by Dave Stanton
“It was unavoidable,” I said, but he raised a hand to stop me.
“I understand it was self-defense. That’s why no charges are being filed. But my point is this: watch yourself, don’t look for trouble, and don’t do anything stupid. Frankly, the thought of an armed citizen in my town gives me cause for concern. Are you leaving today?”
“No,” I said. “I have some business that will keep me a few days.”
“Oh?” he said, his wooly eyebrows rising on his forehead, his expression contemplative. I knew he had seen me the day before at the wedding.
“Please make sure there’s no reason for us to talk again. Other than that, enjoy your stay.” He stood and we walked out into the hallway.
“Fingsten,” he said, and the deputy looked up from his desk.
“Make a copy of Mr. Reno’s driver’s license, his concealed weapon permit, and take down the serial number and make and model of his firearm.” Grier walked away and left me with Fingsten. I gave him the Beretta and licenses, and we stood at the copy machine while he made copies and scribbled down the notes on my gun.
“Don’t even spit on the sidewalk, man,” he said.
“Huh?”
“You heard me, tough guy,” he rasped. It sounded like he was doing a bad Clint Eastwood imitation.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Stick around, and you will.” His muscles tensed and he slowly clenched and unclenched his fist. He looked barely old enough to shave, and his skinny body was the type any respectable man could snap like a pencil.
“Yes, sir, Officer,” I said, standing at attention and saluting. I walked away and tried not to laugh. Evidently Sheriff Grier had a shallow talent pool to choose from.
******
The coroner’s facility was next to the sheriff’s office. I tried the door, but it was locked. I stuck my hands in my pockets and kicked at pebbles for a few minutes until I saw a man carrying a briefcase climb from a car and walk toward me. His shoulders were hunched against the cold, and his gait was bowlegged and hitched.
“Who the hell are you?” he said, his blue eyes glaring from under his bushy gray eyebrows.
“I’m Dan Reno. I’m here to witness Sylvester Bascom’s autopsy.”
“What? Do you have permission to do so?”
“I was told by the Bascom family it had been arranged.”
“Arranged, my ass,” he grumbled. “You need formal permission. From me.” He opened the glass door and stepped inside, holding it open against his shoulder. “Come on out of the cold, goddammit,” he said. I followed him in.
“That’s the problem with your generation. You got no manners, no respect for your elders.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I ain’t heard you say goddamn ‘please’ yet.”
I sighed and straightened my posture. “Okay. Can I please have your permission?”
“Yeah, against my better judgment, you can. As long as you got the stomach for it. You puke on my floor, I’m gonna kick your ass. You got it?” When he looked at me I thought he winked, but then I saw that his right eye had a nervous twitch. He blinked hard four or five times, then he smiled and stuck out his hand, his eyes alive with mirth.
“I’m Jack Myers,” he said. I followed him into his office. “Actually, I was called by an aide to the governor of California, telling me to expect you. You must be working for someone who’s got some clout. You’re Reynolds, right?”
“Reno.”
“That Eye-talian?” he asked, but didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Give me a minute. I need to pull the paperwork. You been to an autopsy before, right?” His voice was like a gravel pit.
“Yes.”
“All right. This way.” I followed him to a changing room. He pulled a white gown over his sweater, and over that a yellow apron.
“Let’s see if we have an XL for you.” He took a gown from a neat pile on a green counter top.
“These too.” He handed me the gown, an apron, a white hair cap with an elastic band, and a mask that covered from my chin to just below my eyes.
“And also these,” he said, dropping a pair of blue rubber gloves into my hands.
We finished suiting up then went into the autopsy room, which had a linoleum floor and green tiled walls. My gown and apron kept me comfortable in the room’s lowered temperature. I wrinkled my nose at the chemical smell, but I welcomed it—the stronger, the better.
There was a stainless-steel counter in the center of the floor, which harbored two sinks with faucets. On the floor below the counter was a large grated drain. A set of knifes, scalpels, and surgical pliers lay in a metal pan between the sinks.
“Wait here while I get the body,” Myers said. When he turned to leave, I picked up a scalpel and idly inspected the blade. “And don’t touch anything,” he said, looking back and shaking his head. I put the knife down and waited for him under the flat light from a powerful rectangular lamp that hung low from the ceiling. He came back through a separate door a minute later, wheeled the covered body over to the sinks, and latched the gurney securely to the counter with two steel clasps.
“Everything I say from this point will be recorded,” he said, and pushed a button on a console next to the counter. He was now wearing glasses, but his face was covered by the mask from the eyes down.
He pulled the sheet down to the waist, and there on the aluminum slats of the gurney lay the whitish-gray body of Sylvester Bascom.
There was a cut and swelling above his left eye, a discoloration on his chin, and a large abrasion on the right side of his rib cage. A two-inch-wide entry wound above and to the left of his navel appeared to be the cause of death. Jack Myers started speaking for the recorder.
“Case seven-zero-zero-nine-five-six. Sylvester Bascom. Visual inspection of the body indicates Caucasian male, approximately late twenties.” He pulled the sheet completely off the body.
