Harris drove Spencer home later.

“Thanks for the help back there.” she said.
“Thanks for pushing the right buttons and closing the case. Is your shoulder going to be OK?”
“Yep. It’s just a bruise.”
“How’s your dad doing?”
“Not good. We’re going to put him in hospice.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. How’s it going with Sally?”
“She finally responded to one of my texts. But I’m still couch surfing.”

Spencer smiled. Harris smiled. Spencer chuckled. Harris chuckled. Then both detectives were laughing deeply, laughing hysterically, laughing to forget.

“If you confess to the murders now, Jerry, things will go easier for you later.” said Harris.
“So now it’s multiple murders?”
“We talked to your cousin. He helped us find something interesting up on Ramage Peak.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jerry started straightening the papers on the table again.

“He’s right, Jerry.” said Spencer. “Confessing will help reduce your sentence. You know it’s pretty overcrowded in California prisons nowdays. There are always other prisoners sharing your cell. Getting into your stuff. Messing up your stuff.”

Jerry looked at Spencer for a minute, then lunged at her. The flimsy table collapsed. The papers fluttered around the room.

“We found a body in your storage unit. Want to tell us how it got there?”
“I have no idea.”

Detectives Harris and Spencer were interviewing a murder suspect in a cramped interrogation room in the basement of the Oakland Police Department’s downtown headquarters. They sat across a cheap folding table from the suspect, Jerry, a Caucasian male in his early 20s. Harris continued to ask questions for a while, but Jerry continued to deny and evade, giving the detectives little to work with. Spencer noticed that Jerry had straightened his pre-interview paperwork and repositioned the pen he had used to fill it out five times so far.

“You wouldn’t happen to have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, would you Jerry?” Spencer asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?”

Spencer messed up the papers and pen, spreading them around the table.

“Let’s just leave these here for now, OK?”

Jerry looked at the mess, looked back up at the detectives, and swallowed.

“So do you need anything else from me?”

Detective Sue Spencer entered the hospital room. Her father was asleep on the bed, hooked up to beeping machines. Her sister Megan was asleep in an adjacent chair. Spencer gently shook her sister awake.

“Where have you been? And why are your pants and shoes so dirty?”
“Long day at work. How’s he doing?”
“They want to refer him to hospice care.”
“No.”
“Susie. They said he has a week or two, tops. This way he can die at home in peace.”
“He’s not going to die. We need to get second opinions, clinical trials, whatever. We can’t just give up.”
“We have to face it: he’s dying. Trying to fight it won’t help him.”

Later that night Spencer drove down to the Berkeley Marina. She parked, pulled a flask out of the glove, and took a long drink. She looked out at San Francisco, shimmering above dark waters.

One cold February morning Detectives Frank Harris and Sue Spencer of the Oakland Police Department’s Homicide Unit set out on foot from Lake Chabot, heading northeast along the Ramage Peak trail. Harris was carrying a large duffel bag. The trail was rugged and hilly. It led them into the East Bay Municipal Utility District watershed, a restricted area containing several reservoirs which constituted the water supply for one-and-a-half million East Bay residents. Despite its life-giving importance and central location in the East Bay hills, few people knew about the area’s existence, and fewer still came here. The detectives saw no one.

It took them three hours to reach Ramage Peak. From here they could see Mount Diablo to the east, and Mount Tam far away to the west, but beyond those familiar landmarks there was nothing to tell them that they were still in the Bay Area, no signs of human development. The vanishing landscape that had given way to suburbs and freeways reappeared for them here as it once was.

“This must be it, the oak tree on Ramage Peak.” said Harris.

He unzipped his duffel bag and took out two shovels.

The outdoor storage facility operator opened Unit #255 for Frank Harris and Sue Spencer. Both detectives took out handkerchiefs, a piece of equipment every bit as important to this line of work as a pistol and a badge, and covered their noses. The body inside had been decomposing for several days.

Later that morning they went to Art’s Place for breakfast.

