Kay Scarpet - Postmortem Part 15

He roughly shoved the car in gear and we were off toward the river, south to Berkley Downs.

For the next ten, fifteen, twenty minutes - I wasn't really aware of the time -we didn't say a word to each other. I was left sitting in a miserable silence, watching the roadside flash by my window. It was like being the b.u.t.t of a cruel joke or a plot to which everyone was privy but me. My sense of isolation was becoming unbearable, my fears so acute I no longer was sure of my judgment, my ac.u.men, my reason. I don't think I was sure of anything.

All I could do was picture the debris of what just days ago was a desirable professional future. My office was being blamed for the leaks. My attempts at modernization had undermined my own rigid standards of confidentiality.

Even Bill was no longer sure of my credibility. Now the cops were no longer supposed to talk to me. It wouldn't end until I had been turned into the scapegoat for all the atrocities caused by these murders. Amburgey probably would have no choice but to ease me out of office if he didn't outright fire me.

Marino was glancing over at me.

I'd scarcely been aware of his pulling off the road and parking.

"How far is it?" I asked.

"From what?"

"From where we just were, from where Cecile lived?"

"Exactly seven-point-four miles," he replied laconically, without a glance at the odometer.

In the light of day, I almost didn't recognize Lori Petersen's house.

It looked empty and unlived in, wearing the patina of neglect. The white clapboard siding was dingy in the shadows, the Wedgwood shutters seeming a dusky blue. The lilies beneath the front windows had been trampled, probably by investigators combing every inch of the property for evidence. A tatter of yellow crime-scene tape remained tacked to the door frame, and in the overgrown gra.s.s was a beer can that some thoughtless pa.s.serby had tossed out of his car.

Her house was the modest tidy house of middle-cla.s.s America, the sort of place found in every small town and every small neighborhood. It was the place where people got started in life and migrated back to during their later years: young professionals, young couples and, finally, older people retired and with children grown and gone.

It was almost exactly like the Johnsons' white clapboard house where I rented a room during my medical school years in Baltimore. Like Lori Petersen, I had existed in a grueling oblivion, out the door at dawn and often not returning until the following evening. Survival was limited to books, labs, examinations, rotations, and sustaining the physical and emotional energy to get through it all. It would never have occurred to me, just as it never occurred to Lori, that someone I did not know might decide to take my life.

"Hey a"

I suddenly realized Marino was talking to me.

His eyes were curious. "You all right, Doc?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't catch what you were saying."

"I asked what you thought. You know, you got a map in your head. What do you think?"

I abstractedly replied, "I think their deaths have nothing to do with where they lived."

He didn't agree or disagree. s.n.a.t.c.hing up his hand mike, he told the dispatcher he was EOT. He was marking off for the day. The tour was over.

"Ten-four, seven-ten," the c.o.c.ky voice crackled back. "Eighteen-forty-five hours, watch the sun in your eyes, same time tomorrow they'll be playing our song a"

Which was sirens and gunfire and people cras.h.i.+ng into each other, I a.s.sumed.

Marino snorted. "When I was coming along, you so much as gave a *Yo' instead of a ten-four the inspector'd write up your a.s.s."

I briefly shut my eyes and kneaded my temples.

"Sure ain't what it used to be," he said. "h.e.l.l, nothing is."

Chapter 9.

The moon was a milk-gla.s.s globe through gaps in the trees as I drove through the quiet neighborhood where I lived.

Lush branches were moving black shapes along the roadside, and the mica-flecked pavement glittered in the sweep of my headlights. The air was clear and pleasantly warm, perfect for convertibles or windows rolled down. I was driving with my doors locked, my windows shut, and the fan on low.

The very sort of evening I would have found enchanting in the past was now unsettling.

