The Color of Light (27 page)

We thanked him for the coffee, apologized for dropping by unannounced at such an early hour, and saw ourselves out the back door.

“So?” Jean-Paul asked when we were outside, headed home.

“Now we know where Duc got that gun,” I said. “We keep tripping over Chuck Riley, don't we?”

“He seems a bit of a bungler, but I think he is an adept manipulator of people,” Jean-Paul said. “Perhaps dangerously so, yes?”

“Yes.” I held my phone on my open palm; the connection to Chief Wasick's phone was still open, still on speaker, as it had been during the entire conversation with George. “Chief, you there?”

“I am.”

“Did you get it?”

“The whole confab,” he said. “Interesting.”

“Where is Chuck Riley?” I asked.

“I heard enough to send a squad to pick him up.”

Happy to hear that Chuck wouldn't be out loose for a while, I closed the connection and slipped the phone into my pocket. Our front door opened just as we reached the porch and crime scene technicians, apparently finished, filed out past us carrying their gear and bagged evidence. With no fanfare, Duc's body, zipped into a green plastic body bag, was wheeled out among them and deposited into the coroner's unmarked white van. Almost as reflex, Jean-Paul and I both turned to see if anyone was watching from the Loper house, but saw no one.

The last man out handed me a certificate releasing the scene and a card with the numbers of local crime scene cleaners. I dialed the first number on the card and arranged with the dispatcher for a crew to come as soon as possible. For a small additional payment, I was told, a crew could be at the house in an hour. I said, fine, whatever, peachy, just come. Now would be good.

Chief Wasick, standing in the open front door, eavesdropped on the transaction.

“Any word on Kevin?” I asked as we walked up the steps.

“Doc says he should be okay.” Wasick crossed his arms over his chest and sagged against the doorjamb, weary, ashen-faced, as he watched the coroner's van pull away from the curb. “Until we bring in Riley, I've posted men at the ICU.”

“
Until
you bring Chuck in?” I said, thinking that Chuck should be in custody by now. “He lives just down the street.”

“Yeah, but he seems to have stepped out. The wife said she doesn't know where he went. The logical place for him to go is the hospital to check on Kevin, but he hasn't turned up there, yet.”

“When you find him,” I said, “might be wise not to tell him right away that Duc is dead. Let him worry that Duc is talking.”

He smiled grimly, “Hey, who's the cop here, you or me?”

“You sound like Kevin,” I said.

“I'll take that as a compliment; Kevin is our best investigator.” His voice cracked when he said Kevin's name. “I should have paid more attention when he told me he was reopening the Bartolini murder. A favor for a friend, he said. There was so little to go on—a thirty-year-old case—that I never thought he'd get anywhere with it. Poke around, make his friend happy. But now, Jesus.” He canted his head toward the bloody mess visible through the open door; I dreaded going back inside. “What did he set in motion?”

I said, “Ask the original investigator.”

“Yeah, Riley.” Wasick went over and sat on the porch rail, gazed out across the long shadows of early morning stretching across the lawn. “For all of his problems, Riley had a good record as an investigator. But he sure did a piss-poor job on that one. I thought maybe he was off his game because he was too close to the case, lived across the street from the victim. But now...”

He shifted his focus to me. “Was Riley covering his own butt? Did he shoot that woman?”

“I don't know if he pulled the trigger,” I said. “But I'm very sure he had a hand in it. Trinh Bartolini was being extorted for sex and Larry Nordquist, the neighborhood Peeping Tom, knew who the guy was. Riley didn't want Larry to talk to me. And now Larry's dead.”

“What was Riley's hold on her?”

“Fear for her sister's safety,” I said. “Wouldn't you expect that if a woman were murdered not long after she and her husband went to the police to report that they were being extorted by the local agent for the people holding their relative for ransom in Vietnam, the homicide detective assigned to her case would pursue that lead?”

“Sure.”

“There's not one word in Trinh Bartolini's murder book about the ransom demands or a police inquiry about it.”

He scowled. “Kevin told you that?”

“I saw it for myself,” I said.

