“The codes I gave you,” she said. “Which one was it?”
“None, actually,” I said. “We have our ways.”
I’d meant it as a joke but she nodded distractedly, still gazing at the drive. “Kind of amazing it all fits on there.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her father hadn’t been much of a photographer. The folder contained around a hundred pictures, many of which were duplicates. Still, there were a handful of shots she’d want, the two of them together.
“It means a lot to have these.” She clasped the envelope to her chest. “Any scrap.”
I nodded.
She said, “I feel like I should offer you coffee. Is that what I’m supposed to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“Please. You took the time. I don’t have any coffee. I have tea. Do you want tea?”
All around us, the sky was embers.
I said, “I wouldn’t turn down a glass of water.”
She stepped back to admit me.
—
OVER THE YEARS, I’ve had the misfortune to tour some of California’s most breathtakingly slovenly homes. Compared with, say, a crack house, Tatiana’s apartment felt positively airy, even with large portions of it swallowed by banker’s boxes and sliding piles of paper. Shrink-wrapped five-packs of unbuilt boxes leaned against the wall, waiting to be born, eager to get fed.
She led me along a path cleared through the living room, toward the kitchenette.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I’m kind of in the weeds here.”
She took down a glass from the cabinet, a filter pitcher from the fridge. “Please, sit.”
I couldn’t. Boxes occupied the kitchen chairs; a paper mosaic on the table. Bank statements and insurance statements and bills, some of them years old, addressed to Walter Rennert or a trust bearing his name.
Tatiana finished pouring and turned to see me still standing. Hurriedly she set the glass aside, stacking documents up and dumping them in an open box.
“I’m the executor,” she said. She slapped the box top on. “Surprise!”
She cleared off chairs and handed me the glass, and we sat.
“You didn’t know?” I asked.
“He didn’t bother to tell me.” A thin bitter edge, swiftly trimmed away: “I’m the logical choice. Stephen’s in Boulder, Charlie’s in New York. They have their own lives.”
The implication being that she did not?
I took a drink. I’d made the glass my clock. Once the water ran out, I would, too.
“Dad had enough sense to divide the assets three ways,” she said. “At least we don’t have to fight about that.”
As siblings, they’d looked happy enough in their childhood photos. But now money was involved. I gave a noncommittal nod.
She sighed and hooked one leg under herself, spine straight as a candle, chest out, as though presenting herself for military inspection. Freckles strewn across her collarbones; bottom lip swollen in a sweet pout; wide-eyed at the avalanche lying before her.
“You probably can’t tell,” she said, “but I’m a minimalist by nature.”
I could buy that. Edit out the inherited clutter and you saw little in the way of ornamentation. Black-and-white posters hastily slapped up with tape; a ukulele on the futon. A stack of cookbooks and some dried-out flowers standing in a repurposed milk bottle. It looked more like the dwelling of a recent college grad, giving the impression that she’d just moved in. Or that she was on her way out soon. Or that she couldn’t decide.
She said, “The lawyer—he did have one, by the way—he’s helping, but it’s still a ton of work, mostly cause my dad was so disorganized. I have to get everything appraised. The art…I’ve been going through his credit card statements. He’s signed up for all this stuff, bogus subscription services or ‘fraud alerts’ or whatever. The kind of sneaky shit a normal person notices and cancels. He had three dozen bank accounts, and each of them is shooting out checks on a monthly basis to God knows where. Plus he keeps his records in his basement, which fills up when it rains, so everything from about”—chopping her shin—“here down has water damage. I can’t be there for more than five minutes, it sets my allergies on fire, so I’ve started schlepping it here. Four trips and I’m still not done.”
I thought she might have another, unstated motive: she couldn’t bear to be alone in a big, hollow house, listening to her father’s ghost repeatedly crash down the stairs.
“Whatever.” She shook off her irritation, smiled. “So you said you live nearby?”
“Lake Merritt,” I said.
“Oh.” The smile took on a gloss of confusion. “That’s cool.”
I’d be confused if I were her, too. I was nowhere near home. Nevertheless I was glad to have found a neutral topic. “It helps if you like geese.”
“Do you?”
“They’re okay to look at,” I said. “Up close? They’re kind of assholes.”
She snorted. “I know people like that. For some reason they all seem to come to my yoga class.”
I asked where she taught.
“It’s a side thing. Mainly I dance. What about you?”
I said, “Uh. Well—”
She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God. I can’t believe I just asked you that.” She started to laugh.
“Reflex,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“To be fair,” I said, indicating the Cal sweatshirt, “I’m in disguise.”
She grinned. She had beautiful teeth, and I’ve seen my fair share of teeth.
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly. Thank you. It’s your fault.”
I laughed, too, over my discomfort. That she’d asked the question, even inadvertently, called attention to the irregularity of my presence. It was the sort of question you asked a blind date.
I drained the water and stood to place the glass in the sink.
