K is for Killer (27 page)

“Oh, hi. Come on in. I got the check right here.”

There were a couple of inaudible remarks between the two of them. The front door closed like a muffled explosion.

Footsteps clunking.
“How's Leda feeling?”

“She's kind of down in the dumps, but she was this way last time. She gets to feeling fat and ugly. She's convinced I'm going out to screw around on her, so she busts out crying every time I leave the house.”

I put out a hand. “Hold on a minute. That's J.D.'s voice?”

She pushed pause, and the recording stopped. “Yeah, I know. It's hard to recognize. I had to play it two or three times myself. You want to hear it again?”

“If you don't mind,” I said. “I've never heard Lorna's voice, but I'm assuming you can identify her as well.”

“Well, sure,” Leda said. She punched the rewind button. When the tape stopped, she pressed play, and we listened to the opening again.
“Oh, hi. Come on in. I got the check right here.”

Again, muffled remarks between the two of them and the front door closed like a sonic boom.

Footsteps clunking.
“How's Leda feeling?”

“She's kind of down in the dumps, but she was this way
last time. She gets to feeling fat and ugly. She's convinced I'm going out to screw around on her, so she busts out crying every time I leave the house.”

Lorna was saying,
“What's her problem? She looks darling.”

“Well, I think so, but she's got some girlfriend that happened to.”
Footsteps thunked across the floor and a chair scraped back, sounding like a lion roaring in the jungle.

“She only gained fifteen pounds with Jack. How could she feel fat? She doesn't even show. My mother gained forty-six with me. Now, that's uggers. I've seen pictures. Stomach hanging down to here. Boobs looked like footballs, and her legs looked like sticks.”
Laughter. Mumbles. Static.

“Yeah, well, it isn't real, so you can't talk her out of it. You know how she is. . . .
[mumble, mumble] . . . 
insecure
.”

“That's what you get for hooking up with someone half your age
.”

“She's twenty-one!”

“Serves you right. She's an infant. Listen, you want me to keep Jack while you two go out to dinner?”
More mumbles.

“xxxxxxx”
The response here was completely missing, blotted out by static.

“. . . problem. He and I get along great. In exchange, you can do me a favor and fog the place for me next time I go out of town. The spiders are getting out of control.”

“Thanks. . . . ceipt in your mailbox.”
Chairs scraping. Clump, clump of footsteps crossing the cabin. Muffled voices. The conversation continued outside and then stopped abruptly. Silence. When the tape picked up again, there were strains of country music with the high whine of a hair dryer running over it. A phone began to ring. The
hair dryer was turned off. Clump, clump, clump of footsteps like a series of gunshots. The phone was picked up, and Lorna raised her voice in greeting. After that, much of her end of the call was a series of short responses . . . 
uhn-hun, sure, right, okay, that's great.
There was a fragmentary mention of the Palace that made me think she might be talking to Danielle. Hard to tell with the competing strains of country music overlaid. There was a second conversation between J.D. and Lorna, which was much as Leda indicated. J.D. complained, and Lorna chewed him out because he never helped at home.

Leda pressed the stop button impatiently. “It goes on like that. Pissed me off they were always talking about me behind my back. Lot of the rest is just mumbling, and most you can't even hear.”

“Too bad,” I said.

“Yeah, well, the equipment was kind of dinky. I didn't want to get into anything elaborate because it was too much trouble. The amplification was minimal. You get a lot of distortion that way.”

“When was this done? Any way to pin down the date?”

“Not really. Lorna sat with Jack a couple different times, but I never wrote it down. It wasn't any special occasion. Just us popping out for a bite to eat. With a toddler at home, an hour by yourself feels like heaven.”

“What about the month? It must have been early in the pregnancy because he mentions you're not showing yet. And wasn't there mention of a receipt? In that first conversation, it sounds like he's stopped by to pick up the rent.”

