Crime Scene

by Jonathan Kellerman

  The old lady who’d died in her bathtub: stroke. Nothing sinister.

  I clicked SUBMIT.

  Overdose. Car accident.

  SUBMIT. SUBMIT.

  Way down at the bottom, last name on the list: RENNERT, WALTER J.

  Get it out of your system.

  My failure to close the case out wasn’t intentional. Subconscious, maybe. I’d left last week in a hurry, pissed off and eager to get out of there before I shot my mouth off.

  Down the hall, Vitti’s door was propped, open to anyone who needed him, as per his policy. We were all friends here. He was my superior, sure, but he preferred that we think of him like a father. Or uncle, but not the creepy kind.

  He knew I was back today. Probably he was waiting for me to get off my ass and go in there and pay homage, thank him for the R&R, confirm the wisdom of an enforced break.

  No, thanks.

  Midafternoon he sauntered in to remind everyone to finalize rosters in time for kickoff. It was the final weekend of the regular season. I realized I hadn’t lifted a finger to manage my team in over a month.

  Opening the website, I saw that I’d slipped to fifth place. Moffett was out front, followed by Sully. Vitti’s team sat in third.

  “How the mighty have fallen.”

  A hand on my shoulder. I fought not to squirm.

  “Always next year, Coach,” Vitti said. He was leaning down on me pretty hard, bent over to look at my screen. I could smell the aftershave he applied to his scalp.

  I said, “I’m still in it.”

  “You say so, Chief.”

  “I mean I don’t think I’m eliminated, mathematically.”

  I waited for him to make a comment about the Rennert case still sitting in my queue. Instead he just chuckled and walked off. “Hope springs eternal.”

  —

  OUTSIDE IN THE intake lot, I slotted myself behind a concrete pillar, the closest a man my size can get to hiding. I hadn’t escaped with any other purpose in mind other than to get some air, but I found myself dialing Amy’s number.

  Right after pressing SEND, I remembered she was headed back to the East Coast today. I’d left her two voicemails yesterday. A third would push me past “determined” and on into “pathetic.” I started to hang up.

  But I heard her voice, far away: “Clay?”

  “Hey,” I said. “Where are you? Are you at the airport?”

  “I’m in New Haven,” she said. “I left this morning and got in an hour ago.”

  “Right. Okay. Well. Glad you’re back in one piece.”

  “That’s not morbid at all,” she said, laughing.

  I laughed, too.

  We spoke at the same time: “Listen—” “I meant to—”

  “Me first,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “I want to apologize for the way I reacted,” she said.

  “You don’t need to apologize.”

  “I do. I was caught off guard.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “I had no idea what was going on.”

  “Can I please explain?”

  “I’m sure I’ll want an explanation at some point. Not right now, though.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I had a good time with you, regardless.”

  “Me too.”

  “…but?”

  “But nothing,” she said. “Just. I don’t know. I think maybe I packed too much expectation into one night.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “I don’t mean I didn’t enjoy myself, or that I don’t want to do it again, when we can.” She paused. “Seeing you brought back all these memories of how I used to feel.”

  I wanted to be able to tell her I felt the same way—that I’d always felt that way about her. But I’d be lying, and she’d know.

  I asked when she was next in the Bay Area.

  “Not till the semester’s over. The plan is to lock myself in my room and write.”

  “Spring break?”

  She said, “Let’s see how my work goes. Okay?”

  “If that’s the best I can get,” I said, “I’ll take it.”

  “Be well, Clay.”

  “Thanks. Happy New Year.”

  “You too.”

  The day was dying. I should’ve gone back upstairs, finished up, done my job. I didn’t move. I thought about the dozen or so boxes at the storage unit that I hadn’t gotten to yet. I’d planned on heading over there after work. Now I didn’t know if I had the energy.

  I thought about Amy, and Tatiana, and I remembered a conversation with an old girlfriend. We were fighting, or I should say that she was fighting with me, getting more and more upset at my failure to match her rising ire.

  Care she yelled.

  About what I asked.

  Anything.

  We didn’t last long after that. It was a familiar pattern. I went along agreeably until all that remained was agreeability.

  I called Amy back.

  “Hi?” she said.

  “I want to see you,” I said.

  “Uh. Well—”

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let me speak. You said let’s see how it goes, and I said I’ll take what I can get. But that’s polite, and it’s bullshit. I’m not okay with that. I want to see you, soon, and I don’t want anything less than that. I know it’s new. I know we’re at the beginning. I’m putting on record that I want it to be a beginning. If you don’t want the same thing, that’s up to you. But I won’t apologize for thinking you’re fantastic, or wanting to be with you more, a lot more, as soon as possible.”

  Silence.

  She said, “I want to see you, too.”

  “Good. Then let’s find a way to make that happen. I’ll come to you. Or you come here. One or the other. Maybe we have to wait a week or two months, or maybe you really can’t get away until the end of the semester, which would suck. But be aware: I’m not letting this go.”

