“I’ll do it,” Regina said. “Girl talk.”
We came to the section of the model where the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers met, a complex network of waterways and townships whose names recalled a bygone era: Cow Creek, Deadman Creek, Rough and Ready Island.
Regina pointed to Disappointment Slough. “I found my next home.”
The man in the Vietnam Veteran cap stood nearby. He gave a friendly nod. “Nice to see young people in love.”
I braced myself for Regina’s reply: Fuck that shit.
She said, “Thank you, sir,” cocked her head, and batted her eyelashes.
The man laughed. “You’re a lucky man, Stretch.”
Regina smiled up at me. “Never, ever forget it.”
We completed our circuit. Brenner was ready. The room smelled like jack cheese and farts. The computer map looked the same but for two dialogue boxes, a pair of input fields, and a Compare button.
He clicked. The progress bar appeared at 0 percent.
Stayed there.
“Is it working?” Regina asked.
“Yes.”
“How can you tell?”
“I wrote it. It works.”
“Then why isn’t the line moving?”
“A granularity of ten linear meters equals approximately sixty-five thousand data points, each requiring its own multivariate regression, thus adding a second matrix—”
“We’ll take another walk,” I said.
“Leave the door open,” Regina said.
Forty minutes later, she and I were back, perched on Diet Dr Pepper.
The third map pared down the number of hot spots. Still far too many. But progress.
“Progress,” I said.
“No,” Brenner said. “This assumes a common point of immersion. If that’s incorrect, the output is invalid. This is the problem with using incomplete starting parameters, the downstream error compounds exponentially.”
Regina said, “Listen, ChatGPT—”
“How about victim weight or height?” I said. “Would that help?”
“No.” Blink-blink. “There is another way.”
Silence.
I said, “Which is...”
“Additional matrices.”
We looked at him, uncomprehending.
“More bodies,” he said.
I stood up with a jolt, toppling my soda throne. Regina’s eyes had taken on an electric sheen.
We started out.
Brenner said, “Where are you going?”
Regina said, “To find more bodies.”
Chapter 12
Six hundred Californians drown each year. Men outnumber women by nearly three to one. Swimming pools present the greatest danger, with children most vulnerable. The far-northern coast has the highest regional death rate but the fewest actual deaths, due to its remoteness and sparse population.
At ninety-five drowning deaths per year, the San Francisco Bay Area tops the list.
Things get even more interesting when you factor in intent. Statewide, the vast majority of drownings are accidental, with only 15 percent classified as intentional or undetermined.
Around here, it’s 40 percent.
Bridge jumpers.
Homicides.
Question marks.
They added up to almost a thousand cases over the last two decades.
Death doesn’t respect the map. It goes where it wants and takes whom it chooses. Nine counties touch the Bay, each with its own coroner’s bureau or medical examiner’s office and its own computer network. An Alameda investigator can’t access records in Santa Clara or Marin, much less those belonging to the armed forces, CHP, or FBI. You have to contact each office individually, praying that whoever you reach is in a generous mood, that they have their act together, that they don’t mistype.
You ask nicely. You cash in favors.
I had thirteen years’ worth of chips to gamble with.
My query was drowners with a toxicological profile similar to that of Adam Valois and Dennis Kudelka. Similar, but not necessarily identical; Regina and I agreed that booze, cannabis, and Lexapro were too common to be meaningful. Ethyl alcohol is also a by-product of decomposition. Bodies ferment, and tests can’t distinguish between the booze of a martini and the booze we make of ourselves.
What mattered most was the trifecta.
Ketamine, midazolam, cyclobenzaprine.
That might be enough to give Brenner the matrices he needed.
While we waited for responses, Regina scheduled a second visit with Olivia Parisi, and I contacted Concord detective Alan Mendes to learn more about the Kudelka case. He was refreshingly agreeable and offered to meet me on his day off, texting the address of a Fairfield hamburger joint.
My tires sang as I drove over the Carquinez Bridge. To my left were San Pablo Bay and the naval shipyard. To my right stretched Suisun Bay, its marshes reminiscent of the Louisiana Bayou. The narrows beneath marked the farthest point of origin for either body, beyond which powerful westward currents prohibited upstream drift.
It struck me that, while I’d spent most of my life within a few miles of the ocean, I seldom interacted with or thought about it. Every so often Amy and I took the kids to Crab Cove or rode the ferry to the city. But that was a novelty — a treat. Certainly compared with Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, or Santa Cruz, the Bay Area lacks a strong beach culture. Our water’s too cold, our coastline too brutal, our chokepoint bridges a source of aggravation and anxiety. To most natives, most of the time, the Bay is at best a view, at worst an obstacle, and it’s a tad ironic that we’ve named ourselves for a feature we so often work to avoid.
Now I was seeing things differently.
Like a fish.
To my left, to my right, the surface rippled and beckoned.
Larry B’s Monster Patty was someone’s Happy Days fantasy: black-and-white-check linoleum, vinyl booths, a jukebox. Alan Mendes leaned on the Formica counter, well into a lettuce-wrapped cheeseburger.
“Clay? Al. Sorry,” he said, wiping grease from his fingers. “I do intermittent-fasting keto. If I don’t eat right away, I turn into a pumpkin.”
Mendes was late forties, five-eight, with short, thick limbs, a barrel chest, and a shaved head. A crucifix tattoo turtled out from his sleeve as he crushed my hand.
I ordered coffee that materialized in seconds.
“Nothing else?” the counterman asked.
“Fries are good,” Mendes said. “For you.” Grin. “I’m keto.”
I said, “Fries, please.”
The counterman said, “Coming up.”
Mendes and I eased into a game of Six Degrees of Cop. He remembered Lisa Shupfer.
“That lady’s no bullshit,” he said.
“Not one ounce.”
The counterman delivered my fries. I took some and passed the basket to Mendes.
“Prick,” he said, shaking the ketchup bottle.
He listened, chewing, as I sketched Adam Valois’s case. Every so often he broke in with a question, his tone genial if a bit cagey.
“You really think this computer map thing will work?” he asked.
“Don’t know. We’re looking for other vics.”
“I haven’t heard of any.”
“No reason you would, if they’re washing up in different locations, at different times. So far, we only have two.”
“And neither’s a homicide.”
“Not officially.”
Mendes took a fry, swirled it in ketchup. “Let’s say you do find more. Then what? It’s a serial killer?”
“I’m nowhere near saying that.”
“I like to pretend there’s no such thing as coincidences.” He stuffed the fry in his mouth. “But that’s just a lie cops tell themselves.”
“I feel the same way.”
“So?”
“The tox is very specific,” I said. “These aren’t drugs you pile on top of each other for fun. Ketamine, fine, but I’ve never heard of anyone partying with muscle relaxants.”