On Tuesday, June 7, about six weeks after Abe Glitsky was told to forget about Mark Dooher and Victor Trang, he got a call at his home. It was 11:14 by the clock next to his new bed. He had gotten home an hour before, turned on and off the television, made a cup of tea, opened a book. Finally, he had gone in to his bedroom to lie down.
The house was empty now, except for him. The boys were staying at a friend's until Glitsky could finish the interview process for the nanny/ housekeeper he was going to hire.
In the first five days after Flo's death, he'd talked to two pleasant-enough young women, and both interviews had been disasters. Glitsky knew he had been to blame – he probably wouldn't have hired himself under these conditions. He should give himself a week or two to come to grips with his desolation, his anger, his despair.
He was fighting to keep desperation out of the picture, too, reminding himself that there really was no hurry; it had only been a few days. He'd find someone.
The new bed was a double. He and Flo had had a queen, but the first night after she was gone he found he couldn't make himself get into it. He knew he would keep turning as he tried to sleep and be newly surprised to find her side empty time after time. So that first night he'd slept, or tried to, on the couch in the living room. The next day he'd called the Salvation Army and they'd come and then the bed was gone. But even the smaller one felt enormous.
He was still in his clothes, one hand over his eyes, squinting at the digital clock. He reached for the telephone.
'Glitsky.'
'Abe, this is Frank Batiste. I know you're on leave and you can say no, but they got me at home and asked, and I thought you'd want to decide for yourself. We just got a nine one one from a frantic husband in St Francis Wood. His wife's been stabbed. She's dead.'
'Okay.'
'The caller was Mark Dooher. The woman's his wife.'
His feet were over the edge of the bed, on to the floor. 'Send a squad car by. I'll hitch a ride with it.'
Glitsky didn't hear Batiste start to ask if he was sure, he didn't have to… he'd already hung up.
He remembered the house more vividly than he would have thought. He saw a lot of homes in his job and they tended to blur together. But this one was distinctive with its tiled front courtyard behind the low stucco fence, the turret in the front, the semi-enclosed entrance, the broad sweeping lawn with its fifty-year-old magnolia tree which was in bloom, scenting the clear, still-warm air.
Glitsky stood a minute surveying the front of the house, now all lit up. Someone was moving in the turret, but he couldn't see through the blinds. The coroner's van hadn't yet arrived, but there was an ambulance in the driveway. Three other black and white squad cars from the early responding officers were parked on the street. The yellow crime-scene tape had been hung over a wide perimeter around the driveway and across the lawn. Within it, a couple of uniforms were standing guard, talking.
Glitsky had to remind himself that this was St Francis Wood, and that police response time here was measured in minutes, not hours as was often the case in less tony neighborhoods.
He was directed to the driveway and saw three other men standing in front of the ambulance. The two in uniform would be the Lieutenant and the Sergeant from the district station, which was Taraval. The third saw Glitsky and started walking down toward him. It was Paul Thieu.
On Glitsky's recommendation, Thieu had recently been detailed full-time to the death department, and he'd been in the office at the Hall pulling long hours when the eight-oh-two – a coroner's case – had been patched through from emergency services. Thieu had called Batiste, which was why Abe was here.
Glitsky met him halfway. Further up the drive, he noticed the pool of light under an open side door. 'Where's Dooher?'
'Library downstairs, over in that turret area. Couple of guys are with him.' Thieu had quickly improved in the chatter department. He'd also learned how to answer questions. 'Okay. I guess he'll wait.'
They approached the Taraval station people – Lieutenant Armanino and Sergeant Dorney – and Thieu introduced Glitsky around. Armanino was taking pains to explain to the downtown Homicide Inspectors that the guys from his station had secured the place well. The woman upstairs was, in fact, dead. She'd been obviously and thoroughly dead when they got here. So the paramedics hadn't moved the body or touched anything.
Thieu needed to talk. 'Stabbed in her bed, Abe. It looks like a burglary gone bad, maybe attempted rape. Sheets and blankets tossed pretty good. Lots of blood – she must have cut the guy.'
Hands in his pockets, Glitsky nodded. 'Okay, let's go on up.'
'Before you do,' Armanino interrupted, 'there are a couple of other things, Sergeant. The paramedics and responding officers were here when we arrived, but we got here right after. Nobody else had been on the driveway. There was no obvious blood on it, though there might be a drop or two, some spatter. I'll keep it clean till the crime-scene guys get here.' Armanino was a stickler for details. Glitsky thought it was undoubtedly how he'd made Lieutenant. 'But in the meanwhile, one of my guys' – he indicated the policeman standing on the driveway – 'found this.' He showed Glitsky a Ziploc bag containing something white dotted with red.
Glitsky took it. 'What is it?'
'It's a surgical glove. It was there in the dirt by the back door, which was evidently the point of exit. Maybe entry, too. The light bulb, by the way,' again he indicated with gesture, 'was dark, unscrewed.'
'Unscrewed?'
Armanino nodded. 'Dorney here put on his own gloves and turned it and it came right back on. And this.'
Another, larger bag contained what, at a glance, appeared to be the murder weapon – a high-quality kitchen knife. The blade's pretty clean, isn't it?'
'It got wiped.'
'But a lot upstairs?'
Armanino shrugged. 'You'll see.' What it meant, if anything, wasn't for him to determine. Neither was Glitsky's definition of 'a lot'. He was simply reporting what he and his men had found.
'That it?'
Armanino looked at Dorney and the Sergeant nodded. A well-oiled machine, these two. Good cops. 'For now, I think so.'
'Okay, Paul,' Glitsky said, 'let's go.'
At the side door, he turned and added quietly, 'Thanks for having Batiste call me.'
The side door opened on to a laundry room with black and white checkered tile floors, a washing machine and dryer. They walked through into the beautiful, marble-countered kitchen, where Glitsky had once sat with Sheila Dooher and had tea.
There were voices coming out of the turret room, but Glitsky followed Thieu as he turned into the foyer and they ascended the stairs to a balustraded landing. It seemed that every light in the house must be on.
A large, circular rug with a Navajo design covered the floor up here. Two panelled doors on the left were now closed.
The bedroom was huge and well lit. Double French doors led to a balcony. There were two darkwood dressers, and a door through which he could see a makeup area and, beyond that, the bathroom.
The woman lay diagonally across the king-sized bed in an awkward position – half turned with one arm under her, the other splayed. Glitsky stood a minute, registering it. Something, though he couldn't say precisely what, struck him as odd. She looked almost as though she'd been dropped.
He remembered the face and looked at it now. In death, there was no sign of fury in Sheila Dooher's last moments – in fact, Glitsky thought, her expression was remarkably peaceful. The hair, mussed from sleeping, still bore the traces of its last brushing and, perhaps tellingly, no visible blood.
Which is not to say there was no blood elsewhere. A blood-spattered white cotton nightie was bunched around her neck, covering her left breast, leaving the right exposed. Only one wound was visible, a inch-long slit out of which seeped a brownish-red ribbon. Her underpants were still on, though they'd been pulled down forcefully, and were ripped.
Glitsky straightened up, backing away a step for a wider angle. Thieu's statement about the blood was a relative one. But Glitsky knew that blood was one of those things – if you weren't familiar with it, a little could go a real long way.
Glitsky's first take on the blood in this case was that there wasn't nearly enough of it. Even Victor Trang had bled substantially more than this, and his killer had used the bayonet to plug the flow. If the knife-wound here had gone to the heart with the victim on her side, which was what it looked like, there should have been massive quantities of blood. Pints. Not a cupful.
'What?' Thieu asked.
But Glitsky didn't answer. Instead, from his new vantage point, back a little from the bed, he noticed something he should have seen immediately. He wasn't going to touch or move the body to make sure, but there were four or five other apparent blood marks on the nightie – he leaned in to see more clearly, now that he thought he knew what he was looking at. They were like brush strokes – straight-sided and tapering, the concentration of blood heavy at one end and lighter at the other.
It could only be one thing, something he'd seen only once before – with Victor Trang – in his career.
The killed had wiped the blade off on his victim's clothes.
Farrell didn't look like a lawyer at the moment.
He was in the pair of white painter's overalls that had been next to his bed. He'd finally finished all the repairs, the caulking and the cracks in the walls of his apartment. For the past few weeks, after work, when he wasn't visiting Sam, he had been haphazardly painting a baseboard here, a door there.
Tonight, after the midnight call from Mark, he threw on the paint-stained pants, stepped barefoot into his trashed topsiders, threw on a ragged and grubby University of California sweatshirt, and grabbed his Giants hat from the peg by the door.
So he didn't look like a lawyer, but he wasn't here as a lawyer. At least he didn't think so. He was here as a best friend. Mark's voice had been calm, though there was no mistaking the anguish. They'd had a burglar, he said. Sheila was dead.
He pulled his Datsun up behind the police cars. The driveway and the street in front of Mark's house were clogged with the ambulance, the coroner's van, the knot of curious neighbors, two local news trucks.
He went up to the nearest uniform. 'Excuse me, I'm a friend of the resident here. He asked me to come over. I'd like to go up to the house.'
The cop had his orders, though. His arms remained crossed, and he shook his head. 'Afraid not. This is a crime scene. It's closed to the public.'
'I'm not the public. I'm an attorney.'
The officer looked him over.'Then be an attorney outside. This is still a crime scene.'
'Look, why don't you go ask Mr Dooher if he wants Wes Farrell up there with him?'
'You're Wes Farrell?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, Wes, we don't run things the way Mr Dooher wants them run, especially at a murder scene. You know what I mean? We're investigating a crime here. We don't want people tramping all over the evidence. That's how we do it. Now, when we're done, you can go up. Meanwhile, somebody comes out, I'll send word up if I can see some ID.'
Wes patted his empty pockets. He could visualize his wallet on the top of the dresser next to his bed at home.
He considered breaking and running up the pavers, but figured he'd get shot or arrested or something for his troubles. No. The only hope was to drive the two miles back home and get his goddamned ID. 'Have a nice night,' he told the cop.
A polite smile. 'You, too.'
The CSI – crime-scene investigation – unit knew the drill, and Glitsky knew them. He didn't want to step on toes, but he wasn't working backward from any theory now. This time he was looking at what he knew was evidence, not wanting it to go away through inadvertence or simple bad luck.
He walked up to Sergeant Jimmy Ash from the photo lab, a gangly, forty-year-old freckled albino who, tonight with the late hour, even had pink eyes, and who'd already 'painted the room' in videotape. Ash was standing by the bed, taking stills of the body that had been Sheila Dooher.
'Hey, Jimmy. You got any special technique for splatter stains?'
'The blood?' He swallowed, a prominent Adam's apple bobbing. 'No, nothing special. Clear photos – my particular area of expertise, you know – and something to provide perspective in the picture. You see something?'
'I think so.'
'Then you got it.'
Thieu was standing next to them both. Glitsky could figuratively almost hear him panting there, dying to ask what he'd seen and having no clue. He started to take pity on him, turned to answer, when Alice Carter, the coroner's tech from the other side of the bed, spoke up.
'Abe?' She pointed a finger at him and curled it toward her. Come here. 'Anybody move this body?'
'I don't think so. Not since I've been here.'
Thieu spoke up. 'She was this way when I came in, too.'
'I think you want to be sure on this. The responding officers still below?'
Thieu was already moving out the room's door, going to get them if they were still there.
'Why?' Abe asked.
Ms Carter pointed at Sheila Dooher's bare right shoulder, the exposed back beneath it, a slight darkening, red under the skin. 'Because we've got what looks a whole lot like fixed lividity here in the upper right quadrant.'
'Which means she was moved…'
'Right, and after she'd been dead a while.'
It was well after midnight. Thieu trailing behind him, Glitsky stopped in the doorway to the library and caught Dooher in an unguarded moment, sitting back in his wingchair, legs crossed, talking with another man. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but Dooher's expression was bland, his body language relaxed.
It had been a week now since Abe had lost his wife and he had yet to draw an easy breath. His tired muscles seemed as though their ache would never end and his jangled nerves, strung with fatigue, twitched like a thoroughbred's.
And here was Dooher, his wife gone less than three hours, all but holding court. The comparison invited conclusions. Glitsky was going to have to concentrate to keep his personal feelings from intruding.
This had to be by the book.
Today's date is Wednesday, June 8th. The time is approximately 0020
hours. This is Sergeant Inspector Abraham Glitsky, star number 1144.
/ am currently at 4215 Ravenwood Drive, San Francisco. Present
and being interviewed is Mark Dooher, Caucasian male, 4/19/47.
With me is Sergeant Inspector Paul Thieu, star 2067, and Mr Dooher's
attorney Wes Farrell.
Q: Mr Dooher, I'll be tape-recording your statement, as you can see.
Do you have any objection to this?
A: No, none.
Q: But, for the record, your attorney did raise some objections to
your coming downtown to give your statement.
A: (Farrell) Sergeant, we've been through that. It's after midnight
and the man's wife has just been killed. Since Mr Dooher wasn 't home
all night, he couldn't possibly be a suspect in this crime. He voluntarily
has agreed to give a statement here and now. There's no reason to go
downtown.
A: (Dooher) It's all right, Wes. What do you need for the statement,
Sergeant?
Q: How about starting by telling what you found here tonight?
A: All right. At about nine forty-five, I got home from hitting a couple
of buckets of golf balls at the San Francisco Driving Range, (pause)
As you know, I've had some bad luck with driving ranges lately.
Q: You got home at quarter to ten…
A: Right. I came inside…
Q: What car were you driving and where did you park?
A: I was driving my Lexus. It's light brown with personalized plates
reading ESKW. I drove up the driveway and parked in the garage
behind the house. I closed the garage door behind me – it's automatic
– and walked out the side door of the garage on the path next to my
back lawn, to the driveway, and in the side door.
Q: Was the door locked?
A: I don't remember, to tell you the truth. I wouldn 't have noticed
anyway. I always just put my key in first, give it a turn, it opens. I
don't remember specifically.
Q: Do you remember if the overhead light was on?
A: No. I don't believe it was. It must have burned out.
Q: Okay. What did you do then?
