so fast when he finally stepped out of line. Only once did he just let fly without planning, and that was the end of him in this town. Tell me, have you met him?’
“I said I didn’t know if I had or not and explained about the pictures.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘Andy Lewis was a charmer. He’d have made a great con man. He was a con man, come to think of it, only not for money, not directly. He wanted power over other people, always moved with a group of worshippers to admire him. When he was sixteen the local preacher’s daughter caught his eye, a pretty, overly protected little thing, very bright.
“‘He got her pregnant. She was fourteen, almost fifteen. She wanted him to marry her, some dream she had, but when he pushed her off she started talking about turning him in for statutory rape. He blew up, beat her so badly she nearly died, lost the baby of course and half her teeth, ruptured her insides so she couldn’t have any more children. And, you know, damned if she didn’t refuse to press charges against him. Partly she was scared to, but she was more than half convinced that he really loved her and hadn’t meant to do it.
“‘I did something then I’ve never done before or since and I’ll only admit to it now because I’m an old man and my deputy’s dead. I took my deputy out, and we picked up the Lewis kid, and we took him out to the quarry and beat the shit out of him. Still makes me sick to think about it, the two of us and this sixteen-year-old kid, but I knew it was the only way he’d listen to me. I didn’t hurt him, nowhere near what he’d done to the girl, but when I finished I told him I wanted him gone, never to set foot in my county again, or next time I wouldn’t stop. The next morning he was gone. A few months later his mother moved to the town you’re in now to be with her sister. The next I heard of Lewis was three, four years later, when his name came up in connection with the Adams girl. I have no idea where he was during those years. He was supposed to have been in the army, but I find it hard to imagine.
“‘Anyway, the other thing you should know is that he always had to be in control of any situation, any group. The only time he faded into the background was when something was about to happen. Now, as I understand it, the Adams girl was a brilliant artist. The whole school knew her, knew that she was going somewhere, a very large and exotic fish plunked down temporarily in their little pond. She doesn’t seem to have been aware of how others looked at her, but when Lewis walked into that school—God knows why or how he did—he saw immediately that she was one of the power points of the school and he set out to take her over. And, as I said, he was a charmer.
“‘For a few months he rode around on her shoulders, making everybody think that he was dangling her, rather than she carrying him. And then she wised up. From what she said at the trial, she decided he was getting in the way of her painting, so she told him to leave and went back to her brushes. He couldn’t have that—not only the rejection, but the public humiliation. She didn’t bother to hide it, and apparently some of the other students saw what had happened and laughed at him.
“‘A month later the child given into her care was found dead. Strangled. With no sign of a break-in. Apparently by a girl who had just made Andy Lewis angry. And I knew that Andy Lewis was a kid with a thirst for revenge, the ability to be patient and quiet, and bright enough to keep his temper under control, most of the time.
“‘I did what I could. I went to the police there. I put it all in front of them, and they tried, but none of us could find the smallest chink in his armor. A week or two after the trial ended I went to talk with him. I guess I thought that I could threaten him into not doing anything else by letting him know that we were all watching him. He laughed at me. Laughed right in my face, and turned his back on me and walked away. I went home and I thought about it, and I realized that I had two choices: I could shoot him like I would a dog with rabies, or I could sit tight and wait until he stepped into someone else’s hands and see what I could do.
“‘There was really no choice in the matter. I couldn’t shoot him. I never even seriously considered it, although I knew that I might very well save innocent lives if I did. So I sat and waited, and I’ve been waiting eighteen years. I know who you are, and I know why you’re calling, and all I can say is, if there’s anything an old, retired sheriff with a bad conscience can do to help, I’m yours.’
“I told him that he’d been more help than I could have dreamed of and that the only thing we were missing was the photograph. He said that he’d try to think of someone who might have one, and if we had no luck he’d be more than happy to come down and try to make an ID. I thanked him and said we’d be in touch.”
Hawkin had sat and listened quietly to her narration, his face growing more strained with every sentence. He now took a cigarette out of its soft package, tapped the end of it squarely on the principal’s desk, twice, put it to his mouth, lit it precisely with one match, shook the match out and put it carefully into the ashtray he’d found in a drawer, his movemen
ts those of a technician defusing a bomb.