The images from the day were before me, as the moon was before me. They haunted me and wouldn't let me go. I saw each of those una.s.suming houses in unrelated parts of the city. How had he chosen them? And why? It wasn't chance. I strongly believed that. There had to be some element consistent with each case, and I was continually drawn back to the sparkling residue we'd been finding on the bodies. With absolutely no evidence to go on, I was profoundly sure this glitter was the missing link connecting him to each of his victims.

That was as far as my intuition would take me. When I attempted to envision more, my mind went blank. Was the glitter a clue that could lead us to where he lived? Was it related to some profession or recreation that gave him his initial contact with the women he would murder? Or stranger yet, did the residue originate with the women themselves? Maybe it was something each victim had in her house or even on her person or in her workplace. Maybe it was something each woman purchased from him. G.o.d only knew. We couldn't test every item found in a person's house or office or some other place frequently visited, especially if we had no idea what we were looking for.

I turned into my drive.

Before I'd parked my car, Bertha was opening the front door. She stood in the glare of the porch light, her hands on her hips, her purse looped over a wrist. I knew what this meant-she was in one big hurry to leave. I hated to think what Lucy had been like today.

"Well?" I asked when I got to the door.

Bertha started shaking her head. "Terrible, Dr. Kay. That child. Uh-uh! Don't know what in the world's got in her. She been bad, bad, bad."

I'd reached the ragged edge of this worn-out day. Lucy was in a decline. In the main, it was my fault. I hadn't handled her well. Or perhaps I'd handled her, period, and that was a better way to state the problem.

Not accustomed to confronting children with the same forthrightness and bluntness that I used with relative impunity on adults, I hadn't questioned her about the computer violation, nor had I so much as alluded to it. Instead, after Bill left my house Monday night, I had disconnected the telephone modem in my office and carried it upstairs to my closet.

My rationale was Lucy would a.s.sume I took it downtown, in for repairs, or something along these lines, if she noticed its absence at all. Last night she made no mention of the missing modem, but was subdued, her eyes fleeting and hinting of hurt when I caught her watching me instead of the movie I'd inserted in the VCR.

What I did was purely logical. If there were even the slightest chance it was Lucy who broke into the computer downtown, then the removal of the modem obviated her doing it again without my accusing her or instigating a painful scene that would tarnish our memories of her visit. If the violation did recur, it would prove Lucy couldn't be the perpetrator, should there ever be a question.

All this when I know human relations.h.i.+ps are not founded on reason any more than my roses are fertilized with debate. I know seeking asylum behind the wall of intellect and rationality is a selfish retreating into self-protectiveness at the expense of another's well-being.

What I did was so intelligent it was as stupid as h.e.l.l.

I remembered my own childhood, how much I hated the games my mother used to play when she would sit on the edge of my bed and answer questions about my father. He had a "bug" at first, something that "gets in the blood" and causes relapses every so often. Or he was fighting off "something some colored person" or "Cuban" carried into his grocery store. Or "he works too hard and gets himself run down, Kay."

Lies.

My father had chronic lymphatic leukemia. It was diagnosed before I entered the first grade. It wasn't until I was twelve and he deteriorated from stage-zero lymphocytosis to stage-three anemia that I was told he was dying.

We lie to children even though we didn't believe the lies we were told when we were their age. I don't know why we do that. I didn't know why I'd been doing it with Lucy, who was as quick as any adult.

By eight-thirty she and I were sitting at the kitchen table. She was fiddling with a milk shake and I was drinking a much-needed tumbler of Scotch. Her change in demeanor was unsettling and I was fast losing my nerve. All the fight in her had vanished; all of the petulance and resentment over my absences had retreated. I couldn't seem to warm her or cheer her up, not even when I said Bill would be dropping by just in time to say good-night to her. There was scarcely a glimmer of interest. She didn't move or respond, and she wouldn't meet my eyes.

"You look sick," she finally muttered.

"How would you know? You haven't looked at me once since I've been home."

"So. You still look sick."

"Well, I'm not sick," I told her. "I'm just very tired."