A: I went to turn off the alarm system – we have a box next to the
doors – and I noticed it hadn 't been set.
Q: Was that unusual?
A: Unfortunately, no. Sheila… that was one of the things she wasn't…
A: (Farrell) Give him a minute, here, would you? You all right, Mark?
A: (Dooher) Yeah, okay. Sorry. Sheila often forgot to set the alarm
system. She would go in and out a lot and thought it was silly -
unnecessary – while we were home. She thought it was more for when
we went on vacation, times like that. She thought I was paranoid.
Q: All right. Then what?
A: Then I went into the kitchen, did the dinner dishes which were still
there. Then I had a beer and read the mail.
Q: You thought your wife had gone up to bed?
A: I knew she had gone up to bed, Sergeant. We'd split a bottle of
wine for dinner. She hit the wall around seven-thirty and said she
wanted to turn in. So I thought I'd go to the range. Anyway, I finished
my beer and went upstairs…
Q: Did you touch your wife?
A: No. I turned on the lights and it was obvious she was dead. I
suppose I froze a minute or two. I don't remember. Then I guess I
called nine one one.
Q: And then what?
A: Then I sat on the stairs and waited. No, I checked the other upstairs
rooms, too.
Q: You didn't try to resuscitate her, anything like that?
A: (Farrell) Sergeant, he's answered that. She was obviously dead.
Q: Did you touch the body at all?
A: (Dooher) There was blood all over the place! There wasn't any
doubt – you can tell when somebody's dead. I didn 't know what to do,
to tell you the truth. I don't even know exactly what I did. I was afraid.
I suddenly thought the guy might still be in the house. I don't know. I
just don't know.
Q: I'm sorry, Mr Dooher, but I need a specific answer to the question.
Did you at any time up to right now touch Mrs Dooher's body?
A: No.
Q: All right, let's go back. Earlier in the day, before…
A: (Farrell) What's that got to do with anything, Sergeant?
A: (Dooher) It's okay, Wes. My attorney here wants to make sure I
don't say anything to incriminate myself. But I can't incriminate myself
since I didn't do anything. How far back do you want to go, Sergeant?
Last week?
Q: Let's start when you got off work.
Christina stood by the French doors and watched Dooher move about his backyard, greeting the other mourners.
She was fighting the feeling that she really didn't belong here, guilt that in her heart she didn't mourn Sheila Dooher's passing. It freed Mark – there was no sense denying it. She sighed heavily.
'I'm glad you're here. I don't know anybody.'
She turned to see Sam Duncan, her arm still in a cast. 'You know me now. But why are you here?'
Sam gestured behind her. 'Wes. He's taking over details for Mark for a while. Even without the police stuff, this whole thing is just so horrible.'
Christina laid a hand on Sam's arm. 'What police stuff?'
'Damn.' Sam's face clouded. 'I'm not supposed to talk about it. Wes doesn't want any rumors going around.' She lowered her voice. 'He's worried that they're going to say Mark did it, killed his wife.'
Christina mouth dropped. The idea was absurd. 'What? He wasn't even here, was he? How could he have-'
'I know, but Wes is afraid they might. I mean, so soon after the Trang thing and all.'
'But they didn't find anything there either.'
'No, but apparently our friend Sergeant Glitsky didn't like being proven wrong. And he's the Inspector on this case.'
'But Mark wasn't even here!'
'Evidently the police can make a case that he was.' Sam held up a hand. 'Wes says if they really want to get you, they can make your life pretty miserable.'
'I guess they didn't really want to get Levon Copes.'
Sam made a face. 'Still a sore subject. But that was Glitsky, too.'
'But what does Glitsky have against Mark?'
'No one knows. Wes isn't sure if there's any reason. And nothing's happened yet. He's just worried. He thinks Glitsky might be overworked and guessing wrong. He did screw up on Levon Copes. And you know about his search warrant on Mark. There's two strikes.'
'You don't think he'd plant evidence, do you? The police don't really do that, do they?'
Sam shrugged. 'I don't know what they'd do.'
Farrell was sitting in a corner of the kitchen with a beer, listening to Mark's two youngest children, Jason and Susan, talking to their friends. He'd known the two kids their whole lives, and they looked very much alike, both very thin with slack blondish hair, waif-like features, and piercing green eyes – Mark's eyes. Susan wore black silk – tunic and pants – and Jason had the baggy pants, an outsized brand-new dress shirt buttoned to the collar, a camouflage jacket.
None of Farrells own kids had made it home for the funeral, which very much disappointed him, especially since Sheila and Mark had been godparents to Michelle, his youngest. But he consoled himself with the fact that neither had Mark's eldest, Mark Jr, the wildcatter sculptor.
Wes had tried to help Dooher out with breaking the brutal news, making the call to Mark Jr, and had been unprepared for the venom he'd heard. His dad never needed him for anything before – he didn't need to see him now. Besides, it was too much of a hassle to come down from Alaska, he said. His mom was already dead anyway. What good was it going to do? And he didn't have the money to spare.
Oh, Dad was offering to pay, to fly him down? No, thanks – one way or another, he'd wind up owing him. He'd have to pay. Even for something like this.
All the young people were drinking beer.
He was comfortable here in the kitchen with them, especially since Lydia was out in the great room, mingling as she did. So he was avoiding her. And he didn't particularly want to introduce her to Sam, either. That kept him in here, too, not that it had been uninteresting up to now. He was learning a lot, listening. Just edit out the 'dudes' and profanity and most of it was English.
Jason, sitting on the counter now, had sat next to his sister in the pew with Mark, but both of them down five feet or more from their father. An eloquent-enough statement. The boy cried at the Mass, but was over that now.
He was enthusing over the snow in Colorado, the winter he'd spent back there, how he was going down to Rosarito from here, surf the summer away, like, starting tomorrow. He had to get out of here. This scene here with his dad was just too weird.
His sister leaned up against the sink, holding hands with another young woman. 'How Mom took it I don't know,' she said.
More Dad-trashing coming up, Wes thought – even a child could do it. Suddenly, stoked by the beers, he stood, deciding to butt in. 'Hey, guys. How about you give the old man a break, would you? He's having a tough enough time.'
Susan nearly snorted. 'Dad doesn't have tough times.'
'I've just been through one with him, dear.'
'I'm sure.' She dropped her girlfriend's hand and walked the four steps over to him – a bit unsteadily. 'You think you know my dad, don't you? You think he's devastated by all this?' She shook her head hopelessly. 'You're a good guy, Wes, I really think you are, but dream fuckin' on,' she repeated.
'Dream on what, Susan? What are you talking about?'
Jason: 'Hey, come on, look around.'
'I'm looking around. What am I supposed to see? I see your dad trying to maintain here. I see he's lost his partner.'
Susan snorted derisively, nodded over at Jason. 'Six months?'
'Tops,' he said.
'What are you guys talking about?'
They were both shaking their heads, but it was Susan who said it. 'You'll find out.'
Finally summoning the nerve, Christina walked out into the backyard. He was standing now in the dappled sunlight under the budding elm, and she thought she had never seen a more magnificent face.
Not the face per se, but that it so clearly reflected the man beneath, that was what was so magnificent. It was all there – the agony he was in, the strength to bear it, the grace, eventually, to rise above it.
He was deep in conversation with a priest who wore a black cassock with a purple lining, but when he saw her, it was as though he bestowed some benediction on her, pulling her forward, to him. Almost physically, she felt her steps grow light. Welcome, even now.
Taking both her hands, he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. 'Thanks for coming.'
'I couldn't not have.'
They were still holding hands. Suddenly, realizing it, he gave a brief squeeze and let go. 'Well…' Remembering, turning back to the priest. 'I don't know if you've met the Archbishop of San Francisco, James Flaherty. Christina Carrera. Christina's one of the firm's future stars, Jim.'
She shook Flaherty's hand, heard him uttering the usual commonplaces, kept her smile in place. But her eyes and mind stayed on Dooher.
He was holding up, his own eyes elsewhere – within – crushed by the weight of his loss. He caught her watching him, then, and tried to smile, an apologetic turn of the lips for having caused her, even briefly, to glimpse the pain he was feeling within. He did not mean to show it, to wear it on his sleeve. He was a man. He would be all right. It wasn't anyone else's problem. He was alone and he would survive.
She thought her heart would break.
Seeing her ex with another woman – of course younger, that's what they all did, wasn't it? – had gotten under Lydia's skin. Not that she was romantically interested in Wes anymore – heaven forbid! – but it skewed her vision of her own importance.
How dare he!
So after Wes and Sam had gone, Lydia decided she deserved a couple of drinks. Then, in the kitchen, she'd gotten to talking with the kids – she was godmother to Susan, 'Aunt Lyd' to Jason – and they traded Sheila stories – laughing, crying, laughing again. Rituals.
The two children left when their father had finally come in from the backyard, after nearly all the other guests had said their goodbyes. The kids' departure wasn't exactly abrupt, but it wasn't leisurely either. After the exodus, Lydia had exchanged one of those 'what-can-you-do' glances with Mark, then picked up the bottle of gin on the counter.
'How about one?'
His shoulders sagged. From Lydia's perspective, Mark had held up like a trooper all day, making the required rounds, having to listen again and again to how sorry everybody was, to the advice and the sympathy and the anecdotes. He had been endlessly patient, as he always appeared, under tight control. That was Mark Dooher, after all.
Although, just for a moment, the final abandonment by his children did seem to take the resiliency out of him. Then he bounced back, smiled, nodded. 'Hit me a good one,' he said.
She was sitting on one of the barstools, and when he came over, she rubbed a hand across his back. He straightened up, leaned into it. 'That beats the drink,' he said. But then he took the drink, too.
She'd stayed to clean up. She knew the house, was good with the caterers. It was a help having her there. Everybody else had gone by 6:00, and she went back into the kitchen and though they certainly didn't need it, poured two gins on the rocks and brought them out to where he sat in the living room, in his black suit, his hands shading his eyes, at one end of the chamois-soft white leather couch.
They clinked glasses. 'Long day,' she said. 'Why don't you take off your coat and stay awhile?'
'I guess I should.'
As though she were his valet, she helped him out of it. On the way over to the closet to hang it up, she caught sight of herself in the large gilt hall mirror.
Stopping there, she had to think again that Wes was an idiot. She was slightly out of focus, but she looked terrific. In her own black tailored suit, her high heels and black hose, she could have been ten years younger, trim, toned, her hair lightened to ash, cut a la Princess Di.
Well, screw Wes and his girlfriend.
She hung the coat in the closet. The day was still warm and suddenly the top of her own suit felt binding. She unbuttoned it, shrugged out of it, and hung it next to Mark's. Her black blouse, too, was tight at her neck, and when she came back to him, it was undone to the second button.
He handed her her glass, and she stood in front of where he sat as they chinked them again. She felt him looking up at her as she drank.
'God bless gin,' she said. 'I don't think I've had anything but wine for six months. But sometimes you need a real drink, don't you think?'
'Here's to that.' He tipped his own glass back. 'To quote the great Dean Martin, that sometime is now.'
'Get you another one?'
He drained his drink and handed her up his glass. Back in the kitchen, she grabbed the silver ice bucket and the bottle of Bombay and brought it out with her, setting them on the coffee table, building two fresh ones.
She was standing in front of him again.
'Here we are,' he said. 'Who would have thought it?'
She stepped out of her heels. 'How are you, Mark? Really?'
He took a thoughtful sip, rotated his head, brought his hand up behind his neck.' Tell you the truth, I'm tight as a drum.'
Putting her glass down, she walked around behind the couch and put her hands on his shoulders. 'Close your eyes,' she said. Take a deep breath.'
As her thumbs dug into the muscles around his neck, he let out a small groan of relief. 'You've got a half-hour to cut that out, Lydia.' His head fell back against the couch and he slumped down.
She stopped. 'Now your angle's all wrong.'
'That's what she said.'
'Down on the floor,' she said. 'On your stomach.'
He was stretched out as she'd directed, arms folded now under his head. She knelt at his waist, reaching up, and began to knead his shoulders, his neck, down his backbone.
Reaching across, then, over the broad back, another bad angle. She straightened up, hitched her skirt up, and straddled him, her hands moving, pushing, rubbing. Pulling the shirt out, then, going under it. Up his backbone with her thumbs.
Another sigh of pleasure.
She reached to her side and undid the button then, unzipped, stood and stepped out of her skirt, her nylons. Dooher still lay on his stomach, unmoving.'Turn over.'
His eyes were closed, his hands crossed behind his head. The belt, then, the button. Zipping slowly over the bulge.
He still didn't move.
Sam and Wes were on the roof of his apartment building, sitting barefoot in beach chairs, holding hands, watching the sunset. Bart lounged between them. A small pot barbecue smoked and Sam had turned Farrell's boom-box radio to a country music section, which he barely knew existed until six weeks before.
Now he was worried that he was getting hooked on the stuff. Something in him rebelled at the idea of a middle-aged urban professional like himself relating to this corn, but dumb as they were, about every fourth song seemed to bring a tear to his eye. A couple of tunes over the past weeks – Tim McGraw's Don't Take The Girl and Brooks & Dunn's Neon Moon – had made him outright weep.
When he'd been alone, painting.
But all of 'em were about those country things – old-fashioned values, Mommy, Daddy (sometimes Grandpa), true undyin' love, God, beer, dogs and trucks.
But dang, he couldn't deny they hit something in him.
Wynonna was just finishing up She Is His Only Need and Wes was blinking pretty hard. Sam squeezed his hand. 'You're just doing that to impress me.'
'Doing what?'
She laughed. 'That misty-eye thing to every mushball lyric you hear.'
'It's nothing to do with the lyrics. I happened to look too long at the sun and it made my eyes water. Or else it was the smoke.'
She ignored him. 'So maybe I'll think that, way deep down, you've got a tender and gentle soul.'
'No, that is not me. I'm not trying to impress you. I'm a cynical big-city attorney and nothing touches me. I am a rock. I am, in fact, an island.'
'My understanding is that no man is an island.'
'I tell you, I am a fucking island.'
'Okay, you're an island. Anyway, I am impressed.' She lifted his hand and kissed it, then nudged Bart with her bare toe. 'I think he actually feels things, don't you, Bart?'
