Wes ascended onto the flat deck they’d built, sixty square feet surrounded by little peaks of roof, protecting them from sight and, on most nights, from wind. He offered an apologetic smile and said, “I just think the kitchen chair looks better the normal way, on its legs. But the paper towels were a good idea. Who knew? Just unroll ’em first, and it saves a ton of time.”
She had her head canted to one side. Her voice, when it came, was barely audible. “I told you about the connection to Rick Jessup because I thought it might help bring his murderer to justice, but only under the express condition that his victim would remain unnamed, as always. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“No buts. This is not a new deal. I believe we’ve had more than a couple of discussions about it over the years. Who do I hear from twenty minutes before it’s time to go home but the woman herself, completely distraught—overwrought, Wes, betrayed by us, the very people who promised to protect her!”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. How else could they have found her so fast? The police were at her apartment today. Today! Hours after I told you.”
“And I’m supposed to feel bad?”
“How can you not? This is completely wrong. The last few days have been traumatic enough for the poor girl, and now she finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation that she doesn’t want any part of. She might even be a suspect, because getting raped is a motive to kill someone, isn’t it? Look where she is now. And all because I thought you could keep it to yourself.”
“Which I did. Listen, ask yourself this: how could they get the woman’s name from me? This just in, I never had it. As you know. They went looking for Jessup and found a connection. It was good police work, that’s all. So what are they supposed to do? Ignore it, ignore her? I don’t think so. Maybe she did kill him. We don’t know yet.”
“How can you say that? She’s the victim, Wes.”
“Victims have been known to fight back, even to kill.”
“Spoken like a true prosecutor.”
“Hey! Check it out. That’s what I do. Prosecute people.”
“People I’m trying to protect.”
“Not usually, Sam. Usually, I prosecute bad people, people who’ve done terrible things. Did your victim tell you they’re charging her?”
“No.”
“Well, then. Did she admit that Jessup raped her? I mean, to the cops?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? All of this angst and accusation, and you don’t know?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It sure seems like the point to me.”
“No. The point is that what happened to her is confidential unless she chooses to disclose it. She came to us and trusted us, and because I told my boyfriend her rapist’s name, trying to do the right thing, the cops are at her home. That is plain wrong. You never should have given them Jessup’s name.”
“Let me repeat, neither of us has a clue how the inspectors got to this woman whose name, P.S., I still don’t know. Plus, that’s exactly what I had to do if he raped somebody on Saturday night—”
“He did.”
“All right, he did. Seeing as he did, somebody might have killed him because of it. If your victim can help us find that person, then we need her, and we’ve got every right to talk to her to find out. How is that not obvious?”
She sulked down into herself. “You never would have argued this before you were the DA.”
“You know what, Sam? I don’t care. I’m arguing it now because it’s right. Your victim wants to keep the shame of the rape—if there is any—to herself? That’s her call. But when she comes to you, it’s on the record. If you want my real opinion, you and your center should be mandated to report. You hear about a rape—especially a date rape, like this one—you get the guy’s name, if the victim knows it, and call the cops. That’s the only thing that will put these scumbags in prison: victims who will testify against them. If that’s too big a burden, well, excuse me all to hell.”
Sam stared at him for a good twenty seconds, then shook her head. “I don’t know you anymore.” Standing up, she walked by him, got to the ladder, and stopped. “I really don’t.” She started down and pulled the door shut behind her.
HER HUSBAND’S SOBRIETY had lasted long enough that the bitter, difficult memories of Moses’s drunken past had blurred for Susan Weiss. Her brain had edited out most of the brawling fights, the scuffles, the language, the blood. She considered it a miracle, really, that little of that drunken misbehavior had come home to roost. Their apartment had always been his sanctuary, his castle, sometimes his hospital; out in the world was where he’d gotten himself into trouble.
Though it worried her, part of Susan didn’t blame Moses—or at least she was reluctant to call him on it—for the occasional drink she knew he’d started to take over the past couple of months. Certainly the events of the last few days could have driven anyone to whatever crutch fueled an escape from harsh reality.
Agonizing over the pain and heartbreak her daughter was enduring after the rape—to say nothing of her own—Susan had drunk a full bottle of chardonnay herself on Sunday night. She had been unable to stop pouring while waiting for Moses to get home from wherever he’d gone, so she empathized somewhat with her husband’s struggle.
But now, at one A.M. on Wednesday, he was waking her up with a phone call that was all but unintelligible. She eventually realized that he needed her to come down to the Shamrock and pick him up. He had walked to his shift at the bar earlier in the day, as usual, so he had no car, and taxicabs out in the Avenues were so rare as to be practically nonexistent. “And the keys? The extras.”
“What about them?”
He managed to get out a few words, slurring heavily. “Can’t find mine, ones I brought down, an’ need to lock up.”