"When Mom gets tired she doesn't look sick," she said, halfway accusing me. "She only looks sick when she fights with Ralph. I hate Ralph. He's a d.i.c.k head. When he comes over, I make him do *Jumble' in the paper just because I know he can't. He's a stupid-a.s.s d.i.c.k head."

I didn't admonish her for her dirty mouth. I didn't say a word. "So," she persisted, "you have a fight with a Ralph?"

"I don't know any Ralphs."

"Oh."

A frown. "Mr. Boltz is mad at you, I bet."

"I don't think so."

"I bet he is too. He's mad because I'm here-"

"Lucy! That's ridiculous. Bill likes you very much."

"Ha! He's mad *cause he can't do it when I'm here!"

"Lucy a" I warned.

"That's it. Ha! He's mad *cause he's gotta keep his pants on."

"Lucy," I spoke severely. "Stop it this minute!"

She finally gave me her eyes and I was startled by their anger. "See. I knew it!"

She laughed in a mean way. "And you wish I wasn't here so I couldn't get in the way. Then he wouldn't have to go home at night. Well, I don't care. So there. Mom sleeps with her boyfriends all the time and I don't care!"

"I'm not your Mom!"

Her lower lip quivered as if I'd slapped her. "I never said you were! I wouldn't want you to be anyway! I hate you!"

Both of us sat very still.

I was momentarily stunned. I couldn't remember anyone's ever saying he hated me, even if it was true.

"Lucy," I faltered. My stomach was knotted like a fist. I felt sick. "I didn't mean it like that. What I meant was I'm not like your mother. Okay? We're very different. Always have been very different. But this doesn't mean I don't care very much for you."

She didn't respond.

"I know you don't really hate me."

She remained stonily silent.

I dully got up to refresh my drink. Of course she didn't really hate me. Children say that all the time and don't mean it. I tried to remember. I never told my mother I hated her. I think I secretly did, at least when I was a child, because of the lies, and because when I lost my father I lost her, too. She was as consumed by his dying as he was consumed by his disease. There was nothing warm-blooded left for Dorothy and me.

I had lied to Lucy. I was consumed, too, not by the dying but by the dead. Every day I did battle for justice. But what justice was there for a living little girl who didn't feel loved? Dear Lord. Lucy didn't hate me but maybe I couldn't blame her if she did. Returning to the table, I approached the forbidden subject as delicately as possible.

"I guess I look worried because I am, Lucy. You see, someone got into the computer downtown."

She was quiet, waiting.

I sipped my drink. "I'm not sure this person saw anything that matters, but if I could explain how it happened or who did it, it would be a big load off my mind."

Still, she said nothing.

I forced it.

"If I don't get to the bottom of it, Lucy, I might be in trouble."

This seemed to alarm her.

"Why would you be in trouble?"

"Because," I calmly explained, "my office data is very sensitive, and important people in city and state government are concerned over the information that is somehow ending up in the newspapers. Some people are worried the information might be coming from my office computer."

"Oh."

"If a reporter somehow got in, for example a"

"Information about what?" she asked.

"These recent cases."

"The lady doctor who got killed."

I nodded.

Silence.

Then she said sullenly, "That's why the modem's gone, isn't it, Auntie Kay? You took it because you think I did something bad."

"I don't think you did anything bad, Lucy. If you dialed into my office computer, I know you didn't do it to be bad. I wouldn't blame you for being curious."

She looked up at me, her eyes welling. "You took away the modem *cause you don't trust me anymore."

I didn't know how to respond to this. I couldn't lie to her, and the truth would be an admission that I didn't really trust her.

Lucy had lost all interest in her milk shake and was sitting very still, chewing her bottom lip as she stared down at the table.

"I did remove the modem because I wondered if it was you," I confessed. "That wasn't the right thing for me to do. I should have just asked you. But maybe I was hurt. It hurt me to think you might have broken our trust."