On that same day – Monday, February 1, at a little after five o'clock in the afternoon, Dismas Hardy placed a call to another San Francisco attorney.
He put his feet up on his desk and listened to the phone ring, was transferred to voice mail, heard the beep. 'Mr Logan,' he began, 'this is Dismas Hardy again. If you're keeping track, this is my fourth call. I'd really appreciate a callback. Same number I left the other three times.'
Hanging up, Hardy stewed for thirty seconds, then stood and walked out of his office on the top floor of the Freeman Building on Sutter Street in downtown San Francisco. His was the only office on the top floor, and he had decided to take the stairs to the lobby a floor below him. Hardy leased his office directly from David Freeman and was the only attorney in the building who did not work for Freeman's firm.
His landlord was pushing seventy. He was short, almost fat, always slovenly dressed; his greatest female admirers, and he had several, would concede that he had a prodigious, nearly mythic ugliness – unkempt hair, eyebrows of white steel wool, a turnip nose scarred by rosacea and alcohol, hanging jowls, liverish lips. But he had a great if unorthodox personal charm. And no one disputed that Freeman was a brilliant lawyer who lived for his work. With Mel Belli's passing, he had assumed the mantle of most famous attorney in the city.
The receptionist's station commanded the center of the lobby. At the phones, Phyllis, an attractive elderly witch with whom Hardy had an off-again, off-yet-again relationship, was handling what appeared to be several calls at once.
Hardy sauntered casually past her station. He even nodded genially as he took a few extra steps toward the long hallway that housed the tiny airless cubicles of the firm's associates. It was all an elaborate ruse – his intention was to go and interrupt Freeman without having to explain himself to the Keeper of his Gate. And for an instant, even as he hung a hard left and strode toward the great man's door, he thought he would make it unmolested.
But it was not to be.
'He's busy, Mr Hardy. He's not to be disturbed.'
Hardy stopped. Phyllis was facing the other way. How could she have seen him? Further proof that she had a personal connection to the devil. She could spin her head around in a full circle like the girl in The Exorcist.
Now she fixed him with Favored Visage No. 1, Stern and Unyielding. He gave her back his winsome, disarming Irish smile, pulled a De Niro. 'Are you talking to me?'
Phones forgotten, her body came around, up and out of her chair in one fluid motion. She was moving not toward Hardy but directly to Freeman's door, to all appearances ready to throw her body in front of it if need be to defend its inviolability. 'He's trying to get a motion written. He was very specific.'
Hardy kept his grin on, inclined his head in the direction of the hallway where the associates toiled. 'That's just to keep the kids from bothering him. He'll welcome some adult companionship. Watch.' Striking like a snake, Hardy reached around the receptionist and rapped quickly twice on the door.
'It's open!' Freeman bellowed from within. 'Come on in.'
Hardy stepped back, spread his palms in a gesture that said, 'See? What did I tell you?'
'If he'd have said "Go away", I'd be gone. Promise.' He turned the knob and pushed at the door. 'Excuse me,' he said politely, moving around her, closing the door behind him.
Pen in hand and a mangled cigar between his lips, Freeman squinted up over his yellow legal pad. A thick bluish haze hung in the air. Hardy recognized the wine bottle by the telephone as a Silver Oak Cabernet – at least fifty bucks retail if you could find it. The old man straightened up in his chair, put the pen down and drained the last inch from his wine glass, making appreciative smacking noises. 'God drinks this stuff,' he said.
'How does He afford it?' Hardy crossed the room to the window and threw it open. He enjoyed the occasional cigar himself, but the smoke in the room was nearly suffocating. 'And while we're asking "how" questions, how do you breathe in here?'
Freeman waved that off. 'If you interrupted me on billable time to criticize my lifestyle, you can use the same door you came in at. Otherwise, get yourself a glass – you've got to have a sip of this.'
