Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

While I admired the reverend’s capacity to see decency in everyone, I did question the logic of granting a convicted murderer — who’d stabbed a woman to death — unsupervised access to a room full of sharp tools.

“May I please ask your friend’s name?”

Willamette looked me in the eye. “I’m sharing this information with you on the understanding that your goal is to help Julian.”

“You said it yourself, Reverend. It’s better if he’s not out there in the wind.”

A beat.

“Ellis Fletcher,” he said. “He’s retired now but I believe he comes in every now and again to teach.”

“Thank you.”

Before leaving I stepped back to have a look at the chair. Mahogany, delicate spindles at the back, sinuous legs, carved claw feet. Far more sophisticated than the shelves.

“Amazing, isn’t it,” Willamette said.

I nodded. The finish on the seat had rubbed off over the years, leaving a blond center surrounded by a dark, reddish corona that reminded me of dried blood.

“Julian had big hands,” Willamette said, touching one of the spindles. “Huge. Like those foam fingers they wave at sporting events. You’d never think a man with hands like that could produce such delicacy. It speaks to an underlying gentleness.”

I said, “Thanks for your time, Reverend.”

That evening I took a walk down Grand Avenue, got myself a bento box and a kombucha to go. I sat on my couch and started to put my feet up on the coffee table.

My phone rang with an unfamiliar number.

I set my food aside, wiped my hands on my pants. “Hello?”

A deep voice said, “This is Ken Bascombe. I heard you were looking for me.”

“Oh. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for getting back to me. Did Nate Schickman fill you in?”

“He said something to do with the Zhao murder. You’re with the Coroner?”

“That’s right. Clay Edison.”

“Tell you upfront, Clay, I’m glad that shit’s over and done with.”

“Bad one,” I said.

“The worst,” he said.

I told him about Linstad’s death; about Rennert’s.

“Rennert has a daughter who’s local,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “And?”

“Triplett’s out there, walking around. I can imagine he’s carrying some ill will.”

“You think he’s coming for her?”

“Just covering my bases,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Well, I mean, the guy’s a fucking psycho, so... You’re saying Rennert had a heart attack, though.”

“No question.”

“First I heard about Linstad kicking it, either. He fell down the stairs?”

“It was ruled an accident.”

“Accident’s an accident,” he said. “Unless you guys changed your policy since I left. When’re we talking about, anyway?”

“Linstad was in oh-five.”

“I was gone by then.”

I asked how long he’d been with Berkeley PD.

“Eighty-one to ninety-seven.”

“You know when Triplett got out?”

“He was scheduled for release in oh-two. Everyone was pissed. We wanted him tried as an adult. I mean, shit. We’re talking premeditation, lying in wait, some serious fucking animal brutality. Adult doesn’t apply in that situation, when does it? You know how it goes around here. Get some idiot judge, find the soft spot, press on it, boom, Triplett’s a victim.”

“Of what?”

“Society. The Man. The fast-food conspiracy. Listen, I’m not gonna sit here, tell you the kid wasn’t holding a shitty hand. He’s got an IQ of about eighty. He can barely read. I have to walk him through the Miranda sheet one word at a time. Lousy deal, no question. Dad’s AWOL, mom’s fucked up outta her head on dope twenty-four seven.”

“She seemed okay to me.”

A slight pause. “You talked to her?”

“I went over to see if she’d clue me where he’s hiding out.”

“Ah-huh. Lemme guess, she didn’t know.”

“No. She looked clean, though.”

“Good for her. Maybe she did a twelve-step.” His laugh was harsh.

“What did she use?”

“Crack. The PD uses that to sob-story. Has people coming in and saying Triplett’s a nice kid, wouldn’t hurt a fly. I get, it’s the job, but enough is enough. He’s hearing voices telling him to hurt people. He needs to be off the street.”

I said, “Voices.”

“Oh yeah.”

“His mom didn’t mention anything about that. Neither did his old pastor.”

“ Pas tor,” he said. “You all over this motherfucker... Yeah, voices. Talk to him for two minutes — you don’t have to be a fuckin psychologist to understand he ain’t right. What do those guys do anyway, complicate simplicity. When we wanted to adult Triplett, the court ordered an eval. The shrink says he can’t hack it at juvie, needs to be hospitalized. Okay, off he goes to the hospital. They put him on meds. Bingo! All better. Now he’s not crazy anymore. Now he’s a nice boy. Back to juvie. In juvie, he doesn’t get his meds. So now he’s crazy again. Back to the hospital. It was like that for eight, ten months. You get the picture.”

“I read your interviews,” I said. “Thorough. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s acting strange cause he’s nervous, or a kid, or whatever.”

“Nervous? He was crazy,” Bascombe said. “Half the stuff he said’s not in there, it gets impossible to follow the thread of the conversation. He’d go on about all sorts of shit.”

“Like what?”

“Specifically? Christ, I don’t... Okay. This I remember. He said the girl disappeared. Like, he stabs her, and — poof. ”

“Yeah, I read that.”

“I mean, come on. Listen — what is it, Ed?”

“Edison.”

“Edison. You ever work homicide?”

“No.”

“Patrol?”

“Some. Before the Coroner I was mostly at the jail.”

“Jail, huh,” he said drily. “Well, trust me. Whatever Triplett said, it was nothing special. We’re talking about Berkeley, okay? I spent half my career talking to people who believe aliens ate their dog. It’s noise. You learn to cut through it. But the eval made an impression on His Honor. Then you get the so-called expert witness banging on the table about this fucking experiment, he’s vulnerable, he’s triggered, blah blah.”

“Video games.”

“Right. Some shoot-em-up dealie they showed the kids. I think my son had it on Nintendo. I guess I should count myself lucky he didn’t kill nobody.” He laughed. “There you go. You know what you need to know. Remind me your name again.”

I said, “Edison.”

“Edison. Okay. Well, Edison, don’t work too hard,” he said. “Trust me on that.”

Back at the office, I worked as hard as I could, but my head was elsewhere. Moffett and I took a callout for the 42nd Street overpass in Fruitvale — John Doe, indeterminate age, indeterminate race, in a state of advanced decomposition. Autopsy would have the final word, but a cursory inspection showed no signs of violence.

He had simply died, rotting in place because there was no one around to witness it, let alone help.

As Moffett and I crab-walked around the body, hacking, waving our hands to bat away the rising chimney of stink, I could not escape the thought that this could be Julian Triplett. Or someone who knew him. Or the person he could, would, become. Eventually. Inevitably.

If you’d asked me several months ago how I felt about such a case, I would’ve answered: Sad but not surprised. Now I listened to the traffic thundering along 880, thousands upon thousands of people pushing on overhead, oblivious to what lay below them. Moffett tried to adjust the corpse’s arm, and a patch of skin sloughed free like the peel off a boiled peach. Behind his mask his features contorted in disgust, and I found myself filled with despair, and frustration, and anger.