Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (17 page)

I moved away from his side, swiveled on the hearth and looked into the flames. Cobalt, emerald, amethyst, blood red—pulling hypnotically at me in the same way my dream visions of the events of June 22, 1956, had . . .

“McCone?”

“I hear what you're telling me.”

“And?”

“I'll think on it.”

He nodded, satisfied. After a bit he said, “Those pennies on the dead woman's eyes—the symbolism's pretty obvious.” I'd filled him in on the cases, past and present, in bits and pieces over the last five days.

“Closing one's eyes to something,” I said. “A statement about the victim: she should have closed her eyes to whatever it was that got her killed. Or maybe a warning to somebody else.”

“But why
lead
pennies? Not easy to come by, even then. Lead: a very reactive metal, highly toxic. And then there's the symbolism again: heavy, gray, inert.”

“Those war-issue pennies weren't actually lead. They were zinc-coated steel. Only minted one year, nineteen forty-three.”

Unlike Jack, Hy seemed to find nothing odd about my having such a fact at my command. “Wonder how many people know that, thought? Zinc—not much symbolism there, other than the association with the color white. Steel—an alloy, man-made—symbolizes strength. The eleventh wedding anniversary of marriage, and my mother used to carry on about how there had been no steel in her second marriage, though; it lasted till death did them part.”

Again I glanced at him with interest. Hy had a way of imparting bits and pieces of his life—fragments that didn't quite add up—and intriguing me all the more.

“Lead's chemical designation is Pb,” he went on, “atomic number eighty-two. Zinc's is Zn. thirty. Nothing in that, I guess.”

Now I just plain stared. “Since when do you know so much about chemistry?”

“Oh, I looked into it some, once. You can't help but have a nodding acquaintance with mineralogy, what with all the mining that goes on in my part of the state.”

I shook my head. The wide range of Hy's interests never failed to amaze me. So far I'd learned that he was a western history and fiction buff; could fly and repair an airplane; had mastered the diplomatic process of fund-raising for environmental causes but also possessed a confrontational style that I'd once heard described as a cross between that of Genghis Khan and the kamikaze pilots. In addition, he could speak with authority on folk medicine, animal husbandry, native American art, meteorology, and antique firearms—and do so in four languages. Now it appeared that he'd not only read the table of chemical elements but memorized it.

“What?” he asked.

“I'm impressed.”

“Hell, McCone, why do you think I learned that stuff? Struck me as a good way to get women.” In more serious tones he added, “You know, to a collector those coins might be considered fake, since they weren't made of copper.”

“But they were minted by the government.”

“I mean, to a purist. Collectors can be weird, you know.”

“Do I ever.” Hy was a purist where his western fiction collection was concerned. He'd once told me that he didn't consider a book to be a complete first edition unless the dust jacket was the exact same one it had worn when it left the warehouse.

“So,” he went on, “the coins could be taken to represent a falseness. And here's one more piece of symbolism for you; in the Old West, they put coins over a dead person's eyes because of a superstition that a corpse with open eyes was looking for the next one to die.”

“Interesting, but like all the other symbols, what does it
mean
in terms of this particular case?

“Damned if I know. You ever think of this: maybe the coins weren't all that central. In focusing on them, the cops might've overlooked something else.”

I had thought of that. “You mean the ring. And the missing finger.”

“Right.”

“Okay, explain the meaning of
that
.”

“Well, if the Benedict woman actually killed McKittridge, it would be obvious; remove the ring, the husband's gift to her, by hacking off the ring finger, where the wedding ring would go.” Hy drained his beer and smiled at me. “But why spoil our night here by getting into that kind of gore? Frankly, I feel more interested in physical acts than in symbolic ones.”

“Do you, now?”

“Uh-huh.”

As I moved closer to him, he pitched his empty bottle toward the trash bag. It missed and shattered with a loud pop. We both started, then laughed.

“Gun-shy.” Hy whispered as he pulled me down onto our sleeping bags.

