'And D'Amico?'
'Florey doesn't listen to gossip. Besides, if he thought there was the least chance, he'd've had you down answering questions.'
'And what —'
He whirled around, looking very large and extremely angry. 'Martinelli, if you ask me whether I believe those filthy rumors, I swear I'll throw something at you.'
Kate took what seemed like the first breath in minutes and felt her eyes tingle with relief.
'Thank you, Al.'
'But when you get home, I'd leave that leather outfit in the closet for a while, and drive something with four wheels.'
'Okay.'
'You'll go?' He could not hide his astonishment.
'I don't have any choice. I'm not doing any good here, and if I stay, it'll only make things worse for everyone. It's already enough of a circus.' Maybe I can do my Pied Piper act now, she thought bitterly, drag all the reporters back to San Francisco.
'I don't like it,' he said unexpectedly.
'Al, she's your wife. And Jules… Jules is your daughter. But you've got to promise me, if there's anything I can do, you'll call.'
'I'll call anyway. Look, I've got to go. I'm late for a meeting with the FBI; they've got a profile to go over.'
'Another one?'
'Yeah. As if it does us one bit of good to know that there's a seventy percent chance he wet his bed as a kid and an eighty percent chance his parents were divorced.'
'I'm glad they're keeping you in on it, Al.'
'I had to call in a lot of favors,' he admitted, and it dawned on Kate that one of the conditions they had made was her departure from the scene.
'Take care of yourself. And Jani,' she said.
'You'll drive back?'
'I'll leave tonight.'
'Watch the snow on the passes.' He walked over to kiss Lee on the cheek, nodded to his partner, and went out. The door clicked; his steps faded.
'That was generous of you, Kate,' Lee said.
Kate was on her feet. 'Shut up!' she screamed. 'For Christ's sake, just shut up!' She caught up a glass from the table, turned, and threw it with all her strength across the room, straight at the mirror above the cheap chest of drawers, then flung herself out the door.
Downstairs, panting, she told the startled desk clerk, I'm leaving. Get my bill together. And you'll have to add something for a broken mirror.'
JANUARY
SIXTEEN
It was a long and mostly silent drive to San Francisco. They stayed the night in Ashland, waiting for the snowplows to clear the road ahead of them, and it was an equally long and silent night. Kate seemed uninterested in how Lee had come to appear out of nowhere, seemed only half aware of her explanation of seeing a week-old newspaper on a trip into town for supplies. She could not rouse herself to give Lee anything but the most perfunctory account of her injury and the shooting of Weldon Reynolds, which simply seemed too far away to be of concern to anyone.
Eventually, Lee recognized the symptoms, and she forced herself to draw back. Kate was not still angry; she wasn't even sulking. She was merely hungover from the excesses of emotion, burnt-out and drained in every way, and fortunately Lee had the sense, and the experience, to see that Kate merely needed solitude, or as close to it as she would get with a passenger in the car. Lee wrapped herself in patience, biding her time, and allowed the miles to pass while she waited, with growing apprehension, for Kate to make the first overture.
The closer they drew to the city, the worse the traffic grew, until halfway across the eastern segment of the Bay Bridge they came to a halt. Kate stirred, looked in the rearview mirror, and spoke for the first time in two hours. 'What the hell is going on? Traffic should be dying down, not getting worse. What day is this, anyway?'
'I think it's Saturday.'
Kate grumbled and threw occasional complaints at the grateful and relieved therapist at her side, who worked hard to preserve a detached air and paid no attention to the roadways outside until, once they were back on the ground and nearing the city center, a rapid movement came spilling in front of them. Kate slammed on the brakes, cursed, and laid on the horn simultaneously; at the same moment Lee began to laugh.
'What?' Kate demanded. 'The whole goddamn city's gone nuts, and you're laughing?'
'Sweetheart, we're the ones who are nuts. Look at what they're wearing. This is New Year's Eve.'
Kate leaned forward to examine the costumes, an equal number of men in diapers and in bedsheets, all of them carrying various noisemakers.
'Thank God,' she said. 'I thought the place had gone off the deep end for sure.'
On Russian Hill, every house was lit up, including their own, which would have surprised Kate except that she had spotted Jon's car down the hill. She eased the Saab in between a convertible Mercedes and a Citroen DCV, coasted into the garage, and hit the button to shut the door behind them. Jon was already on the stairs. His skin looked brown even under the fluorescent lights of the garage, and he was wearing an apron and carrying a wooden spoon in one hand and a pot holder in the other.
He was at the passenger door before Kate had the key out of the ignition. 'Lee! Oh my God, girl, look at you. You look like a woodsman; all you need is your ax. Where's your - Will you look at those. Have you taken up beadwork in your old age, my dear? Oh yes, give us a hug.' Kate smiled at the sight of her two housemates pounding each other's backs (Jon holding the beaded arm braces now as well as the cooking utensils) before she went around to open the trunk and begin the process of unloading. When her head emerged, Jon was holding Lee at arm's length, still exclaiming. 'I love the macha look; it reminds me of the seventies. Do you need a hand here? My God, she's walking. Look at her, Kate; it's a miracle of the blessed Jesus. We'll go dancing next week - can I have a date, dear? How superbly retro, dancing with a woman. God, you look great. You're glowing. Isn't she positively glowing, Kate? Hello, Kate, darlin', you look tired.' Kate could see him hesitate, consider words of sympathy and expressions of horror, and then decide that this was not the time - for which she was grateful.
'Hello, Jon,' she said, sidling past them with her arms full of bags and packs. 'It's good to see you.'
The next day was Sunday, but Kate managed to track down the surgeon who had pieced her head together. He was at the hospital checking up on a trio of drunk-driving injuries from the evening before and agreed to see her.
When she saw him, their conversation consisted of 'Does that hurt?' (No.) 'What about that?' (Yes.) and 'Any fevers or headaches?' (No, and Not for ten days.) With a warning to avoid hard things with her skull for a while, he scrawled a note allowing her back on limited duty. She took it, and broke out in a cold sweat.
She walked back to the car, unaware that she was getting rained on, and drove out of the parking garage, fully intending to go home. Somehow or other, she didn't get there. Instead, she drove out to the coast highway and parked, watching the waves pound furiously at the shore. The car shook with the gusts of wind, and the windshield became opaque with spray. After a while, she got out and walked into the maelstrom.
An hour later, face scoured raw and her entire body feeling cleansed, she unlocked the door and got back in. As she drove home, she tried not to think about Monday. Monday, when she would go back to work, to find that the storm of publicity and the lightning strikes of filthy rumors had moved south, directly into the Hall of Justice. How many obscene notes would be waiting for her? How many photographs confiscated from the collections of pederasts would find their way into her papers, appear on the walls of the toilet cubicles? How many disgusting objects could her colleagues come up with to torment a lesbian rumored to know more than she was telling about the disappearance of a child?
Kate did not know if she could summon the strength to cope with another campaign of whispers. She actually
