The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  Perfect.

  Until this woman.

  He believed no part of her story. In his heart, he was even insulted that she could think any part of it was plausible. He ached to put handcuffs on her, take her downtown and do a serious interrogation. But that would leave him with the really insoluble problem of explaining to Gerson why he'd been here in the first place. The entire house of cards would come down if he didn't have a positive match on some Panos-connected prints to fall back on. He could certainly find himself out of homicide, possibly cut in rank.

  And then there was the even bigger problem. Thieu was morally certain not only that this Michelle Maier knew where the fugitive John Holiday was at this moment, but that he was at her own home. She had come over here to get him some changes of clothes, obviously. Access to his money. He and Len could drive her back to her place, put the cuffs on Holiday and be heroes tomorrow.

  Except Glitsky didn't think Holiday did it. From Thieu's perspective, the evidence didn't say he did, either. It was simply good police work to verify whether an alternative set of suspects had a substantial evidentiary problem. And the woman, Ms. Maier, had given him a rationalization—she'd actually been here with Cuneo and Russell just three days ago, and they hadn't seen fit to follow up. It blew Thieu's mind. It wasn't what they were looking for, and so they hadn't seen what it so obviously was. No doubt her explanations had been as lame then as now.

  By her own admission, they'd checked her identification.

  So in theory, Cuneo and Russell knew as much about her as Thieu did, though he'd be surprised if either one of them had thought to write down her last name or address. Or remembered them, as he did.

  John Holiday was their suspect. It was their case, not his.

  Let them work it.

  All this passed through Thieu's agile mind during his brief questioning of Michelle Maier. She had just begun blowing more smoke about the newspapers, how she was planning on picking them up on her way out tonight.

  "And they just let you go back home?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He turned to Faro, shrugged extravagantly. "Well, Ms. Maier, it appears to be your lucky night. Inspector Faro and I have a lot of technical ground to cover here and if you gave your name and address to the other inspectors, I'm going to assume they followed up as they should. That okay with you, Len?"

  Faro tugged at his bug. He held the rank of inspector but wasn't an investigator. He did forensics and crime scene analysis. As far as he was concerned, the woman's presence was only significant to the extent that it sullied the scene.

  The sooner she was gone, the better. "As long as she doesn't touch anything else going out. Leave the mail," he told her.

  Michelle knew what she was hearing, but wasn't sure she believed it. Thieu lifted his hand and waved as he would to a child. "Drive safely," he said.

  "Really? I can go?"

  Thieu nodded impatiently.

  "Thank you. I mean, I'm sorry. I just ..." She noticed the string bag at her feet and leaned over to pick it up.

  Then she walked past the two policemen, and out the front door.

  26

  Ever since he'd finally gotten his doctor's permission to go back to work after his year and a half of recovery, Glitsky hadn't missed a day. Over a very early breakfast, though—the baby wasn't even up yet—he was telling Treya that he thought he could spend his time more profitably outside today. "But do you want to hear something funny?"

  "More than anything."

  "I feel guilty about it."

  "About what? Taking the day off?"

  "Calling in sick when I'm not. I've never done that before."

  "You're kidding?" Treya put her bagel down. "Never, not once?"

  "I told you it was funny."

  "Hysterical. Except I don't think I have, either. No wonder we're a good couple. We're probably the only two people in America."

  "Which leaves me with a problem. I was hoping you'd be able to tell me the proper etiquette for when I call in, but now it turns out you wouldn't know."

  "I don't think there's really much of an etiquette. You call, leave a message ..."

  "Yeah, but I'm supposed to be sick. So, for example, do I try to sound miserable?"

  "How would they tell the difference?"

  Glitsky faked a pout. "That was cruel."

  "I'm in a cruel mood." This was and had been true since yesterday, since soon after Glitsky's meeting with Jackman.

  Glitsky thought she was proving herself to be one of the premier grudge holders. "I haven't decided if I'm going in, either," she said. "And I'm talking about ever. How dare that man treat you that way?"

  "It wasn't personal."