Hanging by the window – the afternoon breeze had picked up, whipping down Sutler, pulling the smoke out – Hardy leaned against the sill. 'As soon as enough of this clears to be able to taste it. Meanwhile, I've got a great idea for a good time.'
'What's that?'
'We can fire Phyllis right now. It'll be fun. You realize that anybody wants to see you, they've got to mount a campaign.'
'That's what I pay her for.' He was pouring another glass for himself. 'You got around her, I notice. Keeps you sharp.' A slurping sip, another sigh of appreciation. 'So? What else? You didn't come to talk about Phyllis.'
'No. I came to talk about Dash Logan.'
Freeman frowned deeply. 'What about him?'
'Using the normal channels – say, the telephone -I can't reach him. I thought you might have an idea.'
'Why do you want to?'
'One of my clients is getting sued by one of his clients. There are also some criminal charges. I thought I'd feel him out, see where he's coming from.'
Freeman leaned back in his chair, drew in a breath. 'You want my advice, forgo the conversation. He'll just lie to you. I'd file the response and prepare to fight dirty.'
Still at the window, Hardy crossed his arms. 'Not exactly a ringing character endorsement.'
'Read between the lines and it gets worse.' Freeman shook his head in disgust. 'The man's a disgrace, Diz. Personally and professionally. If the bar had any teeth, they'd have yanked his card years ago.'
'For what?'
'You name it. Malpractice, bribery, theft of client funds, extortion, perjury, drug and alcohol abuse. I can't believe you don't know him.'
Hardy shrugged. 'I've heard stories, sure. But people tell stories about you, too.'
'Those are legends,' Freeman corrected him. 'Logan. Well, you know all the lawyer jokes?'
'Most of 'em.'
'Well, they made them up about Dash Logan, especially the one about the difference between a catfish and a lawyer. One's a bottom-dwelling scum sucker and the other one's a fish. Here's a hint – Logan's not the fish.'
'You don't like him.'
Freeman chuckled, but he wasn't amused. 'I really believe there's good in a lot of people, Diz, almost everybody. Almost.' He came forward in his chair again, swirled his wine glass and took a mouthful. 'Talking about him almost sours this wine, and that takes some doing.'
Hardy had taken a glass from the sideboard and held it out. 'Let a professional tell you how bad the sour is getting.'
Freeman picked up the bottle and poured. 'What do you smell?'
'Tobacco.' He held up a hand – he was kidding – then took a sip and his eyes lit up. 'Although I must admit there's a bit of wine in the aftertaste.' He crossed the room, where he settled himself on the couch. 'So if Logan calls back?'
'I'll tell you a story.' Freeman pushed his chair away from his desk, faced Hardy, and crossed one leg over the other. He drank some wine. 'Fifteen years ago I got teamed with Logan on a two-defendant murder case. This was in the days before talking movies, remember, when we had a real DA – Chris Locke – who would put people in jail from time to time. Also, this is one of the few times in my illustrious career when I thought my client – Aaron Washburn, I still remember – was mostly innocent. Maybe he was driving the car, but that's all. He was too young and too chicken to agree to be the wheel man for a hit. In any case, his main flaw was loyalty to the shooter – Logan's client, a real loser named Latrone Molyneux.
'So anyway, Locke declares we're going to have joint disposition of our two defendants – either they both plead or they both go to trial. But he needs fifteen years from my guy. Well, I decide I'm going to trial, one because my boy, Aaron, didn't do it – he wasn't the shooter and didn't know it was going to go down and even if he did, they couldn't prove it. And two, because that's who I am. I'm not taking my client's money and lots of it to plead 'em to half a lifetime in the joint.
'And it's not as though I've got to sink Logan's client, remember. My guy just says he was in the car the whole time and has no idea what happened.' Somewhere in this recitation, Freeman had gotten to his feet, reliving it again. He paced the office, door to window, a caged bear. 'All right. Now I'm working on my kid's defense, keeping my no-good colleague Mr Logan in the loop because, you know, that's what we do. But I notice he's not making too many of our joint motion hearings, he's got my witnesses spooked – I hear rumors that he's actually scoring dope off some of these people – the judge is getting pretty pissed off with delays and no-shows and really awful paperwork.
