“Ever been out there?”
I shook my head.
“There’s this trail,” she said, scrolling ahead, “runs past the old salt ponds.”
Glare filled the screen: a Mondrian landscape, flat as the Dutch countryside, immense polygons of black water intercut by turf strips and mirroring fiery cones of red and white.
It was the Fourth of July.
The camera advanced, following the trail as it curved alongside Alameda Creek toward the Bay. Fireworks gave way to red and blue emergency flashers. An ambulance sat in a gravel turnout. Two cruisers: Parks and Fremont PD. The latter would have been quicker to respond. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t their jurisdiction. And nobody was fighting to add bodies to their stats.
Beyond lay marshland and the delta. In daytime the area would be hectic with shorebirds. Sandpipers, curlews, killdeers, stilts. Now there was only waves and grass and trash.
Fifteen miles across the water to the west, San Francisco guttered and winked.
A lump lay on the mud.
Having read the autopsy protocol, I knew what to expect.
Despite that, my breath caught.
Bad shape.
Skin, facial features, hair: These boundaries define us, unify us, and the intrinsic horror we feel in their absence runs deeper than simple disgust. It’s the terror that comes with loss of self.
The flayed man speaks an obscenity. We are all the same nothing.
“Who called it in?” I asked.
“Anonymous. Detectives ran the number back to a local guy. Him and his wife biked out to watch the fireworks, stumbled onto the body.”
“Why didn’t he give his name?”
“The park closes at dusk. They didn’t want to get in trouble for trespassing.”
She moved on to the autopsy photos.
Rot and discoloration made the tattoo on Adam’s chest hard to see. Another few days in the open and it might have been lost for good. I said as much to Kat, who nodded.
“If I remember right, his girlfriend said he had another tat. On his calf, I think. But it degloved.”
The head trauma could’ve been inflicted by an assailant. Just as likely — likelier — it was damage resulting from a collision with a watercraft. The same one whose propeller had shredded his torso.
Or he could have smashed into a buoy. A bridge support. Rocks.
The East Bay coastline is lined with flinty breakwaters. He could’ve been drunk, high, staggering along the waterfront, tripped, fallen, hit his head.
I said, “You have his last seen as Saturday night.”
“Per the girlfriend. Normal behavior all that week. No talk of self-harm.”
“Phone towers?”
“His cell stayed in San Jose. Ask me about witnesses.”
“No witnesses.”
“Ding ding ding. You know what? You’re pretty good at this. We have openings.”
I smiled. “Any idea where he went into the water?”
“Coast Guard’s telling me it could be literally anywhere.”
“What did Judy say on TOD?”
“One to two weeks.”
“From last seen on.”
“Yup.”
“What about when he washed up?”
“There was a maintenance crew out the day before, doing habitat restoration, and they didn’t notice anything. So sometime during that thirty-six-hour window.”
“Leads on the drugs?”
“He didn’t have a primary care doc. Shrink, either. To get his Lexapro he belonged to some online service. Nurse practitioner talks to you for ten minutes and writes the scrip. The muscle relaxant he had in his bathroom cabinet. Six years old, bottle quarter full, so not like he was pounding it.”
“Benzo?”
“No paper trail.”
“Ketamine?”
She shook her head. “That, neither. Thanks, pal. Now you’re making me doubt myself.”
“Stand tall, Deputy. Where’d they find the vehicle?”
Kat scanned pages of case notes.
Conv Reuss EBRPD PD re dec veh loc 1800 7/26/2026 EB 500 blk 27 St (MLK Way/Northgate Ave)
She mapped it on her browser: a freeway underpass along a major thoroughfare in downtown Oakland. Miles from the ocean, through rough and industrial neighborhoods. The closest body of water wasn’t the Bay; it was Lake Merritt, to the east.
“Off the record, what’d you think of the park detectives?” I asked.
“Average.”
“Not worse than.”
“No. Maybe even a little better.”
“Do me a favor and introduce me.”
“Should I warn them about you?”
“Why don’t we keep it a surprise.”
The general line rang. Over in her cubicle, Deputy Lopez answered. Coroner’s Bureau.
Kat swiveled in her chair. “What did the private autopsy say?”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“Their lawyer sent it to me. I didn’t look.”
I called up the TruPath PDF and handed her my laptop.
She skimmed. I could tell when she’d reached the end because she looked like she wanted to hurl the computer against the wall.
“The fuck is a ‘possible homicide’?”
She shut the laptop, none too gently, and rubbed her eyes. “This shit is so harmful.”
“I know.”
Lopez was taking down details, her voice drifting through the hush.
“How’d the parents find you?” Kat asked.
“Friend of a friend.”
“I’m not going to tell you how to run your business, Clay. But let me put it this way: I didn’t have a choice to work with them or not. You do.”
Hearing the edge in her own voice, she dialed it down a notch: “I feel for them. You know that. But getting your lawyer to yell at me doesn’t change the standard of proof.”
I nodded.
Lopez stood and rapped the cubicle wall. “We’re up.”
Kat reached for her ballistic vest. “Duty calls.”
“One last favor,” I said. “I need a file. You’re gonna have to order it from storage.”
She slid me a Post-it pad and pen.
“DOD is spring 2024,” I said, writing. “April or May. You’ll find it.”
I peeled off the note and gave it to her.
She said, “Who’s Dennis Kudelka?”
“Drowning case.”
“Yours?”
“Shoops was primary,” I said. “I helped.”
“Claaay. What’s going on here.”
“Nothing’s going on. I’m just curious.”
“Yeah.” She stuck the Post-it to her monitor. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
Chapter 5
The following week I drove down to San Jose to meet with Adam’s girlfriend, Olivia Parisi. I would’ve preferred to speak with the detectives first, but as a PI you have to take whatever people are willing to give you, and Olivia was giving us her morning.
Regina and I rendezvoused at a Market Street diner to game-plan. She’d bought drinks — drip coffee for me, soy latte for her since oat milk wasn’t available.
“Fucking hick town,” she said.
Today’s look was Shoulder to Cry On: upscale joggers and a brushed-cotton sweater in soothing ecru, canvas espadrilles, crystal specs, hair meekly ponytailed.
Soft and bland, perfect for curling up on the couch and getting down to some serious Girl Talk. All that was missing was Kleenex and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
“What do we got?” she said.
I opened my notes. “Olivia Emily Parisi. Thirty-five years old, Sacramento native, graduate of Sac State. Credit’s good, record’s clean, no bankruptcies, no judgments or liens. She moved here 2019, same address since 2022. LinkedIn says she’s an office manager for a dental practice. Social’s full of posts about Adam. The rest is her cat and pumpkin spice lattes. She hasn’t been active since the death.”