The Keeper

by John Lescroart

  Since he was the spouse of the deceased, Hal’s wishes trumped those of his wife’s nuclear family. The tensest moment came at the end of the service, when Daniel and Curt Dunne seemed to want to fight Hal about who would be pallbearers—they and their friends, or Hal and Warren and the sheriff’s people. Finally, Cushing took charge; he and Foster and two other deputies stepped forward with Hal and Warren and got the casket lifted into the waiting hearse.

  28

  MARIA SOLIS-MARTINEZ SAT at a pitted gray metal desk in the jail’s infirmary. For security purposes, it was an enclosed place surrounded by glass windows and entrances without doors that could be closed or locked.

  The surroundings did little to calm Maria’s nerves as she awaited the arrival of Luther Jones. She might have been hard-pressed to identify any single immediate cause of her concern, since there were so many possibilities: She was meeting a dangerous and threatening inmate; she was here under false pretenses, pretending to be a nurse-practitioner at the jail and attending to the routine minor complaints of the various inmates; she couldn’t allow herself to fail; she was unarmed—as an investigator, she was used to carrying her weapon—and yet she intended to have the guard leave Luther Jones alone with her, unrestrained by handcuffs or foot shackles.

  So her mouth was dry and her palms damp when Jones—mean and scary in person, in his jailhouse orange garb—appeared at the entry, a confused look crossing his face as he saw her. She realized she would have to act quickly and decisively if she didn’t want to have the moment get away from her, so she pushed back from the desk and stood.

  “Mr. Jones,” she said as she came around and advanced on him. “I’m Maria Solis-Martinez, and I’m here to replace Ms. Bartlett. I know you’re here for a routine diabetes monitoring, but there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  Matter-of-factly, as though she did this every day, she maneuvered him to the bed farthest from the entry where the burly redheaded guard stood. She showed nothing but was relieved when the guard strolled a few feet from the door and began an animated conversation with another guard, leaving her effectively alone with Mr. Jones. She stuck out her right hand and said, “You can call me Maria if I can call you Luther.”

  He just looked at her hand, then half-turned to the door as though planning to call the guard back. Instead, he whirled on her and said, “I don’t know you. Whatchu want?”

  Instinctively, she retreated a step. Just as instinctively, she regained that lost ground and moved forward into Jones’s personal space, forcing herself to look directly up—and it was a good way up—into his eyes. Before she’d become a DA’s investigator, she’d been a patrol officer and then a vice inspector with the regular police in L.A., so she’d had her share of experience interacting with criminals. Still, this was as up close and personal as she’d gotten with one in years.

  But she had not lost the skill set. “Don’t fuck with me, Luther,” she snapped. “I’m here to help you out, and if you fuck with me even a little, I’ll call the guard in that hallway and he’ll have you back in your cell before you know what hit you. Are you hearing me? Answer up, now. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Jones, all six-four and two hundred fifty pounds of him, broke eye contact and looked quickly to either side of her. “I hear you,” he said, if not exactly meek, then at least with a veneer of respect.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, let’s go sit down over by that bed, how’s that sound?”

  Her heart pounding, she marched back around the bed, then turned and sat. Luther had followed her, and he took the other chair. She gave him a reasonable facsimile of a smile and said, “I wasn’t kidding, what I said just now.”

  Maria and Farrell, Frank Dobbins, and Tom Scerbo had gone around and around on this. Trying to talk to a represented defendant outside the presence of his lawyer created serious problems. If this didn’t work, and Luther’s lawyer found out about it later, there would be all sorts of hell to pay: He would claim interference with the right to counsel, maybe ask for a dismissal of the charges against Luther or even complain to the state bar. But all four of them had decided no guts, no glory. “I’m here to see if I can help you,” she said.

  “Why you want to do that?”

  “That’s for me to know, Luther. What’s important for you is to know that I have the authority to get you out of here without a trial and to dismiss the charges pending against you. You’re looking at carjacking with use of a firearm and a strike, which is twenty or thirty years in prison, minimum. That’s about right, isn’t it?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m telling you. And your lawyer already told you. You’re looking at long, hard time. You want to do that?”

  “Against dyin’, that’s what I choose.”

  “Who said anything about dying?”

  Jones sat back in his chair and crossed his enormous arms. “You’re here about that Tussaint thing, ain’t you? What are you, really? Fed? DEA? I snitch out around that Tussaint thing, I’m dead. I got the message already. Loud and clear. I ain’t seen nothin’.”

  “Luther. Do you remember talking about the death of Alanos Tussaint to San Francisco Homicide inspectors?”

  “Okay, I did that.”

  “You were very clear that you saw one of the jail guards, Adam Foster, pull Mr. Tussaint out of his bunk and slam his head against the wall.”

  “No. I never said that.”

  “Luther. It’s on tape. We got your voice on tape saying that.”

  “I don’t know nothing about no tape.”

  “Look, Luther. Everybody knows what happened. You tried to do the right thing, and they got to you. Now you’ve changed your mind. I get that.”

  “I don’t know nothing about no guard or no tape.”

