Crime Scene

Chapter 39

It was still dark out when I reached Sacramento and stopped at Walmart to buy chains for my tires. The streets of the capital were wet, and after another hour on 80 North, snow appeared at the margins, wispy strands that thickened with the climbing elevation.

I hadn’t spent any time in the western Sierras; for obvious reasons, I don’t ski. Operating on a gallon of coffee, I gazed out over a surreal landscape — unimaginably beautiful from a distance, terrifyingly harsh up close — and felt an unpleasant tickle in my heart.

A crumpled moonscape, massive blades of granite. Blackened, limbless remnants of forest fires; stark pine mobs. Coppery light oozed down the mountainsides, like the blood of some giant beast caught and thrashing on a jagged peak.

Names on road signs were strange and unsettling. Rawhide. Secret Town. Red Dog. You Bet. At the turnoff for Emigrant Gap, the California Highway Patrol had set up a tire chain checkpoint. Enterprising young guys in parkas hunkered on the shoulder, offering to help with installation for twenty bucks. I hired one and we got down together on the salt-slimed asphalt, pebbles biting through the knees of my jeans.

I rumbled onward, toward Donner Lake, Donner Pass, Donner Memorial State Park. While I could summon a pang over the plight of folks forced to eat their dead, the decision to name every local landmark after them seemed macabre.

There was even a Donner Golf Course. Think of the clubhouse lunch menu.

The town of Truckee lay hushed under a night’s snow. Along the main drag, people shoveled off the sidewalks, clearing the doorways of cafés and gift shops, ski outfitters and rustic chic boutiques. Businesses catering to the tourist trade, spillover from the resorts scattered to the south and west.

Traces of an older, grittier past persisted. At one such establishment — rotten shingles, guttering neon — I stopped to fuel up. A certificate declared the fare BEST BREAKFAST IN TRUCKEE 1994. In celebration of this achievement, the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned since.

Karen Weatherfeld’s practice was located out past the municipal airport, where alpine greenery yielded to a flat, featureless scrub. I pulled around back of a bland commercial complex that hosted several other mental health practitioners, along with a cosmetic dentist, a snack shop, a paint emporium, and a fitness boot camp. Only the last of these was up and running, electronic bass juddering through the parking lot. How anyone could conduct therapy amid that racket, I had no idea. For her sake I hoped she’d signed either a great lease or a short one.

Her office hours began at ten. At a quarter to, a forest-green Jeep Cherokee pulled into the lot. The driver was a tall, handsome redhead in her mid-fifties, dressed in a shiny, quilted winter coat, emerald scarf, and jeans tucked into cowboy boots. I recognized her from the headshot on her website.

Keys in hand, she headed for the exterior stairs.

I made myself known from ten yards off, so as not to startle her. “Ms. Weatherfeld?”

She faced me. “Yes?”

“Deputy Clay Edison,” I came forward, badge up. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

A series of quick blinks. “May I?” she said, reaching for my ID.

I gave it to her. “I don’t know if you got my emails.”

She examined my picture longer than seemed necessary. “What can I do for you?”

“Can we go inside? Talk a moment?”

“I have a client scheduled at ten.”

“I can come back later.”

She returned the badge. “May I ask what this is about?”

“It’s better if I have a chance to explain in detail. In the meantime, though, please don’t worry. It’s a routine matter.”

“Your saying that makes me extremely worried,” she said.

“How does noon work for you?”

A beat.

She said, “I take lunch at twelve thirty. Meet me here.”

She started up the stairs, glancing over her shoulder. “For the sake of my client’s privacy, I’d appreciate it if you left now.”

Walter Rennert’s vacation home sat on the northwest shore of the lake. Easing down the private road, I could see why Tatiana came here to retreat from the world. It was secluded and still; the trees were majestic and the frost on the water glistened and the earth smelled everywhere of freshness and rebirth.

The house itself was smaller than I’d envisioned, a real cozy cottage, log walls and a black stovepipe jutting from the roof. I strolled around the property in ankle-deep snow, imagining Tatiana and her brothers running through the woods, cramming wet handfuls down one another’s shirts.

Most of the shutters had been left open, and I played my flashlight through the windows. I’m not sure what I expected to discover — Triplett himself, perhaps, peering out timidly from beneath a rug? I found it blackly funny to imagine him, the giant lump of him, living hidden beneath Tatiana’s feet for weeks on end.

I saw only a mild disorder. Following the break-in, she’d left in a hurry, running back to Berkeley before she had a chance to clean up or prepare for winter. The firewood rack on the back porch hadn’t been stocked. She hadn’t managed to sell off all the furniture. The living room had been denuded, but in the kitchen I spotted an overflowing ashtray left out on the breakfast table. The table was nothing special. But the chairs that surrounded it made a set. There were four of them, exquisitely carved.