'But mostly old Dash is walking the walk, I'm giving him the benefit, you know, professional courtesy. We're taking this thing to trial and he's got to know what I know, right?
'Then, two weeks before we're scheduled for jury selection, guess what? No, don't. I'll tell you. Logan comes by here, says he's decided he's going to plead Latrone. He's got his fee. He doesn't have the time for a trial.
'So as you might imagine, things get a little hot between us. I remind him he can't plead if I'm going to trial, which I'm damn well going to do. So he threatens me – if I take it to trial, Latrone will rat out Aaron, say he was just standing around minding his own business when Aaron drove up and asked him to go for a ride. He – Latrone – didn't know there was going to be a shooting. It was Aaron's idea, Aaron was the shooter.
'Anyway, long story short, what could I do? They'd probably both get life. This way they both plead out -fifteen years. Now, you want to hear my favorite part?'
That wasn't it?'
'No. Listen to this. Early on, I decided it might be worth a try to get bail for these kids. It was a shaky case, first adult offense for both of them. They weren't leaving the jurisdiction anyway. But Dash Logan won't go there. Gives me a line of shit about it's too risky, we'll alienate the judge, it'd be better to save any judicial favors for the trial – the trial! Hah! So he persuades me -if I make the motion for my client, he has to for his, and that won't happen. The judge will deny both, so what's the point?'
'I give up,' Hardy said. 'What was the point?'
'The point!' Freeman was nearly screaming now. 'The point was he wanted to keep his boy Latrone in jail. You know why? 'Cause he was fucking Latrone's seventeen-year-old girlfriend, that's why.'
'Well, see,' Hardy said. 'At least he had a good reason.'
But he was shaking his head and clucked in disapproval. 'That's a pretty appalling story.'
Freeman was breathing heavily. He went back to his desk and put himself on the outside of another inch of his wine, then poured some more. 'He's an appalling-'
On the old man's desk, the telephone buzzed. He reached over and picked it up, listened, held it out to Hardy. 'It's Phyllis, she says there's a woman out in the lobby asking to see you.'
'She's lying. I don't have any appointments. She's just trying to figure out a way to get me out of here, return you to your blessed solitude. I wonder, does this guy Dash Logan need a receptionist?'
Freeman held up a finger, listened some more. 'Dorothy Elliot? Jeff's wife?'
Leaving his superb wine in its glass on the coffee table, untouched except for that first sip, Hardy rocketed to his feet on his way to the door. Behind him, he heard Freeman telling Phyllis, 'He's on his way out right now.'
Dorothy greeted him with a nod, an apologetic smile, a few quiet words. It was immediately obvious that something was terribly wrong – her trademark cheerful spark was gone. It was equally clear that she didn't want to discuss any part of whatever it was in the lobby. The staircase was not wide and he let her lead the way.
Following her, he was struck by the stiffness of her carriage, her wide shoulders back, her arms hanging straight down at her sides. One step at a time, she was hiking a steep grade with a heavy pack at altitude. It occurred to him that her husband Jeff, one of his friends and a Chronicle columnist who suffered from multiple sclerosis, might suddenly have died.
At the landing, she stopped and he came up behind her, put an arm on her shoulder. She leaned into him for a second. Then he opened the door and they were in his office.
As he was closing the door, she found her voice. 'I'm so sorry to come barging in on you like this, Dismas. I didn't know…' She lifted her hands, dropped them. Her lip quivered – sorrow? Or rage? She set her jaw, began again. 'I don't know…'
'It's all right.' He gave her a chance to continue, and when it didn't seem she could, he asked softly, 'What don't you know? Is it Jeff?'
She shook her head. 'No, Jeff's all right. Jeff's fine.' She blew out heavily.
