Page 17 of The Night We Lost Him

Sam points at him, smiles. “That right there,” he says. “That’s the first good question you’ve asked.”

Detective O’Brien doesn’t like this and gets busy looking down at his clipboard again.

I walk over to the break in the palisades and down to the landing where the gate is, set into the cliff itself. I pull on the gate’s rusty knob. There is a small lock over the opening, a keypad to set it free.

“What if they did know the code? From my father or some other way. Is there any electronic catalog of who entered that way?”

“No. It’s just a keypad, a manual lock. It’s not connected to the rest of the security system.”

I look up at the detective and Sam on the cliff’s edge. “Why?” I say. “That doesn’t seem particularly safe.”

Detective O’Brien offers a tight smile, failing to hide his increasing irritation. “That’s a question for your father,” he says. “It was his decision. As I said, it’s my understanding that privacy was of the utmost importance to him.”

“Did you at least look into who had access to the code?” I say. “It doesn’t seem like a bad idea to run out the scenarios as to who could have entered this way. Check their alibis…”

“Only if you believe that there is real evidence of foul play,” he says. “Which I do not.”

“Well maybe you should consider doing it now,” Sam says. “So we can all be that sure.”

O’Brien raises his eyebrows, like this is (next to continuing this conversation) the last thing he intends to do. And while I’m not at all convinced that anyone entered from these stairs, that look is the final nail in convincing me that his only concern here is keeping the case closed. Which is why I decide to press.

“Could you tell us a little more about the pedestrians, Detective?” I ask. “The three people who found my father? The couple and the jogger.”

O’Brien flips through his clipboard, lands on his witness reports. “The couple, Meredith and Nick Cooper, were house-sitting for the Velasquez family at 2082. They’d been there for the last several months while the Velasquez family was at their home up in Ross,” he says. “And they were doing their regular evening walk with their golden retriever when your father fell. Nick was the person who contacted 911.”

“And the jogger?”

Detective O’Brien pauses, as if not wanting to share what he is about to. “He was no longer there by the time the police arrived.”

Sam notes it at the same time I do. He meets my eyes.

“What do you mean no longer there?” Sam asks.

“Meredith, the wife, used to be a volunteer EMT, so once she determined that your father hadn’t survived impact, they decided she and her husband would wait for the police to arrive. They didn’t need his help.”

“You don’t think that’s suspicious?” Sam says.

“I think people choose to live here because they want privacy. And your father was clearly no longer alive, so it wasn’t like there was anything to do. He probably didn’t want to be involved.”

Or he was involved, I think before I can stop myself. I walk back up the landing, holding his gaze.

“But the Coopers didn’t recognize the jogger?”

“No, they didn’t recognize him, but again they aren’t homeowners. They are just house-sitting, so…”

“For several months, though, yes?” Sam says. “You just said they had been staying here for several months.”

He nods reluctantly, and I know he recognizes what Sam is suggesting, even if he doesn’t want to see it himself. Something about that doesn’t track. If the Coopers walk their dog every night and this man jogs with any frequency, you would think they’d have run into each other before that night. Or since that night. It’s a fairly safe bet that people living on this small strip of beach would run into each other more than once.

And then there is this: Why is this the first time we are hearing that one of three people on the scene, who apparently wasn’t recognized by the other two, left before he could be interviewed?

“I thought you said that you obtained witness statements from all of the witnesses?” I say.

“That may be what you heard.”

“That’s what we both heard,” Sam says. “Because that’s what you said.”

Detective O’Brien sighs. He actually sighs. “Look, guys, I lost my father last year. I get that this is all painful,” he says. “But I learned early in my training, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”

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