Glitsky 02 - Guilt

by John Lescroart

  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 FranciscoDrivingRange, (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 thoug
ht 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.