Laura Lippman - The Last Place

“Did you ask any of Lucy’s friends about her sex life?”

Carl’s face was now redder than his hair.

“Not straight on, the way you would. But I gave them open-ended opportunities to discuss the relationship. You know the rest-everyone said he was perfect. She never confided the least bit of doubt about him, except to wonder how she had gotten so lucky.”

“Look-your theories and mine don’t necessarily contradict one another. Lucy was keeping a record of her fertile days. Let’s say that our killer does have a difficult time”-Tess tried to think of an expression that wouldn’t make Carl dive under the table from sheer embarrassment-“meeting expectations in this one sphere of the relationship. Maybe he turns this into a strength. He could tell the women-I don’t know, that he doesn’t want to have sex just to have sex, he wants to make a baby with them.”

“Or that he’s born again,” Carl said, “and he wants them to wait until they get married. I knew a guy like that at headquarters.”

Tess nodded. It took time, but she and Carl eventually got in sync. “Think how romantic that would seem to young women like Tiffani and Lucy. Young as they were, they probably had their fill of bad, indifferent sex. Maybe he even chose”-she groped again for another delicate turn of phrase-“to please them in alternative ways.”

“Alternative-oh, you mean-?” Carl looked around the restaurant, as if convinced that the tables of elderly customers were hanging on their every word. But most were simply scooping up chicken fat and diving into belly lox without a care in the world.

“Right. What if-bear with me here-what if he is a she?”

“How can that be?”

“Ever read Yentl the Yeshiva Boy?” As Carl’s roast beef sandwich on whole wheat with mayo arrived, Tess realized he didn’t have even a passing familiarity with Isaac Bashevis Singer. Besides, film was Carl’s preferred reference point. “Or that movie Boys Don’t Cry, about the teenage girl who pretended to be a boy?”

Carl shook his head. “Not my kind of movie. But I saw the documentary, which came first. Besides, she was found out. She didn’t keep her secret for long.”

“Okay, but what about the real-life case of Billy Tipton? He passed as a man through five marriages. No one knew he was born Dorothy Tipton until the day he died.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is. It was. Billy bound his chest, saying he needed the support because he’d broken his ribs in a car accident. I won’t go into the details of how he did what he did-I’m afraid you’ll pass out from that level of technical detail-but if you get curious, there’s a very good book about his life. The point is, it’s doable. It’s been done.”

A thought was nagging Tess, buzzing around her like a gnat. She waited for it to settle, to sit still long enough so she might snatch it up and examine it. But it faded away as quickly as it arrived.

“Can they make a woman into a man?” Carl asked, and it was as if a child had asked a single penetrating question, cutting through to what is profound and essential in the world. Tess sat, a spoonful of kreplach halfway to her mouth. Can they make a woman into a man?

“I’m not sure. Certainly, the task is more formidable than making a man into a woman. But-”

She let the idea sit there, not quite yet exposed, even on a Saturday, waiting to see if it would wither as it was exposed to air and light. No, it was still there.

“If Becca Harrison became a man, one way or another, she wouldn’t exist anymore. It’s natural that she would take the name of Eric Shivers, the boy whose death she witnessed-”

“Maybe caused,” Carl put in.

“Still, there’s no connection to Alan Palmer. Not that we know of. We could throw her name at the state police, but then we’d have to explain how we came to have it.”

They sat in silence, chewing. Carl was the first to get to the end of a long mouthful.

“You know, if you’re a woman passing as a man, there’s one thing you can’t fake.”

“What?”

“You know.” He made a baffling hand gesture.

“An erection? Honestly, Carl, have you ever heard of dildos? Or even the concept of a rolled-up sock filled with birdseed?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What then?”

He made another indecipherable gesture.

“I’m sorry, I guess I don’t speak ”Toll Facilities cop,“ because that doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“Semen!” Carl sputtered, earning the undivided attention of every blue-haired diner in Suburban House. “Sperm! You can’t make a baby without those things, so what’s the point of keeping all these careful records if you’re not?”

“I don’t know,” Tess admitted. She still felt the presence of that damn gnat, hovering close to her ear, still determined not to tell her what it knew. “Maybe none of this matters at all. Do you think we should go to Frederick?”

Carl knew she meant visiting the Gunts family. “That’s specifically against the rules.”

“Right. So you’d rather sit in the office all day, even on a Saturday, waiting for phone calls that never come, rereading case files we’ve practically memorized, in the hopes that the state police might at least tell us when they’ve arrested our guy, let us come to the press conference and stand on the dais?”

Carl thought for a moment. “Let’s go.”

“The Wild Bunch,” Tess said. “William Holden, Ernest Borgnine.”

“You finally watched?”

“Last night. It’s no Once Upon a Time in the West, but it’s pretty good.”

“You know that movie too?”

“Yeah, but I prefer Once Upon a Time in America.” Tess fell back in her chair, faked a dying croak. “Noodles, I… slipped.”

Carl smiled as if she had just presented him with a wonderful gift.

Things had changed in Frederick-things that couldn’t be explained by the passage of less than three weeks. Had it really been so long ago? Had it really been so recently? Tess was beginning to feel like the old crone on Notting Island. One thing was clear: The Gunts family no longer considered her an ally, a friend. Of course, they had been stiff and taciturn the first time, but she detected a new coolness to their closed-in ways. Or maybe it was simply that they had been caught without their usual spokesman, the brother, who was on the road. His chatty wife, Kat, was at work as well. It was just the mother and father today, and neither seemed eager to speak.

“The state police have already been here,” the father said.

“Yes,” Tess said. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Pleased you think that sweet boy did this?” This was Mrs. Gunts, but the father grunted something that sounded like assent.

Carl tried, deploying his small-town charm. “There’s a strong chain of circumstantial evidence linking him to the murder I investigated on the upper shore-”

“We know all about that-that… nasty thing. But Tiffani was shot in her kitchen by a burglar. Not some crazy who took off her head and kept her body and-” The mother shook her head. Clearly, she considered Tiffani’s death more dignified than Lucy Fancher’s.

“I can understand how distressing all this is,” Tess said. “You’ve been so sure, for so long, that she was killed by an intruder. It’s hard to readjust your thinking. But I just have a few questions.”

“I don’t think,” the father said, “that we have any answers. We made that clear to the state police.”

The front door opened, and a burst of noise, cheerful and high-pitched, swept into the gloomy house. The grandchildren had arrived home from school. Now that Tess had met Troy Plunkett, she could see the striking resemblance in the one girl’s face. There was no denying this child, as they said on the streets of West Baltimore, although Plunkett had tried. It was too bad that Tiffani’s sweet but indefinite features had been vanquished by Plunkett’s tougher genes. If the girl didn’t catch a break in adolescence, she was going to end up with her father’s all-over feral look.