Sometime toward morning I woke, twisted in the padded flannel, Hy's arm heavy across my breasts. Woke from a dream of gunfire in which I was both the pursuer and the pursued. And knew instantly what had bothered me about Lis Benedict's murder scene.

The next morning I said goodbye to Hy on the tarmac at Oakland Airport's North Field. He planned, he said, to refuel and fly on to San Diego. Inside the terminal I found a pay phone and called Bart Wallace.

“Where've you been?” he demanded. “I thought you were going to check in with me again.”

“I said, I'd try. Where I was they don't have phone booths on every corner—in fact, they don't have corners.”

“Then you had no business being there.” Bart was a confirmed urban dweller; he'd once confided to me that even houseplants made him twitchy. “There're a couple of details I want to check with you,” he added. “I've got a statement ready for you to sign, plus the results of the lab work on the graffiti on your house. Besides, I was worried about you.”

“Why?”

Wallace didn't reply. In the background I could hear a woman's voice. Bart said, “I'll be ready in three minutes,” then came back on the line. “Sharon? You got any time to talk this morning?”

“Yes. I can get there—”

“Better make it someplace else. How about Judy Benedict's house around eleven? There're a couple of things I want to look at before we take the seal off.”

“Good, I'll see you then.” There were a couple of things I wanted to look at, too.

Before I went to Bernal Heights, I swung by my own neighborhood to check on my house. The ugly red words on the shingles looked garish in the morning sun, but otherwise everything seemed in good order. Ralph and Alice greeted me at the front door, yowling indignantly for their breakfast. “Nice to be considered nothing more than an adjunct to a can opener.” I told them sourly.

I went back to the kitchen, opened some of the gummy stuff they favored, and soothed the savage beasts. There was a note on the counter from Ted, saying he'd stayed over on the weekend and received only one late-night call full of heavy breathing—which, I thought, could have been made by any of the twisted, lonely souls in our city's population. The note also said that somebody had phoned about re-shingling the façade and would send a written estimate.

I played the tape on my answering machine, found nothing of consequence, then called All Souls. Jack was in court, but I spoke with Rae. One of her Mission district informants had told her that Tony Nueva had left town abruptly on Friday. That was interesting since I'd seldom known Tony to leave the Mission, much less the city. Perhaps Buck, the manager of the video arcade, would know something about this sudden trip: I'd pay him a visit later.

Wallace's unmarked car was pulling into the driveway when I parked opposite Judy's house. As I crossed the street, he and a woman got out. The woman was about my height—five six—with a honey tan complexion and dark brown ringlets cropped close to her head. Her features were strong and handsome, her movements brisk, her elegantly tailored jacket and slim-legged pants deceptively functional.

“Sharon, meet my partner,” Wallace said. “Adah Joslyn, Sharon McCone.”

I'd read about Adah Joslyn in the paper, but hadn't realized she was teamed with Wallace. She'd been an inspector only a few years before transferring to the elite homicide detail—a promotion that greatly furthered our chief's aim to move women and minorities throughout the department until its composition reflected that of the community as a whole. In Joslyn, the public affairs had found—and exploited for all they could—a virtual gold mine; not only was she a woman, half black, and relatively young, but she was also half Jewish.

We shook hands, appraising each other, said simultaneously, “I've heard of you,” and burst out laughing.

“Thought you two might get on,” Wallace commented. He mounted the steps of the house, where a yellow plastic police-line strip stretched across the door, removed it, and fiddled with a bunch of keys.

“Where's Judy Benedict staying?” I asked as Joslyn and I followed.

“Her office at the theater downtown. Bart says she's still really torn up over her mother's death. Makes it difficult to get information out of her. And of course the father's still hovering around, being overprotective.”

“Overprotective or—”

Wallace said, “Save it for later, after I've shown Adah the scene. She just came back from vacation this morning, hasn't even gone over the reports yet.

