This time, I let Al do the talking. And in the end, the Captain agreed that we did not have to put the case entirely on hold until the DNA report came back from the water bottle and the stuff from the car.
Which meant that Monday, Al and I were driving back to the Diamond Lake Police Department, for the all-important discussion about jurisdiction. This was one trip when Al didn’t fall asleep. Instead, he stared out the window and made the occasional note. As we left the freeway, he spoke for the first time in miles.
“I think you should let me do the talking.”
“Why? Because you and the Chief bonded over football?”
“It was baseball. And no, it’s because you’re too involved.”
He had a point. And if anyone could establish a rapport, personal and professional, with Dan Ruckart, it was Al. “Okay. But don’t forget to play the budget card.”
“Small towns, tight budgets, got it.”
A case could be tricky when different jurisdictions were involved. My sister had died in Diamond Lake: the SFPD had no authority here. However, if the investigation went where we thought it might, even if the town asked for FBI assistance, the trial itself would burn through a load of money. And considering that our suspect had a bigger income than the annual budget of Diamond Lake, even a young, eager-beaver DA would think twice about filing against him.
Chief Dan Ruckart was the first person we needed to convince. He looked a little pale by the time we finished. He glanced over to make sure the office door was shut—about the tenth time he’d done so—and rubbed his jaw, then reached out to shift the photographs around on the desk.
I thought he was going to turn us down.
“Mark Fields? Jesus.”
“Believe me,” Al said, “we know what we’re asking.”
“I don’t think you do. He’s given this town millions. The mayor’s been in talks with the Fields Foundation about a new—ah, shit.”
“Well, it was just a thought. We’ll leave you out of it.”
It being our proposed next step, namely, talking with any Diamond Lake High graduates who might remember a link between Patty and the Fields boy. Al and I, as outsiders, would have to set these up as formal interviews, while Chief Dan could slip questions into casual small-talk about the town’s financial benefactor.
“No, I’ll do it. And I better start now, before the mayor makes his announcement.”
We stood. Al stuck out his hand. “You have the thanks of the San Francisco Police Department. And the apologies of two of its investigators, for having dumped this on you.”
I finished gathering the folders and shook Ruckart’s hand, too. “Thank you, Dan.”
“If my department missed things back then, it’ll be me who’s sorry. Maybe Diamond Lake needs a Cold Case unit of its own.”
Dan Ruckart was as good as his word. Two nights later, my cell phone rang at 8:30. When I answered, he spoke without a greeting.
“Three of your sister’s friends knew she was going out with Mark Fields that January.”
“Thank you.”
“One of them would testify to that, the other two aren’t so eager. You’ll want signed statements, I’d guess.”
“I think so.”
“But you don’t want me to talk to his buddies yet?”
“I think we need to wait until the next round of lab results come in. I’d rather have the DA make that call.”
“Okay, I’ll go back to the three women tomorrow, see how much I can get. And I’ll have to schedule a talk with the mayor, warn him what’s coming. And after him, the DA.”
“You think he’ll want to keep the case?”
“Not when the mayor points out it’ll bankrupt the town.”
“I am really sorry, Dan."
“Don’t be. I liked this job, but it is what it is. ’Night.”
Sleep well, I said to the dead phone.
One, and potentially three pieces to add to the picture we were building.
The next piece came two days later, with a late-afternoon phone call from the lab.
“You wanted me to test that rag and the cigarette butts, and compare them to the water bottle.”
“Tell me they match,” I pleaded.
“No blood on the rag, and I couldn’t get anything off the cigarettes.”
“Well, we tr—”
“But there was a piece of window glass with blood on it, and the DNA was still good.”
“And ?”
“They’re a match. With your nameless boy suspect.”
“Holy shit. Oh, Jesse, I owe your lab a Christmas party.”
“Who’s your suspect, anyway? I mean, all hush-hush, no names, it’s why we worked it so fast. Must be a terrorist cell or something, right?”
“Or something.”
“Ah, come on, Kate, you can tell me. We’re good with secrets here.”
“I’ll see if I can let you know before it goes public, okay? That’s the best I can do. But Jesse, again, thank you.”
One tiny spot of blood on a crumb of safety glass. Two partial fingerprints in another kid’s car. A tattoo, some thirty year-old memories, and an out-of-focus yearbook photograph…
Circumstantial threads, with no direct evidence in the lot.
