The Last Place

CHAPTER 22

Tess had taken to sleeping with the case files of Tiffani Gunts and Lucy Fancher, although not intentionally. She crawled into bed each night, intent on reading and rereading the complete files to which she finally had access, only to nod off with the light on. She had done this every night since the trip to Notting Island, and she did it again on this balmy Friday night. The next thing she knew, Crow was kissing her awake, gathering up the photocopies spread around her and placing them in a neat stack on her bedside table.

“How-was-” She groped for the word, her mind blank-“work?”

“It was okay. We brought in the Iguanas for a late Cinco de Mayo celebration. We couldn’t get them for the real thing.”

“Very cool,” she said on a yawn. She adored the Iguanas.

“Yeah, but all these frat boys kept screaming Happy Independence Day.”

“So?”

“It’s not.”

“Well, it’s Mexican Independence Day, Crow. Their independence counts too.”

“It’s not anyone’s independence day.” He stacked her papers, clearing a space for himself, turned out the light, and slid into bed next to her. She liked the warm, smoky smell he brought to bed after a night at work. It made her feel as if she had been out clubbing and dancing.

“Huh?”

“Cinco de Mayo,” he said, reaching around her and finding her breasts, as if she might have misplaced them during the day, as if he needed them to anchor himself at night. “It commemorates a naval battle against the French, near Puebla. Mexican Independence Day is September sixteenth-diez y seis.”

“I love you for knowing that,” Tess said.

“Then show me.”

She did.

Sex, usually the perfect sleeping pill, served only to make Tess more wakeful. There was too much stimulation in her life these days, she thought, staring at the ceiling, where shadows flowed like water. She had been having trouble sleeping for a while now. She tried to pin the beginning of her insomnia down. Since she had taken the case? No. Since she had met Carl Dewitt? No.

Since she had kicked Mickey Pechter in the ribs? Maybe. Or maybe a few weeks later, when Dr. Armistead had started nosing about in her head.

She thought Crow was sleeping, but he suddenly turned and placed his hand on her abdomen, her least favorite body part. No matter how strong she got, or how lean, this was always soft and round, untamable. He liked it, though.

“Have you ever been pregnant?” he asked.

“God, no. What a strange question.”

“Not so strange. It happens. Even to people like us, who are careful. Yet in all the time we’ve been together, you’ve never been late by even a day.”

“How do you know? Do you keep track of my cycle?”

“Not exactly. But I’ve just observed that there’s a five-day period each month when you become so unpredictable, so volcanic in your emotions, that it’s a given what will follow. After all, if a woman’s premenstrual, she’s definitely going to be menstrual.”

She bumped him with her shoulder. “I’m not that bad.”

“You’re horrible. Even the dogs have figured it out. I can’t swear to it, but I think Esskay has scratched out a calendar in the backyard, where she crosses off the days.”

“Why are you thinking about this stuff anyway?”

He was behind her, so she couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded sheepish. “I sometimes think I should be able to tell when you’re ovulating, but I guess that’s just a fantasy.”

“I’d imagine so,” Tess said. “Unless that’s a thermometer between your legs.”

“What?”

“It’s a method of testing fertility.”

“Oh, yeah. I knew that.”

“Of course. You know everything, Mr. Cinco de Mayo.”

They laughed and luxuriated in the pure sensation of a laugh rippling through two naked bodies at once.

But the laugh died so abruptly in Tess’s throat it sounded as if she had inhaled a piece of food and choked on it.

“What?” Crow asked.

“The files. Grab my files.” She didn’t give him a chance to do what she asked; she turned on the reading light next to the bed and found them first.

“I never thought to ask for a catalog of items taken from Tiffani’s house after she was killed. I don’t know if the Frederick cops found anything there, although they must have photographs of the scene. But Carl made a list. He showed me a calendar, one with markings that indicated when Alan Palmer was on the road-or so we thought. Every month, two to three days would be circled. He found it in a drawer and assumed the killer had put it there, to throw him off. Which made sense when we thought an outsider might have killed Lucy. But Alan wouldn’t have bothered to hide it. Not if the calendar was part of his alibi, right?”

