Crime Scene

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Point taken. What did Triplett have to return to in the East Bay?

  People did love him, but love didn’t guarantee safety.

  I said, “What was the deal with the tapes?”

  “Walter’s idea. He wanted to hear Julian’s voice, to know he was okay.”

  But she had broken eye contact. I said, “Any other reason?”

  She said, “I’m not going to say he had ulterior motives. He really did care about Julian. Immensely.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, sighed. “He wanted to write a book.”

  “Walter did?”

  “Explain it all. The murder, the trial. Put the record straight. He thought he could fix everything.”

  The manuscript.

  an alternative explanation presented itself

  She faced me. “He meant well.”

  I said, “What was it that changed his mind?”

  “I’m not sure there was one specific moment,” she said. “He got to know Julian. That’s a process that takes a long time. It requires serious dedication.”

  “Let me put it another way,” I said. “Did he learn something from Julian that would have caused him to shift his attention to Nicholas Linstad? Confront him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Again, I doubt it was so cut-and-dried. Few things in life are. And, believe me, Walter could be…fickle. With his affections.”

  Everyone disappoints in the end.

  She cleared her throat softly, drank water, moved her lips against each other. “As far as the book’s concerned, I think he ran out of steam once I stopped recording. By then I was seeing Julian far less often. He didn’t need me as much. He had a routine. Unconventional, but stable. In my experience, Deputy, much of mental illness is about losing autonomy. When someone starts to regain that, you want to encourage them.”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’m letting myself off the hook too easy.”

  “Julian and Wayne seem to get along.”

  She smiled faintly. “Yes. And thanks for changing the subject.”

  She checked the time on her phone. “Should we get going?”

  —

  IN DAYLIGHT, THE neighborhood looked less menacing—worn out but bright. Crahan sat on his porch steps, smoking, while a pair of dogs chased each other in circles. One brindle, one white with half a black head. Compact tubs of gristle and teeth, well short of purebred, they ceased their game to watch Weatherfeld and me. We waited at the gate for Crahan to stub out his cigarette and amble over.

  A third dog, crazily pied, older and larger, trotted out from behind the Camaro and joined the other two.

  Mom and puppies.

  “Safe,” Crahan announced in a loud voice.

  He lifted the squeaky latch.

  I tensed.

  The dogs stood locked in place, vigilant, calm, nothing like the hellhounds that had produced last night’s earsplitting racket.

  Crahan held the gate for us. “He’s up,” he said. “I heard him moving around.”

  We walked toward the back of the property. The roofline I’d discerned in the dark belonged to a trailer that had seen better days. Exterior paint crackled, and the whole structure listed toward the ass-end. Orange extension cords originating in the main house snaked through open windows, where gingham curtains hung slack in the frozen, windless morning. The dimensions looked utterly inadequate for a man of Triplett’s size. I pictured him wedged in there like a fetus.

  Crahan thumped the door gently. “Yo JT. Company.”

  A wooden croak.

  The trailer tilted forward.

  No matter how often you tell yourself not to make assumptions, you can’t help it. I believed—knew—that Julian Triplett was innocent. Yet as the door opened and his torso filled up the frame, the reality of him startled me nonetheless.

  I felt a click in my throat. I’d taken a step back, reflexively.

  He was bending over to peer out, clad in a 5XL blue T-shirt and camo mesh basketball shorts. Barefoot, or so I thought initially. Then I saw flip-flops, black plastic straps stretched to their limit and cutting into his insteps, foam soles squashed flat, toes the size of plum tomatoes overhanging in front.

  My work has taught me to know at a glance what lies beneath a person’s clothes. Calves say a lot. They describe the burdens a body imposes on itself. Julian Triplett’s were hewn cliffs of muscle, suggesting that the load above was balanced despite its outrageous proportions.

  He appeared to have just woken up. His skin bore an oily sheen. Cloudy eyes went from Crahan to Karen Weatherfeld. To me.

  His face pinched, as though he was bracing for a punch.

  “Good morning, Julian,” Weatherfeld said. “Feeling any better today?”

  A cautious nod.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Did you sleep okay?”

  Triplett kept looking at me.

  He recognized me. I could tell. I worried he might run.

  “Julian,” Weatherfeld said. “I want to introduce you to someone. This is—”

  Crahan strode over and slapped me on the back, interrupting her: “You gonna let us inside or what? I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”

  After a moment, Triplett withdrew.

  The trailer tilted backward again.

  “Come on,” Crahan said, waving us along.

  Stepping inside solved at least one mystery: while the sink and cabinetry were intact, the far end of the trailer, where you’d expect to find a dining table and banquette, had been gutted. A pair of mattresses crammed in on the floor formed an oversized sleeping area. I saw a stack of four pillows, crushed into V’s by the nightly weight of Triplett’s head. The sheets were old, but they were clean enough, and there was a distinct lack of smell, much less than I’d expect from so much human in so cramped a space. The open windows helped.

