Guilt

by John Lescroart

  But the situation would also work to his advantage. He'd walk into her room and she'd see him holding the baby. He had gotten to their son in the hospital without her knowing about it. She couldn't have stopped him, whatever she had done.

  A message would get delivered there, now, wouldn't it? He wouldn't have to say a thing.

  She would come back to him. They wouldn't ever have to mention these past couple of days. This was how training worked. There had to be periods of pain, of testing, of finding out how far the chain would go until you felt it choke.

  Well, Christina had found out.

  Dooher didn't remember the births or much of the infancy of his other children. He'd been putting in yeoman hours when they'd been born – in those days men went to work. They didn't change diapers.

  So the size of this baby surprised him – so small, nearly weightless.

  They had wrapped it tight, it arms cocooned in its blue blanket. The nurse he'd charmed earlier escorted him out of the nursery, reminding him to keep the neck supported, to cover the head and shield it from any drafts while they were in the hallway.

  At the door to 412, Dooher turned to her. 'Would you mind if I just go in alone and surprise her?'

  Who could say no to such a reasonable request?

  Christina was looking past Glitsky. The door was beginning to open and it would be the nurse with her…

  No. This couldn't be.

  In her dreams, something like this would happen. But this wasn't a dream.

  Dooher stopped inside the door. 'Well, look at this, a little impromptu party. Corporal Glitsky, of all people.'

  No one said a word. Dooher made sure the door was closed behind him. His eyes swept the room and alighted on Diane Price.

  'Who's this?' he asked.

  Christina spoke up protectively. 'She's a nurse practitioner here, Mark. She helped with the labor.'

  Dooher accepted this. 'Well, thank you very much.' A shift of focus. 'And how are you, Christina?'

  She forced herself to speak calmly. 'I'm fine, Mark. It went all right. No real complications.'

  'I'm glad.' A pause. 'Though it wasn't exactly how we planned, was it?'

  'I'm sorry,' she said. Her eyes never left her son. 'I don't know what happened yesterday, Mark. I guess I lost sight of things for a minute.'

  'I guess so. That happens sometimes. Moments of stress.' Another silence.

  'Can I have my baby, please? I have to feed it.'

  'Actually,' he smiled at her, 'it's not just your baby, it's our baby, isn't that right?'

  'Of course, that's what I meant. It's our baby. I meant our baby.' She held out her hands. 'And he's hungry, Mark. Thank you for bringing him in, but I'll take him now, okay?'

  He shook his head. 'No, I don't think so. Not quite yet.'

  He didn't even recognize her!

  Diane wasn't prepared for the wave of anger that swept over her. He looked – impossibly – the same as she remembered him from college.

  And now he stared directly at her and saw nothing.

  She wasn't there.

  It all flooded back – the experience was etched in acid. Afterward, she had been curled up on the top of her bed, great pain down there. Too hurt for tears.

  This couldn't have happened to her. Her blouse, torn open, had been still around her shoulders – a distinct memory. She remembered lying there in a fetal position, holding the scrap of her blouse collar in her fist, as though it offered some protection. He'd ripped the rest off.

  He was pulling up his pants, tucking himself in. She could still hear the sound his breath had made. He'd said nothing.

  When he looked down at her, just like now, she hadn't been there.

  She found herself speaking in the same even tones Christina had been using. 'The baby needs to be fed, sir.'

  He didn't like the diversion. Snapped at her. 'I'm talking to my wife.'

  'The baby needs to be fed,' Diane repeated.

  This time Dooher glared at her. 'Who are you? Do I know you?'

  Glitsky broke in. 'Give her the kid, Dooher.'

  A disappointed expression. 'Not right yet, private. Christina and I have a few things we've got to work out first.' He turned to her. 'I want you back home.'

  Christina was glued to the child. 'I was upset, Mark. With the hormones, I guess. I got scared. Of course I'll come back. You're the father. I'd never think of raising the boy without his father.'

  It seemed to anger him further. 'You're just trying to get your hands on this baby, aren't you, Christina? You'd say anything now, wouldn't you?'

  'No, that's not true. But the baby is hungry, Mark. He hasn't eaten yet.'