“So who put it in the drawer?”

“Lucy. She was keeping track of her cycle, trying to figure out when she was fertile. Which is old-fashioned and incredibly unreliable, but some people might still do it that way.”

Tess had found the place in the file where Carl had inventoried the things he took from the rental house. Yes, there was the calendar, with a description of the markings that appeared over the last three months of Lucy Fancher’s life. They had assumed these notations showed Alan’s travel days, when he had chosen the time of Lucy’s death.

But Lucy’s body had, in effect, chosen those days. From the moment she began keeping this record, probably at her beloved’s request, Lucy had begun her own countdown to the day she would die.

“Women do that?” Carl asked, blushing redder than Tess had ever seen him.

“Some do, I guess. It’s not mandatory. They don’t hand you a calendar when you turn thirteen and say, ”Hey, get cracking.“ ”

“Jesus, Tess.” Carl dropped his head so low in embarrassment that his nose was almost touching the place mat at the Suburban House. Tess had convinced him to leave the barracks for lunch a second time in a week, a great triumph. Getting him to this Jewish deli was an even bigger coup. Carl seemed mildly alarmed by everything here, from the mock-tough waitresses to the Yiddish witticisms on the paper place mats. And he hadn’t even seen the pots of schmaltz.

“Actually, from what I know of friends who have been seized by the desire to reproduce, it’s not a very good method. I’m surprised they were using it. I’m surprised they were using anything.”

Carl lifted his head warily. “What do you mean?”

“This was a pretty newly minted relationship.”

“So? Not everyone waits ten thousand years to have a baby.”

Was he making some veiled reference to her and Crow? Tess let it pass. “Yes, but even if they had decided to conceive a child, they wouldn’t have needed a calendar.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Carl, I’m trying to be respectful of your apparent delicacy when it comes to such matters, but when you’re young and allegedly in love, you don’t need to keep a calendar of the best time to try to conceive a child.”

“Why not?”

Tess’s voice was louder than she intended. “Because, Jesus Christ, Carl, when you’re in a new relationship you have sex all the time.”

That got everyone’s attention, especially the waitress who was standing over them, waiting to take their order.

“Y’all want anything?” asked the woman, a tall, solidly built black woman. “I mean, from the menu.”

Carl meekly ordered a roast beef sandwich, adding a bowl of matzoh-ball soup when Tess promised him it was really just chicken soup with a bonus. She asked for the kreplach and kishkas with gravy.

“I don’t think you can make generalizations about people’s sex lives,” Carl said, barreling through the sentence as if he just wanted the topic to go away. “And in the case of a serial killer, you have to recognize that he derives a great deal of sexual satisfaction from his crimes. The man we’re looking for may not be able to function normally. He may not be able to function at all.”

“Did you ask any of Lucy’s friends about her sex life?”

Carl’s face was now redder than his hair.

“Not straight on, the way you would. But I gave them open-ended opportunities to discuss the relationship. You know the rest-everyone said he was perfect. She never confided the least bit of doubt about him, except to wonder how she had gotten so lucky.”

“Look-your theories and mine don’t necessarily contradict one another. Lucy was keeping a record of her fertile days. Let’s say that our killer does have a difficult time”-Tess tried to think of an expression that wouldn’t make Carl dive under the table from sheer embarrassment-“meeting expectations in this one sphere of the relationship. Maybe he turns this into a strength. He could tell the women-I don’t know, that he doesn’t want to have sex just to have sex, he wants to make a baby with them.”

“Or that he’s born again,” Carl said, “and he wants them to wait until they get married. I knew a guy like that at headquarters.”

Tess nodded. It took time, but she and Carl eventually got in sync. “Think how romantic that would seem to young women like Tiffani and Lucy. Young as they were, they probably had their fill of bad, indifferent sex. Maybe he even chose”-she groped again for another delicate turn of phrase-“to please them in alternative ways.”

