Crime Scene

Chapter 31

The PI Bob Stanwick had hired was named Faith Raine. She worked out of a room above a ramen shop in downtown Oakland, spitting distance from the county courthouse. Thick tendrils of steam laced with MSG wafted up through the floor vents.

Olivia Harcourt had given me the impression that her ex-husband had screwed up but the once. Either she was still in denial or she was downplaying her humiliation. Or else Stanwick had hidden the truth from her. Nicholas Linstad was a repeat offender. In five months of surveillance, Raine had photographed him meeting with four different women.

As she laid out the evidence — names and addresses, grainy zoom-lens snaps — I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I asked Raine if she knew about any affairs prior to 1997.

She shook her head. “I’d assume there were plenty, though. Guys like him, it’s an instinct. They’re collectors.”

He had such funny taste.

I don’t mean to sound small about it.

A dumpy little girl.

Olivia couldn’t say what she meant out loud, of course. That would be racist.

Put a pint of rosé in her, though — she couldn’t stop herself from saying something.

All the women Nicholas Linstad had collected were in their early twenties, with straight black hair and a medium build. They all stood in the neighborhood of five foot three.

All four were Asian or Asian American.

A perfect description of Donna Zhao.

Li Hsieh, Donna’s former roommate, worked as a supply chain manager for a supermarket conglomerate headquartered in Hong Kong. I pulled her email address from the UC Berkeley alumni database. In the murder file, Ken Bascombe had noted that she spoke minimal English, so I kept my questions to her simple and direct.

As it turned out, her English was just fine — vastly improved since her days at Cal, a point she herself made in her initial reply.

I didn’t speak with the police, I was embarrassed they wouldn’t understand me she wrote. Wendy was American, I thought it would be better for her to talk to them.

Unsatisfied by her own excuse, she went on to offer another.

Donna’s family was very traditional. Every night her mother called to make sure she was at home studying. They got angry when she switched her major from business to psychology. They wanted to bring her back to Beijing but she convinced them to let her stay. They didn’t know she had a boyfriend, they would not approve, it’s a big distraction. I don’t think she discussed it with Wendy either, they were not close. She spoke to me a few times. She was unhappy because he did not respect her. I told her it’s better to find a man who shows you respect, but she said she loved him. I never met him. She would not tell me his name, she was afraid her parents would find out.

There was another, more powerful reason for Li Hsieh not to raise the subject of Donna Zhao’s boyfriend, with the police or anyone else: he was a married man.

This is a very shameful thing. I did not want to cause any more pain to Donna’s family. If they found out they would be very embarrassed and angry, it would be to them like she died another time. The police caught the person who was responsible, I decided to forget about it.

Ken Bascombe had retired to Crockett, a waterfront enclave north of Richmond. For not much money, you could get a neat little condo with bay views — not San Francisco Bay, granted, and you had to overlook the refinery. But to a lot of ex-cops, some water is better than no water. I know guys who have dumped their life savings into a boat or a beach cottage, when really what they need is ten years of therapy.

Still, as far as coping mechanisms go, almost anything beats liquor.

Bascombe answered the door with highball in hand. Meaty, with a seamed, sunburnt face and a good head of hair, some gray but mostly brown. His arms were thick; bowling pin legs stuck out from cargo shorts. “Yeah?”

“I’m Clay Edison,” I said.

He squeezed the doorframe. A gold bracelet swung on his left wrist, links rattling.

“You said I could swing by today,” I said.

He hadn’t meant it. Or hadn’t expected me to show.

He wobbled, turned, and went inside, leaving the door open.

The theme was tourist-trap nautical: rope and lanterns, a bar cart fashioned from two ship’s wheels. He pointed me toward the sofa and fell into a La-Z-Boy.

His expression never changed as I spoke. When I gave him a printout of the email from Li Hsieh, he scanned it impassively, reaching the end far too quickly to have read it.

I said, “I can’t prove she’s talking about Linstad. But overall, it’s a good fit. He worked with Donna. She assisted him on the study. She matches his preferred physical type.”

Hard to say which of us was more uncomfortable. I’d figured it would be an easier conversation in person, but that meant having to look him in the eye. Ask him to consider the possibility that he’d stumbled during the most significant case of his career.

