Crime Scene

Chapter 23

By Friday I knew that Freeway John Doe had died of liver failure. I still hadn’t made much progress on identifying him. His height and weight didn’t match any missing persons at our local PDs. The skin on his hands had degraded, making prints a nonstarter.

The best lead was a partial tattoo on his chest, the letters IVOR and numbers that could be a date. I worked the databases for surrounding counties, seeking persons named Ivor or Ivory or any variant thereof; executing public record searches for births and deaths.

From across the squad room came a mild commotion.

Sully said, “Look what the cat dragged in.”

I followed her gaze toward the far door. An Asian man in jeans and a camouflage-patterned windbreaker had entered and was moving along an impromptu receiving line, fielding greetings, fist bumps, and hugs.

Shupfer scooted her chair back and went over to join the welcoming committee.

Marlborough Ming was a wiry five-eight, with a close-cropped goatee and thinning crew cut, TOUGH MUDDER printed along his jacket sleeves. Pushing sixty, he looked fit enough to outrun any one of us.

“Wassup people,” he said, adjusting rimless glasses after Moffett released him from a bear hug. Reaching into his backpack, he began distributing little cellophane bundles cinched with ribbon, each containing a couple dozen coin-sized cookies in various colors and flavors.

“Ooohhh,” Botero said.

“White chocolate matcha,” Ming said, “sea salt caramel, dark chocolate raspberry, lemon crème.”

Ming’s wife ran a bakery.

“Everybody loves tiny cookies,” he declared. “They pay twice as much.”

I hadn’t yet opened mine before I saw Moffett shaking crumbs into his mouth. “Dude, these are the nuclear bomb.”

“You want more?”

“Hell yes.”

“Too bad, fat pig,” Ming said.

Vitti came down the hall. “What’s — hey now,” he said, as a package of cookies hit him in the chest.

Work ground to a halt so Ming could show off photos of his daughters sporting floppy chef’s hats and flour-dusted faces. That in turn reminded him of the time some fool almost blew up the old building by drowning maggots in gasoline.

“Whose idea was it, Ming?”

“Shut up,” he said. “Okay, maybe me, shut up.”

He mimed pouring from a canister. “ ‘Goodbye, little maggots,’ ” he sang.

The problem had come when some other fool decided to stuff said dead maggots down the garbage disposal, then run the disposal, creating a spark that ignited the gas fumes and caused the entire building to jump like it had been bitch-slapped by God.

“It’s true,” Shupfer said. “I felt it on the fourth floor.”

“The old morgue didn’t have no sprinklers,” Ming said. “It had the chemical powder. Whoooosh. Everywhere, everybody, blinking, totally yellow except for the eyes.” He cackled, putting his hands in front of his own eyes and “blinking” with his fingers. “Like Wile E. Coyote!”

After several rounds of nostalgia, he and Shupfer drifted into quiet conversation, the rest of us resuming our respective tasks. It grew dark outside, wind anguishing the branches of the willows cantilevered along the building’s northern slope.

I heard Shupfer say, “Hey Ming, did Edison ever end up calling you?”

I craned around my screen.

She was smiling genially.

I couldn’t tell if she was doing me a favor or giving me the finger. The line’s not so clear with her.

I said to Ming, “I had a chance to review a case of yours.”

“Oh yeah.” Complete indifference.

“Accidental fall. Name of Linstad.”

“You had some questions for him, didn’t you,” Shupfer said.

“Not really,” I said. “Just that it was interesting.”

“Yeah,” Ming said. “Very interesting.”

He rose and hefted his backpack, turned to Shupfer. “See you.”

“Later, honey.”

He addressed the room: “Goodbye, people.” He pointed to Moffett. “Don’t be like this fat pig.”

A round of farewells.

He left.

I said to Shupfer, “What was that about?”

She was busy on her phone.

“Shoops.”

She handed me the phone, showing me a text.

Tell him come outside

In the parking lot Ming leaned against his Sentra, pushing open a blister pack of nicotine gum. He popped a piece in his mouth and began to chew, listening without interruption as I explained my interest in the death of Nicholas Linstad.

He said, “Don’t waste your time.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“He fell down. Hit his head. He’s dead. It’s closed.”

“I don’t believe you believe that.”

“Why you care?”

“Same reason you did.”