Bart raised his head, put it back down on his paws.
'See?' she said. 'The mute beasts concur.'
Wes got up and took the top off the kettle cooker. A couple of T-bone steaks filled the whole grill. He gave them a turn and came back to sit down. 'You know why people cry at happy endings in movies? Or at weddings? Or even, some incredibly weak slobs, at country-music lyrics?'
'They're crybabies?'
'I'm going to hit your broken arm.'
'Crybabies isn't the answer?'
He shook his head. 'They want it that way again. Something in them remembers that they used to think it was that way, that things in life could turn out good, and seeing that hope, being reminded of it, it's too much to take. So they cry.'
'But you still think things turn out good, don't you?'
'No. I still wish they did just as bad, but I don't think so anymore.'
She reached and took his hand. 'Seeing your wife today?'
'Lydia?' He let out a long breath. 'No, Lydia's over. It was more, I think, the kids. Mark's kids.'
'What about them?'
Again, he sighed. 'I don't know. All the effort, the hopes, the lessons, the tears, the fights, the sicknesses – and at the end, what do you get? You get some kids who are total strangers, who don't want anything to do with you.'
'Your kids?'
'Well, some of that, maybe. But mostly Mark's. They really hate him.'
'Maybe he wasn't a good father.'
'That's just it. He was a great father. I was around. I saw him. Baseball, tennis, soccer, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, private schools, great summer camps – you name it, those kids had it.'
'But did they have him?'
He seemed to deflate. 'I guess I don't know that. Did my kids have me? I mean, both of us – Mark and I – we worked like dogs so Lydia and Sheila didn't have to. This was, of course, the Middle Ages. Back then wasn't considered the height of oppression.'
The silence, as well as the difference in their ages, hung between them. 'I better get the steaks,' Wes said, but he didn't get up. He didn't want to let go of Sam's hand. He turned to her. 'His kids really hate him, Sam, and I know them. They're not bad. They're fine with me. They call me Uncle Wes even, sometimes. But their dad… I just don't get it.'
'Maybe he's not the person you think he is. Not with everybody else. He seemed pretty cold to me.'
Now he did let go of her hand. 'Let's not take my best friend apart four days after his wife was killed, okay?'
'I'm not taking him apart, I'm saying he seemed cold. Maybe he was cold to his kids, that's all.'
'And maybe he's trying to keep from breaking down, so he's guarded right about now, how's that?' He had raised his voice and Bart sat up, growling.
Sam took a beat, a breath. 'You're right, I don't know him at all, I'm sorry. The steaks aren't going to be rare.'
Downstairs, in his, kitchen, they sat at the table. Sam stared down at her food. Wes couldn't stop the smile that crept up. She wasn't going to be able to cut her steak. 'Your cast.' Standing up, he came around the table and kissed her. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I don't want to fight.'
Sam lay her head against him. 'Don't be mad at me. I'm not attacking your friend.'
'I know. With your permission.' He pulled another chair out from the table, sat down, picked up a knife and began cutting. 'And the fact is, Mark might have been a terrible father. I don't know. Maybe husband, too. We didn't pride ourselves on that so much in those days. He's just my friend. Some of us white males – even if we're not angry – occasionally feel unfairly attacked here in this modern world. It's tempting to band together. So I suppose I've got a gut reaction to protect him. Especially now.'
'I can see that. But I'm not attacking you either, okay?'
'I know, but I wonder if it's just that I didn't see what he might have really been like with his kids, couldn't let myself see because I was doing the same thing.'
'And what about now?'
That stopped him again. For a moment. 'What about now?'
She only dared meet his eyes.
'No,' he said. 'Flatly, emphatically no.'
'Okay, but since we were talking…'
'I don't understand how you can even say that?'
'I didn't, actually. I looked it. But I was talking to Christina today – her reaction to Mark being under suspicion kind of reminded me of you.'
'You told her about it?'
'A little. It's okay, Wes, she won't alert the media.'
'So how was her reaction like mine?'
'Just very knee-jerk. Not really looking at it. She's in love with him, you know.'
'She told you that?'
'No.'
He rolled his eyes.
'But a girl can tell.'
'So Christina's in love with Mark. And he's my best friend. Now let me get this straight – because of those reasons we both don't believe he killed his wife while he was out driving golf balls. How strange. Do you think he killed her?'
She shook her head. 'No. Your steak's getting cold. It's perfect, by the way.'
Standing up, he kissed her and went back to his seat.
'All I'm saying,' she continued, 'is that I have a hard time believing Sergeant Glitsky goes around planting evidence to convict people for no reason.'
'Well, I hope you're right.' He cut a piece of meat. 'Christina's in love with him?'
'Tis the season,' she said sweetly. 'She may not even know it yet, but you wait. Six months.'
Wes stopped chewing. The words were almost exactly those used by Mark's kids when he hadn't known what they were talking about. He did now, and it made him nervous.
Most nights, Sam stayed with her brother Larry. She was apartment hunting in a haphazard fashion, but it was never easy finding the right place. And tonight she was staying at Wes's.
Now she slept peacefully next to him. Unable to do the same, he carefully lifted the blanket from his side of the bed and got out, threw on his old terrycloth robe, and padded into the living salon, sitting on the futon. The streetlights outside painted their designs on his hardwood. He'd left the kitchen window open over the table where he and Sam had eaten, and the breeze coming through it still felt almost balmy.
Bart climbed up next to him and he petted him absently. His mind wouldn't stop racing. Maybe he ought to write a country song, he thought, 'bout settin' up all night while your girl's asleep, your love is deep but you're feelin' blue, what's a poor country boy to do? It had possibilities.
But that thought didn't hold. He kept returning to Christina Carrera… which brought him to Mark. Of course, as he'd told Sam, Mark had an airtight alibi. Hell, it wasn't even that, he reminded himself, it was the truth.
The past twenty-five years of Wes's professional life had been spent in the mud and trenches of criminal law, taking on the causes and cases of a seemingly endless procession of people who'd been careless, negligent – and who found themselves called to answer for their mistakes and misdeeds.
He didn't often torture himself with whether any of his clients had done what they'd been accused of. He generally preferred to ask them about the evidence against them and how they might explain it. Sometimes, if he liked his clients, he'd provide two or three explanations and ask if any of them had a particularly nice ring.
He never asked directly if a client were guilty. That was a conclusion for the jury. Similarly, he tried not to ask any open-ended questions about what someone had or hadn't done because he might get an answer he didn't like, and then be stuck with it. And there was always the very real possibility that his client would lie to him anyway. This was in the very nature of people, he believed, and hence understandable, human, acceptable.
But his adult pragmatism was a far cry from the idealism that had drawn him to the law in the first place. It was a rationalization, as so much of his life had become. You did what you had to. And that was okay.
Most of the time.
He'd been trying to convince himself of all this now for the last decade or so. It was the recurring topic in his 'retreats' with Mark Dooher, who would always argue the opposite – you didn't do what you had to do, you did what you believed in.
Before these troubles, Farrell thought that had been easy for Dooher to say. He'd never had to struggle in his career, in his life. He could afford the luxury of idealism, of believing he was always on the side of the angels. He was Job before the curses.
But Dooher was right about one thing. The accommodation ate at you. It made you cynical. Sometimes it seemed to Wes that the endless litany of 'good enough', 'good enough', 'good enough' was a prescription for failure. That there really wasn't any such thing as good enough. There was your best, and then there was everything else.
And, in his darkest moments, Wes sometimes believed that his marriage had failed, his business had never really prospered, he'd never achieved all he'd set out to do – in law school, he'd dreamed of being appointed to the Supreme Court! – because he'd burned himself, his best self, out on the altar of 'good enough'. Lord knew, it had been hard enough, raising the kids, getting and keeping clients, making time for Lydia. He'd put in all the energy he thought he could spare, instead of all he had, on just about everything he put his mind to. What had he been saving the rest for?
Was this the source of his mediocrity? The secret of the nonentity he'd become?
He knew the reason for his nervousness after dinner. Because for once, now, he'd committed. He had a potential client and best friend that he totally believed in.
And now there was Christina Carrera, his own albatross. Why couldn't she just go away?
Farrell, too, had caught a glimpse of them together for a moment on Mark's lawn this afternoon. Witnessing first-hand the almost embarrassing connection between them, he kept coming back to the one salient fact that he wished he could forget. Or – better – never have known.
Which was that Mark had wanted her from the first moment he laid his eyes upon her.
But what did that mean? Nothing, he told himself. It was merely one of those late-night chimeras that tantalize or frighten, and then in the morning turn out to have been a shadow falling on an uneven surface, a wisp of white fabric blowing lonely in a faraway tree.
'Wes?'
Sam's quiet whisper from the bedroom. Worried, obviously caring. Was he all right? Did he need her?
Petting Bart a last time, he pushed himself up. The doubt, the ghost, the mirage – whatever it was – would be gone in the morning.
He was sure of it.
The next day, Glitsky was at Marine World with Nat and the three boys.
He still hadn't found a nanny, and had decided that what they all needed was some time together, a change of scene, a nice day outside, away from the city. So he'd picked them up at the friend's house where they were staying, and they'd made the drive across the Bay and north to Vallejo.
At the amusement park, the sun was out and although there was a steady breeze, it didn't have that Arctic intensity you got off the ocean out in the Avenues where they lived.
Now he was sitting high in the grandstands, watching the killer whale show. Isaac and Jacob had gone down to the seats by the water with their grandfather, all of them, including Nat, deciding that they really needed to get soaked. But O.J., ten years old, didn't want to do that and didn't want to leave his dad, either.
In fact, after the older boys had gone down, O.J. asked Abe if he minded if he sat in his lap. Which was where he was now.
The huge mammals entered the pool, but O.J. couldn't have cared less. 'Dad,' he said, 'can I ask you something?'
Ever since Flo had first gotten sick, O.J. had preceded nearly every remark with this question. Glitsky thought it was because he was such a sensitive little kid, so aware of the pressure everybody was under. He didn't want to add to it by asking any question that someone would have to answer. He didn't want to be a bother.
This sometimes translated to Glitsky as though his youngest son didn't want to exist, and that drove him crazy. But he kept his voice modulated and answered the way he always did.
'You can always ask me about anything, O.J. You don't have to ask permission to ask.'
O.J., as always, then said, 'But can I ask you something?'
Patience, Glitsky told himself. Patience. 'Yes, you can ask me something.'
'Okay. What if all the sudden, you know Merlin?'
'Merlin?'
'Yeah, Merlin, King Arthur's musician.'
'Magician. But yeah, okay, I know. Merlin.'
'Right. So what if Merlin came back to life and he decided all the unicorns were going to be down on earth from now on?'
O.J. had also been playing with variations on the coming-back-to-life idea for the past few months. What if Robin Hood came back to life and got disguised as one of the Power Rangers? What if George Washington really didn't die, but was just waiting to see if he could live to be 300 and then he could be President again? What if Bambi's mother…?
'Things don't come back to life,' Abe said, gently but as firmly as he could. 'Dead means you're gone forever. That's what dead is.'
'I know that, Dad, but Merlin was a musician and he could come back if he wanted to, and then he could decide the unicorns could live on the earth.'
He wanted to tell him there were no unicorns, either. The boy was ten years old, closing in on puberty, and he really ought to stop seeking comfort in these fantasies.
But somehow his energy failed him. He let out a long breath. 'Instead of where? Where do they live now?'
O.J. couldn't believe his father's ignorance. 'Well, now they live in the clouds, in Unicorn Land.'
'Okay.'
'And then they could come down and be here on the earth and we could ride them, and maybe even have one as a pet. What if that happened?'
Glitsky tightened his arms around his gangly son, came up with the answer he always wound up with. 'If that happened, O.J., that'd be really neat.'
Isaac was still very wet. He exceeded by several years the twelve-year-old limit for the playground, but dripping as he was, he didn't look it. And even though he was a cop, pledged to enforcing the laws, Abe wasn't going to call him on it.
He and Nat had left their food – French fries and corn dogs – on one of the picnic tables behind them, where the ravenous seagulls had spirited it away and scarfed it all down.
Now the two men stood at the fence that kept the adults in their place. All three of the boys were clustered together, up high in a corner of a climbing structure made of rigging rope. Hanging together.
The killer whales had dumped a couple of swimming pools worth of water into the lower galley. By now, Nat's hair was re-combed, but his clothes stuck to him. He was marching in place, his tennis shoes making squishing noises. 'This is a good place, Abraham, but I wish someone had told me about this getting splashed. They don't mean a little damp, let me tell you.'
'I didn't know.'
'But I noticed you didn't go down yourself, am I right?'
'O.J. didn't want to get so close to the water. That's why I didn't go down.'
'I wish I believed this completely. I don't want to think you sandbagged your old man.'
'I would never do that. You didn't raise that kind of boy.' A sideways glance.
'That's a good answer.' He pulled his shirt away from his body, did a little dance with his pants. 'And O.J., I happened to see, he was on your lap.'
Glitsky nodded. 'He's having a hard time. He's trying to figure it out.'
'And you are back to work?'
'I've got to work, Dad. It's what I do.' But he realized that his father needed more of an explanation. 'Look. The Hardys are great people, Frannie's taking better care of them than I can right now. And the boys are in school anyway most of the day. I'm there for them. I see them. I go over some nights. We go out on weekends. Like now, Dad, like right now. I've got a lot to get set up.'
'I understand this.'
'So?'
'So nothing.'
'But what?'
Nat shrugged. 'Just to think about, that's all.'
He knew what his father was getting at, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He should have taken some more days off, he supposed, gone over every single night to be with the kids, but when he'd gotten the call about Sheila Dooher, his priorities found themselves rearranged.
Or maybe it was just an opportunity to dwell on something other than the emptiness. His father had implied that, to some degree, he was running away, denying what he needed to confront, shunting off his responsibility to his children. And maybe there was an element of that. He had something to do, something that needed to be done, and it was consuming. The simple doing of it – regardless of the outcome – could save him, could pull him through this time.
He didn't know, but he had to try.
