They hauled him outside and down the balcony. The balcony was long. Toward the bow end, they curved out of sight.
Silence hissed.
The splash could not be heard, even with the volume at max.
Adam and Olivia reappeared without him, their bodies intertwined, groping at each other as they fell on the bed and had sex atop the sheets.
Afterward they went into the en suite. A shower ran.
Adam came out wrapped in a towel. He was carrying extra towels, which he used to mop the floor. He wiped the mirror wall. Olivia joined him, wiping the front and top of the nightstand. Neglecting to open the drawer.
They replaced the furniture, straightened the rug, stripped the bloody linens and stuffed them in a trash bag along with Linus’s clothes and the ruined towels. Olivia asked what if Fuller noticed them missing. Adam replied that he wouldn’t. Extra sets in the closet. Shelby had so much shit. The maid was coming Monday.
When it was over Winterholz turned on the lights.
Each of us had watched something slightly different.
Tessa Maben, the prosecutor, was beaming. For her the video was a solo performance by Olivia Parisi, a stake to drive into the heart of her defendant.
Gary Kinney looked grim, confronting an imaginary Rick Valois, neck swollen with fury, screaming at him, threatening to file suit for defamation, gross negligence, mental anguish.
Alan Mendes’s pale horror said he was seeing the ghost of Denny Kudelka.
Pettit and Winterholz saw Linus Hao: incapacitated, battered, dropped alive from thirty feet up like a water balloon.
I was picturing Hao on the morgue table, comparing his body with Denny’s, with that of John Doe #57. All three men shared a similar physical profile, short and wiry. It struck me that Adam and Olivia had never attempted to restrain Linus. Perhaps they didn’t think it necessary; he was much smaller than both of them. And the sedatives did most of the work. Always had.
But they couldn’t take chances with Damian Roby, not with his size, strength, and agility. Cuffs, then.
Not enough.
Tough luck for two monsters.
Tiffany Reuss kept peeking down the table at Trevor Vogel. His face was waxen, eyes half-closed and trembling, mouth-breathing to stave off nausea. He was remembering his best friend; his best friend, relaxing as a man was beaten to death in front of him, then fucking on bloodstained sheets.
Trevor laid his head on his arms.
He began to snore.
What cops call guilty sleep.
Chapter 37
Accompanied by her defense attorney, Charles Barlow, Olivia Parisi appeared for arraignment in Alameda County Superior Court, pleading not guilty to one count of second-degree murder, plus additional counts of conspiracy and destroying evidence. Judge Jacqueline Searle remanded her to Santa Rita Jail pending trial.
The cops were unhappy. Mendes wanted Olivia charged for Denny Kudelka. Pettit and Winterholz wanted murder one, which carried a minimum twenty-five to life.
In the end the DA was firm: Only Linus Hao’s case had enough juice, and only enough for murder two. Pettit argued that what had happened to Damian Roby demonstrated an MO consistent with premeditation. But Tessa Maben preferred to center her case on the video. The video showed Olivia reacting in the moment. Nor was Maben confident that Roby would be allowed to take the stand; sure enough, the defense would later move to exclude his testimony as prejudicial, a motion Judge Searle denied.
Implicit — though never articulated — was reluctance to pin hopes on the word of a hulking Black man with a criminal record.
Barlow approached Maben about a plea drop to voluntary manslaughter. Eager to avoid a trial, Maben was on the fence until Winterholz facilitated a meeting between her and Hao’s family. His parents flew in from San Diego, his sister Agnes from Denver.
Maben called Barlow: no deal.
These and numerous other legal wranglings ate up the fall and winter. I heard about them mostly from Tiffany Reuss. In February she called to tell me that she’d been reviewing the documentary footage of Adam and Trevor, all five-hundred-something hours, putting on her headphones and letting it play in the background while she did other work, listening for any talk of the murders, waiting for the moment Adam put the SD card into Trevor’s hand. So far she’d found neither.
She had come across one wild thing, though. She offered to send it to me if I promised to delete it straightaway. Flattered by her trust, I agreed.
The clip opened on a dingy, nondescript room. The lighting was excellent; the image quality, superb. Adam Valois lazed on a brown sofa. Trevor Vogel sat beside him, sparking a lighter at a giant purple bong.
The chambers clouded, Trevor inhaled hard.
Mischief crystallized in Adam’s eyes.
He lunged.
The kiss lasted a fraction of a second.
Adam sat back with a smug grin, looking on as Trevor struggled to hold his breath. He went red. He shook. Little white bullets puffed from his nostrils. Finally he couldn’t take it any longer and exploded; hacking, pounding, laughing, cussing.
Douchebag. Trevor set the bong on the floor and got up. Needa piss.
Adam’s head swiveled to follow his departure.
The grin faded, leaving behind an expression of pure longing.
Adam reached for the bong.
The clip ended.
I called Regina. “I’m sending you something. You have to promise to delete it.”
“Color me intrigued, Poirot.”
“I’m serious. You’re gonna get me in a shitload of trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah, Scout’s Honor.”
I stayed on the line while she watched.
“Holy hell,” she said. “Our boy was in love.”
Five months later, the trial began.
I attended as often as I could, which was seldom. I was swamped with new cases, simpler, lucrative.
But I was there on day one, sitting in the last row, when they brought Olivia out in her court attire. Church-worthy navy skirt suit.
Jail hadn’t been kind to her. Her complexion was pallid, she was thirty pounds heavier; her roots had grown out enough that they could no longer be called roots.
She remained expressionless during the prosecution’s opening statement, not reacting to Maben’s characterizations of her as evil, calculating, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, don’t be fooled.
Never glancing at the jury box or the gallery, where the Hao family sat in the front row.
The Haos, in turn, did not react to Charles Barlow’s opening statement, which made clear that it was going to be as much a trial of Adam’s character as Olivia’s actions. Barlow also used the word “evil” — in reference to Adam. He implored the jury not to be fooled, painting his client as a victim, seduced and intimidated by a powerful, wealthy, aggressive, domineering man who had traumatized Olivia Parisi and bent her to his will.
Alerted by Reuss, I was there the day Shelby Fuller IV testified that he’d obtained a Haven Harbor service entrance key fob for Adam Valois and provided him the code for the aft door of Motion Sickness. Fuller stated that he was unaware Adam had brought Olivia or anyone else aboard, and that he had been out of town over New Year’s 2026, skiing in Vail with his wife and children.
During cross-examination, Barlow said, “Mr. Fuller, why did you give Adam Valois access to your yacht?”
“We met there from time to time,” Fuller said.
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“If you were meeting him, why did Adam need his own fob? Or the door code?”
“I often work late,” Fuller said. “If he’d driven up without me I didn’t want him to have to wait outside.”
“You both reside in San Jose, is that correct?”