SEVENTEEN

I DON’T KNOW what temperature the Mr. Coffee brews at, but I decided it was much too high when the first sip burned the inside of my lip. It was only 7:15 in the morning yet I had been awake for hours—hadn’t really gone to sleep, what with images of Amy Lamb’s blood-splattered body filling my head. I had returned to my office early enough to be the first car in my parking lot and spent the dawn retrieving the cassette tape from my safe and typing notes into my hard drive.

I was standing near the Mr. Coffee when the knock came. It was a light knock, almost as if my visitor was afraid I would answer. I swung the door open slowly. Before me stood a woman cradling an open purse in her arms.

“Hello, Louise,” I said. “May I help you?”

“Are we alone, Mr. Taylor?” she asked.

I answered yes.

That’s all she wanted to know. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small semiautomatic handgun. I didn’t wait to determine make or model. I threw the coffee at her and jerked the gun from her hand while she screamed in pain and terror. She dropped the purse, both hands going to her face. My instinct was to punch her. Instead, I pushed her hard into the chair in front of my desk. She nearly tipped it over. I unloaded the gun, a .25 Ruger. All God’s children have guns these days, praise the NRA.

Louise was in pretty rough shape, doubled over in the chair, trying in vain to rub the scald from the hot coffee away. I slipped the gun into my pocket and bent to recover my mug and her purse. Both were sitting in a puddle, about a half-cup’s worth of Cameron’s Colombian Supremo that had missed her face. I’ll have to mop that up later, I decided as I wiped the mug dry and refilled it; the purse could dry itself. I sat behind my desk in front of the woman, who was just beginning to regain her senses.

“I could call the cops and have you arrested for attempted murder or I can shoot you and call it self-defense,” I told her. “Which do you prefer?” From her expression I could tell neither suggestion appealed to her. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t answer so I dumped the contents of her purse on my desk. I rummaged through it, finding a thick paperback entitled Discovering Your Homosexuality: The Joy and the Pain. She gasped when I picked it up and began to thumb through it, stopping at a page with a corner folded down. The chapter headline read “Are You Gay?”

“I am not queer,” she insisted.

What, did my lips move? “I believe the proper term is ‘gay.’”

“I know what the proper term is. I’m not … gay!”

“I really don’t care.” I tossed the book on the pile and said, “Listen, I’ve been treating all this somewhat lightheartedly, mostly because you’re the injured party here. But if you don’t start talking to me real fast …” I picked up my coffee mug. “Things could get a mite nasty.” I took a sip and set the mug back on the desk. The subtlety was not wasted on her. Only, rather than answering my question she asked one of her own.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Amy?” she sobbed.

I lied. “I wanted what information you could give me before your grief confused the facts. I wanted it clean,” I said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she sobbed louder.

And then the truth. “I didn’t want to be the one to break it to you.” It was selfish, I know. I wanted to avoid Louise’s pain and anguish; like a ballplayer who turns his back on a fallen teammate, I just didn’t want to see it. Sometimes I’m a helluva guy.

“I loved her!” she wailed.

“I understand,” I said, glancing down at the paperback.

“No you don’t!” she screamed. “I mean I loved her. No, that’s not what I mean. I mean … Oh God!”

I watched the woman sob into her hands and I might have felt sorry for her, I might have hugged her shoulders and said, “There, there,” except for the gun in my pocket. And except for the words floating back to me, Detective Casper’s words: “When you get five, six gunshots like we have here, you’re talking husband-wife, girlfriend-boyfriend, boyfriend-boyfriend, am I right?” Yeah, he was. The most brutal homicides take place in the closest relationships, and for pure savagery no one can beat homosexuals. With homosexuals you get true crimes of passion—not passion over which TV program to watch or who gets the drumstick or who owes who money—I mean passion as in if-I-can’t-have-you-no-one-can-have-you passion. The real McCoy.

“You and Amy were lovers?” I asked.

The woman shook her head no. Then she shouted, “No!”

Now I really was confused.

“We were roommates,” the woman said between sobs.

“Amy told me.”

“Did she tell you why she left?”

“No,” I admitted and Louise sobbed even deeper and harder.

I took a sip of coffee.

“We were roommates for five months,” Louise said. “Friends.”

“Just friends?”