“No visual tattoos or scars on front side. Approximate height five-foot-nine, weight around one seventy-five, muscular build.” He went on to describe the injuries. My first impression was that Sylvester had been in a struggle or a fight, and I doubted it was with a woman. I didn’t see any scratch marks, but someone had popped him a couple good ones in the face. I bent down to take a close look at his knuckles—his right hand was cut on the fore and middle fingers. I thought back to Osterlund. There were no visible marks on his face earlier, at least not before our encounter.
“Son, give me a hand. I got problems with my back. Turn the body over for me.” I tipped the body, which felt like a cold bag of hardened rubber, onto its front side. To my amazement, there was an exit wound in the lower back, maybe half an inch wide. Whoever stabbed him used one hell of a knife and must have rammed it into him with great force. The knife had to have been at least a foot long, maybe fifteen inches. No way was it a woman, unless she was extraordinarily strong. Jack Myers finished his description of the backside, and I turned the body back over.
He began an inspection of the genital region and said there was “significant residue, appearing to be dried semen and/or female bodily fluids.” He took some scrapings, sealed them in a shallow glass container, then reached over and shut off the recorder. I followed him away from the body to a pair of metal folding chairs against the wall. He pulled his mask down under his chin.
“Next, I need to cut the body open and inspect the wound. Also I’ll cut open the testes to determine if the subject had ejaculated recently.” He looked up at me over his glasses. “You’re welcome to stay if you’re interested, or we can talk later, and I’ll tell you what I’ve found.”
“Okay,” I said. I’d seen what I needed to and had no desire to watch him take the knife to Sylvester’s genitals. “I don’t want to impose, I know it’s Sunday, but could we get together later this afternoon and go over it?”
“We could, as long as you have no objection to meeting me at the local pub.”
“Done,” I sai
d, and managed a smile. “As long as you let me buy.”
“You got a deal, son.” He looked at his watch, then lifted his mask back over his mouth. “The King’s Head, off 50 on Fremont Street. Be there at five.”
“Thank you,” I said, careful to show the gruff old bastard the proper manners.
******
The gambling crowds at the Lakeside had thinned out, and I found a quiet desk in the keno lounge. My jaw was throbbing. I ran my tongue over the series of cuts Osterlund’s punch had left inside my mouth, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. I hadn’t got enough sleep, and felt tired as hell. My head became heavy, and the jumble of sounds from the casino blended into a dim haze of bass notes. Colors began to take shape on the insides of my eyelids, which felt like they were weighted with lead. The shapes became images of John Bascom and Jack Myers, and then they were replaced, as if a page had turned in my subconscious, by the presence of my father. My head fell forward, and I floated back to when I was a child.
It had rained most of that day, until dusk when the gray clouds moved east and the skies lightened. It was colder than we were used to in San Jose. The rainwater flowed down the gutters below the branches of the willows and oaks that lined the sidewalks on my street, and I thought if I looked close enough I might see slivers of ice in the runoff. Our front yard was nearly flooded—pools of water covered the lawn, and the mud around the shrubs was so deep that if you stepped in the wrong place, it might take your shoe off. I was eating dinner with my family that evening when we were interrupted by a loud pounding on our front door. My father left the table, I heard the door open, and heard the rumble of men talking. I walked to the door and two men I’d never seen stood on the porch.
One was large and fat, wearing a dirty t-shirt and faded brown pants, his hair covering his head in sparse patches. The other man was much smaller, not much taller than me even though I was only ten years old. He had greasy black hair and strangely deformed lips that seemed locked in a continuous sneer. Their conversation grew louder, and ugly tones intruded into our home like a vile odor. My father closed the door behind him, but I went outside to the front steps. The men stood shouting in the driveway of our San Jose home, and then I remember my dad saying, “You want to settle it that way? Then let’s settle it.”
They squared off on the driveway, he and the big man, with the deformed one watching not five feet from where I stood. The fight lasted maybe sixty seconds but seemed at the time to go on forever. My mother and sister came outside and watched my dad beat the man bloody, but the man wouldn’t quit until he reeled around, staggering like a drunk, and fell face down onto the wet, gravely street. “You’re not only an evil man, you’re also stupid,” my father told him. “You’ll go to jail for your crimes.” His friend helped him into their truck, and they drove away.
My mother was crying back in the house, and my father put his thick arms around her shoulders. “He had the nerve to confront and insult me at my home,” he said, wiping the tears from her face. “Would the Richard Reynolds you married take that lying down?” His shirt was ripped, and a thin trail of blood ran from his cheek into his black beard.
As a district attorney, Richard Reynolds was widely feared for his vehement approach. A number of men he’d prosecuted swore they’d get back at him, and at one point we had our phone number unlisted. But my father loved his work; he did it fearlessly, and his mind was as sharp as his physical presence was intimidating. He was a large man with hard, dark eyes, and I never remember him without a full, coal-black beard, but in our home he was as kind and patient as he was relentless as a prosecutor.
