Half Moon Bay: A Novel (Clay Edison Book 3)

The road to San Quentin State Prison runs through a village of the same name. Main Street, post office, snug clapboard houses originally built for prison staff and their families. Today the homes are privately owned. If you can get comfortable with having four thousand of California’s most dangerous offenders for neighbors, it’s a lovely place to live.

Picturesque cove. Stunning views. Easy access to wine country. The upscale mall a few miles down the freeway offers high-thread-count linens and artisanal salumi.

I passed a FOR SALE sign.

It’s a testament to the lunacy of the East Bay real estate market that I found myself asking how bad, really, my commute would be.

We couldn’t afford it, anyway.

Through the fog, the prison’s blocky shoulders shifted and rolled. I entered the lobby a few minutes late. Nieminen was nowhere to be seen. At twenty past he came tripping in, crimson and winded, as though he’d arrived on foot.

“Traffic,” he said. I’d taken the same route. Nothing exceptional.

A correctional sergeant named Blake Tipton led us along cinder-block corridors painted khaki and reeking of locker room. Over that, the acrid coating of bleach, fruitlessly applied. What noise I could hear was stifled and unsettling, like the tick of a faulty water heater, hinting at a violence scarcely contained.

“Fritz’ll be happy to see you,” Tipton said. “He doesn’t get a lot of visitors. I checked the log. Last one was his son, couple of years ago.”

“He has a son?” Nieminen asked.

“Three of them,” I said.

“Make that four, right?” Nieminen said. Winking.

I ignored him. Fritz Dormer was a monster, but he still had minimal rights, one of which was to learn about the death of his child before strangers did.

Nieminen must’ve interpreted my silence as a factual objection, because he corrected himself: “Well, sure. Now it’s back to three.”

—

PRISON UNIFORMS RUN on the baggy side. You’re not being fitted for the runway. Fritz Dormer’s was the pale blue of a lifer. Pushing seventy, he filled it out, knots of muscle bulging under crepey skin covered in a dense network of tattoos.

Elaborate scrollwork and gothic lettering, Norse and Nazi iconography, sheathing his arms and crawling out from under his collar. The irony seemed lost on him: In the effort to prove his own whiteness, he’d dyed himself black, square inch by square inch. The eagle-and-swastika spanned his throat. He rubbed at it, smoothing down a nicotine-stained horseshoe mustache as he took us in from across the steel table.

He smiled. “Oh goody.”

A voice like a lawnmower.

We introduced ourselves. I was in uniform, Nieminen in jacket and slacks, and it was to him—the More Important Person—that Dormer directed his attention.

“University police,” he said.

“That’s right,” Nieminen said.

“You come to enroll me, forget it. I already got my degree. Associate of arts in general education. Not from Berkeley, though. I ain’t sure I got the grades for that.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Nieminen said. “Always more to learn. You know what they say. Knowledge is power.”

“That so? Way I see it, power is power.” Dormer turned to me. “What’s your deal, sweetheart?”

The best way to break bad news is to do just that: break it. Fast.

I said, “Mr. Dormer, we recently discovered some human remains. The DNA came back a match to you. The decedent is your child. My condolences.”

No reaction—in itself a reaction, and what you might expect from the likes of Fritz Dormer. It takes a lot to get a psychopath revved up.

It was also possible he was stalling; or in shock; or he hadn’t heard me right.

Wait and watch his next move.

He leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and said nothing.

“Right now we’re still gathering information,” I said. “We don’t know the decedent’s name or the circumstances surrounding the death. We haven’t been able to identify the mother, either. I was hoping you’d be able to help us out.”

“Nope.”

“No, not willing, or no, not able?”

“Neither.”

“I understand that this must be hard for you.”

“It would be, if it wasn’t a bunch of bullshit. But it is. So, no. Not hard.”

“Which part do you think is bullshit?”

“My boys are alive and well. They send me Christmas cards.”

“They don’t visit, though,” Nieminen said.

Dormer stared at him. “Come again?”

I said, “The individual whose remains we found—”

“What’s that mean, ‘remains’? Found where?”

Wanting to preserve Nieminen’s line of questioning, I hesitated.

Dormer snorted. “Yeah. What I thought. Bullshit.”

“You want to see the lab report?” Nieminen said, feeling in his pockets.

Hard to say what he meant to accomplish. The report ran to half a page and contained nothing more descriptive than a pair of ID codes and a relationship probability.

“This here’s you,” Nieminen said. “And that’s the baby.”

To that point I hadn’t specified the age of the decedent.

At the word “baby” Dormer’s face registered a trace of—interest? Pity? Fear?

Nieminen didn’t notice, too busy reading upside down. “ ‘The probability of paternity is ninety-nine point nine nine percent.’ See? They didn’t have room for any more nines.”

“All I see’s words,” Dormer said.

The emotion—if that’s what it was—had evaporated.

“Anyone with a computer makes that in ten seconds,” he said. “Don’t mean shit.”

“We have no reason to lie to you,” Nieminen said. “Why would we?”

