She started for the door. “I’ll walk you out.”
Chapter 11
Built by the army in the late 1950s, the Bay Model is what it sounds like: a painstaking 3-D replica of the San Francisco Bay seabed, filled with real water and covering an acre and a half of warehouse floor.
Hydraulic pumps simulate the tides, allowing scientists in the pre-computer era to study the potential effects of construction, pollution, dredging. Nowadays the place serves mainly as a rite of passage for schoolkids, who come to learn about the water cycle and cultivate an appreciation for the majesty of nature.
Or to do what my friends did: chuck in Doritos bags that get sucked up by the intake valves, triggering a weeklong shutdown.
Shupfer was right. It hadn’t changed. Same chlorinated smell, same beige federal government lobby carpeting. The model itself was hidden on the other side of a walk-through exhibit. Regina and I bought tickets from a uniformed sergeant with a Corps of Engineers shoulder patch.
“Is Jake Brenner here?” I asked.
“In his cave.” The sergeant dialed her landline. “Jake. Visitors. No, I don’t know who they are.” She cupped the receiver. “Who are you?”
“Private investigators.”
“Jake, they caught you. Start running.”
She put down the receiver. “One second.”
In short order a loud, metallic jangle could be heard and then a man came crashing into the office. Olive drabs set off electric-ginger hair and translucent skin bluish with veins. Some three dozen keys clanged on a belt carabiner, swinging like the fist of Optimus Prime. Two stripes: Corporal Brenner.
He said, “What?”
“Hi Jake,” I said. “I’m Clay Edison and this is Regina Klein. We got your name from Alameda sheriff-coroner Lisa Shupfer.”
He blinked. “The dead body.”
“That’s right. We wanted to talk to you about current modeling.”
“Why?”
“We have a dead body, too,” Regina said.
Brenner spun and marched out, keys jangling.
I looked to the sergeant, who smiled and shrugged.
The keys jangled back. Brenner’s head poked into the doorway. “Are you coming.”
We followed him through the exhibit, past habitat dioramas and learning stations, placards printed in optimistic, futuristic 1950s font. During the school year, the place would be filled with shrieking kids; in summer, the sole other visitor was a Black man in his seventies wearing a Vietnam Veteran cap.
A jerky educational film preached to empty seats.
Water, our most precious natural resource...
In the chilly main hall, the model sprawled out in a giant horseshoe, wrapping around pillars, turning corners, too vast for us to see the whole thing. It looked as though someone had begun digging out an absurdly large swimming pool, gotten two feet deep, and quit.
As with the color-coded map Shoops had shown me, only water mattered: the four smaller bays that combined to form San Francisco Bay, the rivers that fed them, estuaries and inlets and coves. All the surrounding land existed as an afterthought — featureless concrete for visitors to walk on.
Regina paused, trying to get her bearings.
“Think like a fish,” I said.
“The fuck does that mean?”
Brenner marched south. “After me.”
City signs placed along the coastline helped to orient us. We trampled an invisible Albany, an implied Berkeley. Ten paces separated Oakland Harbor, where Denny Kudelka had surfaced, from the salt marshes where Adam Valois had washed up.
Brenner rounded the South Bay, stomping Godzilla-esque across Silicon Valley, flattening the campuses of Google and Meta and Apple, headed for a door marked Private. Unlocking it with one of his many keys, he tugged on a chain light.
Six-by-eight room; bizarre contrast to all the space outside. Bare studs and a sloped concrete floor with a drain told of a former life as a janitor’s closet.
Corporal Jake Brenner had made this cell-like place his own. A pair of vertical monitors stood at attention atop the rickety government-issue desk. A tower computer hummed. He’d spliced into the wiring, run ethernet. Creature comforts included a government-issue office chair, a dust-furred box fan, a prehistoric telephone in acidified plastic, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and bulk cases of Diet Dr Pepper stacked five-high.
Brenner sat and waggled a mouse, bringing up a map of the Bay, spread across both monitors. Arrows indicated ocean current direction and speed. Every few seconds they refreshed.
“This controls the model?” I asked.
“What? No,” Brenner said. “That’s for civilians. This is real-time.”
He switched to a tab labeled Simulate, opening a dialogue box with a dizzying array of input fields. “What are your final coordinates?”
“Can we sit somewhere?” Regina asked.
Brenner waved at the soda.
Regina and I took down a few cases each, stacked them up, and balanced on them.
“Final coordinates,” Brenner said, tapping his feet and one hand.
“I can show you on the map,” I said.
He surrendered the mouse. I zoomed in, dropped a pin on the Coyote Hills mudflats.
“Precise location or approximate?”
“Approximate.”
“How approximate?”
“Give or take a hundred yards.”
He clicked Radius (m) and plugged in 91.44. “What date did the body make landfall?”
“July 3 or 4, 2026.”
“Time.”
“I don’t know.”
“Date of immersion.”
“Start with June 21 to June 23.”
“What year?”
“Same year.”
“Twenty twenty-six.”
“Yes.”
He turned to us, blinking. “This is not going to work.”
“Let’s give it a try,” Regina said.
Brenner checked a box marked Reverse and clicked Run.
A progress bar appeared, inched toward completion.
“How long is this going to take?” Regina asked.
Brenner pointed to the bar. “That long.”
After eight minutes, the map redrew, coastline a mishmash of color.
“See?” he said.
“How can we narrow it down?” Regina asked.
“More specific parameters,” Brenner said. “Date or time of landfall. Date, time, point of immersion.”
“If we knew any of that, we wouldn’t be here.”
No response.
I said, “How about if we compare this map with the one you sent Deputy Shupfer? Look for locations in common?”
“The software is configured to perform a single trace,” he said. “I can add comparative functionality but I’ll have to write it from scratch.”
Regina said, “Great. You want to get back in touch when it’s done?”
“I’ll do it now,” Brenner said.
He sprang up and hurried to the mini-fridge. The shelves were wall-to-wall El Monterey brand bean-and-cheese burritos. The door was all Diet Dr Pepper.
Brenner tossed a burrito in the microwave and pressed the Burrito button. Opening a soda can, he returned to his desk.
Glanced over, perplexed to find us still standing there. “I need twenty minutes.”
“We’ll take a walk,” I said.
Regina and I strolled the warehouse floor.
“What’s your read on Kirsten?” I said. “Trust her?”
“As far as I trust anyone.”
“Makes me wonder if this onetime thing with a guy was only a onetime thing.”
“You think Adam was stepping out on Olivia,” she said.
“I think that’s a good reason to turn off his phone.”
“Or buy a burner.”
“Or drive an hour to a place where he won’t run into anyone he knows,” I said. “We should reinterview Olivia.”