The Fallen

15

I stood in Garrett Asplundh’s North Park apartment and looked at the hundreds of faces of Stella and Samantha. It was odd to see Stella in the prime of her happiness, then compare her to the woman I’d seen a few hours earlier outside the Gaslamp restaurant. The difference in age couldn’t have been more than ten years at the most. In some pictures less than two years. But what a drastic reduction. Samantha seemed to have smiled for most of her three brief years on earth.

I walked the room slowly, looking at the black-and-white photographs, dodging the weightlifting machines that took up so much of the space. I could hear McKenzie in the next room, opening and closing closets and drawers and talking on her cell phone.

I sat down at the workstation by the window and slid “The Life and Death of Samantha” into the DVD player of Garrett’s home computer. I looked at the beautiful tooling on the custom leather cover, propped it up against the computer tower.

Then I rolled back in the chair, crossed my arms, and watched.

The video opened with pregnant Stella. Garrett slid into view on the couch beside her. It was a sunny living room. Beyond the windows were green hills and scattered homes. He kissed her and put his hand on her middle.

“Well, here we are,” he said. “Two going on three. Three months to go and look at this! How are you feeling, Stell?”

She smiled. “Wonderful, but I’ll be glad to have little Sam on the ground. That camera makes me feel silly, Garrett.”

“Then I’ll turn it off.”

And so on. The next part was Stella closer to birth. Then closer still. Then a countdown of days. There was a nice pace and balance to it, and I could tell that Garrett had the same knack for video that he had for still photography. Stella became more beautiful and Garrett looked fuller and more energetic with each installment. Finally the birth, in which Garrett was presented tiny Samantha while a very pale Stella smiled with exhaustion and accomplishment.

“Oh, gosh,” said Garrett as he smiled down on his newborn daughter. Then he looked up at the camera, his eyes running over with tears. “Look!”

McKenzie stood beside me, folding her cell phone.

“Tough to watch,” she said. “When you know what happens.”

I nodded.

“I just talked to Wasserman,” she said. “He couldn’t match any of the Explorer latents with Ed Placer’s ten-set.”

“I didn’t think he would.”

“No,” said McKenzie. “Big Ed was home with Mom drinking spiked orange soda because his girlfriend got too serious.”

“Found any loosely woven brown wool garments in the closet back there?”

“Not a one, Robbie. I think those brown fibers in the Explorer came from somebody else’s wardrobe.”

On-screen, newborn Samantha was wrapped in blankets and asleep, her head covered by a small pink cap.

“Mind if I watch?” asked McKenzie.

“Pull up a chair.”

Nearly all of the video of Samantha’s life was shot by her father. Garrett’s clear voice described the settings and events, but you didn’t see much of him. Stella was often on-screen with her daughter. There seemed nothing unusual about Samantha’s growing up. She was a dark-haired, fine-featured girl, apparently an even physical mix between mother and father. Like a lot of children, she seemed to consist not only of her parents’ features but also of independent, unrelated ones. There was video of her in the crib. In new outfits. Crawling. Playing with toys. Taking her first steps. Toddling with increasing confidence. Walking, running, laughing, mugging. Birthdays, Christmases, Easters.

Then the Fourth of July party at which she drowned. Garrett and Stella were the hosts, which I remembered from the papers at that time. The party video started with Stella and Samantha setting out Statue of Liberty napkins on a long outdoor picnic table. Garrett set the date and event — “The 2004 Asplundh Fourth of July Pool, Barbecue, and Fireworks Blowout.”

Then a shot of the pool — no guests had arrived yet — with its still-clear water and the red, white, and blue ribbons tied to the trees and shrubs around it. The pool looked truly ominous because I knew what would happen that day. Samantha burst into the picture from behind her cameraman father, who shouted at her to “slow down, honey!” as the girl approached the pool.

Next were short scenes of people arriving, hugging, making drinks. I saw a woman who had to be Stella Asplundh’s mother, and an old Professional Standards lieutenant who had retired later that summer, and John Van Flyke looking uncharacteristically festive in a Hawaiian shirt with a woody and surfboards on it.

