“Before zero eight hundred. It’s going to be a busy day. We have five camp groups.”
“You’re there now?”
“Yes.”
First light brushed the hilltops. The drive to Marin took an hour and a half; if I waited till Fuller left for work, I’d never make it.
I started the car. “On my way.”
“Bring a flash drive,” Brenner said.
Morning broke as I was crossing the Golden Gate, turning the Bay to embers.
Brenner let me into the building. Inside it was freezing and dark save the emergency exit signs. I stumbled after him, through the exhibit, to his cave.
On the floor was a battleship-gray sleeping bag.
“You slept here?”
He looked at me. “You said to call as soon as it was done.”
“Right.” I pointed to the desk, where the new map spread across both monitors.
“Explain this to me.”
Brenner moused over the medium-blue Sausalito waterfront. “This is our current location.”
A pop-up displayed a probability of 0.00001 — one in a hundred thousand. Brenner traced the cursor along the shore, numbers updating as he went. Black indicated a zero probability.
“Meaning, impossible,” I said.
“No. The program can’t render beyond eleven decimal places.”
Of the two hotspots, Bair Island was the smaller, about a mile and a half of mellow oranges, with a sprinkling of yellow and red. Emeryville was four times as long, most of that red. It started near Aquatic Park and extended south around the Watergate peninsula before veering west alongside Interstate 80. At Observation Pier, the colors died back abruptly. The most intense points registered a probability of just over three in a thousand.
“That still doesn’t feel very likely,” I said.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“What you consider likely.”
I leaned toward the monitors. “There are two distinct clusters. Do I consider both, or is it one or the other?”
“Both clusters may be accurate, or it could be one or the other. Or neither.”
I gave him the purple flash drive. “Should be enough space on that.”
He transferred the file and walked me to the exit. The sun was up, the marina a paisley swirl of peach and tangerine and gold, nothing like the map’s gloomy blue.
I started for my car.
“Mr. Edison.”
I turned back.
“Thank you for the opportunity,” he said and slammed the door.
As potential dump zones, each hotspot offered pros and cons.
Bair Island, cooler and tighter, was near the Dumbarton Bridge, where John Doe had surfaced. It lay directly across the Bay from Coyote Hills, where Adam had washed up. As the crow flies — or the cod swims — it was closer to San Jose.
Emeryville looked like an inferno. Three and a half miles due south was the Inner Harbor, where Denny Kudelka had surfaced. Tilt the line eastward and you hit downtown Oakland, last known location of Adam, Denny, and Linus Hao.
Both areas encompassed tideland, marshland, and beach. Both abutted urban neighborhoods with shopping, eateries, waterfront, housing, hotels.
On balance, Emeryville felt like the stronger candidate.
I went home to see my family and get cleaned up, then headed out again, calling Regina to brief her.
She said, “What do you think you’re gonna find? A sign that says Drop Bodies Here?”
“It’s like I always tell you,” I said. “Nothing gets solved at a desk. Now are you helping me or not?”
“At your service, Poirot.”
“Check connections to our suspects,” I said. “Social media, title searches for Fuller. Maybe he’s got a love nest. I’ll scout the coastline, then hit the mall, shops, restaurants. There are four or five hotels in the vicinity.”
“Oooh,” she said. “I love hotels. Let me call them.”
“Better than going in person?”
“Trust me. I have a secret weapon, works every time. Ahem.”
She paused for effect.
“Twenty years of my life I’ve given that man,” she moaned. “Twenty years. I just feel like such an idiot. You know? I want to say to him, ‘Shel, how could you? Look me in the eye and tell me it was worth twenty years of marriage.’ ”
Her voice burned with righteous indignation.
“The worst part is how it’s affecting my kids. ‘Mommy, why are you so sad? Why are your eyes red all the time?’ I’m a mess from the moment I get up till the moment I fall asleep. Not that I’m sleeping.”
She sobbed like faulty plumbing.
“I keep having the same nightmare, I’m opening up his phone, and there’s all the text messages, hundreds of them, and the pictures of him, them, they don’t even have clothes on... It just keeps running through my head, all these people he’s been with, all the places they... did it. It’s driving me crazy. Please, don’t make me humiliate myself by coming down there. I know he stayed with you, I have the credit card statement. All I need to know is who he was with. You don’t have to tell me their names. I’ll text you pictures, you tell me yes or no. That’s all I’m asking: yes or no.”
I said, “I feel so bad for Ed.”
Aquatic Park, a public lagoon favored by water-skiers, was self-contained. No link to the Bay; I ruled it out, turned south onto Frontage Road, and crossed the Emeryville city line at five miles per hour, stopping periodically to take pictures and slap up a flyer. The road hugged a trail. The trail hugged the water. A rock embankment, shallower than the one at India Basin, was similarly choked with trash and graffiti.
Point Emery, Barkley Beach, Shorebird Park.
Powell Street rounded onto the Watergate peninsula, a skinny, mile-long development jutting out into the Bay. Built in the 1960s atop fill, it put the lie to Will Roger’s axiom: Buy land. They’re not making any more of the stuff.
Emeryville had, and plenty of it. Half the acreage belonged to a mammoth condo complex that lent the neighborhood its name. Attached to it, like remoras sucking at a shark, were miscellaneous commercial ventures: gas station, grocery store, office towers. I noted any street-facing CCTV cameras. I chatted up employees and handed out flyers. At Trader Vic’s the manager allowed me to post one in the men’s room.
The Hilton I left to Regina.
She called as I was exiting the restaurant.
“Negative on the love nest. Not in his name, his wife’s, or the firm. How’s it going by you?”
“Nothing, so far.”
“Hate to say I told you so.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right, I love it more than anything in the world.”
The peninsula’s back half fishhooked into an artificial cove. The outer, Bay-facing side was a park, with grassy strips for picnicking and sooty charcoal grills. On the interior side was the harbor, shielded by a long breakwater.
Then, something.
East Bay Yacht Club.
Why not two elite refuges for Shelby IV?
I slowed to look at the clubhouse, a Gray Cape Codder. The parking lot attendant hunched beneath an umbrella, absorbed in his phone. Besides him, the only security was a locked gangway. Masts bristled in the unfenced marina.
I called Regina. “Run an ANI search on watercraft belonging to Fuller.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
Swinging a U-turn, I headed back to Trader Vic’s. Despondent office workers haunted the bar, coaxing strength from their Mai Tais. I sat in a booth and ate pork tacos.