This was why on Sunday night, the boys were back at his friend's house and he was at his desk downtown on the 4th floor, reading the autopsy report on Sheila Dooher that had finally come in. He had done legwork all week long – interviewing neighbors and driving-range employees and Dooher's co-workers and anybody else he could think of. Going over the initial lab reports, studying the room-painting videotape, combing the Dooher house (again, with another warrant, while Dooher was downtown working) for fibers and hairs and fluids.
But without the autopsy he was whistling in the wind and he knew it, and there had been some bottleneck on paper coming out of the coroner's. Autopsies normally took almost six weeks to get typed, but he'd asked for a rush on this one.
He had the report in front of him now, and he scanned it once, trying to make sense of it, wondering if it might be the wrong one. For a different body.
Because the autopsy report he was looking at listed the cause of death as poisoning.
And what the hell was that about?
The woman was waiting at the door to the Rape Crisis Counselling Center when Sam arrived at 9:00 on Monday morning. Slightly matronly though not unattractive, she wore jeans, hiking boots, a brightly colored sweater jacket and a purple beret. She held a designer purse, out of the top of which peeked an Amy Tan paperback. Sam stopped in front of her.
'Hi.'
'Hello.' A cultured voice.
'Are you waiting to get in here?'
Behind the self-conscious expression, not all that unusual in this setting, she projected a strong attitude of resolve. Even as she nodded, her eyes surveyed the street in both direction. 'I thought this would be a good place to start.'
'It often is,' Sam said. 'Let me get the door.'
Diane Price had removed her sweater and beret and sat easily in one of the wingbacks in the tiny room behind the reception desk. Thick gray hair fell over her shoulders. The natural woman, Sam thought, she wore no makeup and, with a gorgeous mouth and gray-green eyes, really didn't need any. Her nails looked professionally manicured, but they were clear.
She'd waited while Sam put on the pots of water and coffee – told herself that she'd waited long enough, a few more minutes wasn't going to hurt. The bell over the front door tinkled again as Terri, the first of the day's volunteers, came into work.
Sam brought the mugs – black coffee for them both – back into the room where Diane was waiting and sat across from her.
'I feel a little awkward about this, but I didn't know where else I should go-'
Sam waited. It would come out.
Diane sipped her coffee and took another moment. Exhaling then, as though satisfied with something, she began. 'I imagine you know why I've come here?'
Sam inclined her head. 'You've been raped.'
'Yes.' Diane took another sip of her coffee, repeating it. 'Yes,' she said, 'I've been raped.'
Sam leaned forward. 'It's difficult to say the words, isn't it?'
'Yes.' The monosyllable hung between them. 'It's been a long time now. I didn't know if I'd ever say it.'
'How long?'
Again, Diane's eyes raked the small room. Sam had the feeling she was trying to decide whether or not she should continue with this, whether it was too late to back out. All the staring around, putting off bringing the rape into focus.
She put her mug down and crossed her hands on her lap. 'A long time ago. Twenty-seven years ago.'
'And you've been silent about it?'
Diane folded her arms, self-protective. 'Now it's called a date rape. I knew him. He seemed so nice. I've been living with it all this time. I don't think I've denied that it happened. I suppose mostly just feeling that it happened so long ago, what difference can it possibly make, you know?'
'But it has, of course.'
A nod. 'I don't really know how I feel about it all anymore. Not clearly. All the parts of it.'
'That's all right. Why don't – as you said – why don't you just start somewhere. What do you feel the most, right now?'
'It changes. That's what's funny. I guess now, today, it's all resentment because I've been thinking about it so much. First, though, when it came up again, it was just this overwhelming anger, this rage. But for such a long time before that, you know, living my life with my husband and being the school mom and doing soccer leagues and just living – I didn't see what good it would do to bring it all up again.'
'Does your husband know about it?'
'Don. He does now, but…' A lapse into silence. 'He's a great guy, but I'm not sure he understands. Not completely.' The cultured voice was flattening by degrees, losing what had appeared to be a natural animation. 'What I'm trying to deal with now is, I guess, my anger over this sense of loss, of having lost so much of my life over this one… this one episode.' A wistful smile. 'It's funny, you know. You don't really believe that one day can change everything, I mean if you'd just done one little thing differently…'
'Everybody feels that, Diane. If that's any consolation, it's one of the mechanisms we use to blame ourselves. Somehow, at least a little bit, it's our fault.'
This didn't seem to help. 'But I really wonder if it was my fault -I don't mean just the rape, where okay, no doubt I led him on, but I really believed… I didn't know anything then. I mean, I was a virgin. You said "no" and it stopped, right?'
'That was the theory,' Sam said.
Diane sat back in the chair, put her head all the way back and closed her eyes briefly. Opening them, she abruptly reached for her mug of coffee. Something to do that wasn't this recitation of history. She forgot to drink from it. 'Even now,' she said, 'even now I wonder how much of it was my fault.'
'Diane, if he forced you…'
'He said he'd kill me.'
'Well, then, you-'
But she was shaking her head. 'No, not just that. Not just the rape itself. Everything after that. My whole life.' Another silence, another shake of the head. 'No, not my whole life, that's an exaggeration. Only most of a decade. Only.' Suddenly, she slapped the arm of the chair. 'God, I hate this victim thing! I'm not a victim. I don't want to be a victim.'
Sam waited.
'Before, I was going to be a doctor.' The brittle laugh shook her. 'It wasn't ridiculous – you don't get into Stanford if you're dumb, and I'd never gotten a "B" in my life. I was fun, smart, pretty. And now I tell myself – have for years – I've had to tell myself that it was this… this thing that made it all change. That it wasn't my fault.'
'That wouldn't be so unusual, Diane. In fact, it would be more normal if it was.'
'I know that. I'm still not stupid. But don't you see, it makes me sick, that victim excuse. I should have just risen above it, put it behind me. Instead, it just ate me up, and I let it. I just let it.' Her fists were clenched on the chair's arms, and one of her eyes overflowed. 'I'm sorry.' She reached into her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, dabbed. 'There's no reason to cry about it. This is stupid.'
'No, it isn't.'
She managed a condescending smile. 'Well, of course you're trained to say that.'
Sam wasn't going to fight her about it. Yes, she was trained to say that, and that was because it was the truth. It wasn't stupid to cry about it. Almost everyone did. 'So what happened, Diane? What do you blame yourself for?'
'Everything! Don't you understand? I'm mad that it happened! I'm mad that I do blame myself, I don't care what the proper modern response is supposed to be. I could have been… I don't know, more somehow. Who I was really meant to be. And instead,' she visibly deflated, 'instead I'm who I am.'
'And is that so bad?'
'I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out, I suppose. That's why I'm here. I can't believe… it seems so small a thing, somehow.'
'The rape – a small thing?'
She nodded. 'I know that sounds crazy, but it's what I tell myself when I'm just so full of loathing. It was one small thing, and I let it change the whole direction of my life. I mean, one day I'm in pre-med pulling "A"s, I go to football games, I'm kind of ra-ra and carefree, and the next day, the next time I turn around, I'm a mess. I'm taking every drug in America. And this was the sixties, remember, there were a lot to choose from. I survive another year or so before dropping out of school. And sleeping with anybody, not caring. Losing touch with my mom and dad and family and not caring at all.'
'So what happened finally?'
She brought the handkerchief back to her eyes, left it there a minute, pressing. 'Finally, I woke up. I don't know how else to put it. I just woke up. I guess I didn't want to die. And I never thought about that until my mother did. That's the thing I regret the most, I think. I mean, if she could see me now, it'd be all right. But I was still that other way, that other person, when she died. So she never knew.'
Sam nodded. There was nothing to say. Sometimes, she knew, closing that circle could be the toughest pull of a person's life, and it seemed to her that Diane Price was well on her way to doing it.
Diane was going on. 'And by now it seems behind me. I married Don, went back to school and at least got my degree. I've got two great teenagers, and I'm actually working in a lab where my brains count. And I got there – I got all of that – by finally not being a victim anymore, just pulling myself up by the bootstraps and deciding, that was it, deciding I wasn't going to have this cancer in my life. I wasn't going to talk about it, think about it, refer to it. It was the past, over, done.'
'But you're here?'
'I'm here.'
Sam hesitated. 'Did something else happen?'
Diane shook her head. 'Not to me, thank God. But then, suddenly, last week, I was reading the paper and I started shaking at the breakfast table. I couldn' t stop shaking.'
'What was it?'
'The story about this woman who'd been murdered, Sheila Dooher her name was.'
Sam felt the hair begin to stand up on her arms.
'So the name caught my attention, and I looked down the article, and then opened to the inside page and there was the picture of her and her husband at some charity thing last year. Her husband Mark.'
Sam knew what was coming.
'The man who raped me.'
Father Gorman knew why he'd been summoned to the Archbishop's office. Not only had he been absent at the rosary when Sheila's body had been laid out, he'd not attended the wake afterward, then begged off officiating even peripherally at the funeral Mass. He hadn't gone to the gathering at Dooher's home afterwards.
Now they'd kept him waiting nearly twenty-five minutes at the end of the day. Not a good sign. He was more exhausted than he'd ever been in his life. For weeks, he'd slept no more than four hours a night, plagued by nightmares about his own long-gone parents, of all things. And then, finally, he was inside the austere office. James Flaherty stood up behind his desk, but didn't come around it, didn't offer the kiss of peace as he sometimes did. Instead, his lips moved into a perfunctory smile, but his eyes did not change in any way at all, and he sat back down immediately.
'Gene, I'll get right to it,' he said. 'Mark Dooher is one of my most trusted advisers. He is also, not incidentally, a substantial contributor to the Church and to your parish. He's been President of your Holy Name Society, President of your Parish Council, President…'
Gorman didn't need the glowing litany. 'Yes, Your Excellency. I know who he is.'
Not used to being interrupted, the Archbishop's eyes flared briefly. After a long silence, Flaherty continued. 'He has also lost his wife to murder, as you well know. The police have been hounding him on another matter because of some kind of political vendetta. This is not a time to abandon those people who need us most. The man is going through some kind of hell right now, and I found it incredibly un-Christian, not to say callous as a human response, that you didn't see fit to assist at his wife's funeral or visit with us afterward.' He changed the tone of his voice, making it more personal. 'Mark was incredibly hurt by it, Gene. Incredibly.'
'I'm sorry,' Gorman said. 'I…' He didn't know what else he could say, and left the sentence unfinished, hanging in the room.
Flaherty waited for more, but it didn't come. 'You're sorry?'
'Yes.'
'Sorry doesn't seem like quite enough, Gene.'
'I'm sorry about that, too, Your Excellency.'
Flaherty cocked his head. 'What's going on here? You two have a disagreement, a fight?'
'No.'
'Do you want to talk to me about anything else? I checked your most recent reports, and things at the parish seem to be going along smoothly. Am I wrong about that?'
'No, Your Excellency.'
Flaherty tapped the table. 'Let's drop the Excellency. I'm Jim Flaherty. We've known each other a long time. Is there something going on in your parish?'
Gorman knew what he was asking – was he having an affair, was there a scandal brewing? He shifted his burning eyes to the ceiling, to the sides of the room. 'I do feel like I'm under a lot of stress lately. I'm not getting much sleep. I…'
Again, the rogue syllable, and again it hung there.
'What would you like me to do, Gene? Would you like some time off? A short retreat?'
'Maybe so, Jim. Maybe that would help.'
The Archbishop sat still a minute, lips pursed, eyes unwavering. 'All right,' he said at last. 'Let's give that a try.'
Farrell knew he was fouling the air. The Upmann Special tasted delicious, and normally he made it a point not to smoke cigars in small offices, but he didn't much like Craig Ising, and it gave him some pleasure to realize that Ising was going to have to get his suit cleaned to get the smell out. Farrell thought it was a fair trade – he felt dirty near him, but he was a client and your clients were not always people you admired.
'But I didn't do anything wrong. This isn't even a crime in Nevada!'
Farrell coughed, then blew a vapor trail into the air above them. 'We've been through that, Craig. You should've been in Nevada when you committed it.'
Thirty-six years old, physically fit, nicely tanned, Ising had told Farrell all about the suit that he would soon have to clean. It had set him back $450 in Hong Kong. A silk blend that supposedly felt even better than it looked. If you could get it in America, it would go for more than a grand.
Farrell had spent most of the day in this tiny conference room in Ising's plush Embardacero office, the two men discussing a plea so Ising wouldn't have to go to jail. That was the hope, anyway. And Farrell was ready to go home.
Ising's position, early on in the day, was that he was a businessman and all he'd done was take advantage of an investment opportunity. He'd been making some pretty serious money at this particular endeavor for the past couple of years. The investment was straightforward enough – Ising had been buying the insurance policies of people infected with AIDS, in effect becoming their beneficiary when they died.
In Ising's views, everyone benefited by this arrangement. The AIDS patients sold their discounted policies for cash which they needed for their medical bills – normally sixty percent of the value of the policy – and their policies were then sold by middlemen to investors like Ising, who paid between $6,000 and $200,000 for the policies, based on the patient's life expectancy.
Ising had gotten lucky with the first couple – the patients had died almost immediately and he'd cleared nearly half a million dollars in less than a year. Unfortunately for him, the State of California regulated this particular investment (by outlawing it) and Ising was looking at two to five years in state prison and a six-figure fine.
'This doesn't bother you at all, does it, Craig?'
'What bothers me is they're trying to take me down for it. That's what bothers me. Other guys have done a lot worse.'
This was inarguable, so Farrell didn't push it. Instead, he got down to tacks. 'You're lucky, you know. The DA's taking heat for the court's dragging along on violent crimes, so he gets the idea he wants to clear some massive backlog on these white-collar cases, get 'em processed out without taking up court time. You fall in the crack. Otherwise, you'd be looking at hard time. This is actually a sweet offer.'
Ising rolled his eyes. 'It's so sweet, why don't you put up the money?' The deal was a fine of half a million dollars earmarked for AIDS research and two hundred hours of community service for Ising. 'And the time. Where am I supposed to get two hundred hours?'
