Glitsky 02 - Guilt

by John Lescroart

23

  Christina stood by the French doors and watched Dooher move about his backyard, greeting the other mourners.

  She was fighting the feeling that she really didn't belong here, guilt that in her heart she didn't mourn Sheila Dooher's passing. It freed Mark - there was no sense denying it. She sighed heavily.

  'I'm glad you're here. I don't know anybody.'

  She turned to see Sam Duncan, her arm still in a cast. 'You know me now. But why are you here?'

  Sam gestured behind her. 'Wes. He's taking over details for Mark for a while. Even without the police stuff, this whole thing is just so horrible.'

  Christina laid a hand on Sam's arm. 'What police stuff?'

  'Damn.' Sam's face clouded. 'I'm not supposed to talk about it. Wes doesn't want any rumors going around.' She lowered her voice. 'He's worried that they're going to say Mark did it, killed his wife.'

  Christina mouth dropped. The idea was absurd. 'What? He wasn't even here, was he? How could he have—'

  'I know, but Wes is afraid they might. I mean, so soon after the Trang thing and all.'

  'But they didn't find anything there either.'

  'No, but apparently our friend Sergeant Glitsky didn't like being proven wrong. And he's the Inspector on this case.'

  'But Mark wasn't even here!'

  'Evidently the police can make a case that he was.' Sam held up a hand. 'Wes says if they really want to get you, they can make your life pretty miserable.'

  'I guess they didn't really want to get Levon Copes.'

  Sam made a face. 'Still a sore subject. But that was Glitsky, too.'

  'But what does Glitsky have against Mark?'

  'No one knows. Wes isn't sure if there's any reason. And nothing's happened yet. He's just worried. He thinks Glitsky might be overworked and guessing wrong. He did screw up on Levon Copes. And you know about his search warrant on Mark. There's two strikes.'

  'You don't think he'd plant evidence, do you? The police don't really do that, do they?'

  Sam shrugged. 'I don't know what they'd do.'

  Farrell was sitting in a corner of the kitchen with a beer, listening to Mark's two youngest children, Jason and Susan, talking to their friends. He'd known the two kids their whole lives, and they looked very much alike, both very thin with slack blondish hair, waif-like features, and piercing green eyes - Mark's eyes. Susan wore black silk - tunic and pants - and Jason had the baggy pants, an outsized brand-new dress shirt buttoned to the collar, a camouflage jacket.

  None of Farrells own kids had made it home for the funeral, which very much disappointed him, especially since Sheila and Mark had been godparents to Michelle, his youngest. But he consoled himself with the fact that neither had Mark's eldest, Mark Jr, the wildcatter sculptor.

  Wes had tried to help Dooher out with breaking the brutal news, making the call to Mark Jr, and had been unprepared for the venom he'd heard. His dad never needed him for anything before - he didn't need to see him now. Besides, it was too much of a hassle to come down from Alaska, he said. His mom was already dead anyway. What good was it going to do? And he didn't have the money to spare.

  Oh, Dad was offering to pay, to fly him down? No, thanks - one way or another, he'd wind up owing him. He'd have to pay. Even for something like this.

  All the young people were drinking beer.

  He was comfortable here in the kitchen with them, especially since Lydia was out in the great room, mingling as she did. So he was avoiding her. And he didn't particularly want to introduce her to Sam, either. That kept him in here, too, not that it had been uninteresting up to now. He was learning a lot, listening. Just edit out the 'dudes' and profanity and most of it was English.

  Jason, sitting on the counter now, had sat next to his sister in the pew with Mark, but both of them down five feet or more from their father. An eloquent-enough statement. The boy cried at the Mass, but was over that now.

  He was enthusing over the snow in Colorado, the winter he'd spent back there, how he was going down to Rosarito from here, surf the summer away, like, starting tomorrow. He had to get out of here. This scene here with his dad was just too weird.

  His sister leaned up against the sink, holding hands with another young woman. 'How Mom took it I don't know,' she said.

  More Dad-trashing coming up, Wes thought - even a child could do it. Suddenly, stoked by the beers, he stood, deciding to butt in. 'Hey, guys. How about you give the old man a break, would you? He's having a tough enough time.'

