The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin by Michael Craven

clue that the story he just told makes him seem like a total asshole.”
    I looked at Craig. Burned, hurt, but on to something with that last story. People often don’t know how they really are. Aren’t connected to what’s really happening with respect to their behavior. This was obviously an extreme example. Leaving a girl at a bar when you’re on a date with her is a strikingly clear asshole move. But people do things—lame things, insensitive things—to a much less severe degree all the time, and they often have no clue that they shouldn’t be doing them.
    Looking back, I know I’ve committed that crime before.
    â€œYou know what else I heard,” Craig said, in a way that suggested he wanted to prove to me, if I wasn’t convinced already, that Keaton was terrible. “I heard he date-raped a couple of girls in college. Like, forced himself on a coupleof girls who were too drunk or too wasted to stop it. I heard this, again, after the bar. I was at a party at a Mexican restaurant in Studio City. Big table. And at the next table over, another big table of people, I see one of the guys who used to come into the bar. So I start talking to him, and the guys with him tell me this date-rape stuff. I didn’t know those other guys, and I have no idea if what they were saying was true. And they didn’t give me names. They just said they’d heard it. Shit, maybe they knew I was licking my wounds and they were trying to make me feel better by telling me what an asshole Keaton was. But that would be a pretty fucked-up way to make me feel better. I believe it. And, man, think about that. Sleeping with a girl as she’s about to pass out. As she’s saying no, stop, don’t . I mean, who would even want to do that? I’ll tell you, what’s even weirder about that story is that Keaton got girls. When I knew him he did for sure. But I think he always did. Plenty of them. So he just did it for some kind of twisted power trip. What a freak. But I could see it. I could totally see it.”
    Man, this guy just loathed Keaton Fuller. Loathed him. Greer, Sydney—they didn’t have a lot of good things to say. But they at least kept their emotions somewhat in check. Not Craig Helton. His heart was right there on his sleeve. I appreciated it.
    I said, handing Craig my card, “I’m not really sure what else to ask you right now. I’d like to know I can call you if I come up with something. I’d also like to thank you for taking the time.”
    Craig nodded and said, “Call me anytime.”
    We stood up. We shook hands. And I left.

13
    I drove back down that depressing stretch of Valley road toward the freeway, hopped on it, headed south back over the hill. I got back to my office, yanked the slider open, sat down at my desk, and pulled out my MacBook Pro.
    I started typing up, in short, crisp bullets, what I knew so far. I do this throughout a case. Basic, brief pieces of information in chronological order. I constantly revise the notes, strip them back to the core nuggets of information. But I add things too, new insights, texture, context. It allows me to go back over the whole case quickly and gives me a simple, written-out narrative that I can print out, hold, and look at. It’s interesting, it helps me see where I am, and it often helps me decide where to go. As I waswriting out my bullets, I thought, Music, yes, music. I put on Lou Reed’s Street Hassle , the songs coming out of my new speakers loud and crisp. And then I started to type again. Actually, not true. I started to go insane. Street Hassle . Great, inventive record, but the wrong choice for right now. Too weird. Too maddening. I turned it off and sat there. I stopped typing for a sec. I just sat there, thinking. About this guy who nobody liked, getting a big hole put in his chest. About the people in his life at the time of the murder. The sheepish brother, the flaky