Beginnings: A Kate Martinelli novella

by King, Laurie R.

  * *

  My sister’s death was not a case. It was not even a homicide—and yet my mind set about shaping the accident as if it were. After a lifetime of habit, this was how I thought: fit all the pieces together into a story, and fret over any part that didn’t fit smoothly.

  As night fell and I drove across the middle of California, I turned the reports and statements and images into a story. The story of how Patty Martinelli died.

  * *

  The car is driving too fast on Pipeline Road, along a straightaway but coming up to a curve, when the girl behind the wheel loses control of the vehicle. She has been at a party, and though she’s not drunk—blood tests will show that, eventually—she is slightly buzzed. Or it could simply be that she’s in an elevated mood, after a high-spirited party followed by an illegal drive in a friend’s borrowed car. She is alone, but she is relishing her daring, grown-up act of freedom. Driving, without a license—and to hell with a seat belt!

  She accelerates in the dark, and is going nearly twice the posted limit on the narrow rural road when something startles her. She swerves, tries to correct, slams her foot on the brakes, and loses control, sending the heavy car into a skid. Her headlights flash across a solid wall of bark. She throws out her right hand, as if her bones might hold off two tons of violence.

  The car hits the tree. The impact rips her left hand from the wheel and throws her down the length of the bench seat. In passing, some heavy object—the steering wheel? Her own hand?—hits her face, breaking her nose. The car’s spin has pulled at her torso, causing the outstretched hand to slip beneath the loose strap of the shoulder belt. When she smashes into the crumpled metal and tree bark, her collarbone, skull, and thumb shatter. Shards of safety glass are driven into the skin of her face and neck. If she is not dead in that moment, she will be very soon.

  The motor stalls, radiator fluid sprays, the car rocks to a halt. Seconds—minutes?—later, her body slumps down onto the bench seat, her left arm outstretched, either in a fluke of gravity and position or a last, half-conscious effort to reach for the door. As her traumatized brain goes dark, her body settles forward even more, left arm into the meeting place between seat and seat back, right hand stretched back to where her heavy bracelet has caught in the shoulder strap. The weight of her head presses her chin against the car seat, pushing her jaws together. She cannot draw breath through her mouth. The swelling in her broken nose permits no air, either. For all her injuries, all of the things that might have seen her on a surgical table for the remainder of the night, it is a simple lack of oxygen that causes Patricia Martinelli to slip away for good.

  My sister’s death was not suicide—not unless adolescent stupidity was suicidal.

  And yet…

  When I got off the freeway, I pulled into a deserted parking lot to take another look through the photos. The sparkling glass. The trapped foot. The outstretched hand.

  Thoughtfully, I clipped the pictures together again, shoved them back in the folder, turned off the overhead light, reached for the key… and sat.

  That glass. Something was not right about the glass.

  With a sigh, I let go of the key and picked up my phone instead.

  “Al? This is Kate. No, everything’s fine, I’d just like you to look at a file for me. Hah! No, nothing to do with Nora’s boyfriend. It’s… well, I suppose you’d have to call it a cold case.”

  VI

  Tuesday morning, I detoured past the Cold Case unit and found Al poking at a sputtering coffee machine.

  “You’ve gone high tech with your coffee,” I noted. It was one of those single-cup machines that takes a plastic pod, a technique that made Lee despair for the soul of the nation.

  “The thing seems to have something in its throat,” he said. “I put it on ten minutes ago.”

  He peered at the half-inch of coffee in the cup, and I handed him some paper towels to mop away the drops sprayed in all directions.

  “You probably should start over with a fresh pod.”

  “Do you have one of these things?” He pressed the button that opened the top, sending another mist of droplets all over.

  “I wouldn’t dare. Lee swears the coffee tastes like dirt, and Nora says we’re drowning in plastic. I brought you the file.”

  “Have a seat, you can tell me what you’re looking for while I try and coax this thing into giving you a cup.”

  “Actually, I’d rather have you look at the file before we talk. Anything I say would influence you, one way or the other. Take your time, think it over. There’s certainly no rush.”

