HOPP Duwamish When we arrived at Herring’s House Park, the police were clearing off the yellow warning tape and packing their forensics bags and boxes, closing their case of an odd death in a parking lot and moving on. Kay Erwin, epidemiologist at Seattle Public Health Hospital, had declared it shellfish poisoning, and the cops had quickly lost interest. But Peyton McKean was of a different mind. He was getting the lay of what had happened two days before by interrogating a young cop, rapid fire, as the officer rolled up the crime scene tape. “The body lay here?” McKean asked, drawing an imaginary oblong line around a spot in the middle of the damp gravel. “Uh huh,” answered the officer, stashing tape in a black garbage bag. “And the victim’s pickup, parked here?” said McKean, sawing a transect line from the parking bumpers out into the lot with his long-fingered hands. “’At’s right,” said the officer, cinching the bag and pausing to gaze amusedly at McKean, who moved animatedly around the rain-drizzled lot quickly on long legs, marching off distances with his hands tucked behind his back like some intense, gangly schoolteacher.
