The road cleared at a well-lit junction of sweeping concrete roadways, and he looked over at his partner. She was asleep, her full lips curled in some secret amusement. The precise nature of the joke, if joke it was, he could not know, but it made her look very young and wise, and made his own mouth curl into a smile as well. Kate slept for an hour and took the wheel to drive across the lighted bridge into the city. She waited in the car while Hawkin went up to get the DMV photo from the office, and when he came out onto the street she could see from his face that it was even worse than she had anticipated.
"The picture's bad?" she asked as he climbed in.
"In a very good light you can see that he has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and brownish hair. Do you know where Susan Chin lives?"
"Our artist? No."
He gave her an address.
Susan came to the door of her small apartment. She had obviously been in bed when Hawkin called and did not invite them in. She squinted at the photograph and looked at him dubiously.
"You did say it wasn't very good, but this is ridiculous."
"Can you do it?"
"You want me to use this to make a series of sketches, one of which might remind somebody on that Road of one of their neighbors? To extrapolate out from it, intuitively?"
"Exactly. Can you do it?"
"Haven't the faintest," she said cheerfully. "Well, it's an interesting problem. Makes a change from computer-generated IdentiKit drawings."
"Good luck."
They left the young artist standing in her doorway peering at the photo in the light of the bulb over her door. Kate dropped Hawkin off at his house and drove home.
The garage door rattled down behind her. She leaned forward and turned off the ignition, and felt the strength that had kept her moving throughout the long day ebb away into the silent garage. She sat at the wheel and thought about the motions of moving her right arm down to push the button and disengage her seat belt and moving her left arm down to pull the door handle and drawing first her left foot and then her right out and onto the concrete floor and standing up, but somehow sitting and breathing were about all she could manage at the moment.
The sound of a door opening, feet on a wooden staircase, slight scuffs on the slab floor, the click and pull of the car door coming open, Lee's voice, dark and restful.
"Sweet Kate, you look all done in."
"Hello, love. God, it's nice to sit still."
"I started a hot bath when I heard you come in, and the oil's warming for a massage."
"You will kill me with pleasure."
"I do hope not."
A light finger brushed the back of Kate's neck, and then the scuffs and steps retreated upstairs. In a minute Kate followed.
There was a bath that was almost too hot for comfort, and a large mug of something that tasted of chicken and celery, and thick warm towels, and then strong fingers probing at locked muscles and easing the tension from neck and back and legs until Kate lay groaning with the sweet agony of it, and when she was totally limp and the hands had moved on to wide, firm, integrating sweeps, she spoke, halfway to sleep.
"Hawkin asked me tonight if I was a lesbian."
The sweeping hands checked only slightly.
"And what did you say?"
Odd, thought Kate muzzily, how hands can be amused when a voice isn't.
"I told him to ask me again when we knew each other better."
This time Lee laughed outright, and then the towel began to wipe the last of the oil from Kate's skin.
"How utterly un-Californian of you, Kate."
"Wasn't it?"
The hands finished and soft sheets and warm blankets were pulled up to Kate's neck.
"I have some work to do. Give me a shout if you need anything. Now, go to sleep."
"I'll work at it."
Kate's breathing slowed and thickened, and a few minutes later the bed shifted and then the room clicked into darkness. Lee's soft curls formed a halo against the hall light, and she closed the door gently and went downstairs, an expression of fond exasperation on her face.
Several miles away Alonzo Hawkin lay on the sofa in his living room, a glass balanced on his stomach, his eyes on the large, delicate fish that performed their glides and pirouettes for his amusement, his mind on the events and the texture of the day. He was, for once, satisfied.
It was almost magical the way one day's work could on occasion, on very rare occasion, transform a case entirely and bring its whole setting and landscape into focus. That morning—yesterday morning, now—he had walked down the stairs with a huge sheaf of unrelated papers and more questions than he could begin to even ask, and Andrew C. Lewis was just one name in a hundred others. Sixteen hours later he had trudged back up those stairs, bone weary, with two things: a name and a direction. His weariness he bore like a badge of accomplishment, and he felt himself a fortunate man. A break.
The police artist Susan Chin was not the only one he had disturbed that night. First was Chief Walker, from whom he had asked two things: the whereabouts of Andy Lewis's aunt and her family, and further information concerning the reliability of Lewis's alibi the night of the murder eighteen years ago. Hawkin would have preferred to do that himself, but as it was not strictly his case, it would be hard to justify another couple of days up there. Next week, maybe, but not now.
Then he reported in. The man listened, concealed three yawns, grunted approval, and went back to bed.
Then the hospitaclass="underline" no change. Hawkin heard the first prickle of worry in the back of the doctor's voice, but as there was nothing he could do in that department, he pushed the thoughts away and called Trujillo.
That young man sounded older than he had a week before. He confirmed that a guard was now installed next to Vaun's bed instead of in the corridor, with orders not to step outside the door, and not even to close the bathroom door when he needed to use the room's toilet. She was not to be out of his sight.
Trujillo was disappointed that the photo was bad, though not surprised, and agreed to set Susan's drawings up in the main room to guarantee the most contact.
He then told Hawkin that he was not sure how much longer he could keep control. The Road's uneasiness was nearly to the breaking point. He'd had to let two families with children leave during the day (one of the men was black, the other in his late fifties) to take refuge with suburban friends, and the efficient bush telegraph had spread the news clear up to old Peterson's place that Vaun's near death was not being treated as a suicide. Trujillo had spent the day going up and down the Road—Tyler had been forced to suspend the anticar rule—reassuring people and reminding them to inquire first before they let fly with buckshot or bullet. The bedrooms at Tyler's were full tonight with nervous residents (peasants come to the castle during a siege, thought Hawkin with amusement, right down Tyler's alley), and he, Trujillo, would be staying there too. Sharp-nosed newsmen were back to camping outside, and it was only a matter of time…
There had been no immediate response that afternoon to the tattoo inquiry, although only a couple of dozen people had been asked. Hawkin told him in all honesty that he was doing a fine job. The younger man responded to the confidence in Hawkin's voice, and after a few minutes Hawkin told him to go to bed.
After that he went and took a long, mindless shower, wrapped his stocky body in his favorite soft and threadbare kimono, and settled down with a glass.
The time with the Jamesons had proven a gold mine. He now had Vaun Adams; he could now see her walking the halls of that unremarkable high school, an extraordinary teenager with an aura of untouchability and genius to keep the world at bay. And her short liaison with clever, nasty, sophisticated Andy Lewis—even that was not as completely unlikely as it had first seemed.