“Oh. Maybe so. You could be right about that. I mean, Jeremy was born in September, so that must have been . . . I don't know . . . April sometime? She paid the first of the month.”

“When did you start the taping?”

“Around then, I guess. Like I said, the first tape was all static. This is the second one I did. I think he actually had the exterminator out for all the spiders and bugs. He probably has a record of it if you want me to look it up.”

“What else is on here?”

“Mostly junk, like I said. The batteries went dead about halfway through, and after that all you hear is the stuff still on there from the first time I taped.” She pulled the tape out and tucked it back in the empty cassette box. She got up from the table as if to leave the room.

I caught her casually by the arm. “Mind if I take that?”

She hesitated. “What for?”

“So I can hear it again.”

She made a face. “Nnn, I don't know. I don't think that's a good idea. This's the only one I got.”

“I'll bring it back as soon as possible.”

She shook her head. “I'd rather not.”

“Come on, Leda. What are you so worried about?”

“How do I know you won't turn it over to the cops?”

“Oh, right. So they can listen to people clump around making small talk? This is not incriminating stuff. They're talking about the fuckin'
bugs
,” I said. “Besides, you can always claim you had permission. Who's going to contradict you?”

She gave that consideration. “What's your interest?”

“I was hired to do this. This is my job,” I said. “Look. From what you've said, this tape was made within a month of Lorna's death. How can you be sure it's not significant?”

“You'll bring it right back?”

“I promise.”

Reluctantly she put the cassette on the table and
pushed it over to me. “But I want to know where to call in case I need it back,” she said.

“You're a doll,” I said. I took out a business card and made a note of my home phone and my home address. “I gave you this before, but here it is again. Oh, and one more thing.”

Sounding crabby, she said, “What?”

Every time I manipulate people, it seems to make them so
cross
. “Has J.D. come into any money in the last few months?”

“J.D. doesn't have money. If he does, he never told me. You want me to ask when he gets in?”

“It's not important,” I said. “Anyway, if you mention it, you might have to tell him what we were talking about, and I don't think you want to do that.”

From the expression on her face, I thought maybe I could trust her discretion.

I stopped at a minimart on the way back to my place. Somewhere I had a tape recorder, but the batteries were probably dead. While I was at it, I bought myself a king-size cup of coffee and a nasty-looking meat sandwich wrapped in cellophane. From the pink stuff peeking out the side, it was hard to imagine what cow part this was thin slivers of. I ate driving home, feeling too starved to wait. It was not quite eight o'clock, but this was probably lunch.

Home again, I spent some time getting organized. The tape recorder was right where it was supposed to be, in the bottom drawer of my desk. I changed the batteries and found the headphones, a pencil, and a legal pad. I played the tape through, listening with my eyes closed, the headphones pressed against my ears. I played the tape back again, taking notes this time. I transcribed what I could hear clearly and left a series of dots, dashes, and question
marks where the sound was garbled or inaudible. It was slow going, but I finally reached a point where I'd gleaned as much as I could.

As Leda had indicated, toward the end of the tape, after sixty minutes of boring talk, her machine had gone dead, leaving a fragment from the first taping she'd done. The one voice was Lorna's. The other voice was male, but not J.D.'s as far as I could tell. There was a segment of country music playing on the radio. Lorna must have turned it off because the silence was abrupt and punctuated by static. The guy spoke up sharply, saying,
“Hey . . .”

Lorna sounded annoyed.
“I hate that stuff. . . . 
xxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx
 . . .”

“Oh, come on. I'm just kidding. But you have to admit, it's xxxxxxxxxx. She goes in xxxxxxxxxxxxx day . . . xxxxxx . . .”

“Goddamn it! Would you stop saying that? You're really sick. . . .”

“People shouldn't xxxxxxxx
 . . . [clatter . . . clink] . . .”

Sound of water . . . squeaking . . . 

“. . . 
xxxxxxxx
 . . .”

Thump, thump . . . 

