A Killing in China Basin

FIFTY


Raveneau lingered, standing on a rung of the manhole ladder, his head and shoulders above ground. He rested a hand on cold dry pine needles and studied the terrain. Overhead, the sky was white and cold. In the walnut orchard to his right, the soil looked damp and dark. Mom’s house loomed off the side of the guest house and he could only guess at what the property was worth or why Stoltz, living in circumstances most could only dream of, would come after them. The easement for storm drainage ran alongside a tall row of pines planted long ago as a windbreak. Branches reached over him. They shadowed the easement and at the end of the trees he saw a hedge that ran all the way up to the back of the guest house alongside the beds of roses. That had to be how he did it. That was his route.

The iron lid scraped loud enough to be heard some distance and he dropped his flashlight as he climbed back down. Fortunately, it didn’t break when it hit. Leaning against the wall of the big concrete pipe he studied the backpack again. Taking it meant playing their hand, but he only debated for a few minutes.

He worked his way back, first through the big pipe, and then into the smaller branch, carrying the daypack like a football, and after a while slipping the pack straps over his shoulders and wearing it. Working up the incline he straddled the green slime along the pipe bottom, but slipped several times and cut his knee deep enough to start blood trickling down his calf.

At some point the pipe got claustrophobic. His progress was slow up the incline, flashlight cutting a darkness that just seemed to go on and on. The four foot pipe wore him out and made his knees ache. Then he saw sunlight and crab-walked the last hundred yards fast to that bright shaft of light. Now he stood in the sun letting the ache ease in his back and knees, blinking at the brightness as he slid the pack off and handed it to la Rosa.

‘Have a good time down there?’

‘Yeah, it’s great. We ought to pack a picnic and come back. There are a lot of rats so it’s not lonely, but I’ve got an idea for how the little fellas can help us. But right now, let’s go see what CSI can pull off the laptop, and then get it booted up.’

They drove back to San Francisco, la Rosa at the wheel and Raveneau talking with Public Works in Los Altos. In the CSI office several fingerprints got pulled from the laptop, though all but three were smudged. One was a fourteen pointer that matched Stoltz and there were hairs and a piece of a small scab vacuumed out of the spaces between the keyboard keys.

Raveneau had to step away to talk to the Public Works guys again. He needed a truck and some uniforms, but they had a protocol. It took the chief of police in Los Altos and a number of calls.

‘We want it to be credible,’ Raveneau said. ‘It’s got to be an emergency response as though you’d just discovered these rats, a public health warning, an infestation you’re acting on immediately.’

‘That’s just going to give us bad press. It could get someone here fired.’

‘No one is going to care. They’ll just be surprised you’re acting so fast and then we’ll explain it all later.’

‘What is it you’re going to explain?’

‘I can’t tell you yet.’

There was silence on the other end, but he hadn’t said anything about the backpack and laptop. He’d told the Public Works guy, Corrigan, next to nothing and yet was asking him to provide a truck and uniforms and at least one employee who could play along.

‘There actually are a lot of rats down there. You do have an infestation.’

‘There are rats everywhere on earth.’

‘OK, well, these are the ones that can help us.’

‘When do you need all this by?’

‘This afternoon.’

They booted up the laptop and ran into a firewall and after an hour of trying to get through called one of the contract techs the city used. As the techs huddled over the laptop Raveneau and la Rosa went down to Café Roma for coffee.

‘The last thing I need is coffee,’ la Rosa said as they crossed Bryant. ‘I’m already too wired up.’

But she bought a piece of chocolate cake and a big coffee. He got a coffee and they took a table. It was hard waiting and there was no way of saying how long it would be. Behind him, on the other side of a glass wall, someone worked on the big coffee roaster.

‘How’s your scalp?’ he asked, and la Rosa the college basketball player, the girl who’d torn her ACL playing soccer as a kid and carried a scar on her leg from that repair and another scar above her left eyebrow from a lacrosse stick, leaned over toward him and lifted her hair. She was proud of how it was healing. Healthy red pink healing tissue swelled around the black stitches.

‘Looks good.’

‘I heal fast.’

‘What about inside?’

‘Are you asking if I’m thinking about how close a call it was?’

‘I am.’

‘You’re thinking a situation could come up with Stoltz.’

‘It could.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it, but you’re not imagining you’re going to leave me behind.’

‘I’m asking how you feel.’

She picked up her coffee and then set it down again.

‘I admit I didn’t want to get in that culvert with you. I should have gotten in there with you because he could have been in there.’

‘I’m not asking about that.’

‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me, so it’s not easy to answer your question.’

‘You’re not answering it.’

Raveneau’s phone rang and it was the computer tech, Meacham. At the counter, the two employees standing there watched his reaction. The city was waiting and watching. La Rosa watched him, as did the media pair at another table, but he didn’t betray any of what he felt about what Meacham had just said. He leaned toward la Rosa, said quietly, ‘He got through.’