Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

“She hired someone,” I said.

He chomped his gum.

“Maybe she hired Triplett,” I said.

He looked at me. “Not your job.”

He spat out his gum. “You should smoke,” he complained. He opened the driver’s-side door. “Good luck, stupid.”

“Thanks, Ming,” I said.

“Thank Shoops.”

“Yeah. Although I gotta say, I don’t get why she’s up my ass about it.”

He grinned, climbed into his car. “Cause she loves you so much.”

While Google couldn’t tell me how skinny Linstad’s ex-wife was, it had lots to say about her financial status.

Her maiden name was Olivia Sowards, making her the daughter of John Sowards, CEO of CalCor, one of the Bay Area’s largest commercial real estate developers. Her current married name was Olivia Harcourt, making her the wife of Richard Harcourt, cofounder of Snershy, which did something innovative involving cellphones, or had, until Verizon gobbled the company up for five hundred seventy-five million dollars.

Before departing for the day, I put in a call to her, leaving a message with an assistant.

On my way home I tried Tatiana from the car. As it rang, I wondered if I was using Snershy’s proprietary technology.

She didn’t pick up.

Not until nine p.m., as I was climbing into bed, did she call me back.

Since her departure, we’d spoken at least once or twice daily. She wasn’t loving Tahoe. Had locked horns with two realtors. One insisted on underpricing the house in order to spark a bidding war. The other insisted she repaint, top to bottom. She read me the ski report. Why didn’t I come up to visit? They had eight inches of fresh powder. There was a good restaurant she wanted to try.

Banter; a transfusion, keeping the channels between us open.

I didn’t know what we were working toward. Maybe nothing. I hoped it was something.

Expecting more of the same, I was totally unprepared for the panic in her voice.

“Thank God you’re there,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Are you okay?”

“The alarm company just called me,” she said. “Someone broke into my father’s house.”

My response was to tell her to hang up and call 911. But she meant the Berkeley house, not the one in Tahoe.

For the moment, at least, she was safe.

I threw on my uniform and sped over. Berkeley PD was already there. Pulling up the driveway, I parked behind a pair of squad cars, announcing myself in a loud voice.

A uniformed officer named Sherman stood guard out front. I showed him my badge and explained that I had come at the behest of the owner, a friend. For good measure, I name-dropped Nate Schickman.

Sherman didn’t care one way or another. He wasn’t about to let me inside the house, but he did show me the service door on the east side.

“It was open when we got here,” he said.

“No sign of forced entry.”

He shook his head. “They’re doing a walk-through.”

I didn’t ask to join in. No sense putting him in the position of having to refuse me. He knew as well as I did that I had no business being there.

“All right if I take a look around the perimeter?” I asked.

“Knock yourself out.”

“Do me a favor and let them know I’m out there, okay? So they don’t draw on me.”

He nodded.

I switched on my flashlight and began a circuit, passing the trash bins, the electrical box, a derelict potting shed. Turning the corner, I waded through knee-high ivy, playing my beam through the tree trunks. To my left, the earth sloped away severely; redwoods and thickets of fern screened off the street, far below. Wind came shrieking through in short blasts. I peered into the darkened living room.

Up on the second floor, lights blinked on as the cops cleared the bedrooms.

I reached the driveway, scrambled down an embankment, dropped over the retaining wall, stood on the gravel.

All quiet.

I jogged down to the cul-de-sac. Quiet.

I descended the footpath to the lower cul-de-sac where I’d chased Hoodie the Giant.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything and I didn’t.

As I hiked back up, I dialed Tatiana.

“They’re checking the house as we speak.”

“How are they supposed to know what’s missing?”

“They’ll notice if anything’s disturbed. Burglars aren’t very subtle.”

“I don’t fucking believe this.”

“Anything in particular you want me to have them look at? Paintings, jewelry?”

“You can’t go inside?”

“It’s not my jurisdiction,” I said.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve called you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.”

I stayed on the phone with her for another twenty minutes, until the three uniformed officers finished their search. Their verdict: everything in order. Beds made, drawers un-tossed, clothes in the closets gathering lint.

Either the intruder had fled at the sound of the alarm or — and I could tell they were leaning this way — it was a false alarm.

Happened all the time, these old houses.

Rattly frames. Windy night.

Nothing more they could do.

Tatiana drove back to Berkeley the next day. I’d tried to persuade her to stay in Tahoe. She was adamant, of course; who wouldn’t be? It was her house, now. Her stuff. Family heirlooms. She had to see for herself.

I still hadn’t told her about Triplett. I hadn’t yet decided what I was going to say when I met her at the house that evening.

She got out of her car and hurried toward me, casting nervous glances at the dark ranks of trees. Her smile was tremulous; the skin beneath the green eyes was smudged. I doubted she’d slept.

Not that I was at my best. Coming straight from work, I still smelled like death. If she noticed, she didn’t let on as we hugged.

I pulled on gloves. Held out a pair for her.

“What’re these for?”

“To do our own search. How was the drive?”

“Long.”

We started in the kitchen, going room by room, checking the contents against her memory and the catalog prepared by the appraiser. In the service porch, three wrinkled, smelly cardboard boxes sat shoved up against the wall: the same three boxes she’d left behind, the last time we were here. She grimaced.

“Why couldn’t they steal those?” she said.

We swept the first floor, ascended to the bedrooms. Nothing looked out of place to her. All that remained was the attic. Tatiana seemed hesitant, as if afraid to enter a space where the traces of life might be in evidence, the tang of death still sharp.

I offered to go alone and report back.

She shook her head. “I’m a big girl.”

We mounted the narrow stairs.

The smell in the attic was the same, only stronger: paper, bindings, dust, now underlined by months of neglect. Tatiana sneezed three times in quick succession.

“That’s why I never come up here,” she said. “Allergy hell.”

I switched on my flashlight and we began stepping over clutter, turning on lamps as we went, revealing the next few feet in a bright, bleaching spot.

“Anything look wrong?”

“I have no clue,” she said.

Neither did I. The place was such a disaster.

We came to the sleeping area. Tatiana switched on the reading lamp.

Rocker. Lounger. Blanket. Neck pillow.

“Look,” I said.

Several of the desk drawers were cracked, including the door to the liquor cabinet.

I crouched down. The bottles of scotch were intact, the levels about where they had been, so far as I could tell. The rack of tumblers, untouched. Three, not counting the one that I had tried and failed to return to Tatiana, presently sealed in an evidence bag and stashed, along with the leftover pill bottles, in the cabinet above my fridge.