Hardy pulled a chair around and Dorothy stared at it for a minute as though she'd never seen one before. Finally, with an air of gratitude, she sat. 'Thank you.' She shook her head wearily. 'I don't seem to know what to do. I started to go by Jeff's office but then I didn't want to interrupt him – he's on deadline. So I just found myself walking downtown and thought of you, that you worked here. Actually, I thought of you before.'
'Before? When before?'
'When I was at the homicide detail.'
Hardy found his desk and pushed himself back up onto it. With a bedside manner smile, he spoke quietly. 'I don't think I've heard the homicide part yet, Dorothy. Maybe we want to start there. Why were you at the Hall?'
'My brother. Did you hear about Elaine Wager being killed?'
Hardy said he did. The news had depressed him. Not that he'd been that close to Elaine, but he had known her, had considered her one of the good guys.
'They have arrested my brother for it.'
Hardy shook his head. 'That can't be right, Dorothy. I heard they pulled in some bum.'
Dorothy's lips were pressed tightly together. She nodded. 'He's a heroin junkie. My brother Cole. Cole Burgess.'
Not possible, Hardy thought. Flatly not possible. Dorothy Elliot, sitting in front of him, was the picture of corn-fed wholesomeness. He'd known her for over a decade, since she'd first begun dating Jeff. Now they had three daughters and she still looked like a farm girl – those big shoulders over a trim and strong body, clear eyes the shade of bluebonnets, a wash of freckles cascading over her nose onto her cheeks.
Dorothy Elliot was pretty, smiling all the time, well-adjusted and happy. There was no way, Hardy thought, that this woman's brother could be the lowlife animal that had shot Elaine Wager in the back of the head for some jewelry and the contents of her purse.
He sought some fitting response, said he was sorry, finally asked, 'Did your brother know her? Were they going out or something? Working together?'
'No. Nothing like that. But the police are saying he was incoherent when they brought him in, they couldn't even confirm who he was until this morning. And when he finally could, he called my mother, which was of course no help.'
'And where is your mother?'
'Jody.' Dorothy's expression was distilled disapproval. 'She lives here in town now. Out in the Haight. With Cole.'
'With Cole? So he wasn't homeless after all.'
'Well, that depends on your definition. He wasn't with Mom too often, but she was there if he needed to crash. He had a rent-free room. She moved out here from home – Ohio – to be near him.' Another look of disgust. 'To help him.'
'And she wasn't much of a help?'
A snort. 'But he called her from the Hall anyway. And then after she predictably flipped out and couldn't get anything done, she called me.'
'What did she try to do?'
A calm had gradually settled over her. Hands had come to rest in her lap, shapely legs were crossed at the ankles. There was no sign of her usual cheerfulness, but her confidence was returning. The topic was awful, but she had facts to convey. 'He's in heroin withdrawal, Diz. He needs to be medicated.' She broke off and decided she'd said enough about that. 'Anyway, Mom lost her credibility with the police in about ten seconds, accusing everybody of trying to kill her son, the poor lost little boy.' She paused again, sighed heavily. 'But he does need to get into a detox situation soon.'
Hardy matched her tone – matter-of-fact. 'They have programs in place for that. As soon as they book him-'
But she was shaking her head. 'The police are saying Cole is only drunk and they're not through with him.'
'So you're saying he wasn't drunk?'
'Probably that too.' She impatiently brushed some flaxen hair from her forehead. 'But if he was desperate enough to mug somebody, he was after cash for heroin. That means probably he was already into withdrawal, drinking to kill the pain with alcohol until he could score.'
A silence settled. Finally, Hardy laced his fingers in his lap. He had heard enough to know he really didn't want to be involved in this. He liked Jeff, liked Dorothy, saw them socially three or four times a year. And now Dorothy wanted to hire him to defend the man who'd killed one of his colleagues. And though he'd been successful in his three previous murder trials, though he'd gotten himself a reputation, this time Hardy wasn't interested.
