The Blue Hour

Seven

By early morning the next day, both ATM searches had come up empty. Hess wasn’t surprised because this guy didn’t seem to have money on his mind. Other than the cash in the purses, which was gone of course. But even that could be used to establish special circumstances for the death penalty, if things got that far.

The soil percolation test wasn’t finished, so Hess helped Ike examine the antitheft systems of the Kane and Jillson cars. In Janet Kane’s car there was no alarm at all. A sticker on the inside of each rear window proclaimed the car was protected by “Electronic Engine Lock and Radio.” All it meant was you couldn’t drive the car away without the key, or if you pulled out the radio it wouldn’t work again without entering a code. You could smash out a window and climb in without setting anything off.

The Jillson Infiniti was another story. It had a keyless entry and a loud horn that went off if the door handles were pulled. The alarm worked well and hadn’t been physically tampered with, unless someone had taken the time to replace the cut wires, which would have to be replaced or repaired before the ignition would work again. There was no reason to do that, then abandon the car.

Ike held up a small component bristling with pins and connectors. He was bright eyed and his thin blond hair fell onto his forehead like a boy’s. Hess wished he was Ike’s age again.

“This is the wiring harness and the logic module from the Q, sir. There’s a deactivate switch right here — yellow wire to pin five. That’s the positive input disarm wire for the keyless entry. The brown pin is driver door, the gray is passenger doors, the black is ground.”

“And?”

“The unit is working perfectly. Relays, switches, resistors, perfect. Which means a couple of things. One, he could have gotten her key, opened the locks, then got it back to her before she got in her car. Easy enough for a parking valet to do — but he wouldn’t need a Slim Jim to get in, then, so why the scratches on the windows? Good call on that, by the way. It’s low tech, so no one thinks of it anymore.”

“I’m low tech, too.”

“I’m glad you are. So, easy for a valet, but not so easy for anybody else. Or, he could have bought a spare keyless unit to fit her car — but that means he’d have to have her picked out way in advance. See, this system is awfully hard to beat. It’s designed to defeat the old code grabbers, keep them from grinding their own keys from the vehicle identification or serial numbers. This has got rolling codes that change every time the key is used. If he had his own keyless unit, I don’t understand why he would deactivate the alarm but not open the doors. I don’t understand why one and not the other.”

Hess nodded and didn’t understand either. “Then he must not have had a keyless entry device. Not one that was working.”

Ike shrugged. “Well, he didn’t override the alarm mechanically — the good thieves can pop the hood and cut the system before it sounds more than once or twice. They usually work in pairs. But that’s messy and there’s no sign of forced entry at all, other than the Slim Jim abrasions. This guy beat the alarm system electronically, then used the Slim Jim. That would be his only chance, out in a mall parking lot. People around, security. Two things cancel all our bets, though: if she never turned on the security system. Or if she knew him.”

Hess sighed. His vision blurred for just a second, then sharpened again. “Amazing what people forget to do.”

“Amen to that.”

Hess had already cross-checked the Jillson and Kane lists. Both were still growing, but so far, no friends in common. No shared business associates, retailers or service companies except for gas and electric. They belonged to no common organizations unless you counted the auto club, which had millions of members in the state. But he understood that the observers of a person’s life can be many and easily overlooked. And that finding the shared point could be very difficult. He needed to stand in the middle of Lael Jillson and Janet Kane’s lives and look out from there. See what he could see.

“We’re looking,” he said. “Could he make his own? Some kind of universal override device? Something that would work on a lot of different makes and models?”

Ike’s eyebrows and shoulders raised and lowered. “The creeps are always finding a way. That’s what creeps do. You’d have to be pretty darned good with this kind of stuff.”

Ike set the module on the floor, straightened and snapped his head left to get the hair off his face. “I’ll work the interiors again for the usual evidence, Lieutenant.”

“Hit the space behind the driver’s seat extra hard.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hess looked at Janet Kane’s disassembled BMW.

“Lieutenant Hess? I just want to wish you all the good luck in the world, with what you’re going through. It’s good to have a low-tech guy around.”

Hess smiled. The chemotherapy made his lips feel too small and his teeth feel huge.

“Thanks, Ike. It’s good to be around.”

