Guilt

by John Lescroart

  She could see Glitsky still wasn't clear on the concept. 'Abe, you remember that big kidnap/ransom thing in Oakland last year? Okay, the kidnapper, he's calling the victim's family every five minutes, making ransom demands, changing the drop point, making sure there's no trail, the usual. So guess what? He's using his earphone, and one of our guys remembers an article in one of those magazines we all throw away. He gets a brainstorm. He calls the phone company, asks if there's any way they can tell, even roughly, where a cell call originates. You know how it works?'

  'I'm listening.'

  'Big metropolitan area like Oakland, there's maybe ten towers around the city – cells, hence the name. Clever, huh? And they work like a combination amplifier/receiver. If you're in your car, you move from one cell to the next and there's a record of it.'

  'Okay.'

  'But, and this is the cool part, within each cell there are also pie-shaped cones that pick up the signals. So this guy, the kidnapper, he's talking on the phone, calling again, yack, yack, yack. They figure out exactly which block he's driving around, and they nail him.'

  Glitsky was nodding. Amanda was right. This, if true, was cool. 'But I don't see how it helps me here,' he said.

  'I don't either, Abe. But Thomasino said he only needed a little more to get to probable cause, right? So maybe your perp was ten miles away when he said he was at the driving range, that kind of thing. Prove he lied. Hell, you've got the warrant for the phone records already. Might as well use it all up.'

  Sheila told him what she'd done.

  'Are you kidding me?! That son of a bitch! He came in here, lied to you, invaded our privacy? I'm calling Farrell, calling somebody. This is pure harassment. I'll have the bastard's badge!'

  He threw his leaded crystal bourbon glass with all his might and it smashed into the bottom pane of one of the French doors, shattering glass all over the kitchen. 'That son of a bitch!'

  Sheila was in a deep couch in her living room, crying. She was of a class and station that had grown up believing in authority. Sergeant Glitsky had represented that to her. And he had betrayed her, tricked her and used her to insult her husband. She had put her husband in jeopardy. She couldn't stop sobbing.

  Mark came over and handed her a large glass of white wine and she held it with both hands. He sat down next to her. 'It's all right, Sheila. How could you know?'

  She shook her head, mumbling through her tears, over and over: 'I should have known. I should have just called you.'

  He put the palm of his hand under her glass and helped her raise it to her lips. She had to admit that it helped. She took another mouthful, the good cool wine.

  She'd been getting back to a glass or two regularly lately and it hadn't caused her any ill-effects. The doctors nowadays were always so paranoid about alcohol. She should have started out taking their dire warnings with a grain of salt. This wasn't hurting her at all. In fact, it was helping.

  She got her breathing back under control. 'The whole story didn't make much sense to me, Mark, but I just thought-'

  'It's all right,' he repeated. 'There's no harm done. I didn't even have any damn bayonet.'

  'I know. But I didn't remember.'

  'I lost the damn thing on a camping trip five ten years ago, maybe longer. You don't remember?'

  'But why would he think, the Sergeant…?'

  Her husband shook his head. 'I have no idea. I knew Trang. Maybe I'm the most convenient warm body. I think that's how these guys work.' He reached out, laid a hand on her shoulder.

  'So what happens now?' she asked timidly.

  Mark sat back into the couch. 'Now I think he'll probably come back with a warrant and tear the house apart, and maybe my car, and the office. I've got the M-16, after all, and he's seen it, and some Judge will probably believe that means something and give him the search warrant. After all, I did steal it from the Army, demonstrating my long-standing history of criminal moral character.'

  'You were twenty-three years old!' she cried. 'You haven't broken a law in almost twenty-five years.'

  'Well, I did cut the tag off a mattress once.'

  'Don't be funny. Please, not now.' She was shaking her head. 'God, this is unbelievable. This can't be happening to us.'

  Farrell kicked himself for being so stupid, but at the moment he hadn't seen any alternative. He had to drive all the way home in the lower Sunset District to leave Bart anyway, and he decided to make his calls to hospitals from there. Ten minutes later, he found himself in his car again, driving the three miles back, nearly an hour at this time on a Friday night, to within 500 yards of where he's started – St Mary's Hospital.

