I had never been so happy to see a garden-variety multiple gunshot wound homicide as I was the next Wednesday.
We had operated the Office of Chief Medical Examiner on emergency protocol for four days. That meant twelve-hour shifts—me and Ted, side by side at our stations, performing one autopsy after another on the earthquake’s victims, all day Friday, straight through the weekend, and into the next week. We did forty-eight disaster-related cases over those four long days. Twenty-six were victims of the viaduct collapse, more than half of them John or Jane Does. Among the other earthquake cases, I autopsied a woman who had been killed by a beam falling off the roof of her own porch, a man electrocuted by a downed power line, and another man who had a heart attack in his car while it jumped around on its springs.
There were no child deaths. That was a blessing.
At the end of our twelve hours on Tuesday evening, Dr. Howe came back from a meeting with the heads of the city’s emergency response agencies and announced that he was returning us to regular work schedules. We had accumulated a huge backlog of ordinary cases while we cleared the earthquake autopsies, but the chief knew he couldn’t keep pushing us so hard. Everyone in the office was exhausted and short-fused, especially the 2578s. On the evening of day three, Donna Griello bit off my head in the locker room, about the way I’d laid out my shoes.
“And what are you doing in that stupid hat all the time?” she snapped, to boot.
By Wednesday morning I was ready to hang up my twenty-dollar watch cap. The bandages had come off, leaving behind some bruises and transient headaches, plus a fat, itchy scar under my hair. I hadn’t seen Anup since the week before, when he’d fed me his mom’s curry. By the time I’d finished each of my twelve-hour shifts and showered and changed and driven home through the traffic snarled by earthquake damage and its cleanup, I’d had only enough time and energy left for Bea and my bed. Plus Anup hadn’t so much as texted me—and I wasn’t going to be the first to reach out.
Uparty jak osioł, my mother used to mutter after me, especially as I got into my teenage years. She was right. I was and remain stubborn as a mule.
I was relieved, then, to be standing over a young man with three bullet holes in his chest. That morning, that ordinary Wednesday morning, I performed his autopsy and two more—a pedestrian-versus-car fatality and a pulmonary embolism hospital case we’d held over. Then, as a reminder that the disaster work wasn’t finished, I did an external on a delayed blunt trauma death from the viaduct collapse, bringing the total for that scene up to twenty-seven.
I had lunch at my desk. I didn’t enjoy it. Anup is a creative and clever cook. I am not. I chewed on a sad cheese-and-butter sandwich and a couple of pickles, and decided that it was time to step off the stubborn-mule train. If Anup wouldn’t do it first, it would have to be up to me. I texted him.
Before he could reply, my office phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. When I checked the mailbox, I found a whole bunch of messages, and realized I probably hadn’t checked them since the quake hit, so I dialed in. Two were from Natalie Haring, widow of the famous architect in the SoMa Centre case, looking for the death certificate. Another was Jeffrey Symond, Haring’s business partner, seeking the same thing on behalf of the firm. Then came messages from first an insurance company with a claim by Natalie Haring, and then a lawyer representing her.
“Hot potato,” I muttered to my empty office.
The last caller was a man who didn’t identify himself. He spoke at a rapid clip.
“Hello, this is about Leopold Haring. I need you to call me back right away. He was murdered. I know who did it. They’ll deny it, but I know it’s true. I’m not going to the police because they won’t believe me, they never have before. I mean, they... They won’t take me seriously. You will—I know you will believe me—because you’ve seen what they did to my papa. I need to talk to you. Call me right back, this is Oskar Haring.”
That was the end of the message. He’d hung up without leaving his number.
Psiakrew. Okay, I needed to triage the calls. Natalie was going last, that much was for sure, if she was already sending lawyers after me. I was dying to hear what Oskar Haring had to say, but had to check in with Inspectors Jones and Ramirez first.
I dialed them up and got Ramirez. “The family wants answers about the cause and manner of death. What can I tell them?”
“Nothing.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“Tell them the case is still under investigation.”
“Haring’s son, Oskar, left me a message claiming Haring was murdered, and he knows who did it.”
Ramirez grunted. “That guy. He’s fucking nuts. Did he sound nuts?”
“That’s not a term we like to use, Detective. I’ll grant you that he did exhibit a markedly manic affect in his phone message.”