He parked in front of Janet Kane’s Laguna Beach cottage. It was slat construction circa 1930 and painted white with gray trim. There was a shaded front porch with beds of flowers in front of it. Two adirondack chairs by the door. The garden hose was coiled on a crank stand and ended with a sprinkler spiked into the ground. The walkway across the lawn was bordered by river rocks with purple lobelia and white alyssum sprouting up between them.

Hess took the two missing persons files and got out. The air smelled of flowers. On the way up the steps he stopped and looked down at the flower beds. They were dry and dying in the warm August sun. He turned on the water and collected the mail before letting himself into the house.

Inside he confronted the personal surroundings of Janet Kane. Hardwood floors and pale green walk. Rich-looking red French furniture with curvy legs, but not a lot of it. Paintings, sculptures, stacks of art books on the shelves. A red plastic TV with a seven-inch screen. The kitchen was small but light, with big squares of alternating white-and-black tile, just like his. Hess noted that there was a painting in the kitchen of her living room and a painting in the living room of her kitchen. Her file said she was a sales representative for a New York publisher of art books.

He pushed the message button on her answering machine and turned up the volume all the way:

It angered Hess that whoever had taken Janet Kane out to the Ortega probably had no idea that she was artistic and joyful and a little bit unconventional. He probably knew nothing about her except the way she looked. He probably didn’t know her name until late in the process. Hess looked at her picture in a frame on the bookshelf — Janet Kane and two girlfriends about her age standing three across at a party of some kind. An art opening, Hess speculated, a reception. She was in the middle. She would be the brave one of her group, Hess thought, the one quick to laugh, chide, take a stand or take a chance.

The bedroom smelled of woman. It remained cool and i dark at the back of the house with the shades drawn. Her bed was unmade and there was a coffee cup on the nightstand by the clock. Something on the ceiling caught his eye. Hess turned on the light, then turned it off. To the ceiling plaster Janet Kane had affixed luminescent stars of plastic, the kind made for children’s rooms. Children, he thought, or anyone who had a sense of humor left.

Rayborn had interviewed Pete Carter. According to her notes he was saddened, shocked and not to be suspected. He’d claimed to have been out in local bars the night she died and Rayborn had already confirmed it. He was a popular guy — people here knew him. Hess heard sincerity in his voice — maybe a little too much of it, maybe that’s why she hadn’t called him back to begin with.

Hess turned on the light again, then sat on the bed and looked through Janet Kane’s mail. Bills. Junk. Invites to art events. A card-sized envelope with a return address for “P. Carter” scribbled on the back. He remembered from Rayborn’s notes that Kane’s mother and father had arrived here the day after the missing person report was filed by Kane’s friend, Sue Herlihy. Kane owned the home. Hess wondered idly if she was interstate but assumed that either way, her folks would be around for a few more days.

A pea-sized part of my brain says they still might be alive.

Hess tried hard to think of a way this might be possible. He couldn’t reconcile the amount of blood he saw under the oak tree with the continuation of human life. But maybe the crime lab would come up with different results in the saturation test. The Jillson site was too old for a reliable estimate. The Kane site would be their gold standard.

Hess slid open the closet. A soft puff of perfume and leather. Half her clothes were still wrapped in plastic from the cleaners. Suits and trousers, dress blouses and casual ones. Lots of blue jeans. Toward the back was a black leather bodice of some kind, with big stainless zippers. There was a hanging shoe rack with each compartment occupied. A hamper held the things you would wash at home. In the bathroom he found her prescription medicine: an outdated antibiotic for cough and some ointment for a rash. He looked in the shower at her soaps and hair care products. Under the sink he found the bulk-sized bottles she refilled them with. Frugal, he thought. Organized. Efficient. Good at living alone.

End of messages.

He found her banking statements and canceled checks in a cardboard file in the spare bedroom. It was more or less an office, with a bed for guests. Her checking account had just over $3,000 in it. A savings account had $15,500 and her KEOGH was just over $65,000. Doing all right, he thought, especially for thirty-two. Living well. Drinking Brunello. Saving some. Friends. Good job. Going to the mall late for a new CD and makeup remover.

He went through her cleared checks and wrote down the names of the garage where she took her car, all service people — hair stylist, landscape maintenance, plumber — and a few others that caught his eye for reasons he neither understood nor questioned.