  Wes hated almost everything about hospitals – the smells, the light, the sound which somehow always seemed to be simultaneously muted and amplified. As the elevator opened on the fourth floor, he let out a sigh of relief. This wasn't the Intensive Care Unit. He realized he'd been afraid to ask.

  He stopped at the door to the room. The bed wasn't visible – the room separators had been pulled halfway around it – but Larry and Sally, Sam's brother and his wife, were sitting next to one another, talking quietly.

  'Hey, comrades,' he said. 'She never calls, she never writes. Is this the party?' Then, seeing Sam, her head wrapped in gauze, one arm above the blanket and one strapped to her body, he came forward, up beside her bed. 'Hi.'

  He found his hand clutched by her free one. There were sickly black and yellow wells under both of her eyes, a bandage over the bridge of her nose. He saw her make the effort, to try to smile to greet him, but it cost her. Her eyes moistened, and he leaned over to her, gently brought his cheek next to hers, left it there. 'God,' he said. 'Thank God.'

  'She's going to be okay.' He heard Larry behind him. 'Couple more days and she's out of here.'

  He straightened up, still holding her hand, looking at her. 'I'll ask these guys,' he said.

  Larry and Sally told him. Sam had, actually, been very lucky, suffering only a concussion, a broken nose, a broken collarbone, multiple bruises and abrasions. She'd been buried by brick and mortar, but the beams in the ceiling had prevented the house from collapsing on her. They'd pulled her out within three hours.

  'And how's Quayle? Is he okay?'

  Her grip tightened. She shook her head and a tear broke and rolled across her cheek.

  Glitsky thought the day might never end, but the trail was getting hot, and this was where you didn't quit.

  After he left Amanda, he ran up the outside stairs to Homicide, where he called the cellphone company. Because of the earthquake, a supervisor, Hal Frisque, was actually on duty, working late, pulling a ton of overtime. He would love to help.

  So five minutes after faxing a copy of his warrant to Frisque, Glitsky was again on the phone at his desk, a map of San Francisco open in front of him.

  'We're talking the seven-forty call, is that right?' Frisque asked.

  That's what I've got here,' Glitsky said.

  'Okay.' A pause. 'That's zone SF-43. You got a map there? Looks like he was on the 280 Freeway. Had to be, because a minute later, he got picked up in SF-42, so he was going west.'

  Glitsky was lost in possibilities, but none of them helped him very much. True, Trang had been killed near the 280 Freeway, south of it, on Geneva Avenue, but to get to the San Francisco Golf Club and Driving Range, or to Dooher's home for that matter, his car could have taken the same route.

  But Frisque was continuing. 'Okay, now he moves to DC-3.'

  'Further west?'

  A short moment, then: 'No, mostly south. DC, Daly City picked him up. Check your map. I'd say it looks like he left the freeway at Geneva and went south. No way to tell how far, because the call ends. Sergeant Glitsky?'

  'I'm here.'

  Dooher left the freeway and turned south on Geneva at 7:41, knowing at that time that Trang was sitting in his office alone.

  Got him!

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Archbishop Flaherty had canceled his other appointments for
this Monday morning. This was more important. The entire situation was getting out of hand, as a matter of fact. Over the weekend, the police had torn apart Mark Dooher 's world, finding nothing that tied him to Victor Trang in the process. It was unconscionable, irresponsible and appalling.

  So his spartan office was crowded with a gaggle of lawyers. His full-time staff corporate counsel, Gabe Stockman, was punching something into his laptop. Dooher and he had been in touch over much of the weekend, and now he and his attorney, a man unknown to Flaherty named Wes Farrell, had arrived. They were pouring themselves some coffee from the small table near the window that overlooked the schoolyard.

  'What I'd like to know,' Flaherty said, 'is why they seem to have settled on you, Mark.'

  Wes Farrell, the new guy, stopped stirring his coffee. 'Mark owned a bayonet once. He talked to Trang. They don't have anybody else. That's what they have. Beyond that, I've got a theory if you'd like to hear it.'