“Classic,” he commented, then, “damn, damn, damn. How many other people have made Andy Lewis angry over the last eighteen years? Get a hold of Trujillo—”
“I talked with him again after the sheriff’s news and told him to increase the guard on the road as much as he could and stop every male of about thirty-five to forty who wanted to leave.”
“Good.”
“I take it the coach didn’t have a photo?”
“If he does, it’ll take days to unearth. Eighteen years ago Lewis was a bit over five ten, one seventy-five, brown hair and eyes, no marks but a tattoo on his upper left arm, something snaky.”
“Except for the tattoo it’d fit half the men on Tyler’s Road. Maybe more than half.”
“Christ, what I’d give for a fingerprint or a fuzzy picture.”
“I just may be able to oblige you,” she said with ill-concealed glee. “Andy Lewis had a driver’s license.”
“Hot damn, you don’t mean we’re going to get a break with this?”
“Trujillo tracked it down. They’ll send the photo to the office. I wouldn’t count on much, though. DMV photos aren’t exactly the greatest.”
“I won’t cancel the search through the Shapiro archives, then.”
“The what?”
“Never mind. Anything else?”
“Not much. There’s nothing of interest about Ned Jameson. Average grades, some trouble as a kid but nothing nasty, just paint on walls and a shoplifting charge when he was fifteen. I was just going to try the co-op again when you came in.”
“Your ear must be falling off,” he said by way of praise. “Do you have their address? Let’s go by and play nasty cops. I need to growl at somebody. Call Trujillo once more and let him know where we’re going. Tell him I’ll call him from home tonight, and have him start inquiries on the Road for a man with a tattoo.”
Hawkin did not growl at the blushing Mrs. Piggott, nor at Mr. Zawalski, who fluttered them to the car. He did not even growl when the trio of hippie farmers at the co-op produced a hand-scribbled list of drivers that seemed to put Ned in the clear for at least two of the killings. It was not until the new-age farmers responded to his query about restaurants with the name of a vegetarian health-food place that he finally exploded, cursed tofu, beans, and goat’s milk violently, and only subsided when, cowering, they threw him the name of an Italian place that they vowed had no tofu, ferns, or posters of Venice on the walls and was responsible in its choice of veal calves.
It wasn’t a bad dinner. They parked immediately outside the windows so as to keep an eye and ear on the car. Hawkin talked about his childhood in the San Fernando Valley and about his kids, and asked nothing in return. Neither of them drank wine; both of them ate meat. The zabaglione was followed by thick demitasse cups of espresso romano.
Outside the restaurant it was almost dark, the air cool. Hawkin stood and lit a cigarette.
“Look, Al, I don’t mind if you smoke in the car.”
“It’s a filthy habit,” he said.
Kate was anxious to go while the coffee still surged in her veins, but Hawkin seemed in no hurry. He took his time and snuffed the end out thoroughly in the planter box.
“You look tired, Casey. Do you want me to drive?”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind driving.”
“I’m quite competent behind the wheel. I got in the habit of letting my partner drive some years ago, and as you know I catch up on my sleep, but I am perfectly able to get us home in one piece.”
“Really, Al, I’m fine.”
He looked at her, then shrugged and walked toward the car. She unlocked the passenger door, and held the key in her hand. The exhaustion rolled up like waves and beat against the wall of her determination. Why do this? She knew she could make it home. Hawkin knew she could. So what was the point?
She handed him the keys.
“You drive for a while, please, Al.”
Where some men might have shown triumph, Hawkin’s eyes held only approval and warmth. He nodded, took the keys, and drove with easy concentration towards the freeway.
20
Kate drowsed as the white lights sailed past and the red ones blurred and swam into each other. The car was warm and smelled of coffee and, not unpleasantly, of tobacco. She punched up the pillow and settled her head back into it.
“You awake?” said Hawkin softly, without taking his eyes from the road.
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can try,” she said, rousing herself slightly.
“Are you a lesbian?”
Kate examined her reaction to the question. Nothing. Mild surprise perhaps, which was very interesting. “Are you asking as a cop, as a man, or as a friend?” she wondered.
“Mmm. Let’s say, as a friend.”
