“You think he’s coming for her?”
“Just covering my bases,” I said.
“Uh-huh. Well, I mean, the guy’s a fucking psycho, so... You’re saying Rennert had a heart attack, though.”
“No question.”
“First I heard about Linstad kicking it, either. He fell down the stairs?”
“It was ruled an accident.”
“Accident’s an accident,” he said. “Unless you guys changed your policy since I left. When’re we talking about, anyway?”
“Linstad was in oh-five.”
“I was gone by then.”
I asked how long he’d been with Berkeley PD.
“Eighty-one to ninety-seven.”
“You know when Triplett got out?”
“He was scheduled for release in oh-two. Everyone was pissed. We wanted him tried as an adult. I mean, shit. We’re talking premeditation, lying in wait, some serious fucking animal brutality. Adult doesn’t apply in that situation, when does it? You know how it goes around here. Get some idiot judge, find the soft spot, press on it, boom, Triplett’s a victim.”
“Of what?”
“Society. The Man. The fast-food conspiracy. Listen, I’m not gonna sit here, tell you the kid wasn’t holding a shitty hand. He’s got an IQ of about eighty. He can barely read. I have to walk him through the Miranda sheet one word at a time. Lousy deal, no question. Dad’s AWOL, mom’s fucked up outta her head on dope twenty-four seven.”
“She seemed okay to me.”
A slight pause. “You talked to her?”
“I went over to see if she’d clue me where he’s hiding out.”
“Ah-huh. Lemme guess, she didn’t know.”
“No. She looked clean, though.”
“Good for her. Maybe she did a twelve-step.” His laugh was harsh.
“What did she use?”
“Crack. The PD uses that to sob-story. Has people coming in and saying Triplett’s a nice kid, wouldn’t hurt a fly. I get, it’s the job, but enough is enough. He’s hearing voices telling him to hurt people. He needs to be off the street.”
I said, “Voices.”
“Oh yeah.”
“His mom didn’t mention anything about that. Neither did his old pastor.”
“Pastor,” he said. “You all over this motherfucker... Yeah, voices. Talk to him for two minutes — you don’t have to be a fuckin psychologist to understand he ain’t right. What do those guys do anyway, complicate simplicity. When we wanted to adult Triplett, the court ordered an eval. The shrink says he can’t hack it at juvie, needs to be hospitalized. Okay, off he goes to the hospital. They put him on meds. Bingo! All better. Now he’s not crazy anymore. Now he’s a nice boy. Back to juvie. In juvie, he doesn’t get his meds. So now he’s crazy again. Back to the hospital. It was like that for eight, ten months. You get the picture.”
“I read your interviews,” I said. “Thorough. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s acting strange cause he’s nervous, or a kid, or whatever.”
“Nervous? He was crazy,” Bascombe said. “Half the stuff he said’s not in there, it gets impossible to follow the thread of the conversation. He’d go on about all sorts of shit.”
“Like what?”
“Specifically? Christ, I don’t... Okay. This I remember. He said the girl disappeared. Like, he stabs her, and — poof.”
“Yeah, I read that.”
“I mean, come on. Listen — what is it, Ed?”
“Edison.”
“Edison. You ever work homicide?”
“No.”
“Patrol?”
“Some. Before the Coroner I was mostly at the jail.”
“Jail, huh,” he said drily. “Well, trust me. Whatever Triplett said, it was nothing special. We’re talking about Berkeley, okay? I spent half my career talking to people who believe aliens ate their dog. It’s noise. You learn to cut through it. But the eval made an impression on His Honor. Then you get the so-called expert witness banging on the table about this fucking experiment, he’s vulnerable, he’s triggered, blah blah.”
“Video games.”
“Right. Some shoot-em-up dealie they showed the kids. I think my son had it on Nintendo. I guess I should count myself lucky he didn’t kill nobody.” He laughed. “There you go. You know what you need to know. Remind me your name again.”
I said, “Edison.”
“Edison. Okay. Well, Edison, don’t work too hard,” he said. “Trust me on that.”
Chapter 21
Back at the office, I worked as hard as I could, but my head was elsewhere. Moffett and I took a callout for the 42nd Street overpass in Fruitvale — John Doe, indeterminate age, indeterminate race, in a state of advanced decomposition. Autopsy would have the final word, but a cursory inspection showed no signs of violence.
He had simply died, rotting in place because there was no one around to witness it, let alone help.
As Moffett and I crab-walked around the body, hacking, waving our hands to bat away the rising chimney of stink, I could not escape the thought that this could be Julian Triplett. Or someone who knew him. Or the person he could, would, become. Eventually. Inevitably.
If you’d asked me several months ago how I felt about such a case, I would’ve answered: Sad but not surprised. Now I listened to the traffic thundering along 880, thousands upon thousands of people pushing on overhead, oblivious to what lay below them. Moffett tried to adjust the corpse’s arm, and a patch of skin sloughed free like the peel off a boiled peach. Behind his mask his features contorted in disgust, and I found myself filled with despair, and frustration, and anger.
We’d take this remnant of humanity, weigh him, stick him in the freezer. Tell someone he had passed, if someone could be found who cared.
So what?
In six-plus years on the job, I’d never questioned my purpose. I took the bad with the good because what I did was, foremost, necessary. That perfect fit, that sense of sealing airtight a crack in society, gave me deep satisfaction.
A setup man.
Now I felt pushed up against the limits of my mandate, and I had a sudden and awful premonition. Saw myself slide toward a darker state, where the work wasn’t necessary, let alone fulfilling; just a temporary relief from uncertainty.
The question marks awaiting all of us.
“Earth to dude.”
I snapped to. “Sorry.”
Moffett shook his head. “One, two, three, up.”
We rose.
On my next day off, I drove over to Cal.
What I’d told Tatiana was true: I did come by every so often, to use the gym. But it had been years since I’d stepped foot in the psych building.
Sneakers chirping on linoleum.
Bulletin board soliciting human subjects.
One elevator out of service. Did it ever get fixed?
That things hadn’t changed one bit was less charming than terrifying: long before I’d arrived on campus, the structure had been condemned as seismically unstable.
I made my way up to the fourth floor. The halls were hushed and ill lit. I found the door and knocked.
A boyish voice said, “Come in.”
Spellman-Rohatyn Professor of Psychology and Social Issues Paul J. Sandek taught in the department’s social-personality track. He hadn’t changed much, either. A few extra veins of white in his beard, a modest pouching around the eyes.
I’d never seen him in anything other than argyle sweaters, or maybe a sweater vest in late spring. The fluttering array of Far Side cartoons still blanketed the wall above his computer. At one point I’d known them all by heart. Cover up a caption and I could recite it.
“Clay.” He hugged me warmly. “It’s good to see you.”