“I'll have a word later with Kevin about showing you the murder book, but it is interesting. You think Riley was in league with the extortionist's local agent?”

“Maybe not in the beginning, but from the time the police were brought in, yes. Old Chuck Riley, always on the lookout for a little spare cash, extorted the extortionist who, unless I am mistaken, is now zipped inside a green body bag on his way to the morgue.”

“So far, that's a lot of speculation,” Wasick said. “Have any solid evidence?”

“That's your department,” I said. “It's your case. I have faith you'll turn up something. Duc came out of Vietnam with nothing, but managed to turn that nothing into a very substantial business. It's worth looking into.”

Jean-Paul, who had been quietly listening in, said, “If you don't mind, Chief, I will make a call or two. Records of Duc's land purchases will not be difficult for you to find, but international bank transactions, especially very old ones, will require help of a certain sort. Maggie, shall I inquire whether the FBI has records of your parents' report and any follow-up investigation?”

“Can you do that?” I asked. A little Gallic shrug was the response. Jean-Paul was already punching numbers into his phone when he turned to go into the house; the man was full of surprises.

Wasick seemed puzzled. “He said what?”

“Jean-Paul has resources,” I said.

“Who are you people?”

I tried to imitate Jean-Paul's shrug. “When Kevin gets the DNA report from Mrs. B's shirt, with luck you'll have your solid evidence.”

“The DNA report came in from the lab yesterday,” Wasick said. “Whatever Kevin saw in it upset him enough that he ran out to talk to his priest.”

“He ran out to get drunk with my uncle,” I said, turning to go inside. “Please excuse me.”

The blood on the entry hall floor was congealing and beginning to smell. Taking shallow breaths, giving the mess a wide berth and keeping my eyes averted, I went looking for my uncle. I found him in the living room, asleep on a sofa.

“Uncle Max.” When I shook his foot he opened one eye. “Kevin got the DNA profile from Trinh Bartolini's shirt?”

“He wanted to talk to you about it. That's why he came home with me last night. That, and he didn't have enough for cab fare; we put away a tidy bit of scotch after dinner.”

“How did you get home?” I asked. I hadn't seen the rented Caddy out front.

“In a cab.” He yawned. “I offered to lend Kevin some money, but he said something about wanting a farewell tour on a leather sofa. He wasn't making a whole lot of sense by then.”

“What did he say about the DNA?”

Max propped himself up on his elbows and yawned again. “He said he was an idiot and that you were right.”

“About?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe
in vino veritas
, but in scotch there's just a lot of slurred words after a while.”

Chief Wasick had followed me in.

“Chief,” I said, “we need to see the DNA report. Where is it?”

He addressed Max. “She's kind of bossy, isn't she?”

“She can be,” Max said, smiling at me fondly. “And she can be a force of nature when she is on to something. I believe it would be wise if you produced that report.”

“The report is at the station.” The chief bowed from the waist as he swept an arm toward the exit. “Shall we?”

“As soon as the house cleaners come,” I said, turning Max's wrist to see his watch. “About half an hour.”

“Maggie?” Max managed to pull himself upright. “Lana called. The network funded your account at start of business this morning, New York time.”

“So, that's done,” I said. We were staying with the network for the Normandy project, and I didn't know how I felt about that. There was relief that the project would go forward, of course, but also some disappointment that we were still entangled with the old network—a problem child—instead of making a fresh start with a new backer.

“To tell you the truth,” Max said, “I was surprised that the network came through. Apparently the push happened when someone on the New York goon squad picked your name off the morning news feed. He immediately sent in the order to fund.”

“Saw my name?” I said, puzzled.

“Actually, this.” He took out his phone and flipped through his files until he found what he wanted, a photograph. He handed the phone to me. “Lana says it's gone viral. I hope Jean-Paul doesn't take any flak because of it.”

“Holy crap,” was all I could think to say when I saw the image. There we were, Jean-Paul and I, standing shoulder to shoulder at the open front door, barely dressed and covered in blood watching paramedics wheel Kevin to an ambulance.

Jean-Paul heard me and came in from the dining room to look over my shoulder. He muttered,
“Merde,”
and went back to his call.