Farrell shook his head. Two hundred hours is five weeks full-time, Craig. You get the minimum prison time and it's two years. Five weeks. Two years. Think about it.' He sucked on his cigar, keeping it lit. The air in the room was getting as opaque as fog. 'But hey, it's your decision.'
'It's robbery is what it is. We ought to sue them.'
'Sue who?'
'Whoever passed this law. It's criminal. No wonder this state's down the tubes. A man can't make any kind of living.'
Farrell didn't know exactly what Ising had made last year, but the rent here in the Embarcadero highrise was not close to cheap, and Ising had personally ponied up nearly $30,000 for Farrell's legal fees in the past year, so it was a little hard for Farrell to work up much sympathy for how difficult it was for an entrepreneur without morals to make a living in California. 'What's the matter, Craig? You afraid this community service is going to put you in contact with the riff-raff?'
'Yeah, among other things. You got a problem with that? You get your commoners out there rubbing shoulders with me and they find out who I am and next you know I'm getting hit up for money. You wait, you'll see. It'll happen.'
'Does that mean you're going with the plea?'
Ising pulled at his upper lip, drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. 'Damn,' he said.
'I didn't know if I should call. I was worried about you.'
'You've always been able to call, Christina. I appreciate it. But there isn't anything to worry about. I'm a big boy. I'll be all right.'
'I'm not trying to argue with you, but you don't sound all right. And Saturday…'
'I thought Saturday I was pretty good.'
'But it was an act. I could see that.'
'Well, yes. But what was I going to do with everybody there? I couldn't very well sit in a corner and cry, could I?'
'No. I'm sorry. I didn't mean…'
'I know what you meant, Christina, and I thank you. You're right. You're saying it's okay if I show it a little. People aren't judging me so hard right now. Is that it?'
'Of course you see it. You see things.'
'Still, it's good to remember. And I'm very glad you called. A time like this, you don't want to… you don't want to push yourself on your friends. The house has seemed to get pretty big…'
'Mark?'
'I'm still here. I'm thinking maybe I should just sell the damn thing.'
'I don't think I'd make any decisions like that for a while. Give yourself a little time.'
'For what, though?'
'For things to become clearer.'
'Oh, they seem clear enough now. That's almost the problem. Everything's crystal clear. This is just the way things will be from now on.'
'Time will make it better, Mark. Eventually, it will. It does.'
'Okay.'
'I'm sorry. I'm not saying it's not horrible now.'
'No, I know, that's all right. Well, listen, I'm not much for conversation right now. And I do thank you for calling me. Really. I'll be back in the office in a couple more days. I'll see you there?'
'Sure.'
'Okay then. Take care.'
She put the phone down gently, stood looking out at the traffic passing by her front window, then picked it up and hit the redial button.
'It's me again.'
A surprised chuckle, wonderful to hear. 'How've you been?'
'I've been insensitive.'
'Not at all.'
'More than I want to be. I don't know what you're feeling, other than the pain, Mark. It's stupid to say time will make it better. Maybe it won't. I just wanted you to know that if you need to talk sometimes, it wouldn't be a burden. That's all I wanted to say.'
He didn't respond right away, and when he did, the voice was husky with suppressed emotion. 'You're great,' he said. Thank you.'
When he realized that the AIDs-insurance matter involving Craig Ising was going to take up most of the day, Farrell had called and left a message with Sam's brother that he'd pick her up on his way home and they could go out to dinner someplace.
Larry and Sally lived over Twin Peaks from Sam's old place in a gingerbread Victorian, and Farrell wasn't halfway up the dozen stairs leading to the front porch when the door opened. Sam was coming out to him, slamming the door behind her, moving fast. 'We've got to talk,' she said. 'Where have you been?'
'So let me get this straight,' he said. 'Some lady…'
'Some woman, Wes.'
'Okay, some woman comes in to where you work and tells you this story…'
'It wasn't a story. It was the truth.'
He stopped. She walked a couple more steps. 'Here we go, now,' he said.
'I'm going to try to finish one sentence. Then you can have one. How about that?'
'You don't need to get snippy.'
'I'm not being snippy. I'm trying to respond in whole sentences to the topic we are trying to discuss. Now. This woman tells you that twenty-some-odd years ago, she went on a date with Mark Dooher and she took him back to her apartment and got him drunk and then he raped her.'
'And threatened to kill her.'
'Sure, why not? That, too. And because of that, if it is true…'
'It is true.'
'If it is true, I should abandon my life-long best friend, whom you now seem to believe is a murderer. That's where we are?'
'That's right.'
'He killed his wife because he allegedly raped this woman?'
'Wes, don't go all lawyer on me. He didn't allegedly rape this woman. He raped her.'
'No, wait a minute. She invited him up to her apartment, plied him with drink, started making out with him…'
'And then told him to stop, that's right. And he didn't.' She was giving him that look – eyes hard and challenging. 'That's rape.'
'Ex post facto.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means now it's considered rape. Then it wasn't considered rape. It's like people who say Lincoln was a racist, when they didn't have the same concept back then. By today's standards, everybody was a racist a hundred years ago. Same with date rape. It's all semantics.'
'It's not semantics at all. He raped her.'
'I'm not saying date rape isn't rape. I'm saying thirty years ago, a lot of girls said no and didn't really mean no.'
'I'm not going to get into how Neanderthal that sounds, Wes, but this particular woman didn't just say no. She tried to fight him off and he told her he'd kill her.'
'No, he didn't.'
'What? How can you possibly-?'
'Because I know Mark Dooher. He's not going to kill somebody in college over a piece of ass. Come on, Sam. You're a rape counsellor, for Christ sake. You know how this goes. She invites him up…'
'She asked for it, right? Don't give me that one, please.'
'I don't know if she asked for it. I wasn't there, but it sure wasn't the same thing as lurking in the bushes and assaulting her as she walked by.'
'Yes, it was, Wes. That's the point.'
They were still standing where they'd stopped, in the middle of a fogbound street in the gauzy glow of one of Church Street's lights. Wes had his hands in his pockets. He hadn't thought they were going hiking, and in his business suit, he wasn't dressed for the chill.
He forced himself to slow down, take a breath, not let this escalate. They'd work it out. It was just that right now they were both charging at one another. He thought he'd pull back a little, lower the voltage.
'Look, Sam. How about we go someplace? Sit down. Maybe have some food. Calm down a little.'
She crossed her arms. 'I am calm. And I don't need that condescending "Take the little lady someplace she can't make a scene" bullshit either.'
'I am not doing that. I thought we might be able to have a reasonable adult discussion in a more comfortable environment.'
'This environment seemed to be comfortable enough until we got on this.'
'On rape, or what you're calling rape, you mean?'
'What I'm calling rape! Goddamn it, Wes, I expected a lot more from you.'
'Well, yelling is a big help.'
'There!' Now she was yelling. 'Put me down again. Don't discuss the real subject, whatever you do. Jesus Christ!'
'I'd like to discuss the real subject, Sam, but first I can't get out a whole sentence, and then I'm getting screamed at while I'm freezing my ass off, getting all kinds of motive laid on me for the truly ominous, condescending idea of finding someplace warm to sit down. Give me a break, would you? I didn't rape anybody. I'm not the enemy here.'
'My enemy's friend is my enemy.'
He brought a hand up to his forehead. 'That's good. What's that, Kahlil Gibran or the PLO Handbook?'
'It's common sense is what it is. It's survival.'
'I didn't think we were in survival mode.'
'All women live every day in survival mode.'
'Jeez, that's good, too. What are you doing, writing a book of feminist slogans?'
'Fuck you.'
She turned and was walking off.
He followed after her, his own volume way up. 'You've been working at that center too long, you know that?'
She whirled on him. 'Yeah, that's right. I've been working, of course that's the problem. Women shouldn't work, should they, Wes? They shouldn't have their own lives.'
'Sure, that's what I'm saying, Sam. That's what I think. I wonder if you could twist it anymore.'
'I'm sure I could. I'm a woman, after all, I don't get things right.'
'I'll tell you something. You didn't get at least this one thing right. My friend Mark Dooher didn't kill his wife and I'd be Goddamned surprised if he raped this lady, either. She saw his name in the paper, she wants her twenty minutes of fame. You ever think of that?'
'Oh no, Wes, that never crossed my mind. You asshole.' She started walking away again. Stopped, turned back. 'I heard her. I saw her face. This happened, Goddamn it, whether or not you believe it.'
'What happened? She maybe said "no" thirty years ago, and just forgot about it until now? I'm sure.'
Sam said nothing.
'Did she seek counselling? Did she tell anybody? Did she report it to the police back then? Did she do a fucking thing? No.'
'It ruined her life. It changed everything in her life.'
'How sad for her. And now, damn, look at this, what a surprise! Mark Dooher's in the news and it all comes back. And – this is the great part – this means my best friend, who I've known only a hundred times longer than I've known you, this means he killed his wife he loved and raised a family with? Please. I mean it, Sam, you got to get a life here. This is ridiculous.'
This time, she started walking away and didn't turn back.
'Hey, Bart. Daddy's home.'
It was ten o'clock.
The dog got up, yawned and walked slowly over to where his master stood. Wes petted him distractedly, then schlumped into the kitchen, turning on the light, checking for dog shit. He paid a young woman who ran a small graphics business out of her apartment in the building to take Bart out two or three times a day, but sometimes that wasn't quite enough. Today it had been.
The refrigerator held a couple of six packs of Rolling Rock, and he took out two bottles and opened them both, drank one half down, pulled out the kitchen chair and sat heavily at the table.
He felt a hundred years old.
He ached to simply pick up the phone there on the wall and apologize until dawn. But he didn't move. The phone didn't, either. Eventually, he lifted the bottle of beer again, staring out at the night.
This was not supposed to happen. Everything had been going better than it ever had in his life, even better – he thought – than it ever had with Lydia when they'd been young and believed they must be in love.
In the first heady rush of physical pleasure, and then in the next weeks of growing intimacy, he'd put Sam's occasional penchant for volatility out of his mind. That first night, when she'd thrown him out after learning that he was defending Levon Copes – he'd chosen to believe that that had been an aberration born of insecurity and alcohol.
But evidently it wasn't.
It was better to find out now rather than later, he supposed, but he wasn't in the mood to put much of an optimistic spin on anything just now.
He'd wracked his brain all the way home, playing Devil's Advocate with himself, conjuring all the negative images of Mark that he could remember. But there were so few of them and that was the truth.
Once, in college, when they were engaged, Mark had cheated on Sheila. But he'd been riddled with guilt because of it – told Wes all about it on one of their 'retreats'; wondered if he should call off their impending marriage because he was such a bad person.
He'd backhanded his son, Mark Jr, across the face for throwing his bat in a Babe Ruth League game. That, Wes thought, was Mark's worst moment. But at the time Mark had been working eighty hours a week trying single-handedly to save his ailing firm. And he'd tried to turn even that incident, bad as it was, into something positive – treating it as a type of wake-up call. He was working too hard, ignoring what was really important. His family, his spiritual values.
In some way, these peccadilloes reassured Wes about his friend's character. Mark would be the last to say he was perfect. Of course he had sinned – he was human. He'd done things he was ashamed of. But these were why, to Wes's mind, he was balanced. He wasn't wound so tightly holding in every tiny impulse to evil that he would one day need to explode.
So he tried to figure out what it was; why the sudden rush from so many quarters to slander and vilify Mark Dooher.
Jealousy was one thing. Mark was wealthy, powerful, and up until a couple of months ago, lucky. He was exactly the kind of person that lesser people loved to see destroyed.
Then the Trang business, politically motivated and unfounded as it was, had put a hole in Mark's bubble of invincibility. And Wes knew that an enduring truism of life was that accusations bred more accusations.
And now – finally – the dominant bull was injured, limping. This was the time to take him down, when it could be done. Everybody was abandoning Mark. People were lining up to take shots at him when he was least able to defend himself.
Well, Wes wasn't anybody's hero, and he couldn't stop anybody from taking aim and firing, but he could stand in front of his friend and try to defend him until he was strong again.
Trang's murder. This woman's rape story. The enemies were assembling and he didn't have to think too hard to figure out what was coming next. They were going to charge him with Sheila's murder.
And Wes knew he would be the last line of defense. And for once – whatever they might dig up and however it spun – he knew it wouldn't be true.
Wes was going to defend him.
A week later, Paul Thieu got his first real break in the case.
It was not without some trepidation that he guided his city-issue Plymouth off the freeway at the Menlo Park exit, forty miles down the peninsula south of the city, and negotiated the narrow entrance to the parking lot by the Veterans Administration building. The short drive between the freeway and the VA reminded him of 6th Street between Mission and Bryant in San Francisco, the most dangerous walking blocks on the map.
Though the climate down here was infinitely more benign, the small town thoroughfare itself was a no man's land of Reagan's enduring legacy, the mentally impaired homeless. The cops called these people 'eight hundreds' and their social workers called them 'fifty-one fifties' after the Welfare & Institutions code sections that defined them, but by any name, they were tragic. Derelicts, drug addicts, bag people.
Thieu saw them every day in the city, but here within a long spit of Silicon Valley, where the sun always shone and the real estate glittered, he found all this evidence of poverty and despair especially dispiriting.
He was also keenly aware of his Vietnamese nationality. Men in old Army uniforms – singly or in small groups – loitered here and there on the main street and under the trees that provided the shade for the parking lot. Thieu didn't have to guess which war they were veterans of.
And time might have passed, he knew, but in the brains of some of these guys, it still might be 1968.
He opened the car door into what was, by San Francisco standards, blazing heat. It was not yet noon and already in the mid-eighties. Thieu was wearing an ivory linen suit and decided he could leave his raincoat on the passenger seat where he'd thrown it. It was misting heavily in San Francisco, forty miles away. The temperature was in the fifties.
A couple of guys in old fatigues nudged each other as he passed them on the way to the imposing doors, but he smiled and said hello and was past them and through the doors before they had moved two steps.
The place had that old institutional-building feel and smell. A wide entryway with linoleum floors made every sound inside echo. To his left, a waist-high counter separated the government workers from the veterans, who were for the most part queued up waiting for their numbers to be called. Across from the counter, a shiny, light-green wall sported wood-framed photographs of all the Presidents since Eisenhower, as well as a decent assortment of Admirals and Generals (including another one of Eisenhower in uniform). At the end of the entryway, a large paned window let in a lot of light.
