Bret’s visit to the Kellner residence is the moment Matt Kellner’s death ceases to fit the simple explanation of an accident. Drawn back to the place where their relationship had unfolded, Bret finds Matt’s parents still unable to explain their son’s death. The photographs and details Ronald Kellner shares point toward violence and possible staging, while the encounter leaves Bret carrying both a disturbing new suspicion and a private reminder of his connection to Matt.

The Return to Haskell Avenue

After leaving Susan’s car, Bret gets into the Mercedes and drives toward Matt’s house without knowing why. He passes through the Buckley parking lot and continues to Haskell Avenue in a daze. The familiar street and house appear unchanged, but Bret’s knowledge that Matt is dead transforms the journey: the place he once approached with erotic anticipation now draws fear from him, and the pool house becomes inseparable from loss.

Bret finds the gate and the pool-house door unlocked. Inside, the room is unusually bare: the bed has been stripped, the aquarium is empty, and the surfboards and shellacked dolphin remain as reminders of the space Matt inhabited. The column by the entrance is wrapped in blue plastic. Bret does not yet know what it conceals, but its presence suggests that the death may involve something more than the accident he has been led to expect. Standing in the fading light, he recognizes that the pool house has become part of his past, a place whose meaning survives even though Matt is gone.

An Unresolved Death

Bret encounters Sheila Kellner in the gazebo. When she asks whether she can help, he explains that he was Matt’s friend, correcting himself from the present tense to the past. Sheila says that the family does not know exactly what happened to her son. She recalls that Matt was badly bruised, including on his face, chest, back, and legs. Bret tentatively suggests that the injuries could have come from a fall into the pool, but Sheila’s account makes that explanation difficult to accept.

Ronald Kellner also rejects certainty. He tells Bret that he and Sheila do not know what really happened and invites him to look at photographs taken by a crime-scene photographer. The images show Matt’s body beside the pool, with bruising and other wounds that do not readily support a simple drowning. Bret recognizes Matt, but the photographs make their familiar intimacy collide with the evidence of an unexplained death. The encounter shifts the visit from an awkward attempt to understand what happened into a confrontation with the possibility that Matt was harmed.

Evidence Against the Official Account

Ronald describes the official explanation assembled from the scene and the autopsy report: Matt may have taken drugs, experienced a psychotic episode, injured himself, and then fallen into the pool and drowned. The account includes a reported six thousand milligrams of methaqualone in Matt’s system and blood in the front seat and on the dashboard of his red Datsun. Ronald says the authorities treated the blood as evidence of a suicide attempt during a psychotic episode.

The account is unsettled by the animal remains at the pool house. Ronald shows Bret photographs of Alex, Matt’s cat, whose body had been fastened to the entrance column and whose head had been placed by the pool. The scene recalls a wider pattern in which pets and other neighborhood animals disappeared before attacks attributed to the Trawler. But the photographs alone do not establish who killed Alex or how the cat’s death relates to Matt’s. Bret’s disbelief rests partly on his own experience of Matt: he doubts that Matt, who could be too stoned to get up and reach a television remote, could have carried out the elaborate acts described in the official scenario.

Ronald’s Suspicions and Bret’s Retreat

Ronald offers an alternative explanation as a suspicion, not a proven account. He believes someone may have been with Matt, supplied him with drugs, struck him, and put him in the pool. He also thinks the death was staged and raises the possibility that someone drove Matt to Crystal Cove, or drove there and left his backpack. Ronald says he first mistook Bret for Robert Mallory because Matt had mentioned possibly spending time with someone named Robert. His recollection gives Bret a new lead, but it does not establish Robert’s responsibility.

The following morning, Bret decides to act as if life is normal. He makes a schedule and resolves to reduce his drug use and drinking, using routine to recover a sense of control. Yet the visit cannot be cleanly put away: he finds Matt’s jockey shorts in his pocket and hides them in a desk drawer, while a note bearing the initials RM and a phone number becomes another unresolved trace. His outward plan is to erase the past; the objects he carries home show how the visit has made that impossible.

What the Visit Leaves Behind

The visit does not resolve Matt’s death; it changes the shape of what Bret can ignore. The next morning, after sleeping through the night, Bret decides to perform normality through a strict routine and to stop letting fear govern him. But the clothing he took from the pool house remains in his pocket, and he puts Matt’s jockey shorts away in a drawer rather than confronting their significance. He also keeps a note from Matt’s desk bearing the initials RM and a phone number. The two objects register different parts of the encounter: the shorts preserve Bret’s private connection to Matt, while the note points toward Robert Mallory and the possibility that Matt’s final days involved someone Bret does not yet understand.

What the Visit Leaves Behind

The visit does not resolve Matt Kellner’s death; it changes what Bret can continue to dismiss. The next morning, after sleeping through the night, Bret decides to perform normality through a strict routine and to stop letting fear govern him. Yet the objects he brought back from the pool house remain: Matt’s jockey shorts, which Bret hides in a desk drawer, and a note from Matt’s desk bearing the initials RM and a phone number, which he slips into his jacket. The shorts preserve a private connection Bret tries to erase; the note points toward Robert Mallory and a question about Matt’s final days that the visit has opened but cannot answer.