Crime Scene

Chapter 3

Approaching the house, I noticed deferred maintenance. Rain gutters sagged. Cracks in the façade had begun to gape. The portico floor was missing bricks. The front door was solid oak, though, coffered and free of damage, flanked by two unplanted planters smeared with lichen. All the windows I could see were unbroken.

I signed in, tucked my Posse Box under my arm, pulled on gloves.

Inside, Zaragoza was busy with the camera. A couple of Berkeley cops hung around in the doorway, spectating.

The foyer was a double-high oval, open at the long ends to a dining room and a den. Expansive but spare: the furniture consisted of a single high-backed chair and a console table with a tray, over which an oxidized mirror hung askew. At the back, a staircase curved up toward a spidery iron chandelier.

No rug to cushion the impact of flesh on tile.

No sign of disturbance, just the body, facedown.

I could imagine Tatiana’s shock.

I smelled coffee.

Walter Rennert was dressed in a navy-blue bathrobe, fraying at the hem. His feet were bare. Medium height. High side of average, weight-wise. His left arm was curled beneath his torso. His right elbow crooked skyward, as though he’d tried to slow his descent. I’d seen plenty of other bodies similarly positioned, which made it hard not to jump to an immediate conclusion.

Ten feet separated him from the bottom step. That’s a long way for a grown man to travel. I doubted he’d been pushed from the top of the stairs. It would take a violent and powerful heave, close to ground level.

Or else he tripped on the last few steps, went sprawling, cracked his head.

Or else he’d been moved.

Or someone from our side had moved him.

I turned to the uniforms in the doorway. “Anyone move him?”

One of them fetched Schickman.

“Not us,” he said.

“Fire?”

“Not as far as I know. He was cold to the touch when they got here, so I think they pretty much let him be. I can ask.”

“Thanks. Do me a favor and ask the decedent’s daughter also.”

He nodded and went off.

The source of the coffee smell was a brown puddle to my left. The cup it had come from lay on its side, lid popped off. A crumpled bakery bag coughed out its contents. Bran muffin. Scone. Two croissants.

Weekly brunch.

I pictured Tatiana getting out of her Prius, purse slaloming down her shoulder, coffee in one hand, pastry bag in the other, trying to manipulate a house key with two fingers.

I pictured her walking in.

Seeing him.

Dropping the food.

I didn’t see her screaming or freaking out. More like she’d dropped the food because it was the fastest way to get to her purse and her phone.

Assumptions.

I began my circuit at the console table. In the tray were a set of keys and a black leather wallet. The keys included one for an Audi and another for a Honda. I hadn’t seen either car. No big mystery: the garage wasn’t attached to the house, but down at street level, chopped into the bedrock, a common setup for East Bay hilltop homes.

Rennert’s wallet contained an unremarkable assortment of credit cards and forty-six dollars in cash. He belonged to two libraries, Cal and Berkeley Public. Health insurance. Social Security. AAA. Fuzz-edged loyalty card for Peet’s.

I checked the California driver’s license against the man on the ground. Even with next of kin present, I like to find at least one form of photo ID. Stuff like that seems redundant until it’s not.

I knelt down for a better look.

The dead man had a dense gray beard and a scraggly gray-white hairline that had fought to hold its ground. His eyelids were locked tight in an expression of agony, his mouth half open. He looked as though he had just received terrible news, unbelievable news.

He was indeed identical with Walter Jerome Rennert.

In the license photo he wore a dazed smile.

I replaced it in the wallet.

Zaragoza took a few last flicks of the body and turned his attention to the staircase, ascending one step at a time, pausing between shots to wiggle the treads. The walls were whitewashed plaster. Blood would stand out. The stairs themselves were uncarpeted — a point in favor of a slip. Rushing down, say, to answer the door.

I stepped to the far side of the body. Rennert’s right hand was tucked against his flank, gripping an object, the fingers fixed like pipe straps. I waved to Zaragoza, double-checking that he’d gotten shots in situ. He gave me a thumbs-up and I coaxed the object out: an etched-glass tumbler. Its robust, opaque base tapered to wafer thinness along the walls. The faintest coin of yellow liquid pooled at the bottom. Aside from a minuscule chip in the rim, it was intact, which argued strongly against a fall of any significant distance, whether that fall had come about as the result of carelessness, intoxication, bad luck, or malice.

