Crime Scene

by Jonathan Kellerman

  I wondered if she and I would ever get around to discussing my call from Reno.

  Noticing me staring, she gave a friendly little wave.

  I tipped my cup to her, went over to shake Moffett’s hand.

  He grinned. “Thanks, hoss.”

  “This whole goofy-dude vibe,” Zaragoza said. “I get that that’s an act. My question is: How deep does it go? Are we supposed to think you’re an idiot? Or is the idea that first we think you’re an idiot, then go, No, he can’t be that dumb, he must actually be a secret genius. Or is it a triple-cross: No, he can’t possibly be smart enough to act that dumb, he must actually be an idiot, and so we miss the fact that you aren’t.” He paused. “Which is it?”

  Moffett said, “I’m just good at standardized tests.”

  Standing in the burnished evening, tapping our feet to the sound of pop music through portable speakers, we laughed readily, talked more quickly than normal. Hurry up and live, because at any moment a call could come in. The dead don’t care.

  —

  NOT LONG AFTER, returning from a removal on Alameda Island, I peeled a folded Post-it from my computer screen.

  my office

  The handwriting was Vitti’s.

  I scanned the squad room. Nobody paying me any special attention. Either they didn’t know I was in trouble or they were determined not to become collateral damage.

  As usual, his door was open. I found him reading at his desk.

  “What’s up, Sarge?”

  He told me to shut the door and have a seat.

  I crossed my legs, aiming for casual. My body didn’t cooperate. I was perspiring madly. It was a scorcher out, and in my haste I’d neglected to remove my vest. The ceiling vent thundered frigid air, patches at my lower back and chest going clammy.

  Vitti let me stew a little before handing me the sheet of paper he’d been reading.

  It was the intake form for a body that had come in several nights prior. The primary making the report was Rex Jurow. The decedent was a white male, age thirty-seven, found in an abandoned house near Oakland Airport, a needle jutting from his arm. Marital status as yet unknown. Manner of death accidental, pending autopsy. Identification was made from a California driver’s license, found in a wallet in the vicinity, stripped of cash.

  The decedent, Samuel Afton, stood five-five and weighed a hundred and twenty-one pounds. He had brown hair and blue eyes. He resided at an address in West Oakland.

  “You knew him,” Vitti said.

  “His father was one of mine.” I set the page down. “Mind if I ask how it landed on your desk?”

  Vitti said, “Moffett saw him come up in queue and remembered you mentioning the name. He thought you might want to know. He asked would I pass it along.”

  “Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me, thank him.”

  “Will do,” I said. Silence. “That all?”

  Vitti scrunched his eyes, rubbed them. “Why’re you doing this to me, Clay?”

  “Sir?”

  “Did I do something to you, in this life or another, that you feel the need to put me in this position?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

  Vitti said, “I see the name, I go, ‘Why’s that sound so familiar?’ I’m bananas, tryna figure it out. Then it hits me: this is the same guy who called to make a complaint about you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Which gets me thinking,” he said, “about our conversation that we had last year. You know the one I’m talking about.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He grimaced. “So? You like to tell me why you’re doing this to me?”

  I didn’t answer, and he made an exasperated sound, grabbing at his computer screen and swiveling it around to show me my own queue. He pointed to the bottom of the list.

  RENNERT, WALTER J.

  He said, “I asked you—I ordered you—to close that case out. Did I not?”

  “Yes sir, you did.”

  He drummed the desk with his fingers.

  I said, “It slipped my mind.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself, you’re gonna sit here and tell me that?”

  “I’ll do it right now,” I said, starting to stand.

  “Sit your ass down,” he said.

  I obeyed.

  He said, “Something like this, I have to ask myself, What else is he doing? Huh? What else is he up to, that he’s not supposed to be? Because clearly, whatever the deal is with you and this case, clearly it’s affecting your judgment.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” I said. “It wasn’t my—”

  He waved me silent. “I called Berkeley PD,” he said. “Turns out Chief Ames has nothing but nice things to say about you. You and this homicide guy, all the good things you’re doing. I have to play along like I know what the hell he’s talking about. How’s that make me look? How’s it make me feel.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Wrong answer, Deputy. Try again.”

  “Like a prick,” I said.

  “Ding ding ding ding ding. Like a grade-A prick.”

  I said, “I’m truly sorry, sir.”

  He regarded me with a pained expression. “That’s not what we’re about here.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re a family. Family doesn’t treat each other like this.”

  I thought: Maybe not yours.

  “What’m I supposed to do here?” he said. “Huh? You know me. Am I the kind of guy who goes around, Blah this, blah that, Big Me in charge? Huh? I don’t want to be like that. That’s not me. I hate it. But this, here? What you’re doing? You’re basically forcing me.”

  I said, “I’m sorry, sir.”

  He shook his head. “That’s really all you got to say?”

  “I’ll close the case out.”

