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

Gratelli rummaged through the stacks of operas – works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi and Puccini. He was searching for something comedic. He picked a Donizetti to listen to while he sat at the small table in his tiny kitchen. He sipped his coffee and unfolded the newspaper. He’d been in Homicide enough years not to let a few dead bodies disturb his routine.

His thoughts were on the opera – the one playing and the one he would see this week. Because of a duty roster switch, he thought it wise to switch his tickets. It was some German composer – and not even Mozart – which lowered the priority. He could even miss it if he had to. He did not enjoy the Germans, or the French for that matter. But the Germans were the worst. He endured, rather than enjoyed, the endless and pompous Ring Cycle. He remembered the season when the opera house was infested with fleas and even that was more enjoyable than Wagner.

After the sports section, he got up, refilled his cup and sat again. He sighed as everyone does when faced with something unpleasant and inevitable.

The morning paper had three separate stories on the killings – and the media didn’t know about this new one. He and McClellan would likely spend as much time with the news guys as with the investigation.

Julia Bateman and Paul Chang split the day’s watch. A video camera nearby if they should suddenly see their suspect doing cartwheels on the street. So far, they hadn’t seen Samuel Baskins at all. He hadn’t even ventured out to limp and stumble to the corner grocer.

So she started the watch at six a.m. She would observe Samuel from the entrance to Mr Baskins’ building. Baskins, whose earnings probably placed him near the poverty level, was now a potential millionaire several times over – that is if he lived long enough to collect it – because his employer failed to have the machinery checked on schedule. A few hundred pounds dropped on Sam’s shoulder. X-rays revealed nothing. Exams revealed nothing except deep and what ought to be temporary bruises.

That he didn’t have something vital smashed or broken was miraculous. The insurance company claimed the miracle for their own. Sam contended that there were no miracles only the sad fact that medical science failed to explain why he couldn’t walk without a great deal of pain. He claimed to have neck and back pain so horrendous that he could not work, that he could just barely get through the day attending to his pain. Before Baskins found a lawyer, he had injudiciously sent several, hysterical, violence-threatening letters to the company and after that to the insurance company.

Julia sipped from a cup of coffee she got at McDonald’s on Van Ness and watched the building near Leavenworth and Turk.

What made her look up as the dark Camaro cruised by in the gloom, Julia Bateman didn’t know. All she knew was that in the darkened, smoked glass window, penetrated only briefly by the morning light coming through the buildings, there was an eerie stare; enough to make her shiver and encourage her to grab another sip of coffee to offset the sudden cold.

It was below the back half of a Victorian on Stanyan – a basement really, a cave – where the driver of the Camaro lived. Once inside it could still be night. Soon he would be asleep. He would miss a day of working out. And a day of work. That happened on the days following the nights of the kill.

He felt as he usually did. His mind was nearly blank. His eyes were tired. Very tired. But his body was still alive, feeling everything that touched it – the tee shirt against his chest, against his nipples. The denim against his thighs, his buttocks, his sex. He lit the candles. The CD he had just picked up at Tower Records was in place. He pushed the button.

He undressed.

He positioned his shaved, oiled naked body on the bed so he could glimpse at his flickering, golden reflection in the mirror beside him. He would relive every moment of the evening. It would arouse him. He would satisfy himself. He would be calm for a few days. He would be sad, but it was the only time he felt anything other than anger.

He fell back into the bed. His head was slightly raised on the pillow so he could look down at the body he had so carefully constructed. He admired its firmness, its smoothness, now letting his palm glide over his chest, down his flat, firm belly, sliding over and inside his thighs.

He closed his eyes, the vision of the young woman, her pale flesh lit by the moon on the dark grass. At once he felt her flesh and his own. He could feel himself drift into the place. A secret place. All the time in the world to caress her soft and pliant body.

Instead of falling further back into the vision, he was oddly and disagreeably startled by the image suddenly, seemingly projected on the inside of his cranium. It was the woman in the Miata – a convertible with the top up, bright blue and shining in the morning fog, the car on Leavenworth and Turk he saw as he returned from the kill. The car demanded to be seen. The face in the window drew him to it. It startled him then. Startled him now. The stare she gave him had flashed in his mind without warning. It jerked him rudely from his sexual reverie.

He remained in bed trying to recreate the mood. He closed his eyes, ran his palms over his smooth, firm flesh, trying to recreate the moment on the hill. When he couldn’t urge it into the dark frame, he tried recreating others. Another night. The San Gregorio beach. The ocean. The sand. The sound of the waves. The salt breeze. Nothing would come to him, or if it did, not for long. Instead of sweet, sad melancholy he felt a rising anger. It was that woman in the car. Why had she done this to him?

He climbed out of bed, stood under water as hot as he could bear. He would go work out. He would go to the gym. It was the only way he could work it off. All this meant he would be sucked up again into the cycle. Sooner because of her. He would have to do it again in just a few days.

The full-length mirror in the bathroom was all steamed. Usually he’d wipe it clear first so that he could inspect his body. He wasn’t in the mood. He was pissed. He dried quickly.

The door to Julia Bateman’s Miata opened with such suddenness that it jolted her. But it was merely an interruption of bland thought by a smiling, always energetic, teasing Paul Chang.

‘Hi toots,’ he said to his boss.

‘Go toots yourself!’ she said. ‘You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. Bradley stayed over. I don’t know. By morning, I was ready to throw him out of bed, out of my apartment and out of my life. But I left instead.’

‘Why?’

‘Who knows? You know how blonds are.’ He smiled.

‘No I don’t know how blonds are or how anyone is. He must have something. Good in bed?’

‘Yes,’ Paul smiled. ‘You want the details?’

‘Absolutely not.’ She paused. ‘Not all of them.’

They both laughed.

‘How was last night?’ Paul asked.

‘Boring. Sort of.’

‘What wasn’t boring?’

‘It felt a little like Hard Copy meets PBS.’

‘Who?’

‘The usual San Francisco celebrities – those with talent and those with money.’

‘Who was at your table?’

‘I don’t remember most of them.’

‘Jules! What good are you?’

‘Some writer. A plastic surgeon… oh, Maldeaux.’

‘You met him? Christ.’

‘It’s no big hairy deal,’ Julia said.

‘Oh right. “Oh”, she says casually, “Maldeaux”. And the way you said it. One word. Maldeaux. God. Maybe Picasso. Or Brad Pitt, when he’s blond.’

‘Brad Pitt is two words.’

‘Yes, but you can’t just say “Pitt”. “Maldeaux” you said. Sort of like, what? He’s an institution or something. A Lincoln. A Getty, a Rockefeller, a Rothschild. A Maldeaux. Thaddeus Maldeaux. Just the sound of it.’