  A beat. She laughed softly.

  “What,” I said, smiling.

  “You,” she said.

  “What.”

  “You’re different than I remember.”

  I said, “I hope so.”

  CHAPTER 38

  On Sunday morning, I got a call from Ivory Richards, daughter of Freeway John Doe, his identity now confirmed through dental records as that of Henry Richards, age fifty-eight, formerly of Las Vegas and missing since April.

  “I wanted to thank you for what you did,” she said, “taking the time to find me.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “He’s still gone. Least now I don’t have to wonder.”

  “I hope it gives you some comfort.”

  She said, “He used to talk about going to California. He was going to retire, live on the beach. Too hot here. As soon as he could get some money he was going to go. But he lost his house when the bubble burst. I said he could move in with me. I told him: ‘Just till you get back on your feet again.’ He didn’t want to, it hurt his pride.”

  “Yes,” I said, so she’d know I was still listening.

  “When he took off, I thought he was living out there. That’s what I told myself. I didn’t know he was in trouble. I didn’t know how bad it had gotten, he hid it. I asked the police to see pictures. They told me better I don’t. I can’t stop thinking about it. In my mind…” Her voice wrenched. “In my mind, I see such horrible things.”

  She was weeping. “Please tell me it wasn’t as bad as I think.”

  The scream of the freeway overhead; a body unable to hold its own skin.

  I said, “Not that bad.”

  “You’re telling stories,” she said. “It’s okay. I appreciate that. I asked you to.”

  —

  THE LAST DOZEN boxes at the storage unit contained nothing that pointed me toward Julian Triplett. I locked up and drove home.

  Unsure if I’d need to make this call, I’d waited. Now I didn’t think I had a choice.

  “Hey,” Tatiana said.


  “Hey.” Silence. “Got a second?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve been through the boxes.”

  “Anything?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Can I ask you: those last few, that you left at your father’s house?”

  “You want to look at them,” she said.

  “If possible,” I said.

  “I was going to get to them eventually,” she said defensively. “Every time I come near them my eyes water.”

  “Right,” I said. “What do you say?”

  “I’m not around to let you in,” she said.

  “Later this week, then.”

  “No. I mean I’m not around around.”

  A shroud of formality covered her tone.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Relenting a little, she said, “I can send you the key, if you’d like.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  If this. If that. So tactful, we were.

  “You’ll need the alarm code, too,” she said.

  “Please.”

  She gave it to me: 7-9-7-8. I thought back to when I was having trouble unlocking Rennert’s iPhone. I couldn’t remember if that was one of the combinations she’d suggested. Probably would’ve been worth trying. I asked her what it meant.

  “I don’t know, actually,” she said. She sounded miffed to admit it.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try not to disturb you again.”

  “Clay?” she said. “Let me know what you find?”

  “I will if you want me to,” I said. “Are you sure you do?”

  A long silence.

  She said, “My father obviously believed he was doing the right thing. I don’t know his reasons, but I have to trust he had them. He was a good man.”

  She expected an answer.

  “From what I’ve seen,” I said, “yes, he was.”

  “People don’t appreciate that. They never did. They know one thing about him and they think they know everything. But it’s not that simple.”

  “Nobody is,” I said.

  An urge welled up inside me: to ask when she’d be back.

  “I’ll put the key in the mail tomorrow,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Take care, Clay,” she said.

  —

  THE KEY ARRIVED four days later, postmarked Portland, OR.

  I was still laughing as I got into my car and drove over to Berkeley.

  —

  THREE BOXES, MILDEWED and spongy, tucked in the corner of the basement, caged in by a shelving unit.

  We’d had to work to get them out, which meant that Rennert had had to work to put them in. A precaution.

  Months drying out in the service porch had helped: they no longer stank so bad. The black stains in the cardboard had faded to a dull greenish gray, shedding a powdery residue that came off on my hands as I lifted the lid off box number one.

  It was a quarter full, the contents not sitting high enough to escape the annual flooding. They appeared to be some sort of manuscript. The top few pages were legible, but only just: water damage had caused them to curl and shrivel, the printer ink bleeding, leaving teasing fragments.

  never met J before

  process of rehabilitation

  coinciding with my own interests as a psychologist

  arrogance, which prevented me

  an alternative explanation presented itself

  Beyond page five, the paper had disintegrated, fusing into a single moldering brick, like crude papier-mâché. Trying to separate them only worsened the damage.

  The second box was in slightly better shape. The pages had been folded and unfolded, giving them some loft, and they weren’t packed down, leaving the uppermost portion unscathed, sixty or seventy pages in total.

  Letters, written in a tight, uniform hand.

  dear doctor rennert thank you for comming to see me

  Lydia Delavigne had commented disparagingly on Triplett’s poor spelling and grammar. Considering his learning difficulties and the fact that he’d never finished ninth grade, I thought he got by pretty well.

  The neatness of the script struck me as particularly apt.

  Big hands doing delicate work.

