A Killing in China Basin

FOUR


Toward dusk, as Raveneau returned to the homicide office, Cody Stoltz joked with the staff at a Starbucks in Palo Alto as he waited for his macchiato. Then on his way to a table he stopped briefly to check in with a middle-aged woman who’d been laid off and was looking for a job. He met her last time he was here. Same as today, she’d had her laptop open and was working on her resume. She seemed grateful that he took the time to say hello.

When he sat down it was at a corner table. He pulled out his laptop and used Google Earth to find Whitacre’s house. He wasn’t necessarily ever going to go anywhere with it, but it gave him pleasure to see Whitacre’s dumpy little stucco box with its faux Spanish look. Whitacre’s neighborhood wasn’t far from the freeway, so maybe the exhaust had caused Whitacre’s cancer. He hoped so. The lawn was dry, shrubs ratty, the pine tree sickly and out of place. Whitacre’s old American relic of a car sat in the driveway.

Past the car was a fence. On a long bike ride he once checked out the fence and gate. The fence was redwood, silver-gray with age. A couple of flagstones led from the white concrete of the driveway to the gate. Through the gate was a door to the kitchen. It was a nowhere house on a nowhere block in the bleak life Whitacre lived. But none of that changed what Whitacre had done.