Opinion was divided as to his intention. The first school of thought held that he’d waited for Cindy Albright to exit the van so he could take a potshot at her. But he had lousy aim and hit the van by mistake. Others believed that the van was the target. By letting Cindy get out, he’d tried to avoid hitting anyone inside.
One thing everyone could agree on: Cindy Albright was chosen at random. The real target was the utility company, the shooter enraged at having his power shut off for the third time in a calendar year. This theory would later be supported by the discovery, two hundred yards down Overacker, of a pile of rifle casings, alongside a Gatorade bottle containing a note.
Lights out bitches
Bagoyo and I erected privacy screens around Fletcher Kohn’s body. She began the physical exam while I grabbed the camera and went to talk to Jenn Volpe.
She was young and tan, with pale stripes left by the stems of her missing sunglasses. She had scrapes on her face and forehead, large gauze pads on her scraped knees. A drop of clear liquid trembled at the end of a Roman nose. Her eyes were vacant. Three times while we spoke she said, “He was wearing a helmet,” as if virtue trumped physics.
I got a phone number for Fletcher Kohn’s parents and gave Jenn Volpe my card.
The ambulance took her away.
Bagoyo finished her exam and went to interview Cindy Albright.
I took photos and collected Fletcher Kohn’s personal property. His bicycle, frame torqued, rear wheel like a shredded fingernail; a backpack containing his wallet, keys, and phone; his own sunglasses, miraculously unscathed and caught by a boxwood hedge. A crack ran up the left side of his helmet, nearly cleaving it into two unequal parts.
Back at the bureau, Bagoyo braked to let the vehicle lot gate roll open.
“All good?” she said.
“Mm?”
“You keep checking your phone.”
For a call from my father. From Andrea. From James Okafor.
A sick feeling came over me as I realized that I no longer expected to hear from Luke.
I put the phone away. “I was hoping they could tell me when my power’s coming back on.”
“And?”
“They don’t know yet.”
Bagoyo clucked her tongue in disapproval.
We weighed Fletcher Kohn and brought him inside to be photographed under bright clinical light, first clothed, then nude. I went to the van, hefting the bike on my shoulder and the backpack in the crook of my elbow.
When I reentered the intake bay, Lydia Januchak had joined us. She was folding Kohn’s bloody jeans into an evidence bag. She saw the mangled bike and winced.
Hooking the bag on a free finger, I swiped into the property room.
Forty feet by thirty of cinder block and luggage lockers. The bus station that time forgot.
Stacks of clothing. Fewer shoes; an astonishing number of people die barefoot. Wallets and phones, handbags and watches. Eyeglasses. House keys. Jewelry. It smelled like Other People’s Stuff; like a school gym after a long, contentious PTA meeting.
I wondered which lockers contained the valuables from Rory Vandervelde’s home. The tiny fraction of a rich man’s stash that Harkless and Bagoyo had deemed most worthy of protection.
I put away Fletcher Kohn’s Stuff and took the elevator to the second floor.
Edmond, the property clerk, had his headphones on and didn’t hear my knock.
I texted him:
behind you
He glanced down, grabbed off the headphones, and spun in his chair, gripping the armrests. “You’re like a dang ninja,” he said.
He handed me a chain-of-custody tag. I filled it out and he attached it to Fletcher Kohn’s locker keys. A tinny voice issued from the headphones.
“What are you listening to?”
“Podcast.” He hit PAUSE and rolled over to the master safe, a heavy-duty steel cube. A purple key carabiner hung on a lanyard around his neck. He unclipped it and selected a key.
“What about?” I asked.
He unlocked the safe, filed away Fletcher Kohn’s locker keys, relocked the safe, twirled the carabiner on one finger. Grinned. “Ninjas.”
Sergeant Clarkson’s office door was shut. I went to Bagoyo’s cubicle.
“Hey,” I said. “I may need to clock out a few minutes early. Are you set here?”
She faced up at me. Lindsey Bagoyo was a devout Catholic, active in her church choir, volunteering on the weekends. In the four years since she’d joined the bureau I had never heard her use profanity or raise her voice. The most she ever conceded was a mischievous smile.
“Go ahead,” she said, her dark eyes crinkling. “I won’t tell.”
Chapter 15
I drove to Concord.
I’d copied down Ivan Arias’s address as well as addresses for the rest of Rosa’s family. Maxwell and Stephanie both lived near their father. The younger son, Christian, was a student at UC Santa Cruz. Janet and Craig Vernon had divorced. She, too, lived in Concord.
None of them owned a truck of any color or had a criminal record.
I had no legal right to know that.
I hadn’t been able to find a Craig Vernon in the vicinity, and there were too many men with that name to start chasing them all down.
I had to start somewhere, and Ivan felt like the best balance of risk versus reward.
Traffic through the Caldecott Tunnel was sparse. Over the 680 split, the message board declared:
HIGH WINDS — FIRE DANGER — AQI POOR — STAY INSIDE
I forked north. Big-box stores and housing developments bellied up to the roadside.
Roskelley Drive was a single block of ranch homes, a quarter of a mile from Pixieland amusement park. The sidewalk smoldered white hot. Elms and oaks and palms cast weak pools of shadow. Lawns were trimmed to brown stubble or had been replaced by concrete or gravel. Ivan Arias might not own watercraft, but several of his neighbors did. They owned RVs and minivans. They owned trucks.
None white. None with tonneau covers.
Ivan Arias’s ranch home was two cubes of peach stucco beneath an obtuse cap sheet roof. Silver Prius in the carport, curtains drawn against the heat. I stepped from the car into a parched stillness. No televisions or radios singing; no hair dryers or washing machines. A squirrel darted out along a power line and struck a pose as though electrocuted.
The man who came to the door was about five-eight, with wiry gray hair and a full gray beard, steel-rimmed aviator glasses resting on a broad nose. His T-shirt paunched softly. “Yes?”
“Ivan Arias?”
“Yes?”
I’d kept my uniform on. My surname was sewn onto the breast pocket. He didn’t react to it or to my ID. He read it and gave it back and stood there, expressionless. It had to feel to him like déjà vu — a visit from the coroner. And what I was about to do was cruel.
But Luke...
“My name is Clay Edison,” I said. “Luke Edison is my brother.”
A tremor ran through him. “Excuse me?”
“Is anyone else home, Mr. Arias?”
“Is... ” He clocked my face, my gun. “No.”
“Can we talk?”
“What’s there to talk about.”
“Has my brother ever gotten in touch?”
“With me?”
“You, or any other members of your family.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He spoke about wanting to ask your forgiveness.”
Arias wound up to slam the door. Smiled, as if he’d thought of something absurd.