Crime Scene

Chapter 38

On Sunday morning, I got a call from Ivory Richards, daughter of Freeway John Doe, his identity now confirmed through dental records as that of Henry Richards, age fifty-eight, formerly of Las Vegas and missing since April.

“I wanted to thank you for what you did,” she said, “taking the time to find me.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“He’s still gone. Least now I don’t have to wonder.”

“I hope it gives you some comfort.”

She said, “He used to talk about going to California. He was going to retire, live on the beach. Too hot here. As soon as he could get some money he was going to go. But he lost his house when the bubble burst. I said he could move in with me. I told him: ‘Just till you get back on your feet again.’ He didn’t want to, it hurt his pride.”

“Yes,” I said, so she’d know I was still listening.

“When he took off, I thought he was living out there. That’s what I told myself. I didn’t know he was in trouble. I didn’t know how bad it had gotten, he hid it. I asked the police to see pictures. They told me better I don’t. I can’t stop thinking about it. In my mind...” Her voice wrenched. “In my mind, I see such horrible things.”

She was weeping. “Please tell me it wasn’t as bad as I think.”

The scream of the freeway overhead; a body unable to hold its own skin.

I said, “Not that bad.”

“You’re telling stories,” she said. “It’s okay. I appreciate that. I asked you to.”

The last dozen boxes at the storage unit contained nothing that pointed me toward Julian Triplett. I locked up and drove home.

Unsure if I’d need to make this call, I’d waited. Now I didn’t think I had a choice.

“Hey,” Tatiana said.

“Hey.” Silence. “Got a second?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve been through the boxes.”

“Anything?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Can I ask you: those last few, that you left at your father’s house?”

“You want to look at them,” she said.

“If possible,” I said.

“I was going to get to them eventually,” she said defensively. “Every time I come near them my eyes water.”

“Right,” I said. “What do you say?”

“I’m not around to let you in,” she said.

“Later this week, then.”

“No. I mean I’m not around around.”

A shroud of formality covered her tone.

“Okay,” I said.

Relenting a little, she said, “I can send you the key, if you’d like.”

“If you don’t mind.”

If this. If that. So tactful, we were.

“You’ll need the alarm code, too,” she said.

“Please.”

She gave it to me: 7-9-7-8. I thought back to when I was having trouble unlocking Rennert’s iPhone. I couldn’t remember if that was one of the combinations she’d suggested. Probably would’ve been worth trying. I asked her what it meant.

“I don’t know, actually,” she said. She sounded miffed to admit it.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try not to disturb you again.”

“Clay?” she said. “Let me know what you find?”

“I will if you want me to,” I said. “Are you sure you do?”

A long silence.

She said, “My father obviously believed he was doing the right thing. I don’t know his reasons, but I have to trust he had them. He was a good man.”

She expected an answer.

“From what I’ve seen,” I said, “yes, he was.”

“People don’t appreciate that. They never did. They know one thing about him and they think they know everything. But it’s not that simple.”

“Nobody is,” I said.

An urge welled up inside me: to ask when she’d be back.

“I’ll put the key in the mail tomorrow,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Take care, Clay,” she said.

The key arrived four days later, postmarked Portland, OR.

I was still laughing as I got into my car and drove over to Berkeley.

Three boxes, mildewed and spongy, tucked in the corner of the basement, caged in by a shelving unit.

We’d had to work to get them out, which meant that Rennert had had to work to put them in. A precaution.

Months drying out in the service porch had helped: they no longer stank so bad. The black stains in the cardboard had faded to a dull greenish gray, shedding a powdery residue that came off on my hands as I lifted the lid off box number one.

It was a quarter full, the contents not sitting high enough to escape the annual flooding. They appeared to be some sort of manuscript. The top few pages were legible, but only just: water damage had caused them to curl and shrivel, the printer ink bleeding, leaving teasing fragments.

Beyond page five, the paper had disintegrated, fusing into a single moldering brick, like crude papier-mâché. Trying to separate them only worsened the damage.