  “One of the advantages of working this unit,” he agreed, and took the folder.

  “Give me a call,” I said.

  “You can buy me lunch.”

  But I paused in the doorway to look back. As I knew he would, he’d automatically flipped open the cover and read the name. His head came up, eyebrows raised. I nodded.

  “Yeah. My kid sister.”

  * *

  At my desk, I checked the VIN for the car she’d been driving, confirmed that it had been junked two months after the wreck, and sent Al an email with that information. Then I turned to my actual work.

  I didn’t hear from him the rest of the day. I told myself this was a good sign, that he was spending enough time to read through the folder with care, but I knew Al too well for that. If he didn’t call and tell me to stand down, it meant there was something in the reports that bugged him, too.

  I didn’t even consider the possibility that he’d been too busy to look at it. Al would look at something from me if he was in traction, or headed for surgery, or on a plane to Fiji with Jani.

  His call came at 10:30 the next morning, from his personal phone to mine.

  “Hey,” I greeted him.

  “Lunch?” was all he said.

  “I’m free at one.”

  “Toby’s at half past.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just don’t tell Jani,” he ordered. And hung up.

  Toby’s wasn’t actually called that—a snitch by that name used to meet us there, because it wasn’t a place cops used. Which was also why Al and I would meet there if we were working on something of our own.

  Plus that, the food was good and greasy and hot enough to clear sinuses.

  ​ We ordered—Al, to my surprise, going with a salad instead of the greasy end of the menu—and caught up on family news: his wife Jani’s health after a worrying test result, son Daniel’s second year at Cal, and daughter Maya’s choice of grad school in Germany, where they’d never see her. Jani’s first child, his adopted daughter, Jules, looked to be making partner soon in her law firm. “She’d be there already if she didn’t insist on spending so much time doing pro bono work for environmental groups.”

  “She’s something else.”

  “Probably be mayor by the time she’s forty.”

  “Next stop, the White House—now that Hilary’s clearing the way for women in the Oval Office.”

  “And speaking of family.”

  “Patty.”

  “What made you go looking?”

  “Nora. My own fault—I said something about Patty, and Nora was on it in a flash. The accident was so long ago, I never questioned it. My sister dies in a stupid car wreck, sadness all around, end of story. But then Nora did a search online and came up with that second ‘Accident Puzzler’ article.”

  “The one that said drugs were not an issue?”

  “Right. And when I read the thing, it sounded to me like they were trying to sneak in the idea that she’d committed suicide. You know: sober driver plus fatal crash plus no seat belt plus Catholic funeral equals knowing looks. Then I thought, no, I’m reading way too much into it—but when I happened to be near Diamond Lake for a witness statement, I stopped in to talk with the police chief, who let me copy the file, and little things just, I don’t know. Kept bothering me?”

  Al reached down to the ancient brief-case he’d used for as long as I’d know
n him, coming out with a single sheet of paper covered with his small handwriting. He put it on the table between us.

  “Little things like this?” The page said:

  FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS:

  Who was at the party that night? Did anyone leave at the same time?

  Did Patricia M have a boy/girl friend?

  Was the car’s fender checked? Deer blood/signs of impact?

  What broke the driver’s window? Impact or first responder?

  Would the ME expect to see trauma on the left hand?

  When did Joseph Weber’s dog start to bark?

  Any chance Weber reached in, brushed the car, moved the arm?

  Were there other photos—seat belt, fingerprints, driver’s seat?

  ​ Were measurements made—driver’s mirrors, seat position?

  Was PM’s shoe caught , or trapped ?

  RECOMMEND:

  Forensic accident reconstruction

  Medical Examiner review

  Review of any materials in police storage

  Interview surviving family and friends

  Re-interview Tony Cardone: had he washed the car before?

  Follow-up interviews with Joseph Weber, Henry Belmonte

  His list was almost identical to the one in my head. I laid the page back onto the table, and was startled to see a smear of blood—no. Only tomato sauce. I picked up some napkins, aware that my heart was doing something odd. “You agree—that the accident needs a closer look.”