He wasn’t looking me in the eye.

He was looking anywhere but at me.

He folded the page in half and waggled it between two loose fingers. “I’m waiting for the part where you tell me why any of this matters a shit.”

“I got in touch with one of the women Linstad messed around with,” I said, retrieving it and returning to my place on the sofa. “Tammy Wong. She said Linstad once went at her, physically. Held her against a wall and got up in her face. I haven’t heard back from the other two, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they said something similar.”

Bascombe said nothing.

“If so, it feels like a pattern.”

“Big if.”

“Right, but... Let’s just, for a minute, take it as a framework.”

“Framework,” he said.

“Say Linstad is sleeping with Donna Zhao.”

Bascombe yawned, didn’t bother to cover his mouth. “You wanna say that, say that.”

“Something happens between them. He dumps her, she gets mad, starts making noise, threatening to tell his wife.”

Bascombe waved a finger like a conductor’s baton. The music goes on. Yawn.

I said, “Nineteen ninety-three, Linstad and Olivia have been married less than two years. Their prenup says he doesn’t get anything till year three.”

“So.”

“That’s motive for him to want to shut Donna up.”

Bascombe raked the chair arm upholstery, as if trying to quash an unpleasant urge. “You are one creative guy, Tommy Ed.”

“I know it’s not a lot to go on that’s concrete—”

“It’s nothing concrete,” he said. “Don’t let me stop you, though, I’m finding it really entertaining.”

“Linstad puts himself at the scene,” I said.

“As a witness.”

“Okay, but what’s he doing there to begin with? His office is across campus. He lives in Piedmont. He’s spending nights at the duplex, which is in the opposite direction. There’s no reason for him to be on foot anywhere near her apartment. Why’s he there?”

“Ask him.”

“I can’t,” I said. “He’s dead.”

“Yup,” Bascombe said. “You said it.”

“Did you consider him as anything other than a witness? At any point?”

“Sure I did,” he said. “You think I’m a fuckin idiot? It don’t mean shit, because we have a print and a confession. So unless you can explain that I got nothing to say to you.”

He finished his drink, heaved himself up out of the chair, went over to the bar cart, and uncorked a bottle of Wild Turkey. He poured, plodded back to the recliner. His drink sloshed as he sat down. He licked the spillage off his thumb.

“Triplett was vulnerable,” I said, drawing a smirk from Bascombe. “He’s young. He’s suggestible and unstable. Linstad had to be aware of that; he screened Triplett for the study. There’s a report — I emailed you copies of a few pages.”

“I saw.”

“Then you know: the two of them had this weird relationship. Triplett flunks the screening procedure, Linstad goes, ‘No thanks, see you later.’ Then all of a sudden he changes his mind and enrolls him.”

“Cause he felt bad for him.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he realizes, Wait a second, this kid could be useful. He starts buying him food, taking him out. He’s grooming him.”

“Brainwashing. Just like on TV. I love it.”

“Maybe Triplett acted alone,” I said. “Maybe he and Linstad did it together.”

“Hmm,” Bascombe said. “Did you check out Lee Harvey Oswald?”

“Maybe Triplett was home that night, like his sister says, and he was nowhere near the scene and Linstad acted alone.”

“You love that word maybe.”

“You don’t think Triplett’s confession comes across as confused?”

“Of course it does. He’s fucking crazy.”

“You ask him, after he stabbed her, what happened? He says: ‘She like disappeared.’ You tell him come on, be serious, what are you talking about, she disappeared? You know what he says?”

“Please, tell me.”

“ ‘Like in the air.’ ” I looked at him. “In the air.”

He stared at me: Who the fuck cares.

“The study had the kids playing a video game,” I said. “I checked it out. The way it works is, you kill people, they break into pieces and dissolve into the air. It’s possible, right, that Triplett’s imagining that? What’s that mean, ‘in the air’?”

“It means,” Bascombe said, his voice dangerously soft, “jack shit.”

Silence.

I said, “I know this case is important to you.”

“Shut up,” he said. “All right? You had your turn. Now shut the fuck up and listen.”

He leaned over to set his glass on the carpet, coming back up red in the face, busted capillaries etching the flesh of his nose.

He said, “This is finished. It’s dead. Understand?”