  "That's kind of my point, Abe. It should have been personal. You and Dismas are about half the reason he got that job in the first place."

  "Maybe true. But we're not going to be why he gets to keep it." Glitsky picked up a slice of lox, rolled it up, and popped it into his mouth. "When I was a kid, I thought the ultimate food was lox, you know that? If you ate lox, you were a megasuccess like a movie star. If somebody had ever told me that one day I, a mere cop, would commonly eat lox at home, I wouldn't have believed them. And yet look at us. Sometimes I still can't believe it."

  "That was subtle," she said, "but I caught it. You're changing the subject away from Clarence and I want to vent some more."

  "You can if you want, but he wasn't all wrong. Diz and I really have nothing, and Clarence's reaction was probably a good portion of why we decided we had to look rather than just accuse. Besides, if he's getting calls from Washington and Rigby"—the mayor and police chief, respectively—"on the weekends, it's helpful for us to know how high Panos's influence extends. In a way, his coming down on me was a pretty good heads up. He might have even meant it that way."

  "I'm sure."

  He shrugged. "As you so astutely observed, he's playing the political game. Right now he's got his hands on the power and he's the best DA we've had in years. So he wants to keep it. I can't blame him. It's high stakes."

  "And the ends justify the means?"

  "Sometimes. Not always. I think Clarence is trying to figure out that balance himself. If Diz and I actually get something that does break this case, he'll jump on it with both feet."

  "Do you really think that? After what he's already done to you both?"

  "Absolutely."

  Treya chewed silently, sipped at her tea. "All right, I'll go to work. But he can get his own darn coffee."

  At a quarter to eight, Glitsky flashed his badge at the manager of the Diamond Center lot. At 9:45, he and Hardy were still in Hardy's car, in a VIP parking space just to the side of the entrance, and directly across the street from the Georgia AAA Diamond Center. Hardy still hurt. He dozed fitfully behind the wheel until Glitsky backhanded his shoulder. "Panos," he said.

  It was Roy, on foot and in uniform. Stopping at the huge double doors, he checked his watch, paced to the corner, looked both ways, then came back to the doors and looked at his watch again. He wasn't sixty feet from where they were parked. Both men slumped in their seats, awaiting developments. They weren't long in coming. Two men coming up out of the lot passed within five feet of Glitsky's window. Again, he ticked Hardy's shoulder, and pointed.

  Sephia in a black leather calf-length coat and Rez in tight black chinos and a tan, torso-hugging sweater that he tucked into his pants.

  They crossed to where Roy waited at the doors. He wasted no time but immediately grew animated, gesticulating, all bulldog. "Next time we bring one of those distance microphones, tape everything they say," Glitsky said. When Hardy didn't reply, he said, "That was a joke, Diz."

  But Hardy still didn't answer. He just sat, watching the trio across the street. After a few minutes of back and forth, Roy seemed to have shot his wad in terms of aggression, and then the meeting, abruptly as it had begun, was over. Roy resumed the walk on his beat. Sephia and Rez went to the double doors of the Diamond Center and disappeared in
side.

  "Well," Hardy said, "they're all involved in something together, but we already knew that. I'd love to go inside and have a few words with Nick."

  "What good would that do?"

  "I don't know. Maybe none. But it would be fun to bait him a little. Cast aspersions about his mother's heritage or something. See if I could get him to take a poke at me with witnesses around."

  "It's nice to see you thinking about having fun again. I wasn't going to mention it, but your company's been less than scintillating this morning."

  "Yeah, but I had all the ideas last night. Speaking of which, no word from Thieu?"

  Glitsky shook his head. "Too soon." His eyes had never left the double doors, and now he bobbed his head that way. "See? You wouldn't have had any time anyway.

  Keep low."

  But they needn't have worried. Sephia carried a plain paper bag and he and Rez passed them again close enough to touch, but they were deeply into their own conversation now and never slowed.

  "Now what?" Hardy said.

  "Gentlemen, start your engines."