Louise nodded. “She used to walk barefoot in the house. I must have told her a hundred times to wear shoes. I told her that the oil from the bottom of her feet stains the carpet. She thought I was being silly. That’s the word she used, silly. And after a while, I began to walk barefoot in the house, too. Oh, Mr. Taylor, she brightened my life so much; she meant everything to me. I don’t mean mother-daughter, I mean … I’m not queer—gay, I mean. I’m not. I’ve never been with a woman. Never wanted to be. Never even thought about it. Only, one night, we were drinking wine and listening to CDs. It was a kind of game. We would listen to my music and then we would listen to hers and pretty soon I would be putting on Madonna and she would be listening to Judy Garland, and one night, a Tuesday night, we were drinking wine and listening to music—we were on the couch together and listening to music—and I kissed her. I kissed her on the mouth. It was spontaneous, a spontaneous thing. I wasn’t thinking at all and she was more surprised than anything and I was surprised and I said I was sorry, I said I didn’t know why I did that, I said … That beautiful, sweet child, the look in her eyes … What did I do, Mr. Taylor? What did I do?”

Good question, Louise. What did you do? I finished the coffee and poured another cup while she wept.

“She went to her room and she wouldn’t come out and when she did come out she said she was going to find a place of her own; she said there were no hard feelings and we could still be friends and she was grateful to me for everything I did for her but she had to get a place of her own. And, and she said not to worry. She said she wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s what she said.” Louise was becoming angry now, her voice rising along with her indignation. “That’s what she said to me. Like I had something to hide. I’m not gay, I’m not, I’m not …”

And she probably wasn’t, I decided. You get lonely, you reach out for someone. Sometimes you reach out for the wrong person. Happens all the time. I knew guys who did hard time, they never thought of themselves as gay, would have busted up anyone who accused them. But once they were inside, alone … Ahh, hell, let it go, I told myself. You’re way over your head. I took a sip of coffee. When I finished I asked, “What are you doing here, Louise?”

“I saw the way you looked at her when you two went to dinner, the way she looked when she came back. She was a little girl, damn you!”

“Young, not little.”

“You bastard!” she screamed and then started weeping again. It was getting old, all these tears.

“Quit crying and tell me what you’re doing here!” I yelled. Amazingly, she stopped. Just like that.

“I wanted to punish you.”

“For what?”

She didn’t say.

“Do you think I slept with her?”

Still nothing.

“Did you think I killed her?”

“If it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t have been living alone. If I hadn’t … If I hadn’t … She would have trusted me to take care of her, to protect her.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

Louise shook her head and buried her face in her hands yet again. But at least she didn’t cry.

I didn’t know quite what to do. She could easily have killed Amy, yet somehow I didn’t think so. The St. Paul cops were gathering physical evidence at Amy’s home. If any of it supported a female killer I’d give them Louise’s name and gun. As for now …

“Go away,” I told her.

“What?”

I waved at my office door. “Just go away.”

She stood reluctantly, opened her coffee-stained purse and filled it with her personal belongings scattered on my desktop. She moved in slow motion, watching me, her mouth working like she wanted to say something but couldn’t get the words out. Finally, she shuffled toward my office door and grasped the knob with both hands, the purse tucked under her arm. “I loved her, I really loved her,” she said to the door. And then, “I’m not gay.” The door didn’t reply, so I did.

“No, just lonely,” I said.

Louise opened the door and looked back at me. “Can I have my gun?” she asked.

“No.”

C. C. Monroe was dressed in black: black fitted turtleneck with long sleeves tucked inside black gloves, a long black skirt and high black boots. A black scarf was knotted around her throat. Nothing was exposed except her incredible face, framed in butterscotch.

She was standing under the arch just outside the front door of the St. Paul Police Department, describing beautiful, young Amy Lamb with glowing adjectives while raging in general against the increase in violence directed toward women in general and condemning in particular a male-dominated society where women are thought to be less than human. It was a striking performance, made more so by the tears that welled up in her eyes and fell, seemingly on cue, whenever she delivered those brief phrases most conducive to a TV news sound bite.

Standing behind C. C. and not looking pleased about it was Anne Scalasi. Compared to C. C.’s eloquent outrage, Anne’s quiet descriptions of the department’s investigation—and lack of results—sounded lame and evasive.

Marion Senske was unobtrusive in the background, her eyes moving over the crowd, not looking for anything specific, just seeing.