  'At this point, I'd like to hear anything that makes sense.'

  'Glitsky. Sergeant Glitsky. I understand you've met him, too. That he attacked you, as well.'

  'That might be a little strong,' Flaherty said. 'He wasn't very sociable, let's just say that.'

  'Well, regardless, Your Excellency, I did a little checking, a couple of people I know at the Hall of Justice. He is having some serious personal problems. His wife is dying. He screwed up his last major investigation – which happened to be another one of my clients. At the same time, he's bucking for promotion and he needs a high-profile success in a bad way. And guess who oversees police promotions? The Chief, Dan Rigby, who's a pawn of the Mayor, who is, in turn, just a little bit left-wing.'

  Flaherty interrupted. 'You're telling me this is political.'

  Now Stockman looked up, putting in his own two cents. 'Everything's political.'

  Emboldened by the support, Farrell was warming up. 'So here's how it breaks. The Mayor's support is ninety percent blacks, women's groups and gays, am I right? Hell, he's got two gay supervisors in his pocket. The Catholic Church, represented by my client here, Mark Dooher, is anti-abortion, anti-women priests, anti-gay.'

  'That's not entirely accurate,' Flaherty said. He really didn't like the anti-this and anti-that rhetoric. If Farrell was going to be representing Dooher, he'd have to try to get him to re-tool his vocabulary. The Church was pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage. It was not a negative institution.

  But Farrell waved off his objection and kept rolling. 'So Glitsky is willing to go the extra mile to bring Mark to grief. Even if the evidence is lame, and it's less than that, he puts himself on the side of the people who can promote him, who can watch out for his ass. Pardon the language.'

  The room went silent.

  'Could that really be it?' Flaherty asked. 'That's very hard to believe. I mean, this is the police department of a major city.'

  Farrell sipped his coffee. 'It's one man.'

  Dooher held up a hand. His voice was cool water. 'Glitsky's not the issue here, Wes. There is absolutely no evidence tying me to Victor. I was out driving golf balls. I forgot to tell Glitsky that I had stopped on Geneva to get gas on the way out to the range. I foolishly paid with cash. The attendant who took my money had his nose buried in some Asian newspaper and consequently didn't remember me or my car. Or anyone else, I'd wager. So Glitsky thinks I lied, covered up. That's not it. Even if Glitsky's out to get me, somebody out there has got to believe I'm innocent. Maybe the DA himself, Chris Locke.'

  This, Flaherty realized, was why he valued Dooher so highly. He saw things clearly. Even here at the center of this maelstrom, he was formulating a firm, effective strategy. It was ridiculous to think that Mark Dooher would ever have to resort to violence of any kind. He was too smart. He could destroy without a touch. 'Let me try that,' Flaherty said. 'I'll call Locke, explain the situation. See if he can help clear things up.'

  Chris Locke was the city's first black District Attorney and a consummate political animal, and he was sitting alone in his office thinking about Archbishop James Flaherty, with whom he had just spoken.

  Locke knew that Flaherty influenced a lot of votes in San Francisco through parish homilies, position papers, public appearances, pastoral letters. He also knew that conservatives, comprising perhaps thirty percent of the city's voters, played at best only a peripheral role in any election, but that it would be foolish to ignore them completely. Locke, though a prosecutor, was on the Mayor's liberal team (as any elected official in San Francisco had to be), but his private support of the Archbishop might in some future election tip the scales in his favor. Locke thought that cooperating with a powerful conservative like Flaherty, behind the scenes, was worth the risk.

  But something in Locke knew it wasn't just the votes. It was more visceral, more immediate, and he was addicted to it – having something on people who held authority and power. And Flaherty had taken the unusual step of asking Locke for a favor. That was worth looking into.

  Though he directed all prosecutions in the city, Locke was rarely current on the progress of investigations being conducted at any given time – they were police business. The DA came later.

  But, of course, he had his sources. He could find out.

  Art Drysdale sat behind his desk juggling baseballs. Now in his late fifties, he'd played about two weeks of major league ball for the Giants before he'd gone to law school, and the wall behind him still sported some framed and yellowing highlights from college ball and the minors.