“I'm serious . . . by
—”

“
xxxxx
 . . .”

Laughter . . . chair scrape . . . rustle . . . murmur . . . 

There was something quarrelsome in the tone, an edginess in Lorna's voice. I played the tape twice more, writing down everything I heard clearly, but the subject of the conversation never made any sense. I took the headphones off. I pinched the bridge of my nose and rubbed my hands across my face. I wondered if the guys in the forensics lab had a way to amplify sound on a tape like this. As a private investigator, I was not exactly into high-tech equipment.
A portable typewriter was about as state-of-the-art as I could boast. The problem was, I didn't see how I could ask for police assistance without an explanation of some kind. Despite my assurances to Leda, she was guilty of withholding, if not evidence, then information that might have been relevant to the police investigation. Cops get very surly when you least expect it, and I didn't want them to take an interest in something that wasn't mine to begin with.

Who else did I know? I tried the Yellow Pages in the telephone book under “Audio.” The businesses listed offered laser home theaters, giant-screen TVs, custom design and installation of audio systems, and presentation graphics, followed by the ads for hearing aids, hearing evaluations, and speech therapists. I tried the section entitled “Sound,” which was devoted in large part to designing wireless drive-through intercoms and residential and commercial sound systems. Oh.

I checked my watch: quarter after nine. I flipped back to the White Pages under K-SPL and called Hector Moreno at the local FM station. It was probably too early to reach him, but I could at least leave a message. The phone was picked up after three rings. “K-SPELL. This is Hector Moreno.”

“Hector? I can't believe it's you. This is Kinsey Millhone. Aren't you there awfully early?”

“Well, hey. How are you? I switch shifts now and then. Keeps me from getting bored. What about you? What are you up to?”

“I have a tape recording with very poor sound quality. Would you have any way to clean it up?”

“That depends on what you got. I could try,” he said. “You want to drop it off? I can leave the door unlocked.”

“I'll be right there.”

En route, I made a stop at Rosie's, where I told her about Beauty and begged for doggie bones. Earlier she'd boiled up two pounds of veal knuckle for the stock she makes. I had to pick through the trash to get them, but she wrapped two in paper with the usual admonishment. “You should get a dog,” she said.

“I'm never home,” I replied. She is always on me about this. Don't ask me why. Just a piece of aggravation, in my opinion. I took the packet of bones and began to back away, hoping to curtail discussion.

“A dog is good company, and protection, too.”

“I'll think about it,” I said as the kitchen door swung shut.

“Get a fella while you're at it.”

 

A
t the station, I let myself in. Hector had left the door ajar and the foyer lights on. I went down into the twilight of the stairwell with my paper packet of bones. Beauty was waiting for me when I reached the bottom. She was the size of a small bear, her dark eyes bright with intelligence. Her coat was red gold, the undercoat puffy and soft. When she saw me, her fur seemed to undulate and she emitted a low, humming growl. I watched her lift her head at the scent of me. Without warning she pursed her lips and howled, a soaring note of ululation that seemed to go on for minutes. I didn't move, but I could feel my own fur bristle in response to her keening. I was rooted to the bottom step, my hand on the rail. Something primitive in her singing sent ice down along my spine. I heard Hector call her, then the quick thump of his crutches as he swung along the corridor.

“Beauty!” he snapped.

At first she refused to yield. He called her again. Her eyes rolled back at him reluctantly, and I could see her debate. She was willful, intent. As strong as her urge toward obedience, she didn't want to comply. Her complaints were sorrowful, the half-talk of dogs in which sentiment is conveyed in the insistent language of canines. She howled again, watching me.

I murmured, “What's the matter with her?”

“Beats me.”

“I brought her some bones.”

“It's not that.” He leaned down and touched her. The howling became a low cry, filled with such misery that it broke my heart. He held his hand out. I passed him the packet of veal knuckles.

Hector looked at me oddly. “You smell like Lorna. Have you been handling something of hers?”