Thieu stood a minute, getting his bearings, reading from the Building Directory in its glass bulletin board. Gradually, he became aware that the noise had ceased behind him.
Deciding to ignore it, he found the room number for his appointment and moved out directly.
'Hey!'
Somebody was calling after him, but he came to the big window, hung a left, and took the stairs two at a time.
They had been lucky, locating Chas Brown here at the south peninsula VA detox. Neither Thieu nor Glitsky had really known where Brown might lead them, but Glitsky was directing this investigation and he'd sent Thieu down to conduct the interview.
Last Thursday and Friday, he'd run around trying to get a handle on either a Chas Brown or a Michael Lindley, the two other survivors of Mark Dooher's platoon in Vietnam. Their names had been provided, during the Trang investigation, by Dooher himself.
Now, Glitsky smelled blood. He told Thieu that they simply had to find out everything they could about Dooher, from whatever source. Glitsky was working St Francis Wood, talking to the neighbors, working the pawnshops in the adjoining neighborhoods, still looking against hope for the bayonet, the clothes Dooher was wearing, something.
And Thieu, with his background, started out to find yet another missing person.
Chas Brown wasn't a total burn-out case. True, in his faded jeans and flannel shirt, with his long, unwashed graying hair and beard, he didn't look like anyone who worked for a living, blue or white collar. But his eyes were clear, his handshake firm.
He showed up at his counsellor's office on time, promptly at noon, exhibiting no signs of prejudice toward Thieu. After a couple of minutes, Thieu offered to take him to lunch. There was a terrific pizza place not far away named Frankie, Johnny & Luigi Too.
Brown looked like he wouldn't turn food down – he weighed about a hundred fifty pounds. He was nearly six feet tall.
Thieu also thought he'd get franker answers if he was away from his counsellor.
So now they were sitting at a table outside under the green and white umbrellas, sharing a large pizza, of which Thieu wouldn't be able to eat more than one enormous piece. Fully loaded with pepperoni, sausage, olives, mushrooms, peppers, double cheese and anchovies, one slice weighed in at nearly a pound.
Judging from how he started it, Thieu guessed Chas would finish the entire large pitcher of Budweiser he'd ordered. He was already on his third glass. Thieu was having iced tea.
The two men weren't yet friends, but the beer wasn't exactly making Chas taciturn. The pocket tape recorder was rolling and they'd already covered Thieu's background, verifying that he was too young to have fought in Vietnam. His father hadn't been in uniform, either, though he'd been anti-Communist all the way. A capitalist in the silk trade in Saigon, the elder Mr Thieu had to leave when the city was abandoned by the U.S. So Thieu and Chas were on the same side.
'That's when my name changed.' Brown had a lot of nervous energy. Tics and scratches, eyes moving all the time. But he was talking clearly, if a little rushed. Maybe the beer would eventually mellow him out. 'Before I got in country I was Charles, Charlie Brown. When I was a kid, I would have done anything not to be named Charlie Brown, so of course it stuck like glue. Then I get to Nam and Dooher says there's no Charlie in his platoon, I'm Chas. So I'm Chas. I thought it was a good omen at the time. I thought Dooher was a good guy. Shows you what I knew.'
Thieu didn't want to stop him, and remained silent as Brown downed another deep slug of beer, the eyes going blank a moment. Another drink, more emptiness. Blink, the lights went back on, led to the abrupt segue. 'Tried to be my friend, y'know, after.'
'After what?'
The eyes came back, then darted away. 'You know.'
'I don't know.'
'About the dope, all that. I thought that was what you came down here for.'
In fact, Thieu's main avenue of inquiry was going to be about the ease of smuggling bayonets and rifles out of the country when your hitch was up. Instead, a bonus, Chas Brown was heading in a different direction.
'What dope?' Suddenly, Brown's expression closed up. Was Thieu trying to sandbag him in some way? The open camaraderie – the ruse of drinking together, having lunch – faded. The change in Brown was palpable. Suddenly Thieu was the heat and that wouldn't help his investigation, so he moved into damage control mode. 'I'm not interested in dope, Chas. I'm interested in a murder.'
'Well, yeah.' Meaningless, unforthcoming.
Thieu pressed it. 'Look, Chas, it's none of my business what drugs you're taking, or took. I want you to understand that. Here,' he pointed at the tape recorder on the table between them, 'I'm saying it on this tape. It's on the record. This has nothing to do with you except insofar as you know something about Mark Dooher. Did he take drugs, was that it?'
Brown moved out of the blazing sun, into the shadow of the table's umbrella. He wiped his high forehead and took a long pull of beer. 'Everybody took drugs,' he said. 'Everybody.' He scratched at his neck.
'Dooher bought our drugs. He was the connection.'
'Mark Dooher was selling marijuana?'
Brown laughed. 'Marijuana? Look at me, you think I'm strung out on marijuana? You think thirty years down the line, my brain's fried on some doob?' He shook his head, amazed at Thieu's world view. 'We're talking shit here, china white, skag.' Thieu digested this. 'Horse, man. Heroin.'
'You're saying Mark Dooher sold you heroin?'
A continual nod. 'That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Not just me. The whole platoon. Got his own stash free and sold to his guys. Did us a favor, lowest price in Nam.'
Thieu sat back, rocked by this information.
But Brown was going on unbidden. 'And you know, if you look at it the way it really was, Dooher's the one who let it all happen. It was his job to keep us straight. Instead, he kept us wired.'
Thieu leaned forward. 'Let what happen?'
Brown wasn't good with direct questions. They seemed to spook him. He leaned back, found himself out of the umbrella's shadow, his face in the sun, and that moved him forward again. 'You don't know about this, why did you want to see me?'
'I wanted to see if the guys in your platoon – Dooher specifically -smuggled out their weapons. If you knew if Dooher had.'
'Why?'
Though it had nothing to do with Sheila Dooher, which was his case, Thieu ran with what he had. 'We think Dooher used a bayonet to kill somebody, that's why.'
Brown's face cracked – a broken smile. Thieu had just verified something for him. 'Yeah,' he said.
'Yeah what?'
'That's how he did Nguyen, too.'
Thieu was learning about the art of interrogation with this man. Don't ask directly. Just keep him talking. 'Nguyen?'
'His source – Andre Nguyen. Had a little shop just outside Saigon, pretended to sell groceries.' Thieu must have looked confused. Brown put his beer mug down, brought his face in close, eye to eye. 'Come on, man! The guy he killed.'
The story came out. There had been no ambush with a platoon of stoned soldiers. Nguyen had sold Dooher a load of bad heroin, or maybe it was extra-good heroin. In any event, Dooher sold it to his troops and it overdosed all but two of them.
'And this never got reported?'
Again, an expression that told Thieu that his world and Brown's operated on different planes. 'Dooher covered it. He wasn't part of it. We – me and Lindley – we weren't part of it. We all alibied each other. We were out on patrol, the guys left back at camp had this bad load of shit, and it killed them.'
'And the authorities believed you?'
Brown nodded. 'Enough, but that wasn't really the end of it.' A slug of beer. 'Problem is, Dooher knows it's his fault. And we know it's his fault. So now he like wants to be friends, afterwards. Make sure Lindley and me, we got no hard feelings.'
'How'd he try to be your friend?'
'You know, pulled us – me and Lindley – some cherry R and R in Hawaii. He had a knack of getting what he wanted. He thought he'd show us a good time, make up for the other, some bullshit like that. Lindley wouldn't do it.'
'Why not?' It was a direct question and Brown hesitated again, but Thieu couldn't stop himself. 'Chas, why didn't Lindley want to go out with Dooher?'
'He thought he was going to kill us.'
'Why?'
'Why? 'Cause we knew he'd fucked up, that's why. We could ruin him if we told. We were the only witnesses left and we were pretty bitter.'
'At Dooher?'
Brown shrugged. 'At the whole thing, man. You get tight over there with your guys. You're like twenty years old and then, wham, they're all dead but you. It makes you bitter.'
Thieu believed it. 'But you went out with Dooher? In Hawaii?'
Chas nodded. 'I just didn't see it. He wasn't going to kill nobody. Lindley was just paranoid. I thought.'
'Now you don't think he was?'
'Well, he didn't try to kill me. There's the proof of that.'
The eyes seemed to go empty again, but Thieu saw something in them that Chas Brown was trying to keep hidden. Chas grabbed for the crutch of his beer glass, but Thieu surprised himself, reaching out, grabbing his wrist, stopping him.
'What?' he asked.
'I always thought, later, that if Lindley had come along, he might have. Killed us both, I mean. When I showed up at his hotel alone, it was like he freaked out, goes all quiet on me, like, "What the fuck? I ask my guys out for a good time, on me, and they stand me up. What kind of bullshit is that?'"
'So what did happen? That night?'
'Nothing. We got drunk. Well, tell the truth, first time in my life, somebody got drunker than me. I was, I guess, still a little scared what he might do.' Brown's ravaged face creased into a little-boy smile. 'I poured out a lot of good rum that night. Still breaks my heart to think about it.'
'I bet it does.' Thieu found the thread again. 'And so, after that, you became friends?'
'Not hardly.'
'Why not?'
'Cause he was an officer.' This time he got the beer to his mouth. 'No, not that. I thought he was pathetic, I guess. That's why.'
'Pathetic?'
A nod. 'You ever have somebody push on you too hard they want to be friends so bad?'
'And Dooher wanted to be your friend?'
It was all coming back now, and Brown's head swung from side to side. 'No, no, no. He wanted to be forgiven, that's all he wanted. I mean as long as we were alive, and he wasn't going to kill us, then he wanted us to understand how bad he felt, how he had proved it, how he'd made fucking amends.'
'How did he do that?'
'Shit, I shouldn't be telling you this. You're a cop.'
'I am a cop. So what?'
Thieu's hand was still locked around his wrist, and suddenly Brown became aware of it; he moved it, raised the beer to his mouth. Drained it. Took a deep breath. 'So he killed Nguyen, the guy who sold us the shag. Went to his store and gutted him with his bayonet, wiped the fucking blade clean on his pajamas. Told me all about it, man to man, how he'd taken this great risk and all to get the guy who'd been responsible for everybody's o.d. So I'd forgive him, see what a hero he was. Can you believe that?'
'My Lord.' Glitsky, sitting on the table in one of the interrogation rooms on the 4th floor, the door closed behind him, flicked off the tape recorder.
'That's what I thought,' Thieu said, 'except I didn't use exactly those words.'
'He wiped his bayonet on the guy's pajamas!'
'That was my favorite part, too. Do you think this is enough to play for Drysdale?'
'I think we're getting there. You know, you came barging in with this, you didn't hear the other news.'
'What's that?'
'We got the blood lab report in today. You know what EDTA is?' Glitsky consulted his notes.
'Sure. Ethylene Diamine Tetra-Acetic Acid.' Glitsky's mouth hung open. 'My sister's a nurse,' Thieu explained. 'I used to test her on stuff. But what about it, the EDTA?'
Glitsky was still shaking his head. 'You think – well, most people think -when you give blood, they take it out, put it in a vial, spin it down or whatever, do their tests, right?'
'Right.'
'Right. But often they need to add an anti-coagulant to the blood to keep it from clotting, and that, my son, is EDTA. Actually, that's not precisely right. They don't add it to the blood. It comes in the vials. They've got purple stoppers on the top.'
'So?'
'So the blood all over Sheila Dooher's bed, supposedly left there by the perp when he was cut in the struggle, was loaded with EDTA.'
'Which means?'
'Which means that Dooher got his hands on some blood – maybe at his doctor's, maybe the same place he got the surgical glove, I don't know. He thought he'd leave a bunch on the bed, send our slow-witted selves off in search of a man with A-positive blood, which couldn't be him. But, sadly for him, the vial he picked up wasn't pure.'
Thieu tsked. 'And how could he have known?'
Glitsky stood up. 'Of such questions are tragedies made.'
At 10:15 on Tuesday morning, Glitsky, Thieu, Amanda Jenkins, and Frank Batiste were all jammed in front of Art Drysdale's desk. The door was closed behind them.
Art was sitting back in his chair, getting an angle on them. 'It's awful swell having you all stop by at once. If I'd a' known you was comin', I'd have baked a cake. Any of you know that song? No?'
Glitsky was thinking that he bet Thieu knew it, but didn't want to draw attention to himself. The other guests looked around at each other, and it was Amanda Jenkins who spoke up. 'We want to talk about Mark Dooher, Art.'
'Okay. What about him?'
'He killed his wife,' Glitsky said.
'All right. What's the problem? I don't need a committee to tell me that.'
Since Glitsky had the ball, he decided to keep rolling it. 'The problem,' he said, 'is that he also killed Victor Trang, and Frank here tells me that Mr Locke may have had a hand in shutting down that investigation. And if he's got some kind of political tie with Dooher…'
Drysdale held up a palm. 'Whoa. Stop right there. Chris Locke didn't stop any investigation, period. Chris Locke does not obstruct justice, and we're not going to talk about that here. Everybody understand that?'
Everyone nodded.
Drysdale pointed at the Head of Homicide. 'Frank, did I tell you to drop the Trang investigation?'
Batiste swallowed. 'You did say that unless we got some real evidence pretty soon, we ought to move along.'
'And did we get some real evidence? Physical evidence that would withstand the rigors of a jury trial?'
'No.'
'Okay. So much for the old news. Now what's this about his wife – Sheila, right?'
Glitsky took over again. 'I'd like to just run the whole thing down – it's a little complicated – and you tell me how you think it looks.'
'Excuse me, Abe.' Drysdale's gaze went to Jenkins. 'Amanda, you've heard this already?'
'Yes, sir. But you remember I heard Levon Copes, too, and you and I came to different conclusions.'
'This is like Copes?'
Glitsky butted in. 'It's one of those times – like Copes – where we know the perp, yeah. We know that first.'
Drysdale was shaking his head, his lips tight. 'And you know how uncomfortable that makes me?'
'Which is why we're here seeking your counsel and advice.'
