The Design Is Murder (Murders By Design) by Jean Harrington Page B

said, inhaling the mother of all drags. She sucked the nicotine down to her toes and hung onto it for what seemed like forever before exhaling into the beautiful blue morning.
    I pointed to the butt nestled between her stained fingers. “Those things will kill you yet, Naomi.”
    She guffawed, a hoarse smoker’s laugh that ended in a rasping cough. “Your advice is a little late, Deva.”
    I peered at her in the clear, merciless light. Circles of fatigue rimmed her eyes, and the lips that had been pursing around drags for years were sunken in a network of wrinkles.
    I took her hand, the one without the butt dangling from it. “Are you telling me you’re sick?”
    She glanced over at me, her eyes a fresh, startling blue in the wrinkled wreckage of her face. “I’m not telling you anything. You’re asking.”
    “Well?”
    “Well, you didn’t come to discuss my health, so what does bring you here?” She took a final drag, flicked the butt onto the concrete slab and stepped on it.
    Clearly she was sick and didn’t want to talk about herself. For now, I had no choice but to respect her wishes, but later, as soon as I had Jane alone, I’d ask her about Naomi’s health. Though from the look of her, I feared I already had my answer.
    “I have a job for you, Naomi. Some handwriting samples.”
    Her eyes took on a shine. “Great.” She raised her arms and waved them at the ugly back lot. “This place is as good as any. So let’s have a look at what you brought.”
    I took the journal from my bag, opened it to where Connie Rae mentioned Stew and handed the book to her. “Tell me what you see, and then I’ll tell you what I’m looking for. That okay?”
    “Yes,” she said, already nose deep in the book.
    While she perused it, I took in the view. Stare at something long enough and it starts to grow on you. I’d about decided the view really wasn’t ugly but part of the urban landscape when Naomi coughed and laid the notebook on her lap.
    “You want to hear it?” she asked.
    “Of course, that’s what I came for.”
    “All right.” She reached for a cigarette, thought better of it, thank God, and dropped the pack back into her T-shirt pocket. “This is the writing of a young female.”
    “Well, the lilac ink...”
    She shook her head. “Not that. See the little circles over the i’s? No hetero guy does that. Mainly girls and immature women, but despite the emphasis on the middle zone, the writing is too literate to be that of a child. So I’m guessing she’s in her teens or early twenties.”
    “What’s the middle zone?” I asked.
    “Everyday reality.”
    “You lost me, Naomi.”
    She shrugged. “It happens. Think of the writing in Freudian terms—the id, ego and superego. Tall reaching strokes, like d’s and t’s, represent the superego, the spirit. The id, or sexuality, is found in the lower loops, the y’s and g’s. The middle zone, the a’s and o’s and e’s, is the ego or everyday reality. That’s where children live, and this example is written mostly in the middle zone. The writer, though not a child, is naïve and very sweet.”
    “Where do you see sweet?”
    She pointed to a word. “Look at this one. See how the letters are rounded? Almost no sharp edges, no spiky strokes, no long lower loops.”
    “So you’re not seeing much id?”
    “Right.”
    What about that black lace teddy with all the erotic holes?
Stew’s idea?
    “But the weak id could be the result of illness. She’s a sick girl.”
    “Oh, Naomi, I can’t believe you see that.”
    Her eyes filled with tears. “Sickness always shows.”
    I knew she wasn’t talking about Connie Rae in that moment. Reaching across, I took her hand and squeezed it. I didn’t dare ask any more questions about her own health. Above all else, Naomi was a private person. Nor did I get to ask how she could tell the writer was sick, she volunteered the information. “The writing pressure is uneven. She isn’t maintaining an even