“Oh, I dunno. Prolly cause you’re a lying sack of squirrel turds.”

I thought of Luke’s comment—blood be blood—and asked myself what would matter to a man like Dormer, for whom racial purity was a cardinal value. “Genetically, this child is no different than your living children.”

Dormer shrugged. “So.”

“So, if it were mine, I’d want to understand what happened.”

“All right, what happened.”

“I’d want the mother to know. I’d want to provide a proper burial.”

“Gimme a shovel,” he said.

“More along the lines of covering costs.”

“I look like I got money to spare?”

“If you’re not willing to contribute,” I said, “I have a responsibility to search for next of kin who might be. Is there anyone you can think of who I should talk to?”

No answer.

“Your sons, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The decedent is their sibling.”

Another snort.

I glanced at Nieminen. He leaned on his palm, spectating.

“You have two sisters,” I said to Dormer.

“I got one. The other married a spic so I count her dead.”

“They might want to chip in.”

“Ask them. Do whatever the hell you want. I told you, doesn’t concern me.”

You could read his indifference through several different lenses.

The first, and simplest, was guilt. He’d been party to the child’s death, and the obvious strategy was denial.

Even if he was innocent, playing defense was the way to go. He had to assume that the child had not passed peacefully. Why else would I be speaking to him about discovered human remains? And why would a detective be present?

Or he was telling the truth and had no knowledge of the baby. That, in turn, could lead to paranoia: We’d cooked the whole thing up to incriminate him. Or not paranoia. Rational fear. He was in prison partly because he’d been fooled by not one but two cops.

I said, “You used to hang around Berkeley. Back in the day.”

“Did I?”

“You got arrested there a couple of times.”

“I got arrested everywhere. I couldn’t buy a gallon of milk without you motherfuckers crawling up my ass.”

“Wild scene, back then.”

Silence.

I said, “Late sixties, seventies.”

Dormer’s lips moved as if to spit. Whatever was welling up got swallowed. The swastika on his neck bulged briefly. “Shit. I was just a kid, then.”

“Come on now,” I said. “We both know you haven’t been a kid since you were about nine years old.”

Dormer laughed. “I got growed up, if that’s what you mean.”

“Where’d you hang out? Who’d you hang out with?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Big blank.”

“Living in a cage does funny things to your brain.”

“Drugs?”

“Aw gee, I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Girls?”

A faint smile. He couldn’t resist. “Here and there.”

“Anyone who you remember fondly?” I asked.

“Well, shit. The harvest was, how you say? Bountiful. Great big blur of pussy.”

“Start with a few names, maybe.”

Dormer nodded soberly, then peered at the ceiling, stroking his mustache, pondering. “Lemme see. There was your mother.” To Nieminen: “Followed by yours. Her pussy was big as a freeway lane.”

Finally the detective opened his mouth. “Hey ho. Unnecessary roughness.”

“Followed by both your sisters. At the same time,” Dormer said.

“We’ll be sure and check with them,” I said. “Anyone else?”

“I didn’t keep a diary. Tween you and me I never did go in for hippie chicks don’t shave their legs or pits. Make an effort, wouldja? Bush, that’s nice. These young fellas all want em smooth.” He sighed. Kids these days. “They’re pedos down deep. Where did this bullshit allegedly go down?”

I said, “You get any of these girls pregnant?”

“Nope.”

“You’re sure about that.”

“Knock a bitch up, she’s bound to come crying with her hand out.”

“And that never happened.”

“No, sir.”

“What about asking for money for an abortion?”

He iced over. “I don’t truck with that.”

“Not saying you would. But someone could ask—”

“That shit’s for”—he used an ugly word. “Let them wipe themselves out. Saves me a bullet.”

Revolted, I kept my poker face. “Look, obviously it didn’t end that way. The baby was born. What I’m wondering is if the mother could have approached you for money, then changed her mind.”

“Any cunt dumb enough to ask, I’d change her mind for her.”

“You think it’s possible there was a pregnancy but she didn’t mention it?”

“I think you make babies by fucking. I think I fucked a lot. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which question would that be.”

“Where’d it happen? You kept on talking like you didn’t hear me.”

Reluctantly, I looked to Nieminen.

“People’s Park,” Nieminen said. “In Berkeley? That mean anything to you?”

“The fuck’s that shithole got to do with anything?”

“They’re doing construction. The body came up in the dirt.”

Dormer stared at him. “In the park? How the fuck did it get there?”

“Right now that’s unclear,” Nieminen said.

“How did it die?”

“Also unclear.”

“Go fuck yourself, unclear.”

The lab report lay on the table. Dormer pressed his fingers to the page. “Boy or girl?”

“A boy,” I said.

Dormer nodded. He lifted the page up to the light, as if to peer into its depths.

Slowly, neatly, he tore it in half.

Twice more.

He gathered the pieces into a deck and set it in the center of the table. “I’m done talking to you clowns.”

—

NIEMINEN SAID, “NICE work.”

I looked at him. No sarcasm; he meant it.

We stood in the parking lot by the trunk of his Crown Vic, buffeted by gusts cutting off the water. An unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.