“Alternative-oh, you mean-?” Carl looked around the restaurant, as if convinced that the tables of elderly customers were hanging on their every word. But most were simply scooping up chicken fat and diving into belly lox without a care in the world.

“Right. What if-bear with me here-what if he is a she?”

“How can that be?”

“Ever read Yentl the Yeshiva Boy?” As Carl’s roast beef sandwich on whole wheat with mayo arrived, Tess realized he didn’t have even a passing familiarity with Isaac Bashevis Singer. Besides, film was Carl’s preferred reference point. “Or that movie Boys Don’t Cry, about the teenage girl who pretended to be a boy?”

Carl shook his head. “Not my kind of movie. But I saw the documentary, which came first. Besides, she was found out. She didn’t keep her secret for long.”

“Okay, but what about the real-life case of Billy Tipton? He passed as a man through five marriages. No one knew he was born Dorothy Tipton until the day he died.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It is. It was. Billy bound his chest, saying he needed the support because he’d broken his ribs in a car accident. I won’t go into the details of how he did what he did-I’m afraid you’ll pass out from that level of technical detail-but if you get curious, there’s a very good book about his life. The point is, it’s doable. It’s been done.”

A thought was nagging Tess, buzzing around her like a gnat. She waited for it to settle, to sit still long enough so she might snatch it up and examine it. But it faded away as quickly as it arrived.

“Can they make a woman into a man?” Carl asked, and it was as if a child had asked a single penetrating question, cutting through to what is profound and essential in the world. Tess sat, a spoonful of kreplach halfway to her mouth. Can they make a woman into a man?

“I’m not sure. Certainly, the task is more formidable than making a man into a woman. But-”

She let the idea sit there, not quite yet exposed, even on a Saturday, waiting to see if it would wither as it was exposed to air and light. No, it was still there.

“If Becca Harrison became a man, one way or another, she wouldn’t exist anymore. It’s natural that she would take the name of Eric Shivers, the boy whose death she witnessed-”

“Maybe caused,” Carl put in.

“Still, there’s no connection to Alan Palmer. Not that we know of. We could throw her name at the state police, but then we’d have to explain how we came to have it.”

They sat in silence, chewing. Carl was the first to get to the end of a long mouthful.

“You know, if you’re a woman passing as a man, there’s one thing you can’t fake.”

“What?”

“You know.” He made a baffling hand gesture.

“An erection? Honestly, Carl, have you ever heard of dildos? Or even the concept of a rolled-up sock filled with birdseed?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What then?”

He made another indecipherable gesture.

“I’m sorry, I guess I don’t speak ”Toll Facilities cop,“ because that doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“Semen!” Carl sputtered, earning the undivided attention of every blue-haired diner in Suburban House. “Sperm! You can’t make a baby without those things, so what’s the point of keeping all these careful records if you’re not?”

“I don’t know,” Tess admitted. She still felt the presence of that damn gnat, hovering close to her ear, still determined not to tell her what it knew. “Maybe none of this matters at all. Do you think we should go to Frederick?”

Carl knew she meant visiting the Gunts family. “That’s specifically against the rules.”

“Right. So you’d rather sit in the office all day, even on a Saturday, waiting for phone calls that never come, rereading case files we’ve practically memorized, in the hopes that the state police might at least tell us when they’ve arrested our guy, let us come to the press conference and stand on the dais?”

Carl thought for a moment. “Let’s go.”

“The Wild Bunch,” Tess said. “William Holden, Ernest Borgnine.”

“You finally watched?”

“Last night. It’s no Once Upon a Time in the West, but it’s pretty good.”

“You know that movie too?”

“Yeah, but I prefer Once Upon a Time in America.” Tess fell back in her chair, faked a dying croak. “Noodles, I… slipped.”

Carl smiled as if she had just presented him with a wonderful gift.