Glitsky 02 - Guilt

by John Lescroart

  '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.

  24

  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 kno
w 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?

  25

  The woman was waiting at the door to the RapeCrisisCounsellingCenter 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.'