On the other hand, a person hit with, say, an acute myocardial infarction might have time to realize what was happening. He might struggle to stay upright, succumbing in stages, brought first to his knees, then to palms and knees, elbows and knees, before finally giving out. Clutching the tumbler all the while. Wanting to avoid dropping it or collapsing on top of it. Refusing to accept that this was the end. Thinking a very pragmatic, very defiant, very human thought: No reason to ruin a perfectly good piece of crystal.

I bagged and tagged the tumbler.

Schickman reappeared in the doorway. “She says she tried to turn him over to do CPR but couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t turn him, or couldn’t do CPR?”

“You want me check with her again?”

I shook my head. “I’ll handle it. Thanks.”

The body most often speaks for itself.

I set the tumbler aside and knelt at the top of Rennert’s head, pressing my fingers into his skull and neck; moving down the spine and the back of the rib cage; digging through the robe’s deep pile, through layers of skin and fat and flesh gone rigid; verifying the integrity of the bones beneath.

No indication of fracture or dislocation.

There’s a reason we do autopsies, though: some bodies keep secrets.

Having reached the top of the staircase, Zaragoza came down wordlessly to assist me.

He took hold of Rennert’s hips. I took hold under the arms. We did a silent three-count and rolled the body over.

The parts of Rennert’s face that had been in contact with the ground were blanched paper white, in contrast to the pronounced lividity in his nose and chin. I didn’t observe any marks consistent with blunt impact. His robe pouched open, revealing tufts of gray hair, breast and belly blotched purple and white. No lacerations, abrasions, or gross trauma.

It was getting harder and harder not to make assumptions.

Pincered in Rennert’s left hand was an item that, for me, is almost always the single best piece of evidence: a cellphone. People keep their whole lives on their phones. You’d be amazed at how many of them will google signs of a heart attack instead of calling 911.

Rennert’s was a scratched black iPhone, three or four versions old.

Zaragoza photographed the front side of the body.

When he finished, I examined Rennert’s cheekbones, forehead, jaw, sternum, and rib cage. I freed the phone and gave it to Zaragoza to catalog, concluding with a check of the extremities before heading outside to confer with Schickman.

“We’ll hang on to his cell for now,” I said. “If you need something let me know.”

“Right on.”

“We’re just gonna have a quick look around the house.”

Schickman nodded. He look relaxed. He was making assumptions, too.

It’s the mark of a good secondary when you don’t have to waste time negotiating the division of labor. Zaragoza might be a neurotic hypochondriac, but he’s a professional: he’d taken it upon himself to cover the ground floor, leaving me the upstairs. I followed on his sweep of the staircase with one of my own, failing to find any evidence pointing to a fall or a fight.

Mostly I wanted to track down the hypertension medication. Say Rennert had missed a bunch of pills. That could point toward a natural death: a stroke, for example. Taking too many pills could lead to light-headedness, which in turn could lead to fainting.

A person’s home is also a useful indicator of whether he’s taking care of himself, sleeping well, getting proper nutrition, and so on.

In this instance, I got mixed signals. Each of the five bedrooms was tidy and tastefully decorated but gave off a stale, unused odor.

In the master I paused to take in a panoramic view of the Bay.

The medicine cabinet in the master bath was empty. Dust dulled the tub.

Rennert was divorced. Maybe he slept somewhere else because the suite conjured too many unpleasant memories. Or it felt overlarge for a single man, living alone.

Nothing hinted at the existence of a girlfriend. No women’s clothes in the closet, no stray pots of makeup. Here and there amid the art hung family photos, various combinations of the same three faces, at various stages of childhood and adolescence: Tatiana and two boys roughly ten years older. Products of a previous marriage, perhaps. I saw them apple-cheeked in ski suits against a backdrop of regal pines; holding hands as they jumped into a swimming pool; riding horses in tall dry grass. They looked happy. If they were in fact stepsiblings, they appeared to have blended well enough.

Then again, you don’t whip out the camera when the kids are fighting.

Figuring Rennert for one of those people who keep their medicines by the kitchen sink, I started down the hall, pausing by a narrow door.

I had overlooked it, thinking — assuming — it was a linen closet.