“That’s where you wrong,” he said, cackling. “I don’t give a shit. I got cookies.”

A gust of wind punched down. Ming ejected his spent gum into the broken blister, looked to me with stoic hope. “You got a smoke?”

I shook my head.

He sighed and popped in another piece of gum. “Last case before I retired.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“Bad luck.”

“Not just for you,” I said. “I spoke to the detective from the first murder. He left Berkeley PD soon after.”

He laughed, rubbed his eyes. “You big brave stupid man.”

I waited. He shrugged, ticking off on his fingers: “Two dents in the pillows. Two voices. Two wineglasses.”

“Someone else was with Linstad that night.”

He nodded.

I said, “You don’t know who it might’ve been.”

“Nope.”

“You don’t know if they were present when he died.”

“Nope.”

“Theories?”

“Not my job.”

“But you do have one,” I said.

No reply.

I said, “Julian Triplett.”

To my surprise Ming shook his head. “I never heard about him.”

“You think someone else could’ve pushed Linstad?”

Ming said, “I called his father. In Sweden. He told me the ex-wife was rich. Paying Linstad alimony.”

“She was paying him.”

“Like, twenty, thirty thousand a month. Good deal, huh?”

I whistled.

“Motive,” Ming said.

“Did you speak to the ex?”

“Not my job,” he said again. “Not yours, either.”

“What’d the cops think?”

“They said no evidence,” he said. “They were right.”

“There were two wineglasses.”

“So what?” Ming said. “He had a friend. They got drunk. The friend went home. He fell down the stairs. So what?”

“Did they take prints off the glasses?”

“No evidence,” he said again.

“What about the guy who heard the gunshot?”

“Inconclusive,” he said. “No casing. No bullet. No holes in the decedent. No holes in the wall.”

I understood. The case for a homicide was borderline at best, requiring that you squint and tilt your head. But Ming couldn’t justify that — either to himself or to the cops — and so he’d done what he could.

“You must’ve had questions,” I said. “You mannered it undetermined.”

“Okay, but I changed it.”

“Why?”

In the distance, the freeway had begun to clog with angry taillights.

He said, “Pressure.”

“From who?”

“It came down through the lieutenant.”

“What was the source, though?”

He shook his head. Either I don’t know or I can’t tell you.

I said, “How rich an ex-wife are we talking about?”

He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “She could buy a lotta tiny cookies.”

“So what are you thinking? She knocked him off?”

“Skinny lady,” he said. “Skinny rich lady.”

“She hired someone,” I said.

He chomped his gum.

“Maybe she hired Triplett,” I said.

He looked at me. “Not your job.”

He spat out his gum. “You should smoke,” he complained. He opened the driver’s-side door. “Good luck, stupid.”

“Thanks, Ming,” I said.

“Thank Shoops.”

“Yeah. Although I gotta say, I don’t get why she’s up my ass about it.”

He grinned, climbed into his car. “Cause she loves you so much.”

While Google couldn’t tell me how skinny Linstad’s ex-wife was, it had lots to say about her financial status.

Her maiden name was Olivia Sowards, making her the daughter of John Sowards, CEO of CalCor, one of the Bay Area’s largest commercial real estate developers. Her current married name was Olivia Harcourt, making her the wife of Richard Harcourt, cofounder of Snershy, which did something innovative involving cellphones, or had, until Verizon gobbled the company up for five hundred seventy-five million dollars.

Before departing for the day, I put in a call to her, leaving a message with an assistant.

On my way home I tried Tatiana from the car. As it rang, I wondered if I was using Snershy’s proprietary technology.

She didn’t pick up.

Not until nine p.m., as I was climbing into bed, did she call me back.

Since her departure, we’d spoken at least once or twice daily. She wasn’t loving Tahoe. Had locked horns with two realtors. One insisted on underpricing the house in order to spark a bidding war. The other insisted she repaint, top to bottom. She read me the ski report. Why didn’t I come up to visit? They had eight inches of fresh powder. There was a good restaurant she wanted to try.

Banter; a transfusion, keeping the channels between us open.

I didn’t know what we were working toward. Maybe nothing. I hoped it was something.

Expecting more of the same, I was totally unprepared for the panic in her voice.

“Thank God you’re there,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Are you okay?”

“The alarm company just called me,” she said. “Someone broke into my father’s house.”