Stepping into Karen Weatherfeld’s waiting room, I added my coat next to hers on the rack and pushed the button to notify her of my arrival.

The inner door swung wide, and she beckoned me into a warm office with a neutral color scheme, a jute rug, bookcases. With the door shut, the throb of the gym subsided to a gentle pulse, reminiscent of a heartbeat.

Diplomas on the wall: BA in sociology from Arizona State University; master’s in social work from the University of California, Berkeley.

“Please,” she said, inviting me to the couch. Running horses patterned her navy blouse. She sat at the desk, opened a canvas lunch sack, began setting out neat little glass containers of vegetables and grains. “You don’t mind if I eat.”

“Of course not.”

“I did get your emails,” she said. She shook up a mason jar of dressing, tipped a thimble’s worth onto sliced cucumbers. “I couldn’t tell if they were legit.”

Credible excuse. I’d written to her from my personal account instead of from work; I’d referred to myself as a sheriff but had not identified the county. I couldn’t afford to have her calling my office to confirm.

I offered her my bona fides again.

“I believe you,” she said, stirring her salad. “Long way to come for a routine matter.”

“It’s a nice drive.”

She chuffed. “In this weather?”

I said, “I need to get a message to Julian Triplett.”

A hitch in her expression. She set down the fork and reached for her water bottle. “You realize, Deputy, that we can’t have this conversation. Any answer I give you constitutes an ethical violation.”

“I’m not asking you to reveal anything. I’m asking you to deliver a message.”

She shook her head.

“Is that a no?” I asked.

“It’s not a yes or a no. It’s not anything. I told you, there’s nothing I can say to you.”

“Are you aware that Walter Rennert passed away?”

She paled, and her mouth opened involuntarily.

“When?” she said.

“September.”

“How?”

“His heart,” I said.

She shut her eyes. “God.”

She sounded shell-shocked.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’d rather know.”

“How often were you two in contact?” I asked.

“Once or twice a year.” Her eyes remained closed. “Usually it was over the phone.”

“When he came up here, you didn’t see him?”

She shook her head. “No, we... No.”

I said, “You knew Walter at Cal.”

“Yes.”

“Did you work together?”

She cleared her throat, came to attention. “We were friends.”

Lydia Delavigne’s words came into my mind.

Walter wasn’t perfect.

Do you expect me to believe that he didn’t take his fair share of comfort in the arms of others?

“I found the audiotapes you made for him,” I said. “The sessions you did with Julian. I listened to some of them. Not all. I stopped once I figured out who you were.”

Karen Weatherfeld said nothing. She appeared to have lost interest in her lunch.

“Walter calls you up,” I said. “He says, I have this kid, he’s in some trouble and I need to get him out of town. He asks you to keep an eye on him. How am I doing, so far?”

She stared at her lap.

“You must have been surprised when he showed up with Triplett. Unless you already knew about the relationship between the two of them.”

No answer.

“The tapes stop about six years ago. Have you kept up with Julian since?”

No answer.

“You’re juggling several competing priorities, I get that,” I said. “But let’s remember what the purpose of this arrangement was originally: to help Julian.”

She seized her fork and scooped quinoa into her mouth.

“I’m not here to create problems for him,” I said. “The opposite. I know he didn’t kill Donna Zhao. Tell him that, please.”

She chewed, chewed.

I said, “His sister Kara is concerned about him. So’s his mom. His pastor; Ellis Fletcher. People haven’t forgotten about him. They want to hear from him.”

I took out my card, scratched out the office number, wrote my cell on the back.

“I’m not in town long,” I said. “I have to go back tomorrow afternoon. I was hoping to speak to him before then.”

I pushed the card across the desk.

She didn’t touch it.

Reaching in my pocket again, I took out an amber pill bottle. Held it up.

“This is a thirty-day supply of Risperdal,” I said. “Julian came looking for it a couple months back. I don’t know how he’s fixed now. But at the time he was desperate enough to break into Walter’s house. He’s lucky he wasn’t arrested.”

I placed the bottle on the desk, atop my card.

“If nothing else, I want him to know that somebody believes him.” I stood up. “I believe him. Please tell him that.”

I headed south out of the parking lot, driving a hundred yards before making a U-turn and pulling over. I had an unobstructed view of anyone entering or exiting the parking lot. Which meant they would have the same view of me.

I reclined the seatback as far as I could without losing my sight line.

I listened to the radio.

I ate beef jerky and a gas station muffin.

Intermittent snow fell.

I guessed she’d stay through the end of the workday.

Close.

At four fifteen, the Jeep made a rolling stop at the lot entrance and headed north, away from me.

I started my car.