Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

He found the glass, pushed himself to his feet, headed to the bar cart.

I said, “Linstad’s ex-father-in-law is John Sowards.”

He froze, thick shoulders bunched. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re still talking.”

“He’s worth about half a billion dollars. There’s one business partner he’s done several deals with. Dave Auerbach. He used to be a UC regent. Dave is short for S. Davis. That’s him, on the committee that throws Linstad under the bus. The lawyer, Khoury? She’s from the Sowards family firm.”

Bascombe kept his back to me as he poured more Wild Turkey.

I stood up. “The report comes out right around when Olivia and Nicholas’s marriage hit the rocks. You’d think Sowards would have no reason to protect Linstad. Quite the contrary. Let the bastard burn. But the big rich think differently, right? Reputation is everything. Their daughter marries a murderer, they get tainted by association.”

Bascombe recorked the bottle.

“I spoke to the coroner who handled Linstad’s death. He told me his boss was leaning on him to close the case quickly and quietly. I’m figuring Sowards got spooked. He may’ve even suspected his daughter had something to do with it. So he circled the wagons.”

Bascombe faced me. Red gone to purple.

He extruded words, like a machine making sausage links. “Never. In my. Career. Did I. Let anyone. Influence. Me.”

“I’m not saying you did,” I said.

The room was small, and, drunk as he was, he covered the distance with impressive speed. Barely enough time for me to see him cock a fist back, the bracelet jangling, the big hairy right forearm swinging in a shallow, sideways arc.

What’s true for a free throw is true for a punch: the flatter the trajectory, the more accurate it has to be. Try to club me over the head but miss, you still might break my collarbone. Aim straight for my nose and your margin of error shrinks. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it was what I was thinking as I juked to the left and Bascombe’s momentum carried him past me and into a bookcase.

Kitschy piece, shaped like a canoe with the bottom third chopped off so it stood upright. A few books, mostly knickknacks: brass compass, ship-in-a-bottle, autographed baseball on a plastic stand. All of which came raining down as the bookcase slammed back and then pitched forward, leaving a moon-shaped cleft in the drywall.

Bascombe tangled with a floor lamp, which went down, the bulb blowing out with a pop. He came to rest in a deep one-legged squat against the wall, arms flung out, fingers spread and palms flattened, as though he’d been shot from a cannon. A Tom Clancy paperback lay at his feet.

His wrist was bleeding. I put out a hand to help him up.

He slapped it away, struggled up, and lurched toward the back of the house, swallowed up by the unlit hallway.

A door slammed.

I put the canoe-case back where it belonged. The baseball had a Giants logo; the signature was Willie McCovey’s. The ship-in-a-bottle was toast. The glass hadn’t broken, but the insides had collapsed into a slurry of matchsticks and fabric. I set it on an end table and saw myself out.

“I don’t blame him,” Shupfer said.

She swung the van around and began backing up toward the intake bay. “You got into his personal space and accused him of being on the take.”

“I was careful not to say that.”

“I’m sure he totally appreciated the distinction.”

“Somebody took a statement from Triplett’s sister,” I said. “What happened to it?”

“I’m gonna go with ‘garden-variety incompetence,’ ” she said.

She jammed the gearshift into park and noted the mileage, and we got out to unload the latest decedent. Seventy-nine-year-old Hispanic woman found in the bath by her caretaker. We hadn’t noted any obvious signs of elder abuse, but the location of the body warranted bringing her in.

“Forget Bascombe getting paid off,” I said, unlocking the gurney wheels. “It doesn’t have to be that overt. It could be much subtler — like what Ming felt. Linstad cooks up his story. He tells his wife he’s going to the police, give a statement. She freaks out, calls her father. He freaks out, calls his lawyer, and so on and so forth, up the chain, until the message trickles back down to Bascombe: ‘Handle with care.’ Now, in his mind, he’s no longer talking to a potential suspect. He’s talking to a helpful witness with important friends. Anyone would start to see the situation through that lens.”

“What about you?” she said. “What lens are you seeing it through?”

We wheeled the body over to the scale. I switched it on and saw Shupfer raise her eyebrows. The dead woman weighed just eighty-one pounds.

“You ask the caretaker about her nutrition?” Shupfer asked.

“She said she ate okay. I saw a box of Ensure in the pantry. Couple cans missing.”

“Mm. Could still be FS.”

Frailty Syndrome. Old bodies deteriorating, the damage hastened by neglect and sometimes worse. A memo had directed us, last year, to look for it.

We rolled the gurney into the intake bay. While Shupfer scribbled on the clipboard, I began unwrapping the body. The old woman was already naked — her skin waxy and shrunken — saving us the trouble of having to undress her and catalog her clothing.

I picked up the camera, began taking flicks. “You’re right, though.”

“Am I now.”

“Bascombe. I shouldn’t have gone there,” I said. “No reason to think he’d cooperate.”

“Yup.”

“Anyway I don’t have enough.”

“Nope.”

“But he just — he pissed me off, Shoops. Super-smug.”

She stopped writing. “Just be glad he didn’t hurt you, princess.”

She spoke too soon.

Entering the squad room, wringing out wet hands, I proceeded down the corridor past the sergeants’ offices. Vitti’s door was propped, the man himself slumped over his desk like he’d been sucker-punched. He saw me and sat up, curled a finger, telling me to shut the door and close the blinds.

“If this is about trading for Odell Beckham, Junior,” I said, sitting down, “forget it.”

He ran a hand back and forth over his scalp. “I just got off the phone with Chief Ames at Berkeley PD.”

“Okay.”

“Any guesses why he’s calling me?”

“No sir.”

“None at all?”

“Sir?”

Vitti said, “Have you been harassing one of their guys?”

I said, “Sir?”

“Have you?”

“No sir. I haven’t.”

“Did you go over to some guy’s house?”

“With permission,” I said. “I didn’t show up out of the blue.”

“But you did go to see him.”

“I spoke to him, yeah.”

Vitti’s eyes went to slits. “God’s sake, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking he and I could have a civilized conversation.”

“The guy’s retired. With health issues, I might add.”

“That’s what he said? I’m harassing him?”

“It’s a little worse than that, actually. He said you took a swing at him.”

“ I —? Sorry, sir. That’s bullshit. He came at me. All I did was avoid him.”

Vitti sighed and began fiddling with his Word-A-Day desk calendar — part of his relentless, half-assed pursuit of self-improvement. “What the hell are you into?”

“One of my cases,” I said, “led me to one of his cases. I did due diligence and noticed parts of Bascombe’s report don’t add up. So I went over there to get clarification.”

“How’s that lead to him hitting you?”

“He didn’t hit me,” I said. “He missed, cause he was drunk off his ass.”

“Christ, Clay, don’t pick nits. How does Bascombe’s case impact yours?”