It was still early when
we got to the police station, though we'd been up so long it felt like midday. The Civic Center was just coming to life, city workers beginning to straggle in, paper cups of coffee clutched in their hands as they dodged the cadre of young skateboarders who use the public sidewalks, ramps and stairs as their private skate park. And, of course, there was a fair cross section of street people drinking out of paper bags or sleeping off the night before on shaded benches. Max, Jean-Paul and I managed to negotiate our way through wheeled youth and panhandlers and get through the front door of the police station without incident.

The rookie cop on front-desk duty expected us. He led us out of the police lobby and through a maze of cubicles in back. We passed Chief Wasick's office door and went instead into the detectives' bullpen. Tony Wasick was at Kevin's desk studying the contents of the manila file folder open in front of him. He glanced up when we came in.

“It's interesting,” he said as the three of us peered over his shoulders. “Very interesting.”

When Kevin sent Trinh Bartolini's shirt to the lab for testing, he had also sent along a sweat-stained T-shirt belonging to Chuck Riley, the baseball bat belonging to George Loper, a plastic fork Bart Bartolini had used, and a chewed-on pencil he lifted from the pencil cup on Dad's desk. Beto gave him a bamboo flute that he remembered his mother playing, from which her DNA sample was extracted. Of the five samples, only two matched the DNA on swatches cut from the bloody white shirt she wore when she was found. They were hers and Chuck Riley's.

When I saw that Chuck Riley's semen as well as some of his blood were found on the shirt, I felt like crying and laughing and maybe doing a rain dance at the same time; fatigue, let-down after a very bad night, both or neither, I didn't know what all, made me feel just a bit giddy.

I reached around Wasick and put my finger on a line in the lab report: a small amount of Chuck Riley's blood was found on the back of her shirt. I said, “Riley was behind her when she was shot.”

“Looks like it,” Wasick said. “She took a frontal hit, middle of the chest. The bullet passed through her and may have grazed him. So, the question is, if he was behind her, who pulled the trigger?”

“Ask Riley,” I said.

“When we find him, we will.”

Max chimed in, “You certainly have enough to get a search warrant for Riley's house, Chief.”

“Thirty years after the fact, what am I looking for and where am I looking for it?”

“Riley's bedroom or whatever dungeon he took that dear woman into. Take up the carpets, check the walls, look for blood, a gun, a bullet hole. A souvenir he kept of her, maybe.”

“
More
than thirty years, counselor.” Wasick rubbed tired eyes.

“It's a long shot,” I said. “But it is a shot. If Chuck Riley won't talk, we may never know exactly what happened to Trinh Bartolini. Larry Nordquist is another matter. After all that I have seen and heard, I am just awfully damn certain that Chuck whacked Larry to keep him from talking. I have faith in you, Chief. You'll find what you need to convict Chuck on that one.”

“We'll see,” Wasick said, closing the file. “We'll see.”

We had learned what we came to learn, and now it was time to go. I offered Wasick my hand. “Thank you, Chief.”

He took my hand in both of his and looked directly, pointedly, into my eyes. “Like the murder book, you never saw this report. Got it?”

“Of course.”

He rose from his chair. “Now, if you folks will excuse me, I have a nap to take. I'm too old for all-nighters.”

Jean-Paul, Max and I walked up to the Bartolini deli for breakfast. Beto's wife, Zaida, was busy with customers, but she took the time to tell us that Beto was at the hospital with his dad and that Bart was having a pretty good day, all things considered. Beto had run into Kevin's son at the hospital, so he knew in broad outlines what had happened the night before. And because Beto knew half the staff at the hospital from either school or the deli, he was able to get regular updates on Kevin's condition. Zaida told us that Duc's bullet had pierced Kevin's lung and shattered a rib on the way out. He had lost a lot of blood, but no other vital organs were damaged. He was still in the ICU, still asleep, and his condition was stable. Good news all around.