  None of the letters bore a date, and most were brief, one or two lines on a short list of concrete topics: the weather, the food, a stomach ailment that appeared to drag on.

  If Triplett ever expressed emotion, it was gratitude for Rennert’s visits—simple gratitude, ritualistic, the kind a young child offers when prompted.

  The crime, the victim, Nicholas Linstad: none of that came up.

  It would be easy to read into the tone a lack of empathy. A low-functioning psychopath, unable to grasp or care about the consequences of his behavior.

  I took away a different message. I heard a disoriented mind, brimming with anxiety and loneliness, clinging hungrily to anything consistent.

  Two pieces of toast for “brekfist” one day; three the next.

  His way of marking time, like scratch marks on a cell wall.

  The sheer volume of the correspondence suggested the depth of the connection between Walter Rennert and the boy he’d helped put away. Writing must’ve presented a serious challenge to Triplett.

  Yet he’d persisted, seeking to communicate, taking comfort in repetition.

  He told Dr. Rennert. Who else could he tell?

  I moved on to the third box.

  Atop the pile sat a loose sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings, speckled with mold. The murder; the trial. I skimmed them. Nothing I didn’t already know.

  Lastly, a pair of plastic shopping bags that rattled when I picked them up. I unknotted the handles and saw a jumble of microcassette tapes, cases dated in blue or black ink.

  I gathered up the bags, along with the surviving letters.

  Stopping in the foyer to reset the alarm, I glanced at the spot on the tiles where Walter Rennert’s body had lain. Another small patch of my world marked by death, a shadow invisible to nearly everyone except me.

  —

  THE CLERK AT Radio Shack tried to discourage me from buying a microcassette player.

  “We don’t even make those anymore,” he said.

  “The website says you have one in stock.”

  He trudged off, returning after a while with a scratched clamshell case.

  He scanned it. “Two eighty-four sixty-nine.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “ ’Swhat I mean. Shit’s discontinued. Get a digital recorder, they’re like forty bucks.”

  I couldn’t be sure that the tapes were good: the water might have ruined them. But the plastic bags gave me hope.

  “What’s your return policy?” I asked.

  “Thirty days.”

  I handed him my debit card. “Receipt, please.”

  —

  AT HOME I brewed a pot of coffee and set myself up at the kitchen table with notepad, pen, and my new, expensive, semi-vintage microcassette player.

  I sifted the tapes, arranging them in chronological order. The oldest went back to March 2006—shortly after Julian Triplett disappeared. Fifty-seven in all, roughly one a month. But not evenly spaced out: the first few bunched together weekly. Then monthly, bimonthly.

  Seven months separated the second-to-last tape from the final one, in January 2011.

  I put in the first tape and rewound to the beginning.

  Expecting something along the lines of an audio letter—garbled updates from Triplett, sent to reassure Rennert—I sat up at the first voice I heard.

  A woman, crystal clear.

  All right, Julian. Before we begin I wanted to make sure that you’re settling in okay.

  The response came slowly.

  Uh-huh.

  I’d never heard Triplett speak before. His voice was deep, so muted that you could mistake it for a distortion in the recording. As though he were hiding beneath the covers.

  How are you liking the new place? the woma
n asked.

  Pretty good.

  Okay. Okay, good. Well. I spoke to Dr. Rennert about your medication. You remember I told you that I can’t do that for you, write prescriptions? He and I agreed that he’ll continue to handle it, like you’ve done so far. I’ll check in with him periodically. But if you ever run out, or you’re having a problem, and it doesn’t feel right, you should come talk to me and I’ll do what I can to help. That’s what I’m here for. Okay?

  Okay.

  Okay she said. Great.

  Silence; hiss.

  She said How’ve you been feeling recently?

  Okay.

  I know you’ve had a lot of changes. No response. Do you want to talk about that?

  All right.

  The silence went on so long I started to think the tape had ended.

  How about your symptoms? Are you hearing voices?

  No.

  The conversation lasted another twenty-five minutes, much of it empty air. The therapist probing gently, Triplett mumbling yes or no or I guess.

  I’m so glad we’re talking, Julian. I really look forward to getting to know you better.

  No answer.

  The hiss cut off.

  I reached for the next cassette.

  —

  AS IN HIS letters to Rennert, in his speech Triplett gave an unsettling initial impression. He sat silent for uncomfortably long stretches, ignoring—or seeming to ignore—questions that would have sparked an emotional response in most people. I could imagine him sitting there, taking up a vast amount of space, like some dormant volcano. I could guess how he had come across in court.

  The therapist never lost patience, slowly building up a rapport over many sessions. While Triplett was never chatty, his replies got a hair more expansive, his mood less skittish. On tape eight he referred to a job. He’d been hired as some sort of shop hand.

  During the following session, she asked how work was going.

  I don’t like it Triplett said.

  What don’t you like?

  He thinks I’m stupid.

  Has he said that?

  No.

  So why do you think he thinks that about you?

  He don’t let me touch nothing.