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

This wasn’t the first time she’d been in danger. Hang around Turk and Eddy Streets in the city for a few years. Anybody who could do that would be able to stay cool in a volatile situation. Her bare feet touched the cool wooden floor. Her arm went out to feel for the doorway. She moved slowly into the hall.

A patch of starry night showed itself in the skylight. Suddenly her naked body was bathed in light. She looked up again, but was blinded by the light. There was a creaking sound, then a loud crack. The light went crazy and something huge was sucked into the cabin. Nearly on top of her. She heard breathing. The light came at her and she saw nothing else.

Inspector Mickey McClellan was holding the long suction tube of a portable vacuum cleaner as Gratelli came into Julia Bateman’s bedroom.

‘I see a broken skylight. I don’t see any glass,’ Gratelli said.

‘This is why.’ Mickey waved the tube. ‘This is why we got no evidence,’ McClellan said.

‘He cleaned up afterward,’ one of the Gurneville deputies said.

‘This guy was thorough,’ McClellan continued. ‘He took the bedclothes, vacuumed the mattress and carpet and probably the body.’

‘What about the bag?’ Gratelli asked, nodding toward the little red vacuum.

‘This is priceless Gratelli, tell ’em.’ McClellan nodded to the deputy who spoke earlier.

‘Best we can tell Inspector, the perpetrator not only stole the bag but he sucked water through the tube there and dumped it in the commode. Then damn if he didn’t wash the commode.’

‘Nobody searched outside?’

‘No, Inspector. We waited. We saw the tattoo there and well, you know, we had that other kid, that other homicide up here earlier. We waited for you.’

McClellan pushed the switch on the vacuum with his foot. ‘Me,’ he said over the whir, ‘I figure the maid did it.’

Everybody but Gratelli started laughing.

D avid Seidman spent Saturday and Sunday mornings at Julia Bateman’s bedside. Paul Chang did the same in the afternoons. Sammie stopped by both days, stood awkwardly for fifteen minutes or so and excused herself. She didn’t so much leave the room as escape it. Otherwise, nothing changed. The nurses had cranked up the bed, putting its inhabitant in a sitting position. Julia’s eyes were open. She didn’t speak.

Sometimes she looked in Paul’s direction, but with little interest. Either she didn’t know him or wasn’t much interested in his being there. Not knowing which, Paul assumed it was the former.

‘I called your father,’ Paul said Sunday afternoon. He waited. No response. ‘He’s coming out. He’ll be here around ten in the morning.’ No response.

‘I’m watering your plants,’ he continued, ‘checking the mail, things like that at the apartment and things are going OK at work. I can handle it for awhile. Keep things going. So don’t worry, Jules.’

Julia Bateman didn’t appear to be worrying.

‘I checked your cabin Saturday morning. Tried to, anyway. The cops wouldn’t let me in.’

Paul was sorry he mentioned the cabin. He hadn’t intended to bring up what had happened, even indirectly.

‘I told your father he could stay at your place, but he decided to stay downtown somewhere. I told him he could reach me at the office on Monday.’

Paul felt silly just babbling on when he couldn’t be sure she heard or understood a single word he was saying. He sat the rest of the afternoon in silence, his hand touching hers.

Pauli Vincente Gratelli awoke Monday morning as he always awoke, eyes sealed shut by the too plentiful secretion of some chemical or another. There were mornings he would have to pull the lids apart and brush away the grit to be able to see.

It was as if nature intended his slumber to be more permanent. This morning, the seal required intervention and though he didn’t remember dreaming – he never remembered – his unusually tired body suggested the night had been restless.

He imagined that it had something to do with the killings. Gratelli was usually able to shed the more gruesome aspects of his work when he was off duty – something he’d learned to do only in the last five years or so. Perhaps it was the age of most of the victims. These weren’t exactly children, but they were young. That made things more difficult. Perhaps it was Julia Bateman’s battered body and shocked numbed mind that made it worse. In homicide, the victims are usually dead and beyond pain. Not alive, suffering.

He closed his eyes to redirect his thoughts and get a fresh start on the morning. Official police work began after his morning coffee and the Chronicle .

His bed occupied a small, windowed alcove in the smaller of the two bedrooms in his small apartment. He knew the temperature outside was probably around fifty degrees; but the sun was warm on his face and bare arms.

He wiped at his eyes one more time, threw the covers back and slid a bony leg over the side, eventually bringing himself to a sitting position, where he’d turn off the alarm he’d beaten by at least fifteen minutes and where he’d remain until he felt his blood circulating to his feet.

When he was satisfied that his feet were ready to support him, Gratelli reached down and aligned his slippers, then slipped his feet into them. The bedroom was carpeted, the bath and kitchen weren’t. He pushed himself off the bed, moved to the closet where he grabbed his robe from the hook on the back of the door and headed to the kitchen.

He ground the coffee beans, drew water from the faucet into the ancient percolator, started the gas burner with a match – all in the morning ritual. Next he went to his wall of shelves in the living room selecting Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri , letting the music begin while he went to the front door for his morning paper, a continuation of his ritual – a ritual only slightly modified by the loss of his wife to ovarian cancer ten years ago. His family suggested he move to a new place, even if it was just down the hall. Find a nice widow somewhere and start a new life. He liked it the way it was. He didn’t want a new life. Anna was his wife. She was still his wife. He liked being where he was. He liked the memories the apartment, the furniture, even the percolator gave him.

The memories were not sad. They gave his life meaning, a richness it might not otherwise have.

Gratelli usually chose comic opera to start the day. The days were often tragic enough. He sat at the small chrome table with the black top in the tiny kitchen and went methodically through the paper. It seemed an emptier paper without Herb Caen – another break in the rhythm. He read the back of the style page next. He’d begun to like the columnist who resided there. A little wit, humor and intelligence before he went back to the front page.

The story was a few pages in and small which meant the reporters had not yet tied Julia Bateman with the others. It didn’t mention her name, but did mention a San Francisco business woman was raped and beaten at a weekend cabin three miles outside of Gurneville.

‘Oops,’ he thought. The last sentence read: ‘Gurneville police said they would not comment about any possible connection between this and the recent spate of savage murder-rapes in the greater Bay area.’

Gratelli took another sip of coffee, letting the music take his mind off it for the moment.

Aerosmith’s Love in an Elevator was abruptly cut off by a hand crushing the snooze button on the digital clock radio. Paul Chang turned back to the center of the bed where he saw the body of his blond-headed friend.

‘Come on, wake up Bradley,’ Paul said, nudging the bare shoulder.

‘What?’ the head turned slowly, groggily toward Paul.