Crime Scene

Chapter 5

Zaragoza had left the gurney collapsed by the front door, laying out sheets in the foyer next to the body. He glanced up, spiking an eyebrow as I entered carrying brown paper bags and zip-ties.

We bag hands for trace evidence but only in suspicious cases.

I said, “Can’t hurt.”

He shrugged agreeably and we moved the body to the center of the sheets, knotting handles in the fabric. We’ll use whatever happens to be in the van, but at that particular moment I felt grateful that it was sheets and not a body bag; sheets move more naturally and are less likely to wrench you in the wrong direction. Ever since the second flight of stairs I’d had a low-level hum in my knee — what I call leg nausea.

Whoever said there’s no point worrying about what you can’t control clearly had a poor memory, a poor imagination, or both. I take precautions. I ice. I stretch. I get to the gym whenever possible. Still, I worry. I have a decent imagination and an excellent memory.

As I squatted down, braced, put my weight on my heels, I wondered, as I always do: is today the day my own body fails me?

“One,” Zaragoza said, “two, three, up.”

He rose.

I rose.

The body rose.

No disaster today.

We crossed the foyer, moving slowly to minimize the swinging. As we stepped outside and eased the body down onto the gurney, wrapped it in blankets, and buckled it in, I was aware of Tatiana watching us from a distance, those sharp green eyes.

I went over to Schickman and told him we were releasing the scene to him.

“We’ll let you know what canvass turns up,” he said.

“Just to put it on your radar, the daughter said her father had a colleague who died under similar circumstances.”

Schickman nodded. “She told me, too. I tried to ask her about it but she got kind of pissed off. Told me I wasn’t listening. Why. You think it means anything?”

I make judgments based on observable facts. Only rarely does a person’s history play a role in deciding the manner of death, the main exception being suicide.

Walter Rennert’s positioning, clutched chest, facial expression, skin tone, and medical history told the likely story. I thought about my decision to bag the hands — bothered, now, that I’d let her persuade me to second-guess myself.

“Let’s wait for autopsy,” I said. “I’m off Monday, Tuesday, back Wednesday.”

“Sounds good.” Schickman glanced over my shoulder. “Is she okay there by herself?”

“Mom’s en route,” I said. “Let me check her ETA.”

Tatiana informed me her mother had cleared the snarl and was a few minutes out.

I said, “I’ll hang out until she arrives.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“It’s not a problem.”

She stared at the police officers going in and out of the house. She said, “What are your other goals?”

“Pardon?”

“You said making things go easier for me is one of your goals.”

She faced me. “What are the others?”

“Taking custody of your father’s body. Although that’s a duty rather than a goal.”

“What else?”

“Securing property, when there’s no next of kin present.”

“Do you keep a list of these on a poster in your office?”

I smiled. “Right above the coffee station.”

The sound of a car turned us both around. A black Mercedes sedan reached the top of the driveway and jerked to a stop, unable to proceed any farther.

Honk honk honk honk honk.

“That would be my mother,” Tatiana said.

I told her we’d be in touch.

By the time we arrived back at the morgue, got Rennert weighed and intaked and handed off to a tech, it was three thirty, the end of shift visible on the horizon. The mood in the office managed to be both subdued and hyper: what you get from long hours in a close, low-lit gray space, everyone steadily sucking down carbohydrates. I stripped off my vest, flexed my knee, settled in front of my computer to begin the paperwork.

Sergeant Vitti shambled over, waggling his phone. “What’s up, boys? How was Berkeley? You finish your rosters yet?”

Without taking my eyes off the screen, I gave him a thumbs-up.

Vitti opened up the app he used to manage our office fantasy football league. His lips moved as he appraised my starters, running a hand back and forth over his shaven scalp. “Some questionable choices here, Deputy Edison. Kirk Cousins over Cam?”

“It’s his year.”

“It’s your funeral. Zaragoza?”

“I respectfully decline to participate.”

“Come on. Again with this?”

“Sir, may I point out that last year’s winner—”

“Jolly Jesus Christ, Zaragoza.”

“—did not receive the agreed-upon monetary prize. Therefore I decline to participate. Fool me once, sir.”

Vitti appealed to the room. “Somebody please resolve this for us. Sully.”

One of the techs arched away from her screen. “What’s that.”

“Tell Zaragoza there was no prize for winning the league.”

“It was twenty dollars a person,” Zaragoza said.

Sully rubbed her nose and resumed typing. “It was a gentleman’s agreement.”

“There you go,” Vitti said, retreating toward his office. “Thank you.”

“Are you kidding me,” Zaragoza said. “You’re kidding me. It is impossible to have a gentleman’s agreement with y’all, cause y’all aren’t gentlemen—”

“Oof. Burn” — this from a tech named Daniella Botero.

“—which y’all are proving right now with this bullshit,” Zaragoza said. “Moffett. Back me up, bro.”

From behind a cubicle wall came a lazy baritone. “It cost a hundred dollars.”

“Don’t. Do not. Don’t.”

“It cost five hundred dollars,” Moffett said. He stood up. He was tall like Vitti and fleshy like Vitti and had an identically shaved head, down to the V crease where his hairline used to be. Peel ten years off the sergeant and get Deputy Coroner Moffett; likewise, fast-forward Moffett and behold our unit’s next leader. He was grinning, chewing on a bear claw big as an actual bear’s claw, icing flecking his shirt, quivering at the corners of his mouth.

