Finally, a trace of smile crossed his face, but it wasn’t much. Something was up with him, and I had a very bad feeling I knew what it was.
Kevin pulled over near a park entrance, got out and waited for me. I brought the murder book along, opened to the plastic sleeves that held the Polaroids taken of Mrs. Bartolini lying among the boulders nearby.
According to the first homicide investigation report, Mrs. B’s body was discovered by a mailman who stopped on his route during his lunch break to fill his water bottle at the fountain near the park sign. But because there are no rest rooms in the park, before he filled his bottle he went between some boulders to relieve himself, and that’s when he saw her.
Feeling a little queasy to be standing on the spot where she was found while looking at photos of her body, I turned to look down across the Bay, saw that the sun had already dropped into the fog bank obscuring the Golden Gate. It was late in the day, already cooling off. The rocks around us would radiate accumulated heat for hours after the sun disappeared. Mrs. Bartolini had been found before noon on a cool but sunny fall day. She was lying in the shade, but the rocks around her would have been warm.
I looked back and forth between the Polaroids and the place.
“Kevin, what time did we head off for school in the morning?”
“Around eight, I guess.”
“Mrs. B died some time between then and just before noon, right?”
“Yep.”
“When she saw Beto off that morning, she was wearing a powder blue shirtwaist dress and low-heeled black pumps.” I held the coroner’s evidence log for him to see. “According to this, when she was found she was wearing a white blouse and nothing else.”
“Okay.”
“It isn’t a blouse.” I pointed at the button placket visible in the Polaroid close-up of her chest area, a bloody mass speckled with black gunpowder burns. “It’s a man’s shirt.”
As he looked at the photo, he fingered the placket at the neck of his polo shirt, checking which side the buttons were on. He said, “I’ll be damned.”
“According to the medical examiner, Mrs. B was naked on the bottom when she fell or was pushed. At some point, and in some order, she had intercourse, put on a man’s shirt, and was shot in the chest.”
“That’s what it says.”
“Where is the shirt now?” I asked.
“In a sealed evidence bag locked up in my office.”
“Is there a laundry mark? Maybe remnants of fluids from more than one person?”
He glanced askance at me. “How much do the TV people pay you to snoop, Sherlock?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“I’ll send the shirt to the crime analyst and ask him to check it out.” With the back of his hand, he wiped away sweat running down the side of his face. “See anything else?”
“Lots of blood on the shirt, but there wasn’t very much blood found here in the park,” I said. “She was murdered elsewhere and dumped. It wouldn’t take a very strong person to carry her because she barely weighed a hundred pounds.”
“That we know, but no crime scene was ever determined,” he said. “You think you know what happened?”
“I have some ideas,” I said. “How long can I keep the book?”
“You can’t keep something you never saw,” he said. “It’s an open murder case and that’s a confidential police document. Besides, I don’t ever, ever want Beto to get a look at what’s in there. I keep the book.”
I looked around for a boulder in the shade to sit on. “Then give me a minute with it, okay?”
“Take your time.” He started up the steps that were cut into the face of a granite tower. “Whistle when you’re finished.”
I opened the book and began reading the investigation reports. Mrs. Bartolini’s body was identified by Patrol Officer Ray Gutierrez, who knew her because he frequented the Bartolini Deli and because he and the victim attended the same church. The police captain who responded to the scene dispatched Officer Gutierrez to collect Father John and to go with him to inform Bart of his wife’s death. Bart took the news as expected, hard, and was driven home from his place of work by Officer Gutierrez. Father John stayed with Bart while Officer Gutierrez went to the school to pick up Beto. Father John was worried enough about Bart’s state of mind that he summoned the family physician, Dr. Benjamin Nussbaum, who administered a sedative. Any questioning of Mr. Bartolini was postponed until, in police-report-speak, “such a time that he was not under the influence of sedation.”
The first conversation between Bart and the police happened three days after the murder. Bart went by the police station to retrieve his wife’s wedding ring so that she could be buried with it, and stayed to answer some questions posed by Detective Charles Riley. According to the interview summary, he was at the deli all that morning. His lovely wife had no enemies. Period. I could hear what my late husband, Mike, would have to say about the softball questions Chuck Riley lobbed at Bart, who should have been his first suspect. But Mike worked detectives in great big, occasionally murderous Los Angeles, and not in relatively peaceful little Berkeley. Kevin had already told me that his department didn’t get much experience working homicides. Everyone in town knew Mr. B, and knew that he doted on his beautiful young wife. But still…
What happened to Beto? I flipped through the pages but found nothing except that when the police left the Bartolini house that evening, Beto, Father John, Doc Nussbaum, and Dr. Brian Halloran, the head counselor at the high school-Kevin’s father-were “inside the residence.”
“Hey.” Kevin’s shadow fell across the book. I looked up and spotted him leaning over a ledge about fifteen feet above me. “Did you know there’s a cross chiseled on the rocks up here?”
“I saw it the other day,” I said. “But I don’t remember seeing it before.”
“Me either.” He started down the steps. “Last time I was up here I think I was with you. We wouldn’t have seen it though, because it was dark when we came up to watch submarine races.”
“Uncle Kevin,” I said, ignoring the remark. “When did you and Beto become such great friends?”
“It started then.” He indicated the book on my lap as he walked toward me. “Old Bart was a basket case after Mrs. B died.”
“I remember. The report says your dad was at their house that afternoon.”
“Father John asked Dad to go over and talk to Beto, to make sure he had what he needed. They decided that because Dad was a school counselor and Mom was a nurse, they’d be able to look after Beto until Bart could pull himself together, so Dad brought him home. He stayed with us off and on for maybe a year, until Aunt Quynh got out of Vietnam and contacted Bart. There were a lot of crazy rumors going around. Dad wanted me to make sure the kids at school weren’t…”
He searched for a word. I said, “Kids?”
“I was going to say little shits.” His color was better than it had been when he picked me up.
“That’s when you started walking to school with us.” My shade had disappeared so I got up and moved into the shadows cast by the rocks.
He followed me. “Yeah. I’d walk him over to your street and meet you guys, make sure you didn’t stop to rumble with any more bullies on the way to school.”
“I keep seeing Father John’s hand in our lives,” I said, leaning my back against the rough, warm stone. “He’s the keeper of everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets. I wonder how he can sleep at night.”
“Maybe he doesn’t.” Kevin fell quiet, his focus on something far, far away. “Maybe that’s why he’s sick.”
“You’re not going to say Father John is dying for our sins, are you?”
“No.” The corner of his mouth came up in a semblance of a wry smile. “Dying from the weight of them, maybe.”
“Kev?” I put my hand on his arm and waited until he looked down at me. “You ready to tell me why you decided to show me the murder book?”