Miranda shuddered. She phoned the medical examiner’s office and asked for Ellen Ravenscroft.
“I enjoyed the report,” she said. “Nice prose style; a touch ornate.”
“Which report would that be, love?”
“The Sahara Desert. That was good.”
“It was a particularly trying job. Onerous, very onerous. Have you ever been to Guanahuato?”
“Where?”
“Guanahuato. It’s in Mexico. No, I don’t suppose you have.”
Miranda wondered why she had called.
“They put bodies on display in the Museo de los Mommias. There’s a natural mummifying effect from the sand where the townspeople bury their dead. If no one pays the cemetery fees, after ten years the bodies are disinterred. The interesting ones go into the museum, the others are tossed out. It’s electrifying, walking among them.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Curiosity, love — about the poor sods who maintain the exhibit. Can you imagine working there? Like being a coroner’s apprentice without the autopsies. I’m not much interested in a replenishing stock of dried-out corpses scavenged from reusable graves, despite my choice of professions, but when I was prying through the insides of your closeted lovers I couldn’t help thinking about the state-employed ghouls of Guanahuato. You should visit sometime. They have an annual Cervantes festival.”
“They weren’t lovers.”
“No, I expect they weren’t. We found traces of mould on the male’s skin. He’d been processed and placed on hold for a while before she came along. The poor thing had none on her at all, so they were probably encrypted as soon as she was prepared. Anyway, love, as I was working I recalled Guanahuato, bodies arranged for morbid amusement. It’s a form of play, Miranda. Playing with the dead. Your killer is a fatalist with a warped appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition. Let’s make death perform — it performs. You’re looking for someone utterly lacking in empathy, someone who has an impoverished emotional life, inflexible religious beliefs, or none at all, and a fecund imagination.”
“Thank you, Detective Inspector Ravenscroft. And the Sahara?”
“That was for colour. Guanahuato wouldn’t have worked. You know why? I’ll tell you why. Neither of your lovers was dead before the process of mummification began!”
“Oh, Christ!”
“A killer with a mind like the mind of God. You know the fall from Eden is all about making us live out our lives, knowing we’re dying from the moment of conception. Not that I believe all that. Not the religious part. I’d say your murders are virtually incomprehensible from a mortal perspective. But so is life.” She paused. “Medical examiners carry on conversations with the dead, you know. We’re filled with deep thoughts. Let’s get together. I hear Morgan’s deserted you.”
“He’ll be back next week. I’ll call.”
“Do.”
“Bye.”
Miranda had no intention of calling, and Ellen Ravenscroft had no expectation that she would. Somehow, Morgan as an issue of playful contention between them had opened a minor rift. It was not so much that Miranda wanted Morgan as her lover — she was pretty sure she did not. But she did not want the medical examiner to have him, either. Miranda at her desk was an uncommon sight. Superintendent Alex Rufalo noted her presence, looked at his watch, and chortled to himself. With Morgan away, she was spending more visible time in the office. Usually the two of them were off by themselves — freelancing, he called it; working the field. You never knew when they might turn up, day or night.
Aware of being watched, Miranda caught Rufalo’s eye and smiled with what she imagined was non-invasive congeniality. She didn’t want to pry but she wanted him to know she was there, if he needed her. Nurturing be damned, she thought, and went back to work. She was reading Morgan’s inspired version of the Hogg’s Hollow murders.
Rachel Naismith leaned against Miranda’s desk, waiting to be noticed. She was in street clothes and carried a small pack or knapsack, as well as a purse. Miranda was intent on Morgan’s account, which he had written up for her benefit as if it were a piece for The New Yorker. Without taking her eyes from the page, she said, “He writes more like Truman Capote than Dashiell Hammett.”
“Are you talking to me?” Rachel responded. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah,” said Miranda, sitting back in her chair. “He’d hate that. He’d much rather be Dashiell Hammett. How long have you been standing there?”
“Awhile. How long did you know I was watching?”
“Awhile. It’s Morgan’s report. He writes really well, but it’s not exactly police-appropriate.”
“You gonna change it? Do you want to go for a drink?”
“Yeah. This’ll wait. The superintendent has other things on his mind.”
“A messed-up marriage.”
“Do you know him?” she said, glancing through Rufalo’s door. “How do you know that?”
“He smiled at me,” said Rachel. “He never smiles at uniformed officers. Not at the women.”
“You’re kidding.”
“So, what I figure, he’s got woman problems, he’s in the wrong, he’s compensating, trying to prove to himself he’s not a chauvinist double-pig.”
“Double?”
“He’s a cop.”
“How sixties. You’re not in uniform now — ”
“So he doesn’t recognize me, which proves my point!”
“It does?”
“He’s a man.”
“He’s a good man. A bit of a prick, but a good man,” she said in a whisper. “His wife’s a lawyer.”
“I heard.”
“So, let’s go for a drink. This case is giving me the creeps.”
“Weird, eh?”
“I feel like I’m in the middle of a play by Samuel Beckett, trying to make out what’s going on in the audience.” She liked that — the turn of phrase, a Morgan-like inversion. She wondered if he was diving.
“I played Estragon in a school production of Waiting for Godot.”
“Some school,” said Miranda.
“Some play. We had a great teacher. She insisted that if you know what the play means, you’ve ruined the play. She’d say things like that. To understand is to misunderstand. She was a superannuated hippy on the verge of retirement. It was funny and sad, and I never knew what the play was about, not even now.”
“The fine line between madness and genius…”
“There’s no line at all. Let’s get outta here.”
When Miranda woke up, Rachel was naked in bed beside her. Without lifting her head, and with only one eye open, Miranda surveyed the situation. They were lying on top of the covers. Rachel was facing her, her head on the other pillow; she opened her eyes and smiled.
“G’morning, Detective.”
Without saying anything, Miranda got up and went into the bathroom. She sat on the toilet with her arms propped on her knees and cradled her head between her hands. She was mildly hungover.
Rachel stood in the doorway, legs akimbo, arms folded beneath her breasts. Miranda looked up, smiled sheepishly. She had never been with a woman.
With calming deliberation, her eyes traced Rachel’s body, starting at the long toes and slowly rising, exploring the deep colour of the woman’s skin, sliding up past her trim ankles, knees, hard thighs, delving into the folds between her legs accentuated by the soft curly fringe of glistening hair, rising over her taunt stomach, her gently articulated ribcage and diaphragm, lingering on the sullen precocity of her small breasts, rising past her collarbone, which gleamed ebony through her skin, up the long neck to her chin, the full lips, the fine broad nose, the deep-set gleaming eyes, her face surrounded by a thick fringe of sleek, black hair. Is this woman my lover, she wondered?
Neither demure nor provocative, Rachel let Miranda survey her body. She said nothing. After a few moments she rose to her toes, lifting her entire form into an alluring and yet innocent pose, and slowly, softly, began to laugh. Miranda glanced away in embarrassment, then looked back, catching the vulnerability and strength in her eyes, and began to laugh herself. Two naked women, one sitting on a toilet, the other holding a statuesque pose. Miranda did not know where to go from there so she began to pee. This took them both to the edge of hysteria.