said.
“There’s no rest for the wicked.”
She seemed to think that was funny.
Because of my wanting to get the story planted, I had to pay the piper and drive out to the desert. The change in my plans prompted a call to Gump and Martinez. I told them something had come up with my other homicide, and that I wouldn’t be meeting with them that morning as planned. Both men were fine with that; to their thinking I was the third wheel, and a necessary evil at that. We talked for a few minutes about the Klein murder. The case was stalled, but both detectives were following up on potential leads in the investigation, although neither sounded hopeful. I told them I would call later that afternoon.
Moments after we finished up, the phone started ringing. “Gideon,” I said.
“You sound busy,” Lisbet said. “Should I call back later?”
“No, now is fine.”
“I’m not sure if it is.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, or the obvious strain in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m upset and I don’t want to be, but I am. I just got off the phone with Sylvia Espinosa.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given out your number without your permission. I just assumed…”
“I’m not upset about you giving out my number. I am about the only person I know who doesn’t have an unlisted number. What I don’t like is being used. You sold me as part of your story.”
“Wait a second. I gave out your name so you could talk about the Safe Haven law.”
“And you wrapped it in Rose’s body.”
Even to my own ears my answer sounded hard and angry: “I didn’t do that. Rose’s mother did that.”
“Sylvia said you were driving out to the cemetery today to take pictures.”
“That’s right. I’m working the case.”
“Are you working it for Rose or for yourself?”
“I’m working it to bring a murderer to justice.”
“You played that reporter. You didn’t want a story about Rose so much as you wanted one about her mother.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t remember being deputized as part of your posse.”
“You’re not part of my posse. You’re the Good Samaritan in an awful story, because without you Rose wouldn’t exist for most people. They would just look away. No one wants to deal with throwaway babies. That kind of death is just too ugly.”
“And I don’t want to make it any less so.”
“My job is to find Rose’s mother. I am sorry you don’t like that.”
“I respect your job. I understand the need for it. I just don’t understand you getting any joy from it.”
“Putting bad people behind bars is one of the great perks of being a cop.”
“Do you really think Rose’s mother is a bad person?”
“I do.”
“On a cold night, she covered her newborn with a warm blanket and put bootees on her daughter’s feet.”
“And then she abandoned her to die.”
“I used to be angry like you. The first few times I buried my children-and yes, I think of every one of them as a child of mine-I thought no punishment could be harsh enough for the monsters that abandoned them. I wanted those creatures found and sentenced to death, but not before being tortured. But then I happened to meet one of those monsters and then another, and suddenly they weren’t monsters anymore. They were mostly young women overwhelmed by a situation that they didn’t know how to deal with, and in a panic they made the worst decision of their life. I am not excusing what they did, but I have not yet heard of a mother that was in her right mind when she abandoned her baby.”
“I don’t believe in diminished capacity. What I do believe in is jailhouse conversions brought on by defense lawyers.”
“I can understand why cases like these hit home for you.”
“Don’t make this about me. It’s about Rose and other newborns like her.”
“And weren’t you a newborn like her?”
“I didn’t die.”
“And you haven’t forgiven.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Hate is a heavy burden to carry.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I am certain that Rose’s mother is suffering more than we can even imagine for what she did.”
“Then she shouldn’t mind doing that suffering in prison.”
“Having her wear a scarlet
“I don’t agree. Society needs its pound of flesh.”
“I believe Rose already paid that price.”
“So you think her birth mother should just get away with what she did?”
Lisbet’s voice softened. “No,” she said. “But when you find her, and I know you will, I wonder if you’ll be as certain about what justice is or isn’t as you lead her away in handcuffs. I think what you’ll find is a young woman living in a hell of her own making, a hell that she’ll have to live with until the day she dies.”
“What I find too often are crocodile tears passing for the real thing. I am not good with the idea of supposed remorse paying for a crime. What works for me is punishment.”
“I can understand why you would want that. I hope you can also understand why in the future I don’t want to be used to further your investigations.”
“No problem.”
Both of us fell silent. Wounded pride kept me from saying anything else.
After a few seconds, and an eternity, Lisbet said, “Before I talked to Sylvia I had planned to call you to say what a wonderful time I had last night.”
“It’s still the same number.”
“But will anybody be home?”
It was a good question. Had I already checked out of our relationship even before it had begun? I might have been able to smooth things over then, but I didn’t. I put the ball back in her court-or maybe it was just the gauntlet.
“I guess you’ll have to call to find out.”
“Good-bye, Michael.”
“Adios,” I said.
I did a lot of muttering during the drive out to the desert. I was in a foul mood, and my partner had to listen to me vent.
“She doesn’t understand that it’s my job. And when you do the job right it’s not tea and crumpets. If I dangled her as bait in front of that reporter, and I’m not exactly saying that’s what happened, I did it because this is a homicide investigation.”
I took my partner’s silence as tacit agreement.
“I am looking for a murderer, dammit. My job is police work, not social work. I have to do whatever it takes to make an arrest.”
What I was saying sounded right to me, but it felt wrong. My motives had been anything but pure. Lisbet had seen through my ploy.
“Besides, shouldn’t she want to help me? I mean if something was there between the two of us-if it was real, that is-shouldn’t she want to stand by me?”
I sighed.
The drive east was relatively free of traffic, but the ride home promised to be a bear. Every weekend Las