“Let’s go talk to the roommate next.” said Harris.
“Sure.” said Spencer. “You’re the primary. So…I heard Sally kicked you out.”
Harris sighed.
“Getting too friendly with everyone’s favorite Assistant Medical Examiner, eh?”
“Will you please drop it? Gossip behind my back but I don’t want to hear it.”
“Oh come on, I’m just messing with you. I’m sure things will settle down at home soon.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”

They finished breakfast in silence.

“Come on, let’s go talk to that roommate.” said Spencer. “I’ll drive.”

“It was a freak accident.”

Homicide Detective Frank Harris sighed, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t been getting much sleep lately. Two weeks ago, his wife had kicked him out of the house after reading some flirtatious texts he had sent to a woman in the coroner’s office. He had been sleeping on a friend’s couch ever since. His exhaustion was making it more difficult to determine whether or not this young man was lying.

“So your friend was reaching for his wallet when he fell off the ski lift?”
“Yes.”
“We didn’t find a wallet on him.”
“Something. He was reaching for something. I just assumed it was his wallet.”
“You know what we did find, we found some emails where the two of you were arguing about money.”
“Are you saying you think I pushed him?! This is crazy.”
“I just want to better understand what happened.”
“I already told you what happened. A freak accident.”

Steve had been training for the Tour of California bike race, trying to break into the upper echelon of professional cycling, when the accident happened. He was descending from a training ride on Mount Diablo at about 40 mph when he rounded a corner and saw the snake. It was stretched out across the entire width of the road’s downhill lane, and about half the width of the oncoming, uphill lane. A car was driving uphill at the same time. Snake, bike, and car converged. Steve’s front wheel hit the snake’s body, throwing him over his handlebars and into the oncoming car.

Steve had suffered a serious spinal cord injury. He was currently paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors were still trying to determine if that was going to be a permanent condition. And Steve, in his hospital bed, was still trying to come to terms with the randomness of it all. If any of dozens of variables – his speed, the car’s speed, the snake’s movement, the time of day, anything – had not been just so, this never would have happened. He would still be training. He would still be whole.

Brad was Maggie’s husband and coach. He had once been a promising downhill ski racer himself, but had his career cut short by a gruesome crash which almost resulted in the loss of his left leg. It had taken many years and surgeries just for him to be able to walk again. He had spiralled into a deep depression during those years. All of his former friends from the sport seemed to have forgotten about him. Maggie and her father came and visited him one day, when he was still in a wheelchair, asking for his help. He emailed them some training routines, thinking that would be the end of it. But they kept coming back. They lived in Truckee, too, so it was convenient. Maggie had watched Brad when she was just a kid and he was in his prime. He ultimately agreed to coach her, full-time.

Two years after becoming her coach, Brad became Maggie’s husband. A year after that, Maggie qualified for the Olympics in Pyeongchang. Now she was standing atop the mountain in the final round of the downhill, awaiting her turn to try to make history.

“You’re my Warrior Angel.” Brad said.

Maggie kissed him, scooted up to the starting gate, and sped away.

“You can never give back what you took. You took our son away.”

Marie broke down sobbing and had to be escorted out of the courtroom by her husband Dave. She was speaking to 19-year-old Jeff Jones during the victim impact portion of his sentencing hearing for Gross Vehicular Manslaughter While Intoxicated. Five months prior Jones had been driving rapidly and drunkenly through Golden Gate Park when he crossed over into and beyond the oncoming lane, striking and killing Marie and Dave’s only son, Toby, who was riding his bike in the opposite direction. Jones tried to flee the scene, but drove into a tree a short distance away, breaking his arm in the process. He was quickly picked up by police.

Jones was sentenced to eight years at Folsom State Prison. Soon after starting his prison term he began writing letters to Marie. He sent the letters to the judge, hoping that he would forward them along. His first letter was a letter of apology. Subsequent letters told the story of his life – losing his mom to cancer at age 8, his father’s alcoholism, his lack of any family to rely upon. He described the conditions in the prison, and his efforts to survive there. Neither Marie nor the judge ever responded to any of his letters.

Jones was a model prisoner and won parole six years into his sentence. He wrote Marie with the news. He admitted to being scared about what awaited him on the outside. On his release day, he was given bus fare and his small handful of belongings. He walked to the bus stop, unsure of where he would go. A car pulled up. It was Marie.