Well. Whatever you decide to do she said I hope it’s a good day for you.
I picked up the cassette case. July 8, 2006.
Triplett’s birthday was the next day, the ninth. He had a few years on me. Born in ’78.
7-9-78.
Rennert’s alarm code.
Come midnight, I’d been listening off and on for over six hours and had yet to learn the therapist’s name. Triplett never addressed her, and the recordings picked up in the middle of their talks, as though she waited until they’d said their hellos to start taping.
Then, toward the middle of tape thirteen:
Dr. Weatherfeld?
Yes, Julian?
When
I rewound to make sure I’d heard right.
Dr. Weatherfeld?
I stopped the tape, opened my laptop.
No mental health professional by that name showed up in the Bay Area.
But I did find a Karen Weatherfeld, farther afield.
I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, offering individual and group therapy for adults facing a wide variety of challenges, including depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
She had an office in Truckee. About a twenty-minute drive north of Lake Tahoe.
I kept my email to her casual and quick, asking for a callback, identifying myself as a sheriff but mentioning nothing about Rennert or Triplett.
Within seconds I received an automated reply.
Thank you for your inquiry. I will be away from the office until January 13th. During that time I will be checking email infrequently. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, please contact the Nevada County Crisis Center at—
Over the ensuing week I called carpenters and cabinetmakers in the Truckee-Tahoe area. There were a lot of them; construction appeared to be one of the main local trades. Vacation homes needed building, refurbishing.
No one I spoke to knew Julian, let alone admitted having employed him.
The day of Karen Weatherfeld’s return, I sent a follow-up email. No response. I sent another; same result. Called her. Called her again.
On Saturday we took a homicide in Oakland, guys beefing over a debt, the vic mouthing off about the shooter’s girl. While Shupfer finished up with the cops, I perched on the van bumper, dragging my finger down my screen to refresh the inbox, again and again.
Nothing.
I gave Karen Weatherfeld the rest of the weekend. By Sunday night my patience was gone. I had forty-eight hours of my own time and I intended to use them. I checked the weather report and road conditions, threw some clothes in a bag, and set an alarm for four a.m.
Chapter 39
It was still dark out when I reached Sacramento and stopped at Walmart to buy chains for my tires. The streets of the capital were wet, and after another hour on 80 North, snow appeared at the margins, wispy strands that thickened with the climbing elevation.
I hadn’t spent any time in the western Sierras; for obvious reasons, I don’t ski. Operating on a gallon of coffee, I gazed out over a surreal landscape — unimaginably beautiful from a distance, terrifyingly harsh up close — and felt an unpleasant tickle in my heart.
A crumpled moonscape, massive blades of granite. Blackened, limbless remnants of forest fires; stark pine mobs. Coppery light oozed down the mountainsides, like the blood of some giant beast caught and thrashing on a jagged peak.
Names on road signs were strange and unsettling. Rawhide. Secret Town. Red Dog. You Bet. At the turnoff for Emigrant Gap, the California Highway Patrol had set up a tire chain checkpoint. Enterprising young guys in parkas hunkered on the shoulder, offering to help with installation for twenty bucks. I hired one and we got down together on the salt-slimed asphalt, pebbles biting through the knees of my jeans.
I rumbled onward, toward Donner Lake, Donner Pass, Donner Memorial State Park. While I could summon a pang over the plight of folks forced to eat their dead, the decision to name every local landmark after them seemed macabre.
There was even a Donner Golf Course. Think of the clubhouse lunch menu.
The town of Truckee lay hushed under a night’s snow. Along the main drag, people shoveled off the sidewalks, clearing the doorways of cafés and gift shops, ski outfitters and rustic chic boutiques. Businesses catering to the tourist trade, spillover from the resorts scattered to the south and west.
Traces of an older, grittier past persisted. At one such establishment — rotten shingles, guttering neon — I stopped to fuel up. A certificate declared the fare BEST BREAKFAST IN TRUCKEE 1994. In celebration of this achievement, the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned since.
Karen Weatherfeld’s practice was located out past the municipal airport, where alpine greenery yielded to a flat, featureless scrub. I pulled around back of a bland commercial complex that hosted several other mental health practitioners, along with a cosmetic dentist, a snack shop, a paint emporium, and a fitness boot camp. Only the last of these was up and running, electronic bass juddering through the parking lot. How anyone could conduct therapy amid that racket, I had no idea. For her sake I hoped she’d signed either a great lease or a short one.
Her office hours began at ten. At a quarter to, a forest-green Jeep Cherokee pulled into the lot. The driver was a tall, handsome redhead in her mid-fifties, dressed in a shiny, quilted winter coat, emerald scarf, and jeans tucked into cowboy boots. I recognized her from the headshot on her website.
Keys in hand, she headed for the exterior stairs.
I made myself known from ten yards off, so as not to startle her. “Ms. Weatherfeld?”
She faced me. “Yes?”
“Deputy Clay Edison,” I came forward, badge up. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
A series of quick blinks. “May I?” she said, reaching for my ID.
I gave it to her. “I don’t know if you got my emails.”
She examined my picture longer than seemed necessary. “What can I do for you?”
“Can we go inside? Talk a moment?”
“I have a client scheduled at ten.”
“I can come back later.”
She returned the badge. “May I ask what this is about?”
“It’s better if I have a chance to explain in detail. In the meantime, though, please don’t worry. It’s a routine matter.”
“Your saying that makes me extremely worried,” she said.
“How does noon work for you?”
A beat.
She said, “I take lunch at twelve thirty. Meet me here.”
She started up the stairs, glancing over her shoulder. “For the sake of my client’s privacy, I’d appreciate it if you left now.”
Walter Rennert’s vacation home sat on the northwest shore of the lake. Easing down the private road, I could see why Tatiana came here to retreat from the world. It was secluded and still; the trees were majestic and the frost on the water glistened and the earth smelled everywhere of freshness and rebirth.
The house itself was smaller than I’d envisioned, a real cozy cottage, log walls and a black stovepipe jutting from the roof. I strolled around the property in ankle-deep snow, imagining Tatiana and her brothers running through the woods, cramming wet handfuls down one another’s shirts.
Most of the shutters had been left open, and I played my flashlight through the windows. I’m not sure what I expected to discover — Triplett himself, perhaps, peering out timidly from beneath a rug? I found it blackly funny to imagine him, the giant lump of him, living hidden beneath Tatiana’s feet for weeks on end.
I saw only a mild disorder. Following the break-in, she’d left in a hurry, running back to Berkeley before she had a chance to clean up or prepare for winter. The firewood rack on the back porch hadn’t been stocked. She hadn’t managed to sell off all the furniture. The living room had been denuded, but in the kitchen I spotted an overflowing ashtray left out on the breakfast table. The table was nothing special. But the chairs that surrounded it made a set. There were four of them, exquisitely carved.