“Let me, please,” she said, taking it from me. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, thanks.”
“Thank you for the photos.”
“My pleasure. Good luck,” I said, or meant to say. I didn’t get it out before she spoke again:
“You know, I recognized you.”
I said nothing.
“At the house? I thought—when you introduced yourself, I mean, you’re like”—she waggled her hand above her head, meaning tall. “I wasn’t sure until you gave me your card.”
“You went to Cal,” I said.
“Oh-seven.”
“I was oh-six.”
“I know,” she said. “I looked you up, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. It was reassuring, in a way. Oh my God, I know him. Even though I don’t, really. That’s strange, right, for me to think that?”
I shrugged. “Not that strange. It happens. People feel a connection.”
“You’re used to being recognized.”
“We’re not talking about I’m famous.”
“Kind of, you were.”
I brought my thumb and forefinger close together. “That much.”
Narrowed them further, so they were almost touching. “For that long.”
“I never went to any games,” she said. “Is that terrible?”
“It is,” I said. “I’ll still help you, though.”
She laughed. “Cause that’s the kind of guy you are.”
I smiled, shrugged again.
“It was a thing that year,” she said, “the basketball team.”
It was. I was.
“I’m sure that’s why I didn’t go,” she said. “On principle. I was artsy. I’m sorry.”
I waved her apology away.
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Not even a little?”
“I don’t mean that it was easy to stop,” I said. “It’s not like I had a choice.”
“And now?” she said. “Why this?”
“My j
ob, you mean.”
She nodded.
“Why do you do what you do?” I asked.
“Because my mother put me in ballet slippers before I could walk.”
So far she hadn’t given any indication she could smell me, either the decomp or the Febreze. But I realized with a start that I could smell her. Scent has a role in my work; it’s another tool in the kit, and my nose has grown both highly attuned and not easily bothered. Every body, living or dead, has its own unique perfume. Tatiana’s was dark and rich and alive as she leaned toward me.
“It doesn’t get boring,” she said, “dealing with people like me all day?”
“No.”
“You sound very convincing.”
“It’s the truth,” I said. “When I talk to someone who’s grieving, they don’t care how many other people I’ve talked to, that day or any other day. They shouldn’t have to. For them, it’s the first time. They deserve the same attention and respect as everyone else.”
Tatiana rolled the empty water glass back and forth between her palms, like she was forming a clay snake. She said, “I know you don’t believe me about my dad.”
I started to object and she cut me off: “It’s fine. I wouldn’t believe me, either. But if what you just told me is true, look through my eyes for a minute.”
I wondered if everything to that point—asking me in, every word, every coy shape—was a run-up to this moment, when she could lobby me. But that threw far too much responsibility on her. She’d never asked me to come by to begin with. That was my idea.
I said, “Do you feel that people aren’t listening to you?”
“I feel that the cops don’t want to get into it, because that forces them to consider they might’ve screwed up.”
“Screwed up how?”
“When Nicholas died,” she said. “They ignored that, also, and now they have to justify their decision. But I remember how upset my dad was.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
She frowned. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”
“I’m not. It must have been terrifying for him.”
She allowed a nod.
“It must have affected you, too,” I said. “Not just that. All of it.”
“My parents did their best to shield me from what was going on. I was genuinely shocked when they told me they were getting divorced. I mean, I wasn’t blind. They’d been unhappy for years. And neither of them were experts at staying married. But for some reason I assumed they’d keep toughing it out. For me.” She scoffed at her own naïveté.
I asked how many times they had each been married before.
“Dad, just the once. Her? Boy. She’s what you’d call a runner. He was number five.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s not the smallest number I’ve ever heard.”
“But not the biggest, either,” she said hopefully.
“I had a guy once who was married nine times. Twice to the same woman.”
“People are insane,” she said. “She told me once that I was her Hail Mary. As in, her last chance to have a kid? Obviously she couldn’t get pregnant while she was dancing. It’s a refrain of hers. ‘I’ve seen it happen to too many girls, your body is never the same again…’ What’s that mean, you ‘had a guy.’ ”
I hesitated. “In the course of my duties.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. I should’ve realized.”
“All my stories end the same way.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask what he died of.”
“Motorcycle accident.”
“I thought maybe his last wife killed him.” Her collar had begun to sag. She plucked at it, then reached behind to regather stray hairs at the base of her neck, shirt tautening over her breasts. It was warm in the kitchen. She didn’t have air-conditioning. Few East Bay homes do. You don’t need it till you need it. Diamonds glistened in the cup of her throat.
I said, “You mentioned the other day that you left Berkeley for a period.”
“I moved to New York.”
“To dance?”
She nodded. “I came back three years ago.”
“For your father.”
That I had discerned this appeared first to disarm her, then to please her.
“He never asked me to,” she said. “He tried to convince me not to, in fact. Somebody had to take care of him, though.”
