“One-two-three,” Camille sang. “I’m taking care of me.”
San Francisco PD moved its headquarters to Mission Bay in 2015, but the investigations bureau remained behind at the old Hall of Justice, a morose granite monolith on Bryant Street. Uniformed cops and sheriffs loitered on the courthouse steps, opposite a block encrusted with the usual legal barnacles: criminal defense, bail bondsmen, immigration counselors, Beat That Ticket!
I entered the lobby and got in line for the metal detector. An echoey quiet prevailed. The jury duty rush had subsided, the lunch rush not yet begun. Tired-eyed lawyers blew on vending machine coffee in mandatory compostable cups. Adjacent to the elevator bank, like so many time capsules, were three pay phone booths. How long before someone converted them to a tiny Starbucks? Or better yet, three tiny Starbuckses?
Collecting my backpack from the X-ray machine, I called upstairs on my cell.
“Investigations.”
“Inspector Pettit, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Clay Edison.”
“Hold please.”
I counted down to the inevitable reply.
“He’s not available.”
“Tell him I’m in the lobby,” I said. “Tell him I have something he needs to see.”
I camped out in a pay phone booth, sipping vending machine coffee. It tasted like a compostable cup. Tiny Starbucks couldn’t come soon enough.
The elevator dinged and a guy stepped out, peering around with a pissed-off smile. He was tall but not as tall as me, broad-shouldered, with a Roman nose and cheeks the inky tinge of someone who shaves twice a day. Tailored slacks, alligator shoes, hair slicked high like a junk bond trader.
He clocked me, came striding over the scuffed marble. “Can’t you take a hint?”
“Pleasure to meet you, Inspector,” I said, putting out a hand.
He ignored it. “Go home.”
“You were supposed to get back to me.”
“I never said that. I said I’d think about it. I thought about it.”
“Let me buy you coffee and we’ll talk it over.”
Pettit regarded my compostable cup with scorn. “I don’t drink that garbage. You have something to show me or not?”
I reached for my phone, intending to play him Camille Radovic’s video.
A little voice in my ear gave me pause. Quid pro quo.
“Did you talk to Jake Brenner?” I asked.
“Your robot friend,” he said. “Total waste of time.”
“He sent you a map?”
“Garbage. Worse than that fucking coffee.”
“Did you have him use all the coordinates or just yours?”
“Look, pal, I don’t have time for this shit.”
“Brenner needs explicit instructions,” I said. “He’s going to do exactly what you ask, nothing more, nothing less.”
“You should take a lesson.”
“What’s Hao’s last known location? Is it East Bay?”
Pettit smiled. This guy. He started for the elevator.
I trailed him. “What about the other stuff I mentioned? Dating sites?”
He stabbed the up button repeatedly.
“Did Hao sleep with men?”
The doors dinged open.
“Lunch,” I said. “On me.”
He got in and scanned his key fob, standing back as the doors slid shut.
Chapter 20
Buried in the metadata of Camille Radovic’s video was a start time down to the second: 9:27:13 a.m. I reviewed the clip frame by frame — tracking the body as it meandered to shore, comparing its position with my photos and Google maps, plotting dozens of coordinates.
I emailed the information to Jake Brenner. Minutes later my phone rang.
“It won’t work,” Brenner said.
“Why not?”
“Insufficient processing power. Every point on the curve requires its own—”
“Can we solve that?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Add processing power.”
“How do we do that?”
“Upgrade the processor.”
“How much does that cost?”
“Four hundred thirty-eight dollars and four cents plus tax and applicable shipping.”
“Buy it and I’ll reimburse you.”
“I can’t do that, you need to make the purchase.”
“What’s the model number?”
He rattled it off, and I entered it into the search bar. At $438.04 plus tax, the processor qualified for free one-day delivery.
I clicked Buy Now. “It’ll be there tomorrow. How long will the analysis take?”
“I don’t know.”
“Longer than before?”
“Yes.”
“Jake, did you speak with a San Francisco police inspector named John Pettit?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He sent me a location and asked me to trace the source.”
“Did he provide a point of origin?”
“Oakland.”
Bingo. Eat it, Pettit. “Where in Oakland?”
“All he said was Oakland. I told him, it’s not going to work.”
“What about a start date and time?”
Clicking and typing. “Twenty hundred hours 31 December 2025 to zero eight hundred hours 1 January 2026.”
Eat it again, Pettit. “Did you run a comparison with the other bodies? The ones I gave you?”
“He didn’t ask me to.”
“Asshole,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Not you. Call me as soon as the analysis is done.”
I didn’t say please. It meant nothing to him.
I tried Linus Hao’s sister Agnes; maybe she could fill in what Pettit wouldn’t. As I was leaving her a second message, call waiting beeped. I figured it was Brenner with another technical objection, but the screen showed a 925 number.
“Hello?”
A male voice said, “Yeah, uh. Can I talk to someone?”
“What’s this regarding?”
“It just says call if you have information.”
“Is this about the missing persons flyer?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Thanks for calling. I’m Clay.” I waited. “What’s your name?”
“Uh. Do I... Do I have to tell you that?”
“Not if you don’t want to.” I opened a database and ran a reverse search on his number. “Maybe you could start with where you saw the flyer.”
“Uh. Savage.”
“That’s a club?”
“Yeah. It was on the wall.”
“You recognized one of the individuals.”
“Yeah.”
“Which one?”
“Adam Valois,” he said, pronouncing it as Valoyz.
My heart kicked. “How do you know him?”
“I don’t know him. I just — talked to him for, I don’t know. Ten minutes?”
The search result popped up. Rafael Arguelles. Twenty-two years old. Oakland resident.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Last summer.”
“Do you know the date?”
“Like around my birthday. My cousin was visiting.”
I didn’t need to ask his birthday. I had it on my screen. June 17.
Three days before Adam’s disappearance.
Rafael said, “He didn’t do anything.”
“Who didn’t? Your cousin?”
“Yeah. Like, really. Nothing.”
“I understand.”
“No, but, I’m saying if he finds out I...” A beat. “I don’t want him to find out.”
“He doesn’t have to. Tell me whatever you’re comfortable with and we’ll take it from there.”
“Um... So, me and him went out, we’re going around. Someone starts calling his name. It’s this guy Dame. He and my cousin used to be tight. They played together at Tech. But Vi — my cousin, he moved to Sac, so I guess they hadn’t seen each other in a while. My cousin’s like, ‘Yo, come party with us, it’s Ra’ — shit,” he mumbled, annoyed at himself, “ ‘it’s his birthday, we’re doing shots.’ And Dame goes, ‘Sorry, bro.’ ’Cause he was with this other dude.”