  Susan nearly snorted. 'Dad doesn't have tough times.'

  'I've just been through one with him, dear.'

  'I'm sure.' She dropped her girlfriend's hand and walked the four steps over to him - a bit unsteadily. 'You think you know my dad, don't you? You think he's devastated by all this?' She shook her head hopelessly. 'You're a good guy, Wes, I really think you are, but dream fuckin' on,' she repeated.

  'Dream on what, Susan? What are you talking about?'

  Jason: 'Hey, come on, look around.'

  'I'm looking around. What am I supposed to see? I see your dad trying to maintain here. I see he's lost his partner.'

  Susan snorted derisively, nodded over at Jason. 'Six months?'

  'Tops,' he said.

  'What are you guys talking about?'

  They were both shaking their heads, but it was Susan who said it. 'You'll find out.'

  Finally summoning the nerve, Christina walked out into the backyard. He was standing now in the dappled sunlight under the budding elm, and she thought she had never seen a more magnificent face.

  Not the face per se, but that it so clearly reflected the man beneath, that was what was so magnificent. It was all there - the agony he was in, the strength to bear it, the grace, eventually, to rise above it.

  He was deep in conversation with a priest who wore a black cassock with a purple lining, but when he saw her, it was as though he bestowed some benediction on her, pulling her forward, to him. Almost physically, she felt her steps grow light. Welcome, even now.

  Taking both her hands, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. 'Thanks for coming.'

  'I couldn't not have.'

  They were still holding hands. Suddenly, realizing it, he gave a brief squeeze and let go. 'Well . . .' Remembering, turning back to the priest. 'I don't know if you've met the Archbishop of San Francisco, James Flaherty. Christina Carrera. Christina's one of the firm's future stars, Jim.'

  She shook Flaherty's hand, heard him uttering the usual commonplaces, kept her smile in place. But her eyes and mind stayed on Dooher.

  He was holding up, his own eyes elsewhere - within - crushed by the weight of his loss. He caught her watching him, then, and tried to smile, an apologetic turn of the lips for having caused her, even briefly, to glimpse the pain he was feeling within. He did not mean to show it, to wear it on his sleeve. He was a man. He would be all right. It wasn't anyone else's problem. He was alone and he would survive.

  She thought her heart would break.

  Seeing her ex with another woman - of course younger, that's what they all did, wasn't it? - had gotten under Lydia's skin. Not that she was romantically interested in Wes anymore - heaven forbid! - but it skewed her vision of her own importance.

  How dare he!

  So after Wes and Sam had gone, Lydia decided she deserved a couple of drinks. Then, in the kitchen, she'd gotten to talking with the kids - she was godmother to Susan, 'Aunt Lyd' to Jason - and they traded Sheila stories - laughing, crying, laughing again. Rituals.

  The two children left when their father had finally come in from the backyard, after nearly all the other guests had said their goodbyes. The kids' departure wasn't exactly abrupt, but it wasn't leisurely either. After the exodus, Lydia had exchanged one of those 'what-can-you-do' glances with Mark, then picked up the bottle of gin on the counter.

  'How about one?'

  His shoulders sagged. From Lydia's perspective, Mark had held up like a trooper all day, making the required rounds, havin
g to listen again and again to how sorry everybody was, to the advice and the sympathy and the anecdotes. He had been endlessly patient, as he always appeared, under tight control. That was Mark Dooher, after all.

  Although, just for a moment, the final abandonment by his children did seem to take the resiliency out of him. Then he bounced back, smiled, nodded. 'Hit me a good one,' he said.

  She was sitting on one of the barstools, and when he came over, she rubbed a hand across his back. He straightened up, leaned into it. 'That beats the drink,' he said. But then he took the drink, too.

  She'd stayed to clean up. She knew the house, was good with the caterers. It was a help having her there. Everybody else had gone by 6:00, and she went back into the kitchen and though they certainly didn't need it, poured two gins on the rocks and brought them out to where he sat in the living room, in his black suit, his hands shading his eyes, at one end of the chamois-soft white leather couch.

  They clinked glasses. 'Long day,' she said. 'Why don't you take off your coat and stay awhile?'

  'I guess I should.'