Ten minutes later, she pulled up to the open curb directly in front of the bar; a dim light shone in the back. She honked twice and waited. She honked again. No sign of movement inside.
She let out a breath, got out of the car, slammed the door behind her, crossed the sidewalk, and pushed at the Shamrock’s door, which was locked. “Goddammit.” She slapped a flat palm on the door’s glass front. “Moses!”
No reply.
She remembered that she had grabbed the extra keys at home, so she dug in her purse, unlocked the door, and swung it open. Hearing an unexpected sound, she looked down and saw the original keys on the floor.
She called his name, again got no response.
Okay, she was thinking. This is serious. Then she heard a snort, a snore, some guttural noise.
She moved ahead. In the sixty watts of light emanating from the lone Tiffany lamp, she could make out a figure passed out on one of the couches in the living room–style seating area at the back of the room. As she got closer, she saw one arm hanging down, resting on the floor next to a nearly empty bottle.
She whispered to herself, “Jesus.”
“YOU REALLY CAN’T wake him up?” Frannie asked.
“No. I’ve tried some cold bar towels on his face. He’s out. I don’t know how much he’s had, but he’s almost completely unresponsive. I wouldn’t have called you and Diz if I had any idea what to do.”
“I know. Don’t worry about that. You’re sure there’s no way you can move him?”
“Frannie, he weighs two hundred pounds, and right now all of it is deadweight. I’m a hundred and twenty. I could barely straighten him up.”
“But you’ve got him straightened up now?”
“In case he threw up. I didn’t want him choking on it.”
Next to her, Hardy whispered, “Is he alive? Is he breathing?”
Frannie nodded, a finger over her mouth, listening.
“I’m thinking I should maybe call an ambulance.”
“That might be a good idea.”
“What’s a good idea?” Hardy asked.
; “An ambulance,” Frannie said.
That word got Hardy moving. He slapped at his cheeks a couple of times, threw the covers off, and sat up on the side of the bed. “Can you let me talk to her?”
Frannie handed the phone to him.
“Susan,” he asked, “does he have a pulse? Is he breathing?”
“Yes. But, Diz, I can’t wake him up. I’m afraid he might die. People die from too much alcohol, don’t they?”
“Sometimes. You’d better call an ambulance. We’ll be right down there.”
“I don’t want to ask—”
“Shut up. We’re family. You call us when you’re in trouble. It’s one of the rules. Listen to me. You need to hang up right now and dial 911. If the ambulance gets there before we do, call my cell and tell us where they’re taking him, and we’ll meet you there. Clear?”
“All right.”
“Okay. Do it now!”
DRIVING THROUGH THE night, under the overhung branches in the western end of Golden Gate Park, Hardy was too worried and too angry to trust himself to speak. Next to him as he sped on the deserted streets, Frannie found her own voice. “Did you know he’d started again?”
“No.”
“Susan said it’s been a couple of months now.”
“Nice of her to let us know.”
“Diz, this isn’t her fault in any way. This is my brother.”
“If she knew, she might have mentioned it. That’s all I’m saying. There’s a tiny little bit riding on him staying sober. You realize that, don’t you?”
“So it’s about that?”
He shot a glance across at her. “At least a goddamn portion of it is about that.”
“You don’t have to yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling. Yelling entails volume, not only the use of mild profanity. If I’m yelling at anything, it’s not you. It’s the situation.” He reached over, touched her thigh. “For the record, I’m grateful you’re here with me. You’ll keep me from killing him, if he hasn’t taken care of that on his own.”
“Don’t say that. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to kill himself. Maybe he just didn’t know his tolerance after all this time, or more likely, he forgot it.”
“Right. Maybe.”
“And I couldn’t not come with you. He’s my brother, after all. You’re the one who doesn’t need to be here, doesn’t have to be doing this.” She put her hand over his. “You might slow down a little. If we get in an accident, we won’t help anybody.”
“We’re not going to get in an accident.” But he lifted his accelerator foot slightly. “Just to be clear, I’m not doing this out of Christian charity. I’m supremely pissed off. I’ve got an incredibly busy day tomorrow that I’ll have to walk through like a zombie, if I don’t fall asleep in the courtroom. The only reason I’m in this car is so I can be there when your moron of a brother wakes up, if he does, and make sure he doesn’t get to chatting with his doctors or nurses or the fucking janitorial staff and let slip a little detail or two about something that might have been nagging at him for, oh, six years or so.”
“He’s not going to do that.”
Hardy chuffed out an empty laugh. “He sure could, Fran. And the very real fear that he would was why he stopped drinking, you may recall. The topic kept popping up when he’d had a few. He couldn’t stop himself, the philosopher in him, it was all so goddamned interesting. So he stopped drinking instead. Thank God.” Hardy slammed a hand down on the steering wheel. “What an idiot. What’s he thinking? That he can handle it? He can’t. He’s already proved it a hundred times, a thousand times.”
