After a minute, to her relief, Hawkin nodded his head in agreement. They had been on the road for eighteen hours, since the San Jose people had made the connection between their hospitalized pedophile and the SFPD’s dead bodies, and Kate for one knew that her day was not over yet.
“That car was rented out to Jane Larsen at around ten a.m.,” Al noted. “We might find the same staff on duty that time tomorrow.”
“How ‘bout
“More driving for you—you could just drop me at the Hall, I’d use an unmarked.”
“It’s only twenty minutes to your place, Al, and not much farther in the morning.”
“Then I accept. Might even see Jani today, awake.”
The apartment Al shared with Jani, a professor of medieval history, and her teenaged daughter, Jules, was north of Jani’s work and south of his. Kate and he talked mostly about Jules on the short drive there, about her brilliance and her resilience in recovering from the traumatic experiences she had been through over the winter.
“I finally managed to call her the other day,” Kate told him. “It was good to talk to her. I told her we’d go bowling in a week or two.”
“She’d like that. She misses you. You know, the other day she told me she was thinking of writing to that bastard in prison. She didn’t say anything to you about it, did she?”
“God, no, she didn’t. She isn’t serious, is she?”
“ ‘Fraid so. She thought it might, and I quote, ”aid the healing process.“ I don’t know if she’s insane or incredibly well balanced.”
“Lee would tell you that at a certain point, the two are the same.”
“Thanks a ton. Meanwhile, what do I tell Jules?”
“Oh no, I’m not going to touch that one. You’re the dad here.” And then, for the first time and tentatively, she told him about Lee’s decision. “Lee wants to try for a child. She has an appointment at the clinic in a couple of weeks.”
“Hey,” Hawkin said warmly. “That’s great. Really great news.”
“Not news yet, just an intention, and if you’d keep it to yourself.” You’d think she’d get used to the invasions of the world into her private life, Kate thought to herself, but sometimes it felt like living in a house with glass walls, and all the world outside with rocks in hand.
“Sure. Can I tell Jani?”
“Of course—but let’s have Jules out of the loop for a while, okay? We can tell her when there’s something to tell.”
“I hope it all goes smoothly. Give Lee my best, would you?”
“God—I nearly forgot. Would you dial a number for me?”
Lee was still at Roz and Maj’s house, and sounded relieved to hear from her. Whatever the crisis was, Lee was already tired of it and glad of an excuse to leave. Kate told her she’d be there within forty minutes.
“I think Roz is off on one of her campaigns,” Kate told Al in explanation. “She gets involved in some cause or another and everything gets thrown up into the air until she loses interest. It’s kind of hard on Maj.”
“What is it this time? Handicapped parking permits for the meals-on-wheels delivery folk? City investments in anti-gay corporations?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
“Well, I hope you get some sleep. See you at nine? We can get some coffee on our way to the car place.”
“Jani still can’t stand the smell, huh?”
“You notice I didn’t have any tonight—I don’t like sleeping on the couch.”
Kate hoped this was not a sign of things to come.
She dropped Al off, made a U-turn in the quiet night street, and headed back north. When she pulled up in front of Roz and Maj’s house, the red Jeep was not on the street, and when Maj opened the door it was obvious that she’d been crying earlier in the evening. She seemed calm now, and so Kate ruthlessly extracted Lee from the troubled house; in truth, Maj seemed nearly as relieved at her departure as Lee was herself.
Kate settled Lee in the passenger seat, tossed the cuffed crutches over the back, and drove briskly away before Roz could arrive and precipitate them all back into the crisis. Lee drew a deep breath, blew it out with feeling, and let her head drop back against the headrest.
“Might be easier if you could charge them by the hour,” Kate offered by way of sympathetic opener.
“I love Roz,” Lee said tiredly, “but the woman can be a fucking maniac.
First Al, now Lee—two people who never cursed letting fly with easy obscenity, and both in the same day. A third one and San Francisco might well slip into the sea.
“What’s Roz got in her teeth now?”
“It’s that Indian girl again, Pramilla Mehta,” Lee said. “Roz has decided to link up in solidarity with a group in India that’s working to expose dowry deaths for what they are.”
Kate dragged her thoughts away from San Jose and back to the larger picture. “But I thought she was convinced that Laxman Mehta killed her? What can she do about him? He’s dead—our problem now, not hers.”
“She thinks the family encouraged him, maybe even drove him to it.”
“Christ. So what is she going to do?”
“Big picket lines in front of his company, and the city is looking into the contracts it has with him, thinking of canceling.”
“Well, that certainly sounds like Roz.”
“They’re also putting together a public memorial service for Pramilla.”
“Who is they?”
“I swear, Roz has half the organizations in Northern California involved. This is going to be big. Huge. And, I’m afraid, divisive. There’s a large Indian community in the Bay Area, and they’re all going to feel targeted, even those who have nothing to do with dowries. You know how it goes with ethnic groups, they all get jumbled together in the popular mind. Anyone wearing a turban is a follower of the Ayatollah; anyone with an Arab name sides with Saddam.”
“I know. But I’m sorry, babe, this all sounds like business as usual for Roz. Why is Maj so upset about it this time?”
“A combination of things. Maj’s not feeling very well, and the pregnancy is interfering with her own work. And the timing is bad, coming just when her work is going through a demanding phase, and Roz had promised to be more available for Mina. Plus that, Roz’s church is making noises about cutting back her funding—they say they’re paying her to be a parish priest, not a political organizer, and the congregation is being neglected. So there’s that worry as well. But I think what has Maj so concerned is the degree of Roz’s involvement. For some reason this girl’s killing has pulled all of Roz’s levers at once, and it’s making her a little crazy. That’s not a diagnosis, by the way,” Lee added, in a welcome breath of humor. “She’s out to make Pramilla Mehta a saint and a martyr, or at least a household name, and you know how good she is at playing the media game.”
Kate agreed: Roz was an artist at manipulating the media.
“But it takes a massive jolt of energy to get the PR wheels going, so she’s pulled out all the stops. Statements issued, photo ops, interviews on national television, in and out of the mayor’s office and the supervisors‘, phone calls to the governor and any senators she can get through to. The president has heard of her, and Oprah is interested.”
“So she’s running on empty, no food or sleep, and Maj is waiting for the crash.”
“You know, it really is an addiction, this kind of righteous campaign. When it ends, as it has to, the drop-off is a steep one.”
They had seen it before, but Maj had to live with it, and would be picking up the pieces at a time when she would be ill equipped to do so.
“Is there anything you can do?” Kate asked.
“Not really. You know Roz. If you try to shake some sense into her, it just makes you the enemy.”
“Hard on Maj.”
“Yes. And Mina is confused, too. But enough—it won’t help anyone if you and I get sucked in. What happened with your day?”