The second box was in slightly better shape. The pages had been folded and unfolded, giving them some loft, and they weren’t packed down, leaving the uppermost portion unscathed, sixty or seventy pages in total.

Letters, written in a tight, uniform hand.

Lydia Delavigne had commented disparagingly on Triplett’s poor spelling and grammar. Considering his learning difficulties and the fact that he’d never finished ninth grade, I thought he got by pretty well.

The neatness of the script struck me as particularly apt.

Big hands doing delicate work.

None of the letters bore a date, and most were brief, one or two lines on a short list of concrete topics: the weather, the food, a stomach ailment that appeared to drag on.

If Triplett ever expressed emotion, it was gratitude for Rennert’s visits — simple gratitude, ritualistic, the kind a young child offers when prompted.

The crime, the victim, Nicholas Linstad: none of that came up.

It would be easy to read into the tone a lack of empathy. A low-functioning psychopath, unable to grasp or care about the consequences of his behavior.

I took away a different message. I heard a disoriented mind, brimming with anxiety and loneliness, clinging hungrily to anything consistent.

Two pieces of toast for “brekfist” one day; three the next.

His way of marking time, like scratch marks on a cell wall.

The sheer volume of the correspondence suggested the depth of the connection between Walter Rennert and the boy he’d helped put away. Writing must’ve presented a serious challenge to Triplett.

Yet he’d persisted, seeking to communicate, taking comfort in repetition.

He told Dr. Rennert. Who else could he tell?

I moved on to the third box.

Atop the pile sat a loose sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings, speckled with mold. The murder; the trial. I skimmed them. Nothing I didn’t already know.

Lastly, a pair of plastic shopping bags that rattled when I picked them up. I unknotted the handles and saw a jumble of microcassette tapes, cases dated in blue or black ink.

I gathered up the bags, along with the surviving letters.

Stopping in the foyer to reset the alarm, I glanced at the spot on the tiles where Walter Rennert’s body had lain. Another small patch of my world marked by death, a shadow invisible to nearly everyone except me.

The clerk at Radio Shack tried to discourage me from buying a microcassette player.

“We don’t even make those anymore,” he said.

“The website says you have one in stock.”

He trudged off, returning after a while with a scratched clamshell case.

He scanned it. “Two eighty-four sixty-nine.”

“That can’t be right.”

“ ’Swhat I mean. Shit’s discontinued. Get a digital recorder, they’re like forty bucks.”

I couldn’t be sure that the tapes were good: the water might have ruined them. But the plastic bags gave me hope.

“What’s your return policy?” I asked.

“Thirty days.”

I handed him my debit card. “Receipt, please.”

At home I brewed a pot of coffee and set myself up at the kitchen table with notepad, pen, and my new, expensive, semi-vintage microcassette player.

I sifted the tapes, arranging them in chronological order. The oldest went back to March 2006 — shortly after Julian Triplett disappeared. Fifty-seven in all, roughly one a month. But not evenly spaced out: the first few bunched together weekly. Then monthly, bimonthly.

Seven months separated the second-to-last tape from the final one, in January 2011.

I put in the first tape and rewound to the beginning.

Expecting something along the lines of an audio letter — garbled updates from Triplett, sent to reassure Rennert — I sat up at the first voice I heard.

A woman, crystal clear.

All right, Julian. Before we begin I wanted to make sure that you’re settling in okay.

The response came slowly.

Uh-huh.

I’d never heard Triplett speak before. His voice was deep, so muted that you could mistake it for a distortion in the recording. As though he were hiding beneath the covers.

How are you liking the new place? the woman asked.

Pretty good.

Okay. Okay, good. Well. I spoke to Dr. Rennert about your medication. You remember I told you that I can’t do that for you, write prescriptions? He and I agreed that he’ll continue to handle it, like you’ve done so far. I’ll check in with him periodically. But if you ever run out, or you’re having a problem, and it doesn’t feel right, you should come talk to me and I’ll do what I can to help. That’s what I’m here for. Okay?

Okay.