  “It’s not too late, Luther. I work with the DA. I can get you out of here. It’s not too late for you to make a deal. Everybody knew you were talking last time. That was our bad. But nobody knows I’m here now. Nobody but me and the DA. We get you out of here, you say what you got to say. You’re gone.”

  Luther shrugged elaborately.

  “Who talked to you after you talked to those inspectors, Luther? Was it Foster? Was it another guard?”

  “It don’t matter. They all the same. No, Foster’s the worst. Then they all the same after him. Either way, it don’t matter.”

  “It might matter, Luther. This time nobody’s going to know if you say anything about Foster or Tussaint until you’re long gone. As soon as we get your testimony again, we’re going to get you out of here and into Witness Protection, the charges against you get dropped, and you get another chance to put your life together. Maybe this time you’ll do it right.”

  Maria knew that Wes Farrell had said no such thing; she was making promises she had no authority to make and no power to keep. She could also sense that if she was going to get anything at all from this guy ever, she had to go for broke right now. “What do you say to that?” she concluded.

  “I’m saying you could be tryin’ to trick me, see if I’m gonna snitch. Is one thing I’m sayin’.”

  “That’s not it.”

  Luther’s gaze was dead flat. “I’ll think on it,” he said. “And then how do I talk to you? I ask for the DA from down here, the word gets out, I in some shit.”

  Maria had her phony business card with her real cell number ready for him, and she passed the card across the table. “You got phone privileges. Use ’em. You call, I’ll come running.”

  29

  GLITSKY STOOD AT the back of the crowd of mourners shivering around the Colma grave site. Coming to the actual interment wasn’t his idea of a good time, but he thought there was a slim chance that it might be unpredictably instructive, so the cop in him had said goodbye to Frannie and Hardy at St. Ignatius and tagged along. As had been the case at the church, the sides were strictly segregated, and as
he had done earlier, Abe gravitated to Hal’s side.

  They hadn’t quite gotten started. Glitsky was keeping his eye on the interaction between Hal and Patti Orosco—the word was long since out about their affair, and to Glitsky, they seemed skittish as thoroughbreds in their careful dance around each other—so he was surprised when he felt a tap on his arm and turned to face Burt Cushing.

  “Abe Glitsky.”

  “You got me.” Glitsky nodded amicably. “Sheriff.” He touched his forehead in a casual salute. “Nice turnout of your people.”

  “They’re a good crew, and Hal’s among the best of them. He’s a popular guy. You here officially? I thought you’d retired.”

  “I did.” Glitsky enjoyed watching Cushing do the math for a minute before he helped him out. “You notice I’m over here on Hal’s side, same as at the church. I’m working with his defense attorney.”

  “He’s smart to have one on board already. They’re going to try to string him up. I’m surprised he’s still walking around a free man.”

  “Me, too. Though I don’t think that’s going to last too long.”

  “Me, neither.” Cushing hesitated, then asked, “So who’s the lawyer?”

  “Dismas Hardy.”

  Cushing whistled. “Top-drawer guy. Last week I would’ve asked how Hal could afford him, but I guess that’s not an issue anymore.”

  “Which, in itself,” Glitsky replied, “is an issue.”

  “I hear you.” The sheriff cast a quick glance over the assembly. “Little tense back there, wasn’t it?”

  “Little tense here, too,” Glitsky said. “Katie’s side looks like they’re ready to string him up right now. I’m halfway expecting it.”

  “Not with my guys here. No question who they’re with.”

  “I see that.” Over the past few days, Glitsky had followed the television updates and read every word of conjecture about the case; that had brought him up to speed on the progress of the Homicide inspectors, including some stuff he hadn’t come upon in his own investigation. One of those stories had been Daniel Dunne’s theory about Katie’s purported threat to expose Hal for his role in the alleged cover-up of abuses by the jail guards. Obviously, Cushing had been made aware of that theory as well, and Glitsky thought it couldn’t hurt to probe a little. “Are your guys taking a lot of heat on Katie’s brother’s idea?”

  “Which one is that? I’ve heard so many these past few days.”

  “That Hal had to shut her up before she blew the whistle on him and the other guards.”

  Cushing chuckled without mirth. “The only problem with that, and the other stories like it, is there isn’t one grain of truth behind them. My jail’s a fucking model of restraint and due process, and any report to the contrary is irresponsible and unfounded drivel.”

  Glitsky hated profanity but also knew that once in a while someone’s lapse into it could be useful. Despite Cushing’s dismissive chuckle and all of his protestations notwithstanding, Glitsky knew that he’d hit a nerve.

  “Say what you really mean,” Glitsky told him.

  “We get that shit all the time,” Cushing said. “If these bleeding hearts knew what it was like being in the cages day in day out with those animals, unarmed and outnumbered. It’s a miracle there’s as little violence as there is. But hey, you’re a cop. You know this. Sorry to go off.”

  Glitsky shrugged. “No worries. So if Hal did it, that wasn’t why.”

  “Couldn’t have been, but beyond that . . .”

  “What?”

