And here’s something else you should know about me. In addition to being irresolute, I’m also a quitter. I’m not ashamed. I find that it often takes more courage to stop doing something you despise than to continue blindly along the wrong path. You usually save yourself, and others, a lot of grief by acknowledging your failure and moving on. But walking out on those kids—entitled spawn of venture capitalists and software magnates that they were—in the middle of the day, in the middle of the term was wrong. Plain wrong. The thing was, I couldn’t have not done it. Another double negative. But seriously. If I’d had to spend another minute in that beautifully appointed classroom overlooking the rolling hills of the San Francisco Peninsula’s richest real estate, I would have slit my wrists. Peter, reasonably enough, asked me whether I’d feel more . . . useful . . . teaching inner city kids. But the point wasn’t that I felt useless. I’m not sure what the point was, except I got the same kind of choked-up-difficult-to-breathe feeling that had been the breaking point in Sam Adams’s (yours truly) legal career misadventure. No beer jokes, please, I’ve heard them all.
I stumbled into my current situation, like I stumble into everything. About four years ago, Peter and I were living on Curtner in a dismal two-bedroom apartment. I’d just quit teaching. Peter was finishing up his master’s. Palo Alto doesn’t have many streets that aren’t safe, but Curtner is one of them. Do a search of the California Sexual Predator’s online database, and all the little red dots congregate around Curtner—about the only area in town where a sexual predator wouldn’t be kicked out five minutes after he moved in. I’ll say this about Curtner: People were tolerant. Well, I was back to using my bike after a four-year hiatus—depended on it, in fact, to get around as my car had died and I didn’t have the money to fix it—and so was mad as hell when someone sawed through the heavy chain I’d specially purchased and made off with my ride. I loved that bike, had viewed it as my vehicle of liberation. An antidote to my stint as a teacher of the privileged.
My fit of rage over the theft propelled me onto a bus downtown and into police headquarters. I was given a form by a bored clerk and began filling it out despite the fact that my bike was probably worth less than two hundred dollars and therefore the report wouldn’t be considered worth anyone’s time. Then I saw the notice, tacked on the bulletin board. The police department was hiring. All that was required was an undergraduate degree and a clean record.
As it turned out, they mainly needed bodies to patrol the Stanford campus and try to prevent the kids from doing anything too dangerous. I tend to interview well, so that part was easy. They also gave me an aptitude test, and I passed with flying colors. Apparently my whole life I’ve been aching to lay down the law—not in the courtroom, but in the streets. It figures. I tend to be a little prissy about rules.
I know about as much as anyone what kind of bad things good kids can get up to, and I have a lot of tolerance for the undergraduate age group. This made me fairly popular on campus, and I gained a reputation as a trustworthy person among all parties. Surprisingly, the work suited me. I liked the camaraderie at the station house. I wasn’t scared of drunk freshmen, even if they were bigger than me. I didn’t mind getting yelled at or wept on. I had more trouble coping with the suicide-minded kids and the violent crimes—we generally had one or two sexual assaults on campus per quarter. But I found I had a cool head and sufficient authority to handle even these difficult cases, and so the first year passed rather quickly and satisfactorily. After that, three more years whooshed by. Then, just when I was beginning to think I had gotten into a rut, a detective position opened up. It offered a bigger paycheck, which sounded pretty good to me. But it was also a chance to get out of the itchy uniform into some comfortable clothes and use my brain. I’d begun to stagnate, to stink, even, with what was getting dangerously close to boredom. Again interviews. Again the aptitude test. A bunch of tedious training. And I got the promotion. Detective Samantha Adams. But everyone calls me Sam.
So it’s about 1 PM on a sunny May day. We’ve just gotten home from Cook’s—home being the smallest rental house in Palo Alto—and kick off our shoes. Peter is about to make a pot of his world-famous veggie chili when I get a call.
I put my shoes back on.
“What’s up?” Peter comes out of the kitchen. He looks sad. Our schedules don’t always sync, and Saturdays are supposed to be sacred.
“Someone croaked over at the Westin,” I say. I’m still in a bit of shock.
Peter groans. “Can’t it wait?”
“No. This is serious. I need to meet Jake and the county’s CSI team there.” Jake is the Santa Clara County medical examiner. “Mollie says it looks suspicious.”
“So?” Peter asks.
“So, what I’m saying is that this might be an actual murder. In Palo Alto.”