Crime Scene

Chapter 24

My response was to tell her to hang up and call 911. But she meant the Berkeley house, not the one in Tahoe.

For the moment, at least, she was safe.

I threw on my uniform and sped over. Berkeley PD was already there. Pulling up the driveway, I parked behind a pair of squad cars, announcing myself in a loud voice.

A uniformed officer named Sherman stood guard out front. I showed him my badge and explained that I had come at the behest of the owner, a friend. For good measure, I name-dropped Nate Schickman.

Sherman didn’t care one way or another. He wasn’t about to let me inside the house, but he did show me the service door on the east side.

“It was open when we got here,” he said.

“No sign of forced entry.”

He shook his head. “They’re doing a walk-through.”

I didn’t ask to join in. No sense putting him in the position of having to refuse me. He knew as well as I did that I had no business being there.

“All right if I take a look around the perimeter?” I asked.

“Knock yourself out.”

“Do me a favor and let them know I’m out there, okay? So they don’t draw on me.”

He nodded.

I switched on my flashlight and began a circuit, passing the trash bins, the electrical box, a derelict potting shed. Turning the corner, I waded through knee-high ivy, playing my beam through the tree trunks. To my left, the earth sloped away severely; redwoods and thickets of fern screened off the street, far below. Wind came shrieking through in short blasts. I peered into the darkened living room.

Up on the second floor, lights blinked on as the cops cleared the bedrooms.

I reached the driveway, scrambled down an embankment, dropped over the retaining wall, stood on the gravel.

All quiet.

I jogged down to the cul-de-sac. Quiet.

I descended the footpath to the lower cul-de-sac where I’d chased Hoodie the Giant.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything and I didn’t.

As I hiked back up, I dialed Tatiana.

“They’re checking the house as we speak.”

“How are they supposed to know what’s missing?”

“They’ll notice if anything’s disturbed. Burglars aren’t very subtle.”

“I don’t fucking believe this.”

“Anything in particular you want me to have them look at? Paintings, jewelry?”

“You can’t go inside?”

“It’s not my jurisdiction,” I said.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve called you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.”

I stayed on the phone with her for another twenty minutes, until the three uniformed officers finished their search. Their verdict: everything in order. Beds made, drawers un-tossed, clothes in the closets gathering lint.

Either the intruder had fled at the sound of the alarm or — and I could tell they were leaning this way — it was a false alarm.

Happened all the time, these old houses.

Rattly frames. Windy night.

Nothing more they could do.

Tatiana drove back to Berkeley the next day. I’d tried to persuade her to stay in Tahoe. She was adamant, of course; who wouldn’t be? It was her house, now. Her stuff. Family heirlooms. She had to see for herself.

I still hadn’t told her about Triplett. I hadn’t yet decided what I was going to say when I met her at the house that evening.

She got out of her car and hurried toward me, casting nervous glances at the dark ranks of trees. Her smile was tremulous; the skin beneath the green eyes was smudged. I doubted she’d slept.

Not that I was at my best. Coming straight from work, I still smelled like death. If she noticed, she didn’t let on as we hugged.

I pulled on gloves. Held out a pair for her.

“What’re these for?”

“To do our own search. How was the drive?”

“Long.”

We started in the kitchen, going room by room, checking the contents against her memory and the catalog prepared by the appraiser. In the service porch, three wrinkled, smelly cardboard boxes sat shoved up against the wall: the same three boxes she’d left behind, the last time we were here. She grimaced.

“Why couldn’t they steal those?” she said.

We swept the first floor, ascended to the bedrooms. Nothing looked out of place to her. All that remained was the attic. Tatiana seemed hesitant, as if afraid to enter a space where the traces of life might be in evidence, the tang of death still sharp.

I offered to go alone and report back.

She shook her head. “I’m a big girl.”

We mounted the narrow stairs.

The smell in the attic was the same, only stronger: paper, bindings, dust, now underlined by months of neglect. Tatiana sneezed three times in quick succession.

“That’s why I never come up here,” she said. “Allergy hell.”

I switched on my flashlight and we began stepping over clutter, turning on lamps as we went, revealing the next few feet in a bright, bleaching spot.

