Damage

by John Lescroart

  A pair of headlights cut through the mist as it turned onto the street a couple of blocks down, and Bracco heaved a sigh of relief as the car pulled up and parked behind the small caravan that had already formed behind Bracco’s car at the curb. Unable to calm his nerves, Bracco jogged down and arrived at the car as its driver was just opening his door.

  “Warrant?” was about all he could manage to say.

  The driver tapped his chest with his knuckles—“Right here”—and from the sound of it, Bracco realized that these guys, too, were already wearing Kevlar, as was the rest of the team.

  Nobody taking any chances.

  And now everyone was ready. Another wash of relief swept over him. It was time. He counted the men one last time, now all of them having gathered close, ten of them present and accounted for.

  “Okay, guys,” he said. “Quiet and careful. Let’s move it out.”

  Eztli crossed to a small table at the back of the little study that featured a diminishing selection of nuts and hard candies. He picked up the little silver bell, identical to the ones in the kitchen and living room, and gave it a shake, which produced a melodic tinkle.

  And which in turn produced one of the uniformed young women from the kitchen—Eztli did not always bother learning their individual names since he had so little interaction with them, and also because they tended to move along to their next posting to one of the Curtlees’ acquaintances within a year or so. He thought this one might be named Linda, but it wouldn’t do to call her by a name and get it wrong. Eztli prided himself on being unfailingly polite. “Another bottle of the Cristal, please,” he said. “The full-size bottle from the refrigerator. Oh, and two more champagne glasses.”

  She looked over at where the Curtlees sat, let her eyes rest on them for a moment, her face, it seemed to Eztli, fighting against itself to keep an expression of resentment at bay. It was difficult, he knew—he was not entirely immune to some resentment himself—to be constantly aware of the unbridgeable gap between staff and principals.

  When her eyes came back to him, he gave her what he hoped was an understanding nod, and she returned it, curtsying as she’d been taught. She then glanced at the nearly empty nut tray and went over to pick it up and carry it back with her. His eyes followed the smooth perfection of her hips as she crossed the dining room and disappeared back into the kitchen, and for an instant he thought he might reconsider his firm lifelong policy of never dating the help. This young woman was certainly pretty enough to make the effort worthwhile.

  But he banished that thought as quickly as it had appeared. No good could come of it. Just look what problems Ro had had. Even though that was a lot of years ago, it was still wreaking havoc on his life. There were other women who didn’t live under this roof that Eztli could enjoy. It wasn’t as though he was hurting in that department.

  It didn’t take the young woman thirty seconds to reappear with the glasses and the champagne wrapped in a plain white dish towel. Carrying the expensive champagne and the dainty expensive glassware obviously made her nervous—the glasses were clinking dangerously against one another—and she set all of the stuff down on the small table with visible relief that she’d made it without breaking anything. With another little bow, she turned to go back to the kitchen.

  Eztli brought the champagne bottle over to Ro’s parents. Presenting it for their approval, he got a brisk nod from Cliff. Theresa said, “I believe that will do just fine.”

  Half listening to the conversation that had now moved along to Sheila Marrenas and her latest column on Leland Crawford’s assertion of his vision over the police department and how well it was beginning to work, Eztli went back to the table, removed the foil expertly, then the wire, then turned the bottle carefully while holding the cork in place. With a satisfying little pop, the bottle opened with no spillage. First he poured one of the two glasses for Ro and crossed the room to deliver that. Next he would pour for Cliff and Theresa. Only then would he take care of his own half glass.

  He was almost to Ro when, behind him, he became aware of the young woman returning again, this time with the tray of nuts under a silver dome. She set it heavily on the small table, clearing a space for it, and then stood still for a moment, her hands holding both sides of the table, as if she needed to do that to remain standing.

  Aware of the unusual hesitation, Eztli turned back to see if everything was all right with her just as she removed the dome and placed it in front of the tray so that it blocked Eztli’s view of it. Then she reached down with both hands and lifted an object, and for an instant Eztli found himself confused by something that in this setting was so bizarre and unexpected that it paralyzed him. She was holding the big semiautomatic in both hands, beginning to bring it up.

  As the confusion crystallized into a horrified and desperate certainty, Eztli dropped the bottle of champagne from his right hand and, in the same motion, threw Ro’s glass over toward the fire.

  “Ez!” Cliff jerked at the sudden noise and movement. “What the . . .”

  Eztli’s right hand was reaching for his own weapon, turning to face her, inadvertently giving her a larger target, but with no other real choice, and by the time he got his hand on the grip, she had brought the gun all the way up, centering it on his chest.

  He never heard the first blasting report as the slug hit him just above the heart and threw him backward onto the floor. Then, as though from far away, he did hear and this time felt another shot, a searing pain in his shoulder, and then, all the sounds in the world growing fainter, several more reports in quick succession.

  Until finally everything went quiet.

  And then dark.

  Ro didn’t believe that this was happening. This wasn’t how he was supposed to die.

  He had been so relaxed with the weed and the glass of cognac that he felt molded to his chair, slumped down into the cushion, just reaching up to grab his glass when Ez turned and suddenly was looking at Linda, then throwing the drinks down and making a move toward his shoulder holster.

