BASCOMBE: She disappeared.
TRIPLETT: Okay.
BASCOMBE: It’s a question. I’m asking you.
TRIPLETT: Okay.
BASCOMBE: Julian. Julian. Come on, now. Tell me the truth. What are you talking about, she disappeared. Where’d she go?
TRIPLETT: Like in the air.
BASCOMBE: In the air.
TRIPLETT: Can I have a Coke?
BASCOMBE: You can when you stop playing with me. I’m gonna ask you again. What happened after you stabbed her? What’d you do with the knife? You throw it away?
TRIPLETT: Yeah.
BASCOMBE: Where.
TRIPLETT: I want to go home.
As before, lacking voice cues, I couldn’t tell what was going on in Triplett’s head from reading the transcript. Denial, fear, remorse, confusion? His youth complicated matters.
With the day winding down, I gave up on reading for content and began to flip pages quickly, using my phone to photograph them for later review.
I phone-shot the crime scene photos. Street; building exterior; stairs; front door. Familiar angles, but fewer than you’d find in one of my case files. This was the period before digital cameras, when every frame cost money.
Front hallway.
Living room, in chaos.
Kitchen.
A human being, torn apart.
At five fifty-six, I packed up the file and took it back to Schickman’s office. Two other cops sat working their computers.
“Cool,” Schickman said. “You can just leave it here.”
I set the box down on his desk. “Thanks a lot.”
“Yeah, no worries,” he said.
I asked if he’d had a chance to look up Bascombe.
“Shit, no. I’m getting crushed here. Tomorrow, scout’s honor.”
One of the other detectives called, “What kinda fuckin scout are you?”
I said, “Tomorrow’s great, thanks.”
We shook hands and I left.
Dusk had flooded the square, skateboarders and students cleared out, leaving men in rags, in sleeping bags, belly-up on benches. They stumbled in and out of streetlight, kicked bottles, sermonized, confronted invisible enemies. They, too, were invisible, pressed down to ground level, stepped over.
Across the purpled lawns, lights burned inside the high school. Extracurricular activities. Math or debate or jazz or fencing.
Julian Triplett had never made it to the end of sophomore year.
Less than half a mile away, due east, lay the Cal campus, steeped in history and flush with resources, a haven for young minds full of hope and folly. They came from around the world to drink at the fountain.
Donna Zhao hadn’t graduated, either.
I thought of the two of them colliding like streaking comets. Meeting in a savage heat that left no trace.
Chapter 17
Julian Triplett wasn’t in the system.
I found a last known address for him — his mother’s house, on Delaware Street — but it was a decade old, and nobody picked up when I called. Other than a younger sister named Kara Drummond, who lived in Richmond, he had no other kin or associates. He had no adult criminal record. No credit history, no Facebook page, no Twitter, no Instagram, no gallery of faces on Google Images.
The lack of an internet presence is unusual but not unheard of. The denizens of People’s Park tend not to be plugged into the social network. Maybe Triplett was living on the street. Or he’d served his sentence and decided to get far away, start over. Part of my job is finding people, some of whom prefer not to be found.
The phone interrupted me.
“Yes, hi, this is Michael Cucinelli from Cucinelli Brothers Mortuary in Fremont.”
“Hi, Mr. Cucinelli. What can I do for you?”
“Yeah, so I’m following up with you directly, cause we have the body of a Mr. Jose Provencio here, and I gotta be honest with you, this is getting to be a bit much.”
“Wait a sec,” I said.
“Well, yeah, but no, cause I’ve been waiting five months, so I’m not really inclined to do a heck of a lot more waiting.”
“Hang on. Hang on,” I said, mousing rapidly. “You said Jose Provencio?”
“Yes.”
“Jose Manuel Provencio?”
“...yes.”
“He’s still there?”
“I’m looking right at him.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”
“You’re telling me he never took care of it.”
“Who didn’t.”
“Samuel Afton. Mr. Provencio’s stepson. He assured me he would handle it. He said he worked out a deal with you guys.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about that. I know that my idiot nephew is telling me this guy’s been here since the summer. I respect what you do but I’m at my limit.”
“You and me both,” I said. “Give me five minutes, okay? I’ll call you back.”
Samuel Afton’s phone went straight to voicemail. I left a message asking him to get in touch immediately, then phoned Cucinelli.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “If I don’t hear from him by the end of the day it’s going to county indigent.”
He grumbled but agreed. “As long as we finish with it today.”
“Five o’clock. You have my word.”
I put down the phone.
“Yo,” Zaragoza said, hanging over the partition. “We’re up.”
I reached for my vest.
He laughed. “No, dude. Lunch run.”
In the car, he said, “You okay?”
“Me? Fine. Why.”
“You look kinda tired.”
I’d been up late several nights in a row with the Zhao file. Even after forcing myself to roll over and turn off the bedside lamp, I’d lie on my back, listening to cars bottoming out in the potholes along Grand Avenue, wondering whether to call Tatiana and what to say.
The question wasn’t if Julian Triplett was dangerous. I’d seen the carnage. I’d read the autopsy protocol. Donna Zhao had been stabbed twenty-nine times.
The question, rather, was, if the huge guy I’d seen outside Rennert’s house was in fact Julian Triplett, or whether he was some other huge guy, and I was caught up in an equally huge mindfuck of a coincidence, victim of my own imagination.
Say it was him. What did I hope to accomplish by warning Tatiana? What did I expect her to do? Run out and get a gun? Like a dancer, Berkeley born and bred, would arm herself. Even if she did, she was more likely to end up shooting herself by accident.
By making her aware of a threat, I was in a sense creating that threat, which in my mind created a responsibility for me — to ensure that no harm came to her. Was I going to sit outside her house, a one-man neighborhood watch? For how long?
I was also concerned about feeding her suspicions. There was no evidence her father’s death was anything but natural, and I had no proof of Triplett’s ill intent. I had no proof he knew she existed. He hadn’t come to her address.
I considered other explanations for his presence outside the house. The best I could come up with was that he’d read the obituary and dropped by to gloat.
“Insomnia,” I said to Zaragoza.
“You try melatonin? I have some in my desk.”
“No, thanks.”
“I meant to ask you. Sunday. Priscilla’s making...” He paused, scratching his chin.
“Food?” I suggested.
“Let’s hope.”
“Yeah, man. Thanks.”
“Thank her. Her idea.”
That raised my antennae. “No unmarried cousins, please.”
“One time,” he said.
“Once was enough.”
“Telling you, dude, you fucked up. Iris is a quality chick.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Leaving In-N-Out Burger with my arms full of greasy bags, I felt my pocket buzz and hurried to dump the food in the backseat of the Explorer. Too late: I’d missed the call. I was expecting a voicemail from Samuel Afton.