The suddenly silent crowd seemed to separate and open a corridor through the room and Hunt, standing right beside Lorraine Hess, found himself looking at a very attractive young woman in a plain black dress that hinted at an exquisite body beneath it. She was standing perfectly still with one hand held over her heart. Her eyes were wide in surprise at being thrust into the spotlight by this unexpected reaction, and this, if anything, made her, if possible, even more luminous.
On the other side of Hunt, Al Carter spoke in a matter-of-fact tone-“I’ll get her”-and moved at the same time to escort the young woman, who Hunt immediately knew had to be Alicia Thorpe, out of the room.
The exterior of the 2006 Lincoln Town Car was spotless and shone with a high gloss. The black leather seats, likewise, might as well have been brand-new. The trunk contained a spare tire, but no tire iron or any other tools or debris. It looked as though it had been vacuumed within the past day. All the nonleather internal soft surfaces-dashboard, steering wheel-had recently been wiped down with Armor All, which, as all cops and many miscreants know, does not readily yield fingerprints. Russo and Juhle stood by while the crime scene personnel lifted the front rugs on both sides and found nothing under them. The CSI team had also already shone their flashlights and used their whisk brooms under the nonremovable front seats. The entire exercise had so far yielded one paper clip, nearly hermetically wedged into the seat-belt connector on the driver’s side.
The police impound garage doubled as a maintenance shed for city-issued cars, and looked very much like the service area of any gas station. Russo, on her knees, her own flashlight in hand, watched while crime scene personnel now felt around under the passenger-side track that allowed the seat to move forward and backward. The technician, in her surgical gloves, worked something back and forth gently until it came loose from its perch under the seat. The woman straightened up, cricking her back, held up for their inspection an unopened condom in its wrapper.
“Eureka,” Russo said. “Getting warm now.”
“Oh, yeah.” Juhle’s enthusiasm less than genuine. “That ought to break the case wide open.”
“You wait.”
After she placed the condom in a Ziploc bag, the tech opened the back door of the limo, waited for her partner to do the same on his side, and then the two of them lifted the backseat. Russo turned her flashlight beam to the area under the seat cushion itself and it illuminated what looked like a multicolored rag of some kind scrunched into a ball and caught there.
“What’s that?” Juhle asked.
The tech was extricating it with some care from the springs under the seat. She finally brought it out and held it up by one end so that it fell open and revealed itself as a silk head scarf in reds, yellows, and oranges. But all of it did not fall out; several folds in the silk appeared to be stuck to each other.
The inspectors watched and waited while the technician pulled one of her standard tools-a Wood’s lamp-out of her kit and shone it on the scarf. Under its ultraviolet light, a smear of characteristic stains appeared as fluorescent.
She made a face and held it out at arm’s length.
“Semen,” she said.
19
Jim Parr got outside, then, noting the weather, immediately went back in and up the stairs to his place to get his heavy peacoat. And so by less than a minute he missed his first chance to catch the N-Judah bus to downtown. As he rounded the corner to the bus stop, he saw it pulling away and took the opportunity to dust off several of his favorite underutilized profanities.
The next bus put him in the thick of the last- minute crowd rushing into the War Memorial building. He was standing in the middle of the crush of humanity at the bottom of the stairs when word traveled down that the Green Room had reached its capacity and that no one else could be admitted. Over the next twenty minutes, those members of the crowd who chose to remain, including Parr, managed to push themselves upstairs, where they got backed into the hallway that led to the doors inside of which the memorial was to take place.
Jostled back and across the entire hallway and now near the entrance to the elevator, Parr had just about decided to call it a day when he saw his old acquaintance and successor Al Carter approaching him, shouldering his way through the mass of people gathered between his spot and the Green Room’s door, his arm protectively around a tearful and perhaps frightened Alicia Thorpe.
“Al!” he called out. “Alicia!”
Carter raised a finger in acknowledgment.
On an impulse, Parr pressed the button for the elevator. When it opened, he stepped back into it and held the door open as a few of the overload of mourners filed in before Carter and Alicia finally made it too.
“Going down?”
“Anywhere,” Carter replied, his arm still around Alicia’s shoulder wrap.
Though she was clearly shaken, Alicia’s hooded expression barely allowed her to nod at Parr before she leaned her head against Carter’s chest. The doors closed in front of them and the elevator began its descent.
On the ground floor, Carter stayed around long enough to exchange a few pleasantries with Parr. Then he turned to Alicia. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’d like to kill Ellen,” she said, “but otherwise…”
“You got a way home?” Carter asked.
“I’m good,” she said. “I drove myself down.”
Parr cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t by any chance be going back my way, would you? Save me another Muni adventure.”
“Sure,” she said. “Done.”
Carter had made sure the guard at the door he’d exited upstairs knew he’d be coming back in. He was certain that he’d be readmitted, so he could afford these moments of pleasantries with Jim and Alicia, but clearly he wanted to get back up. After a few last encouraging words to Alicia, Carter left them both in the lobby and disappeared again into the elevator.
When he was gone, Alicia turned to Parr. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Now they were speed-walking together on Van Ness into the teeth of the misty north wind. Alicia had parked a few blocks away and the walk to her car wasn’t much conducive to conversation.
Once they were both in her car, the doors slammed shut and quickly locked behind them, they sat for another moment in silence, breathing heavily. Alicia fumbled in her purse, found her keys, turned the ignition on, and blasted the heater and then the fan all the way up.
Parr still wore his heavy coat over his dress suit and it had cut the wind and cold to some extent. But Alicia-in her flimsy dress and woolen shawl-hugged herself with her hands up and down on opposite arms and took deep breaths and long exhales until she had gotten herself back to some sort of comfort.
Eventually, she reached out and put her hands on the steering wheel, then gave Parr an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so cold.”
“I’ll forgive you this time. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Just cold.”
“Maybe not just that, huh? What happened back there?”
For an answer, she just shook her head. Her hands gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, her knuckles white. She turned away from Parr to study a green light’s worth of traffic as it passed outside her window. Slamming the car into gear, she released the parking brake, turned the wheel, again checked the traffic.
Then, abruptly, another shudder of cold or something else went through her, and she shifted back into neutral and set the parking brake. She stared into some middle space somewhere out in front of her. “Fucking Ellen Como,” she said.
“What about her?”