“It’s not superficial, and you’re doing fine. It’s very helpful, especially knowing there was a fool in the woodwork ten or fifteen years ago, even if it’s a different man. Would you like to look into it for me, see if you can find out who he was, or maybe find someone like him?”
“For you, or for the department?”
“I suppose it would be for me. I doubt they’d pay you a consultancy fee, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It isn’t that. I’m just… I don’t know.”
“What is it, sweetheart?” Kate could see that Lee was troubled but couldn’t understand why.
“Oh nothing. No, I guess it is something,” said the therapist. “I just don’t know how I feel about getting involved in another case.”
“Oh God, then don’t, hon.” She took Lee’s hand from the table, kissed it, held it tightly. “I don’t want you to touch any of my cases,-I don’t want them to touch you. The question of who fools are or were is of no earthly importance,- I can’t imagine it has the slightest relevance to the case. This man who calls himself Brother Erasmus, he interests me, that’s all. I don’t know what to make of him and I was curious about what you might know.” She did not add, And I thought it might interest you, give you a project that was challenging but not strenuous. Think again, Kate. The last and only time Lee had been involved with one of her lover’s cases, she’d ended up with a bullet tearing through two of her vertebrae and a multiple murderer dead on her living room floor, ten feet from where they were now sitting. A lack of enthusiasm for future involvement was not only understandable, it was to be encouraged.
“It was a bad idea, hon. Forget it.” She gave Lees hand a squeeze and let it go, but Lee did not immediately resume her meal, and Kate kicked herself for her stupidity.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Lee said slowly. “When I said I don’t know how I feel about it, I meant just that: I don’t know. I think I’m expecting to feel apprehension, but I honestly don’t know if I am. If anything, there’s an absence of emotional overtones, just a vague interest, intellectual almost. Perhaps the apprehension is so strong that I’m blocking it. There’s a degree—What are you laughing at?”
Kate wasn’t laughing, but she was grinning widely. “God, you sound like a therapist, Lee.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I am a therapist.”
“I know,” Kate said, loving her, loving the surge of affection and exasperation and normality that had hit her, and then she really was laughing, and Lee with her. When it had washed on, Lee picked up her fork again and continued where they had left off.
“If it’s just for you, I’d be happy to see what I can do. Jon has the modem up and running, this would be a good exercise in learning how to use it in research.”
“If you want to, if you have the time, I’d appreciate it. But I want it kept on a purely theoretical level. If you find someone, I don’t want you talking to them, even through the computer. I don’t want your identity out there at all. The last thing we want is the press standing in our petunias and looking in our windows, and the case is colorful enough already without you getting involved.”
“Actually, I think Jon dug out the petunias and put in some sweet peas, but I agree. Newspaper reporters know how to use computer nets better than I do. Now, tell me more about this fool of yours.”
Dinner progressed with the story of Erasmus, told as entertainment, with the dark moment of the cremation and the possible confession downplayed and the conversation in the parking lot behind the Hall of Justice omitted altogether.
Jon came into the kitchen just as Kate was putting on the coffee. He raised his eyebrows at the plates in the sink.
“Aren’t you a clever girl, then?” he murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“She hasn’t eaten that much in a month,” he said, and then in a normal volume added, “Well, toodles, ducks, I’ll be seein‘ ya. Dr. Samson has his beeper on, so buzz me if you have to go out. Arrivederci, Leo,” he called.
“Have a good time, Jon,” she called from the living room, and the door opened and shut behind him.
Kate loaded the dishwasher, put the leftovers in the refrigerator, and took the coffee back into the living room. The television was on and Lee was on the sofa, slightly flushed from the effort of clambering from the wheelchair. Kate stood and looked down at her, smiling.
“You look gorgeous,” she said.
“Tamara came today and gave me a cut and a shampoo. You should let her do yours,- she’s pretty good.”
“It’s not your hair. It’s you.”
“Poor Kate, going blind from all the paperwork. Come and sit down for a while. There’s an old Maggie Smith movie on Channel Nine.” Lee had a thing for Maggie Smith.
“The chair’s a better place if you’re going to_ watch TV. You’ll get a stiff neck sitting here.”
“I thought maybe if I sat here I could tempt you away from your paperwork. Then I can lean on you and I won’t get a stiff neck.”
Kate put both cups on the table and obediently inserted herself behind Lee, who leaned into the circle of her left arm. The movie had just started. They drank their coffee. Kate began to find the warm smell of Lee’s curly yellow hair distracting.
“Did your mother pronounce it dabl-ya or day-li-ya?” asked Lee suddenly.
“What?”
“Those hideous flowers,” said Lee, gesturing at the screen with her cup. “English people tend to use three syllables, but I always thought there were two. I should check in the dictionary,” said the scholar.
“Do you want me to go get it for you?” asked Kate, her face buried in Lee’s hair. Her left hand, having migrated from the back of the sofa, was pressed flat against Lee’s stomach, her forefinger bent and gently circling the rim of one of Lee’s buttons.
“Not just now.” Lee slowly finished her coffee. Kate’s was going cold. “Don’t you love it, a woman with bright red hair wearing that color of red? Only Maggie Smith could pull it off.”
“I’m jealous of Maggie Smith,” muttered Kate happily.
They never did see the end of the movie.
Murder cases not solved within two or three days tend to drag on into weeks, and this was no exception. The fourth and fifth days passed without any startling revelations. Kate and Al Hawkin had agreed that Brother Erasmus was not likely to run, so after Thursday’s fruitless question-and-statement session he was handed back his staff and allowed to walk back out into the city of Saint Francis. Kate, rather to her surprise, found herself making a detour from a Sunday morning shopping trip to drive slowly through Golden Gate Park, where eventually she came across Erasmus, dressed like a tramp and walking along the road in the midst of a group of street people. The raggle-taggle congregation might have been from another world compared to the group of his admirers in Berkeley, except for one thing: on these faces was an identical look, a blend of pleasure, awe, and love.
Hawkin saw him once, too, although his sighting was accidental, when he passed Erasmus on his way home from work one afternoon. Erasmus was not wearing his cassock then, either, but a pair of jeans and a multicolored wool jacket. He was sitting in the winter sun on a low brick wall, reading a small green book and eating an ice cream cone.
The millstones of justice continued to grind. Their John Doe’s lab work showed no signs of alcohol, drugs, or even nicotine and indicated that his last meal had been a large piece of beefsteak, green beans, and baked potatoes at least six hours before his death. Death had been due to a blow with a blunt object to the right side of the skull, which, judging from the angle, had been delivered by a right-handed person standing behind the victim as he sat on the stump a few feet from where Harry and Luis had found his body. Death had been by no means instantaneous, although unconsciousness would have been.