  Christina had re-introduced Diane to Glitsky, so he knew who she was. It would complicate matters if Dooher realized it. Glitsky had his gun inside his jacket. He'd drawn it only occasionally in his career, and had never fired it at a person.

  If this turned out to be the first time, he wanted to know what was behind his target. He moved to his left.

  'Stay where you are!' Dooher backed up a step. A wider angle on the room. 'Whatever you're trying to do, it's a bad idea.'

  'I'm not doing anything.'

  'You're moving. I don't want you to move.'

  'And if I do, what then? Are you threatening to hurt your baby if I do, is that it?'

  It didn't faze him. 'I'm holding my child, Sergeant. That's all. What are you doing here?'

  'I heard you were here. I wanted to talk about Wes Farrell.'

  A turn of his mouth. 'I don't know anything about Wes Farrell.'

  The baby mewled quietly. Christina: 'Mark, please. Let me hold him.'

  Glitsky looked to Christina, back to Mark. 'Let her have him, Dooher.'

  He shook the baby, shushed at it.

  'Don't shake him,' Diane said.

  'You shut up. I'm talking to the Corporal here.'

  Diane saw it clearly. He was going to wind up killing the child.

  'All right,' Glitsky said. Talk to me.'

  'I told you I don't know anything about Farrell. We were supposed to have a meeting today. He didn't show up.'

  Glitsky was impassive. 'We found him. He wasn't dead. Not yet.' Christina was staring at Dooher. 'Oh God, Mark, not Wes. Not your best friend.'

  Glitsky pushed at it. 'You thought the fall finished him, didn't you?'

  'I don't know what you're talking about.'

  The baby began to cry.

  'Please, Mark, let me take him.'

  He shook his head at his wife, backed up another step, looking down at the infant. 'Shh!' At Christina: 'Wes wasn't any friend of mine. He's the one who poisoned you about me, who made you leave me.'

  'So you killed him,' Glitsky said.

  The baby wailed. 'Shh!' More roughly. 'Shhh!'

  'Don't shake him, please. Don't shake him, Mark.'

  But he was back on Glitsky, holding the baby against his shoulder, both hands around the tiny body, shaking him up and down. 'I thought you said he wasn't dead.'

  'When we found him. I said when we found him he wasn't dead.' Glitsky played the trump. 'We followed you to the lake.'

  'From where? Who did? What are you talking about?'

  'Give it up, Dooher. It's over. We know where to look. We're going to find everything, aren't we?'

  'And then what? You find a bag of wet clothes, big deal. You can't connect them to me.'

  'I don't need to. I can connect Farrell to you.'

  Dooher shook his head. 'You can't prove anything. Just like with Trang, just like with Sheila. That old proof keeps on fucking with you, doesn't it, Private? So Wes Farrell fell off a cliff. He died. So what?'

  Glitsky's scar stretched white through his lips. 'So he didn't die, that's what.'

  Dooher took in a breath. He nodded, bitterly amused. 'As if Wes Farrell matters.' He pulled the child closer to him, holding it with one arm, pointing with the other. 'You think Sheila, Victor Trang, Wes Farrell – you think I feel bad for what happened?'

>   The baby began crying again and he pulled it roughly against him, pressing the infant's face into his body.

  'Mark, please! You're hurting him!'

  Diane was in slo-mo. She stood up. She lifted the purse from the floor. 'Sit down!' Dooher barked at her.

  'No.' She took a step toward him.

  Christina, pleading. 'Please, Diane, no. Mark, just let him breathe. Let your son breathe.'

  Dooher pointed at his wife. 'I had to have you, don't you understand that? After the trial, I told Wes I was sorry for what I'd put him through. If I'd made life hard for him, I'd make it up to him.'

  Christina had her hands out. The baby, the baby. Anything he said, just let her have the baby. 'Okay, Mark, fine. We can talk about that.'

  He included Glitsky. 'This nigger can't prove anything. They'll never convict me. We could start again, Christina. I could make it up to you. I could.'

  'Dooher!' Glitsky said. 'Let the baby go.'

  Diane moved forward.