He'd known, liked and admired Elaine Wager. He had no desire to help her killer. There were other lawyers who could live with defending Dorothy's brother a lot more easily than he could. And they were welcome to do it. But the longer they talked, the more he would give her the impression of tacit acceptance. In spite of that, he couldn't resist the next question. 'So what do you want me to do, Dorothy?'
'He needs to get into detox and I don't know the channels. I need somebody they'll listen to, who knows how to talk down there.' Her eyes were telling him that she didn't like it any more than he did. But it was family duty. Her heartland values wouldn't let her shirk it.
Hardy told himself he wasn't agreeing to defend Elaine's killer. He'd see what he could do to get a suspect into detox. He was helping a friend, that was all, another heartland value that he couldn't shirk. It wasn't going to go beyond that.
Hardy figured he could get the fastest results by going directly to the head of homicide, who happened to be his best friend. On the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice, he exited the world's slowest elevator and was looking at Sarah Evans, a homicide inspector who was married to one of David Freeman's associates. He and Frannie would occasionally socialize with Sarah and Graham. He considered her a friend, and usually she greeted him warmly. But today her look was guarded.
'If you're here to see the lieutenant, maybe you want to come back another day.'
'Less than his usual bubbly self, is he?'
She just shook her head, said, 'Good luck. I warned you,' and pushed by him into the elevator.
So he was wondering as he walked the long hallway down to the homicide detail. This was a spacious, open area with grimy windows all along the back wall. The twelve inspectors in the unit had their desks here, most of them face to face with those of their partners. The usual bureaucratic detritus cluttered up the workspace – green and gray metal files, a water cooler, a coffee machine that from the look of it might have been Joe DiMaggio's original Mr Coffee. There was also the working stoplight, which added a certain tone.
To Hardy's right as he entered the detail were three doors. The two on either end led to interrogation rooms; the one in the middle to the audio-visual controls room. To his left, the lieutenant's office was a hundred square foot rectangle that some architectural wizard had carved out as an obvious afterthought. Glitsky's door stopped him dead.
For many years, there had been no door to Glitsky's office. Finally, three years back, after months of trying to cajole the bureaucracy into buying a door, Glitsky had had enough. He came in himself on a weekend and hung one he'd bought with his own money.
Thereby admitting that he cared about it.
Big mistake.
Immediately Glitsky's prize door became an untapped bonanza for any psychologist who might want to study the effects of stress on otherwise normal people whose job it became to investigate murders. After the first impressive flurry of graffiti and property damage in the weekend after he'd hung it, Glitsky had made it a point of honor to refrain from comment or reaction no matter what his people did to it. And they did plenty.
Eventually the door had become a living testament to something profound and not particularly flattering about San Francisco's homicide detail. A large poster of Bozo the Clown with the international 'NO' symbol commanded the center of it, but that was among the first, and the mildest, of desecrations. By the last time Hardy had come up here a few weeks before, there hadn't been a pristine inch left. Burn marks, spitballs, chewed gum, three bullet holes, assorted bumper stickers, picture ads for prostitutes, photos of murder suspects from ancient cases.
The homicide inspectors thought it was a funny, running gag. Glitsky didn't see it that way, but he wasn't going to whine about it. There were other approaches.
One night he had come down to the Hall on a late call and happened to arrive as one of his inspectors, Carl Griffin – now deceased – was adding some graphic flourishes to a wanted poster someone else had tacked to the door. Griffin had been engaged in his artwork and hadn't heard Glitsky come up behind him, didn't hear a thing even as Glitsky whacked him on the head with his sap, knocking him senseless for several minutes.
Glitsky thought that was funny.
Even funnier because Griffin could never say anything about it without appearing to be an idiot. But somehow the word had gotten out. And the stakes had been raised.