  So they were ready. Glitsky, looking back over his shoulder, said "Okay." Hardy let them pass, said, "That's the car!" and fell in behind them.

  "What car?"

  "The gray sedan. The one they were driving when they shot at me and John. The bastards are so smug they didn't even use a rental or a throwaway. Can you believe that?"

  Glitsky had his pad out and got the license number. They were heading west on Geary now, back a couple of car-lengths, but no one in between. "Speaking of fun, if we can ever get somebody to start issuing search warrants, it might be fun to dig around in that thing."

  "There it is," Hardy said, "fun again." But as he said it, he was rolling the muscles of his back. He didn't look like he was having fun.

  They followed as the car did the one-way-street boogie until it was heading south now on Van Ness, then down Mission to Twenty-first Street, where it turned right and finally pulled to a stop at the curb in front of a nicely maintained, freestanding Victorian house. Hardy drove by as both men were getting out of their car. There was no paper bag, although Sephia walked with both of his hands inside the pockets of his black coat.

  Hardy pulled over a couple of houses up the road.

  "What's this?" he asked.

  "I don't know." Glitsky was writing down the address, though. "Drug drop maybe? I don't know," he said again.

  It wasn't a long wait, perhaps ten minutes. When they came out of the house, this time Rez was holding a briefcase. They got back on the road and the tail continued.

  By noon, when they turned back into the Diamond Center lot, they'd made four similar stops, from the Mission out to Diamond Heights and then to a palatial, gated home in St. Francis Wood. By this time, both Hardy and Glitsky had concluded that whatever the boys were up to, it wasn't kosher. But they didn't get much time to air any of their theories. They were parked in a loading zone, waiting for the two men to exit the lot again. Hardy had just turned off the motor when he looked into the rearview mirror and said, "Okay, here they come."

  At the same moment, Hardy's cell phone rang. He watched Sephia and Rez, each with a briefcase now, as they crossed the street, but he stopped paying attention to them when he heard his wife's voice, crying. "Dismas," she managed to get out. "Please ..."

  "What is it, Fran? Do you hear me? Easy."

  "I can't be easy!" she screamed. Then, "Dismas, you've got to come home."

  "I will, but..."

  "Please! Now!"

  "Are you all right? Should I call nine one one?"

  "No, but it's ..." Her breathing came in ragged gasps.

  "Just get here."

  "Okay, sure. I'm on my way, but what's ..."

  "I can't explain. You'll have to see. Oh God, I've got to call the school."

  "The school? Why? Are the kids...?"

  "I've got to call the school," she repeated, and hung up.

  "Fran? Frannie?" He stared at the dead phone.

  "What is it?" Glitsky asked.

  "Not good," Hardy said. A muscle twitched at the side of his jaw. "Whatever it is, it's not good. She's calling the school." He turned to his friend. "Listen, Abe, I'm done here. I've got to go now." He hit the ignition. "I can drop you someplace on the way."

  "No." Glitsky was already halfway out of the car.

  "You go."

  The car peeled out in a spray of gravel.

  Holiday was alone now in the Yerba Buena Motel at the corner of Van Ness and Lombard, not even three blocks from Michelle's house. She had come back home last night traumatized and panic-stricken. She was sure that the policemen that had been at his place had followed her home.

  They both had to get out of there right away. So they'd walked down here, a few blocks, and Michelle had checked them both in under her name.

  And now she was gone. She had a deadline for a big article on bonzais for Sunset and she needed to do a ton of research. She told him he should just hang out here in the room and she'd be back midafternoon with some lunch. He called Hardy's office three times and redundantly left Michelle's cell phone number each time, but it appeared that his lawyer had taken the day off. The one time he ventured a look out the window, a black-and-white police car had been parked in the lot outside. The next time he looked, it had gone, but the anxiety hadn't.

  This was getting bad, he knew. He was going to have to do something. He couldn't just sit here.

  When the maid knocked, he let her in and went out across the street and into the convenience store on the corner. At least his picture wasn't on the front page of the newspapers out front today. He bought a quart of milk, a quart of apple juice, six apples, a Snickers candy bar and a copy of the Chronicle. When he got back, the maid had finished.

