Maybe Luke was traveling for work. A last-minute thing, for Scott.
Maybe he’d taken off on a vision quest, selling his car first, hours before the murder.
Ugly coincidence. It happened.
I wielded these thoughts, trying to beat back the uglier alternatives.
Failed.
I told a cold shower. I breakfasted on protein bars and tap water and Advil.
Flakes of burnt paper stuck to the sides of the kitchen sink. I rinsed them down the drain with the vegetable sprayer.
A fine layer of ash covered my car. I ran the wiper fluid, sluicing runnels of gray sludge.
At my desk twenty minutes early, I plugged in my cellphone to finish charging and stashed it at the back of the desk drawer, behind Rory Vandervelde’s house keys. The cord poked out, creating a quarter-inch gap, and my mind overlaid a nauseating image of the garage hangar door, stuck open.
I stapled my attention to paperwork.
Day shift trickled in. Night shift clocked out.
The sun came up, just.
By nine a.m. I couldn’t stand it any longer and reached into the drawer for the phone.
One text from Amy. The beach it was. She’d try me later. She loved me.
Another text from the reporter. Did I want to comment yet? I did not.
My former teammate hadn’t followed up and neither had Billy Watts, the Berkeley detective. I texted my teammate that I was hanging in there and called Watts. His line went to voicemail. I told him to give me a ring whenever.
Nothing from Luke.
Dread resurfacing, stronger, sharper.
I texted Andrea.
Hey hope you’re feeling well. Please lmk if you hear from Luke
My desk phone rang. I put the cell away and pressed SPEAKERPHONE. “Coroner’s Bureau.”
A curt male voice said, “Sean Vandervelde for Clay Edison.”
“This is Deputy Edison. Thanks for getting back to me, Mr. Vandervelde.”
“Yeah, so, I’m at work and I have two people standing outside my office, saying my dad’s dead, except that they won’t tell me a thing about it because they’re saying I have to speak to you. So maybe you can tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“I can, yes. I’m sorry to tell you that your father has passed away. My condolences.”
“I know that part. They told me that part. What I don’t know is anything else, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stick to that: the parts I don’t fucking know.”
“Right now we’re not able to say exactly what happened, but—”
“Why not?”
“It appears your father was the victim of a crime.”
Silence.
I said, “I realize that hearing that can be—”
“Fucking bitch. Hang on.” He spoke to someone else: “You can leave, please. And tell them to leave. Goodbye. Thank you. Goodbye.”
He came back on. “Do you have a suspect?”
“That’s a question for the detective. I’m with the county coro—”
“Who’s the detective?”
I gave him Cesar Rigo’s contact information.
“I don’t fucking believe this. Oakland? It has to be them?”
“That’s where the crime took place.”
“Yeah, I understand that, I’m saying the reason you have murders in Oakland is because your police department is a grade-A shitshow run by a dickless prancing clown crew with a single-digit solve rate, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t sound psyched at the prospect of them sleuthing. How do you know he was murdered?”
“It appears he was shot. We—”
“The fuck is that, ‘appears’? Was he shot or not?”
“The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow. Once that’s complete, we’ll have a better sense—”
“No autopsy, I do not consent.”
“Respectfully, sir, the law requires us—”
“I want him out of there. I want it done in a private facility.”
“If you’d like him reexamined—”
“No. You do nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing. I will get a court order.”
“Mr. Vandervelde, I appreciate that you’re upset—”
“What time tomorrow?”
I started to check the calendar. Instinct kicked in. “Just so you know, sir, the procedure is closed to the—”
“Get fucked,” he said and hung up.
Dani Botero leaned out. “No chill.”
I got up to refill my coffee and came back to find my drawer buzzing.
Pictures from Amy. They were at the Santa Monica Pier. Charlotte, ear-deep in a cloud of cotton candy. I texted them to have fun and put the phone away.
I looked up OPD’s homicide clearance rate.
It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t in the single digits. Getting better every year.
I looked up Sean Vandervelde’s LinkedIn profile.
He was the young man from the graduation photo on Rory Vandervelde’s desk. Since his college days he’d lost hair and gained weight. He was an attorney at a multinational firm. Their L.A. office was on Wilshire Boulevard, not far from where Amy and Charlotte were having a delightful beach day. He specialized in entertainment law.
Midmorning Nikki Kennedy and I responded to a call from Oakland Fire at the Ace Hardware on MacArthur Boulevard. Earlier that day the store’s assistant manager, whose name was Russell Andrews, had arrived for work. The store wouldn’t open for ten minutes but people were lining up along the sidewalk.
Andrews entered the store through the rear and went to his locker to put on his red vest. He and a co-worker discussed the crowd out front. Same as yesterday. Andrews shook his head. Somehow, these folks had managed to disregard dozens of emails and text alerts from the utility urging them to stock up on batteries and flashlights. Now they needed batteries and flashlights.
He fought his way into the vest. It didn’t fit right, they never did. Russell Andrews was a big guy. He sweated a lot and kept extra vests in his locker so he could change during lunch.
Laughing, he told the co-worker he didn’t know if he was going to make it that long. The forecast called for a scorcher.
Might be a three-vest day.
The first few hours kept him busy. Without power, the registers were inoperable. They had to write up receipts by hand, count out change. By eight thirty a.m. they’d run out of lanterns. By nine the paper towels were gone. Signs limited customers to one pack of batteries apiece. Nobody obeyed. They’d stuff four under each arm, waddle up to the customer service desk, and plead their case. Likewise all the other rationed items: masks, TP, generators, portable light sources. Everyone had a reason for why they, more than anyone else, needed multiples. Life-and-death-type excuses that got them nowhere.
By ten thirty supplies were dangerously low, tempers brittle. Russell Andrews phoned the distribution center to see if he could get an ETA for restock. The distribution center put him on hold. Andrews flagged down a woman from the paint department who was passing by. He asked her to listen on the line while he ran and swapped out his vest real quick.
He hadn’t donned the new one when a cashier burst through the swinging doors: fight on register three.
The cashier would explain to me that he’d come looking for Andrews because he was the supervisor. Plus, when you needed someone to break up a fight, Russell Andrews — six foot two, two hundred ninety pounds, erstwhile offensive lineman for De Anza High School — seemed like the right dude for the job.
Andrews lumbered out to the floor.
Two women were rolling around on the linoleum, scrapping over the last unsold twenty-four-pack of Energizer D-cells. They had toppled an endcap display of ChapStick. A crowd of shoppers and employees had gathered. Several people, including the store security guard, were filming.