Down at the bottom, a man stood on the sidewalk.
He was gazing up at Rennert’s house. I couldn’t see his face. The angle was wrong; he was wearing a hoodie, pulled up, and my headlights blew out details, leaving me with no more than a general sense of size and shape.
He was goddamn enormous.
That was as much as I could process before he spooked and ran, disappearing behind a hedge.
I lifted my foot off the brake, rolling to street level.
The cul-de-sac was deserted.
I edged forward to peer along Bonaventure Avenue.
No sign of him.
I was off duty, unarmed, fatigued.
I had my couch, my TV, my ice pack.
Why run?
Peeping Tom?
Burglar, casing?
Someone who pushed people down stairs?
I deal in facts. I try to be pragmatic. But so much comes down to instinct, a tickle in the brain stem that says This feels wrong.
Where the hell had he gone?
The street was the only way out for a vehicle. Then I noticed the sign for a footpath, poking out at the opposite end of the cul-de-sac.
BONAVENTURE WALK.
I left my car at the curb.
The path snaked between two of the south-side properties, twisting and dropping. I couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. To my left grew towering bamboo hedges; from behind them came the loud burble of a fountain or pond, the owner’s attempt to block out the sound of pedestrian traffic. It also meant that I couldn’t hear what lay around the bend.
No one would hear me coming, either.
I picked up the pace, boots slapping concrete, knee beginning to complain.
A steep run of crumbling cement stairs fed me into a second cul-de-sac. Less ornate homes, brown shingles and station wagons, funky statuary and overgrown planter boxes.
I spotted him: a block and a half off, headed toward College Avenue at a rapid clip.
I followed.
He glanced back.
Stiffened.
Broke into a sprint.
Definitely wrong.
I went after him.
Within ten feet I could feel the mistake in my knee.
“Sheriff,” I yelled. “Stop.”
He hooked left down Cherry Street, his receding bulk shored up against banks of moonlight and the icy spillover from living room TVs. For a man his size, he could move. Or maybe it felt that way to me because I was limping like a junker.
I yelled again for him to stop.
He raced ahead.
It’d been a long time since I’d detained anyone, let alone made an arrest. But I’m still a peace officer; I was in uniform, and his failure to heed me amounted to probable cause. Forget whatever hunch had triggered my suspicion. He could be carrying drugs or a weapon. He might have warrants out.
At Russell he went right, westward again, ducking out of sight.
I came stumbling around the bend.
College Avenue was bustling and fragrant, bookstores and cafés doing a brisk nighttime trade. Hipster dads bounced toddlers awake way past their bedtimes. Undergrads in North Face walked with their arms linked. Bursts of laughter and breath-steam.
Given his height, given mine, I should have been making easy eye contact with him.
He was nowhere.
I hitched along, peering into shop windows. People gave me a wide berth. I was sweaty and red and filthy.
He wasn’t in the Italian grocery. He wasn’t sampling Tibetan cloth.
I crossed over Ashby and doubled back, passing the movie theater, the gelato shop. Weather be damned, there was a line out the door, patrons corralled by a black velvet rope. Everyone was having fun, except me.
He could have gotten into a car.
Taken a side street.
Hopped a fence.
Air whipped my face as a bus barreled past.
I craned to see if he was on it. Too late; it farted exhaust and plunged into darkness.
I stood with a hand on the back of my head, panting.
He was gone.
I trudged back to my car. My knee felt thick as a barrel, and I considered calling in sick. Physically, I doubted I could do more than shuffle paper. But Shupfer had already left the team shorthanded. She had a sick kid, pretty much the definition of a legitimate excuse.
What was mine? I’d hurt myself in pursuit of a suspect?
Suspect in what? A guy in a hoodie fleeing the scene of a death that had gone down two months ago? What was I doing there in the first place?
Explain yourself, Edison. Make it make sense.
I couldn’t.
In agony, I crawled behind the wheel, popped the glove box, shook out four generic ibuprofen from a jumbo bottle, dry-swallowed.
For the next two hours I sat in the cul-de-sac, waiting for him to show himself.
Shortly after midnight I drove home. I wrapped my knee in ice, stuffed a pillow beneath it, and stretched out on my bed.
At four thirty a.m., I woke to the beeping of my alarm. I rolled over. The ice had melted into a sloshing bag. Gingerly I removed it and tested my range of motion. The joint felt stiff, but the pain, at least, had receded to a dull threat.
I hobbled to the shower, letting the hot water loosen me up, praying for a slow day. The hulking silhouette of the man flashed through my mind, sending my heart rate leaping. To calm myself, I turned instead to thinking about Tatiana.
Her dancer’s posture. Her collarbones. Her body as I imagined it, all parts seamlessly knitted together.
I dried off, dressed, went to work.
Chapter 15
Officer Nate Schickman said, “How old a file are we talking about?”
I hesitated longer than I should have. He said, “Please tell me this doesn’t have to do with Rennert.”
I got where he was coming from. He was a homicide cop. Starting two months behind was his personal nightmare.
“My understanding was you guys had that sewn up. You’re changing your mind?”
“Nope. Natural.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “So, what. Something else?”
I shifted the phone to my other ear, hunching to gather as much privacy as possible. I didn’t have to worry about Shupfer listening in; she had indeed taken the day off. But I was conscious of Moffett, standing five feet away, fake-stabbing Daniella Botero in the neck as he reenacted a scene from The Walking Dead; conscious of Zaragoza, behind the partition, humming “The Final Countdown” to himself. Of Carmen Woolsey giggling at a cat video.
I said, “I’m sure it’s nothing. Rennert was involved, but as a witness. I’m just tying up loose ends. You know the deal. One tiny screwup, all kinds of shit hits all kinds of fans.”
That relaxed him somewhat. Nothing unites the brotherhood of the badge like hatred of red tape. “Gotcha. What’s the name?”
“Donna Zhao. October ninety-three.”
“You want I should send it your way?”
I imagined the file showing up at my office for everyone to see. “I’ll come get it from you, save you the hassle. Tuesday good?”
“Fine by me,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”
The four spots outside the Berkeley Public Safety Building were occupied. I trawled downtown awhile before finding a space on Allston, opposite the shuttered central post office with its grand and sooty colonnade. An encampment had sprung up on the steps, a mix of homeless people and protestors incensed over a variety of social ills, including homelessness. A man offered me a choice of pamphlets: STRIKE DEBT, SAVE OUR POST OFFICE, SAY NO TO GREEDY DEVELOPERS. I smiled my refusal; ten feet on, I heard him oinking.
It was lunchtime. Outside the high school, I paddled upstream against the exodus of kids bound for eateries along Shattuck Avenue. They spread out on the grass, clotting the sidewalks over several square blocks, eating or yakking or texting or all three simultaneously.