  He glared across at her. 'I told you to stop right there.'

  'Give me the baby,' she said.

  'Back off!' Dooher slammed a palm against the wall behind him. 'What do you think you're doing?'

  The baby got a breath and managed another piercing yell.

  Dooher took it in both of his hands. He held it up in front of him.

  He kept shaking it. 'Shut up, damn it! Shut up!'

  Diane Price dropped her carry-all purse to the floor and lunged forward.

  Glitsky started to react, reached inside his jacket.

  There was no time.

  The gun was a metallic blur in her right hand moving toward Dooher's head. The sharp, flat report.

  She let the gun fall. It clattered to the floor.

  Diane grabbed for the child as Dooher collapsed.

  The room hung for an instant in surreal suspension.

  Glitsky smelled the cordite. His hand was still on his own weapon, but there was no need. It was over.

  The baby began crying again.

  Diane was bringing it over to Christina when the door flew open, a nurse and two attendants rushing in after the noise from the shot. They stopped in the doorway.

  Diane laid Christina's son in her arms.

  'He was killing the baby,' she said. 'I had to stop him.'

  That would be her story, Glitsky knew. It was a good one.

  Her eyes pleaded with him. Did he understand what she was saying? 'Guy says he's sorry and thinks that's enough? I don't think so.'

  Glitsky nodded at her. He was going to arrest her, but she posed no danger at the moment.

  He held out a hand to stop the influx of other staff crowding to the door. He crossed the room and went down to one knee next to the still and crumpled body. Almost as an afterthought, he picked up the small gun.

  He felt for a pulse. The throat at the carotid artery twitched once under his fingers. Then he felt nothing. He leaned over, closer.

  'It's Lieutenant,' he whispered.

  CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

  After his fight with Sam, in his heart Farrell had still wanted to believe that Dooher was turning himself in, that the guilt had gotten to him. But the more he considered it, the wiser it seemed to cover his bases, so he'd called Glitsky and the Lieutenant had given him his marching orders.

  In the event that Dooher did not confess, if the meeting began to look like an ambush, Farrell was to extricate himself as quickly as he could, remembering to drop the bait – 'Glitsky knows where you hid the stuff.' Thieu would be tailing them, so the threat to Farrell would be minimal.

  Minimal. Farrell had liked that.

  It was a gamble, but their only chance. If Dooher took the bait, if he went to make sure his hiding place was still secure, Thieu would follow. Dooher would lead them to the evidence. Thieu would call Glitsky when he'd found something.

  And that's what had happened.

  But not soon enough for Farrell.

  They hadn't planned on the fog and they'd underestimated Dooher's dispatch. Always stronger, faster, more determined than Farrell, Dooher had walked up close, concealing his intention, then come at him like an enraged bull. A blow to the solar plexus, then another to the face had driven Farrell backward, and Dooher had kept coming, forcing him off the pavement, on to the steep angle under the trees, all the way to where the land fell off and the air began.

  Now, Monday, Thieu and Glitsky were playing lunchtime chess at one of the open tables on Market Street. The sun was bright overhead; the air still. Glitsky was thinking mate in three moves, but his concentration got diverted when a bare-chested man in sandals and shorts stopped to watch the endgame. Carrying an enormous wooden cross, he just stood there looking on with his companion, who was a fashionably dressed businesswoman in her mid-thirties. The cross, Glitsky noticed, had a wheel at its base to facilitate pulling the thing along.

  He moved his bishop and the man shook his head. 'Blew it,' he said, and moved on, pulling his cross, chatting with his friend. Daily life in the city.

  Studying the board, Glitsky realized the man was right. Thieu made his move – one move! – and tried not to smile. It wasn't a really good try, though.

  Glitsky started putting away his pieces. His brow was not clear. Throughout the game, they'd been discussing their sting operation, how it had gone so wrong. 'I still don't understand how you lost Farrell.'

  Thieu was holding the bag. 'I didn't lose Farrell. I never had Farrell.'

  'You followed him,' Glitsky said.