“I’m thinking about the family,” I said.

“You arrogant goddamn muppet, I told you to shut up.” He sputtered a laugh. “You’re thinking about the family? All right. Let’s ‘think about the family.’ When I think about the family, it’s that they’ve had twenty-four years to come to terms with what happened to their daughter, their only child, which — if you had a shred of real-world experience whatsoever, which you don’t, you sad fucking wannabe — then you’d know that it’s not nearly enough. The fuck you know? You don’t deal with alive people. You’re a vulture. You go through pockets. But I can promise you one thing: dragging them back into it will do nothing, nothing, to ‘help’ them. You want to help them? Shut up. Everything you’re saying, all this garbage you’re spewing, even if it was true, accomplishes nothing. There’s nothing to accomplish. One guy is out of prison, the other guy is dead. Not to mention everything you’re saying is a hypothetical load of shit.”

He smiled. “I’ve tried to be patient with you. I let you call me on the phone, come to my house, where I live, waste my time, tell me this that the other, make up stories about people you don’t know and never met, and then I’m supposed to give you a pat on the back?”

He leaned over, feeling around for the glass. “We’re gonna be good boys and do our jobs. I already did mine. I put that fuckin animal in jail. Now I get to have fun. You seem a little unclear about yours, so I’ll review it for you again: shut up. Go back to being a maid. Unless you’re as terrible at that as you are at police work, in which case, my recommendation is, go out and find a job more suited to your skill set. Try clowning.”

He found the glass, pushed himself to his feet, headed to the bar cart.

I said, “Linstad’s ex-father-in-law is John Sowards.”

He froze, thick shoulders bunched. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re still talking.”

“He’s worth about half a billion dollars. There’s one business partner he’s done several deals with. Dave Auerbach. He used to be a UC regent. Dave is short for S. Davis. That’s him, on the committee that throws Linstad under the bus. The lawyer, Khoury? She’s from the Sowards family firm.”

Bascombe kept his back to me as he poured more Wild Turkey.

I stood up. “The report comes out right around when Olivia and Nicholas’s marriage hit the rocks. You’d think Sowards would have no reason to protect Linstad. Quite the contrary. Let the bastard burn. But the big rich think differently, right? Reputation is everything. Their daughter marries a murderer, they get tainted by association.”

Bascombe recorked the bottle.

“I spoke to the coroner who handled Linstad’s death. He told me his boss was leaning on him to close the case quickly and quietly. I’m figuring Sowards got spooked. He may’ve even suspected his daughter had something to do with it. So he circled the wagons.”

Bascombe faced me. Red gone to purple.

He extruded words, like a machine making sausage links. “Never. In my. Career. Did I. Let anyone. Influence. Me.”

“I’m not saying you did,” I said.

The room was small, and, drunk as he was, he covered the distance with impressive speed. Barely enough time for me to see him cock a fist back, the bracelet jangling, the big hairy right forearm swinging in a shallow, sideways arc.

What’s true for a free throw is true for a punch: the flatter the trajectory, the more accurate it has to be. Try to club me over the head but miss, you still might break my collarbone. Aim straight for my nose and your margin of error shrinks. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it was what I was thinking as I juked to the left and Bascombe’s momentum carried him past me and into a bookcase.

Kitschy piece, shaped like a canoe with the bottom third chopped off so it stood upright. A few books, mostly knickknacks: brass compass, ship-in-a-bottle, autographed baseball on a plastic stand. All of which came raining down as the bookcase slammed back and then pitched forward, leaving a moon-shaped cleft in the drywall.

Bascombe tangled with a floor lamp, which went down, the bulb blowing out with a pop. He came to rest in a deep one-legged squat against the wall, arms flung out, fingers spread and palms flattened, as though he’d been shot from a cannon. A Tom Clancy paperback lay at his feet.

His wrist was bleeding. I put out a hand to help him up.

He slapped it away, struggled up, and lurched toward the back of the house, swallowed up by the unlit hallway.

A door slammed.

I put the canoe-case back where it belonged. The baseball had a Giants logo; the signature was Willie McCovey’s. The ship-in-a-bottle was toast. The glass hadn’t broken, but the insides had collapsed into a slurry of matchsticks and fabric. I set it on an end table and saw myself out.