Ronald Tierney - Good To The Last Kiss - Crimes of the Depraved Mind Series

‘A lot of people know about the mark.’

‘Who? Nothin’ in the papers, nothin’ on TV about the mark,’ Mickey said, deftly trapping some noodles in the grip of the two little wooden sticks.

‘Thirteen sets of cops, fourteen sets of coroners, maybe even ambulance drivers and who knows who else. And no doubt a couple of ambitious prosecutors.’

‘So you’re sayin’ we got two cases, not one.’

‘No.’

‘What are you sayin’?’

‘Nothin’.’

‘Well, here’s the skinny. They want us to stay on the Bateman thing.’ Mickey used the word ‘they’ for anything that came down from the Lieutenant or higher. For him, everybody above him was some vast ‘they’ bureaucracy. Some gray machine. He’d accepted them as he did everybody else, putting them in a specific category of the general category – ‘asshole’ – and keeping them at arm’s length.

‘What about the task force?’ Gratelli asked.

‘If you look at the organization chart on this thing we are connected to those folks by a little dotted line. We talk to them. They talk to us. But you and me bub, we are by ourselves from now on. Just Bateman and only Bateman so help us God.’ He smiled. ‘That suits me.’

‘You’re not saying that like you mean it.’

‘Yeah, well, what the fuck?’

‘I don’t like it either.’

‘It’s like we’re not doing the job,’ McClellan said. ‘I’d like to know who the fuck would’ve done it better. You ever heard of this? Takin’ us out like this? Shit.’

‘Political,’ Gratelli said. ‘Too hot. There’ll be another news conference.’

McClellan was quiet, except for the slurping sound the noodles made as they disappeared between his lips. An incredibly mild explosion, Gratelli thought. He was taking it too well. McClellan’s life wasn’t about acceptance, but that seemed to be what he was doing, gradually slipping from nearly uncontrollable anger to indifference.

‘So what do we do now?’ Gratelli asked, sipping his tea.

‘I think we take in a little baseball or take a little drive up to Gurneville. Your choice, kiddo.’

‘Julia?’

She didn’t hear Thaddeus Maldeaux come. Nor did she hear him speak. A nurse had taken two dozen cream colored French tulips from him. She would find a vase and return. He pulled a chair up, beside her bed.

‘I don’t know if you can hear me,’ he said touching her hand. ‘I should have gone with you. Or better yet, you should have run away with me.’

He waited. The nurse came back in, put the vase on the rollaway table. ‘They’re beautiful,’ she said and left again.

‘It’s tough,’ Maldeaux said softly. ‘The world is a strange place, Julia. Sometimes it is so beautiful it takes your breath away. Sometimes it is so horrid…’ he said, voice trailing off. He looked at her. There wasn’t much to recognize. Swollen, blue, distorted face. ‘And you never know when something dark and foreign and deadly will strike. You know, under the sea there are wondrous things we’ve never seen, most of us. Colors and shapes of living things that would amaze us, take us away from our normal daily lives. There is a turtle I saw that looks like a leaf. A harmless leaf. But it is hungry. Like all of us, we do what we must to survive. And so a fish goes by, thinking it is a beautiful day in its vast watery neighborhood and the fish does not see what it is who lies in wait.’

He leaned over the bed, whispered in her ear.

‘You’ll survive, Julia. Then you need someone who can help, who can tell the difference between turtles and leaves.’

I t was all so real. Julia Bateman could smell home – the place where she grew up. There was a crispness in the morning air. It carried the scent of the sun burning dew off the grass. She stood behind her aunt’s white frame farmhouse.

She was on the highway now, the rolling blacktop that rose and fell between the Amish farms. They waved to her. The women in their long dresses waved as if they knew her, loved her. The men too, in their dark clothes, waved, welcomed her.

She could feel the breeze in her hair. She was gliding across the ribbon of highway in the sun. How was she moving? She didn’t know. She looked down. There, in her blue Miata convertible. She didn’t have that car in Iowa. Then, as if by magic, the landscape changed. She was on the highway along the ocean now.

She’d done this before. Repeatedly. Even asleep, she knew it would be the same as it was before. Driving up Highway One along the California coast. It was all too familiar now. The carefree feeling she had was giving way now to a sense of anxiety. Into the pines. Getting darker. She was frightened. There was her Aunt’s house, only it wasn’t white anymore. It was dark and dingy looking. What was it doing there, half hidden, lurking in the trees?

Julia Bateman was in the house. There were pictures. Her sister, her father. She didn’t have a sister. It was a picture of Julia. A picture that was supposed to be her mother; but it wasn’t. It was Julia Bateman staring back through the dusty glass. In the hall now. A long hall. Thin, wind blown drapery drifted in like ghosts from doorways she hadn’t known were there. Something was going to happen there. She knew it. It was terrible. She couldn’t look. She put her hands over her eyes.

‘Oh God, no!’

She smelled something like ammonia. Julia Bateman opened her eyes to see her legs stretched out under a white blanket. Beside her were machines with tubes that stretched out and into her. She remembered now. She was in the hospital. She took small comfort in the knowledge that she was alive.

‘We thought we lost you yesterday.’

Julia looked over by the window. It was Paul Chang.

‘You’re going to be OK, Jules.’ He came to her, sat on the bed. ‘I’d hug you but I think it might hurt right now.’ He patted her hand. ‘Don’t try to talk. We’ll have plenty of time for that.’

A woman came in. About Julia’s age. A sturdy woman with dark, short-cropped hair.

‘Jules?’ she said, edging to the bed. She seemed almost frightened and the emotion seemed not to suit her.

Julia’s eyes seemed to show recognition for a moment. Then the eyes went dull again.

‘Hey Sammie, how ya doin’?’ Paul said quietly.

‘Paul.’ She responded warmly, but her eyes were on the patient.

‘How’s she doin’?’

The answer was in the silence.

Too much time to think. Earl unbuttoned his jail shirt and looked down at his chest, hoping they wouldn’t keep him in too long because he’d be missing his weights. It took less time to lose muscle than it took to gain it.

So his lawyer didn’t like him. Stand in line, he thought. If there were things about Earl Falwell people didn’t like, Earl was the first to learn them. Hell, his dad didn’t like him well enough to stick around or to contact him once he left. And that pissed his mother off, because, if the truth be known, she sure as hell wished the old man would have taken Earl with him.

His stepfather wanted Earl out of the house the moment the toad moved in.

People didn’t like him when he was a little, pimply mouse of a kid. Now that he was strong, they didn’t like him any better. Now they were scared of him. He could see it in their eyes.

Outside, in the world, he could fool people sometimes. When he first met them, he could act all nice and shit, like he cared about what was going on in their lives. Give them something.

That’s how he did it. That’s how he got the girls to go with him. Meet them at the mall, maybe the beach at San Gregorio or somewhere on the streets in San Francisco. Down around Turk Street they were kinda scuzzy, but they weren’t all that bad when they were young. They’d talk to him. He was always shy with women. Came in handy. Made them feel comfortable. Then he’d find out what they’re into. Rock bands mostly. Then he’d say he had these tickets to this or another concert. Whatever was in town or coming to town, some group they’d die to see.