  He drank the milk and ate an apple and the candy bar.

  He read the Chronicle, was pleased to note on page two that they still hadn't found him, although the search continued. He tried Hardy again, but he still wasn't in.

  Finally, he took a clean towel from the bathroom and used it as a tablecloth on the bedside table. He took his gun from his jacket pocket, made sure there wasn't a bullet in the chamber, nor a clip in the handle. After wiping it clean with the towel, he tried the action, sighted down the barrel, squeezed off a succession of phantom rounds. To his surprise, he found that the clip had only four rounds in it, and he opened his box and squeezed in another three, so that it was fully loaded. He worked the action to chamber a round, then dropped the clip and put another bullet in its place.

  Finally, he jammed the clip into the weapon.

  Loaded for bear.

  Thieu didn't get much sleep, but he wasn't accustomed to more than five hours anyway, so it didn't bother him. After he and Faro had finished their dusting at Holiday's, he decided on his own that Dismas Hardy's strategy had if not a flaw, at least a difficulty. Thieu still had to find a way that he could plausibly inject himself into a discussion with Sephia and Rez about their possible presence at Holiday's duplex. That wasn't his case. On the other hand, he had been the responding inspector to the Terry/Wills scene.

  Any concerns he had about the inviolability of that scene would be completely appropriate.

  So at a little before two, he appeared at the Diamond Center and ten minutes later found himself in a small anteroom off the showroom floor, explaining about his problem to the private security guards Sephia and Rez. "So the basic security of the scene is still my responsibility," he lied, "and I know both you guys and"—he looked down at his pad—"and Roy Panos have been helping out Inspectors Cuneo and Russell, isn't that right?"

  "Some," Sephia replied. "Mostly that's been Roy, though."

  "Yeah. I already got him." Thieu passed over Roy quickly. He didn't want them to ask what he meant by saying he "got" him. "But they mentioned you, too."

  Sephia looked to Rez—a question. Then he shrugged.

  "We just talked to them a couple of times."

  "But yo
u never went with them. You never were at Terry's and Will's apartment?"

  "Why would we?" Rez asked. "Did anybody say we were? Why don't you ask them, the other inspectors?"

  Thieu played innocent. "They're out today interviewing witnesses and they asked me to clear this up. Look, we're trying to get the neighbors and other folks to tell us who had been in and out of there. It's a simple question. Have either of you guys ever been there before?"

  Rez looked at Sephia. They both looked at Thieu. "No, of course not."

  Now Thieu had them. He pulled out his tape recorder and they couldn't very well refuse to repeat the denial.

  Then, when he got to the end, he set the hook. "By the way," he said with the tape still running, "have either of you guys ever been to John Holiday's apartment?"

  Glitsky wandered around downtown for over an hour, his mind jumping between Hardy's sudden emergency and the odyssey they'd witnessed with Sephia and Rez. He ended up at David's Deli, where he sat at the bar and ordered a pastrami sandwich and a Cel-Ray soda. He checked his watch. He was dying to know, but wanted to give Hardy time to work out the problem. Whatever it was, it seemed serious, but if he'd have wanted Glitsky's company or help, he would have asked in the car.

  Again, he looked at his watch. If he bolted down his sandwich, he could get back to the Hall in time still to get in a half-day. He could just say he was feeling better and didn't want to be home if he wasn't really sick. It would be a good example for the troops.

  "No," he said aloud. Suddenly he stood up, took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his seat to save his place. At the pay telephone, he called Treya at work, but a different woman answered at her personal number, and this brought a crease to his brow. "I'm trying to reach Treya Glitsky."

  "I'm sorry, but she's not in. Is this Lieutenant Glitsky?"

  "Yes it is."

  "Treya's left for the day, Lieutenant. She left a message if you called that you should get home, or at least call, as fast as you could. And that you should be very careful."

  "Call home?"

  "That's what she said. She left here in a hurry. She said she'd try and page you."