Then a long left-to-right pan of adults sitting around the picnic table eating and drinking. Garrett and Stella sat side by side at the middle of the table. Garrett’s brother, Sam, sat at one end with a woman who looked to be his wife. Whoever had picked up the video camera narrated: Great party. Great people. Great country.

The next scene was later — I could tell by the shadows — and it showed a shimmering swimming pool full of children and teenagers. They were yelling and screaming like kids in pools do. Water drops from a boy’s great cannonball dive splashed onto the camera lens. Next it was dark and fireworks fizzed and popped in the middle distance. The video shooter was inside the house, shooting out. A little boy ran with a sparkler. Then, with the sudden speed of an unheard bullet, the scene became a small casket in a chapel with solemn light slanting down from a stained-glass window across which a dove flew with an olive branch. It was one of the most jolting series of images I’d ever seen.

“Jesus,” said McKenzie.

“Yeah. Tough stuff.”

“How could she drown with all those people there? I never understood that. It happens every summer. All the time. I just never get how. From a pool party to a funeral. Boom.”

I played the sequence again. Then again.

“What are you doing, Robbie?”

“There’s something in that first part, when the adults are eating at the table. Something caught me.”

“Play it again.”

I did. The dining sequence was one long pan, maybe eight or ten seconds. There was a table full of adults. It reminded me of the Last Supper, with all the activity and drama, people leaning this way and that. Ten different conversations seemed to be going on. Roger Sutherland was there — Garrett’s boss at the time. His companion was a shapely brunette in a yellow sundress. The Professional Standards lieutenant who had since retired sat across from Sutherland. Garrett’s other future boss was there, standing behind the table and looking on — Erik Kaven — tanned for summer and wild-haired as always.

The narrator said, Great party. Great people. Great country. Then the next scene was the pool with all the kids splashing and diving and yelling.

“What is it?” I asked. I played it again.

Great party.

“There’s Garrett’s brother, Sam, left end of the table,” I said.

The camera moved right again, taking in Garrett and Stella and the others.

Great people.

The camera showed the right end of the table. And just as the narrator said, Great country, I thought I recognized the guy standing off to the side of it. He was wearing a straw hat and had his back to the camera. He was almost lost in the overhanging foliage of a pretty tree with yellow blossoms. But as he turned to the shooter, right before the sequence ended, I could just make out his profile.

“There,” I said.

Funny how your mind catches up with itself in its own good time.

“Fellowes,” I said. “The hat threw me. And you can’t see his face until he turns.”

“Hell,” said McKenzie. “Our whore-loving captain of Vice. You’re right. Is that his wife beside him?”

“Yes. Partying down with the Asplundhs on the day their daughter drowned.”

The last twenty minutes of the disc were harder to watch than the first twenty. Some of Samantha’s memorial service was recorded, part of the eulogy. Part of the burial was shown. There was a brief tour of her room, some close-ups on her collection of stuffed animals and the clothes in her closet. There were newspapers with the Asplundh tragedy recounted in increasingly smaller articles. Garrett said nothing at all. Silence. But the emotion came through the silence — exhaustion, heartbreak, and numbness.

The last five minutes featured a family portrait done by Garrett. Samantha must have been close to three years old. It was Garrett’s usual black-and-white. His usual balanced composition and subtle emotions. The camera stayed fixed on it while he spoke off-screen. His voice was clear and soft and it sounded like he was speaking to someone who was right in front of him.

The video ended with a close-up of Samantha, framed by silence. I thought of Garrett sitting in his black Explorer by the Cabrillo Bridge in the rain.

We sat there in the slowly darkening room. For a moment I tried to imagine what Stella Asplundh must be going through, having lost her daughter and husband in the last nine months. Nine months, I thought — the time it had taken her to bring Samantha into this world. All I could imagine was a darkness that would not lift, a darkness that would drown all light in your heart.

“Sometimes I feel exhausted and lucky at the same time,” said McKenzie.

“I know that feeling.”

