Like King Solomon in Timberlands, Russell Andrews waded into the fray, patient, confident in his size. He instructed the women to simmer down. That didn’t have the desired effect, so he lunged for the batteries. Now all three of them were grabbing and shoving and cussing. Not since senior-year two-a-days had he had performed such strenuous physical activity.
With a heave from Andrews the batteries flew free, arcing over his head and tumbling along aisle five, Small Kitchen Appliances. He flopped back.
The women flopped back. They recovered and went scrambling after the batteries.
The crowd shifted to watch them.
Russell Andrews stayed down, flattened by sudden cardiac arrest.
A customer noticed him, ran over, felt his neck, and shouted for help. A cashier ran for a defibrillator. The customer began chest compressions. She was a graphic designer, untrained in CPR. She only knew what she’d seen on TV. Afraid of hurting Andrews, she didn’t push nearly hard enough to goad the circulatory system of a man more than twice her weight.
Starved of oxygen, Russell Andrews’s brain began to die.
Nobody had called an ambulance. The graphic designer told me she thought the cashier had done it. The cashier had the opposite impression. The security guard had moved up with his phone to get a better view of the brawl. The woman from the paint department was still on hold.
Russell Andrews died at register three.
In advance of our arrival, EMTs had sent the rubberneckers packing and herded the employees, teary-eyed, into the break room. We took pictures, took statements, examined the body. Turning him was a bit of an adventure, Kennedy and me squatting and grunting, her ruddy cheeks gone raspberry red to match her hair.
She began the dorsal exam. I went to the van for the gurney. The sidewalk was deserted, customers having dispersed in search of batteries and flashlights.
My phone buzzed. Jed Harkless.
“Am I right in thinking you got the keys for Vandervelde?” he asked.
“In my desk. What’s up?”
“Oakland called. They’re finished. Me and Bagoyo are gonna head up there to seal.”
I pulled out the gurney. The legs unfolded and it clattered upright in the gutter. “I can come with you. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Not sure we can wait that long.”
The gurney had started to roll down the street. I grabbed a rail. “What’s the rush? There’s a uniform on site.”
“Not anymore, there isn’t. The detective said they can’t spare the bodies. They already left this morning. All that stuff, I want to get up there soon as I can to safeguard.”
The very rationale I’d given Cesar Rigo: big house, full of expensive things to steal.
An old FBI agent once told me he’d never met a cop who asked for more work. I couldn’t demand to accompany Harkless without coming off like a major try-hard, and the desire not to call attention to myself outweighed the desire to revisit the scene and have a look around.
“Whatever you want,” I said. “Just trying to spare you the smell.”
I thought Yak-Yak might jump at the chance to bow out. Instead I triggered a defensive reaction. “Naw, bro. I’m good. Keys?”
“Top left.”
“Thanks.”
I pushed the gurney to the hardware store entrance. A man on Rollerblades was tugging on the locked door. The EMTs hadn’t turned over the hours-of-operation sign. It still read OPEN — PLEASE COME IN!
“They’re closed,” I said.
“But I need batteries,” the man said, his feet sliding.
I braked the gurney and knocked. “Pretty sure they’re sold out.”
“Are you going inside?” the man asked. “Can you ask?”
An EMT unbolted the door for me.
“Godspeed,” I said, flipping the sign to CLOSED — SEE YOU SOON!
Nikki Kennedy knelt by the wrapped body. She took the feet. I took the shoulders.
“You want a hand?” the EMT said. He smiled gallantly at Kennedy. “Don’t want you to hurt your back.”
She shot him a look that would burn toast.
I counted down from three, and we lifted what used to be Russell Andrews, two hundred ninety pounds of never again, onto the gurney.
The pads squeaked. The frame shuddered and settled without further complaint.
Kennedy did not injure her back.
Near the freeway, I saw the man on Rollerblades testing the door of an unlit 7-Eleven.
At four thirty Harkless returned from sealing the house.
“Holy Moses,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me about the garage?”
The Camaro flashed through my mind, its bright colors dulled down to something sickly.
I saw my hand, racing across the paint, removing marks, destroying evidence.
Of what? Luke was on a work trip.
I said, “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Oh, it was.”
Lindsey Bagoyo entered, unstrapping her vest. “We didn’t know where to start. We ran out of bags.”
Triumph in their voices, as though they’d returned from a successful hunt.
I opened my desk drawer. Rory Vandervelde’s house keys were no longer there but were in a storage locker with his watches and cuff links and jewelry and everything else Harkless and Bagoyo had managed to gather. The key for the locker, in turn, was upstairs with Edmond, the property clerk.
I reached to the back of the drawer for my phone.
Twenty-seven hours since I’d written to Luke.
Chapter 7
Bay Area Therapeutics occupied a converted warehouse on Washington Street, a block and a half in either direction from the old morgue building and from Jack London Square. Before leaving work I called and secured permission from Scott Silber’s chief of staff to come by.
I took side streets. Traffic lights vibrated in the wind and signs ricked spasmodically. In the residential neighborhoods everyone had hunkered down for the evening, but the markets along 8th and 9th in Chinatown did a brisk trade. Masked shoppers shouldered twenty-five-pound sacks of rice up the sidewalk, the stream parting and rejoining around an elderly man glacially advancing a wire cart bricked solid with toilet paper.
I parked beneath a snapping banner that invited me to DINE PLAY SHOP STAY. The area had long served the adjacent Port of Oakland. Growing up, Luke and I referred to it as POO, because of the acronym and because you could smell it from the freeway.
Gentrification had sanded down some of the rough edges. Not all. A few edges you kept for character. The eye relished the reclaimed waterfront with its gastropubs and bowling alley and purveyor of artisanal beef; the nose wrinkled at stagnant brine and bunker fuel.
That evening’s special was Added Smoke.
The grid functioned this far west. I could hear the thud of bass as I passed the CrossFit box Luke frequented after work. Along with reforming his character, he’d devoted serious effort to reshaping his body. No longer did people confuse us from behind.
In a fit of brotherly insanity I’d once agreed to join him. For twenty interminable minutes I climbed a rope and stepped up onto a high wooden box and flung kettlebells. The wall timer hit zero and I puddled on the rubber mats, knee screaming.
Luke lay beside me.
Pain is weakness leaving the body he said.
Pain is pain paining the pain I said.
Feels good when it’s over.
You could also try not making yourself feel horrible to begin with.
He laughed and bumped me with his elbow. How I do.