Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

Bascombe answered the door with highball in hand. Meaty, with a seamed, sunburnt face and a good head of hair, some gray but mostly brown. His arms were thick; bowling pin legs stuck out from cargo shorts. “Yeah?”

“I’m Clay Edison,” I said.

He squeezed the doorframe. A gold bracelet swung on his left wrist, links rattling.

“You said I could swing by today,” I said.

He hadn’t meant it. Or hadn’t expected me to show.

He wobbled, turned, and went inside, leaving the door open.

The theme was tourist-trap nautical: rope and lanterns, a bar cart fashioned from two ship’s wheels. He pointed me toward the sofa and fell into a La-Z-Boy.

His expression never changed as I spoke. When I gave him a printout of the email from Li Hsieh, he scanned it impassively, reaching the end far too quickly to have read it.

I said, “I can’t prove she’s talking about Linstad. But overall, it’s a good fit. He worked with Donna. She assisted him on the study. She matches his preferred physical type.”

Hard to say which of us was more uncomfortable. I’d figured it would be an easier conversation in person, but that meant having to look him in the eye. Ask him to consider the possibility that he’d stumbled during the most significant case of his career.

He wasn’t looking me in the eye.

He was looking anywhere but at me.

He folded the page in half and waggled it between two loose fingers. “I’m waiting for the part where you tell me why any of this matters a shit.”

“I got in touch with one of the women Linstad messed around with,” I said, retrieving it and returning to my place on the sofa. “Tammy Wong. She said Linstad once went at her, physically. Held her against a wall and got up in her face. I haven’t heard back from the other two, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they said something similar.”

Bascombe said nothing.

“If so, it feels like a pattern.”

“Big if.”

“Right, but... Let’s just, for a minute, take it as a framework.”

“Framework,” he said.

“Say Linstad is sleeping with Donna Zhao.”

Bascombe yawned, didn’t bother to cover his mouth. “You wanna say that, say that.”

“Something happens between them. He dumps her, she gets mad, starts making noise, threatening to tell his wife.”

Bascombe waved a finger like a conductor’s baton. The music goes on. Yawn.

I said, “Nineteen ninety-three, Linstad and Olivia have been married less than two years. Their prenup says he doesn’t get anything till year three.”

“So.”

“That’s motive for him to want to shut Donna up.”

Bascombe raked the chair arm upholstery, as if trying to quash an unpleasant urge. “You are one creative guy, Tommy Ed.”

“I know it’s not a lot to go on that’s concrete—”

“It’s nothing concrete,” he said. “Don’t let me stop you, though, I’m finding it really entertaining.”

“Linstad puts himself at the scene,” I said.

“As a witness.”

“Okay, but what’s he doing there to begin with? His office is across campus. He lives in Piedmont. He’s spending nights at the duplex, which is in the opposite direction. There’s no reason for him to be on foot anywhere near her apartment. Why’s he there?”

“Ask him.”

“I can’t,” I said. “He’s dead.”

“Yup,” Bascombe said. “You said it.”

“Did you consider him as anything other than a witness? At any point?”

“Sure I did,” he said. “You think I’m a fuckin idiot? It don’t mean shit, because we have a print and a confession. So unless you can explain that I got nothing to say to you.”

He finished his drink, heaved himself up out of the chair, went over to the bar cart, and uncorked a bottle of Wild Turkey. He poured, plodded back to the recliner. His drink sloshed as he sat down. He licked the spillage off his thumb.

“Triplett was vulnerable,” I said, drawing a smirk from Bascombe. “He’s young. He’s suggestible and unstable. Linstad had to be aware of that; he screened Triplett for the study. There’s a report — I emailed you copies of a few pages.”

“I saw.”

“Then you know: the two of them had this weird relationship. Triplett flunks the screening procedure, Linstad goes, ‘No thanks, see you later.’ Then all of a sudden he changes his mind and enrolls him.”

“Cause he felt bad for him.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he realizes, Wait a second, this kid could be useful. He starts buying him food, taking him out. He’s grooming him.”

“Brainwashing. Just like on TV. I love it.”

“Maybe Triplett acted alone,” I said. “Maybe he and Linstad did it together.”

“Hmm,” Bascombe said. “Did you check out Lee Harvey Oswald?”

“Maybe Triplett was home that night, like his sister says, and he was nowhere near the scene and Linstad acted alone.”

“You love that word maybe. ”

“You don’t think Triplett’s confession comes across as confused?”

“Of course it does. He’s fucking crazy.”

“You ask him, after he stabbed her, what happened? He says: ‘She like disappeared.’ You tell him come on, be serious, what are you talking about, she disappeared? You know what he says?”

“Please, tell me.”

“ ‘Like in the air.’ ” I looked at him. “In the air.”

He stared at me: Who the fuck cares.

“The study had the kids playing a video game,” I said. “I checked it out. The way it works is, you kill people, they break into pieces and dissolve into the air. It’s possible, right, that Triplett’s imagining that? What’s that mean, ‘in the air’?”

“It means,” Bascombe said, his voice dangerously soft, “jack shit.”

Silence.

I said, “I know this case is important to you.”

“Shut up,” he said. “All right? You had your turn. Now shut the fuck up and listen.”

He leaned over to set his glass on the carpet, coming back up red in the face, busted capillaries etching the flesh of his nose.

He said, “This is finished. It’s dead. Understand?”

“I’m thinking about the family,” I said.

“You arrogant goddamn muppet, I told you to shut up. ” He sputtered a laugh. “You’re thinking about the family? All right. Let’s ‘think about the family.’ When I think about the family, it’s that they’ve had twenty-four years to come to terms with what happened to their daughter, their only child, which — if you had a shred of real-world experience whatsoever, which you don’t, you sad fucking wannabe — then you’d know that it’s not nearly enough. The fuck you know? You don’t deal with alive people. You’re a vulture. You go through pockets. But I can promise you one thing: dragging them back into it will do nothing, nothing, to ‘help’ them. You want to help them? Shut up. Everything you’re saying, all this garbage you’re spewing, even if it was true, accomplishes nothing. There’s nothing to accomplish. One guy is out of prison, the other guy is dead. Not to mention everything you’re saying is a hypothetical load of shit.”

He smiled. “I’ve tried to be patient with you. I let you call me on the phone, come to my house, where I live, waste my time, tell me this that the other, make up stories about people you don’t know and never met, and then I’m supposed to give you a pat on the back?”

He leaned over, feeling around for the glass. “We’re gonna be good boys and do our jobs. I already did mine. I put that fuckin animal in jail. Now I get to have fun. You seem a little unclear about yours, so I’ll review it for you again: shut up. Go back to being a maid. Unless you’re as terrible at that as you are at police work, in which case, my recommendation is, go out and find a job more suited to your skill set. Try clowning.”