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

Only he didn’t have the tickets with him, he’d tell them. He’d have to go get them. That would always work. And they’d go with him. He’d get them out somewhere. Always somewhere different. Hell, he didn’t even remember where a couple of them happened. He remembered it would be someplace in the middle of nowhere. And that’d be it.

What he really wanted was a woman, not some girl who barely had her pubes; but the young ones were easier. He didn’t feel so awkward around them. And they trusted him. Most of the time, they didn’t even see it coming.

McClelland and Gratelli met with Judge Wharton the next morning to get the warrant to search Julia Bateman’s San Francisco residence. However they decided to go to the cabin in the woods first.

McClellan drove. Gratelli, this time, rode shotgun, the unmarked Taurus making them look like a couple of hardware conventioneers in a rental.

They drove without conversation, up Highway 101, choosing speed over the beautiful but tortuously slow Highway One. They bypassed Mill Valley, Novato and Petaluma before having to exit at Cotati, where still another bypass would get them around thriving and trendy Sebastopol.

Gratelli would have preferred the scenic route. McClellan seemed immune to anything aesthetic. Once out of San Francisco, it didn’t matter that much to Gratelli. The sky was a cloudless, hazeless blue and the sun through the glass warmed him, enticed him to relax. He allowed Puccini’s ‘Un bel di’ to creep in and sweep out the debris that littered his mind. It was as good a way as any to spend a Friday afternoon, a fine way indeed to reduce the tension before gliding into a weekend.

Gurneville, the closest town to the crime scene, was one dot on the map beyond Forestville. It wasn’t until then that McClellan spoke.

‘You know where I can find a cheap apartment?’

‘The Tenderloin,’ Gratelli offered as a joke.

‘Too expensive. I checked.’

‘Who’s interested?’

‘Me,’ McClellan said, eyes still on the road.

‘Yeah, why is that?’

McClellan didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Gratelli regretted asking. He had pieced together the signs. It was the breakup of a twenty-five-year marriage. That many years was a near record in the police department, where male officers, and now female officers, accumulated multiple spouses. But when a marriage lasted beyond the second decade, there was another dangerous time. When the kids left. When they were on their own. Nothing to hold the shaky partnership together. The years of late hours, mediocre pay, lack of communication, pent-up anger, disillusionment took its toll on the most well-intentioned, devoted families.

Even now, McClellan couldn’t talk about it.

‘Why in the hell would that dink want to move way up here? Christ, a woman alone in a cabin in the boonies, she’s asking for trouble.’

‘Un bel di’ was irretrievable. Fitting for Julia Bateman, Gratelli thought. The aria from Madama Butterfly was the song of innocence and the prelude to the grim, ironic realities of life and death. And Gratelli’s quiet afternoon escape was over. They neared the cabin.

As Inspector Mickey McClellan went with cops from Santa Rosa and Gurneville inside Julia Bateman’s cabin, Gratelli wandered the outside perimeter of her property. There wasn’t much of it. The cabin itself was set into the hill, the front jutting out, leaving only a modest yard in front before it was cut off by the gravel road.

Even so, the cabin was almost invisible from the road, hidden by pines of various heights which canopied a wilderness of ferns and other greenery below he couldn’t identify. If the lights were on inside, then perhaps someone could detect human existence. Otherwise it was doubtful, especially doubtful in the dark. The drive might give it away, though it was narrow and was slightly overgrown from disuse.

An automobile parked in the drive might call attention to itself by reflecting a headlight. However, Julia Bateman’s blue Miata was parked around the curve and in a space under the house. Had it been moved since the crime?

The doors and windows to the cabin had not been jimmied. There were no footprints, no broken twigs or squashed plants. No sign anyone had tried to peek in the windows. If the brush had been beaten down, it wouldn’t have surprised him. In fact, he was surprised that the local police hadn’t tromped around the grounds.

How did the rapist get in? Not likely through the windows and not likely through either door unless they were left unlocked or Julia Bateman had let him or them in herself. Possible. She hadn’t yet spoken a word on the subject. What was also possible was a climb up the hill to the roof. Stones had been embedded along one side of the incline toward the back of the cabin to inhibit erosion.

It was possible to climb that way and return by that route without leaving much if any imprint.

Gratelli took a deep breath and went inside the cabin. The question of the rapist’s access was immediately answered once Gratelli got beyond the living room and headed toward the bedrooms where the police officers who had agreed to meet the two big city cops were engaged in a heated discussion, punctuated by nervous laughter.

Consciousness seemed more accessible to Julia Bateman, though not necessarily more desirable. She was now able to mentally separate the two worlds, the one lit inside her mind, the other outside. And to some extent, now, she was able to choose which one to inhabit.

Earlier, she had heard the nurses talk about a reduction in morphine and was able to conclude that was what accounted for her rise into the real world. She had also heard them tell the doctor that ‘the patient’s heart beat and blood pressure were nearly normal and continuing to improve.’ Julia was, however, indifferent to the news.

At the moment she was being given a sponge bath. They’d begun by gently dabbing her face with warm water sending periodic needle pricks of pain that spread like tentacles into her brain. It was less painful when they gently swathed the warmth on her chest and belly. Then the warmth disappeared as the moisture evaporated and she would chill in one spot and become warm in another.

She chose not to open her eyes, but merely to feel the not altogether unpleasant sensation. Whoever it was worked in silence. And when the bath was completed, Julia felt the cool sheet again cover her. Then another layer – a cotton blanket – was tucked up under her chin.

Julia could feel herself drift again, her body tingling against the cool sheets. She was sure she could hang on to consciousness, but allowed herself to drift, feeling a comfortable warming of her body.

As a child, in the early summer, she’d play all day, forgetting how the weak sun could still sting her skin with a light pink blush. She would shower and climb naked into her bed. This is how her flesh was now – warm and cool, safe and secret. She was completely aware of every inch of her body.

In those adolescent days, she discovered the strange pleasure her nakedness gave her – the slight swell of her breasts and the electricity of her nipples against the starched sheets, the secret touching.

Dark now. Heavy quilt over her. Sounds. Sounds overhead awakened her. She opened her eyes, but couldn’t see in the darkness. At first Julia Bateman was frightened, but she was sure it was a raccoon, perhaps a possum. The area was full of nocturnal creatures. She closed her eyes. The sound again.

The cabin had a flat roof, so the sound was not far away nor was there much in between her and the sound to buffer it. Couldn’t be raccoons, she thought. It was a heavy sound. A bear? Surely not. There were brown bears in California, but weren’t they in parks?

Her.32 revolver was in the desk drawer. The telephone was on the desk. The desk was in the living room. She decided not to turn on the light. If it were a bear, it probably didn’t matter. If it were a burglar, the light would let him know her whereabouts.