A Killing in China Basin

FORTY-SIX


Before leaving the house Stoltz spent an hour on his laptop reworking the TV and room lights schedule. He went out the back of the house a few minutes before the computer turned on the TV and lights in the kitchen. He had no illusions; the police had the whole house covered.

Still, he’d run a lot of his own tests on what you could see from the ridge and the back of the orchard, and left through a window in the basement laundry room that opened into a bush at the end of an old hedge, where the plants were big enough that he could belly crawl under them until he reached the trees. At the trees he crouched and waited fifteen minutes until a stairway light and an upstairs bathroom light came on. Faint strains of music leaked from the house. No doubt they thought he was inside gloating that he was out and the media was focusing on Bates.

He worked from tree to tree to reach the storm drainage easement where the manhole was. He waited before prying the heavy iron manhole cover off, and then slid it back into place after climbing part-way down the ladder. He didn’t turn on his flashlight until he got to the bottom of the ladder.

It was much cooler in here, cold, really, a dank cold, but somehow comforting because they couldn’t watch him. They didn’t know about this. The concrete pipe was large though not big enough to stand in and he hunched down, turned the flashlight beam on the backpack and the fresh rat droppings on it. He saw a hole had been chewed through it and brushed the droppings off, but didn’t yet unclip the pack from the wire and carabiner it dangled from.

How were the rats getting to the pack? Was it possible they crawled down the wire or did they jump from the manhole ladder? He unzipped the pack and was relieved not to find a rat inside, though it looked like one had made a nest of his coat. But the laptop was OK. The pack was suspended from a wire attached to an eye hook he’d drilled into the center of the top of the culvert pipe and however they were doing it, they were doing it. It didn’t matter. He’d kill them. He spread rat poison just above the moss and trickle of water at his feet. He put some of it on top of the pack and then pulled on a headlamp and started down the pipe.

The bigger pipe ended where the other feeder pipes coming off the hills fed in, and from there he had to squat and walk forward like a crab, headlight bobbing, rats moving, scraping and scratching as they ran up ahead. He smelled rat shit and the long uphill grade was a slow tiring climb. He’d slept too little and burned too much adrenaline. He knew he was becoming manic, the way he did sometimes, and taking risks he shouldn’t. Yet he couldn’t stop right now. He had to get control back.

After forty minutes he reached the second ladder, but instead of climbing out the usual way, continued on and had to belly crawl through the slime in a smaller pipe, and then struggled getting the grate off the storm drain, finally jerking his way free. In the trees he stripped down to his running shorts and sweats, and left the filthy coveralls in a black plastic bag that he hid in the brush. He put the keys in the pouch around his waist, walked back out to the road and started the two mile jog up and over the grade, then down a long-falling road to where he called for a cab to take him to San Jose. He had the cab drop him half a mile from the warehouse and once inside showered and changed before loading up a car and driving to San Francisco.

He entered China Basin on Third Street and then found a place to park and wait. The light was off in the apartment where Inspector Raveneau lived. Raveneau’s car wasn’t in the fenced lot. If Raveneau came home and if the opportunity showed itself, he’d do it, but for now he reclined his seat, plugged in his iPod, and waited.