  “Of course you fucking will,” he said. “You’re gonna do that, first thing. Second thing, from this point forward, you have nothing to do with the appeal. Any further developments—a reporter comes to you—you don’t speak to them. You don’t know shit. You refer them to me. Three,” he said, “you’re suspended. One week without pay. Fight it if you like, but my advice to you—and I say this as a friend, who cares about you and your future—take your medicine. Dismissed.”

  —

  I LEFT HIS office in a fog, stripping off my vest and hanging it on the edge of my cubicle. Phones rang. The copier coughed and spat. People minded their own business.

  It all looked plasticky, deformed.

  Punch line? I’d never meant to keep the case open. I really had forgotten. Tatiana and I hadn’t spoken in nine-plus months. My focus had become Julian Triplett, and him alone.

  I hunched over my desk, mousing.

  RENNERT, WALTER J.

  SUBMIT

  Stare at something long enough, you cease to see it at all.

  “You okay, princess?”

  I raised my eyes. Shupfer had craned around her monitor.

  I said, “Knee’s acting up.”

  She held her gaze on me.

  I said, “Gonna give it a rest.”

  Her smile was soft and sad and knowing.

  “Feel better,” she said.

  I nodded and she shrank behind her screen.

  I clicked SUBMIT.

  CHAPTER 45

  Kara Drummond said, “My treat.”

  I put my money away.

  We took our coffees to the same table, at the same Starbucks, in the same Richmond shopping center. She still worked next door at the bank, though she’d recently been promoted to manager. The added responsibility, on top of a bi-weekly drive to Reno, had begun to wear her down. Since February, she’d put an extra seven thousand miles on her car.

  She gave me the latest from the lawyers handling her brother’s application for pardon. “The girlfriend whose name you gave them, they heard from her.”

  She was referring to Francie Nguyen, one of Nicholas Linstad�
��s former paramours. I’d tried repeatedly to get in touch with her, but she had failed to return my calls, and I’d passed along her contact information more as an afterthought.

  Now she’d changed her mind, following the appearance of a news item about the appeal. As expected, Nicholas Linstad’s father had declined to provide a DNA sample, and there was no legal means to compel him to do so. Nguyen had read the article on Berkeleyside and promptly called the Institute for Wrongful Convictions.

  “She filed a paternity suit against him,” Kara said. “The court made him take a test. She has the whole profile.”

  “How long till they get the comparison with the hairs back?”

  “End of the week,” she said, crossing her fingers.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Kara said, beaming. She was thrilled, and I was thrilled for her. At the same time, a tiny part of me felt shaken. I wondered if Francie Nguyen realized how fortunate she was to still be alive.

  The other big news was that, after endless cajoling, Julian had agreed to come down and meet with his legal team in person.

  “About time,” I said. “What’s on the agenda?”

  “Antonio and Sarah”—the lawyers. “After that? Depends on how much time we have. We’ll visit who we can. I told him he could stay over with me. I said I’d give him the bed, Wayne can take the sofa.” She laughed. “I sleep in the bathtub.”

  She paused. “He didn’t want to. He said he has to get back. It’s hard for him, being here. He gets nervous.”

  “Bad memories,” I said.

  She nodded.

  I said, “Does your mom know he’s coming?”

  “I didn’t tell her.” She toyed with the lid of her coffee cup. “You’re right, though. It’s up to him if he wants to have a relationship with her. I need to start thinking of him that way. You know? A person who can make his own decisions.”

  I asked when they got in.

  “Thursday,” she said.

  “Send them my best.”

  “I will,” she said. Then: “You have any time? In case Julian wants to see you.”

  A beat.

  I said, “I’m working.”

  Her face loosened, settling in a half smile. “Sure.”

  “I’ll see if I can get away.”

  “Don’t worry if you can’t,” she said. “You’ve done enough. More than enough.”

  —

  BEFORE RETURNING TO work, she needed to grab something from her car. I walked her across the softened asphalt and stood by in the broiling heat while she rummaged in the glove compartment. When she came up, holding a tube of hand cream, her necklace had fallen free of her blouse. The wooden sunflower.

  She touched it. “Last time I went up, I had him fix the chain on.”

  “It looks nice,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll let you know about Thursday.”

  She tucked the necklace away; shut the car and locked it.

  Hesitating, she stepped forward and embraced me.

  It lasted a second or two. She pulled away with a short, embarrassed laugh, shaking her head, wiping her eyes. She started to speak, but thought better of it, leaving me alone in the punishing glare.

  CHAPTER 46

  I pulled to the curb, tapped the horn. The front door opened, and Paul Sandek came down the walkway. I lowered the passenger window to return his greeting.

  “She said to tell you she’ll be out in a sec,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Realistically, though, it could be hours.” He leaned in through the open window. “We probably have enough time for PIG.”

  I pointed: behind him, Amy had stepped from the house.

  “Dammit,” he said.

  She was toting a paper grocery bag—“Snacks,” she said—which she stashed in the footwell before sliding in next to me.

  “Drive safely,” Sandek said.

  “We will,” Amy said.

  “As for you,” he said to me, “consider yourself lucky.”

