Джонатан Келлерман: Crime Scene

Shupfer tried again, louder.

We went to the side of the house. I leaned over the gate, called toward the backyard.

No answer.

A neighbor confirmed that Melissa Girard lived next door. He ogled the Explorer and put on a concerned face and wanted to know why we were there.

“It’s a courtesy call,” Shupfer said. “Nothing to worry about.”

We returned to Melissa Girard’s house. Shupfer took out her card, wrote a brief note on the back, and made to tuck it into the doorframe.

Behind us, a blue RAV4 pulled up.

Shupfer returned the card to her pocket.

The driver got out. She was gaunt and fair-skinned, peering at us through raccoon eyes as we came up the front walk toward her. I noticed a rear-facing car seat in back.

Shupfer said, “Mrs. Girard.”

The woman nodded.

“I’m Deputy Shupfer from the Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau.” Talking clearly, not rushing, not dragging. Bearing truth, which is a kind of gift. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your father passed away.”

For a moment, Melissa Girard did not react. Then she opened the back door and reached for the car seat.

She unlatched it and hauled it out, her spine bent at a painful angle. Supermarket bags filled the footwells. No way was she going to be able to manage. I jogged over to help.

“Thank you,” she said.

The neighbor was watching us from his front window. Shupfer shot him a look and he vanished.

We went into the house, into the kitchen.

Melissa Girard said, “On the counter is fine, thanks.”

I made space for the bags amid a litter of unwashed baby bottles.

“Is there someone you can call to be with you?” Shupfer asked.

“Why would I do that?”

“It can help not to be alone,” I said.

Melissa Girard gestured to the car seat. “I’m not.” She started to laugh. “I never am.”

Still laughing, she began unpacking the groceries.

The baby was a boy, about three months old, asleep with his head slumped on his chest. His shirt said I ♥ MY BIG BROTHER.

Behind the fridge door, Melissa Girard said, “Was there something else you needed?”

Shupfer nodded me from the room. I went outside to wait.

Sitting in the Explorer, I found myself thinking about Tatiana Rennert-Delavigne. She was my most recent point of reference, and I couldn’t help but feel the contrast between her response to her father’s death and that of Melissa Girard.

I wondered if she was okay.

I couldn’t come up with an excuse to call her. Remembering that Dr. Louis Vannen had never called me back, I did the next best thing. The old switcheroo.

“Doctor’s office.”

I repeated my spiel. As before, the receptionist would not tell me whether Walter Rennert had been a patient of the practice. She would deliver the message to Doctor, et cetera.

“Right,” I said. “I called last week. Is Dr. Vannen around now?”

“He left for lunch a few minutes ago.”

“Can you look on his calendar and see when he’ll be free?”

“He’s booked solid. All I can do is tell him.”

“Thanks, then. Have a good day.”

“You too.”

Shupfer emerged. I leaned across to open the driver’s-side door for her.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

She shook her head, put the key in the ignition.

“Should we wait for someone to show up?” I asked.

Shupfer glanced at the house and thought it over. “I’m going to say no.”

I said, “You mind if we take a little detour?”

Twenty minutes later we rolled up to the medical building where Louis Vannen practiced. Shupfer cruised the lot along a row of reserved parking spaces. Three belonged to Contra Costa Urological Associates, the middle slot unoccupied.

She found a nearby spot and parked nose-out.

Shortly before one, a silver BMW coupe arrived to claim the reserved space. The brake lights shut off, and I stepped from the Explorer.

“Dr. Vannen?” I asked.

He paused, halfway out of his car. He was mid-sixties, sinewy and tan, sleeves rolled up on woolly forearms. He looked at me, at the Explorer, at Shoops, back at me. He stood up, erect and pigeon-chested. “Can I help you?”

“Hope so,” I said, coming forward. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for the last week. I called your office a couple of times and they said they’d give you the message, but I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by.”

He made a forbearing sound, half chuckle, half cough: This guy. “It’s not the best time. I have patients waiting.”

“It’s about a patient, actually. Walter Rennert?”

A beat. Vannen bent into the BMW to retrieve his phone from the cup holder. When he came back out his expression had cleared.

“Sorry,” he said, closing the car door. “I don’t have a patient by that name.”

“You prescribed him some medication,” I said. “Risperdal.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Your name’s on the bottle.”

“Then there’s been a mistake. Check with the pharmacy.”

“Will do. Sorry for the interruption.”

“Not at all. But I really do have to go.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He strode off toward the building.

“Dr. Vannen?”

He turned around, annoyed.

“You forgot to lock your car.”

He stared at me, fished out his keys, jabbed the button. The BMW bleeped.

I got in beside Shoops. “That was weird, no?”

She started the Explorer. “Mm.”

“What’s ‘mm.’ ”

“What nothing,” she said, shifting into gear. “Mm. That’s all.”

“Drive, please.”

“Mm.”

People keep their whole lives on their phones.

Having a person in your contact list doesn’t prove that you have a real relationship with them. My own list includes names — Ike the Plumber, Plaid Glasses Girl — that I can no longer match to a face.

At some point, though, I had reason to care.

As soon as Shupfer and I got back to the office, I went down to Evidence to retrieve Walter Rennert’s iPhone.

At my desk, I dug through my notes for Tatiana’s suggested passcodes. She’d written down four strings of four numbers. Kids’ birthdays plus Rennert’s own.

I held up the phone. “Anyone know how many tries I get before it locks me out?”

“Five,” Moffett said.

Sully corrected him: “It’s ten.”

Another tech, Carmen Woolsey, suggested I take it upstairs to the crime lab.

“I don’t want to sift through a data dump,” I said, googling iphone wrong passcode. Sully was right: after ten incorrect codes, the phone would not only lock but erase itself.

None of Tatiana’s codes worked.

If I still wanted an excuse to call her, I had it.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Ms. Rennert-Delavigne. Deputy Edison from the Coroner’s Bureau.”

She said, “Oh.”

You could drive yourself nuts, trying to figure out the meaning of that “oh.”

Oh it’s you. Oh great. Oh shit.

I said, “I’ve got your father’s phone here and unfortunately none of the codes you suggested seem to be correct.”

“...uh,” she said, “ah, hang... hang on.”

I heard a chair scrape.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked.

“No. No, it’s fine, I...” She cleared her throat. “It’s fine. I meant to call you.”

I tightened up. Let the yelling commence. “Okay.”

“I wanted to thank you for your help,” she said. “With the... the funeral home.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “I don’t remember being too helpful on that count.”

“Well — no. You were helpful in general, I guess. So thanks.”

“Of course.” Possibly she hadn’t seen the death certificate and was still clinging to the idea of a homicide investigation. Or else I was right: she’d come to her senses, let it go.