'You having problems with your mom?'
'I suppose.'
'Most people do, at one time or another. She loves you.'
'I know. And she has problems. God, who doesn't?' she said with a bitterness beyond her years.
'We don't,' said Kate lightly. 'Not today. Today is not for problems. Come on.'
They spent the next few hours at the shooting range, and Kate considered that she had done the job well, acquainting Jules with the intricacies of the handgun (a borrowed .22 and Kate's own heavier .38) to the point that Jules could hit the target a respectable number of times, and further, she kept the girl at it until she began to show signs of boredom with this, her mother's bugbear. Ravenous, they ate hamburgers, went to an early movie, ended up, of all places, at a bowling alley, and arrived back at the apartment at 10:30 that night, disheveled, exhausted, and reeking of gunpowder, sweat, hamburger grease, popcorn, and the cigarette smoke of the alley. Jules jabbered maniacally for twenty minutes before she began to flag, and then was dispatched to bed. Jani went to make coffee.
'You gave her a good time,' said Al, approving and amused.
'She's a nice kid. And tell Jani I think the fascination with guns will fade, now she knows they're just noise and stink.'
'How's Lee? Do you need to call to tell her you'll be late?' Hawkin knew the routine as well as Kate did: Call in whenever you're away.
'No, I don't. She's… she isn't there.'
Hawkin looked up quickly. 'Not in the hospital again?'
'Oh, no, she's doing fine. Or I guess she is. She's up at her aunt's.'
'Still? It's been weeks.'
'Five weeks, not that long. She writes. She's okay, getting her head straight.' That she could admit this much to Al Hawkin was an indication of how very far she'd come since they first began to work together. However she added, 'Don't say anything, around the department.'
'No,' he said, but he watched her closely-for a long minute before he stood up to get himself a drink. Kate thought vaguely of leaving.
'I've asked Jani to marry me,' he said abruptly. 'She said yes.'
'I did wonder.' She grinned. 'I'm very happy for you, Al. For both of you.'
Al Hawkin and Jani Cameron had met a year and a half ago, only days before Lee had been shot in the culmination of the same case that brought him to the Cameron door. Since then, Al had paid court to this woman with all his might and every wile at his command. 'Laid siege' would describe it more accurately, Kate had occasionally thought over the months. A very polite and solicitous siege, true, but for all the chivalry, there was an underlying single-minded determination that made the final result inescapable.
Jani, coming in with a tray of coffee, was also happy. At any rate, there was a softness in her that had not been there before, and conversely, her spine was straighter. Al had won her, and she was freed from solitude, and Kate heard the heavy footsteps of returning melancholia as she sat on the comfortable ugly sofa and drank coffee with these two friends who had obviously spent this gift of an unexpected free day mostly in bed. She drained her mug, took her leave of them, and drove home to her empty house on Russian Hill. She looked at the keyhole with loathing, opened the door. No lights, no warmth, no smells, the only noise the sharp echo of the door closing. The only life here was an importunate raccoon.
'You miserable house,' she said loudly, and went to feed Gideon his dinner.
FOUR
Kate woke early after a night of fitful sleep, and she decided the time had come to find her running shoes again. It took her a while, but she uncovered them at last in a box on a shelf in what she had begun thinking of as Lee's closet, where Jon must have put them some months before in one of his fits of tidying. They were old friends on her feet, and she did a careful round of stretches before letting herself out into the gray half rain of an early, foggy morning.
By the base of the hill, her calf muscles were quivering, and the intended easy run of two miles was whittled down still further. At the end of the short circuit, she returned up Russian Hill, walking, and slowly at that, with a red face and heaving lungs. Inside the house, the red dot on the answering machine was glowing, an excuse to sit down on the carpeted stairway to listen to the message - three messages, it turned out; the telephone must have rung the whole time she was out. The first one was from Jon, his voice sounding distant, exaggerated: defensive.
'Katarina, dearest,
The next message was a brief one from Rosa Hidalgo, who said, 'Kate, I just wanted to tell you that if there's anything I can do to help you with Jules, just call me. She's a real sweetheart, but she can be a handful, and I'm happy to offer advice.' Kate stared at the machine, wondering what on earth the woman was talking about. She shook her head at the neighborhood busybody and dismissed her from her mind.
Fortunately, the third message was from Jules.
'Hi, Kate. I, um, I suppose you're asleep, and don't bother calling me back. I just wanted to say thanks for yesterday; I really enjoyed it. Especially when that guy in the next lane who was giving you a hard time turned around and dropped the ball on his foot. God, that was funny. Anyway, thanks, I really had a great time, and, if you ever want to do it again, I'd love to. I mean, not just the same things, but anything. Oh, this is Jules - I forgot to say. As if you wouldn't have guessed by now, duh. Gotta run - the French club's going to the beach. Bye, Kate. And thanks again. Bye.'
Kate was grinning when the tape clucked to itself, and she pushed herself off the stairs to go shower.
The message from Jules was to prove the high point of a very long and very trying week, a week designed by malevolent fate to push the most phlegmatic of detectives over the edge. Kate was not exactly riding the most even of keels to begin with.
Monday her car would not start.
Cable car and bus got her to work late, irritable, and with leg muscles still quivering from Sunday's run, to find that Al Hawkin was out with the flu and she had been paired with Sammy Calvo, easily the most abrasive and inefficient detective in the city. And of course they caught a call first thing, so she had the pleasure of listening to his offensive jokes - told in all innocence; he truly could not comprehend why a woman might not think a rape joke funny - and going back over his interviews to see what he had left out.
Tuesday, the tow truck was delayed, so she was late a second time. She was further irritated by the truck driver's friendly offer to take Lee's Saab down from its blocks so Kate could drive it - because the thought had already occurred to her and been squelched by the need to reinstate its insurance at a moment's notice, by the knowledge of the comments a Saab convertible would stir up when she climbed out of it at a crime scene in one of the more unsavory parts of town, but mostly by pride. The car was Lee's; Kate would have nothing to do with it.
Wednesday, she sat in the department's unmarked car and had a shouting match with Sammy Calvo over his treatment of a witness, the fifteen-year-old mother of the child whose death they were investigating. His final querulous remark made her blood pressure soar: 'I don't understand why you're so hot about this, Katy. I just asked her if she'd ever heard of the Pill.' Although sorely tempted to whack him over the head with the clipboard he invariably carried, she satisfied herself with snarling, 'It's because you're an insensitive jerk, Sammy. And for Christ's sake, don't call me Katy.' She slammed the door of the car behind her and went back into the house to calm the teary young mother and her angry family, finally retrieving some of the answers she needed.
It was a long time until night, and longer still before she came through the door of the house, her very skin