It was around that time he changed our family name from Reynolds to Reno, and he was labeled as an eccentric in Santa Clara County’s legal ranks. He eventually left the DA’s office, went into private practice in San Jose, and had a successful career as a trial lawyer until one late fall day.
He had come out of his downtown office later than usual that evening, on a windy, moonless night. The man, whose name I later learned was Hubert Sheridan, was hiding in the parking lot, lying in wait for the day he had promised himself for the last three years. My father never had a chance. He died instantly from the point-blank blast from Sheridan’s ten-gauge shotgun.
Hubert Sheridan was arrested later that night as he crouched in the weeds down on the banks of the nearby Guadalupe River. He was a lifetime criminal, an unintelligent, bitter man who had lost any real hope of a normal life by his teen years, when he was convicted of rape and sentenced to a year in a juvenile detention center. Afterward, he took his place among the criminal element on the outskirts of society, until eventually he was arrested for a series of felonies. My father convicted him of armed robbery, kidnapping, and a number of lesser charges, but prison overcrowding and a paperwork glitch set him free after serving only three years of his twelve-year sentence. He had been out of jail for a week when he murdered my dad, and it wasn’t until I went to his sentencing hearing that I realized he was the same man my father had fought in our driveway on that cold night, back when I was a young boy.
******
A waitress tapped me on the shoulder and I snapped awake. I ordered a coffee, called Caesar’s, and asked for Mandy McGee. There was no answer. I sat around for a few minutes, filled out a five-dollar keno slip, and gave it to the runner when she came by. Then, as much as I didn’t want to, I called Wenger’s home number. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Rick—
“Enjoying your long vacation?” he interrupted.
“Rick, something’s come up here in Lake Tahoe.”
“Don’t tell me—you’re hung over, and you’ll be late on Monday.”
“No. You know the wedding I’m here for? The groom was murdered, and his father has hired me to investigate.”
“Hired you to investigate?”
“That’s right.”
“What? You mean Wenger and Associates, right?”
“No, I’m going to do this freelance.”
“Freelance? What does that mean?”
“It means I’ll need to spend another couple days up here, maybe more.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
“So, you’re not coming in tomorrow?”
“That’s right.”
“Dan, what are you saying? You can’t just drop your responsibilities. You have a job working for me.”
“I understand that. I’ll need to take some vacation time, or possibly a leave of absence.”
“What? That’s bullshit! You can’t just call me up on a Sunday afternoon and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I won’t be coming in for a while.’”
“Sorry, this was unexpected.”
“Unexpected, huh? Listen, buster, that doesn’t cut it. That’s not the way professional careers work. I’ve treated you fairly, paid you on time, and now you’re completely disregarding that.” His voice had risen about two notches higher, the way it always did when he was emotional. I didn’t say anything for a moment. I could hear him breathing in the phone.
“Rick, I don’t feel good about putting you in a bad spot. You’ve been a fair boss, and I don’t take my job for granted. But depending on what happens here, I may or may not want to continue working for you.”
“What? Now you’re quitting without notice? You asshole!”
“Now, calm down—I didn’t say I was quitting. Goddammit, Rick, here’s the bottom line. I was paid a large amount of money up front to investigate this murder. There’s no way I could pass it up.”
“How much?” he said. I knew he would ask that.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s enough that I accepted the offer immediately.”
“Tell me how much. You owe me that.”
“What’s the point, Rick?”
“The point is I may want to make a counter offer.”
“There’s no way you could offer me enough. I told you, it’s a large amount of money.”
“Dammit, Dan, I’ve t
reated you well for two years. You can’t screw me over like this! I have the right to know what I’m up against.”
“It’s way more than what you’re paying me.”
“Dan, how much?”
“It wouldn’t make sense for you to even consider-”
“How much?”
“I’m telling you, Rick-”
“How fucking much?” he screamed.
“Fifty thousand,” I said.
“Stop lying.”
“That’s up front, plus another fifty K if I identify the murderer before the police.”
“That’s preposterous. No one would pay that kind of money.”
“The guy’s a rich executive.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“It’s the truth.”
“Fifty thousand for investigating one murder? What kind of idiot would pay that much? What if the cops close the case right away? Do you still get the money?”
“I already have the check.”
“This is unbelievable. I think it’s just wrong. And I think the right thing to do is bring this business to Wenger and Associates.”
“Yeah, right. Look, I’ll make you a deal, Rick. Don’t jump to any quick decisions. This whole thing could be over in forty-eight hours. I’m asking you to cut me some slack, hang in there for a couple days, and I’ll let you know how it’s going.”
“Bring the case to Wenger and Associates.”
“Nope.”
“Let’s work it together. Me and you.”
“Not gonna happen, Rick.”
“That’s it, huh? Just like that. Well, thanks a lot, Dan. It’s all good. I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Just call me at your convenience. Appreciate it, man. No problem.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“You better think long and hard about what you’re doing here. What comes around goes around. Don’t come running to me when you need work.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t forget, you’re gonna have to pay taxes on that money.”
“I know.”
“You’ve got some growing up to do,” he said, and started saying something else, but I hung up on him.