Sue Grafton - K Is For Killer

I smiled, wishing he looked stronger, knowing I'd look even worse if I were in his place. I held out the magazine. "For you," I said. "I figure nothing in your condition precludes an overdose of gossip. If you're really bored, you can always do the crossword puzzle in the back. How're you feeling? You look good."

"I'm not bad. I've been better. The doctor's talking about moving me off the unit tomorrow, which seems like a good sign." He scratched at the stubble on his chin. "I'm taking advantage by refusing to shave. What do you think?"

"Very devil-may-care," I said. "You can go straight from here to a life on the bum."

"Pull a chair over. Have a seat. Just move that."

The chair in the near corner had the rest of the paper and several magazines piled up on the seat. I set the whole batch aside and dragged the chair over toward the bed, aware that both Dolan and I were using chitchat and busywork to cover a basic uneasiness. "What are they telling you about going back to work?"

"They won't say at this point, but I imagine it'll be a while yet. Two, three months. I scared 'em pretty bad, from what everybody says. Hell, Tom Flowers ended up doing mouth-to-mouth, which he'll never live down. Must have been a sight for sore eyes."

"You're still with us, at any rate."

"That I am. Anyway, how are you? Cheney told me about Janice Kepler. How's it going so far?"

I shrugged. "All right, I guess. I've been on it less than a day. I'm supposed to meet Cheney later. He's going to cruise lower State, looking for a snitch, and offered to point out a chum of Lorna's while he's about it."

"Probably Danielle," Dolan said. "We talked to her at the time, but she wasn't much help. You know these little gals. The life they live is so damn dangerous. Night after night, connecting up with strangers. Get in a car and you have to be aware it might be the last ride you ever take. And they see us as the enemy. I don't know why they do it. They're not stupid."

"They're desperate."

"I guess that's what it is. This town is nothing compared to L.A., but it's still the pits. You take someone like Lorna, and it makes no sense whatever."

"You have a theory about who killed her?"

"I wish I did. She kept her distance. She didn't buddy up to people. Her lifestyle was too unconventional for most."

"Oh, I'll say. Has anybody told you about the video?"

"Cheney mentioned it. I gather you've seen it. I probably ought to take a look myself, see if I recognize any of the players."

"You better wait 'til you're home. It'll get your heart rate right up there. Janice Kepler gave me a copy. She's feeling very paranoid and made me swear I'd guard the damn thing with my very life. I haven't checked the dirty-book stores, but it wouldn't surprise me to see half a dozen copies in stock. From the packaging, it looks like it was manufactured up in the Bay Area someplace."

"You going up there?"

"I'd like to. Seems like it's worth a try if I can talk Janice into it."

"Cheney says you want to take a look at the crime scene photographs."

"If you don't object. I saw the cabin this afternoon, but it's been empty for months. I'd like to see what it looked like when the body was found."

Lieutenant Dolan's brow furrowed with distaste. "You're welcome to take a look, but you better brace yourself. That's the worst decomp case I ever saw. We had to do toxicology from bone marrow and whatever little bit of liver tissue we could salvage."

"There's no doubt it was her?"

"Absolutely none," he said. He lifted his eyes to the monitor, and I followed his gaze. His heartbeat had picked up, and the green line was looking like a row of ragged grass. "Amazes me how the memory of something like that can cause a physiological reaction after all these months."

"Did you ever see her in real life?"

"No, and it's probably just as well. I felt bad enough as it was. 'Dust to dust' doesn't quite cover it. Anyway, I'll call Records and get a set for you. When do you want to go over there?"

"Right now, if possible. Cheney doesn't pick me up for another three hours yet. I was up late last night, and I'm dead on my feet. My only hope is to keep moving."

"Photographs will wake you up."

Most of the departments at the police station close down at six. The crime lab was closed and the detectives gone for the day. In the bowels of the building, the 911 dispatchers would still be sitting at their consoles, fielding emergency calls. The main counter, where parking tickets are paid, was as blank as the ribs on a rolltop desk, a sign indicating that the window would open again at 8:00 A.M. The door to Records was locked, but I could tell there were a couple of people working, probably data-processing technicians entering the day's warrants into the system. The small front counter wasn't currently manned, but I managed to lean over, peering into the records department around the corner to the right.

A uniformed officer spotted me and broke away from a conversation with a civilian clerk. He moved in my direction. "Can I help you?"

"I just talked to Lieutenant Dolan over at St. Terry's. He and Detective Phillips are letting me look at some files. There should be a set of photographs he said I could take."

"The name was Kepler, right? Lieutenant just called. I have 'em right back here. You want to come on through?"

"Thanks."

The officer depressed a button, releasing the door lock. I went through into a back hallway and turned right. The officer reappeared in the doorway to Records and Identification. "We got a desk back here if you want to take a seat."

I read through the file with care, making notes as I went. Janice Kepler had given me much of the same material, but there were many interdepartmental memos and notes that hadn't been part of her packet. I found the witness interviews the police had conducted with Hector Moreno, J. D. Burke, and Serena Bonney, whose home address and phone number I jotted down. There were additional interviews with Lorna's family, her former boss, Roger Bonney, and the very Danielle Rivers I was hoping to meet on lower State Street tonight. Again, I made a note of home addresses and telephone numbers. This was information I could develop on my own, but why pass it up? Lieutenant Dolan had left word that I could photocopy anything I needed. I took copies of countless pages. I'd probably interview many of the same people, and it would be instructive to compare their current opinions and observations with those made at the time. Finally I turned my attention to the crime scene photographs.

In some ways, it's hard to know which is more sordid, the pornography of sex or the pornography of homicide. Both speak of violence, the broken and debased, the humiliations to which we subject one another in the heat of passion. Some forms of sex are as cold-blooded as murder, some kinds of murder as titillating to the perpetrator as a sexual encounter.

Decomposition had erased most of the definition from Lorna Kepler's flesh. The very enzymes embedded in her cells had caused her to disintegrate. The body had been invaded, nature's little cleaning crew busily at work-maggots as light as a snowfall and as white as thread. It took me many minutes before I could look at the photographs without revulsion. Finally I was able to detach myself. This was simply the reality of death.

I was interested in the sight of the cabin in its furnished state. I had seen it empty: sooty and forsaken, full of spiders and mildew, the fusty smell of neglect. Here, in full color and again in black and white, I could see fabric, crowded countertops in use, sofa pillows in disarray, a vase full of sagging flowers in an inch of darkened water, rag rugs, the spindle-lathed wooden chair legs. I could see a pile of mail on the sofa cushion where she'd left it. There was something distasteful about the unexpected glimpses of her living space. Like a houseguest arriving early, who sees the place before the hostess has had the chance to tidy up.