The cadre of reporters surrounding C. C. and Anne certainly had no interest in me; did not see me hand Martin McGaney an envelope with a rubber band wrapped around it; did not hear me ask McGaney if he had anything on Sherman yet. McGaney, who was preoccupied with his superior’s performance, merely shook his head. I glanced at my watch. It was 9:30. I wondered if Cynthia Grey was hiding Sherman somewhere, waiting for the circus to pull up stakes and move on.

I wanted to speak with C. C., with both her and Marion, but didn’t like my chances, especially with the media looking on. I decided to try another time and was leaving the press conference when I heard a voice hail me. The voice belonged to Kerry Beamon, a crime reporter for the Star Tribune. Beamon was tall and gangly with a long, shaggy beard and a bald spot on the back of his head, like a monk. He wore wire-rimmed glasses on the point of his nose and was dressed like he had just finished cleaning the garage.

“Long time no see,” Beamon told me.

“Too long,” I said, instead of “not long enough.” The man was a pompous bore, but you don’t get information by being sarcastic or patronizing, I don’t care what Robert B. Parker writes. And I’ll say one thing about Kerry Beamon—there was very little that was news to him.

“What are you doing here?” Beamon asked.

“I came by to visit Anne Scalasi,” I answered. “But I see she’s busy. How come you’re not up there? You’re the crime reporter.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t about crime. This is about politics. My paper has a couple of political writers on it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So,” Beamon said, smelling scandal the way a shark smells blood, “you’re here to visit Scalasi.”

“That’s right.”

“You guys are pretty tight.”

“I suppose.”

“Been partners for what?”

“A long time.”

“Until you retired.”

“That’s right.”

“You, ahh, you two have something going on the side?” he asked, winking at me like we shared a secret.

“Get a life, Beamon.”

“No offense, no offense.”

“She’s a happily married woman.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

“What do you hear?”

“I hear she and the old man are on the outs. I hear he’s pissed because she made chief of Homicide and he’s still driving a unit in the Midway.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, that’s what I hear.”

“You’re a rumor monger, Beamon.”

“It’s only a rumor when you whisper it. When you say it out loud it becomes news. Speaking of which …”

Beamon pointed out a good-looking Geraldo Rivera type standing among the reporters, a notebook in his hand, casually asking C. C. if she wasn’t just a little embarrassed for using the murder of an acquaintance to make the political statement that she was tough on crime.

“I am tough on crime,” C. C. Monroe answered. “And yes, I am holding this press conference because I knew and cared about Amy Lamb. That’s the point. We all know women who have been victims of violent crime. Something is seriously wrong with a society in which we all know women who have been assaulted and abused and harassed and raped. A society like that has to be changed. Don’t you agree?”

The reporter didn’t answer. Instead he busied himself by writing in his notebook, pretending not to see the contemptuous grins of his fellow journalists.

“Good for her,” Beamon said.

“Do you support C. C.?” I asked him.

“Naw, I support no one. But that cheesy little shit, I’d love to crush his balls.”

“Who is he?”

“Hersey Sheehan.”

“He’s the guy from the Reporter,” I told Beamon. “The guy who got the goods on the governor and the mayor.”

“Sleazy bastard, he’s making us all look bad, all this sensational shit. The public is pissed something fierce and are they blaming the governor or the mayor? Hell, no. They’re blaming the media. Course, circulation is up.”

“How does he do it?”

“How do any of us do it?” Beamon replied. “Sources.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. But I’d love to have ’em.”

“Guess,” I told Beamon.

“No idea. Little asshole is keeping ’em real tight.”

“C. C. Monroe?” I suggested.

“Naw, I don’t think so.”

“She’s the only one who hasn’t been burned,” I reminded him.

“True, but the sharks are circling.”

“Why?”

“Like you said, she’s the only one left. You want a guess, I think the mayor fed the governor to Sheehan and later the governor gave him the mayor outta revenge.”

“Why Sheehan?”

“He’s out of the mainstream; he doesn’t give a shit where his stories come from.”

“Wouldn’t a legitimate newspaper print the story? Wouldn’t you?”

“Sure. But we would also say where it came from. You don’t go off the record with something like this.”

“And now you say he’s after Monroe?”

“We all are.”

“Is anything there?” I asked.

“What is Monroe? Thirty-two? Thirty-three? You can’t be thirty-three these days without having some kind of past, without doing something stupid—smoking dope in the girls’ lockers, something.”

“Is that news? Do you print something like that?”

“We do now.”