“He’s a frequent-flier at our switchboard over here, been leaving me and Keith nonstop nutso messages. Don’t call him back, whatever you do. The case is still restricted.”
“Any idea how long it’s going to stay that way?”
“We’re working some leads.”
“What kind?”
“We been down the job site and done a bunch of interviews, picked up a few things. And a couple things off the hotline, too. We’re getting some motion.”
“I can’t just ignore these people.”
“Ignore Oskar Haring. Trust me on that.”
“What about the wife and the business partner? There are insurance companies involved now, and the wife’s sending lawyers after me.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“That’s your advice—?”
Ramirez laughed darkly. “Best of luck, Doc.”
I hung up on Ramirez and decided to start with Jeffrey Symond, Leopold Haring’s business partner, hoping he’d be the most levelheaded of the bunch. Right after the returning-your-call pleasantries, though, he put me on my back foot.
“What are the police doing about Leo’s death? That was a homicide detective at the site.”
“Inspector Keith Jones. Yes. But—”
“So they’re investigating this as a homicide?”
“Mr. Symond, I’m afraid I can’t talk about police procedure.”
“They have to take a look at Oskar. He’s certifiable—bipolar with paranoid features, and when he’s off his meds, he’s violent and dangerous. Have you talked to him?”
“I...uh, again, I can’t discuss...”
“Of course. But don’t believe a thing he tells you, Dr. Teska. Oskar comes up with all kinds of fantasies, believes they’re real—and then he acts on them. Poor Natalie. He’s given her nothing but grief since he was a teenager.”
“When we first spoke, you told me that the day Leo died, he had been in a fight with Oskar.”
“Oskar assaulted him. Bloodied his nose.”
“How do you know that?”
“When Leo arrived at our office, late to meet me and Natalie, he had a bloody handkerchief still pressed to it. There was blood on his shirt, too—he asked Natalie for one of those laundry wet wipes.”
That was interesting. It explained the recent trauma to the nose I’d found during the autopsy, and the dried blood in the dead man’s nostrils.
“Was that the first time they’d come to blows, that you know of?”
“It’s happened before.”
“Were the police ever called out?”
“No.”
“You sound sure about that.”
He hedged, then said, “Natalie has spoken to me about it. She didn’t want police involved. Leo certainly didn’t, either. But now they’ll have to be involved. They have to arrest Oskar. Right?”
“I don’t know. That’s a question for Inspectors Jones and Ramirez.”
“They’ll have to,” Jeff Symond said again. “What about the death certificate?”
“It might be a while. The earthquake—”
“Of course. But we need it right away.” Two things I didn’t like about Jeff Symond: he liked to cut me off, and he liked to say of course. “The insurance company is telling us we need the death certificate.”
“Who is we, Mr. Symond?”
“The company, of course. Apart from this being a personal disaster for me, and for poor Natalie, it’s a professional disaster, too. Leopold was one of the two principals in our firm. I’m the other. He was the one with the international reputation. He didn’t have much of a head for business, but he was a true creative genius, the soul of the firm. With Leo gone... Well, we’re going to have to restructure, of course. In the meantime, we need the insurance settlement money. Immediately. It’s a matter of dire urgency to the continuing survival of Haring & Symond. That’s Leo’s legacy, the business. I intend to preserve and protect it.”
I gave him my boilerplate answer about getting the death certificate filed as soon as circumstances allowed. Then I tried to sign off—but Jeff Symond wouldn’t let me.
“I’m begging you, Doctor,” he said. “Get the detectives to bring Oskar in. I’m... I’m afraid of Oskar. I’m certain he must’ve been involved in Leo’s death.”
I said something noncommittal that definitely did not include the word homicide, and suggested that Symond should call Inspector Jones to share his concerns. “Be sure to tell him everything you know about the bloody nose and any other incidents of domestic violence, okay?”
He agreed he would. I repeated my promise about filing the death certificate as soon as possible, and managed to end the call.
Why would Jeff Symond suspect that Leo Haring had been killed by his son? Symond had seen Haring’s body crushed by those pipes, to all appearances the grisly aftermath of a workplace accident. He didn’t—or shouldn’t—know about the bloody patch on Haring’s back and the fatal wound under it.
I typed up some call notes and added them to the activities section of my case file. Then I took a deep breath and called Natalie Haring.
