Crime Scene

Chapter 28

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, we got slammed at work. I spent the holiday on duty, hours taken up by a hit-and-run that left a sixteen-year-old dead and a fifteen-year-old who shouldn’t have been driving on a ventilator. We were short-staffed again, though it wasn’t Shupfer causing the crunch, it was Zaragoza. His wife had prevailed upon him to take time off. He was due — overdue — and nobody could stop him, though Vitti chewed him out about the timing.

The sergeant prowled around the squad room in a sour mood. His fantasy team sat in dead last, and his admiration for my coaching had curdled into disdain. He made sure to drop by my desk at least once every couple of hours to harass me, swipe my food, tell me to quit spending so much energy on football and get back to doing real work.

If he only knew.

Tatiana wasn’t returning my calls or texts. Nor had I heard back from Paul Sandek, Nate Schickman, or Nicholas Linstad’s ex-wife. I was starting to feel unloved.

I missed Tatiana. The challenge of her personality. The landscape of her body.

I could understand her reluctance to probe. In the aftermath of death, you flail around, hoarding mementos. You think you want that: Any scrap. But in truth we advance through grief via an act of willful ignorance.

Take your idea of the deceased. Frame and seal it.

New information requires you to update the image. It forces you to smash the glass and unfreeze time. It reminds you that, no matter how much you loved someone, there are things about him you will never know. That uncrossable space between two people, painful in life, widens unbearably.

I’d broken open a disturbing perspective on Tatiana’s father — yet continued to dismiss her beliefs about his manner of death.

For her, dredging up the past was a no-win.

But I’d begun. I’d put myself in debt. Not merely to Tatiana. To her father. To Nicholas Linstad. To Donna Zhao. And I knew, better than most, that the dead never forget. On quiet nights, nights of reckoning, they come to collect.

“Coroner’s Bureau, Deputy Edison.”

“Yeesss, hello, I need to speak to you, sir, because I have received some very disturbing information, and we need to have a conversation about this, like right away now.”

“Mr. Afton? Is that you?”

“Yes and I am sorry to tell you but this is not acceptable.”

“What isn’t?”

“I cannot accept this situation and I am very unhappy, very unhappy.”

“One second,” I said. “Can you hold on a second, please?”

“Well okay but we need to talk.”

“We will, I promise, I’m just — gimme a second.”

I hit MUTE, called up the file on Jose Manuel Provencio, skimmed through it. I unmuted the phone. “Mr. Afton.”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay, let’s talk about what’s bothering you.”

“Yes sir, I am bothered because I just went down to the place where they had him and I was informed that he’s not there because they already cremated him already.”

“You went to Cucinelli Brothers.”

“Yes sir, and I’ll tell you, I was very surprised because I thought you and me, we had an understanding.”

“Right, but we also agreed that if I hadn’t heard from you by a certain—”

“And so that, that is, what. He’s in a jar? I’m sorry, but that is unacceptable, I cannot accept that.”

“Hang on, please, Mr. Afton. Let’s review this together, okay?” I moved the phone to my other ear. “Last time you and I spoke, you were getting together funds to cover the cost of burial. You sounded like you were ready to move. I don’t know what happened in the interim, but I get a call from Mr. Cucinelli and he tells me you never followed up.”

“I was, I was doing that.”

“I attempted to reach you, more than once. I tried the number I had for you, I left messages. My hands are tied. I authorized them to proceed with a county indigent—”

“Excuse me, sir.”

“I’m sorry if you’re unhappy with that outcome, but—”

“Excuse me. Sir. Excuse me please.”

“Go ahead.”

He said, “I was in the process of assembling the funds.”

“Okay.”

“And I got, okay, delayed. Okay? So, but I was handling it.”

“I get that, but if you tell me it’s all set, and then it turns out there’s going to be a holdup, I need to know that. I’m working in the dark here.”

“I asked you to wait.”

“I did wait,” I said. “I waited six months. What happened?”

“I had a situation and I was unavailable,” he said.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Well, okay, listen, I was not in a position to do that.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Hang on a second, please.”

I muted him again and clicked over to the main Sheriff’s Department server.

On October seventh — days after our last conversation, in which he assured me he was on top of things — Samuel Afton pleaded no contest to a charge of possession of a controlled substance and was booked into Santa Rita Jail to begin a forty-five-day sentence.

I came back on the line. “Hi, Mr. Afton. I completely understand why you’re upset. Unfortunately, this is what we’re looking at. I’m sorry, but I can’t undo it. We do have his remains, and I’m happy to arrange for you to—”

“What do I want that for?”

“Well,” I said, “this way you could bury them when the time is right for you.”

“Did I ask for your advice? I didn’t ask for it. No, you don’t say nothing.”

I did not reply.

“Hello?”

I shut my eyes. “I’m here.”

He paused. “You did the wrong thing.”

“Mr. Afton,” I said, but I was talking to a dead line.

I set the receiver down. Immediately it rang again.

I jabbed the speakerphone. “Coroner’s Bureau,” I barked.

“Eh. May I please speak to Clay Edison?”

It was Paul Sandek.

I picked up. “Hi. Sorry. I’m here.”

“Clay? You sounded like somebody else.”

“It’s been a long week.”

“Oh. Well, hopefully I can make it better for you.”

“You got the files.”

“Only some of them,” he said. “I’m sorry about the delay. It got a bit weird, actually. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. Dinner tomorrow? Theresa’s making stew.”

I glanced at Vitti, stalking the floor like a big disgruntled toddler. “I might be on the late side.”

I didn’t make it to the Sandeks’ till a quarter to nine.

“It’s perfectly fine,” he said, dismissing my apology and leading me into the kitchen. “We saved you some.”