  As though she were his valet, she helped him out of it. On the way over to the closet to hang it up, she caught sight of herself in the large gilt hall mirror.

  Stopping there, she had to think again that Wes was an idiot. She was slightly out of focus, but she looked terrific. In her own black tailored suit, her high heels and black hose, she could have been ten years younger, trim, toned, her hair lightened to ash, cut a la Princess Di.

  Well, screw Wes and his girlfriend.

  She hung the coat in the closet. The day was still warm and suddenly the top of her own suit felt binding. She unbuttoned it, shrugged out of it, and hung it next to Mark's. Her black blouse, too, was tight at her neck, and when she came back to him, it was undone to the second button.

  He handed her her glass, and she stood in front of where he sat as they chinked them again. She felt him looking up at her as she drank.

  'God bless gin,' she said. 'I don't think I've had anything but wine for six months. But sometimes you need a real drink, don't you think?'

  'Here's to that.' He tipped his own glass back. 'To quote the great Dean Martin, that sometime is now.'

  'Get you another one?'

  He drained his drink and handed her up his glass. Back in the kitchen, she grabbed the silver ice bucket and the bottle of Bombay and brought it out with her, setting them on the coffee table, building two fresh ones.

  She was standing in front of him again.

  'Here we are,' he said. 'Who would have thought it?'

  She stepped out of her heels. 'How are you, Mark? Really?'

  He took a thoughtful sip, rotated his head, brought his hand up behind his neck.' Tell you the truth, I'm tight as a drum.'

  Putting her glass down, she walked around behind the couch and put her hands on his shoulders. 'Close your eyes,' she said. Take a deep breath.'

  As her thumbs dug into the muscles around his neck, he let out a small groan of relief. 'You've got a half-hour to cut that out, Lydia.' His head fell back against the couch and he slumped down.

  She stopped. 'Now your angle's all wrong.'

  'That's what she said.'

  'Down on the floor,' she said. 'On your stomach.'

  He was stretched out as she'd directed, arms folded now under his head. She knelt at his waist, reaching up, and began to knead his shoulders, his neck, down his backbone.

  Reaching across, then, over the broad back, another bad angle. She straightened up, hitched her skirt up, and straddled him, her hands moving, pushing, rubbing. Pulling the shirt out, then, going under it. Up his backbone with her thumbs.

  Another sigh of pleasure.

  She reached to her side and undid the button then, unzipped, stood and stepped out of her skirt, her nylons. Dooher still lay on his stomach, unmoving.'Turn over.'

  His eyes were closed, his hands crossed behind his head. The belt, then, the button. Zipping slowly over the bulge.

  He still didn't move.

  Sam and Wes were on the roof of his apartment building, sitting barefoot in beach chairs, holding hands, watching the sunset. Bart lounged between them. A small pot barbecue smoked and Sam had turned Farrell's boom-box radio to a country music section, which he barely knew existed until six weeks before.

  Now he was worried that he was getting hooked on the stuff. Something in him rebelled at the idea of a middle-aged urban professional like himself relating to this corn, but dumb as they were, about every fourth song seemed to bring a tear to his eye. A couple of tunes over the past weeks - Tim McGraw's Don't Take The Girl and Brooks & Dunn's Neon Moon - had made him outright weep.

  When he'd been alone, painting.

  But all of 'em were about those country things - old-fashioned values, Mommy, Daddy (sometimes Grandpa), true undyin' love, God, beer, dogs and trucks.

  But dang, he couldn't deny they hit something in him.

  Wynonna was just finishing up She Is His Only Need and Wes was blinking pretty hard. Sam squeezed his hand. 'You're just doing that to impress me.'

  'Doing what?'

  She laughed. 'That misty-eye thing to every mushball lyric you hear.'

  'It's nothing to do with the lyrics. I happened to look too long at the sun and it made my eyes water. Or else it was the smoke.'

  She ignored him. 'So maybe I'll think that, way deep down, you've got a tender and gentle soul.'

  'No, that is not me. I'm not trying to impress you. I'm a cynical big-city attorney and nothing touches me. I am a rock. I am, in fact, an island.'

  'My understanding is that no man is an island.'