“And sometimes... I just feel wrung out and dried up as an old bag. You know what I’m glad of? I’m glad Hollis Harris is going to whisk me off in his ten-billion-horsepower red race car tonight and I’ll forget about stuff like this for a few hours.”

“I guess you two have hit it off.”

She looked at me, then away. “He’s a hyperactive Looney Tune but I do like him. Get a load of this — he wants me to teach him how to shoot.”

“He’s a lucky guy. And I’m happy for you, McKenzie.”

I ejected the DVD and placed it back in its special leather case.

“He’ll get sick of me in a week or two but we’ll burn some fossil fuel along the way,” said McKenzie. “Fire some bullets too, I guess.”

“You never know.”

“True. Maybe I’ll get sick of him first.”

“Why not be optimistic?”

I put the DVD in my briefcase. McKenzie stood on the porch looking out over the city while I locked the door of the apartment.

“You going to watch that thing again at home?” she asked.

“It will help me understand Garrett.”

“It’s hard to watch.”

“Robbie, do you ever get sick of being a nice guy?”

I thought about that a minute. “I never put much effort into it.”

“Just naturally a nice guy?”

“I guess. Maybe I got a little nicer after the fall, you know, just trying to be more considerate.”

“You always say ‘fall,’ instead of ‘being thrown.’ Like it was an accident.”

“No, it was no accident. I was there because I wanted to be there. I just got caught off guard.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said McKenzie. “Either way, you’re a nice guy, Robbie.”

“Well, thanks.”

Just then a late-model Corvette grumbled to a stop on the street outside Garrett’s apartment building, then angled back quickly for a precise parallel park.

Sam Asplundh uncoiled from the driver’s seat, pushed the door closed with his boot, and came down the sidewalk toward us. He was dressed the same as he was a few hours ago when I’d seen him with Stella Asplundh and John Van Flyke. When his coattail swung out, his Bureau sidearm was holstered in plain sight over his right hip.

“Brownlaw,” he said, “I’m going to have a look around Garrett’s place if you don’t mind. Stella and I have to figure out what to do with everything in there.”

He came up the stairs, brandishing a house key. “I’ll be a good boy with respect to possible evidence.”

I introduced him to McKenzie. He gave her a sly smile and a quick appraisal.

“What’s your take on the murder?” he asked her.

“Enemies,” said McKenzie.

“That’s what three years in Professional Standards and three months in Ethics gets you,” said Sam.

“How is Stella holding up?” I asked.

He looked at me and shook his head. “It’s been tough. Her folks will be here later today, and that might help. She’s a good person, you know, not just a pretty woman.”

I thought it odd that Sam would comment on Stella Asplundh’s good looks.

“Maybe you and I could sit down and talk about your brother and Stella sometime,” I said.

“Break my heart, but I’ll do it,” said Sam. He took out a card and wrote his cell number on the back. “Anytime.”

I drove back toward headquarters in the falling winter light. It would be spring in a few days. The breeze of a memory of Gina crossed my mind, and it made my heart feel like it was about to crash straight down through the floorboard of the Chevy, plummet through the earth, and come smoking out the other side of the planet.

“I hate what happened to that little girl,” said McKenzie. “I try to imagine how Garrett felt but I can’t. The video gives an idea but still, to actually be the one going through it. Then his total babe pretty much ditches him.”

“I can’t imagine it either.”

I had just pulled into the headquarters officers’ lot off Broadway when my phone rang. It was Captain Chester Fellowes, clearly unhappy that he’d reached me. He said he’d gotten my message.

His timing couldn’t have been better. I’d wanted to talk to him since seeing him do the sock dance on Garrett’s video, but I wanted to talk to him even more now that he’d shown up at Garrett’s house the day his daughter died.

“This about Garrett?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What makes you think I can help?”

“You were friends.”

“Not really.”

“I’d just like to ask you a few questions about him, sir.”

A beat of silence.

“You in your car somewhere?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll have to do this later. I’m only going to be here for about two more minutes.”

“Fine, sir,” I said. “We’ll be up in one.”

I thanked him and rang off.