Hess read the Macy’s shoe clerk’s description of Janet Kane as she left his store, the last known person to see her alive: “Average height and weight, dark hair worn up, a black skirt and white blouse and two-inch heels.” He would know the height of the heels, wouldn’t he? That was 8:43 P.M. She was dressed nicely. She was alone. The clerk saw a thousand women walk through his store that night but he identified her from a picture.

He found a description of Lael Jillson supplied by her husband, who had been at home with the children when Lael went to South Coast Plaza for hosiery. She had been wearing a blue woolen dress from Nordstrom. White shoes and the white purse. Hair up in a white plastic clip, a white woolen jacket with her but not on her when she got in the car.

Her hair was up, too, thought Hess.

He replaced the bills and checks and put the accordion file back where he’d found it. He put her mail on the kitchen table, beside a stack of Publishers Weekly and a black-and- white ceramic cow creamer, a cow sugar bowl and cow salt and pepper shakers.

Kitsch.

Art.

Bulk beauty aids.

High heels and her hair up.

Hess went into the living room and sat down on the big red sofa. He put his head in his hands and thought about Janet Kane, then dozed a moment, then thought about Janet Kane again. The fact that she had black-and-white checked linoleum made him feel irrationally bad.

For a moment he thought about himself, picturing the dead cells dying, the good ones multiplying by the millions. The doctor had said he was in a battle for his life and that’s how it felt.

A few minutes later he got up and locked the door behind him. He turned off the garden water and walked past the white and purple flowers to his car.

“We were closing,” said the Macy’s men’s shoes clerk. His name was Drew Allen and he was twenty-two years old, a student at a local junior college. “And I’d pretty much finished up, just had to run the vacuum. She came down the center of the store there, because it leads to the exit. She was just beautiful. A beautiful face. She looked over and she knew I was watching her and she smiled. That doesn’t happen much. Most women catch you looking they don’t like it. Anyway, when someone that beautiful smiles at you, you remember. At least I remember. I looked at my watch and it was exactly 8:43. Tuesday. You make kind of an event out of some things. On a job like this. I remember thinking I’d watch that walkway at 8:42 every night from then on out. I started dreaming up ways to find out if she was married, maybe ask her out, but I couldn’t come up with anything good. No point in that now, right?”

No suspicious men.

Nothing unusual.

Except for Janet Kane, just another boring night.

Robbie Jillson answered the door in shorts and a T-shirt and acknowledged Hess with a tired nod. He was a handsome young man with a surfer’s bowlish haircut and the first touches of gray appearing just above his sideburns. Hess noted the big knots built up on the tops of his feet by years of lying on a surfboard. Part owner of a beachwear company, Hess remembered, “Pure Risk” or “Risk All” or something like that. Had the brains to leave his wife’s car undisturbed because he knew she’d been taken.

“The kids are at camp until six,” he said.

Hess was pleased but not surprised that Robbie Jillson had gotten together the things he’d asked him to. Robbie showed him into the library. It had a view of the hillsides to the east. There were high bookshelves with ladders to get to them and a very large burnished desk. On the desk were pictures of Robbie and Lael Jillson and their children. It was the prettiest family Hess had ever seen. He thought they were just the kind of people you’d expect to find in this house. It was a good family until the mother got careless and thought she could go shopping alone.

Robbie brought Hess a fruit drink and closed the door behind him. Hess could feel the waft of the air conditioner on his scalp, and the drink made his teeth feel like they were being squeezed. He ran through the cleared checks and listed the same kinds of parties he’d listed in Janet Kane’s house. He’d hoped for some connection between the two cars, but there was none he could find. Nothing popped. There was an overlap in bottled water service — Mountain High Springs — but a call to the company confirmed that the delivery routes were different. Yes, Hess elicited from the district delivery manager, it was possible that a fill-in driver could have delivered at both residences. Yes, all new drivers started as fill-ins, to get experience. But the manager said it was impossible to check back for a year, even six months, because every quarter the weekly route schedules went back to corporate. Hess would have to take it up with them and she gave him the number. He thanked her because patience was the linchpin of any investigation and of Hess’s soul.

He was surprised to find Lael Jillson’s diary included in the box full of personal, medical and financial information that he had requested. There was a gummed yellow tag on it that said, “I’ve never looked at this, but you can if it will help — RJ.”