  'I tell you, I am a fucking island.'

  'Okay, you're an island. Anyway, I am impressed.' She lifted his hand and kissed it, then nudged Bart with her bare toe. 'I think he actually feels things, don't you, Bart?'

  Bart raised his head, put it back down on his paws.

  'See?' she said. 'The mute beasts concur.'

  Wes got up and took the top off the kettle cooker. A couple of T-bone steaks filled the whole grill. He gave them a turn and came back to sit down. 'You know why people cry at happy endings in movies? Or at weddings? Or even, some incredibly weak slobs, at country-music lyrics?'

  'They're crybabies?'

  'I'm going to hit your broken arm.'

  'Crybabies isn't the answer?'

  He shook his head. 'They want it that way again. Something in them remembers that they used to think it was that way, that things in life could turn out good, and seeing that hope, being reminded of it, it's too much to take. So they cry.'

  'But you still think things turn out good, don't you?'

  'No. I still wish they did just as bad, but I don't think so anymore.'

  She reached and took his hand. 'Seeing your wife today?'

  'Lydia?' He let out a long breath. 'No, Lydia's over. It was more, I think, the kids. Mark's kids.'

  'What about them?'

  Again, he sighed. 'I don't know. All the effort, the hopes, the lessons, the tears, the fights, the sicknesses - and at the end, what do you get? You get some kids who are total strangers, who don't want anything to do with you.'

  'Your kids?'

  'Well, some of that, maybe. But mostly Mark's. They really hate him.'

  'Maybe he wasn't a good father.'

  'That's just it. He was a great father. I was around. I saw him. Baseball, tennis, soccer, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, private schools, great summer camps - you name it, those kids had it.'

  'But did they have him?'

  He seemed to deflate. 'I guess I don't know that. Did my kids have me? I mean, both of us - Mark and I - we worked like dogs so Lydia and Sheila didn't have to. This was, of course, the Middle Ages. Back then wasn't considered the height of oppression.'

  The silence, as well as the difference in their ages, hung between them. 'I better get the steaks,' Wes said, but he didn't get up. He didn't want to let go of Sam's hand. He turned to her. 'His kids really hate him, Sam,
and I know them. They're not bad. They're fine with me. They call me Uncle Wes even, sometimes. But their dad ... I just don't get it.'

  'Maybe he's not the person you think he is. Not with everybody else. He seemed pretty cold to me.'

  Now he did let go of her hand. 'Let's not take my best friend apart four days after his wife was killed, okay?'

  'I'm not taking him apart, I'm saying he seemed cold. Maybe he was cold to his kids, that's all.'

  'And maybe he's trying to keep from breaking down, so he's guarded right about now, how's that?' He had raised his voice and Bart sat up, growling.

  Sam took a beat, a breath. 'You're right, I don't know him at all, I'm sorry. The steaks aren't going to be rare.'

  Downstairs, in his, kitchen, they sat at the table. Sam stared down at her food. Wes couldn't stop the smile that crept up. She wasn't going to be able to cut her steak. 'Your cast.' Standing up, he came around the table and kissed her. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I don't want to fight.'

  Sam lay her head against him. 'Don't be mad at me. I'm not attacking your friend.'

  'I know. With your permission.' He pulled another chair out from the table, sat down, picked up a knife and began cutting. 'And the fact is, Mark might have been a terrible father. I don't know. Maybe husband, too. We didn't pride ourselves on that so much in those days. He's just my friend. Some of us white males - even if we're not angry - occasionally feel unfairly attacked here in this modern world. It's tempting to band together. So I suppose I've got a gut reaction to protect him. Especially now.'

  'I can see that. But I'm not attacking you either, okay?'

  'I know, but I wonder if it's just that I didn't see what he might have really been like with his kids, couldn't let myself see because I was doing the same thing.'

  'And what about now?'

  That stopped him again. For a moment. 'What about now?'

  She only dared meet his eyes.

  'No,' he said. 'Flatly, emphatically no.'

  'Okay, but since we were talking ...'

  'I don't understand how you can even say that?'

  'I didn't, actually. I looked it. But I was talking to Christina today - her reaction to Mark being under suspicion kind of reminded me of you.'