B007GFGTIY EBOK (16 page)

“Hello, Mr. Fuller. It’s nice to see you again. I’m so glad we could get reacquainted,” Beckerman said and put down his binoculars.

M
alcolm Fuller swerved off the road and aimed his rented Pontiac G6 at the three-bar wooden fence. The Pontiac slithered on the damp grass and sawed at the wheel to keep the car from spinning out. It smashed through the fence, reducing it to matchwood, and the driver’s side came dangerously close to clipping a post. The sedan bumped and bounced over the park’s undulating ground, the suspension crashing into the wheel arches and the tires churning up the turf. Fuller loved this park and he searched for his favorite spot.

He told himself this was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. The stranger who’d visited him at the farm had helped him see the light. What the stranger had to say made total sense now. Fuller didn’t understand why they had brawled at the beginning. He gazed at the rectangular bruise with the rounded corners on his wrist and rubbed it with his other hand.

Fuller found the spot he was looking for. He’d first come here with Debbie when they were dating, then once they were married and again with the kids. The kids imagined adventures here, but he felt at peace. That was what made this the perfect place. The Pontiac skidded to a halt among a group of six trees on a rise. The trees, all oaks, were widely dispersed, but their growth was so broad that the branches reached out and touched each other, creating one vast canopy.

“Debbie will understand. She’ll know I’m doing the right thing. She’ll be able to explain it to Tracey and Kevin.”

He got out of the car and surveyed the park for other people. He saw and heard no one. Who would be out here at this time of the morning? It was all working out.

“This is a good place,” Fuller said, nodding to himself. “The right place.”

He went to the rear of the car and popped the trunk. The morning dew, cold and invasive, seeped into his shoes and soaked his socks. It was a minor discomfort, but it wouldn’t do his cold any good.

He snatched up the rope he’d brought from the farm, then sneezed. He wiped his nose on his forearm. As he carried the rope over to the nearest oak, he talked to the trees. Someone needed to hear his confession. It would have been nice if it had been someone he knew. Someone who would understand. But someone like that would get in his way of doing the right thing.

“What we did was wrong,” Fuller told the trees.

He held one end of the rope and dropped the remainder on the ground. He tugged a generous length from the loose coil and wrapped his arms around the trunk of one the oaks. The tree’s bark smelled musty. It smelled like nature, clean and honest. Nature knew how to keep its charges in check. If something got ahead of itself, Mother Nature was there to slap it down. It was a pity humanity didn’t incorporate its own system of check and balances. Sadly, humanity relied too much on a few strong individuals to do the right thing. Strong individuals like him. He paused for a moment, the rope trailing from one hand. He’d never considered himself a strong-willed person, but he was when it counted. Like now.

“Bellis had the right idea,” he said to the silent giants bristling in the morning breeze. “Killing everyone in one fell swoop was a masterstroke.” He hadn’t believed in Bellis’s guilt before, but now he was certain.

He tried to pass the rope from hand to hand, but the oak was too broad and his arms were too short. He gave up and instead walked around the oak like a child around a maypole. When he had circled the tree, he tied a knot. He made sure the knot was strong and tight, before he tied another and another and another, constructing a braid of even knots running down the tree trunk. He thought of Tracey’s ponytail. He couldn’t count the times he’d watched his wife braid his daughter’s hair. It saddened him that he would never see that ritual between mother and daughter again.

“We could never redeem ourselves.” He made the statement more to his absent family than to the trees.

He braced a foot against the base of the tree and tugged hard on the rope encircling the oak. The knots tightened, securing their grip. He smiled. It would hold.

Fuller uncoiled the remaining rope, laying it on the ground in a straight line. He felt like a demolition expert unfurling fuse wire from an explosive charge. He stopped when he bumped into the car.

TV images of the fire at MDE filled his head. The scorch marks. The partially collapsed building. The bodies sheathed in plastic. He’d lost a lot of friends in one morning. They’d moved on and he’d stayed behind. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. “I should have been at work that day. Being sick was no excuse. My place was with you guys, not at home.”