Right off the bat, Natalie was talking about “closure.” Considering the calls from her insurance company and her lawyer, I figured by closure she meant money. She wanted the death certificate, with cause and manner. Cause of death and manner of death. She was careful and insistent in the way she demanded this. She’d done her homework.
“I’m afraid that, at this time, I can’t talk to you about the cause and manner of your husband’s death.”
“Of course you can, Doctor, that’s why we’re speaking.”
“There’s an ongoing police investigation, Mrs. Haring—”
“Wait. Why is that?”
“Because the death occurred at a workplace. Can you tell me why your husband went to the construction site that evening?”
“Leopold visited SoMa Centre nearly every day. He liked to go by at different times, so he wouldn’t be expected. He was sure they were rushing the work. Time is money in our business. Leopold could see that the contractors on that job were cutting into one to save on the other, and he wouldn’t stand for that. He wasn’t going to end up like Carlo Farnell.”
She didn’t explain what that meant, so I had to ask.
“Carlo drew up 185 Pine Street.”
Again—I had to ask.
“The Leaning Tower,” Natalie said, like it was a curse. “Carlo drafted the plans, handed them off, and walked away. But I’ll bet you can guess who is getting sued into bankruptcy now, after those plans were so badly executed. Leopold was not going to let that happen to him. He hasn’t had a major lawsuit resulting from his commissions in thirty years as an architect, and he wasn’t about to let this silly little job soil his reputation.”
It seemed to me that there was nothing silly about a six-hundred-something foot skyscraper in the beating heart of the most expensive real estate market in the country, but I kept that opinion to myself and asked instead what exactly Leopold Haring had suspected was going on that was so shoddy it merited his personal supervision.
“I don’t know,” Natalie Haring said. “He would only say it was substandard work. My part in our business is PR and marketing—I’m not an architect. I tried to get Leopold to tell me more, but he found the whole subject of SoMa Centre unbearably stressful and wouldn’t discuss it.”
She stopped, and I said nothing. I’m good at letting people talk. Sometimes they need to if they’ve just lost a loved one. Sometimes they tell me things that the autopsy never would have revealed. So I waited for Natalie Haring to keep talking about her husband, and she did.
“There were complaints from other stakeholders in the project, complaints that Leopold’s unbending quality control was slowing construction and costing everyone money and momentum.”
Something occurred to me. “Was one of those stakeholders Jeffrey Symond?” I asked.
Natalie surprised me: she laughed. “God, no. Jeff and Leo were partners. They had worked together for a long time and been friends even longer. No, Jeff is one of the only men Leopold really trusted.”
I wanted to ask her about Jeffrey Symond’s accusation that her son and husband had been in a fight on the day he died, but couldn’t be too blunt about it. I found a way in, as I always can, with the physical findings at autopsy.
“When I examined his body, I found your husband’s nose to be bloody and swollen. The injury looked like it was several hours old when he died.”
I paused to give Natalie a chance to volunteer what she knew. She didn’t.
“Can you tell me anything about that injury?”
“Leopold and Oskar were in a tussle that evening. Leopold wasn’t badly hurt. Neither was Oskar.”
“Were you there when it happened?”
“No. They were at our home and I was at the office with Jeffrey, working.”
“Waiting for Leopold to join you?”
“No.”
That was interesting. Jeffrey Symond had said they were expecting Haring to come.
“Did that kind of conflict happen often between Leopold and Oskar?”
“They challenge each other. They are, both of them, strong-willed. They have their moments of tension, but it doesn’t affect their love for one another. Oskar is very protective of both his father and me, you see. Sometimes overprotective—and it can cause him to fly off the handle a little. He’s a passionate boy.”
I scrolled through my notes. Oskar was twenty-three.
“Sometimes Oskar says things that are simply untrue, and this upsets Leopold.”
Natalie Haring didn’t sound defensive or even especially evasive. She sounded, if anything, a little rueful.
“What time did Leopold arrive at your office?”
“Six thirty or thereabouts.”
“Did he stay long?”
“Oh, no. He was in a hurry to get to SoMa Centre. I asked him not to go, but he was in a state. About the job site, I mean. He was adamant.”
So if Leopold Haring left his office a few minutes after 6:30, he was probably at SoMa Centre sometime around seven. That fit into the broad time-of-death estimate I had computed for Keith Jones. I would have to update it for him. That was a relief, at least: one solid piece of information pertaining to our investigation into the death of Leopold Haring. One piece of information, buried in a pile of blather. Natalie Haring and I went through our cordial goodbyes, and I hung up.