After we ate, though a nap sounded like a very fine idea, no one was in a hurry to get home until the crime scene cleaners had time to finish removing the gore. Jean-Paul and I decided to walk, to get some fresh air, while Max, playing the martyr, volunteered to go home to check on progress. He said he would call Lyle, to get a referral for someone to patch the walls and to paint; Lyle had contacts.

After we saw him off, Jean-Paul and I headed up Shattuck to take the shortcut across the Cal campus. I wanted to show him where I had spent a great part of my growing-up years, and where I had earned my degree.

The day was already warm, uncomfortably so. But the campus under its canopy of redwood trees was sweet-smelling and cool, a lovely break from the ugliness of the night before. Instead of cutting straight across, we wandered arm-in-arm along Strawberry Creek, through the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Grove, and then over to the physics building where my dad's office had been for so many years. I was feeling a bit wistful, wondering if I would ever take that particular walk again. Saying another good-bye to Dad.

Jean-Paul interrupted my reverie. “Tell me, my friend in television, if you were to film a dramatization of the murder of Trinh Bartolini, how would it unfold?”

I rested my head against his shoulder and thought for a moment. “I can think of various scenarios, but the one that makes the most sense to me after seeing the lab reports would begin with Mrs. B in bed with Chuck, his house, drapes closed to keep the room dark so she wouldn't have to see him, gritting her teeth, praying he'll finish and roll off her. They hear someone in the house. He pushes her or she falls off the bed, bruising her bottom and her shoulder when she lands on the floor. She grabs the first thing she finds to cover herself—his shirt. Chuck ends up standing behind her. Was he trying to hide, or to use her as a shield?

“Someone opens the door. Maybe he, or she, has heard a man's voice inside. In the darkened room he sees a man's white shirt, assumes it's Chuck, aims for center mass and shoots.”

Jean-Paul thought that over before he nodded. “I can see that, yes. But who opened the door?”

“If this is my story to tell, it would be someone who intended to take out Chuck and made a terrible mistake when he shot her. I don't know anyone who would want to hurt Mrs. B, but I can't say that about him.”

“Khanh Duc?”

“He's certainly on the top of my list,” I said. “The Bartolinis paid Quynh's ransom through him, and then somehow Chuck infused himself into the situation. Did Chuck, always looking for a deal, offer Duc protection from a police investigation in exchange for a cut of the proceeds? If that's the case, then when my parents brought the FBI aboard there wouldn't be much Chuck could do to shield either of them, and was probably a liability. He would certainly hand over Duc to save his own scrawny butt. Maybe he asked for too much and Duc wanted him gone.”

“If that is what happened, then I would expect Duc to try again when he missed killing Riley the first time,” Jean-Paul said. “We learned last night what Duc is capable of.”

“Unless Chuck told Duc that everything would be exposed if anything happened to him. Duc certainly thought there was something in our house that he needed to get to. Was Dad supposed to have evidence of some sort squirreled away?”

“He did, if you recall. Isn't that how you became involved?”

“True. Nothing that I found in Dad's desk would incriminate Duc, but we don't know what Riley might have told Duc.”

“What about the husband?” Jean-Paul said. “Is it possible that your snooping Larry tells Bartolini, Senior, that his wife is making visits of a certain variety to Riley? In a rage, Bartolini grabs a gun and goes across the street after Riley. He shoots, but it is his beloved wife he hits by mistake.
Catastrophe
. He is distraught now, of course. Riley foils the murder investigation to save his own—what do you say?—sweet ass, because it is highly problematic to explain why there is a naked dead woman in his bedroom without getting into some grave difficulty. Instead, he dumps the woman's body and destroys the evidence he can. And there you have it, impasse for thirty years.”

“Chuck's wife would have the same motivation as Bart,” I said.

“In that case, which one was she gunning for?”

“They were both hit.”

“It is a fine puzzle,
chérie
.”

The rest of the way, we talked about anything except the people in my neighborhood.

When we got home, the cleaning crew was still at work inside. We found Max out front helping Toshio Sato unload the plants he had brought to repair the ruined flower borders. The two men were arguing affably about what should go where.

Jean-Paul went up onto the porch, a quiet place to return calls, while I went over to greet Mr. Sato.