He climbed behind the wheel of the Pontiac, closed the door, and fed the rope through the open window. He stuck the keys in the car’s ignition and twisted it until the radio came on. He scanned through the radio stations until he came upon a tune he loved. He hadn’t heard it in years. He had the record somewhere at home. He’d bought it for Debbie. Damn, that had been before the kids were born.

He sang along with the words while he worked. He rested the rope against the steering wheel while he tied a slipknot. He tried the knot’s slip action around his wrist. It worked well. He smiled. Always the engineer. He had to test his designs before he tried them out for real. Debbie would be rolling her eyes if she were here now.

“Debbie, I love you,” he said.

He removed the rope from around his wrist and slipped the noose over his neck. His elbows connected with the Pontiac’s tight cockpit, striking the steering wheel and gearshift. He slid the slipknot close to his neck and tossed the slack out the window, careful it didn’t get trapped under the wheels.

Malcolm Fuller buckled his seat belt and started the Pontiac. The car roared to life at the first turn of the key. He selected drive and disengaged the emergency brake. Without hesitating, he took his foot off the brake and stamped on the gas pedal. The tires ripped through the dirt before finding traction. Fuller accelerated away from the tree with the rope chasing after him.

“This is for the best,” he said a second before the rope’s slack came to an abrupt end.

Santiago’s eyes burned from another rude awakening, and the drive to Petaluma didn’t help. At least he had Rice on hand to take care of the driving duties. The son of a bitch looked to be glowing with youthful exuberance. Where was his? There had been a time when he could roll out of bed ready for anything anyone threw at him, but not anymore. If his sleep routine got disturbed, he spent the rest of the day out of phase with the world. A good night’s sleep would reset his body clock, but somehow he didn’t think he’d be getting regular sleep for some time. Nothing at MDE was resolving itself. It just kept getting more complicated. Today was no different.

Rice slowed for the prowl unit blocking the entrance to the public park, although he could have sidestepped the cop by driving through the hole punched in the fencing. Santiago got out his badge and showed his party invitation to the officer. The officer pointed them in the right direction and backed his unit out of their way.

Rice followed the narrow two-lane road in the direction the officer indicated, not that directions were needed. It was hard to miss the fleet of law enforcement vehicles crowded around a rise encircled with oak trees. Rice drove off the paved road and onto the grass, following the scars left by at least eight different sets of wheels.

Rice parked the car and he and Santiago approached the crime scene. Detective Trudy Moore spotted them and broke from the group. Moore had previously worked investigations for the Marin Sherriff’s Office, but she’d switched jobs eighteen months ago to head up the detectives’ unit in Petaluma. Off duty, she was an attractive thirty-five-year-old, but on the job she managed to quash the beauty from her appearance. She drew her shoulder-length, straw-blonde hair into a tight ponytail. She wore flat-heeled shoes, comfortable and necessary on this soft ground.

“Morning, Ruben,” she said. “This is one of yours, I believe? Your guy’s name popped up on the missing persons when we ran it.”

Santiago was pissed. He hadn’t discovered that Malcolm Fuller was on the missing persons list until he’d contacted the engineer’s home to discuss the aftermath at Marin Design Engineering. Instead, he found Fuller’s distraught wife expecting news. Well, she was going to get some news: the worst kind. Santiago had placed a tag on Fuller’s case file to be contacted as soon as the engineer was located. He hadn’t expected to find Fuller like this.

“This is Mark Rice, Trudy. He’s trying to follow in your footsteps.”

The colleagues greeted each other.

“Shall we take a look at Fuller?” She didn’t wait for an answer and led the way.

“Who found him?” Santiago asked.

“A night-shift worker on his way home.”

“Name?” Santiago asked.

“Lou Davis,” Moore replied without looking at her notes.

It made a difference to hear Hayden Duke wasn’t a witness.