Now Hardy stared. The door was flat white. He could still smell the paint. And it was closed – a rarity during the working day. Struck by the stunning blankness, Hardy whistled softly and looked out over the open room. At least casually acquainted with most of the homicide inspectors, he recognized Marcel Lanier, who was seated at his desk, a pencil poised over some paper.
The inspector was looking back at him. He shook his head and spoke with a quiet authority. 'I wouldn't.'
'Somebody with him?'
'No.'
'When did this happen?' The door.
A shrug. 'He came in after lunch with a bucket and a roller. Took him ten minutes.'
'Is he all right?'
A shrug. It wasn't for a sergeant to say.
Hardy thought about it. Two warnings from two solid professionals. The smart move would be perhaps to skip it for now, pick a better time.
But he'd just driven down from his office, paid to park, come all the way up for this personal visit with his best friend. It was the end of the day, anyway. Whatever it was, Abe would deal with it. Maybe Hardy could even help. Besides, he was tired of well-meaning gatekeepers trying to keep him from people he needed to see. First Phyllis with David Freeman. Now Sarah Evans and Marcel Lanier with Glitsky.
'I think I'll just see how he's doing,' he said. 'No guts, no glory.'
He knocked on the post next to the shocking white door and heard the familiar growl of a response. 'It's open.' Inside, Hardy's first reaction was to reach for the light switch, but Glitsky spoke again. 'Leave it.' The room wasn't exactly dark, but with the overheads off and the shades drawn on both windows, it wasn't exactly light either. 'You want to get the door.'
Hardy did as instructed. 'I couldn't read a damn thing in this light. I don't know how you do it. It's got to be tough on the eyes.'
'What do you want, Diz?'
Hardy found the wooden chair opposite the desk and lowered himself into it. 'Nice door. I love the color.'
No answer.
'What's going on, Abe?'
'Nothing.'
'You all right?' After a lengthy silence, Hardy said, 'You want to talk about it?'
'There's nothing to talk about.' Glitsky's chair scraped. He pushed himself back from his desk and leaned into the wall behind him on the chair's back legs.
Hardy's eyes were adjusting. He gave it another try. 'It's after five o'clock. You feel like a drink?'
'I don't drink.'
'Really? Since when?' Hardy had only been Glitsky's pal for twenty-five years. 'Sometimes it's not the worst idea in the world.'
Glitsky came forward in his chair, clasped his hands on the desk before him. When he spoke, his voice had softened. 'I'm trying to work something out, all right? Meanwhile, what can I help you with?'
There was nothing to be gained from pushing Glitsky's issue, whatever it was, so Hardy drew a breath and started. 'You've got a guy across the way there, Cole Burgess-'
'Yeah. Elaine Wager's killer.'
'Alleged killer, as we say in the defense biz.'
'Are you defending him?'
'No.'
'I hope not.'
'And I'm not here to spring her killer.'
'OK. Then what's this about?'
Hardy calmly and briefly stated the reason for his visit, his connection to Cole's sister Dorothy, the rest of it. 'His sister's worried that he slipped through the cracks when they brought him in and the paramedics never got around to diagnosing him as a heroin user. Anyway, the point is he's got to get into detox pronto or he's going to have a bad week.'
'Really? That would be sad.'
'Well, anyway-'
'He was drunk, Diz. We've had him up here since last night, mostly puking his guts. We're still talking to him.'
'Yeah, but now it's been what? Eighteen hours? He might still be hungover, but he's dry. All I'm saying is we know he's a junkie. He's got to get in a program.'
But Glitsky was shaking his head. 'No. I'm not buying into that scam.'
'What scam?'
'Couple of days on the county in a nice soft hospital bed. That's not happening. He was drunk, that's all.'
This was not the response Hardy expected. Abe was a due process freak – he played by the rules. Maybe, Hardy thought, it was the other thing, the dark room, whatever else was eating him. He started to debate. 'C'mon, Abe, how can you know?'
Glitsky slammed his palm flat on his desk, raised his voice. 'He was drunk! That's all he was, all right? We Mirandized him, he's talking, we'll book him when we're through. You hear me? Just leave this one.'