Once we had a charge, subpoenas would fly. Interviews and interrogations; a warrant to search the Fields home, pointless as that would be after all these years. Talking to friends of the dead boy whose car had been logged by Officer Columbo, that night on Pipeline Road: did they know Mark Fields, back in the day? Medical records—had the hospital treated a banged-up kid that night? Did a local doctor have a walk-in patient?
Threads, all of them. But hell: threads were what captured the giant Gulliver. Why couldn’t we financial Lilliputians capture the massively wealthy Mark Fields with ours?
I talked to Al, a conversation that looped back, again and again. Was there anything else we might do before taking things to the DA? What would he make of the evidence as it was? Would it be enough?
Mark Fields on the one side, threads on the other.
“I wish we had something else,” I said.
“You want to wait?”
“I don’t think we can. Once Chief Ruckart talks to his mayor, things will get out.”
“We might get lucky. Might stay under wraps for a few days.”
We tried to reassure each other that every case felt the same way at some point, but when we hung up, neither of us was fully convinced.
I dropped my head back, kneading at my stiff shoulders. Thed Bear watched me from the shelf, slumped against the books. “You can hang a man with a rope made out of threads, right, Thed?” I asked him. Not that we hang people anymore.
He merely contemplated the scarlet toenails on his right foot. Thed looked a bit strangled himself, I thought, with all those necklaces around his throat. I stood, stretched, and took him down, running my fingers through the cheap decorative pendants. The one on the top was a gaudy piece of Indian enamel-ware in the shape of a heart, a little locket nearly buried among the shiny unicorns and Berkeley hippie-beads that hid the long-buried silk neck-tie I had given him.
A heart-shaped locket. The last thing Patty had given him.
I lay Thed under the desk light. The heart was little more than a half-inch across, but it did indeed have a small indentation on the side. Smiling, I absently worked a thumbnail into it, pried—
And stared down at the tight little curl of hair that tumbled out.
Black hair.
My hands found a pair of heavy scissors in the drawer and cut right through the flimsy chain. The open heart dropped onto the top page of printouts. I moved Thed to the side and went back to the drawer for the magnifying glass, a joke gift from Nora. A lock of cut hair didn’t provide much genetic material—but maybe Patty’s boyfriend had objected to having a chunk of hair cut away. Maybe she’d had to retrieve her memento from his comb instead.
I stared through the magnifying glass, trying to see if
there were any bulb ends, but I couldn’t tell, not without pulling the curl apart. Taking care not to move too fast or breathe too vigorously, I folded the sheet around the little heart and its contents, and wrapped the thing with tape. A lot of tape.
They were only threads, hair-thin and fragile.
And yet…
XX
The hair in Patty’s locket did contain DNA. It matched that of the blood on the broken window-glass. It also matched the saliva on the bottle from the fitness club.
Two of Patty’s three friends gave Dan Ruckart written statements saying that the boy Patty had not-so-secretly been going out with that last month was someone who had later become really, really famous.
Ruckart also found one of Mark Fields’ high school friends, who agreed to give testimony in exchange for immunity: he and three others had driven out to the old quarry that night, to drink beer and smoke dope while they’d waited for Mark—who had promised them a party. A party involving a girl. They’d heard the sirens, seen the lights, and three of them had abandoned the car and its driver to walk home across the fields.
Records from the Fields family doctor, long retired but slow to clear out his storage locker, revealed that Mark had been treated for a badly bruised left shoulder and a number of scratches on his hands, sustained when he “fell off his bike.” The treatment happened the morning after Patty died.
And finally, forensic examination of an old leather jacket found in the Fields house in Diamond Lake—packed away with such memorabilia as Mark’s letterman jacket and the running cleats he’d won his JV title in—revealed a smear of blood embedded in its right forearm, just where you’d expect from a back-handed blow to a passenger. The stain had been cleaned, and was too degraded for a DNA sample.
In the end, based on the Conspiracy to Rape admission from his one-time buddy, Mark Fields—the Mark Fields—was charged with felony murder. He was arrested, and would be tried, in San Francisco.
* *
It was the top story on every Bay Area news channel, and aired before the first commercial break in the national news. Company stock prices sagged, spokesmen read cautiously worded protests, Fields stepped down as CEO of Fields Enterprises. There was talk of changing the company’s name.
Word of the ass tattoo leaked—of course it did—followed rapidly by either the image itself or a Photoshopped recreation. The Fields ass became a well-known internet meme.
Diamond Lake is no longer in the running for a major Fields Foundation grant—in fact, the Foundation itself is far from a sure thing. But Dan Ruckart is still chief of police. And last week, I had a letter from Diamond Lake High asking if I would mind their setting up a small college art scholarship in the name of Patricia Martinelli.
