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

Copyright © 2011 by Ronald Tierney.

Though the entire work is fictional and no character, including the inspectors in the book, are based on anyone other than the author’s imagination, James W. Bergstrom and Anthony J. Camilleri Jr., inspectors for the San Francisco Police Department at the time of my research, were instrumental in rendering police activities as realistic as fiction – and a heavy dose of artistic license – allowed.

Thanks also to Kirsten Jones, John Fleener, Karen Watt, David Anderson and brothers Richard, Robbin and Ryan for their reflections (though not necessarily approval) on the following pages. A special thanks to my good friend Mark Stevenson for helping me recreate the area in and around Iowa City.

The kid knew it would be tonight. He could feel it taking over, wrestling with his numb soul – a force out of nowhere, taking him to a place he didn’t want to go. Not a whole lot he could do about it. He knew that too. He had tried to fight it before. But this was the feeling. The beginning. He knew it. And it would only get worse.

She had already flipped most of the contents of a childproof bottle of Tylenol into the toilet during the act of getting it open. Before that she discovered the dry cleaners had failed to replace an essential clasp on her black evening dress.

Julia Bateman took a couple of deep breaths and – having convinced herself that she had brought on a period of calm – looked around her studio apartment for a couple of stray aspirins. Nothing. Calm, she went back into the bathroom. Once her feet touched the wet tile, they struck out on their own and her body slapped against the floor. She got up slowly, checking to make sure everything was still working.

Everything worked. ‘See,’ she said with a phony brightness. ‘Every fucking thing is just delightful, isn’t it?’

She couldn’t find her face in the mirror. The old apartment building had no bathroom exhausts. Steam still coated her reflection. When she took off her towel to clean the mirror it snapped the bottle of Chanel No.19, shattering it in the tub, exploding like radiation waves from the detonation of an atom bomb and sending a cloying scent into her bathroom.

She cut a finger trying to pick up the little granules of glass from the porcelain. As soon as she was convinced the visible pieces of glass were retrieved, she ran the water forcefully to draw the rest of the glass and the dregs of Chanel down the drain. Afraid the smell would hang in her small studio, she ran to the windows to open them, again to discover a small movement in the drapery across the alley.

What was it? Had there been someone there?

She decided not to care. She went back to the bathroom, pulled out a tube of Ben Gay and applied it to the bristles of her toothbrush.

Inspector Vincente Gratelli was off duty, shoes off, a glass of Chianti in his hand, watching television.

He was not a pretty sight, even when he wasn’t exhausted. He looked older than his fifty-five years and no one would mistake him for a retired fashion model even if his tie were tied and his shirt buttoned, and his hair combed.

This was the only TV he allowed himself – that and 60 Minutes . The news. The national news ended. It was the local news now. The stylish mayor was talking about the murders. Gratelli switched off the set, went to the window. Darkness was overtaking the light. There was a pinkness down on the busy street. The color of the sunset, the influence of the neon. He heard a siren. It was beginning. He felt a little guilty. He should be doing something about the murders. When you know it’s going to happen again, it seemed like you ought to just keep working – all day, all night. But there was nothing to go on. Absolutely nothing. So he finally gave up. Finally took a night. He’d eat. Go to bed early. Try to get some sleep. Get some energy so he could pile back in with a fresh mind and at least a mildly cooperating body.

None of them were easy. The homicides. These were particularly nasty. Some strange twists. The girls were young, too. The way they were left – that too was strange and sad and smarmy. Wasn’t messy. Not bloody or anything. It was something more indefinable. Something less visceral, more unsettling in its sickness.

The kid knew it would be tonight. He could feel it taking over, wrestling his numb soul out of nowhere and taking it to a place he didn’t want to be. Not a whole lot he could do about it. He knew that too. This was the feeling. The beginning. He knew it. And it would only get worse.

Julia Bateman couldn’t help herself. She stole another glance. The object of her curiosity was Thaddeus Maldeaux. He sat across the table from her, down one seat. He was more striking in person than he was in the photographs published by the newspapers and magazines. She was not usually awed by celebrity or overwhelmed by the presence of another human being. It was a feeling that – at the moment – caused her discomfort.

David Seidman sat on her left chatting with matriarch Helen Maldeaux. Helen, most people in San Francisco knew, controlled the family who controlled large chunks of the nation’s banks and investment institutions and media, not to mention a few powerful politicians, many of whom had already passed by the table and engaged her in flattering conversation.

It was impossible not to know about the Maldeaux family. Thaddeus – Teddy to his friends – was son of Helen. Someone less rich and less charming, who behaved as he did, would not have been allowed too near polite society. At thirty-eight, he’d been married four times – each to an innocent, young heiress or social celebrity. His extra-marital affairs were, however, the most tantalizing. The women were media savvy and rarely innocent. You would find Teddy’s name in all the trendy magazines, often in Vanity Fair and Interview and Tatler . Occasionally in Time and Newsweek . Teddy’s cast off girl friends often ended up as shooting stars themselves – bright and brief luminescences in the night sky – for all of the media mentions.

A few kissed and told.

‘The frightening thing about Thad,’ one said, ‘is that he appears both masculine and intelligent.’ She also said that he had perfected the ‘dress-down’ look – the slightly frayed cuffs on his slightly over-sized shirts and the slightly wrinkled fabric of his shirts. One would have easily recognized the names of those who designed his clothing, but these were not off the rack and you wouldn’t see anything just like them on anyone else. ‘He spends a great deal to look like a handsome peasant,’ she told the magazine. ‘A handsome stylish peasant of course.’

Julia already knew that Thaddeus and David Seidman were friends, though Julia had not met him before this evening. Julia sensed that David wanted to protect her from him – perhaps wisely so. David and Thaddeus graduated from Stanford and received law degrees from Harvard in the same years. They were fiercely competitive, though there was no real contest. Teddy outperformed David in sports, spending, womanizing and intellect. David was from a wealthy family as well, though one would never know it. Few knew that the Seidmans possessed even more wealth, perhaps because they wielded their power and influence less publicly and with considerably less flourish.