Drysdale laughed out in the small room. 'Beautiful,' he said. 'Let the record reflect that I am truly snowed by this display of sincerity and trust.' He leaned forward, elbows on his desk. 'All right, tell me all about it. If I like it, we'll ask my wife. If she likes it, we'll go to the Grand Jury. I promise.'
Later, around 11:30, Drysdale poked his head into Homicide on the 4th floor, saw Glitsky at his desk, and walked over.
'I just called Lou's,' he said, referring to Lou the Greek's, 'and today's special is Kung Pao Chicken Greek Pizza.' Lou's wife was Chinese and the menu at the place often featured interesting culinary marriages such as this. 'I ordered a medium, enough for two, and it's going to be ready in,' Drysdale checked his watch, 'precisely seven minutes.'
'Sounds delicious,' Glitsky said, getting up, 'but I'm really only going because I want to see how they do it. I make that stuff at home, it almost never turns out.'
They were in a booth along a wall in the back of the darkened restaurant. The table was below street level. The wood-slatted windows began at their eyes, and outside the view of the alley included two garbage dumpsters, the barred back door of a bail bondsman's office, rainbows of graffiti on every surface.
At the big meeting in his small office, Drysdale had listened attentively and said he wanted to review the reports, but tentatively wasn't going to object to proceeding with the Grand Jury indictment on Mark Dooher.
But he and Glitsky had a bit of a longer personal history, which was why they were having lunch now.
Lou the Greek himself was hovering at the table, wondering how today's masterpiece was being received. 'It's good,' Drysdale was saying, 'but -you want my honest opinion, Lou? – I'd leave off the goat cheese.'
Lou was in his fifties and he'd lived underground in a cop bar for twenty-five years, so he looked closer to a hundred. But his eyes still sparkled in a long, lugubrious face. 'But the goat cheese is what makes it Greek.'
'Why does it have to be Greek?' Glitsky asked. 'How about just plain old Kung Pao Chicken pizza like everybody else makes?'
'You've had this before?' Lou asked. It bothered him. This was San Francisco, a major restaurant town, and Lou featured his wife's cuisine as cutting edge, which, in fact, it was. Not particularly good, but nobody else made anything like it.
'Lou, they got this at the Round Table, just without the goat cheese.'
The Greek turned to Drysdale. 'He's putting me on.'
'It's possible,' Art agreed. 'But here's an idea. The chicken. Why don't you just serve it over rice – forget the pizza altogether. Call it Kung Pao Chicken?'
'But then it's Chinese food.' The idea clearly distressed Lou. 'Everybody makes Kung Pao Chicken. People come here to eat, they expect Lou the Greek's, something Greek, am I right? I let my wife take over completely and pretty soon I'm Lou's Dragon Moon, a Chinese place. I'm fighting for my ethnic identity here.'
Glitsky took a bite of the pizza. 'On second thought, leave the goat cheese, maybe sprinkle on some grape leaves.'
Lou straightened up, struck by some merit in Glitsky's suggestion. 'Kung Pao dolmas,' he said. 'You think?'
Drysdale nodded. 'Worth a try. Abe?'
Glitsky's attention had suddenly wavered. He was staring blankly out the window at the alley.
'Abe?' Drysdale repeated. 'You with us?'
'Yeah, sure.'
'I was telling Lou. King Pao dolmas? Good idea?'
Coming back from far away, Glitsky nodded. 'Yeah, good idea. Definitely.'
But the real purpose of the lunch.
'I'm just going to pretend to be a meddling, picky defense attorney here now for a couple of minutes,' Drysdale was saying. 'I can see you and Amanda want to run with this and my instinct tells me it's going to go high profile in about ten seconds, so I'd like to have answers for some questions that I predict will be asked by our ever-vigilant media, to say nothing of my boss.'
The pizza was done, the tray cleared away. Glitsky had his hands folded around a fresh steaming mug of green tea on the table in front of him. 'Okay, shoot.'
'All right. Dooher comes home from work, brings some champagne, into which he intends to put some chloral-hydrate, thereby to knock his wife out so that he can come back later and kill her. But when he gets home, she is already dead. This is the theory?'
'Right.' This was, of course, the nub of the problem. 'But he doesn't know she is dead. He's got his plan all worked out and he's moving fast, all nerves. He comes in, says thank God she's not awake, not moving, and he sticks her, rearranges the body to make it look like a struggle, gets back to the driving range before anybody notices he's gone.'
'But he was gone, Abe. He's been gone at least a half-hour. And nobody noticed? You talked to people there at the driving range, right? Anyway, forget that. Let's go back. You're saying he poisoned her with chloral-hydrate, is that it? How do we know she just didn't take the stuff? What if she was committing suicide?'
Glitsky spun his tea slowly. 'So your argument is that Dooher waits until his wife commits suicide and then comes in and stabs the body with a knife and makes it look like a burglary?' He shook his head. 'No, Art. The knife-wound is why it's not suicide. The drugs is why it's not a burglary. Besides, there wasn't enough chloral-hydrate to kill her.'
Drysdale spread his palms. 'I thought she was poisoned. Didn't you just say the chloral-hydrate…?'
'The chloral-hydrate is the drug Dooher gave her to knock her out, make her go to sleep. But what he didn't know was that she was evidently having a tough time with menopause and was already taking a drug called Nardil for depression. Also, just that day she had evidently dosed herself up with Benadryl. She had an allergy shot that morning. So she was already drugged to the gills. Then she drank the champagne. Add alcohol, mix and pour. The chloral-hydrate pushed her over. It did her in.'
'Okay.' Drysdale sighed. 'So what, exactly, does that leave us with? The stabbing is a crime, okay, but it's not Murder One. Hell, it's not Murder Anything to stab a dead body.'
'It is Murder One to poison somebody to death.'
Drysdale sat back in the booth, contemplating it.
A quiet edge crept into Glitsky's voice. He leaned in over the table. 'This works, Art, listen: Amanda's argument isn't going to be that he meant to kill her with chloral-hydrate, even though that was the result. He didn't intend to kill her until he stabbed her later, but he did intend to give her poison, and she died from that. And the beauty is that stabbing her is what proves it.'
'And, of course, we can prove that?'
'We know he stabbed her.'
'Not exactly my question.'
'Okay. This is what we've got. You tell me.' Glitsky outlined it all. It was Dooher's knife and contained only his fingerprints. He had left his house alarm system off and his next-door neighbor had seen him unscrewing his side-door light on the way out to the driving range. Another neighbor saw his car parked on the street around the corner from his house during the time he was supposedly hitting golf balls. Then there was wiping the blade on the victim's clothes, which Glitsky had never encountered before in all his years in Homicide – and now it had happened twice in cases implicating Mark Dooher, three times if you included Chas Brown's Vietnam story. Finally, there was the blood that had been contaminated with EDTA. 'And who else would have stabbed a dead woman and then faked a burglary?'
When Glitsky finished, Drysdale sat still for a moment. 'You've got an eyewitness for the car?'
Glitsky nodded. 'Emil Balian. Swears it was Dooher's car, swears it was that night, that time. Rock solid.'
Drysdale appeared satisfied. There's your case,' he said. 'Don't let that guy die.' A beat. 'But now, just for me, Abe, one more thing. You want to tell me why he did it?'
'Frank's always telling me we don't need motives. We just need evidence.'
'And Frank's right, Abe, he's right. But Chris Locke is going to be curious as to why a model citizen suddenly decides to kill his wife.'
'Don't forget Victor Trang.'
'Okay. Him, too, maybe – two of them for no apparent reason. Why did he do this?'
'Maybe Sheila and Trang were having an affair.' Glitsky held up a hand. 'Just kidding. The real answer is we don't know. Not yet.'
'Well, Chris Locke is going to ask, Abe, and I'd be a whole lot more comfortable if I had something to tell him.'
'Amanda's got two possible theories.'
'Which are?'
'This thing with Sheila's drinking. We've heard some talk – both from neighbors and from some of Dooher's partners, that she got silly when she was out in public. She might have pushed it too far, become an embarrassment.'
'I don't think so,' Drysdale said flatly.
'The other one is money.'
'Money is always good. What kind of money?'
'A million six. Insurance.'
'The wife had a million six? Now we're talking.'
'Well, they both had it.'
'The same amount on each other? Why?'
'I gather when Dooher reorganized his firm a couple of years ago, things got pretty lean. They were living on their savings, deferring his salary, the whole thing. Dooher thought he'd turn it around eventually, and he did, but if he died halfway through, Sheila was pretty exposed, so they started to buy some term on him just in case, and then she evidently wanted to protect him if she died in the middle of it.'
'So, bottom line, Dooher's getting it?'
'Yep.'
Drysdale stretched his neck, looked around the now near-empty bar. 'All right,' he said, slipping out of the booth. 'It could be tighter, but I think we've got enough. I'll tell Amanda that if we need it we're going to go with the insurance.'
Drysdale waited until the end of the day. He was going to be reporting to Chris Locke anyway on a host of other matters, and while he didn't for a moment dream that he'd simply slip this one through, he thought he would package it to appear within the realm of normal business.
Hah.
'As you might imagine, Art, I've already gotten a call on this, warning me to expect just such a moment. The Archbishop is not going to be pleased. He is convinced there is some kind of vendetta going on against Dooher.'
'I don't think so, Chris. I think he killed his wife for a million six in insurance money.'
'And why did he kill Trang? Jesus Christ, Art, people don't just become homicidal maniacs one morning out of the blue for no reason at all.'
Drysdale was suddenly happy – in the midst of this reaming – that he'd earlier decided not to mention as part of his argument the Chas Brown story. Instead, he stuck to the question at hand. 'He killed Trang because Trang pissed him off – hey, I'm not saying it's the best reason I've ever heard – but it worked. He got away with that so he got cocky, decided he could do the same with his wife and collect big time.'
'Why does he want to collect big time? Does he need the money? Is his business failing?'
Since Drysdale knew that, if anything, the contrary was true, he thought it would be wiser to shift gears, get on to the evidence. The point is, this time we've got witnesses, we got fingerprints on the murder weapon. We have one good citizen who saw Dooher's car near his house when he said he was at the driving range. Chris, we've got a case. We've got a righteous Murder One.'
But Locke was still frowning, his head swinging slowly back and forth, side to side. 'And Glitsky's the investigator again? How'd he get on this?'
'I don't know, Chris, but he's-'
'He's got a damn conflict of interest, if you ask my opinion. Even if he's not out to get this guy, for whatever reason, it looks like he is, which is just as bad.' Locke didn't want to add, although they both understood, that Glitsky, who for statistical purposes within the bureaucracy was considered black, was someone Locke couldn't afford politically to alienate or even, to a great degree, to criticize. As a show of solidarity, Locke had even attended Flo's funeral a few weeks before.
'Well, I'm afraid that's water under the bridge now, Chris. Glitsky's the Inspector of record.'
Locke stood still for a moment, then swore and slammed his hand down on his desk. He walked over to the windows and stood staring out, his hands clasped behind his back. Without turning, he spoke conversationally. 'I really, really don't want to charge anybody, much less an influential lawyer, with a murder he didn't commit.'
'No, sir. Neither do I.'
Now Locke did turn. 'What do you think, Art?'
Commitment time. Drysdale spoke right up. 'I think Glitsky's right, though it may be a bitch to prove.'
'You don't think there's anything to him being out to get Dooher, planting evidence, anything like that? Or his wife's death has-'
But Drysdale was emphatic. 'Not a chance.'
Back out to the window. 'All right, I'm going to give you my decision and you're not going to like it, but here it is. We go for the indictment on killing his wife, but not on Victor Trang. From what you say, we're not going to prove Trang.'
'Well, sir, there is the consistent M.O., with wiping the blade…'
'Forget it. It's not going to happen. So we go with one count, Murder One, no specials.' This meant special circumstances murder-killing a police officer, multiple murders, murder for profit, and other especially heinous crimes.
'But we've got specials at least two ways.'
'No.' Locke was emphatic. 'I am supporting my staff on the one charge that it has any chance of proving. But personally, I must tell you, Art, I am not convinced. It smells funny to me, but I can't not charge it, can I?'
'I don't think so, no.'
'All right. Then go get the indictment, but I want you to ride this case like white on rice – it starts to go sideways, I want to know about it yesterday, all right?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And one other thing. I want you to ask for a quarter million dollars' bail.'
'What?' Drysdale was stunned. This was unheard of. Murder suspects did not get out on bail, or if they did, it was for millions. A quarter million dollars' bail meant that Mark Dooher could put up his ten percent bond on one of his credit cards and be out of jail before he was in. In effect, he would never be arrested.
'You heard me, Art. This particular man is innocent until he's proven guilty, and I want him treated innocent. Do you understand?'
'But this bail, sir. The precedent alone…'
'This is an unprecedented case. If Amanda Jenkins wants it and you think it's a winner, I'll go along because I respect you, Art. But we'll do it my way. And that's the end of it.'
'But-'
He held up a warning hand. 'No buts! That's the end of it!'
Glitsky liked this woman. The appointment was scheduled for his home at 7:30 and that was the exact moment she rang the doorbell. Glitsky generally believed that cleanliness was next to godliness, but punctuality was next. Rita was starting off on the right foot.
He'd been surprised, at first, by her nationality, since he'd expected Rita Schultz to be somehow vaguely Germanic. But she was a hefty and healthy-looking Hispanic woman. Her great-grandfather, she explained, had come over to Mexico with the Emperor Maximilian's troops, then stayed. She was thirty-three years old and her English was accented but at least as grammatical as most of what Glitsky heard on television.
She had been working for six years for the same couple – the references were glowing. The couple were having their third child, and the woman had decided that she was going to take an extended leave from her job in advertising and stay home with her new baby and the other two, so they wouldn't need a nanny anymore. But it did mean that Rita could not start for Glitsky until after the baby was born. It was due any day.
He thought that for Rita Schultz it would be worth the wait.