  Cushing looked over to where Hal was placing some flowers on the casket. “I know the guy. I knew his dad, Pete, back when I was a probationary deputy. He’s good people. Katie was good people.” Sighing, he went on, “There’s just no way he killed her. They might have been going through a rough patch, but they had a real connection. I know that, which is why I can’t believe any of this.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Glitsky said. Then, realizing what else Cushing had perhaps inadvertently admitted, he asked, “You knew her, too? Katie?”

  The sheriff’s visage darkened, and for a startling moment Glitsky thought he caught a glimpse of what might have been a tear in the other man’s eyes. “I know most of the spouses,” he said at last. “Something like this happens to one of us, it’s a loss to the whole family.”

  • • •

  WHEN THE MOURNERS got back to Hal’s house, Glitsky found himself struck by the similarities between this gathering and his own return to his duplex after the funeral of his first wife, Flo, who’d died of cancer many years before. Like Hal, Abe had young children at the time. His living room and kitchen had been filled to overflowing, mostly with somber men in uniform. His father, Nat, had been the only tie to the past generation, as Ruth was. The food, in both cases, was a couple of Safeway party trays.

  Abe found himself a bare stretch of living room wall and leaned back, hands in his pockets, trying to shake off his own ghosts. Suddenly—he hadn’t really noticed her approach—Ruth was standing in front of him with a glass in her hand, the contents of which looked like Coke and smelled like rum. “How did this tradition of throwing a party after a funeral ever get started?” she asked him. “You see anybody here who looks like they want to party, Mr. Glitsky?”

  “Not so much,” Abe replied. “Maybe it puts off the finality of it all for another day. Then you go back to real life, or try. Meanwhile, it’s a last opportunity to drink enough to forget.”

  “That’s exactly it,” she said, “and spoken like one who’s been through it.” She cast her eyes around the room. “Sometimes I think someone put a curse on this family. On me, really. I never would have believed I’d be doing this again so soon.”

  “So soon?”

  “After Pete. Hal’s father. He overdosed, you know. By mistake. They eventually admitted it was an accident, which turned out to be good for us, since we could collect the insurance. But it was awful, no matter what.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know about that. When did that happen?”

  “Warren was five. He’s twenty-two now. And I guess Hal must have been fifteen. So seventeen years.” She took a pull of her drink. “But it’s like it was yesterday, especially here, now . . . all these uniforms. It brings it all back. Nothing ever changes.”

  Glitsky didn’t want to air out his own memories, so similar to hers. Instead, he said, “Sometimes it seems that way, but things do get better. It may be hard to keep believing that, but it happens. It happened to me.”

  “Well, you’re not cursed.”

  “Ruth, you’ve got two healthy sons and two grandchildren. You can look ahead. There can be a future. You’re not cursed.”

  This made her laugh, a bitter and shrill note that already seemed more than a bit fueled by alcohol. Lifting her glass, she drank again. “No? How many people do you know who have lost two family members? And now they’re going to arrest Hal. It’s obvious that’s where they’re going with all that. They already think he’s guilty. Everybody does.”

  Glitsky heard himself say, “I don’t,” and realized that this was what he intuitively believed, even if he couldn’t marshal the facts to support it.

  She took his words at face value. “Thank you for that. But you’re in the minority. Everybody else thinks he walked behind her up that path and turned right through the bushes and shot her while she walked, maybe while she was talking, pleading over her shoulder. And that’s just not something Hal could do. I know my boy, and he never could have done that.”

  “If it comes to it, and it may not, I think a jury will agree with you. He’s got a great lawyer, and this city doesn’t like to convict, even with lots of evidence.” Except, he thought, in cases of domestic violence, where the accusation alone was often enough to convict a male suspect. This wasn’t something he wanted to share with her now, though. “And here, there’s basical
ly no evidence,” he repeated. “So I’d keep a little hope.”

  “I am. The hard thing is I never thought they’d arrest him. I really thought, because he didn’t do it, they’d never get to that.”

  “And they haven’t yet. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “All right. You’re right. I’m just . . . my brain . . .” She stopped in apparent confusion and tipped up her glass, finishing it. “At least I’ll be here for the babies,” she said. “There’s one silver lining. They’ll be in my life again. I suppose I should think of things like that.”

  “That’s a good idea. At the very least, you’ll get to share them.”

  She hesitated and cocked her head. “What do you mean, share?”

  “With the other grandparents. Katie’s family.”

  She shook her head with a firm show of defiance. “That is not happening. I’m not sharing with those people. Hal’s their natural father, and he’s the only parent left, and he gets to make that decision, even if he’s in jail. He won’t let those children go and live with those awful Dunnes, not even for a day. I know he won’t.”

  Glitsky knew that this could, in fact, become a pitched custody battle over the next several months, but now wasn’t the time to try and convince a grieving, drunk woman about something she obviously didn’t want to consider. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “And speaking of Hal . . .” Glitsky pointed to the other room, then excused himself and made his way through the press of deputies to where Hal stood, holding a sleeping Ellen in his arms, at the kitchen counter. “How are you holding up?”

  Hal gave him a perfunctory smile. “Minute to minute. It ought to be over soon, although I’m not sure I want it to be.”