  “It may be nothing. But yes, there are some troubling questions. I have a guy I want to send it to.”

  “Not our own?” The Hit and Run unit, naturally, had a trained reconstructionist, but they were as backed up as any other unit in the department.

  “My guy’s private, but he owes me.”

  “You don’t want to create a case out of this, first?”

  “Let’s not worry about it until we get a few of those questions answered.”

  Such as: Was there any evidence, either physical or from the first witness, that the car had hit something?

  And: Why did the driver’s side window fall out onto the road, away from the tree, when everything else in the car had been thrown toward it?

  And: Was her shoe trapped, or merely caught?

  And: Had the car been recently cleaned? If not, why were the wheel, gear shift, and window surround free of prints?

  All of which amounted to: Did the physical evidence, the victim profile, and the statements of witnesses all fit the theory that Patricia Martinelli had borrowed a car, gone for a joy-ride, and killed herself against a tree?

  I glanced down at Al’s list. “Who’s Henry Belmonte?”

  “Investigating officer. Long retired, but still in the area. I have an appointment at ten-thirty tomorrow. Want to go?”

  I met his eyes, which were shining with that familiar blue they took on when he was on the chase.

  “Al, this is an accident that killed a girl thirty years ago. Surely you have better things to do than drive to Diamond Lake?”

  “This is your sister. So, no, I got nothing better to do.”

  I hadn’t worked a case with Al for so long, I’d almost forgotten how much I missed it. I felt—not happy, exactly, but invigorated. Eager. I found I was grinning, even though this was my sister we were talking about.

  “Well, it’s your time to waste. And I know a place down there with decent coffee and great muffins.”

  VII

  A sense of déjà vu rode with us down to Diamond Lake. My very first case with Al Hawkin—the one that had ended with a gunman at my door—had included a drive from San Francisco into California’s rural heartland. And as before, on that and on dozens that followed, I drove while Al alternated between reading and snoring.

  Just because I was now 52 and he was halfway retired didn’t change much. Although we did pull in to use a rest stop along the way.

  As if the “Welcome to Diamond Lake” sign triggered a wake-up call, Al stirred as we went past it. We’d made good time, travelling the reverse commute traffic, so it was only a little after ten. “Want to be early,” I asked, “or stop for coffee?”

  He chose coffee, and set about charming the red-headed owner with his usual gruff ease. But to my surprise, he told her we’d have it in to-go cups, and then asked if she knew Henry Belmonte.

  “The policeman? Well, retired now. Sure I do, though he hasn’t been in for a while.”

  “Why don’t you give us a little box of whatever he likes? I bet he misses your baking.”

  I watched her turn pink and bustle away, as I’d watched all kinds of women do over the years. “Al, it’s a good thing you became a cop. Otherwise the department would be getting calls from a series of old ladies you’d charmed out of their life savings.”

  To be fair, he was almost as good at winning over men, with an air of masculine camaraderie so strong, you could almost smell the beer and hot dogs. It worked with Belmonte himself twenty minutes after we’d left the bakery: Al thrust the pink box into my hands, strode up the walkway, and stuck out his hand the moment the old guy opened the door.

  Before we had reached the living room, they were buddies for life. I half expected them to look at me to produce coffee from the kitchen—but there was a wife for that. I gave her the box and went to sit with the boys.

  I’d worked with men—lots of them—for whom that ignore-the-girls scenario would be standard procedure. With Al, it was a game to win the trust of a witness. Or in this case, a first responder.

  Five minutes of male bonding followed: football teams and cop life edged into the woes of budget cuts and the mixed benefits of enforced retirement. Belmonte was interested in the workings of a Cold Case unit, although Diamond Lake was too small to have one built into its budget. And he was enough of a cop to nod thoughtfully at Al’s admission (rather pointed, I thought) that if the SFPD didn’t pay him to do the job, he’d probably work it for free, to keep from going crazy with the boredom of retirement.