The light had faded long ago and Christina was sitting alone in her office at McCabe & Roth. The room was small, stark and utilitarian, with a desk, a computer terminal, a bookshelf, a gun-metal legal file. With her door open, she could look out across the open reception area and catch a glimpse of the Oakland Bay Bridge, but she had no windows of her own. The walls in her office had been bare when she'd moved in, but she'd tacked up a couple of posters to lessen the claustrophobic feel. On her desk she had a picture of her parents smiling at her from the pool deck in Ojai.
She heard a noise somewhere on the floor and glanced up from the brief she was writing. Seeing her parents in the picture, smiling and carefree in the bright sunlight, she felt a pang and looked at her watch.
9:35.
What the hell was she doing with her life?
She stretched and stood, thinking she'd go see what other lunatic was burning the oil the way she was. At her door, she paused – it was Mark's office, the light on now. He hadn't been back into work yet. She crossed the reception area.
The sense of disappointment when it wasn't Mark brought her up short.
She hadn't really been consciously aware that she was waiting to see him, wanting to see him again. She'd been biding her time until he could face coming back into work, and then, thinking it must be him in his office this late at night, her heart had quickened.
But it wasn't him. Another man was standing by the wraparound windows, looking out at the mezmerizing view. She knocked on the open door. 'Wes?'
Farrell turned, smiled weakly. She couldn't help but notice how drawn and tired he seemed.' C 'est moi. I thought everybody would have gone home by now.'
She took a step into the room. 'Can I help you?'
'I don't think so.' He held up a key by way of explanation. 'Mark asked if I'd stop by on my way home and pick up his in-box. He must be thinking about coming back to work.' Wes moved over to Dooher's desk, picked up his briefcase and opened it. 'What are you still doing here?'
Christina shrugged. 'Brownie points, I guess. I wanted to finish my brief by the morning. How is Mark doing?'
Farrell raised his eyes. 'He's lying pretty low. I haven't seen him since the funeral. We've done some phone.' He finished stowing Dooher's papers in his briefcase, snapped shut the lid. 'He'll be all right, Christina. He's pretty tough.'
'I don't know if tough helps at a time like this.'
'Well,' he smiled ruefully, 'it doesn't hurt.' Lifting the briefcase, he came around the desk, over next to Christina. He gestured her out, turned off the lights in Dooher's office, closed the door and locked it.
'Wes, are you worried?'
'About what?'
'Mark. The police. Sam said-'
He turned to her and his shoulders sagged. 'I don't want to talk about Sam. And I don't know what's going on with the police, to tell you the truth. I don't think Mark does either. So far they've left him alone. Maybe that's a good sign.'
'You don't sound very confident.'
'I don't think I am.'
'But if he wasn't there…'
'I know. But if you're predisposed to see something, you'd be amazed how often you'll see it. I think the police got stuck on the Trang murder and suddenly Mark went from being an upstanding businessman to potential suspect. And once you're a potential suspect, well, you know this. It's a lot easier to accuse somebody a second time.'
'But not if he wasn't even there!'
'Maybe. But all they've got to do is have somebody at the driving range say they couldn't swear he stayed there all night, and then they walk around the neighborhood asking everybody if they saw Mark Dooher or somebody who looked like him, or his car, or a car that looked like his car. And somebody will have seen something, or thought they did, and that's all they'll need.
'Even Sam… no. I've got to get going.'
He started toward the elevator.
'What about Sam? Wes!'
He made it another couple of steps before the spring gave out and he stopped.
'What happened with Sam?'
He turned around. 'Actually, Sam is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.'
After he hired Rita and she left, Glitsky was back in his kitchen, rattling around, when his beeper went off. He called the number and learned that Paul Thieu was still working, had beeped him from a pay phone not ten blocks away.
Glitsky had sent him out on what appeared to be another wild-goose chase, and for the second time in two days Thieu had discovered something. Glitsky gave him his home address and told him to come on up.
No sooner had he opened the door when Thieu enthused: 'Dr Peter Harris. I realized going over to his place that I couldn't ask – he wouldn't know -about any missing surgical gloves, they're not any kind of a controlled item. But the blood, he's sure of. He even thinks he knows precisely whose blood it was, though we'll never be able to prove it.'
'And why is that, Paul?'
'Because the man is dead and cremated. He's gone.'
It had been Glitsky's idea to question Dooher's physician to see whether any vials of blood had gone missing in the past month or so. He reasoned that Dooher had to have gotten it somewhere, and his own doctor's office seemed the most likely spot. So he'd told Thieu that the place to start would be Sheila's female doctor, whom they already knew. It might not be much of a stretch to suppose that the family physician – Mark's doctor – would be somewhere on Sheila's documentation or records.
'Did you have to mention Dooher?' The police were keeping the EDTA angle out of the news for the time being, so it would be better if no names were used.
Thieu's face, already animated, lit up ever further. 'No. He didn't even ask. I showed him my ID and told him we were talking to a lot of doctors, doing a kind of informal survey on how often blood got lost from their offices or labs.'
'You made this up?'
'Yeah. I told him that with our new DNA tracking and all, we were seeing more and more criminals contaminating crime scenes with – we thought -stolen blood, to throw us off. So we were trying to track the sources of it.'
'And he bought this?'
Thieu broke a grin. 'I have an honest face. Anyway, he said it almost never happens, especially since AIDS. Blood is a high-security item. But it turns out his lab did lose this one vial last month. The doc was really upset because the patient was an old guy with bad veins who pitched a fit over having his blood taken at all, and then they had to do it again.'
'And he is Mark's doctor, Harris?'
'I couldn't help but notice Dooher's name in the Rolodex on his receptionist's desk. So unless it's a coincidence…'
Glitsky still hadn't closed the door or invited Thieu in, but neither of them seemed to notice. 'Okay, let's get a subpoena tomorrow for Harris's records and find out the last time Dooher saw him.'
'Do we need to do that? If we're letting the cat out of the bag about the EDTA, why don't I just call him back and ask him? If you want to invite me in?'
In ten minutes they knew. Dooher had gone for his yearly physical a couple of weeks ago. Dr Harris would doublecheck on the exact date in the morning, and also when the blood was reported missing. But he thought the two dates were in the same general time span.
Wes Farrell delivered Dooher's in-box and his friend asked if he'd like to come in and talk about things. Now, in the turreted library, Wes crossed one leg over the other, sinking back into the soft leather. 'I've got to ask you, Mark. I've been wrestling with it all day. Sam and I broke up over it, and I'd kind of like that to have not been for nothing.'
'You two broke up over whether or not I slept with somebody in college?'
'Not slept with, Mark. Raped.'
'I don't believe this.' He began pacing, fingers to his temples. 'What's next? Where are they digging this up? What did Sam say the woman's name was?'
'Price, I think.'
He stopped pacing and took a breath. 'I have never heard of anybody named Price. I never dated anybody named Price. I swear on Sheila's grave. And PS, old buddy, I've never raped anybody either. It's not my style. Jesus Christ. Sam believes I did this? Where did this Price woman come from?'
'I don't know. She walked into the Center and said you'd raped her.'
'When, exactly, did I rape her?'
'In college sometime. You were out drinking and she brought you back to her room -I don't know.'
Suddenly Dooher snapped his fingers. 'Diane? Lord, Diane Taylor. Of course, of course.'
'You do know her?'
'No, I'm not sure.' An ottoman was handy and Dooher sat heavily on it. 'I don't know any Diane Price, Wes, but I did go out a couple of times with a Diane Taylor. If it's Diane Taylor… let's hope it's not Diane Taylor.'
'Why not?'
'Because Diane Taylor is an unbalanced person, Wes. She's done every drug in America twenty times over. She slept with every single other guy I knew at Stanford.'
'Including you?'
'Including me, before I even met Sheila. And with her full consent, I assure you.' He moved the ottoman forward, lowered his voice. 'Wes, you know more than anybody. The couple of times I screwed up on Sheila, didn't I come crying to you? But this wasn't a screw up. This – if it was Diane Taylor – was getting laid a couple of times before I developed any taste in women. Jesus, she's now saying I raped her!
'Evidently. And ruined her life in the bargain.'
Dooher hung his head and shook it. Raising his eyes, he met his friend's gaze. 'It's just a black lie, Wes. I don't know what I can tell you. I didn't do anything like that. I wouldn't.'
'I know,' Farrell said. 'I didn't think so, but I had to ask, all right?'
A long, frustrated sigh. 'Okay. But this gets old, especially at this particular juncture in my life, you know what I'm saying? I'm not having my best week.'
'No. I'd imagine not. Me, neither, actually.'
Dooher's voice softened. 'I'm sorry about your girlfriend. I feel if it hadn't been for me…'
'No, it's not you, Mark. It was her. It was me.'
'So go back and tell her you're sorry. Leave me out of it. I can get another lawyer whose life I won't ruin.'
'You're not ruining my life, and I am your lawyer.'
'Just so you're sure.'
'I'm sure. I'm sure you didn't do any of this.'
'That's good to hear, because I didn't.'
'Well, then, here's to the old-fashioned idea of friends standing by each other. And to hell with the rest of 'em.'
'Amen to that,' Dooher said, 'and thank you.'
The conference room at McCabe & Roth had seen more somber moments, but not since the downsizing layoffs. And this may have been worse than any of those.
It was five o'clock on this Monday evening, one day shy of two weeks from the day of Sheila's death. Mark Dooher waited until the room was full before having Janey page him and tell him it was time.
Dooher lingered one last moment outside the room, aware of the muted tones within These people were worried. He had returned to work the previous Wednesday, enduring the sympathy of his partners and staff, taking individual meetings with key people for the rest of the week, reassuring one and all that life would go on, he was fine, the firm's client base was solid.
And then Sunday's Chronicle broke the story with the front-page headline – Local Lawyer Suspected in Wife's Murder.
'Sources at the Hall of Justice have confirmed that the Grand Jury is considering an indictment on a prominent San Francisco attorney, Mark Dooher, for the murder of his wife, Sheila.' The long article went on to include all the other details that the unnamed 'sources' provided – the other allegations, from the rape of Diane Price to the murders of Victor Trang ten weeks earlier and Andre Nguyen in Vietnam.
Dooher and Farrell had spent all of the morning denying everything. They had held a press conference in Wes's office. Yes, they were planning on suing the Chronicle and the police department. No, he had never raped anybody. He'd never killed anyone in Vietnam or anywhere else. This was a carefully orchestrated character assassination… political overtones… despondent, desperate Police Inspector… blah blah blah.
They'd hit all the high notes, and the media had gone into its fandango. All the local stations were carrying it by the noon broadcasts, radio talk-shows picked it up. The office had gotten calls from Newsweek and Time and USA Today. Clearly, it was going to turn into a circus.
He opened the conference-room door and all noise ceased. He went to the chair at the head of the table and stood a moment, meeting the eyes of his people one by one. He came to Christina and gave her an almost imperceptible extra nod. Finally, he cleared his throat.
At his earlier request, Janey had placed a copy of the Sunday Chronicle in a folder at his place. Dooher picked up the folder, opened it, and withdrew the paper, holding it up so that the headline fairly screamed. He, by contrast, spoke with great control, quietly. 'I did not do any of this,' he said. 'I will fight these charges until the day I die.'
No one said a word.
He scanned the room again, the sea of faces staring back at him, rapt. The current of tension was palpable, underscored by the barely audible sibilance of heavy breathing. Janey and three of the other women in the room were crying.
He continued: 'I wanted to meet with all of you, face to face, and tell you this. I want to sit here and answer any questions you might have. We're a room full of lawyers and you'll notice I don't have my lawyer present in here – he's sitting in my office, waiting until we're finished. I don't have anything to hide.' He glanced a last time at the newspaper, then put it back in its folder. Sitting down, he clasped his hands in front of him on the table. 'I am at your complete disposal.'
Glitsky and Thieu, armed with their warrant, stood in the empty reception area for a couple of seconds, wondering where everyone was. That odd, red evening light seemed to shimmer in the moted air and the place appeared absolutely deserted.
'This is spooky,' Thieu whispered.
'Dooher's office,' Glitsky said. 'I know where it is.'
They walked the long hallway through the center of the building, offices to either side, all of them empty, the light blessedly shaded in the interstices between them.
The area opened up again in front of Dooher's office – Janey's area, the view again, the light. Glitsky knocked on Dooher's door and sensed the movement inside. He put his hand on his gun and the door opened on Wes Farrell.
'We've been expecting you,' he said.
Still with his staff in the conference room, Dooher looked over and stood when the door opened. 'Excuse me,' he said to the silent table in front of him. He came outside to meet them, closing the door behind him. 'You're making a terrible mistake, Sergeant,' he said.
'You have the right to remain silent,' Glitsky began, while Thieu – more or less gently – took Dooher's arm and placed a handcuff over one wrist, turning it behind his back.
'Is that necessary?'
The door opened again and Thieu put out a hand against it. 'Just a minute, please. Police.'
But the door got pushed open anyway. Roughly.
'Sergeant Glitsky!'
Glitsky stopped his recital. He remembered her now, no problem. Stunning in the sepia light, her color high, eyes flashing. 'Ms Carerra,' he said. 'I'm sorry, can I ask you to please wait back inside?'
'No, you can't! This is outrageous!'
Farrell stepped forward. 'Christina…'
She jerked her arm away, faced off on them all. 'What's the matter with you, Sergeant? Can't you see what you're putting this good man through? Look at him. He didn't do anything. Goddamnit, look at him, would you?'
But Glitsky was looking at her.
'Christina, it's all right,' Dooher said.
Thieu had snicked the other cuff on Dooher and now he was advancing on Christina. 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to get back in there, ma' am. Right now.'
Glitsky said, 'Paul, it's okay.'
'It's not okay!' Christina's hands were clenched. Tears of anger were beginning to gleam in her eyes.'This isn't right. Why are you doing this?'
'Christina,' Dooher repeated. Softly, almost like a lover. 'They can't prove it. It's all right.' Then, to Wes, gently, 'Take care of her, would you?'
Christina looked pleadingly at Dooher. He met her eyes. She started to reach a hand up, but Wes Farrell took it. Some profound energy, unmistakable, flowed between them.
Glitsky saw it, and suddenly knew that the very slim chance that he might in fact be wrong had disappeared. They had inadvertently given him the last piece, the elusive key to the whole puzzle – a motive.