“It cost ten thousand dollars,” he said.

Behind me, the technicians were laughing.

“It cost ah crap,” Moffett said. Zaragoza had grabbed his pastry and body-slammed it into the trash. “The heck, dude.”

“You don’t need it,” Zaragoza said.

“You can’t decide that for me. That’s like communism.”

“Have some fruit. Seriously, screw all y’all.”

The subject of the conversation turned to Moffett’s weight. My phone rang.

“Coroner’s Bureau,” I said. “Deputy Edison.”

“Aaaahhh, yes sir, okay, so this is Samuel Afton again.”

Samuel Afton had two noteworthy traits. The first was a drawn-out way of speaking that stretched every statement into a question and every question into an existential mystery. Even mildly novel information caused him to drawl “Oh my goooodness.”

The second trait that distinguished Samuel Afton was a bottomless hatred for his mother. It was impressive. That he expressed his loathing in the same dreamy voice only made it that much more poisonous.

Samuel Afton’s parents had split up when he was a baby, his mother remarrying a guy named Jose Manuel Provencio. That marriage lasted longer, but it, too, ended in divorce. Instead of continuing to live with his biological mother, however, Samuel Afton had chosen to stay with his adoptive father.

Now Afton was in his mid-thirties, and Jose Manuel Provencio had died without sufficient funds to pay for burial. Samuel Afton did not have sufficient funds, either. The only person in the immediate picture who had the money was Samuel Afton’s biological mother, Provencio’s ex-wife. She had in fact offered to pay, which I thought was pretty nice of her, all things considered.

Samuel Afton would not permit her to pay. No sir. No how.

For two months, the body of Jose Manuel Provencio had lain in the cold chamber of a Fremont mortuary, occupying valuable real estate. The funeral director was going bananas, begging me to cremate Provencio as a county indigent. I’d already put that suggestion to Samuel Afton, who had declined. He’d promised to find a relative of Provencio’s to cover burial costs.

We’d been having this conversation for weeks.

“Hi, Mr. Afton. What’s up.”

“Yes, I have been trying to reach you but I have not been able to do that.”

“Sorry. I’ve been out of the office. What can I do for you? Did you get a chance to speak to Mr. Provencio’s nephew?”

“Ahhh, okay. So I left another message, but honestly, he hasn’t called me back. He’s in Virginia, you see. I don’t know what it is over there, do you know the time difference?”

“Three hours.”

“Oh my goodness. What is that, is that around seven in the evening?”

“Something like that.”

“Ah-haaah, so yeah, that is why I have been unable to reach him, probably because probably he’s engaged in some activity at the moment.”

I opened up Google. “Right.”

“Probably he went to get something to eat.”

“Right.” I typed risperdal alcohol interaction into the search bar.

“So,” Samuel Afton said, “what I would like to determine is your time line, because you see that would be helpful for me to know that right there—”

Combining Risperdal with alcohol could trigger a host of unpleasant outcomes: seizures, dizziness, fainting, coma, arrhythmia.

“—about when you need an answer, what’s the longest you can wait.”

I rubbed my eyes. “There’s no set time, legally.”

“Ah-hah.”

“But,” I said, “it’s a matter of us needing to act. He’s been at the mortuary since July.”

“Ah-hah, yes. I understand.”

“So if the blood family is not going to pay for the burial—”

“Yes, I don’t know that, though, you see, cause to tell you the truth his nephew hasn’t called me back.”

“Right, but if you can’t get ahold of him, or some other relative... And you still don’t want your mom paying for it, even if she’s willing to do that?”

“No sir, I do not want that.”

“I get that you and she have had your differences.”

“Oh my goodness, yes sir. That bitch—”

“I get that, but—”

“That bitch took all my money,” he said. “That’s my own mother right there, you understand.”

“I do. My question is what we do about your stepfather, because he’s lying there, and at some point I have to go ahead and classify him as county indigent, and you told me you don’t want that, either. So it’s fine if you want to keep trying his blood, I can say okay, let’s do that a little while longer. But at some point. Out of respect for him.”

“Yes sir, I understand. I appreciate your assistance.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Afton.”

“You too, Deputy.”

I rang off. I felt tired.

With the browser still open, I searched for the doctor who’d written Rennert’s prescription for Risperdal.

I expected a psychiatrist. Maybe an internist.

I did not expect that Louis Vannen, MD, would run a urology practice in Danville.

The internet yielded plenty of off-label uses for risperidone — depression, OCD, PTSD — but none that targeted areas below the neck, let alone the belt.

I craned around to address my deskmate. “Hey Shoops.”

Our fourth DC, Lisa Shupfer, hunkered down opposite me, hiding in her screen, pointedly ignoring the debate raging over low-fat versus low-carb. “Mm.”

“You ever heard of a urologist prescribing Risperdal?”

“Urologist?”

“Yeah. Some condition I’ve never heard of.”

Shupfer shook her head. “Ask Dr. Bronson, he’ll know.”

“He left for the day,” Daniella Botero said. “It’s his son’s birthday.”

Moffett said, “Know what?”

“My decedent was taking Risperdal,” I said.

“He kept it with his liquor,” Zaragoza said.

“He needs psych meds,” I said, “why isn’t he going to a psychiatrist?”

“Maybe he was ashamed,” Shupfer said.

A fair point.

“Maybe his penis was delusional,” Moffett said.

“Find one that isn’t,” Daniella Botero said.