  “I do,” I said.

  —

  I COULDN’T PRETEND to be familiar with the route, so I had Amy navigate. Google Maps predicted a drive time of two hours and fifty-eight minutes.

  We spent the better part of that discussing her, which was fine by me. I wasn’t in a talkative mood, and anyway she had more news to share. A complete draft of her dissertation. A job lined up at the VA clinic in downtown San Francisco. Aside from seeing individual clients, she was to lead the weekly stress reduction group.

  “I’m sure I’ll be burnt out soon enough,” she said. “But for right now I’m choosing to be excited.”

  The question remained: hunt for an apartment in the city or remain in the East Bay? Convenience or affordability?

  “I could probably swing a one-bedroom in the Tenderloin,” she said. “Either that, or I’m going to have to split with five other people. I feel like I’m getting a little old to be labeling my cottage cheese.”

  “You could always stay at your parents’,” I said.

  “That’s super-helpful, thanks.”

  “Laundry service,” I said. “Free food.”

  “Unwanted advice. Personal questions.”

  “Learn to focus on the positives.”

  “You think it’s so great,” she said, “I’m sure they’d be happy to have you.”

  She pulled the snack bag onto her lap. “I have egg salad and turkey with Swiss. Oh—but. My mom really wanted you to have this for some reason.”

  She unwrapped the sandwich to its waist. Meatloaf.

  I laughed and took it.

  —

  THE ROUTE WAS a straight shot down I-5, offering precious little scenery: monotonous stretches of wrinkled highway, beige hills relieved by farmland. Billboards advertised berries, fudge, antiques—always, it seemed, a bit farther on, a promise infinitely receding.

  “In two miles,” the phone said, “the exit is on the right.”

  “How’re you feeling?” Amy asked.

  I shrugged. “Fine,” I said. “Little nervous.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “That would be the healthy thing to do, wouldn’t it.”

  “Only if you want to,” she said.

  “I don’t really.”

  “Then don’t.”

  A green sign loomed.

  Jayne Ave

  1 mile

  Pleasant Valley

  State Prison

  The phone said, “In one mile—”

  Amy muted it.

  The last stretch before the exit consisted of citrus groves—row after row of round-topped trees, studded with underripe fruit. It was easy to pretend we were headed someplace fun. A day of U-pick, followed by lunch, a nap, a blanket in the shade.

  Then we crossed over a dry riverbed and the terrain sank and withered, becoming a terrible blankness, baked and sterile, only the sandy margins of the road and drooping power lines separating us from oblivion.

  It was a vision of hell.

  I reached for Amy, and she took my hand.

  The prison campus revealed itself in stages. Barbed wire, protecting nothing but empty acreage; bleached green transformer boxes and orange traffic delineators and a duo of blinking amber lights that warned of the upcoming intersection. Low-slung cement structures: a sister facility: state hospital for mentally ill and sexually violent offenders.

  The left turn lane stretched for hundreds of yards, as if to allow you time to change your mind.

  I put on my signal.

  The run-up to the guard booth was long, too, trimmed with agave and rocks.

  Amy squeezed my hand. “You do know how to woo a lady.”

  I said, “Wait’ll you see what I got lined up for our third date.”

  The guard checked my driver’s license, raised the barrier arm. “Ahead on your right.”

  I lifted my foot off the brake.

  The visitors’ lot was already cr
owded, slack-faced folks trudging between the cars, like the breakup of some awful tailgate. They knew enough to get here early.

  I killed the engine. In an instant, suffocating heat slammed through the windshield.

  I turned to Amy. “Ready?”

  Easier to ask her than myself.

  We got out and she took my hand and we joined the back of a discontented line, shuffling toward the door, out of the sun and into a scratched, boomy concrete room. Clearing the metal detector required that she let go of me, but she was waiting for me, hand out, when I came through, and she held on to me as I approached the booth, the impassive face behind Plexiglas.

  I felt her walking close beside me, and I felt her fingers tighten on mine as I formed the words:

  Clay Edison, here to see my brother.

  To Faye

  —JONATHAN KELLERMAN

  To Gavri

  —JESSE KELLERMAN

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Jesse Grant, Ariana Heller, Sam Ginsburg, Jeff Shannon, Lauri Weiner, Janice Thomas.

  Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern.

  Capt. Melanie Ditzenberger, Lt. Riddic Bowers.

  Dep. Rebecca Lorenzana, Sgt. Howard Baron, and all the members of the Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau.

  Special thanks to Dep. Erik Bordi.

  By Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman

  Crime Scene (2017)

  The Golem of Paris (2015)

  The Golem of Hollywood (2014)

  By Jonathan Kellerman

  ALEX DELAWARE NOVELS

  Heartbreak Hotel (2017)

  Breakdown (2016)

  Motive (2015)

  Killer (2014)

  Guilt (2013)

  Victims (2012)

  Mystery (2011)

  Deception (2010)

  Evidence (2009)

  Bones (2008)

  Compulsion (2008)

  Obsession (2007)