Nightlife: A Novel

18

Catherine Hobbes sat at a stainless steel table in the crime lab and watched Toni Baldesar pouring epoxy into a small dish. Toni carefully placed the kitchen knife in the vapor chamber, then lifted the dish of epoxy onto the hot plate, closed the door, and began to heat it. She turned to Catherine. “All we can do is wait and see if the epoxy vapor makes some latent prints show up. If they match the ones I got from the rental agreement, we’ll have her.”

“I don’t think there will be any,” said Catherine. “She’s not careless. She’s got an obsession with cleaning things and wiping off surfaces to be sure she doesn’t leave anything. I don’t see her leaving prints on a murder weapon.”

“I know, but you’d be surprised at how often I get lucky with things like that. They get emotional, and then everything is such a mess, and they have so many things to think about at once. Sometimes I think that a person’s brain just skips over the things that it doesn’t want to think about—especially things that involve getting blood on them or going back to touch the body.”

“Maybe,” said Catherine. She had a blown-up copy of the driver’s license photograph of Tanya Starling on the table in front of her, and while she waited she was using a pencil to fill in the background to make the hair shorter. “And it’s just possible that my theory about her is wrong. Some man may have come looking for her and killed Mary Tilson because she saw his face.”

“I’d rule that out,” said Toni.

“Based on what evidence?”

“Based on no evidence—no evidence that a man has been in that apartment since the day the plumbing was installed,” said Toni. “No prints, no hairs, no shoe marks, nothing.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling people,” said Catherine. “So far I’ve got two of us convinced.”

Toni was staring through the small window in the front of the vapor box at the butcher knife. The epoxy vapor had filled the small chamber. She flipped a switch and an exhaust fan cleared the vapor. She opened the door and examined the knife with a flashlight, then turned it over. “Score one for the pessimists. She wiped the handle clean.”

“What have we got left?” asked Catherine.

Toni looked up at the clock on the wall. “It’s nearly eleven. What I’ve got is a load of laundry and a sink full of dishes waiting at home.”

“I’m sorry,” said Catherine. “I know I kept you here half the night.”

“No,” said Toni. “You didn’t. When we’ve got one that fresh, I always try to squeeze all the information I can out of the trace evidence the first day. Sometimes you find something that helps catch the killer that day, and not just convict him two years later.”

“I know. That’s why I’ve been hanging around.”

Toni carefully poured the warm epoxy back into its jar. “How long have you been a cop?”

“Seven years. Four in homicide.”

“You went through the ranks fast.” She began to sponge off the counters where she had been working.

Catherine shrugged. “It’s a small department and I’m good at taking tests.”

Toni looked at her for a moment. “I’ll bet you are.”

“How long for you?”

“Fifteen years this June. For me, it’s a little different. I see some horrible things, but I don’t have to chase anybody down and drag him off to jail. There’s less stress.” She took off her lab coat and hung it on a hook. “And no fear.”

“Well, thanks for staying late tonight,” said Catherine.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get everything we wanted, but we’ll keep working on it.”

“Thanks to you, we know for certain Nancy Mills is Tanya Starling, and we can place her in the victim’s apartment. That’s plenty for one day.” Catherine folded her picture of Tanya Starling as they walked toward the door.

“Do you need a ride to your hotel?”

“No, thanks,” said Catherine. “I have a rental car.” She stepped out in the hallway and Toni locked the door of the lab. “Good night.”

She went to her car in the police lot and drove through the dark streets toward her hotel. Talking with Toni had made her think back on her first days as a police officer. She had not grown up planning to join the police bureau. She had decided to apply to the academy during the long drive home, away from the wreckage of her life in California. It had been an act of desperation, just grasping for something in her life that made sense and didn’t need an excuse or an explanation. The months in the academy that followed, the grueling physical training and the Spartan discipline that bothered other recruits so much, had been her salvation. At times she thought it had saved her life.

She remembered the first day after she had graduated from the police academy. She reported for work at the police bureau more than an hour early, all dressed in her uniform with her shoes shined and her heavy gear creaking against her leather belt. She had been assigned to the precinct station on the northeast side of the city.

When she walked in the front entrance and approached the desk, a big man with a military haircut and a neck that seemed to overflow from his starched collar stepped in from the side and said, “Hobbes?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Lieutenant Morton. Come with me.”

She followed, watching his broad back swaying from side to side with his rolling gait. He went into his office and closed the door, then glared at her with bloodshot eyes. His face seemed to have some kind of pink, irritated rash on it that she later came to believe was a reaction to contained anger. He said, “Catherine Hobbes.”

“Yes, sir” was all she could think of to say.

“Your father is Lieutenant Frank Hobbes, and your grandfather was the first Frank Hobbes. Is that right?”

She smiled. “Yes.” She felt a moment of pride, and maybe some relief.

“I hate dynasties.” He paused, then narrowed his eyes. “A police force is a government operation, which means that nobody in this town owns any more of it than anybody else. It doesn’t matter whose daughter or granddaughter you are. You are the greenest of green rookies, and you will be treated like all of the others in every respect. You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I never wanted any special privileges.” Her stomach began to sink, and she knew her face was beginning to turn red.

“You are also a woman,” he continued. “I’m very suspicious of that.”

“Of what—that I’m a woman?”

“Being a woman and wanting to be a cop. In this precinct we deal with a lot of street crime. Every day a cop has to go out and drag somebody back here in handcuffs or push somebody around. You coming here and exercising your constitutional right to wear that uniform has grave implications for the rest of the people I put out there. You coming here means to me that you must be assuming that some male cop is going to be willing and able to do his share of the physical stuff and yours too.”

She knew that her face was bright red, but there was nothing she could do about it, and she was not going to retreat. “I’m not—”

“Being Frank Hobbes’s daughter, you cannot pretend that you didn’t know what a cop does. You can’t possibly imagine you’re going to take down some crystal meth monster who’s six feet six and two eighty.”

“No, sir,” she said. “Most of the men in my academy class aren’t up to that either. But any one of us will do our best to help subdue a person like that if the occasion comes up, and to use our brains to be sure it doesn’t come up often.”

He glared at her for two seconds, then smiled, and said. “You are Frank’s girl. Welcome to my shop. Now get to roll call and go to work.”