  He never got to it.

  And she kept pulling the trigger. Another shot hitting Ez—Ro trying to look everyplace at once, with nowhere to run or even duck away to.

  Now he heard his mother scream and Linda had fired again at his father, who had been halfway to his feet, and who then went down. Now she was bringing the gun around, just firing away, not really taking time to aim, but pointing straight at his chest and...

  He felt the first slug go all the way through him from side to side, low in his gut, as the force of it knocked him back and sideways now in the chair.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was still pointing the thing at him. He tried to put his hands up, but they didn’t seem to want to obey him.

  “Don’t . . . ,” he began.

  She pulled the trigger again and it felt as if someone had ripped his right arm off. In the corner of his eye, he saw his mother stand and as he watched, Linda turned to her and fired once, doubling her over before Theresa went down on her knees.

  But Linda wasted no time making sure with his mother as she came walking forward now, the gun extended in front of her, pointing right at his face.

  He met her eyes.

  Through the shock and pain, Ro’s brain tried to make sense of any of this. What was her problem? What was the big deal? So, she hadn’t been in the mood. He had to fight her a little to finally get it done, but so what? That’s what you did. He couldn’t believe she wasn’t already pretty used to it. She was a big girl. She ...

  He felt the gun pressed high against his left cheek.

  “Adios,” she said. “Fucker!”

  37

  Glitsky got the call from Bracco, with one of the arrest teams. The teams had been gathering out in front of the mansion on Vallejo Street when they’d heard the shots from inside the house and rushed to the door.

  Glitsky had to pull up and park behind rows of other cars and vans nearly two blocks away. It was raining steadily a
nd it seemed impossible to him that such a crowd—of police personnel, curious neighbors, news vans, politicians, and reporters—had developed in such a short time. But then again, the bare fact of what had apparently happened here seemed impossible as well. All these people braving the inclement weather in coats and umbrellas, pressing in against the yellow police tape line they’d strung along the street and across the property line.

  Glitsky picked his way through the mass of people, ducked under the police line, and showed his ID to one of the patrolmen standing guard at the bottom of the steps. Once he was safely inside the perimeter, he turned briefly to look behind him.

  He estimated there were fifteen black-and-white patrol cars, each with their red and blue lights strobing the night. Somebody had already set up at least one set of kliegs to brighten the place even more. Glitsky counted four television vans, which must have gotten the word even more quickly than he did. Sheila Marrenas, so far unsuccessfully, was trying to bully her way through the line down at the end of the driveway. Leland Crawford was giving an interview to a small knot of television people over by his limo.

  Glitsky jogged up the steps and slowed down at the open door, where Bracco was waiting to meet him. “That was fast,” the inspector said.

  Glitsky nodded. “I was motivated. Where’d it go down?”

  Bracco pointed and started walking toward the study at the same moment, Glitsky at his heels. “The chief here yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet, no.”

  “How about CSI?”

  “Yep. And we’ve got the suspect in custody back in the kitchen. One of the maids. Linda Salcedo. She’s not giving us any trouble.”

  “Let’s hope we can keep it that way. You got the weapon?”

  “Tagged and bagged. It was on the floor where she dropped it.”

  “She dropped it?”

  “Dropped it and answered the doorbell, then showed us where to go. You could still smell the cordite. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  But by then they had reached the arched entrance to a small room, guarded by two other members of what was originally supposed to be the arresting team. Glitsky stopped a half step behind Darrel, and nodded at both of the other men. There was plenty of light from a couple of standing lamps and an overhead chandelier. The study was less than fifteen feet deep, maybe twelve feet wide. It seemed to be filled with bodies.

  And even with his vast experience, Glitsky was impressed by the body count in the enclosed place.

  The iron smell of blood and, underlying it, something sweet smelling and alcoholic. Glitsky stepped forward so he could take it all in.

  The butler lay on his back by the fireplace, his tuxedo coat wide open revealing a shoulder holster with its gun still in it. A red splotch bloomed in a wide circle in the shirt over his heart. Another slug looked like it had taken him in the shoulder, but the one by the heart looked like it had done the job. When Eztli had gone down, he’d knocked over the screen in front of the fireplace, which lay on the floor by his head. On the other side of his head, a bottle of champagne lay on its side. The mirror above the fireplace was shattered, and shards from it littered the floor all around him.

  Ro Curtlee sat slumped in an easy chair, literally soaked in blood. He’d taken two or three in the chest and one at really close range high in his left cheek. The force of the shot had canted his head to the right and the entire right side of his shirt was soaked from the exit wound damage, the exit wound annihilation.

  The most ghastly image was Cliff Curtlee, who had managed to get up and turn around before he’d been hit, or hit fatally. The shot that had done the most obvious damage had evidently taken him in the side of the throat—his carotid spurting arterial blood over the rug and onto the hardwood of the adjoining dining room floor—but several other rounds had hit him in the side and back, evidently as he tried to get away. From the blood trail, it looked like he kept on crawling through his own blood for a good three or four feet before finally stopping with the shock and trauma of the injuries and bleeding out.