  Thieu explained what had happened. 'Two cars, Abe,' he said. 'We always tail with two cars. You know that. We waited by the lot by the bridge when they pulled in there. When the Lexus pulled out, I followed Dooher down to Merced. There was nothing to call you about until we found the bags. The guys in the second car didn't find Farrell right away and they had better things to do than report to us, like get him out of there, try to keep him alive. What I'm curious about is the Price woman.'

  'After this,' Glitsky was laconic, 'odds are she'll get her movie deal.'

  'Not precisely what I meant, Abe.'

  'I know, Paul. I know what you meant.'

  They crossed Market, negotiating a stalled Mini bus spewing out a stream of unhappy campers. When they had forded it, Glitsky told Thieu that the DA hadn't yet decided on the charge for Price. 'My guess is Reston will go with manslaughter, she'll plead and get some community service. Maybe not even that if I have any real influence, which I don't.'

  'Community service for killing a guy?'

  'Using deadly force, Paul to save a life. The situation called for it. I was there. He was going to kill the baby. That's what I'm going to say. It's what Price's lawyer is going to say. It'll fly.'

  Thieu was skeptical. 'How was Dooher going to do that, exactly? Kill the kid, I mean. Did he have a gun, a knife? What was he going to do?'

  'He was shaking it. Kills infants every day. You know that, Paul. We've got that nice poster on the column – "Never, never, NEVER shake a baby!" I'm sure you've seen it.'

  'So she had to shoot him dead?'

  Glitsky shrugged. 'Must've seemed like a good idea at the time.'

  'You're cute with those tubes coming out of you.'

  'Mmmmfff.'

  'I know, I agree. Oh listen, I brought you a present. You can pin it on your Take me drunk, I'm home shirt.' Sam fished in her purse and pulled out the button. She turned it to face Wes. It read, What if the hokey-pokey is what it's all about?

  Two weeks later, Christina was on the deck of her parents' home, breastfeeding William. Her father was coming out of the house with a tray of food.

  'Your mother will be along in a minute,' he said, sitting down on one of the wrought-iron chairs, 'but I wanted to tell you something. She feels so guilty about telling Mark you were at the hospital. It's been paralyzing her.'

  'She did what she thought was best, Dad.'

  'You know that; I know it. She did it, though. I think it feels different.'

  Chr
istina looked out over the valley. 'She didn't trust me. She didn't believe what I told her.'

  Bill was all agreement. 'That's true. She feels terrible about that, too.' He leaned forward, his voice soft. 'I'm just trying to tell you her intentions were the best.' He put a paternal hand on her knee. 'I've got to ask you to let her share her grandson, Christina. You can't go on punishing her. You've got to trust her again. Let her hold him.'

  'I can't.'

  'I think you can. She loves you, Christina. I love you, too. This is something you can do.'

  She blinked a couple of times. William gurgled and she looked down at him. She had finished nursing. She took a moment fixing her swimsuit, her eyes down.

  'I can't do anything. All I've done is cause you both pain. Now I'm hurting Mom and I can't make myself do anything else.'

  'I'll say it again. You can.'

  She forced herself to breathe. 'No, Daddy, it's more of the same. I mess my life up and then I do it again and again and again. Now I'm a single mother with no job and no career and you're taking care of me again.'

  'That's what we do, Christina. That's what parents do. You followed your heart.'

  But she was shaking her head. 'I didn't. I followed some dream, to be like both of you. And I'm not really like either of you. I've got all this stuff, this baggage. A woman's role, a mother's role, a daughter's role… roles define everything I am, so I'm not anything anymore. I'm just not carefree.'

  Bill's elbows were on his knees. He canted forward in his chair. 'I know that. It's a different world than we grew up in, your mother and I. Maybe it's better, I don't know, worrying about so much, trying to do right on so many levels.'

  'But I haven't done right. I'm guilty about everything. I'm all lost.'

  Bill took her hand. 'You guilty about William here?'

  She looked down at the boy. 'No.'

  'You know where you are with him?'

  'Yes. Definitely.'

  He sat back in his chair, took an olive and popped it. 'You're going to make mistakes with him, you know. Just like your mother did with you about telling Mark. Like I did, too, lots of other times. Still do. We make mistakes.'