My perpetual stack of unfinished paperwork loomed over the phone. It was even taller than usual, thanks to the backlog of cases we’d deferred during the disaster. I rubbed the wound on my head with the heel of my hand, which eased its itching but sent a ricochet of pain across the inside of my skull.
“Hell with it,” I said out loud to no one, and decided, then and there, to swallow my pride, bug out of the office, and go spend some time with Anup—even though he hadn’t placed the first call. Before I could gather my things, though, Cameron Blake knocked at my door and stuck his head in. He informed me that someone named Oskar Haring was waiting for me.
“What...? Where?”
“He showed up at the public window, looking for you, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. He seems kind of agitated.”
“Great.”
“Who is he?”
“Remember the dead architect, with the pipes? His son.”
“Oh.”
“Daniel Ramirez in Homicide says they interviewed this guy, and he’s batshit crazy.”
“Oh.” Cameron was looking worried.
“Did you tell him I’m here, Cam?”
“No.”
“Good. Where is he?”
“I stuck him in the chapel.”
“Why would you do that?”
“It’s dark and quiet. I figured it’d calm him down.”
“Good thinking. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Donna’s here?”
“She’s covering for me at the public window.”
“Perfect. Bring Oskar into the Ops Shop and sit him down. Tell him I’ll be right there. That way you can be handy while I talk to him.”
“Hey, Jessie—we aren’t muscle, you know.”
“Oh, sorry. Then you go back to the window and send Donna to Ops. I’ll bet she could take him.”
Cameron Blake turned red. He resembled a fireplug whenever that happened. He got all stiff and formal, and said, “If you’re concerned about your safety while conducting an interview in this office, Doctor, then you ought to call the PD and ask them to send an officer.”
“We aren’t in the Hall anymore, Cam. They can’t just take an elevator down.”
Cameron, by way of answer, glared and shrugged. I was going to have to play my ace.
“Cam, do you remember last year? When I was assaulted in the morgue—?”
Cameron went from red to white. “Now, hold on...”
“I don’t want to repeat that experience.”
“I wasn’t even there!”
“Right.”
Cam started to protest again, but then thought better of it.
“Okay,” he said—and we proceeded with my plan.
Oskar had nervous eyes under bushy brows, small nostrils in a mousy nose, and bluish stubble against a complexion like an altar candle. He impressed me as a man who climbed out of bed every morning wound up three turns too tight.
“Are you the one investigating my father’s death?”
“Yes.”
“He was murdered.”
Yikes. I was going to have to tread carefully around the police restriction on discussing cause and manner with this guy.
“So you said in your message. What makes you think that?”
“My mother and Jeff Symond did it. One of them, or both. Or they hired someone. I don’t know the details.”
I said nothing, folded my hands across the table, put on a psychotherapist’s poker face.
“They’re sleeping together,” he added.
Over Oskar Haring’s shoulder I could see Cam at his desk, going through the motions of making noises on his keyboard. He had one eye on us.
“They needed to get rid of him. They arranged my papa’s death to get him out of the way, and to collect on insurance. They have a lot of insurance riding on him.”
Cam’s face came fully off his computer screen. I didn’t waver from my kindly-listening stance.
“They might have hired a hit man. I know I’m being followed. If you get my body, you’ll know, okay? You’ll know that if I turn up dead, it’s a hit.”
Oskar Haring watched my lack of reaction to his opening pitch and started to get, as Cam had put it, agitated. His head jerked on his neck, first left, then right. Cam returned his attention to his computer monitor before the jittery young man’s eyes could swing around and catch him eavesdropping.
“Tell me about the fight with your father,” I said.
“What fight?”
“I saw the injury to his face. The bloody nose.”
Oskar Haring looked down at his lap like a kid who’d been caught in a lie. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You hit him?”
“He hit me first.”
“Can you tell me what you were fighting about?”
“Something...that belongs to me.”
“What was that, Mr. Haring?”
He still had his head down, and mumbled the reply. “Opa’s rastengasser.”
“Sorry?”
Oskar Haring’s eyes came back up to meet mine, and I almost flinched from the ferocity behind them.
“You tell me something, Doctor. Tell me what else you found when you did my father’s autopsy. I’ll bet it isn’t what it looks like, is it? It wasn’t an accident.”