“That thing about him getting arrested in Berkeley?” he said. He turned out his pant pockets. “I like how you came up with that.”

All I’d done was read the file. “Thanks.”

“It rattled his cage. And that thing about having two sisters? Now he knows you know more than you’re letting on.”

I’d been trying to give Nieminen the benefit of the doubt. Now I accepted that his limp-noodle style wasn’t some sort of clever psychological long game, just habitual apathy.

I thought back to the night of the bones: UCPD chief Vogel chewing on his lip, trying to decide which detective to give the case to. He had to give it to someone. But at that point, pre-DNA-test, Vogel had no way of knowing if the remains were Native American or not. The best strategy, then, was to stall.

Call the one guy you could count on not to do shit.

Get Tom over here.

Florence Sibley had hesitated before obeying.

By the time Tom Nieminen got it in gear, the lawyers would have done their thing. People’s Park would be a distant memory, and the dorm would be halfway up.

The only question was if Vogel had ordered him directly not to do shit or was relying upon the detective’s innate sloth.

“Damn,” Nieminen said, patting himself. “You got a light?”

“Sorry.”

“Ah. Ah. Ah. Hang on.” He fished a squashed book of matches from an inner pocket. I watched as he struggled to keep one lit in the wind. Finally he succeeded, sucked hard, rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “So. What’s our play?”

I’d made my list before leaving the building.

Item one: Dormer’s sons.

“Not sure,” I said. “Why don’t I think it over and give you a call?”

“Sounds good. No rush.”

—

AMY’S CAR WAS still gone when I arrived home. Maryanne, our landlady, a sweet woman and an avid gardener, was in her front yard making use of the dregs of daylight, kneeling by a planter box sprouting with the rough arms of winter vegetables.

She tugged off her gloves and rose to greet me.

“I met your brother,” she said.

“Sorry. I should’ve warned you he’d be around.”

“No, no, not at all. He’s a sweetheart. Playing so nicely outside with the baby. We got to chatting. He gave me some wonderful pointers about soil restoration. He really knows his stuff.”

“That he does.”

“My kale’s looking good. I’ll bring you some.”

I thanked her and headed down the driveway.

Inside the guest cottage, Luke lay on the futon, watching a documentary about bodybuilders. His shovel feet dangled off the mattress edge. By tenth grade he wore a size fourteen. His friends used to call him El Roachkiller.

Charlotte snoozed on his chest.

“Yo, Captain America,” he murmured.

Formula powder on the kitchenette counter, wipes by the sink.

Not much worse than if it’d been me in charge. Better, possibly.

He reached for the remote and shut the TV off.

“She nailed me a little,” he said, indicating a spit-up stain near his shoulder. “I forgot the burp cloth.”

“Rookie mistake,” I said. “Can you hang out for ten more minutes so I can shower?”

“Yeah, man, have at it. I was right about to move her to the crib.”

“Don’t bother. She won’t transfer. I’ll get her from you when I’m done.”

He nodded.

But when I came out, wrapped in a towel, Luke was standing in the hallway, peering into the darkened nursery. He grinned at me and curtseyed.

“Kazaam,” he whispered.

Through the bars of the crib I could make out Charlotte’s still, small form. My first thought was that he’d put her down on her stomach or done something else equally dangerous. I barged into the room, heroic, ready to snatch her up out of harm’s way.

She was on her back. Eyes closed, lids fluttering, breathing slowly and smoothly.

I tiptoed out and shut the door. “How’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Move her without waking her up.”

“I mean. I waited till she was ready.”

“But how did you know when she was ready?”

“I don’t know. She felt ready.” He laughed. “You’re welcome.”

He went to collect his things.

Trailing him, I said, “Luke.”

“Mm?”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“I also wanted to…I’m sorry.”

He paused with his fleece halfway on. “What for?”

“You saved my ass today.”

“Yeah, bro. Anytime. She’s a great kid.”

“And I apologize if I suggested that you—I apologize.”

He fished out his key ring, twirling it on a long finger. “Nah, man.”

“I saw the new car. Looks great.”

“I know, right? Already I got two offers, but she’s so sweet I’m thinking I might keep her for a little.”

I nodded. “When you were away.”

He stopped twirling and looked at me.

“I should’ve come to see you more,” I said.

He stared at me. An awful sadness stole over him, and he seemed to age before my eyes, the decade he’d forfeited coming due. Shoulders caved, head bowed, the healthy tissue he’d worked so hard to rebuild shrinking back from the bone.

Then: whiplash: he straightened, swelling up like a rude totem made of eyes and mouth and fists. I saw the process reversing itself, saw him race backward through time. Twenty-two years old, eighteen, sixteen, stoking chaos, toppling my parents’ breakfront, igniting outmatched fistfights on the Siempre Verde courts.

Plowing a green Mustang through an intersection at seventy miles an hour, drunk, high, laughing.

He laughed. His laugh is my laugh, his smile, my smile, toothy and broad.

He clapped me on the shoulder. It stung. “All is blessed, bro. Say hi to Amy for me.”