  For the past dozen years, Drysdale had run the day-to-day work of the DA's office, and Locke depended on him for nearly all administrative decisions. The DA had come down to Drysdale's smaller office, knocked on the door, and let himself in, closing the door behind him.

  Drysdale never stopped juggling.

  'How do you do that?'

  'What? Oh, juggling?'

  'No, I wasn't talking about juggling. What makes you think I was talking about juggling?'

  The balls came down – plop, plop, plop – in one of Drysdale's hands, and he placed them on his desk blotter. 'It's a gift,' he said. 'What's up?'

  'What do you know about Mark Dooher?'

  The Chief Assistant DA knew just about everything there was to date about Mark Dooher. Drysdale believed in a smooth pipeline from the police department, through the DA's office, and on to the courts. He stayed in touch with Chief Rigby, with the Calendar Judge, with his Assistant DAs, such as Amanda Jenkins. He generally knew about things before they officially happened, if not sooner. If asked, he would undoubtedly say that his prescience, too, was a gift.

  So he ran the Dooher story down for his boss. It was a tasty mixture: Flaherty's fears, Dooher's mysterious turnoff onto Geneva near the time of the murder, the bayonet question, the interviews with Trang's women, Glitsky's recent over-aggressive stand on Levon Copes, the stress he was under because of his wife's illness.

  'But not much evidence yet?'

  Drysdale shook his head. 'Not that I've heard. They searched all weekend.'

  'Flaherty says this Dooher is a pillar of the community.'

  'Community pillars have been known to kill people.'

  'We know this, Art. But His Excellency thinks that maybe Glitsky's harassing Dooher for some reason.'

  'The famous "some reason"

  'The point is, Flaherty is really unhappy. Really unhappy. He's also worried that Glitsky will arrest Dooher for murdering Trang anyway, even if he's light on evidence.'

  Drysdale was shaking his head no. 'Glitsky's a stone pro, Chris. He's not going to arrest him without a warrant. If there's no evidence, there's no evidence.'

  'And there is none?'

  'Nowhere near enough. So far.'

  'So I can tell the Archbishop he needn't worry?'

  'If things don't change. But,' Drysdale held up a warning finger, 'they often do.'

  'I'll keep that in mind, Art. But in the meanwhile,' he stood up, 'if we're hassling this guy, whatever reason, I want the word out it's
to stop. We get righteous evidence or we let it go. We in accord here?'

  'That's the way we always do it, Chris.'

  Locke was at the door. 'I know that. I don't want to criticize a good cop who's having problems, Art, but Flaherty seems to know that we've got no matching hairs or fibers or fingerprints, no blood, no bayonet. And no motive. Am I right?'

  'Yep.'

  'All right.'

  Drysdale stared at the door for a moment after it closed behind the DA. Then he picked up his baseballs again. Locke, he thought, had his own gift: the man knew how to deliver a message.

  Glitsky's fears about his wife were well founded. After three days of whirlwind house-cleaning following the earthquake, she had faked feeling better on Sunday morning. When Glitsky had left to continue serving his search warrant, she had gone back to bed.

  She sent all three boys out to the movies, with instructions not to return until dinnertime. Flo knew that her nurse, and Abe's father Nat, would be back on Monday. She thought she'd be fine until then. She didn't want to burden anybody, which is all she did anymore.

  But this morning she hadn't been able to get out of bed. The nurse was in with her. Abe had put off going to work and now he and Nat sat in the living-room armchairs in the same attitude – hunched over, elbows on their knees.

  'She's got to do what she's got to do, Abraham. Maybe all the cleaning, it did her some good. For her soul.'

  Glitsky didn't have it in him to argue anymore. It had been a thoroughly dispiriting weekend. Hours of work and nothing to show for it. There had been no sign of Mark Dooher's bayonet. The lab would be coming in with microscopic results over the next few days, but Glitsky held out little hope of finding anything. Dooher had lots of suits in his closet at home, ten pairs of shoes, and all of them were pristine. It had been basically the same story at his office – fewer clothes, but everything spotless. His files gave no indication of any meeting with Trang. He kept his golf clubs in the trunk.