I thought about Amy, and Tatiana, and I remembered a conversation with an old girlfriend. We were fighting, or I should say that she was fighting with me, getting more and more upset at my failure to match her rising ire.
Care she yelled.
About what I asked.
Anything.
We didn’t last long after that. It was a familiar pattern. I went along agreeably until all that remained was agreeability.
I called Amy back.
“Hi?” she said.
“I want to see you,” I said.
“Uh. Well—”
“Hang on,” I said. “Let me speak. You said let’s see how it goes, and I said I’ll take what I can get. But that’s polite, and it’s bullshit. I’m not okay with that. I want to see you, soon, and I don’t want anything less than that. I know it’s new. I know we’re at the beginning. I’m putting on record that I want it to be a beginning. If you don’t want the same thing, that’s up to you. But I won’t apologize for thinking you’re fantastic, or wanting to be with you more, a lot more, as soon as possible.”
Silence.
She said, “I want to see you, too.”
“Good. Then let’s find a way to make that happen. I’ll come to you. Or you come here. One or the other. Maybe we have to wait a week or two months, or maybe you really can’t get away until the end of the semester, which would suck. But be aware: I’m not letting this go.”
A beat. She laughed softly.
“What,” I said, smiling.
“You,” she said.
“What.”
“You’re different than I remember.”
I said, “I hope so.”
Chapter 38
On Sunday morning, I got a call from Ivory Richards, daughter of Freeway John Doe, his identity now confirmed through dental records as that of Henry Richards, age fifty-eight, formerly of Las Vegas and missing since April.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did,” she said, “taking the time to find me.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“He’s still gone. Least now I don’t have to wonder.”
“I hope it gives you some comfort.”
She said, “He used to talk about going to California. He was going to retire, live on the beach. Too hot here. As soon as he could get some money he was going to go. But he lost his house when the bubble burst. I said he could move in with me. I told him: ‘Just till you get back on your feet again.’ He didn’t want to, it hurt his pride.”
“Yes,” I said, so she’d know I was still listening.
“When he took off, I thought he was living out there. That’s what I told myself. I didn’t know he was in trouble. I didn’t know how bad it had gotten, he hid it. I asked the police to see pictures. They told me better I don’t. I can’t stop thinking about it. In my mind...” Her voice wrenched. “In my mind, I see such horrible things.”
She was weeping. “Please tell me it wasn’t as bad as I think.”
The scream of the freeway overhead; a body unable to hold its own skin.
I said, “Not that bad.”
“You’re telling stories,” she said. “It’s okay. I appreciate that. I asked you to.”
The last dozen boxes at the storage unit contained nothing that pointed me toward Julian Triplett. I locked up and drove home.
Unsure if I’d need to make this call, I’d waited. Now I didn’t think I had a choice.
“Hey,” Tatiana said.
“Hey.” Silence. “Got a second?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve been through the boxes.”
“Anything?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Can I ask you: those last few, that you left at your father’s house?”
“You want to look at them,” she said.
“If possible,” I said.
“I was going to get to them eventually,” she said defensively. “Every time I come near them my eyes water.”
“Right,” I said. “What do you say?”
“I’m not around to let you in,” she said.
“Later this week, then.”
“No. I mean I’m not around around.”
A shroud of formality covered her tone.
“Okay,” I said.
Relenting a little, she said, “I can send you the key, if you’d like.”
“If you don’t mind.”
If this. If that. So tactful, we were.
“You’ll need the alarm code, too,” she said.
“Please.”
She gave it to me: 7-9-7-8. I thought back to when I was having trouble unlocking Rennert’s iPhone. I couldn’t remember if that was one of the combinations she’d suggested. Probably would’ve been worth trying. I asked her what it meant.
“I don’t know, actually,” she said. She sounded miffed to admit it.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try not to disturb you again.”
“Clay?” she said. “Let me know what you find?”
“I will if you want me to,” I said. “Are you sure you do?”
A long silence.
She said, “My father obviously believed he was doing the right thing. I don’t know his reasons, but I have to trust he had them. He was a good man.”
She expected an answer.
“From what I’ve seen,” I said, “yes, he was.”
“People don’t appreciate that. They never did. They know one thing about him and they think they know everything. But it’s not that simple.”
“Nobody is,” I said.
An urge welled up inside me: to ask when she’d be back.
“I’ll put the key in the mail tomorrow,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Take care, Clay,” she said.
The key arrived four days later, postmarked Portland, OR.
I was still laughing as I got into my car and drove over to Berkeley.
Three boxes, mildewed and spongy, tucked in the corner of the basement, caged in by a shelving unit.
We’d had to work to get them out, which meant that Rennert had had to work to put them in. A precaution.
Months drying out in the service porch had helped: they no longer stank so bad. The black stains in the cardboard had faded to a dull greenish gray, shedding a powdery residue that came off on my hands as I lifted the lid off box number one.
It was a quarter full, the contents not sitting high enough to escape the annual flooding. They appeared to be some sort of manuscript. The top few pages were legible, but only just: water damage had caused them to curl and shrivel, the printer ink bleeding, leaving teasing fragments.
never met J before
process of rehabilitation
coinciding with my own interests as a psychologist
arrogance, which prevented me
an alternative explanation presented itself
Beyond page five, the paper had disintegrated, fusing into a single moldering brick, like crude papier-mâché. Trying to separate them only worsened the damage.
The second box was in slightly better shape. The pages had been folded and unfolded, giving them some loft, and they weren’t packed down, leaving the uppermost portion unscathed, sixty or seventy pages in total.
Letters, written in a tight, uniform hand.
dear doctor rennert thank you for comming to see me
Lydia Delavigne had commented disparagingly on Triplett’s poor spelling and grammar. Considering his learning difficulties and the fact that he’d never finished ninth grade, I thought he got by pretty well.
The neatness of the script struck me as particularly apt.
Big hands doing delicate work.
None of the letters bore a date, and most were brief, one or two lines on a short list of concrete topics: the weather, the food, a stomach ailment that appeared to drag on.