“I can’t talk to you about our investigation.”
“Oh, sure. Questions but no answers, like the cops.” The spring inside Oskar Haring was getting tighter. “How did they kill him? My papa didn’t lie down on the ground and let a pile of pipes get dropped on his head. So tell me how they did it.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve already said that I can’t discuss the investigation with you. Now, if you—”
“How?” he barked. “I know you know! How’d they kill him?”
“Mr. Haring, I’m going to advise you to reach out to Inspector Jones. He’s the one you ought to be talking to about your concerns.”
That was the signal. Cam and I had agreed on the homicide detective’s name as my safe word.
“Dr. Teska?” Cam said, holding up his phone. “Call for you.”
I nodded to Cam and said, “Please excuse me for a moment,” to Oskar Haring. The young man’s lips flapped like a gaffed cod’s, but he didn’t object aloud. I crossed the room to Cam’s desk, pretended to talk, and punched a button to put the fake call on hold.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Haring, but this is an urgent matter.” I turned my back on him and faced Cam. “I’ll take it in my office.”
“Yes, Dr. Teska,” Cam said, and gave me the evil eye for leaving him to do the dirty work.
I walked right out of the Ops Shop without another word to Oskar Haring. I stopped on the other side of the locked security door, to listen up and make sure Cam really could handle him. He did—calmly talking Oskar down from his frustration at the abrupt end to our meeting, and advising him that the next time he wanted to have a personal interview with a San Francisco medical examiner in the wake of a deadly earthquake, it would be best to call first and make an appointment.
We are, after all, busy people.
Anup wasn’t waiting for me at Mahoney Brothers #45. Bea certainly was, of course, and came bolting through the tiny, overgrown yard to tackle me at the gate. I gathered her leash for our nightly walk and sent Anup one more text, telling him I’d made it home safe. That would be all the texting, though. I wasn’t about to start spamming him like a worried wife.
Maybe we were a bad match, Anup and I. Thinking about it made the pain ricochet in my skull again. “Don’t let a man be a headache to you, Bea,” I counseled the dog. She paused her snuffling in the weedy underbrush of Golden Gate Park to glance up, but didn’t offer any advice in return.
Bea the beagle seemed especially passionate about one particular patch of dirt in a meadow of shaggy dune grass, so I let her linger there while I gazed up to enjoy the sunset, a beauty—a handful of high pink clouds, the red glow settling over the Pacific Ocean just beyond the eucalyptus and cypress trees. I was happy to be at leisure for a change. I still had plenty of time to cook dinner, have a bath in my cable car’s tiny tub—sunk into the floor under a trapdoor in the living room—and get to bed early. I could pay down some of my sleep deficit.
Assuming Anup didn’t call. What was my time limit? I decided I ought to decide one. Then I further decided that, never really having practiced at battle-of-the-sexes head games, I wasn’t about to start. Anup had better get his shit together.
Bea’s barking broke my spell. She stood over the weedy patch—only now it was a hole in the ground. I hadn’t even noticed her digging; she must’ve been fast. She barked one more time and then stood stock-still, nose out and tail rigid, one foreleg off the ground in a pointing pose.
Something was in the hole. I couldn’t see it, but it set off my alarms.
It smelled strongly of decomp.
I fished around in my pocket for my phone and got the light on.
It was a dead cat. Couple of weeks dead, in my professional opinion. Next to the cat was a dirty greeting card. Bea’s digging had flipped it open. Under the printed condolence message someone had written in pen, Rest in Peace, dear Rocky. A small bouquet of faded wildflowers, tied with a ribbon, completed the morbid tableau.
Bea was still pointing. I opened my mouth to admonish her for digging up poor Rocky’s grave—but then thought better. Instead, I gave her one of the training treats I kept in the pocket of my dog-walk jacket. I thought of the cadaver dogs at the King Street viaduct. I’d had Bea since she was a puppy, and hadn’t trained her to go around exhuming cats. She was a natural.
Anup finally texted me back while I was reinterring Rocky. He’d had to work late—they had a deadline on a hearing, and the judge wasn’t taking San Francisco’s earthquake delay as an excuse against timely submission.
First I was overworked. Now I had a break—for an evening—and Anup was overworked. It couldn’t be helped. But it was doing us no good, either.
I tamped down the dirt on the cat’s grave.