He opened to the last entry and read in Lael’s graceful hand:

Hess closed the book and tapped his thick fingers on the leather cover. His desire for a cigarette was suddenly strong, but he’d had to stop them when they took out the upper two-thirds of his lung. The first two weeks without the smokes had been almost intolerable but he’d been pretty much alone so he hadn’t taken it out on anyone. Every time he wanted a smoke he touched the scar running from the back of his shoulder to the bottom of his ribs. Fifty years of cigarettes were enough — Hess had started when he was fifteen because his older brothers did. He knew that if he’d stopped thirty years ago it might have saved him some considerable pain and maybe some years of life, but there was no profit in this knowledge, no one to pass it along to.

Hess felt the scar through his shirt and looked at Lael Jillson’s picture in front of him. He saw her hanging upside down from a rope slung over the branch of the Ortega oak. He saw the slow twist of her body. At first her arms dangled down, then he saw them tied up behind the small of her back. He saw the blood running from her neck and pooling on the ground. Hess wondered if they had been chosen with their hair up to save someone the trouble of doing it himself. No, he wanted these particular women more than that He wanted them very badly. The hair up meant something else. Hess saw a similar scene with Janet Kane. He saw the scenes again.

Terrible sights. Hess had learned to forgive himself for them. Sometimes it made him sad to know he was like this. It was part of what made him good at what he did — the detective’s version of the athlete’s positive imaging. But he never got to see home runs or three-pointers. And he could never unimagine what he saw. The memory was part of the price he paid for a skill he had purposefully worked to develop, a useful part of his portfolio.

In the larger sense Hess believed that most of life’s givens were just that — given. He had yet to meet a man who had created himself, and this is why he thought he understood the nature of evil.

Robbie showed Hess into his bedroom. It was half the upper floor, with magnificent views to the west and south. The wall opposite the windows was mirrored glass, which offered the same view, inverted. Hess saw Catalina Island far offshore caught on Robbie Jillson’s wall.

“You want to know her, don’t you?” asked Robbie. “But I can’t contain her for you. I can’t, like, present her in a few words or with a few pictures and give you an idea of what she is.”

Is, thought Hess: her husband still hasn’t accepted it. Hess supposed that if he were in Robbie Jillson’s position he wouldn’t either. He would love to be wrong about her and Janet Kane.

They stood outside on a deck off the bedroom. Hess felt the afternoon breeze in his bones.

“I’m trying to see how your wife’s life might overlap with the Laguna woman. Janet Kane. Why they were chosen.”

“It’s because they’re beautiful.”

“How, specifically?”

“Her face. Her posture.”

“What about insider?”

“Her happiness. She... was a happy person, and it showed. She was a happy woman, Lieutenant. I mean I was really lucky. She was like that when I met her. It’s just the way she... was. She loved her life, and if you were around her it made you appreciate your life, too. She always knew it would end, though. She wasn’t shallow or stupid. But she wasn’t morbid and she wasn’t cynical and she didn’t look for the dark side of things. If there was something good or joyful to be found, she’d find it.”

Hess thought about this. He watched Robbie looking out the window. Six months and the man still couldn’t decide whether to speak of his wife in the past or present tense. It was the uncertainty that broke people down, he thought, and he’d seen it happen a lot. When you had a body you had the end, and people could work with endings. But without a body all you have is a mystery that eats the soul like acid.

Jillson turned and looked at Hess. The expression on his face didn’t match the face — it was like a guy in a surfboard ad ready to shoot somebody.

“I smelled him.”

Hess’s heart seemed to speed up a beat.

“I didn’t tell the other cops because the other cops didn’t ask. Some guy named Kemp? He’s the reason some people hate cops. Anyway, Lael disappeared on a Thursday night. Friday morning her car was found and towed I was called to get it out of hock. When I let myself in to drive it away, I could smell him.”

“And?”

“Faint. Cologne or aftershave maybe. Real faint. But I smelled him. If I ever see him I’ll kill him.”

Hess nodded. There wasn’t much you could say to that, except to be practical. “I’d like to, too. But don’t. You wouldn’t like prison very much.”

“It would be worth it, just to punch a few holes in his face with my magnum.”

“It’s a better thing to dream about than do.”

Hess looked out to the west. There were other mansions, acres of rolling yellow foothills, clean asphalt roads and the sharp blue Pacific rising up to the sky. Robbie was still stuck in paradise, his Eve departed.

Hess could say it wasn’t fair but he’d already said it a million times in his life. In spite of its truth, the idea counted far less than it should.