Kate drove unhurriedly down Olympic Boulevard toward the city of Santa Monica, sorting through her thoughts amid the ocean-like flow of late night traffic. Faces filtered through her mind: Maggie Schaeffer; Patton; Roland and Flora Quillin. Andrea Ross. And always Dory Quillin.
After Taylor had gone home Kate had remained at the station to check the Records Unit and verify that indeed Dory Quillin had been arrested as a juvenile, one count of prostitution. Then Kate had reviewed the stack of Field Interview cards compiled by Hansen’s officers—interviews with the owners and patrons of the hillside businesses, the staff and guests of the motel. She had learned that fourteen windows of the motel faced onto the parking lot of the Nightwood Bar; guests had occupied nine of those rooms. At approximately six o’clock on a quiet, idyllic Father’s Day evening, the killer of Dory Quillin had been lucky; no one was looking out any window facing the parking lot shared by the Casbah Motel and the Nightwood Bar.
If the F1’s were this useless in providing leads, Kate reflected dourly, there seemed scant promise in the follow-up interviews she and Taylor would conduct in the next few days. Unless the technicians found something highly unusual in the Volkswagen van, Dory Quillin would most likely become a statistic among Los Angeles County’s criminal violence files, a permanent fixture among the city’s uncleared cases. Or perhaps the day would come when some murderous drifter was finally caught here or in some other city, to confess idly, offhandedly, I knocked off a few other people too. A young girl in L.A. back in ’85, with a baseball bat… And the grisly details of another version of Juan Corona or Henry Lee Lucas would splash across the nation’s newspaper headlines.
Kate shrugged impatiently, realizing that she was applying to the Dory Quillin case her own gut theory about uncleared homicides generally—that a significant percentage were committed by anonymous roving monsters, serial killers who drifted from city to city, from state to state, smashing lives without the slightest qualm or remorse for the horrors they perpetrated.
She turned off Olympic and decided that instead of futile pondering of serial killers, she would look forward to the drink she would soon have to end this long day. She pulled into the subterranean garage of her apartment on Montana Avenue wondering why it was that America couldn’t produce a decent scotch of its own.
Switching on the lights of her apartment, she frowned at the open window and the newly formed coat of dust on the furniture. Too much wood in here, she’d bought too much wood—a huge teak coffee table, a desk, a bar, cabinets and bookcases, a magazine rack; even the sofa and the lamps were accented in wood—all of it bought more than a year ago.
Needing no tangible symbols of Anne, knowing she would take Anne with her wherever she lived and for as long as she lived, she had sold without regret all the furniture along with their house in Glendale. But she had bought all this wood out of a compulsion to surround herself with substantiality, with objects that suggested solidity and permanence: Anne’s death had been too much a taking away of the ground from beneath her.
She splashed scotch generously over ice cubes, cleaning up a few drops on the counter with a bar towel, ruefully aware of her neatness. She had lived with Anne for twelve years in comfortable clutter; now she was obsessed with order.
She checked her answering machine; its light was blinking.
Kate dear, this is Ellen. Can we have lunch this week? Stephie and I are going to the Gay Pride parade this Sunday, then we’re off on vacation… Can I see you before then? You’re still everybody’s favorite cop at Modern Office…mine too. Love you, bye Kate…
“Bye, Ellen,” Kate murmured. “I love you too.”
She took off her jacket and tossed it over a chair, resisting the need to hang it in the bedroom closet. Thinking about Ellen O’Neil and the homicide investigation at Modern Office where she had met Ellen more than a year ago, she went back to the refrigerator to add ice cubes to her drink. She swallowed a quantity of scotch, then selected packaged ham and some cheese for a sandwich. The scotch burned down her throat and became spreading warmth.
What had Andrea Ross said tonight about her lack of response to Dory Quillin’s advance? “Right now I need everything about myself for myself.” Five months after Anne’s death she herself had needed no less. But that was when she had met Ellen O’Neil—when she had not had an emotional breadcrumb to offer anyone.
She could hardly regret that meeting, or that needful night when Ellen had sheltered her in her arms. But now I’m coming back to life, she thought, some of the dead places are beginning to regenerate…
Except for the timing of their meeting, Ellen would be waiting for her right now in the quiet dark bedroom down the hall.
Kate took another warming sip of scotch and directed a poisonous thought toward Stephanie Hale. Whatever her opinion of the brittle, self-centered UCLA professor, she had to give her credit: she had fought for Ellen. She had recovered quickly from her astonishment and rage at the threat to a relationship she had deemed safe beyond challenge. She had bought a house to please Ellen, even though the act risked exposure of their relationship to her academic colleagues, even though buying an affordable house meant living in the despised San Fernando Valley. She had even agreed unconditionally to Ellen’s career ambitions.
And Ellen had committed herself to making the renewed relationship work. “I can’t even think about you as an alternative,” she had told Kate in her candid way. “Anne fills up every corner of your life. There isn’t room for anyone else.”
There was no ethical choice, as Kate saw it, but to accept Ellen’s decision, to offer Ellen the caring and loyalty of her friendship. Now they had occasional lunches together, a drink after work—whatever time would permit. There was still a tinder-dry attraction between them, and Kate was aware that they were careful with each other, neither of them wanting to do anything to hurt the other.
That night—how long ago had it been? Almost a year and a half since she had wept in the arms of Ellen O’Neil and then afterward, afterward… There had been no one else since Ellen, no one remotely tempting or even interesting. Until tonight.
She would call Ellen tomorrow, have lunch with her just as soon as she had breathing room in her investigation of the death of Dory Quillin.
Suddenly exhausted, Kate put the food back in the refrigerator and picked up her scotch and walked to her bedroom, her thoughts of Ellen O’Neil fading into the image of Andrea Ross.