Cesar Rigo appeared unfazed, stepping nimbly through the evidence markers.
Around a bend the bloody ellipsis reached its end: a burst of spatter, a concentrated port-wine pool, drag marks curving through an open doorway.
A second clog, people instead of vehicles. Blood pattern analyst. PD photographer. LiDAR. Ballistics, meditating over a hole marring the baseboard. Everyone sweating and shifting on haunches.
The crowd parted for us, and we followed the drag marks into a capacious office. Piled against the near wall was a collection of lived-in furniture. There was a suede armchair with nailhead accents. A reading lamp hovered behind like a backseat driver. The windows over the desk looked west toward gray oblivion. Atop the blotter sat a lifeless computer and an old-school Rolodex.
Two snapshots in silver frames.
The first showed an Asian woman in her mid- to late forties. She was pretty, with caramel skin and liquid black eyes. She wore a lei and hoisted a cocktail. Tiki torches. Turquoise sea.
In the second photo, a young white male posed in cap and gown.
Both subjects were smiling. Both stood beside the same man. He was smiling, too, a mouthful of shiny veneers set in a prominent, pointed jaw. His hair was blond in the graduation photo. By Hawaii it had silvered and thinned, though he kept the same swept-back style. He had the brick complexion of one who burns easily but nevertheless spends his time outdoors, unwilling to capitulate to the elements or bother with sunscreen.
He was gazing at the woman in the lei fondly.
He was gripping the young man around the shoulders, fingers digging into the gown. The two of them didn’t resemble each other.
The desk and its kin occupied maybe fifteen percent of the floor space. The remainder was given over to sports memorabilia: framed jerseys, pennants, helmets, ticket stubs, trading cards, programs, game balls encased on pedestals, a riot of team colors. Green and yellow for the A’s; yellow and blue for the Warriors; the Niners’ red and gold. Rory Vandervelde was a Bay Area native or he’d adopted local allegiances.
I was impressed.
Rigo said, “You don’t know the half of it.”
Harkless didn’t say anything, hiccuping and lurching after the drag marks that snaked between display cases and into a modest half bath.
Rory Vandervelde lay on his stomach, face cocked to the left, wilting hair grazing the tiles. He wore black terry-cloth pants with a grosgrain stripe down the side and a gray silk shirt whose collar had partially torn off. There was a crescent-shaped gash over his left eye, a hole in his back, and another near the base of his neck. A third shot had bitten off a chunk of his left trapezius.
Blowflies swarmed, emitting a bowel-tickling drone. They’d colonized the wounds as well as the decedent’s mouth, nostrils, ears, and eyes. Eggs glistened like clumps of rice. A few had broken out into maggots. Competition was fierce. Most of the prime real estate was spoken for.
Heat accelerates postmortem processes. Tissue breakdown, rigor, livor, insect activity — they’d all been ripping along, the off-gases collecting to create a fetid pressure cooker. Condensation streaked the windowpane. My educated guess was that Vandervelde had been dead no fewer than twelve hours, no more than a day. But that’s what autopsy’s for.
Rigo said, “Do you gentlemen require anything further at this time?”
Yak-yak went Harkless.
I said, “All set, thanks.”
Rigo left.
I thumbed on the camera. “I’ll get you when I’m done.”
Harkless nodded gratefully and went to stand in the hall.
Capturing the correct angles required some acrobatics. I leaned over the toilet and against the wall, blinking and snorting and batting away flies that had seized on my orifices as the solution to their housing shortage. Dilute pink traces streaked the sink; a pink corona ringed the drain hole; watery pink spots on the wall implied wet hands shaken dry. Other than that, I saw no effort to clean up, and I wondered why the killer had moved the body in here.
Likely he’d been doing what most people did after they’d killed someone: freaking out and scrambling and committing one dumb messy error after another.
I finished up and stepped from the bathroom and called to Harkless. “All yours.”
He soldiered past, gagging beneath the ineffectual mask. Pity him. He’d picked up the call. Examination of the body fell to him as the primary.
While he got to it, I returned to the foyer. By the front door stood a lacquered table topped with a silver dish for off-loading sundries. Sunglasses. Driveway clicker. Five keys on a sterling-silver fob engraved with the initials RWV, one of which fit the door.
No wallet. No phone.
I advanced toward the site of the altercation, taking photographs as I went. Mixed in with the broken glass was more dried blood — the origin of the trail. I traced it down the hall and around the bend. The scrum of investigators dutifully parted to give me a clear shot. Their reports would take days or weeks to prepare. Still, I’d seen enough homicides that I could speculate about the sequence of events.
It had begun in the living room. Maybe the assailant had broken in and stumbled upon the victim relaxing with a drink in hand. Although the front door, at least, didn’t show forced entry.
Maybe the assailant and the victim had been sharing a beverage and had gotten into an argument.
Whatever the cause of the fight, it was violent enough to draw blood. The victim fled into the hall, flinging droplets as he went. The assailant caught up and shot him in the back and neck. Fueled by momentum, the victim kept going for a few more steps before reality kicked in and he collapsed, bleeding out, while the assailant panicked and freaked out and tried to decide what to do with him.
I photographed the kill zone. Exteriors and the rest of the house would have to wait until I’d helped Harkless turn the body.
I found him in the office-cum-museum, gazing at a 1989 World Series commemorative baseball autographed by Dennis Eckersley.
“Wallet?” I asked.
Harkless shook his head. “No phone, either.”
“Okay. Ready?”
He exhaled noisily. “No.”
We went into the bathroom.
A coroner’s duties include care of the decedent’s body, determining manner of death, notifying next of kin, and securing property.
Rory Vandervelde owned a great deal of property.
Thirsty for air, I started upstairs.
The second floor held the living quarters, a horseshoe of bedrooms at one end and the master suite at the other, joined by a balcony that spanned the width of the living room. From that height the disorder below looked a carrion feast, scavengers in white coveralls swarming.
Each of the smaller bedrooms was pristine and impersonal, outfitted with a queen bed, hotel linens, a seventy-inch flat-screen, and an attached three-piece bath. Crash pads, maybe, for anyone too tipsy to get home safely. A spread like this cried out for parties, big and frequent. What determined who slept here and who got banished to the guesthouse?
The master, on the Bay-facing side, was predictably huge. Less predictably, it was unadorned, the walls white and free of art. But that was the idea. Anything that drew the eye would distract from the main event: an explosion of color every evening at sunset.
Tonight’s would be more spectacular than usual.
The bed was a California king, half slept in. Atop the nightstand were the remote control for the AV system, a white noise machine, and a stack of magazines. Cigar Aficionado. Vintage Guitar. Hemmings Motor News. I opened the drawer. Foam earplugs. Eye mask. Reading glasses in an octopus tangle. No cellphone, but I did find a money clip with a California driver’s license.