I sat down and right away felt at ease — like putting on an old bathrobe. So many hours spent in this room: studying at the breakfast nook when my apartment got to be too loud and the library felt too lonely. Talking to Paul or his wife or the both of them about the meaning of life. Two smart adults I respected, hearing me out and taking my fears seriously.

Now I saw the same cream-colored wall tiles, every third embossed with a different farm animal. An espresso machine, identical to the one in Sandek’s office, had joined other counter appliances lucky enough to have received tenure.

Theresa Sandek pecked me on the cheek and took a cling-wrapped bowl from the fridge. “Let me heat it up first.”

Same maternal instinct. Theresa had a doctorate of her own; she taught at the business school. Around me, though, it was always food and comfort.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m starving.”

“It’s better hot.”

“She’s right,” Sandek said.

“I’m always right.”

“She’s always right,” he said, taking the bowl and opening the microwave.

A voice from the living room said, “Clay?”

I poked my head out. A young woman was coming down the stairs. She wore square-toed canvas slip-ons and jeans, a bright-blue flannel shirt that offset a swarm of glossy blond curls — bobbed, not pulled back carelessly like I remembered.

She had changed in a lot of respects.

“Amy,” I said.

She gave me a hug. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You too.”

“I can’t believe how long it’s been,” she said. “How are you?”

“Busy,” I said. “In a good way. You?”

“Same.”

“Your dad said you’re almost done with your doctorate.”

“You know what ABD stands for.”

“ ‘All But Dissertation.’ ”

“ ‘A Big Disappointment.’ ”

From the kitchen, Sandek called, “Not true.”

“You cut your hair,” I said.

“I did?” she said. “I guess I did. It was a while ago. I wanted ‘professorial.’ Instead I got ‘preemptive lurch toward middle age.’ ”

“It’s nice,” I said.

“Thanks.” Curls tossed. Teeth flashed. “I’m sorry I can’t stay and catch up. I’m meeting a friend for a drink. Nobody told me you were coming.”

“I didn’t want to spoil the surprise,” Sandek called.

I made jazz hands. “Surprise.”

Amy smiled. “I’d love to hear more about what you’re doing, though. What’s your email address?”

I gave it to her. “Are you around next week?”

“Sunday-night red-eye,” she said. “I have to TA on Monday morning.”

“She’s back for Christmas,” Sandek called.

Amy mimed strangling him, then smiled again and squeezed my arm. “Nice seeing you.”

“Safe travels.”

She grabbed her jacket off the sofa and went.

Sandek called, “Stew’s on.”

I lingered briefly, examining the negative space created by Amy’s departure.

“Awesome,” I called, heading into the kitchen.

I found it telling that neither Paul nor Theresa attempted to stop me from taking my bowl to the sink and washing it. I belonged. “Delicious,” I said. “Thanks so much.”

“Pleasure,” Theresa said. “Can I get you anything else? We have leftover meatloaf.”

“I was going to eat that for lunch,” Sandek said.

“Paul. He’s our guest.”

“I was going to make a sandwich.”

“I’m good, thanks,” I said. I ran a dish towel over the bowl, placed it in the cupboard.

Sandek and I adjourned to the living room sectional. From his work bag he produced a rubber-banded photocopy of the review committee’s report.

“Strings were pulled,” he said.

“I appreciate it.” I riffled the document; it ran to three hundred fifteen heavily footnoted pages. “You read it?”

“Not to the end. I wanted to get it to you ASAP. The parts I did see were interesting.”

“How so?”

“I won’t bias you,” he said. “I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”

Theresa walked through en route to bed. “I left you something on the counter.”

“Thanks again,” I said. “Have a good night.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Sandek said.

She went upstairs.

“You also asked for the file on Rennert’s experiment,” Sandek said. “I didn’t know this, because now we do everything online, but they keep all the old paper. IRBs, raw data, reimbursement forms, and so on, boxed up at an offsite facility.” He fished in his bag, handed me a single sheet of paper. “That’s the reference number. I put in the request and got an email back saying the file was unavailable.”

“What’s that mean, unavailable?”

“That’s what I wondered. I spoke to the social sciences librarian, who spoke to offsite, who told her there’s a gap on the shelf where the box ought to be.”

“Who was the last person to check it out?”

“She wouldn’t tell me,” Sandek said. “Borrowing histories are confidential.”

“Damn. Think it was Rennert?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “I’m sure he wasn’t the only person interested in it. There was a lawsuit, remember. They might be more responsive to a request from law enforcement.”

“They might be less responsive, too.”

“Always a possibility,” he said.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.” I held up the report. “This is fantastic.”

He grinned. “When do I get my badge and gun?”

The “Something” Theresa had left on the counter was a meatloaf sandwich, wrapped in foil. On it she had written in blue Sharpie: FOR CLAY!!!!

“Treachery,” Sandek said, “thy name is Theresa.”

I reached for the sandwich but he snatched it away. “We’ll play for it.”

Out in the driveway, I eyed the hoop hanging askew over the garage door. No external lighting, just starlight to shoot by.

“You’re not worried about waking your neighbors?” I said.

Sandek strode across the street, jouncing a basketball.

“We’ll keep it quick,” he said. “PIG instead of HORSE.”

He stepped onto the opposite curb, spun on his heel, and drilled it. Forty-footer.

I set my backpack down and went to collect the ball. “You’ve been practicing.”

“Goddamn right I have.” He pointed to the curb. “Your shot.”

I crossed the street. He stepped aside, yielding the spot to me.

I hesitated. “Do I have to start with my back to the basket?”

“In the spirit of hospitality, I’ll say no.”

All the same, I missed by a country mile.

“This is not fair,” I said, jogging after the rebound.

“Don’t talk to me about fair,” he said. “That’s my fucking sandwich. P.”