“Anything look wrong?”

“I have no clue,” she said.

Neither did I. The place was such a disaster.

We came to the sleeping area. Tatiana switched on the reading lamp.

Rocker. Lounger. Blanket. Neck pillow.

“Look,” I said.

Several of the desk drawers were cracked, including the door to the liquor cabinet.

I crouched down. The bottles of scotch were intact, the levels about where they had been, so far as I could tell. The rack of tumblers, untouched. Three, not counting the one that I had tried and failed to return to Tatiana, presently sealed in an evidence bag and stashed, along with the leftover pill bottles, in the cabinet above my fridge.

I could understand why the cops had failed to note the open desk drawers. The attic was three hundred sixty degrees of distraction, including other cabinets not perfectly shut. Anyone glancing at the desk would have no reason to believe it had been messed with.

I turned my attention to the drawers on the right.

Pens, pencils, checkbooks, bills, bank statements, invoices, Post-its, confetti, crap.

Middle right, more of the same.

Bottom right.

Walter Rennert’s revolver was missing.

We sat at the dining room table, Tatiana’s bloodless fingers woven around a juice glass filled high with Chardonnay.

I said, “Who else has access to the house?”

“Nobody except me.”

“The real estate agent?”

“We haven’t signed a contract yet.”

“A neighbor with a key?”

“No.”

“Cleaning service?”

“I canceled them.”

“Did they have a key when they worked here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She dropped her face in her hands. “I can’t remember. I think they were supposed to mail it back.”

“Are you sure you locked the side door, the last time you were here?”

“I think so.”

“Let me ask that a different way: Do you ever leave it unlocked? Like if you go to take the trash out.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did your father keep a key hidden outside? Under a rock or something?”

“I don’t know, Clay.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

She drank half the glass at one go.

“What about your brothers?” I asked.

She shot me a look: Don’t be ridiculous.

“I’m just eliminating the obvious,” I said.

“They’re hundreds of miles away,” she said. “I gave them the appraiser’s list. ‘Claim whatever you want.’ They don’t need to break in. Anyway they wouldn’t want it. We’re not gun people. I’d forgotten he even had it.”

“Do you know when he bought it?”

She shook her head.

“Why’d he want one in the first place?”

“To protect himself from that maniac, I assume.”

I said, “So, no one else who could get into the house.”

“What,” she said. Her lips were trembling. “You’re scaring me.”

I hadn’t meant to. More than anything, I wanted to come up with a benign explanation. For her sake.

She pushed her glass away. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“That’s his name?” she said. “Julian Triplett?”

I nodded.

She bit her lip. “I’m trying to figure out how to express this calmly. Because, right now, I’m really angry at you.”

She brushed hair off her face, took a deep breath, let it out. “Okay. I’m telling myself it’s considerate of you to want to protect me. Sweet, even. But dumb, Clay, stupid dumb. If I don’t know I need to be careful, then I can’t be careful.”

“I wasn’t sure that you needed to be careful.”

“That’s my decision to make.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Julian Triplett,” she said, enunciating slowly. “He’s about our age, isn’t he?”

“A little older.”

“I wonder if my friends who went to Berkeley High knew him.”

“He was arrested freshman year.”

“Probably not, then.” She shivered, took a drink of wine. “What should we do?”

“Report it to the cops. We can’t have a loose weapon floating around. At least now we can give them a reason to keep an eye out for Triplett. For your safety—”

“I know what you’re going to say. I’m not going back to Tahoe.”

“We’re talking short-term.”

“No. Forget it.”

“Tatiana—”

“I will not let him intimidate me.”

“You could come back to my place.”

She looked at me, wide-eyed. “You think he knows where I live?”

“No reason to assume that.”

“Then?”

“Humor me,” I said. “At least for tonight.”

Her smile took effort. “If you’re trying to sleep with me, there are easier ways.”

“I’ll take the couch,” I said.

She didn’t answer. She finished her wine, poured more. “Are you convinced yet?”

“Of what?”

“That Dad was pushed.”

“It’s late,” I said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

A beat.

She shoved her chair back and dumped her refill in the sink.

“The couch,” she said, “sounds like a good idea.”