“I’m sure he appreciated it.”
“Whether he did or he didn’t, he needed it, and nobody else was stepping up. Not working was terrible for him. It’s not like he couldn’t have hung out a shingle or whatever. Independent research. He told me he’d lost his professional credibility. I was like, ‘You are completely missing the point.’ I wanted him to keep busy.”
“Besides tennis,” I said.
“Besides tennis. That’s all he did. That and wander around the house.”
Idly she tapped the rim of the water glass. “I don’t expect to snap my fingers and voilà. But it’s frustrating to have the cops refuse to even ask questions. I mean, what harm is there? Other than for some guy’s ego.”
“You want my honest opinion?”
“I do,” she said.
“A lot of harm, potentially. I’ve seen people sacrifice their entire lives to questions.”
She said nothing.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong to ask.”
“But get it together and”—twirling air—“move on.”
I said, “I can’t pretend to know what’s right for you.”
She bit her lip. “All I’m asking is for you to please keep an open mind.”
A lying doctor; the echo of a fall; a murderer walking the streets.
It only felt like half a lie for me to say, “I will.”
She put the water glass in the sink and crouched to open the cabinet beneath. She pulled out a ceramic ashtray and a cigar box, both of which she set on the counter. Inside the box was a Baggie of marijuana, a packet of papers, and several pre-rolled joints.
She lit one off the range burner, took a deep drag.
Offered it to me still smoldering.
I said, “No, thanks.”
A cloud rolled in her open mouth, licking at her tongue before she banished it in a long white wire. “I have a medical card.”
“I didn’t ask,” I said.
“I get migraines.”
I gave her a little salute. “Have a good night, Ms. Rennert-Delavigne.”
She returned the gesture.
CHAPTER 10
I spend my days off engaged in single-guy activities. It can be a challenge, because I work weekends. But this is the land of the irregular and irregularly employed; build a billion-dollar company in your underwear and you win. Weekday diversions abound, and I can usually find something to do. Browse the farmers’ market outside Children’s Hospital and flirt with the mushroom girl. Drag a buddy to Lincoln Square Park to play pickup, or Mosswood, if I’m feeling solid and don’t mind waiting for a game.
My one semi-regular obligation comes whenever Zaragoza’s wife takes pity on me and invites me for dinner.
Things get dire enough, there’s always Tinder.
That week, I stayed inside with my laptop and read.
—
NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS OF Walter Rennert’s downfall were sketchy. The events in question had taken place pre-internet-boom, and archives of the locals, including The Oakland Tribune and The Daily Cal, only covered the early 2000s and on. The San Francisco Chronicle archive went back further, but evidently they had deemed the story East Bay News, unworthy of too much attention.
I did manage to learn the date of the original murder—Halloween night, 1993—as well as the victim’s name and age.
Donna Zhao, twenty-three years old, a Berkeley undergrad, had been found stabbed to death in her apartment, half a mile south of campus.
Tatiana had gotten the year wrong but not by much. She’d been a child; her knowledge of the case had been acquired after t
he fact.
One thing she’d gotten right: the offender’s name was never released. Like many juvenile hearings, his was closed to the public, and I found no information about its disposition. The bulk of the coverage focused not on the murder but on the resulting civil suit, brought by Donna Zhao’s parents, charging negligence on the part of the University of California, the Board of Regents, the Berkeley Department of Psychology, and Dr. Walter Rennert.
Tatiana said the offender had been enrolled in one of her father’s research studies. What she’d left out, deliberately or not, was the nature of that research.
Rennert, it emerged, had built a career examining the effects of media violence on the developing brain. The theory appeared to be that exposing kids to graphic imagery harmed them in all sorts of ways: lessening their empathy, hindering their academic performance, and—his central theme—priming them to commit real-world violence. Perusing his abstracts on PubMed, I gathered he did stuff like show teenagers clips from slasher films while measuring their heart rates.
That sounded on par. During my senior year, when I suddenly had a bunch of free time, I’d volunteered for a handful of psych studies. I recalled a corkboard in the lobby of Tolman Hall, tabbed flyers promising free cookies in exchange for collaboratively building a tower of wooden blocks; five bucks to put on goofy stereoscopic glasses and follow the bouncing ball.
To earn course credit, rather than cash, you’d have to expend a little more effort. Code video, log data, help conduct the study itself. That was what Donna Zhao had been doing when she was murdered: working in Rennert’s lab, assisting with the experiment that would draw her killer into the building.
The Zhaos, Chinese nationals, had hired a San Francisco firm to represent them. The claim was that Rennert, his lab, and the institutions they belonged to had failed to properly evaluate the boy’s potential for real violence. By exposing him to violent stimuli, they had triggered an outburst that found the closest available target: Donna Zhao.
A settlement was reached in 1997.
Its terms were undisclosed.
Days later, Walter Rennert resigned his professorship.
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