Stupefied, Hardy sat back in his chair. 'What's going on, Abe?' he asked quietly. 'I can't just leave it. You know that.'
'He killed Elaine.'
'OK. And we hope he burns in hell for it. But his sister told me he was probably already in withdrawal this morning. He's got to get some treatment.'
Glitsky remained unmoved. 'When they process him in, they'll give him the standard tests. If it's heroin, they'll know soon enough.'
'When will that happen?'
A shrug. 'When we're done here.'
Hardy took that in. 'You mind if I ask what he's doing here right now?'
'Answering questions.' Glitsky came forward in his chair. 'And FYI, he waived an attorney. Though maybe if he'd known it was you…'
'He doesn't know me.' Hardy sat back, shifted angrily in his chair. 'You're sweating him, aren't you?' He glanced toward the door, came back to the lieutenant. 'If you were sitting where I am, Abe, you'd tell me something was wrong here. That I wasn't doing my job right. This isn't how it's supposed to happen.'
Glitsky's face was a slab. He said nothing.
Hardy sighed. 'Have you videotaped a confession?'
A crisp nod. 'I believe we're in the process of doing that very thing.'
Hardy's blood was running now. He spoke carefully. 'So if I'm moving ahead and getting him processed into a program, you're telling me I've got to go around you, is that it? Maybe a judge? Get a writ?'
Glitsky stared over his desk. 'You do what you've got to do.'
'I intend to.' Hardy paused. 'I hope you know what you're doing.'
'It's possible.' The lieutenant looked through him. Talk to you.'
The visit was over.
Glitsky's conscience was a mangy dog gnawing at his insides.
After Hardy left, he remained sitting behind the desk in the dim confines of his office for over an hour, until the quality of the light shifted. Outside, it had come to dusk.
He rose, went to his door, opened it, and looked out into the homicide detail. The workday had ended, but the door to the interrogation room was still closed. He heard voices behind it. Ridley still had Elaine's killer in there.
He surveyed the detail. The old school clock over the water cooler said it was six fifteen. Wearing headphones, head down over his desk, Marcel Lanier moved his lips and jabbed corrections with his pencil as he ran his interview tape and proofed it against what the transcriber had typed. Paul Thieu, who already knew everything anyway, had his nose in a book with what looked like Cyrillic script on the jacket – he was working a Russian mafia-related homicide and Glitsky thought he probably wanted to conquer the language before the case got too far along.
Neither of the inspectors looked up.
Nobody had messed yet with his door, either.
He closed it behind him and pushed in the lock. Flicking on the light, he got in his chair and pulled out his junk drawer, lifted out Elaine's picture. He couldn't look at it for long. He realized that his daughter wouldn't exactly be proud of how he'd handled things so far. But he'd told himself, when he'd given Ridley his marching orders, that this was an instance of bad things happening to bad people. Karma.
Now he was trying to sell himself on the idea that it wasn't as though he'd been actively complicit in torture, but it wasn't easy. Though it truly had been Glitsky's intention to 'sweat' the young man in the interrogation room, this might be cruel but it wasn't unusual – homicide inspectors did it frequently. Under the stressful conditions in that closed-up space, a suspect occasionally would waive his rights to an attorney, or tell a story that he later wished he hadn't. Once in a while, as in Burgess's case, he would even confess under conditions that might not qualify as legally coercive.
But now he realized that it had gone on long enough. He'd better go and tell Ridley to end the interrogation, get the suspect in the system. Burgess had killed Elaine. There was no doubt about that, and it was important that no screw-up create a hole he could slither through.
He stood, grabbed his leather jacket, opened his door again. If Ridley had gotten the impression because of Abe's obvious hostility to Burgess that the suspect should be sweated beyond human endurance, Glitsky would have to try and correct that. There was an important difference, he knew, between wishing pain and suffering on someone and making him experience it.
It was called civilization.