“Al, as a friend, I hope you won’t be offended if 1 say that I don’t think we know each other well enough for you to ask me that question. Try it again in a couple of months.” She settled back and closed her eyes.
“And as a man?”
“You didn’t ask me as a man.”
“And if I had?”
“If you had, my answer would have been somewhat different.”
Neither of them mentioned the third possibility.
“A couple of months, huh?”
“Maybe more. Maybe less if we have another case like this.”
“God forbid!”
“Not offended?”
“Of course not.”
Hawkin drove in silence for several miles, thinking. He was not all that concerned with her answer to his question and had asked it only because he thought it might be necessary to provide an opening for her to talk about herself. She had not chosen to take the opening, but it hardly mattered. The initial move away from the strictly professional had been made, and that was what he had been after.
The road cleared at a well-lit junction of sweeping concrete roadways, and he looked over at his partner. She was asleep, her full lips curled in some secret amusement. The precise nature of the joke, if joke it was, he could not know, but it made her look very young and wise, and made his own mouth curl into a smile as well.
Kate slept for an hour and took the wheel to drive across the lighted bridge into the city. She waited in the car while Hawkin went up to get the DMV photo from the office, and when he came out onto the street she could see from his face that it was even worse than she had anticipated.
“The picture’s bad?” she asked as he climbed in.
“In a very good light you can see that he has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and brownish hair. Do you know where Susan Chin lives?”
“Our artist? No.”
He gave her an address.
Susan came to the door of her small apartment. She had obviously been in bed when Hawkin called and did not invite them in. She squinted at the photograph and looked at him dubiously.
“You did say it wasn’t very good, but this is ridiculous.”
“Can you do it?”
“You want me to use this to make a series of sketches, one of which might remind somebody on that Road of one of their neighbors? To extrapolate out from it, intuitively?”
“Exactly. Can you do it?”
“Haven’t the faintest,” she said cheerfully. “Well, it’s an interesting problem. Makes a change from computer-generated IdentiKit drawings.”
“Good luck.”
They left the young artist standing in her doorway peering at the photo in the light of the bulb over her door. Kate dropped Hawkin off at his house and drove home.
The garage door rattled down behind her. She leaned forward and turned off the ignition, and felt the strength that had kept her moving throughout the long day ebb away into the silent garage. She sat at the wheel and thought about the motions of moving her right arm down to push the button and disengage her seat belt and moving her left arm down to pull the door handle and drawing first
her left foot and then her right out and onto the concrete floor and standing up, but somehow sitting and breathing were about all she could manage at the moment.
The sound of a door opening, feet on a wooden staircase, slight scuffs on the slab floor, the click and pull of the car door coming open, Lee’s voice, dark and restful.
“Sweet Kate, you look all done in.”
“Hello, love. God, it’s nice to sit still.”
“I started a hot bath when I heard you come in, and the oil’s warming for a massage.”
“You will kill me with pleasure.”
“I do hope not.”
A light finger brushed the back of Kate’s neck, and then the scuffs and steps retreated upstairs. In a minute Kate followed.
There was a bath that was almost too hot for comfort, and a large mug of something that tasted of chicken and celery, and thick warm towels, and then strong fingers probing at locked muscles and easing the tension from neck and back and legs until Kate lay groaning with the sweet agony of it, and when she was totally limp and the hands had moved on to wide, firm, integrating sweeps, she spoke, halfway to sleep.
“Hawkin asked me tonight if I was a lesbian.”
The sweeping hands checked only slightly.
“And what did you say?”
Odd, thought Kate muzzily, how hands can be amused when a voice isn’t.
“I told him to ask me again when we knew each other better.”
This time Lee laughed outright, and then the towel began to wipe the last of the oil from Kate’s skin.
“How utterly un-Californian of you, Kate.”
“Wasn’t it?”
The hands finished and soft sheets and warm blankets were pulled up to Kate’s neck.
“I have some work to do. Give me a shout if you need anything. Now, go to sleep.”
“I’ll work at it.”
Kate’s breathing slowed and thickened, and a few minutes later the bed shifted and then the room clicked into darkness. Lee’s soft curls formed a halo against the hall light, and she closed the door gently and went downstairs, an expression of fond exasperation on her face.