  The floor felt gritty underfoot, and the air tasted of sawdust. A fine layer of it covered the surfaces; swirling paisley clouds diffused the sunlight that insisted through cracks in the curtains. Again, if not for the open windows, it would have been intolerable. As it was, the atmosphere was hazy and unreal.

  On the counter, a tabletop lathe. Beside it, a cardboard box, labeled REAL CALIFORNIA AVOCADOS and piled halfway up with scraps of wood.

  Crahan’s line about wanting to get out of the cold was just that, a line. The temperature inside the trailer was the same as out. I suppose Triplett’s bulk provided him enough insulation to walk around in T-shirt and shorts.

  He plopped down on the mattresses, scooted back against the wall, and hugged his knees to his chest.

  Crahan crawled over to join him. They sat side by side, shoulders touching.

  “Julian,” Karen Weatherfeld said, kneeling, “this is Deputy Edison.”

  “Hi,” I said. I got down and pulled myself cross-legged. It was awkward but I didn’t want to loom. “You can call me Clay.”

  Triplett had hooded eyes, dark nearly to the edges, narrow-set and too small for his face. The effects of years on antipsychotics showed in his wrists, which flexed and extended; in fingers that snatched at the air. A pink nub of tongue skated over his lips periodically.

  For all that, he exuded an otherworldly silence, a monumental Buddha, hardly breathing. He kept staring at me, finally saying, “I seen him.”

  Weatherfeld gave me an uncertain look.

  “At Dr. Rennert’s house,” I said.

  Triplett nodded.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was you.”

  He clenched his hands to stop their fidgeting.

  “It’s cool, JT,” Crahan said. “We’re all good here.”

  He looked at me. “Right?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Karen Weatherfeld said, “Julian, Clay has some questions for you. You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want. I’ll stay here with you the whole time.”

  “Me too,” Crahan said. “Okay?”

  Triplett
said, “Yeah, okay.”

  “Thank you, Julian,” I said. “First off, I want to tell you that you’re not in any trouble. I came here because I think people blamed you for things you didn’t do.”

  Silence.

  I said, “I know you went through a lot. I can’t change what’s already happened. But I am sorry that it happened, and I want to try to prove that you didn’t deserve it.”

  “Lookie there,” Crahan said. “The man’s apologizing.”

  Triplett shrugged.

  “Is it all right if I ask you about Dr. Rennert?” I said.

  Triplett nodded.

  “You know he passed away?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “I can tell you that,” Crahan said. “We didn’t get meds like usual. I tried calling but it said the phone was off. So I put his name in the computer and we saw the notice.”

  “It must be hard for you,” I said to Triplett. “You two were close.”

  Triplett nodded. “Yes sir. He’s a nice man.”

  “Is that why you went down to Berkeley?” I said. “To look for your meds?”

  Crahan said, “He didn’t say nothing to me, he just took off.”

  “How’d you get down there?” I asked.

  “Bus,” Triplett said.

  Crahan nudged him with his elbow. “I was mad.”

  Triplett shrugged, a small smile playing at his mouth before vanishing. It occurred to me that the relationship between him and Wayne might go beyond friendship.

  “You have a key to Dr. Rennert’s house?” I asked Triplett.

  “No sir. He keeps it in the shed.”

  “The potting shed.”

  “Yes sir. In the jar.”

  “How come you didn’t shut the alarm off?”

  Triplett shrugged. “I didn’t know it.”

  “The alarm code.”

  “No sir. He never turned it on before.”

  I said, “It was your birthday. The code.”

  A tangle of emotions passed over the massive face, slow and inexorable as a caravan pressing across the desert.

  He said, “I didn’t know that.”

  “You did know where he kept the pills, though, in his desk.”

  “Yes sir. I didn’t find nothing.”

  “You could have come to me, Julian,” Weatherfeld said. “I would’ve helped you.”

  Triplett averted his eyes.

  “You used to do that,” I said. “Take the bus down, visit people. You stopped.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t like it.”

  “What don’t you like?”

  “The bus,” he said.

  “How come.”

  “They look at me.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “I get that. People stare at me, too, sometimes.”

  He regarded me quizzically.

  “I mean,” I said. “I’m pretty tall.”

  For the first time, Triplett broke into a full grin. “Yeah, you ain’t nothing.”

  That had us all laughing, and the tension released a notch.

  “I spoke to some folks who’re worried about you,” I said. “They haven’t heard from you in so long. Ellis Fletcher?”

  Triplett appeared briefly surprised, then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “Your sister Kara, she misses you, too.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “She’d like to hear from you,” I said.

  Rather than answer, he looked to Crahan, who said, “You tell him what you think, JT.”

  Triplett said, “I like it fine here.”

  I nodded. “Well, sure. Peace and quiet like you got, I’d like it, too.”

  He gave another small smile. “Yeah.”

  “All right,” I said. “You two discuss it and decide what you want.”

  Triplett nodded.

  I said, “I want to ask you about the night you and Dr. Rennert left to come up here.”

  Silence.

  “It was raining,” he said.

  “That’s right. Good memory. Did he say why you had to leave?”