  A flicker of smile on Belmonte’s face gave him away: he knew he was being played, but would go along with it.

  I liked him better, after that. And I would trust his instincts a bit more, as well.

  Once the masculine back-slapping was over, we moved on to the reason for our presence. I opened the folder—which, had Al been a true believer in male superiority, he’d have grabbed away from me—and gave Belmonte the initial report.

  The old cop sat back in his chair, the sheet in one hand and a baked good in the other—the box held croissants and macaroons, to my surprise, rather than the traditional doughnuts. He read thoroughly, all the way to his signature at its bottom.

  “Yeah, I remember this. Poor kid. It was a real mess.”

  “She was my sister,” I told him.

  He looked over at Al, then back at me. “I’m not sure what you two are after. It wasn’t a homicide.”

  “There are a few loose ends.”

  He turned his gaze toward Al, no doubt hoping for the what-can-you-say shrug of the beleaguered male. When he did not find it, he took a bite of his chocolate croissant, thinking about matters as he chewed.

  “Well, there’s almost always loose ends around accidents.” Had there been a pause before that last word? As if he’d drawn quotation marks around it?

  If so, Al didn’t seem to notice them. “Indications of this one are, you weren’t sure yourself, at first.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because you started out treating it like a crime scene. Fingerprints, loads of photos. You telling us you did that for all your crashes?”

  Belmonte noticed the crumbs that had rained over his sweatshirt, and brushed them—not onto the floor for his wife to vacuum, but onto his hand, to deposit back on the plate. Another notch up in my estimation.

  “No, you’re right. We were short that night so I was working patrol. Happens sometime in a small department. So I was the first one on the scene, other than the guy who lived down
the road. It was him who called it in. Or maybe his wife? Anyway, he was there, and it looked obvious what happened, but like you say, something about it didn’t feel quite right. I never did figure out what it was, but you know how it goes: when in doubt, bring out all the guns. Anyway, we did go over the car pretty closely, and nothing showed up.”

  “What were you looking for? Tampering?”

  “Oh no, just any kind of criminal negligence. It was a beat-up old car, and there was always a chance that her family would sue the owner. If a wheel fell off or something, you know?”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “It would be in the report.”

  “Do you know if there were any tests done on the front of the car, blood or hair or something, like if it hit a deer?”

  “I don’t think the front was damaged much. You can check on the photos.”

  “There’s only a handful of them.”

  “There were more to begin with. Sorry, I guess they got thrown out.”

  “What about the party she’d been at? Didn’t you interview the rest of the kids? Or her friends?”

  “We might’ve talked with a few of them, but of course, it was decided pretty soon that we were looking at an accident.”

  “There aren’t any statements from them in the file.”

  “Really? Sloppy bookkeeping, I guess. Or maybe because they were minors.” But his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “Far as I remember, there was beer and probably some pot, and she asked one of the kids if she could borrow his car and he said sure.” He shook his head. “That’s all I can dredge up off-hand.”

  “Pipeline Road is nowhere near where we lived,” I remarked.

  “Yes.” His expression made it clear: this was another point in favor of suicide. “Anyway, we just wanted to make sure the car itself wasn’t to blame. And lab work’s so expensive, when the chief decided not to spend any more, I couldn’t really argue.”

  “But at the same time,” Al pointed out, “you left all the stuff you’d pulled together in the file.”

  “Sure. Well, not all the stuff.”

  Al’s coffee cup paused halfway to its saucer. “You kept other evidence?”

  “I don’t know if you’d call it evidence, and I doubt it’s still there, but we had a box in the lock-up for years—photos, notes, stuff we picked up from inside the car. Maybe they stuck the negatives in there? Anyway, nothing very exciting. An empty beer can under the seat, couple of marijuana roaches in the ashtray. Samples of glass from the ground. I know the box was there in the nineties, because when DNA work started to get easier, I sent a couple things off to the lab, to have them checked. Like her, um, her underwear.” He avoided my eyes, as if I were Patty’s disapproving mother rather than her cop sister.