The Golden Gate: A Novel

“Q: Mrs. Bainbridge, I’m giving you a chance to help your family. We know one of your three granddaughters is a murderer. I can convict all three as coconspirators, or you can tell me which one did it, and I’ll spare the other two. 

[NO RESPONSE FROM THE WITNESS.] 

Q: Did you hear me, Mrs. Bainbridge? 

A: I heard you, Mr. Doogan.”

This exchange establishes the novel’s central mystery while introducing the narrative frame of Mrs. Genevieve Bainbridge’s deposition. DA Doogan’s ultimatum creates immediate tension through his threat to convict all three granddaughters, revealing the legal stakes. Mrs. Bainbridge’s minimal response demonstrates both resistance to authority and reluctance to betray her family, establishing her character’s protective instincts that will prove central to the plot’s resolution.

“On top of it lay Iris, like a broken doll, face up, dark curls strewn, one eye open, her bare neck twisted at a terribly wrong angle. My Dy-Dee doll died twice. Once when I snapped her head off…and once under the sun lamp trying to get warm, she melted. 

Encircling Iris’s grotesquely bent neck was a laceration, fresh and thin and red and angry.”

This visceral description of six-year-old Isabella Stafford discovering her sister Iris’s body establishes the traumatic event that haunts the Bainbridge family. The simile “like a broken doll” foreshadows the Dy-Dee doll symbol that will recur throughout the narrative, connecting past trauma to present murder. The italicized text introduces ambiguity about who is speaking and suggests premeditation rather than accident, while the laceration detail hints at violence beyond the fall, establishing the mystery surrounding Iris’s death that parallels Walter Wilkinson’s murder and later connects to her missing necklace.

“He was spread out on the king-size bed, face up. Statesmanlike just a few hours earlier, now he was exposed from the waist down, genitalia limp and hairy nakedness splayed out. His black trousers were crumpled down to his ankles, and his legs were half on, half off the bed, bent at the knee, his polished black shoes a few inches off the floor. He still had on his white dress shirt, bowtie, and vest, which made the whole thing more disturbing, like accidentally catching someone in black tie on the toilet.”

Al Sullivan’s description of Wilkinson’s corpse reveals the murderer’s intent to humiliate and degrade the victim, not merely kill him. The contrast between Wilkinson’s earlier “statesmanlike” appearance and current exposed state suggests the stripping away of public facade to reveal private vulnerability.