  Bracco leaned over Cliff and examined the throat injury with interest. He turned to Glitsky and said, “That’s going to leave a mark.”

  Glitsky took in all of this at a glance, then said to no one in particular, “Where’s Mrs. Curtlee?”

  One of the crime scene guys looked up from photographing Ro’s body in his chair. “Other room,” he said.

  “Dead?”

  In a perfect imitation Munchkin voice from The Wizard of Oz, the tech said, “She is not just merely dead, she is really most sincerely dead.”

  Glitsky, once again reminded of the wisdom of the rule that reporters were not allowed on crime scenes until the techs had finished, turned and saw Vi Lapeer coming through the front door and he moved to intercept her. “Chief,” he said. “What you’ve probably heard is true. They’re all dead, the Curtlees and their butler. Shot at close range. We have a suspect subdued and in custody in the next room.”

  Lapeer slapped her game face on. Taking a steadying breath through her mouth, she set her jaw and started across the dining room toward the archway.

  At eleven o’clock, the techs were still working in the study. The bodies had been bagged and taken in the coroner’s van to the medical examiner’s office behind the Hall. Since Bracco spoke excellent Spanish and was already here at the scene, Glitsky assigned the formal investigation of these murders to him, so Bracco had given Linda Salcedo her Miranda warning and a quick preliminary interview and was on his way with her to the detail for a full videotaped statement. Outside, the crowd had eventually mostly dispersed. Neither the mayor nor Sheila Marrenas had ever been admitted to the crime scene, and both had eventually gone away, as had a stoic Vi Lapeer.

  Amanda Jenkins had been out at a restaurant with a couple of other assistant DAs and caught the breaking news flash on the television. Now she sat at the dining room table with Glitsky, both of them too wound up to go home.

  “So our suspect evidently had heard about the earlier rapes, so she had some type of warning,” Glitsky was saying, “but she didn’t take it seriously enough.”

  “You’re saying Ro had already done another one of them? Since he got out?”

  “No. One of the other workers here had heard the stories and told her she should be on her guard.”

  “But she wasn’t.”

  “Not enough, anyway. He called her up to his room under the pretext of her cleaning up something last night . . .”

  “Last night? He pulled this shit just last night? When he knew we’re all over him?”

  A brisk nod. “He thought he had us beat. Killing Farrell’s dog. Cutting our balls off. Squeezing Lapeer with the mayor. Time to go back and check out the home turf.”

  “What an asshole. So she was warned about it and still went up?”

  Glitsky shrugged. “He’d been home almost a month and never did anything. Last night he called and needed something cleaned up, so she goes to his room and he’s naked in bed with a gun on her.”

  “So she ... ?”

  “She wanted to stay alive.”

  Jenkins shook her head in disgust. “I’d like to kill him again.”

  “I hear you.”

  “What about the shoes?”

  “Evidently not an issue this time. I know she didn’t mention anything to Darrel.”

  “Okay, so how’d she get the gun?”

  Glitsky’s lips turned up slightly. “This is my favorite part,” he said. “He just left it in his drawer next to his bed in his room. Loaded. So he goes out with his man, Ez, today and doesn’t take it with him. Probably figures that Linda liked it—the sex, not the gun, or the sex with the gun. So today she comes up, makes sure the gun is still there, and waits for her opportunity, which doesn’t take long coming.”

  “But why kill the others? Why isn’t she just waiting in his room for him when he comes home?”

  “I asked Darrel to ask her that myself. She said it was self-defense. Where she’s fr
om, you kill a member of a powerful family, they kill your whole family. She knew if she was going to kill Ro, she had to kill them all.”

  Jenkins thought about this for a minute. “Knowing the Curtlees, she just might have been right.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, she knew Ez carried a gun, and so he had to go first. And then she figured Cliff and Theresa, they knew what Ro was doing and had been doing all along and they enabled him. Not her word. So they were part of it, what he was doing, and so the heck with them, too.”

  “Jesus Christ, though,” Amanda said. “I didn’t think anybody was that good with a pistol. She killed all four of them?”

  “God was on her side.”

  Amanda sat back, looked up at the ceiling, and closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m going to want to run ballistics on the gun tonight, the murder weapon, to see if it matches the one that killed Matt.”

  Glitsky nodded. “Probably a good idea.”

  “And Ez’s, too, while I’m at it.”

  “Whatever you can find,” Glitsky said. “I don’t think a search warrant is going to be a problem this time around.”

  At the Novio house, the muted jubilation over news of the death of Ro Curtlee was even more restrained than it otherwise might have been because by midnight, Jon Durbin still had not come home. He had not answered his cell phone or responded to text messages, either, even when Michael had Jon’s little sister, Allie, text from her phone and beg him to just tell her he was okay.

  Now finally all three of the girls were asleep and Peter lay on a couch covered by one of Kathy’s comforters, sleeping with the TV on in the family room. The three adults sat in the living room, Chuck and Michael on either end of the couch, Kathy in a lounger, all of them obviously wrecked by the recent and continuing events.