Half Moon Bay

On a damp Saturday, just last year, the sixties finally died in Berkeley.

On Sunday, I came for the bones.

The end began the day after Christmas, at dawn. With a wrecking crew standing by, a team of University of California police officers entered People s Park to rouse the two dozen bodies curled limp in the bushes, pressed against tree trunks, atop and under benches, ordering them to vacate the premises.

The third sweep in as many days.

Each time, the park residents who d been kicked out at six a.m. came back at ten p.m. to bed down, as though returning from a long day at the office.

A week prior, the university had installed a chain-link fence around the perimeter. It had been scaled, sheared open, knocked down.

A month before that, campus cops had circulated through the neighborhood, handing out flyers giving notice of the demolition and verbally notifying those who refused the paper or threw it back, in one instance using it first to wipe an ass.

The previous year, the architecture firm contracted for the project had erected large multicolored signs along Dwight Way and Haste Street depicting a pristine six-story dormitory alongside detached ground-floor units of supportive housing for the homeless.

Modern. Clean. Green. The drawings showed faceless humanoids gliding through streak-free glass doors. It was impossible to tell the students from the homeless. Everyone was wearing a backpack.

Within days, Berkeley Fire found the signs ablaze in a dumpster.

Articles about the closure of the park and op-eds either lamenting or celebrating its demise had been a fixture of local media for four years running. There d been a public hearing, two lawsuits, multiple town halls, and city council meetings too numerous to count.

Nobody could claim they hadn t been warned.

The run-up to Demolition Day was a continuation of a fifty-year tug-of-war, begun when a group of hippies wielding gardening implements converged on a muddy, disused lot

Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than forty crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The Murderer s Daughter. With his wife, Faye Kellerman, he co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. With his son, Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored Crime Scene, A Measure of Darkness, The Golem of Hollywood, and The Golem of Paris. He is also the author of two children s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Psychological Association. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California and New Mexico.

Jesse Kellerman won the Princess Grace Award for best young American playwright and is the author of Sunstroke, Trouble (nominated for the ITW Thriller Award for Best Novel), The Genius (winner of the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle), The Executor, and Potboiler (nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel). He lives in California.

Praise for the Clay Edison series

As for the keen sense of drama, it must be a genetic trait. . . . Unlike most crime writers (not to mention most of their readers), who revel in the bloody aftermath of a violent encounter, the Kellermans show compassion for the survivors, including conscientious officials like Edison. The New York Times Book Review

Edison is an interesting protagonist, a good man for whom finding the truth is more important than anything else, including his own safety. He s gentle and strong, compassionate and ruthless, methodical and impulsive. Booklist

Praise for Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman s psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix. Los Angeles Times

[Jesse] Kellerman has a gift for creating compelling characters as well as for crafting an ingenious plot that grabs the reader and refuses to let go. Publishers Weekly (starred review)