Cash Strickland’s alibi stood, as did that of his sister, Emily, leaving Kate and Al with empty hands and facing the fact that they would have to begin from scratch, as if the days between the murder and walking out of the San Jose insurance office counted for nothing.
Until, that is, the phone company came across with the address for the final call to have reached the Larsen telephone.
It had been placed from a phone located on the wall of a laundromat six blocks from Carla Lomax’s law offices.
And two blocks from the women’s shelter that had given refuge to Emily Larsen.
Chapter 5
“I COULD JUST ARRIVE on their doorstep,” Kate said to Carla Lomax over the phone. “I do know where the shelter is. I’m trying to be cooperative about this and talk to the director first, but if the only choice you give me is between waiting until I can dig up the name and phone number on my own or just driving over there and asking, then I’m sorry, I’d rather not waste my time.”
“These women are in a very fragile state, Insp—”
“Carla, look. I’m not unsympathetic; I’m prepared to keep my voice down; I’m even willing to leave my male partner out of it. But it’s going to happen, with or without your help. I have a job to do.”
“Okay. Let me have your number. I’ll ask her to call you.”
“I’ll give her five minutes, and then I’m going to leave this phone and climb in my car. You have my number.”
A sigh came over the earpiece as the lawyer admitted defeat. “The director’s name is Diana Lomax.”
“A relative?”
“Cousin. She’ll call you.”
They both hung up at the same time.
Kate sat reading departmental memos for three and a half minutes before her phone rang.
“This is Diana Lomax,” said a hoarse voice at the other end. “Carla tells me you want to come to the shelter and interview the residents.”
“Anyone who was there on Monday night, yes.”
“Carla said you have the address. Just don’t come in a marked police car.”
“I won’t,” Kate assured her, but the phone had already gone dead.
The building that housed the temporary residence for abused women and their children might have been chosen by the same eye that picked out the Lomax law offices. It, too, was anonymously like its neighbors, in a street busy enough that a few more cars would go unremarked but not so filled with traffic that a stranger would go unnoticed. Its hedges were trimmed back, the walkway had strong lights, the front door was solid and fitted with a sturdy dead bolt lock, and the glass on the ground floor was shatterproof, just in case.
The woman who opened to Kate’s knock was enough like Carla Lomax in stature and the color of her skin and hair that Kate knew it had to be the lawyer’s cousin, but whether or not the two women had once resembled each other could no longer be determined, for the face this woman wore was not the one she had been born with. Her nose had been comprehensively flattened and badly reset, a scar bisected her left eyebrow, and the two halves of her lower face were asymmetrical. Long ago something had bashed her face in, breaking her jawbone, knocking out teeth, and leaving her with the rasping voice Kate had heard on the telephone. Put together with her chosen employment as director of a women’s shelter, it seemed unlikely that an industrial accident or car crash had been responsible for so brutally rearranging her features.
Kate put out her hand instead of her badge, and after a brief hesitation, the woman took it. Once inside the door Kate flipped out her identification. Diana Lomax glanced at it, then led Kate toward the back of the house.
“We had six women in residence on Monday night,” she told Kate without preliminary, speaking over her shoulder. “Four of them are still here. Of the two who left, one went back to her husband, down near Salinas, the other—but of course you know about Emily.”
The walls of the narrow hallway they had been passing through were broken by four doors, all closed, each with its own hand-lettered sign: chapel and office on the right two, meeting room followed by training on the left. At the back of the house the hall opened up into a light, cheerful room the width of the house, a combination kitchen and dining room that was obviously the center of the shelter. Half a dozen children sat at a table along one wall with homework or crayons, washed in the sweet light of the low, late-afternoon sun, while three women were preparing a meal at the counter space under a window at the back and two adolescent girls laid plates and silverware at another table. Kate’s stomach growled at the scents of dinner.
Diana went over to where the women were working and spoke quietly to a woman chopping tomatoes. The woman looked up at Kate, her face going pinched with a deep-rooted, habitual fear. Diana rested her hand on the woman’s arm and said something else. The woman nodded, dried her hands, and followed in Diana’s comforting shadow.
Going back through the central hallway, Diana opened the door marked office, standing back to encourage her charge to go in, and let Kate bring up the rear. Kate was not surprised to find Carla Lomax already sitting in the room, dressed in a gray-blue suit and looking every inch the lawyer.
“Crystal,” Diana said, “this is Kate Martinelli. She’s with the police department, and she’s looking into a death that took place Monday night. It’s nothing to do with you, and you don’t have to talk with her if you’re not comfortable with it, but she would appreciate it if you could help her with a few questions. Kate, this is Crystal Navarro.”
Kate wondered if the director spoke to all the residents as if they were rather slow children, or if Crystal was simply a bit stupid. Perhaps she’d better keep her own words basic, just in case.
“Hello, Crystal, good to meet you. Sorry to interrupt your dinner. This’ll only take a few minutes.”
Crystal did not respond, except to hunch her head more deeply between her shoulders.
“Let’s sit down,” Kate suggested. Crystal looked less like a threatened turtle when she was seated, but her thin hands began twisting each other, over and over.
“There was a meeting here Monday night, Crystal. A group therapy session, do you remember?” The woman nodded. “Do you know what time it ended?”
Crystal shot a glance at Diana Lomax, then at Carla, to see if this might be a trick question. When neither of them reacted, she sat up a little straighter and said, addressing her hands, “ ‘Bout nine.” The words were said with a strong Southern twang.
“Do you remember who was here?”
Again the nervous consultation, and again she spoke to her twisting fingers, frowning slightly. “There was about ten of us, I think. Me and Tina, Joanne, Emily, Carmelita, and Sunny. Then there was you two.” Her gaze came up to touch on the Lomax cousins. “And Roz, of course. And I think Phoebe might’ve been here, but I’m not sure. And wasn’t there someone else? Oh, right, Nikki was here for a while and then she had to go.”
Without drawing attention to the notebook in her hands, Kate made surreptitious note of the names while asking the next question; she would ask Diana about them later.
“What were you talking about?”
“Just stuff, you know? I told ‘em about looking for a job—I’m a dental assistant, or I used to be, once ’pon a time. And the others talked about this ‘n that. Like, Tina’s boy was acting up in school, and somepin’ he said to her sounded just like it might’ve come out of his daddy’s mouth and she was all in a bother, thinkin‘ that he was gonna come out like his daddy, and she didn’t know if she wanted to shoot herself or shoot him. And then somebody said somepin’ about just tyin‘ him up with duck tape and everbody laughed and joked for a while. You know, about them Ladies who’re goin’ around duck-tapin‘ naked guys to phone poles and stuff?” Kate nodded to indicate that she knew who the Ladies were, and that the joke was getting a bit tired. “Well, anyway. And then Emily talked a whole bunch—I remember that, ”cause it was the first time she’d said more’n two words. And Joanne. She was having problems with her ADC checks.“
“What did Emily talk about?”
“Her husband. He sounds a real shit house, pardon my French, but she said she was thinkin‘ about giving him another chance. Stupid, really stupid.”
“Was it?”
“Oh, God.” Crystal went so far as to raise her eyes to Kate for a moment. “I mean, look. One thing we know
