No grandchildren.
As if to compensate, an antique music stand displayed two textbooks: Advanced Concepts in Cellular Biology, 4th edition, co-authored by Richard and three others, alongside his solo effort, Cyclin-Dependent Kinases and Cell Cycle Control.
Regina said, “Bathroom reading.”
Footsteps approached, and Liz reappeared, followed by an older version of the man in the photos, clad in blue jeans and a short-sleeved blue chambray shirt. Reading glasses nestled amid the wiry hair, now streaked with white. One arm pinned a yellow legal pad against his body.
He offered me the other hand. “Rick Valois.” Nasal tenor.
“Clay Edison.”
“Regina, good to see you again.”
“You too.”
We found seats around the coffee table.
I said, “Do I have your permission to tape our conversation?”
“By all means,” Rick said.
I set the voice recorder running. “First, my condolences.”
“Thank you,” Liz said.
“How can I help?”
“I took the liberty of preparing some notes,” Rick said. “Although I should preface this by saying that it’s broad strokes.”
“That’s fine. We’ll fill in details as we go.”
Drawing down his glasses, Rick set the legal pad in his lap. The top page was crammed with cursive.
“We first became aware something was wrong on Tuesday, June 23, of last year. At the time we were out of the country,” he said, “visiting friends in Rome. Around eight a.m. local time, eleven p.m. Monday in California, I received a call from our daughter, Kirsten. She’d spoken to Adam’s girlfriend, who hadn’t heard from him in a few days and was worried.”
“What’s his girlfriend’s name?”
“Olivia Parisi. Naturally, the first thing we did was try Adam ourselves. It went to voicemail, and he wasn’t answering our texts. We then called Olivia. She informed us that she and Adam had spent Saturday evening together at her apartment before he went home. The next day she texted him. He didn’t reply, which was unusual, although she knew he was trying to make a deadline. He’ll shut off his phone if he needs to concentrate.”
“What did he do, professionally?”
“Video production. Branding, corporate events, parties, things like that. Freelance. He worked alone, out of his apartment.”
“And where’s that?”
“The city. San Jose,” Rick clarified. “By Monday afternoon, Adam still wasn’t answering, so Olivia went over to check on him. He wasn’t home, and his car was gone. She began contacting their friends. No one had spoken to him. She then tried my wife, but it was the middle of the night in Rome and her phone was off. So she contacted Kirsten, who called me.”
“Eleven p.m. Monday, California time.”
“Correct.”
“Was there a delay?”
“Yes, because Kirsten waited several hours to call us. She wasn’t sure how urgent it was, and she didn’t want to wake us up. I immediately phoned the San Jose police. They took down basic information and suggested we try the hospitals. We did, but nobody would tell us anything. The whole day my wife was pacing around our flat, getting more frantic by the minute.”
I looked to Liz, inviting her perspective.
She remained silent.
Rick turned the page. “In the evening a detective named Lloyd called. The conversation did not inspire confidence, to say the least.”
“What bothered you?”
“Right off the bat he was asking leading questions. Did Adam have a history of disappearing? Did he use drugs? Et cetera. We stressed that this behavior was outside the norm. By then my wife was in a terrible state, and we decided to cut short our trip. The only flight we could get had layovers and landed at SFO instead of San Jose. We arrived at seven p.m. on” — page flip — “Wednesday the twenty-fourth. Our attorney picked us up from the airport and drove us directly to the police station. Detective Lloyd had left for the day. A desk sergeant told us they’d issued a Nixle alert with Adam’s description and the description of his car. She said there was nothing further to be done and advised us to get some sleep. Like that was possible.”
He yanked over the page. It almost tore.
“Next morning, the twenty-fifth, we met with this Lloyd person for the first time,” he said. “At that point it became clear we would have to take matters into our own hands.”
“What happened?”
“We asked what his plan was for finding Adam. He couldn’t provide a minimally coherent answer. He seemed to be accusing us of something, which, in addition to being absurd and insulting, was a complete waste of time. My son’s missing, I’m not going to wait around for the spirit to move you.”
I nodded. “What steps did you take?”
I’d directed the question toward Liz; it was Rick who answered.
“We began posting online and contacting various media outlets. Olivia recruited their friends to help us drive the streets, looking for him and putting up flyers, and Shel was able to get his photo on TV along with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward.”
“Shel...”
“Shelby Fuller. Our attorney. We wanted to offer more, but Lloyd, the genius, discouraged us — threatened us, really — saying it would elicit too many false tips.”
“Did you get calls?”
“A few dozen. Nothing concrete. Over the next week and a half we spoke numerous times with the police. They consistently refused to share information.”
“Frustrating.”
Liz nodded. Moist eyes.
“It was more than frustrating, it was hell,” Rick said, throwing over another page. “My wife didn’t sleep for weeks on end. On July fifth, Lloyd asked us to come to the station, where we met two new detectives, Tiffany Reuss and Gary Kinney, from the park police. They’d found a body they thought could be Adam’s. They couldn’t be sure, because there wasn’t any identification and the body was—”
He broke off, nostrils flared, lips pressed flat.
“In bad shape,” Liz said softly.
“They showed us a photo of a tattoo,” Rick said, over her, “which we confirmed as Adam’s. They wanted dental records and/or DNA. We accompanied them to Adam’s apartment, and they took his toothbrush and hairbrush. I offered to process the samples personally, in my lab, to speed things along. They declined, promising to expedite the test. It ended up taking six days. We didn’t get the results until after the autopsy.”
For them, the agony of limbo; but I knew that six days for DNA was nothing short of miraculous. Their lawyer must have been applying relentless pressure. “What did the autopsy find?”
“The preliminary report said drowning. He’d also suffered a skull fracture, though they refused to take a firm position on what caused it or when it had occurred.”
Again, I could sympathize. It would be nice if every injury came labeled. The human body is an imperfect canvas, and immersion in water can wreak havoc on tissues.
“Initially they seemed to be treating the case as a potential homicide. In late July,” Rick said, paging ahead, “they recovered his car in Oakland. In August the toxicology came back, showing drugs in his system. From then on we observed a marked shift in attitude. It was no longer about Adam as victim, but Adam as responsible party.”
“Responsible in what sense.”
“They’d made up their minds that he’d bought drugs, gotten high, fallen into the water, hit his head, and drowned. End of story. Yet they couldn’t answer the most elementary questions. Where did it happen? Was anyone with him? You can buy drugs in San Jose, believe me. Why drive an hour? We asked them, begged them, to hand the case off.”