hospice.
No, all in all, Jon Samson singing love songs was not a sound guaranteed to gladden the hearts of his housemates.
Kate kept her mouth firmly shut. Lee was the one who bore the brunt of Jon’s moods, since she was around him all day and Kate was not. And Lee was the one who had to decide if and when she was ready to do without his services, not Kate. So Kate said nothing, just stuck her coffee mug in the dishwasher, kissed Lee goodbye, and strapped on her gun to go to work.
WHEN EMILY LARSEN OPENED the door to Kate and Al Hawkin two hours later, Kate almost did not recognize her. Her hair, though still a dull black, had been professionally styled and the gray roots were gone. She also wore a defiant if amateurish splash of makeup on eyes and mouth, and her caricature housekeeper dress had been exchanged for slimming khakis and a flowered blouse. More than exterior changes, however, were the set of her shoulders and spine and the way her eyes met theirs without flinching. She stepped back to invite them inside, and was speaking before she had shut the door behind them.
“I’m really glad you came by this morning. Here, come on back to the kitchen, I’ve got some coffee on.” The house was tidier than it had been when they had shone their flashlights through its windows on Tuesday night, although Emily had not been able to do anything about the wear on the shag carpeting and flowered upholstery. The design sense of the residents leaned more to framed photos of children than to paintings, the living room had no fewer than three large arrangements of fake flowers, and one corner was haunted by a four-foot-long black ceramic panther with a chipped ear. The dust of print powder still lay over everything, and the house smelled unoccupied. “Can I take your jackets?” Emily was saying. “No? Well, sit down, I’ve got a confession to make.”
To a police officer, the word
“I wasn’t very up-front with you yesterday, Inspector Martinelli. You knew that, didn’t you? Carla told me what you said, but I had to, well, mislead you, like, until I was sure what was goin‘ on.
“You see, I’ve got this brother, he’s three years older than me, and he has this really bad temper, you know? And I was scared that he’d gotten piss—that he’d gotten PO’d with Jimmy and… done it to him. I couldn’t reach Cash until last night—that’s my brother’s name, Cash—I couldn’t get ahold of him to ask him if he’d… had anything to do with Jimmy’s death. I didn’t really think he did, you know, but he has a record, and he and Jimmy had a… an argument a while back, so I knew you’d think… well, not you personally, but the police, you know? But anyway, I talked with him and he told me it wasn’t him. And he has a good alibi, too. He was in an AA meeting until eleven. So that’s okay, then. I mean, Cash has done some really stupid things in his life, but at least this isn’t one of them.”
“We’ll have to speak with him, though, Ms. Larsen,” Al told her.
“Of course, he said you would. He works for a company, they clean offices at night. He said he’d be home in another hour, if you want to see him. Do you want his address? He lives down in San Jose.”
“Thank you. However,” Al continued, “the fact remains that someone killed your husband, and did so not in his usual surroundings. Someone either kidnapped your husband and took him to San Francisco, or else arranged for him to be there. The phone company’s tracking down the last incoming call he had, but we also need to have a word with your postman about any mail he might have delivered.”
“Oh. Sure. I mean, would you like me to ask him about it?” “That’s okay, Ms. Larsen,” Al told her gently. “We’ll take care of it.”
FOR SOME REASON, KATE had been anticipating a hulking bruiser of an ex-con, a younger, fitter version of James Larsen, but the man who opened Cash Strickland’s door and invited them inside was not even as tall as his sister, and equally round-shouldered. The man’s explosions of temper must be rooted in his resentment at the world’s treatment of him rather than in any habitual aggressiveness; from his hangdog look, he might as well have been wearing a hit me sign pinned to his back.
Still, alcohol combined with chronic resentment made for a volatile mix, and both detectives kept one eye firmly on the ex-con as they introduced themselves and entered his apartment. Their free eyes flicked over the sparsely furnished room, and Al stuck his head into the adjoining rooms to be sure there were no unfriendlies waiting behind the shower curtains. Strickland knew what Al was doing, and waited politely until Al had made his reconnaissance before offering them seats on the thrift-store sofa and plastic chairs. A well-thumbed Bible lay on the coffee table beside a couple of folded newspapers. On one wall hung what Kate had seen advertised as a “sofa-sized oil” depicting a tree-shrouded lake; on another Strickland had thumbtacked up the poster of a mewing kitten on a tree branch, with the inspirational caption “All God’s Creatures Need a Hand.”
“You’re here about Jimmy, aren’t you?” he asked them.
“That’s right, Cash,” said Hawkin.
“Em told me you’d been askin‘ her questions. I hope to God you don’t think she had anything to do with it. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“No, she has an alibi for Monday night. She seems to think you do, too.”
“I was at my AA meeting. Had dinner with my sponsor, helped set up the chairs at about seven-thirty, maybe seven-forty-five, stayed at the meeting until it finished about ten. I helped clean up afterward. Came back here, changed my clothes, got to work at eleven.”
“Anybody see you come home?” Hawkin asked. Not that Strickland could have driven to San Francisco and back in an hour, but leave no stone criminal unturned was Hawkin’s motto.
“Couple of my neighbors were sitting outside havin‘ a smoke and a brew. Guy in two-thirty-four—his wife won’t let him smoke inside ’cause of the kid,” he explained.
“Tell me about your brother-in-law,” Al requested.
“Jimmy?” Strickland said, surprised that the questions about his alibi were over already. “What do you want to know?”
“What kind of a person was he?”
“He was a—” The reformed convict caught himself. “He was an awful man. Real horrible to my sister. More times than I can count I told her to leave him, take the kids and get away, but she wouldn’t do it. I mean, any man that’d do that to a woman. You know he used to hit her?”
“We are aware of that. And that your sister finally left him just before he got out of jail this last time.”
“None too soon.”
“Do you know who would want to kill him?”
“I will admit to you that it passed through my mind, a couple of times when I was a drinking man. Not now, though. But I don’t know enough about him to know who else there might be. Somebody he punched in a bar, maybe?”
“Did he get into fights, then?”
“No, not really. Saved it for his wife. Only time I saw him get into a fight with someone his own size was when he was giving Emily a hard time in a restaurant and this other drunk started callin‘ him names. Coward and stuff. So Jimmy punched him, they both fell over each other, and that was the end of it. Kinda funny, at the time. Now I have to say it was just pathetic.”
Strickland’s self-consciously pious remarks should have struck a note somewhere between comical and suspicious, but for some reason they sounded more dignified than anything else, perhaps even a touch brave. Kate was surprised to find herself hoping that Strickland was one reformed drunk who stayed that way, and even Hawkin’s final questions were more gentle than a cop normally put to a recent ex-con.
Strickland gave them his sponsor’s name and phone number, telling them that the man was expecting their call. When they were through, he showed them to the door.
“I hope you catch whoever did it,” Strickland admitted reluctantly. “Jimmy was a no good—well. But Emily loved him, and if he’d got sober, who knows?”
Kate wished Cash Strickland luck when they left, and Hawkin shook his hand.
Strickland’s AA sponsor and alibi provider was an undeniably upright citizen. He even owned his own insurance business, and although he freely admitted that he had a record for drunk driving, he had been sober now for twelve years and four months, and had acted as sponsor for Cash since the man had asked him at a meeting back in early February.