To the plant discussion, I contributed, “Think tidy, hardy and low maintenance.”

“Not good enough,” Max said, waving off what I'd said. “We should at the very least try for some approximation of my brother's planting scheme. Red, orange, yellow, and so on.”

“Max, Max, Max.” Mr. Sato took off his hat and wiped the sweatband with his big white handkerchief. “Yesterday I asked Duc to give me some good plants for Al's borders, and this is what he gave me. I got pink begonia, I got yellow lamium, I got white shrub roses, and I got some rosemary makes a nice blue flower in the spring. You want something else, you go get it. But don't fool around 'cuz I got grandkids to pick up from lacrosse camp this afternoon.”

At the mention of Duc's name, Max and I looked at each other. He shook his head; now was not the time to announce Duc's death to Mr. Sato. So far, the coroner's office had released no information about Duc.

“So, Tosh,” Max said, “are you and Duc good friends?”

“Nah, the guy's a pain in the ass, but he knows flowers,” he said, putting his hat back on. “As long as we talk flowers, we get along okay. If you're thinking of driving all the way down there, don't bother unless you want to pay retail because Duc didn't come in today. Now, you gonna give me a hand here or do you want to stand around talking?”

“Mr. Sato,” I said as he sank the end of a shovel into the soil of the flower border. “I was wondering, if Duc worked with you, why don't I remember meeting him before the other day? Every Monday I would say hello to you and your helper. I never knew them very well, but I'd like to think I would remember them.”

He pulled off his hat again and wiped the sweatband with his big handkerchief. “That's because Duc never worked for me on Mondays when I did your yard. Guy worked two or three jobs. Mondays and Fridays, he drove a delivery truck, I think.”

“Did he?” I caught Uncle Max's eye but he just shrugged. “Could he have worked for Bay Laundry and Dry Cleaners?”

“The laundry?” Mr. Sato thought that over as he settled his hat back on his head. “Yeah, I think it was the laundry. I remember he used to pick up dirty tablecloths after big weekend parties. He'd salvage all the wilted centerpieces, recycle the vases and florist foam and junk, save it for when he opened his nursery.”

“Mystery solved,” I said, thinking Duc had just hit the Trifecta: motive, means, and opportunity. “I'll go see what's happening inside and get out of your way.”

I was allowed into the living room, but everything from five feet beyond the front door was sealed off behind plastic sheeting. Jean-Paul and I had decided to pack our things and go to a hotel until we could hand the house keys over to the university. Max was leaving, too. He had a late afternoon meeting in LA with Lana and would be leaving for the airport in a few hours. But because of the wall of plastic sheeting, we couldn't get up the stairs until the crew left.

They wouldn't need much longer, I was told, because as crime scenes go, this one was relatively small. The man I spoke with launched into a lurid account of a mass shooting at a crack house down in Fremont, but was summoned back to work before he got very far into his tale. I was not unhappy to see him slip back behind the plastic.

Just for information, I called Lyle and asked him how long he thought it would take for workers to finish the house cleanup and repairs. He went through the list I gave him: the blood was being dealt with, a plasterer was scheduled to patch the holes in the walls made by the lab people, then some new paint, and finally a thorough general house cleaning before we handed the keys to University Housing.

“Four days, maybe more if some flooring needs to be replaced,” he said. “Guido told me you guys are headed for France in a couple of weeks. Is this going to put you in a jam?”

“It is, but it has to be done,” I said.

“Maybe we can do each other a favor,” he said. “We have a friend, broke up with his partner, needed a sofa to sleep on, so we took him in. He's a good guy, a very good guy, and we've enjoyed having him. But Roy's parents are coming out for a visit day after tomorrow and I think it would be better for all if we don't have an extra person around while they're here. What if I send him over to you? He doesn't have any disgusting habits I'm aware of. He works from home so we can put him in charge of overseeing your workers, make sure everything is done right.”

“If he's willing, it would be a godsend,” I said, feeling a mountain lift from my shoulders.

“No, honey, it would be a Lylesend. Let me go get him so you can work out the details.”

“You're my guru.”