I opened it and instead peered up a cramped second staircase.

As I mounted the steps, a phantom ache stirred in my knee, and I stopped for a moment, gripping the banister, breathing through my teeth.

I climbed on.

The staircase opened to an attic, plywood floors and naked rafters and bulging insulation. Stifling and dark, it ran the length of the second story, lacking interior walls but sectioned by Oriental rugs and file cabinets, lamps and books and odd bits of junk. A comfortable disorder that conveyed movement and intention, unlike the space below.

A monumental kneehole desk, ornately carved and piled high with books and magazines, anchored one zone. There was no desk chair, but rather a pair of chairs set up to face each other. The first was a lounger that looked like it had been slept in a lot: nubby upholstery, blanket limp over the arm, grimy buckwheat neck pillow. The second chair was a wooden rocker with smooth, carved spindles, a rich red cherry stain. The two pieces made for strange companions — one elegant and cool, the other greasy and creased. They seemed to huddle in conversation; they looked like a dude on a bender and his successful younger brother, there to stage an intervention. Yet again.

Along the far wall I spied the components of a basic bathroom: plastic-basin shower, sink, toilet, exposed plumbing.

I’d found where Rennert did his living.

No fridge. Maybe he still went downstairs to eat.

I picked my way through the gloom toward the sink.

No pill bottles.

I got down to check the floor.

I inched back the shower curtain.

The makeshift sleeping area felt like the next most logical place to look.

I made my way there, high-stepping over milk crates filled with LPs, sliding aside the rocking chair to stand before the desk.

I wondered how they’d gotten the massive thing up those stairs. A crane? The largest window, overlooking the Bay, didn’t look big enough to admit it. Maybe it had been taken apart plank by plank and reassembled onsite, imprisoned, never to leave.

As a symbol, it felt kind of over the top.

One glance at the mess of papers smothering the desktop was enough to generate a strong hypothesis about Walter Rennert’s profession. Books: The Teenage Brain and Taming the Human Animal and Issues in Contemporary Research Design. Academic journals: Assessment. Adolescence and Childhood Quarterly. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

It fit. We weren’t far from campus. Although I’d majored in psych, and I didn’t recognize his name.

Hospital or private practice?

Maybe he used the attic as his office, put his patients in the lounger and took notes in the rocker. To me it didn’t feel like a relaxing place to unburden oneself. Too claustrophobic. But to each his own.

I started opening the column of desk drawers on the right.

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

Middle right, more of the same.

Bottom right, a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.

As a rule, we stick to a single camera per scene. It gets too confusing otherwise, having to coordinate different devices. Zaragoza had the Nikon with him downstairs. For the moment I used my own phone to shoot a few flicks, not so much for the official record as to remind myself.

The mere presence of a weapon did not raise red flags. People own guns. Even people in Berkeley. More to the point, Rennert hadn’t been shot.

I checked the cylinder.

Five-round capacity.

Four cartridges, full metal jacket.

The central drawer contained more paper and unopened mail.

The drawers on the left were false, a single door that swung out to reveal a deep cabinet, stuffed with a splendid array of fine scotch whiskeys: Walter Rennert’s liquid pantry.

At least I think the whiskeys were fine. I don’t know booze. They had fancy labels with pictures of game animals and dramatic Highland names.

At any rate, they had all been well enjoyed.

Three tumblers, identical to the one I’d found in Rennert’s hand, sat in a rack on the inside of the cabinet door. Tucked into the tumblers were three plastic amber pill bottles.

The first two contained a diuretic and a beta-blocker — as expected, with Rennert being treated for hypertension. I noted the dates, the dosages, the prescribing doctor (Gerald Clark, MD). A count of the pills corresponded to the days remaining before refill.

The third prescription had been issued by a different doctor, Louis Vannen, and filled five days earlier at a different pharmacy.

We don’t receive any formal medical or pharmacological training, but along the way you pick up the basics. Rennert’s third prescription was for Risperdal, which is the brand name for risperidone, which is a widely used antipsychotic.

The bottle contained the complete thirty days’ worth of pills. Two refills remained. Large black letters warned the user not to consume alcohol while taking this medication.

I opened up my phone to google risperdal alcohol interaction. No bars.

I put the bottles back in the glasses and went downstairs to find Zaragoza.