The Fields trial itself won’t begin for months, possibly years. Will he be convicted? Anyone who has seen a rich man’s lawyers at work will doubt it. But will he recover?
I don’t think so.
So far, Al and the Captain have managed to keep my name out of everything. I pray that my sister’s killer never learns what I had to do with getting the investigation under way. It will be bad enough when he finds I’m providing evidence against him.
The night before the Fields arrest, I finally had my long-delayed conversation with Nora. As my carefully edited explanation went on, she picked up Thed to run her hands along his fur, as if reaching to him for comfort. I told her about Patty’s relationship with a boy, a boy she thought she could trust. I described what Al and I had fitted together about my sister’s bravery, her determination to save herself, when she discovered her boyfriend’s true nature. About how I’d gotten a lot wrong, and some things right, all these years. And I gave her the barest outlines of the case against Mark Fields, stressing that this was something she couldn’t talk about, outside her family.
“But you think he killed her.”
“Indirectly, but yes, without a doubt he killed her.”
“The Mark Fields.”
“Nora, you do understand that you can’t tell anyone what I’ve told you? I am trusting you with my job, here. If anyone finds out I’ve given you evidence in a case, I could be fired. And Fields himself could use it to get free.”
I could see the last threat hit home. Her head, which had been bent over the bear while she listened, now came up, her eyes flaring with anger. “I won’t, Mom. I’ll never talk about it, ever. I promise.”
“I know you won’t, honey. I just needed to be sure you understood the consequences. Now, what do you think—did Mama Lee leave us any of that caramel ice cream you love?”
* *
A newborn’s wail, a doctor’s news, the squeal of brakes. A car driving too fast on a lonely road…
My life as a cop started with a story I told myself, to try and make sense of my kid sister’s death. When I had it, when I’d built a picture that explained the facts, I turned away from her and from my early years, to get on with life—until my daughter forced me to go back to my beginnings for a closer look.
These days, Thed Bear sits on a shelf in the living room, minus his heart locket. That is waiting with the other evidence, to do its part in the trial. I framed two pictures of Patty and added them to our family photo wall. Nora mentions her occasionally, like an aunt she once knew who moved far away.
The note under my dormitory room door had said: Kate, your family’s trying to reach you.
And I think it has.
Notes
Same-sex marriage was not definitively ruled on by the US Supreme Court until June, 2015. Kate and Lee were first married during the brief 2004 period when licenses were issued in San Francisco. In the eleven years that followed, some couples had to marry several times, until the law finally caught up with society.
* *
With thanks to retired SFPD Homicide Inspector Karen Lynch, Robert Difley, Master of Images, Sylvie-Marie Drescher, Bookshop Santa Cruz Publishing Coordinator,
and my team of backup editors—Alice, Erin, Merrily, Lynn, and Zoë. All these people have proved unfailingly generous with their time, scrupulously attentive to detail, and invariably patient with my mistakes.
And because writers by our nature both lie for a living and ignore sensible advice, none of these good folk should be held responsible for my own creative manipulations of grammar, geography, or the workings of the SFPD.
Laurie R. King
Santa Cruz, California
Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 29 novels and collections that have won an alphabet of prizes, from Agatha to Wolfe. Books in the Kate Martinelli Series have been given the Edgar, Creasey, and Lambda awards, and were nominated for Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Orange awards. The Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories include The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, an ALA award winner and one of the IMBA’s 20th Century’s Best Crime Novels . She is a third generation northern Californian who lives in the Monterey Bay area, and may be the only writer to have both an Edgar and an Honorary Doctorate in theology.
If you would like to find out about her future publications, sign up for the newsletter at:
LaurieRKing.com
ALSO BY LAURIE R. KING
KATE MARTINELLI
A Grave Talent
To Play the Fool
With Child
Night Work
The Art of Detection
MARY RUSSELL & SHERLOCK HOLMES
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Letter of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem
Justice Hall
The Game
Locked Rooms
The Language of Bees
The God of the Hive
Pirate King
Garment of Shadows
Dreaming Spies
Mary Russell’s War (short stories)
The Murder of Mary Russell
Island of the Mad
Riviera Gold (2020)
STUYVESANT & GREY
Touchstone
The Bones of Paris
STAND-ALONE NOVELS
A Darker Place
Folly
Keeping Watch
Califia’s Daughters
Lockdown
Beginnings: A Kate Martinelli novella Page 11