Okay she said. Great.

Silence; hiss.

She said How’ve you been feeling recently?

Okay.

I know you’ve had a lot of changes. No response. Do you want to talk about that?

All right.

The silence went on so long I started to think the tape had ended.

How about your symptoms? Are you hearing voices?

No.

The conversation lasted another twenty-five minutes, much of it empty air. The therapist probing gently, Triplett mumbling yes or no or I guess.

I’m so glad we’re talking, Julian. I really look forward to getting to know you better.

No answer.

The hiss cut off.

I reached for the next cassette.

As in his letters to Rennert, in his speech Triplett gave an unsettling initial impression. He sat silent for uncomfortably long stretches, ignoring — or seeming to ignore — questions that would have sparked an emotional response in most people. I could imagine him sitting there, taking up a vast amount of space, like some dormant volcano. I could guess how he had come across in court.

The therapist never lost patience, slowly building up a rapport over many sessions. While Triplett was never chatty, his replies got a hair more expansive, his mood less skittish. On tape eight he referred to a job. He’d been hired as some sort of shop hand.

During the following session, she asked how work was going.

I don’t like it Triplett said.

What don’t you like?

He thinks I’m stupid.

Has he said that?

No.

So why do you think he thinks that about you?

He don’t let me touch nothing.

Touch what? The tools?

I wanted to use the band saw. He said I don’t know how.

But you do know.

Yeah I know.

You could try telling him that she said. Pause. Why are you shaking your head?

He won’t listen.

Well, you don’t know that unless you try.

As their relationship deepened, I began to feel guilty, eavesdropping. But not enough to stop.

From tape eleven:

Happy birthday, Julian. It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?

Yeah.

Doing anything special to celebrate?

I don’t know.

What about the friend you mentioned? From work?

You mean Wayne he said.

That’s the one she said. You could invite him to do something.

I don’t know.

It seems like you two get along fairly well. What’s something you both like to do?

He wants to see the X-Men.

Would you like that?

Silence.

He’s got a girlfriend Triplett said.

Well, fine, but if he wants to go to the movies with you, I bet she’ll be okay with that.

I don’t know.

Well. Whatever you decide to do she said I hope it’s a good day for you.

I picked up the cassette case. July 8, 2006.

Triplett’s birthday was the next day, the ninth. He had a few years on me. Born in ’78.

7-9-78.

Rennert’s alarm code.

Come midnight, I’d been listening off and on for over six hours and had yet to learn the therapist’s name. Triplett never addressed her, and the recordings picked up in the middle of their talks, as though she waited until they’d said their hellos to start taping.

Then, toward the middle of tape thirteen:

Dr. Weatherfeld?

Yes, Julian?

When

I rewound to make sure I’d heard right.

Dr. Weatherfeld?

I stopped the tape, opened my laptop.

No mental health professional by that name showed up in the Bay Area.

But I did find a Karen Weatherfeld, farther afield.

She had an office in Truckee. About a twenty-minute drive north of Lake Tahoe.

I kept my email to her casual and quick, asking for a callback, identifying myself as a sheriff but mentioning nothing about Rennert or Triplett.

Within seconds I received an automated reply.

Over the ensuing week I called carpenters and cabinetmakers in the Truckee-Tahoe area. There were a lot of them; construction appeared to be one of the main local trades. Vacation homes needed building, refurbishing.

No one I spoke to knew Julian, let alone admitted having employed him.

The day of Karen Weatherfeld’s return, I sent a follow-up email. No response. I sent another; same result. Called her. Called her again.

On Saturday we took a homicide in Oakland, guys beefing over a debt, the vic mouthing off about the shooter’s girl. While Shupfer finished up with the cops, I perched on the van bumper, dragging my finger down my screen to refresh the inbox, again and again.

Nothing.

I gave Karen Weatherfeld the rest of the weekend. By Sunday night my patience was gone. I had forty-eight hours of my own time and I intended to use them. I checked the weather report and road conditions, threw some clothes in a bag, and set an alarm for four a.m.