Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

He could have gotten into a car.

Taken a side street.

Hopped a fence.

Air whipped my face as a bus barreled past.

I craned to see if he was on it. Too late; it farted exhaust and plunged into darkness.

I stood with a hand on the back of my head, panting.

He was gone.

I trudged back to my car. My knee felt thick as a barrel, and I considered calling in sick. Physically, I doubted I could do more than shuffle paper. But Shupfer had already left the team shorthanded. She had a sick kid, pretty much the definition of a legitimate excuse.

What was mine? I’d hurt myself in pursuit of a suspect?

Suspect in what? A guy in a hoodie fleeing the scene of a death that had gone down two months ago? What was I doing there in the first place?

Explain yourself, Edison. Make it make sense.

I couldn’t.

In agony, I crawled behind the wheel, popped the glove box, shook out four generic ibuprofen from a jumbo bottle, dry-swallowed.

For the next two hours I sat in the cul-de-sac, waiting for him to show himself.

Shortly after midnight I drove home. I wrapped my knee in ice, stuffed a pillow beneath it, and stretched out on my bed.

At four thirty a.m., I woke to the beeping of my alarm. I rolled over. The ice had melted into a sloshing bag. Gingerly I removed it and tested my range of motion. The joint felt stiff, but the pain, at least, had receded to a dull threat.

I hobbled to the shower, letting the hot water loosen me up, praying for a slow day. The hulking silhouette of the man flashed through my mind, sending my heart rate leaping. To calm myself, I turned instead to thinking about Tatiana.

Her dancer’s posture. Her collarbones. Her body as I imagined it, all parts seamlessly knitted together.

I dried off, dressed, went to work.

Officer Nate Schickman said, “How old a file are we talking about?”

I hesitated longer than I should have. He said, “Please tell me this doesn’t have to do with Rennert.”

I got where he was coming from. He was a homicide cop. Starting two months behind was his personal nightmare.

“My understanding was you guys had that sewn up. You’re changing your mind?”

“Nope. Natural.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “So, what. Something else?”

I shifted the phone to my other ear, hunching to gather as much privacy as possible. I didn’t have to worry about Shupfer listening in; she had indeed taken the day off. But I was conscious of Moffett, standing five feet away, fake-stabbing Daniella Botero in the neck as he reenacted a scene from The Walking Dead; conscious of Zaragoza, behind the partition, humming “The Final Countdown” to himself. Of Carmen Woolsey giggling at a cat video.

I said, “I’m sure it’s nothing. Rennert was involved, but as a witness. I’m just tying up loose ends. You know the deal. One tiny screwup, all kinds of shit hits all kinds of fans.”

That relaxed him somewhat. Nothing unites the brotherhood of the badge like hatred of red tape. “Gotcha. What’s the name?”

“Donna Zhao. October ninety-three.”

“You want I should send it your way?”

I imagined the file showing up at my office for everyone to see. “I’ll come get it from you, save you the hassle. Tuesday good?”

“Fine by me,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”

The four spots outside the Berkeley Public Safety Building were occupied. I trawled downtown awhile before finding a space on Allston, opposite the shuttered central post office with its grand and sooty colonnade. An encampment had sprung up on the steps, a mix of homeless people and protestors incensed over a variety of social ills, including homelessness. A man offered me a choice of pamphlets: STRIKE DEBT, SAVE OUR POST OFFICE, SAY NO TO GREEDY DEVELOPERS. I smiled my refusal; ten feet on, I heard him oinking.

It was lunchtime. Outside the high school, I paddled upstream against the exodus of kids bound for eateries along Shattuck Avenue. They spread out on the grass, clotting the sidewalks over several square blocks, eating or yakking or texting or all three simultaneously.

While I waited for the light to cross MLK, skaters ground the rail at the base of Peace Wall Park, the noise raising the hair on my arms.

The lobby of the Safety Building was spruce and silent. Reception paged Nate Schickman, but it was Patrol Officer Hocking who came to escort me back to investigations.

“You,” she said, not unpleasantly.

“Me,” I said.

Schickman wasn’t at his desk, either. Someone said he was out back. I couldn’t blame him for needing to escape: the room he shared with five other cops was landlocked, windowless, a cave with fluorescent bulbs and whiteboards badly in need of a shave.

“Out back” meant the vehicle lot. Hocking walked me there, about-faced, and returned inside, unimpressed by the unfolding spectacle: Schickman, in gray sweats, grunting as he flipped a giant truck tire end-over-end, while another guy kept time on his phone and exhorted him to fucking hurry the fuck up. Just watching it re-tore my ACL.

“Ten,” the timekeeper yelled.

Schickman collapsed to his knees and rolled messily onto his back, forearm draped across his eyes, belly pumping in and out. “Fuck that,” he wheezed to no one in particular.

The timekeeper looked at me. “Help you?”

“I’ll wait till he’s alive,” I said.

Schickman sat up, groaning. “Shit. I forgot you were coming.”

He stretched out a hand, and his partner yanked him to his feet.

“Back in a minute,” Schickman said. “Stay warm.”

The other guy began jumping imaginary rope.

Schickman went slowly up the stairs, pounding his quads as he climbed. He asked if I was into CrossFit.

“I’m more into not being paralyzed,” I said.

He laughed. “Me, I’m nothing. My buddy there squats five fifty.”

“Well that seems unnecessary.”

“Till you’re crushed by a tractor.” He glanced at me. “Ever had anybody crushed by a tractor?”

“No, but I’m still young.”

“Ha.”

He climbed faster. My knee was feeling better and I kept up with him. Fate had done me a solid: no bodies for me at work, and I’d been religious with the ice and ibuprofen. Shupfer had returned on Saturday without explanation, nodding a truce as she sat down. When I asked how Danny was, she’d shrugged. “Shit never ends.” Adding: “He’s home.” Adding: “Thanks.” As close to optimism as she got.

Life had regained its normal rhythm, except for the nagging possibility of a prowler stalking Rennert’s house and/or his daughter.

I’d said nothing to Tatiana. I didn’t want to scare her before I knew there was something to be scared of.

Schickman, bless him, didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe he was a good guy, maybe he didn’t care. He brought me to a storage closet adjacent to the investigations room, reaching for the top shelf to take down a cardboard box hand-lettered in black marker.

He hauled the box over to the deserted conference room.

“Need anything,” he said, dropping it with a thump, “you know where to find me.”

“The hospital.”

He strained comically. “ ’Murica, baby.” Turning serious. “And it goes without saying, there’s something I need to know...”

“You got it. Thanks.”

Alone, I spread the contents of the box out on the table. The centerpiece of the Donna Zhao file was a vinyl five-inch binder, its contents tabbed in rainbow colors: yellow for the report, orange for written statements and warrants, so forth, ending with blue jail call transcripts and green A/V files. The scheme suggested an investigation starting off at a boil and cooling as it went.