It was cold inside the little house; the parlor curtains were drawn, shrouding the room and the hallway in darkness. Wallace led us to the dining area where Lis had died. The only alteration since the night of the murder was a sheet of plywood nailed over the broken glass door.

Wallace began pointing out details of the scene to Joslyn. I watched for a bit, then said, “I'll be right back,” and went down the hall and out the front door. The boundary fence was flush against the house on its right, but a path ran along at the left. I followed it, found it ended at an unlocked gate that opened onto the deck outside the glass door. As I retraced my steps, I checked out the side of the house; there were no windows overlooking the path, and a storage shed protruded next to the dining area. I thumped the wall; the house seemed solidly built and well insulated.

When I went back into the dining area, Wallace was pointing out a spot on the wall where a section of paneling had been removed. “Stray bullet went in here.”

“Two shots were fired?” I asked.

They both looked surprised, as if they'd forgotten I was there. “Right,” Wallace said. “Benedict was only shot once, but her hands tested positive for nitrate. We figure she fired a wild shot before the killer took the gun away and used it on her.”

“Interesting.” I looked around, spotted the TV on the breakfast bar. “Can I try an experiment?”

“What?”

“I want to turn the TV up as loud as it'll go for a few minutes.”

Wallace gave me a puzzled look but said, “Go ahead.”

I did, then hurried back outside. At no point along the path could I clearly hear the sound. Wallace and Joslyn had their hands over their ears when I returned. As soon as she saw me, Adah hit the off button.

“Jesus,” she said, “did you have to tune in on that Pillsbury Doughboy commercial?”

I grinned. “He's on my list, too—along with the Snuggle Bear, Mrs. Butterworth, and both Orville and his grandson.”

Wallace frowned, obviously not a man who took serious offense at TV commercials. “What the hell was all that about?”

“You mean turning on the TV? I wanted to find out if I could hear it outside. I could, but just barely.”

“So?”

“This house is well insulated for sound. A gunshot would be louder than the TV, of course, but someone next door would probably have dismissed it as a car backfiring.”

“But the neighbor was definite about hearing a shot. Remember, the glass door was broken: that made it audible.”

I asked, “Have you ever broken a door like that?”

Both Wallace and Joslyn shook their heads.

“Has either of you ever worked Burglary?”

“No,” they replied.

“Well, when I was remodeling my house, I had an office from Burglary come out and advise me on how to protect myself against break-ins. And you know what he told me? When one of those glass doors shatters, it sounds exactly like a gunshot.”

They looked at each other, then back at me. “And?” Joslyn prompted.

“I think the shot the neighbor heard—when was that?”

“Six-fifteen.”

“The shot she head at six fifteen was actually the door breaking.”

“Then why didn't she hear two short shortly afterward? With the door broken—”

“Maybe whoever broke the glass didn't shoot Benedict.”

Wallace looked skeptical, but said, “Go on.”

“Assume someone came to the front door and got no answer. Someone, perhaps, who had an appointment with Benedict and looked through the back door. Benedict was lying on the floor. The person broke the glass, found she was dead, panicked, and ran.”

Wallace pulled out a chair and sat, looking thoughtful. “If she was shot before six-fifteen, that would explain a discrepancy in the M.E.'s report.”

“What?” I asked.

“Degree of rigor—it was more than you'd expect.”

Joslyn said, “I haven't seen the report yet, but rigor varies with temperature. Couldn't it have been accelerated by heat?”

Wallace shook his head. “The cold coming through the door during the five or so hours before the daughter found her would have inhibited it.”

I added. “And even before the door was broken, it was cold in here. I noticed when I stopped by that morning.”

“Stomach contents analysis tell you anything?” Joslyn asked Wallace.

“Only that she hadn't been eating.”

I said, “When I was here she told me there wasn't any food in the house. She'd been too depressed to go shopping.”

“One of the things I wanted to double-check with you,” Wallace said to me. “You left the victim at ten that morning?”