“He spotted the hole in the fence and the tire tracks, then followed them to the car.” Moore indicated the wreck. “He stopped for a look-see. The poor bastard expected to find someone in the middle of a heart attack. I think this has cured him of his Good Samaritan instinct.” She pointed at the wreck. “Have you seen this?”

The nose end of a red Pontiac sedan had struck a tree and the front end was folded around the tree’s trunk. The tree hadn’t sustained any substantial damage in comparison to the car—just some gouges to the bark. Thirty feet of rope trailed from the driver’s window like a scarf. Following the crazy tire tracks, it was clear that the rope had been part of the rope knotted around a nearby oak. The tree looked as if it were wearing a necktie. Richard Dysart, the coroner, was instructing a photographer on what pictures he wanted taken.

“Where’s our night-shift worker now?” Rice asked.

“Back at the station, giving a statement. Understandably, he didn’t want to hang around here.”

“Don’t blame him,” Santiago added.

“When did all this occur?” Rice asked.

“Davis found Fuller at five thirty this morning. The car’s hood was still warm when we arrived. I’d say he’d been dead less than an hour.”

“Hey, Dickie,” Santiago shouted at the coroner. “What’s the breaking news?”

Dysart looked up from his endeavors and frowned. Dickie Dysart without his customary naughty-schoolboy grin was like a hooker without a john—a rare occurrence. Santiago took pleasure from the fact he was responsible for that frown. He tried not to gloat too much. No doubt he’d pay heavily for this somewhere down the line. Dysart left the photographer to his task and came over.

“Morning, Ruben,” Dysart said. “I just wanted to say thanks for calling me out here even though I’m out of my jurisdiction. The county coroner and his staff are more than capable of handling this case.”

Oh yes, he was going to pay for this one big-time.

“Dickie, this one is connected to us and we should be here to point the locals in the right direction. Now, if you’ve finished bellyaching, what can you tell me?”

“It’s quite clear-cut. Another suicide. Quite elaborate. Very gruesome.” He jerked his thumb back at the scene. “I wish I knew what your suicides were thinking before they did it.”

Santiago shrugged. “Tell me what happened.”

Dysart turned to the scene and ran through the course of events, pointing with his hands. “Malcolm Fuller tied one end of the rope to that tree over there and the other end to his neck. He used a slipknot, incidentally. Then he buckled himself into his seat and drove away as fast as he could.”

“Click it or ticket,” Santiago said, quoting the national advertising campaign slogan for seat belt use.

Moore winced at his humor and Rice shook his head disapprovingly. Only Dysart wasn’t offended.

“Well said, Ruben. An original approach but not a particularly effective one. Seat belts aren’t designed to restrain a person from an upward and sideward force, as in this case.” Dysart demonstrated with his own head, jerked by an invisible rope. “A modern three-point seat belt restrains you from falling forward in a front impact, and the seat keeps the back and neck straight from a rear impact—”

“Dickie, just tell me what happened here,” Santiago said. He knew how seat belts worked. He could do without the science class. If he let Dysart have his way they would be here all morning.

Dysart sighed unhappily. “The upshot is that Fuller didn’t hang himself as easily as he thought he would. The rope yanked him from his seat, but he was caught up in the doorframe and the window. He didn’t die as quick as a hanging. I doubt the spinal column was snapped right away, although it snapped eventually with the momentum of the car and Fuller’s body having nowhere to go.”

“Christ,” Rice murmured. “What a hideous way to go.”

“Yes,” Dysart said. “Very. He was lucky not to lose his head. Mercifully, the rope lost the battle in this deadly game of tug-of-war and snapped before physics showed us what it can do to a human body. The car would have kept on running if it hadn’t struck the tree.”

“Was it quick?” Moore asked.

“Relatively, in the scheme of things, yes. It probably took no more than a few seconds, but they would have been long seconds for Mr. Fuller. From the damage in the car, there was a lot of thrashing. Would you like to take look, Ruben?”