  “The man got hurt.”

  “Nicholas Linstad.”

  “Yes sir. Doctor went to talk to him about me, that I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

  “Was Dr. Rennert planning to go to the police?”

  Mere mention of the police caused Triplett to seize up with apprehension.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Never mind that. What about you? Where were you, that night?”

  “Home.”

  “At your mom’s.”

  He nodded.

  “Was anyone with you? Your mom? Was she there?”

  He scratched his chin. “I can’t remember.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “You’re doing great. So you’re home. Dr. Rennert shows up.”

  “Yes sir. He said to get in the car.”

  “He took you someplace in the city, in San Francisco. Is that right?”

  “Yes sir. I was there the one night and then doctor said we got to go. The man got hurt, he didn’t want nobody thinking I did it to him.”

  “Did he explain what had happened?”

  He hesitated.

  “Did the two of them have an argument?” I asked.

  Again, Triplett looked to Crahan.

  “Up to you,” Crahan said.

  Triplett said, “He shot him.”

  I said, “Renn—Dr. Rennert told you that?”

  “No sir. I heard him tell the lady when we was at the house.”

  “Lydia,” I said. When Triplett regarded me blankly: “That was the name of the woman whose house you stayed at, Lydia. You overheard Dr. Rennert tell her he’d shot Linstad?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Shot him, or shot at him.”

  Triplett made a helpless face.

  “It’s all right, Julian,” Weatherfeld said. “It was a long time ago.”

  She gave me a warning look, and I relented. “We can leave it there for now.”

  Triplett’s hands had resumed their fitful dance.

  He said, “He was a nice man, too.”

  “Dr. Rennert cared a lot about you,” I said. “And I know you cared about him.”

  But Triplett was shaking his head. “The other one.”

  I grasped his intention. “Linstad?”

  “Yes sir,” Triplett said. “He was always nice to me.”

  He showed no trace of bitterness. Had Rennert given him the whole truth? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps, over time, Walter Rennert arrived at the same conclusion that I had, after years of dealing with death: truth, like any vital substance, can be fatal in large doses.

  If Julian Triplett could suffer his ordeal while retaining his humanity—his quiet, somber grace—by what right did Rennert or I or anyone else interfere?

  Crahan said, “You said you can prove he’s innocent.”

  I said, “I can try.”

  “How?”

  “First thing I need is for Julian to take a DNA test,” I said. To Triplett: “It’s your choice. Nothing’s going to happen if you decide not to do it.”

  Crahan said, “We got a lot to think about. Right, JT?”

  Karen Weatherfeld said, “Maybe we should let Julian rest.”

  She got to her feet, waited for me to follow suit.

  “One last thing, before I go,” I said. “I’m going to need you to give me back the other item you took from Dr. Rennert’s house.”

  Triplett stared at his twitching hands.

  “Nobody’s mad,” I said. “But it belongs to someone who wants it back.”

  Triplett said nothing.

  “JT?” Crahan said.

  “Yeah,” Triplett said. “Okay.”

  He got up—I felt the floor dip beneath me—and pointed to a kitchen drawer.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  Weatherfeld and I backed out of his way.

  The drawer housed a variety of woodworking tools:
X-Acto knives, chisels, files. Buried in the mix was Walter Rennert’s .38.

  Triplett picked it up by the butt. Pinched in his fingers, it looked like a toy.

  Weatherfeld sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, Julian,” she said softly.

  Crahan was on his feet now, too, scowling. “The hell you got that for?”

  Triplett shrugged.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You got scared and you grabbed it.”

  Triplett nodded.

  “We both know you wouldn’t use it.”

  “No sir.”

  “You don’t need it anymore, though. Right? You’re safe. So can I have it, please?”

  Triplett offered me the gun, barrel-first.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it carefully. “I want you to know this, okay? You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

  He thought it over awhile, then nodded. “Okay.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  We started to go, but Triplett stopped us: “Hold on.”

  He rooted in the avocado box, coming up with a piece of wood he liked. Selecting a knife from the tool drawer, he began rapidly to whittle.

  He worked inches from me, like a close-up magician. I couldn’t tell what he was making; it was lost in his huge hands. He paused but briefly to inspect the piece from a new angle before resuming with swift, short strokes, shavings spiraling to the floor. The tremors had left him, and he was steady and confident. I could hear the whisper of the blade. His big chest moved up and down like the tide.

  Crahan looked on fondly. Karen Weatherfeld watched, rapt.

  The strokes slowed. Ceased.

  Julian set the knife in the drawer, exchanging it for a crumpled square of sandpaper. He gave the piece several quick wipes, blew dust into the sink, regarded his handiwork with a satisfied smile.

  A sunflower.

  Start to finish, it had taken him perhaps three minutes.

  “Twenty bucks,” Crahan said, “and it’s all yours.”

  Triplett pressed the carving into my palm. For an instant his flesh touched mine, and what I felt was smooth and warm, strong and heavy and present, impossible to ignore.

  “Kara,” he said.

  I said, “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  CHAPTER 42