A Killing in China Basin

NINE


Raveneau knew the muffled voice might be no more than someone with a grudge against police who was hovering at the edge of a homicide investigation, hoping to screw with them. It happens. But the call had unsettled him and he felt tired and on edge as he drove home. He should have stopped at a grocery store, but didn’t. He rode the service elevator to the second floor and climbed the narrow flight of wooden stairs up to the rooftop apartment.

A clean rain-laden wind blew in off the ocean and he left the slider open as he tried to figure out what to eat. Leftover pasta looked like glue, but there wasn’t much else. He heated a little olive oil in a sauté pan, slid the pasta in, and was adjusting the burner down as the phone rang. Celeste.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hey, yourself, I’m in San Francisco. I did a wine thing today. What are you doing right now?’

Celeste was a wine broker he’d started going out with about a month ago. He was starting to get the picture about how she organized tastings and sold wine, and in truth, he probably knew more about her job than her. But they were easy about all that and it was good to hear her voice tonight.

‘I’m heating up some leftover pasta and it’s going to be terrible. Come on over and I’ll split it with you. Where are you?’

‘On the Embarcadero, but if you just got home you must be exhausted.’

‘No, I’m good.’

She called again as she arrived and Raveneau unlocked the gate so she could park next to his unmarked cruiser. That he lived on top of a warehouse with a coffee house on the floor below in the corner of the building was fun to her, and for Raveneau living up here was fine for the moment. He kept an eye on the building for the owner and liked the big roof and the view from the brick parapet. A three foot wide wooden walkway ran from the stairway door to a redwood deck off the apartment.

Raveneau barbecued on the deck regularly. His cop friends called it the rooftop bar and likened the walkway to something you’d see in the Everglades for viewing alligators, and the tar and gravel roof in the September heat to the La Brea tar pits. He laughed along with them, but he wasn’t looking to buy another house. He sold his house after Chris was killed, and then the market fell and no one really knew where it was all going to end.

And he didn’t know any more where he stood on the homicide detail. He was basically a mostly white older guy on a squad that was trying to become more diverse to better reflect the city. If not for his solve rate he likely would have been bumped out already. A month ago he was approached about partial retirement or early retirement, neither of which he had any interest in, both of which were good reasons not to buy another house.

Celeste was forty-four and never married. She lived with a boyfriend for fifteen years and then the boyfriend left her and married someone else within three months. She drove a Miata with a license plate that read ‘No Kids,’ though when she talked about kids she was wistful and close to sad. She was cheerful tonight though and pulled a bottle of Cristal champagne out of her bag saying, ‘Perks.’

Raveneau popped the cork and poured them each a glass. She was a sweet, graceful, hopeful human being, and when he was with her he forgot his own loneliness even as he was seeing it in her. He was very glad she’d called. He watched her step out on the deck and lean to smell the leaves of the potted lemon trees that ringed it.

‘I’m going to grill cheese sandwiches,’ he said. ‘This pasta isn’t going to work.’

He scraped it into the garbage as Celeste came back inside and checked out the videos near his TV.

‘Are any of these any good?’

‘They’re from crime scenes. I bring them home to watch and try to figure out what I’ve missed.’

‘But not tonight?’

‘Definitely not tonight.’

He refilled her glass but not his own. When the sandwiches were ready they ate, and Raveneau realized what was causing her nervousness after they were sitting near each other on the couch and the sandwich plates were back in the kitchen. She turned toward him as the first rain pattered on to the deck boards and blew against the slider.

‘Rain,’ she said, her mouth just inches from his, and then it just kind of unfolded and he tasted the cold, sweet champagne on her lips and tongue. They moved into the bedroom while in the front room Gillian Welch sang a faraway song about a hickory wind. The feeling of being with a woman again almost overwhelmed him. It’s funny how you think you know something so well and all the while, every day, you’re forgetting what it was.