“Diz. It’s a disease. He can’t help it.”
“I’m not sure I buy that. But he sure as hell can stop himself from taking that first drink, can’t he? We’ve seen him pull that one off. So he can do it, and he’s got to keep doing it.”
“Something must have happened.”
“Damn straight something happened. He fell off the goddamn wagon is what happened.”
Arriving at Lincoln Way, Hardy turned left sixteen blocks out from the Shamrock. Though it was dry, the black street glistened under the overheads and stretched out empty before them. He picked up speed again.
“No,” Frannie said, “I know that. What I mean is that there must have been a specific reason. Otherwise, why now?”
Hardy looked over at her. “You really want to know what I think? I think something woke up the vigilante in him. It was close enough to what we all did, and equally justified. And suddenly, there wasn’t any point trying to deny what he felt he needed to do. He just did it. And he found he needed a drink.”
“You’re talking about after that thing with Brittany, the guy who hurt her.”
“He could have gotten arrested for what he did, you realize that? It’s pure good fortune that the kid didn’t call the cops. Now that I think about it, I bet you money Mose had a few the night he told us about it. Hey, he got the bad guy. Something to brag about, right? Have a drink, tell a secret, justify what you did, then have another drink and forget you’re confessing to one and all that you actually did it. And here’s my favorite part.” No ambulance had arrived yet. Hardy parked right behind Susan’s car. “Then go have another drink or five so you can live with what you’ve done.”
16
AT FIVE O’CLOCK, after logging about forty-five minutes of troubled sleep, Hardy gave up and went downstairs to get himself started on caffeine for the day. For his last birthday, Frannie had given him a Jura espresso maker, the kind Lisbeth Salander used in the Stieg Larsson books. Hardy thought it was as good as advertised, and this morning he would need every drop it could give him.
The machine took a minute or so to warm up, and he used the time to feed his tropical fish. His twenty-eight little babies were all swimming around happily, picking up few if any of the negative vibrations that Hardy was certain he was exuding from every pore.
Placing his coffee mug under the dual spigots, he pressed the start button three times (the strongest blend); while the coffee dripped, he walked up through the house and out the front door into the still-dark morning, where the air seemed to promise another unusually pleasant day. The well of his discontent, near the brim to begin with, overflowed as he discovered that today’s Chronicle had not yet arrived and probably would not appear for close to an hour.
Fucking Moses, he thought.
Back in the kitchen, he boosted himself onto the counter and sipped his coffee, his mind a blank. Gradually, the caffeine gained a foothold, the pounding in his head abated, his breathing slowed. He closed his eyes more to relax for a moment than to surrender to any urge to sleep. When he opened them again, his gaze fell upon the pearl-black cast-iron pan that hung from its marlin hook over the stove. It was one of the very few artifacts he’d kept from his parents’ home. After every use, he cleaned it with salt and a soft rag—no soap, no water—and because it was perfectly seasoned, perfect in its function, nothing he cooked in it ever stuck.
He opened the refrigerator, which, since the kids had left home, had degenerated into a culinary wasteland, with little in the way of real edibles. Frannie had taken to shopping after work nearly every day for dinner, buying small portions for the two of them, thereby avoiding most leftovers and waste. Looking now, Hardy saw condiments galore—seven different types of mustard, an equal number of various hot sauces—two bottles of white wine, and about a dozen assorted beers, but the actual food was limited to four eggs, a small block of cheddar cheese, and the remains of Sunday’s dinner: corned beef, potatoes, carrots and cabbage in a clear plastic container.
It would have to do.
Taking down the black pan, which weighed nearly five pounds, he put it on the front burner, turned the heat up high, and threw in a quarter stick of butter. He tipped back his mug and finished the coffee. Suddenly ravenous and moving quickly, he dumped all the leftovers onto the cutting board and chopped and mixed until there was one relatively homogenous pile, which he hefted into the pan wi
th the foaming butter.
While the next cup of coffee dripped out of the spigots into the mug, he turned down the heat a little and moved the hash to one side, then broke two eggs into the cleared area. Finally, after grating some cheddar over the whole thing, he covered it with a lid from another pan that fit perfectly, as if by magic.
While it all cooked, he sipped coffee and brought sriracha and Tabasco over to the table in the dining room, where he was going to sit down to a real breakfast and savor every bite and, until he could get some distance and perspective, try not to think about what he’d learned from Susan last night while they were waiting to find out whether Moses was going to die: that Rick Jessup had raped Brittany McGuire on Saturday night.
“SO LET ME get this straight,” Glitsky said. “You found a woman who dumped Jessup a few months ago, after which he beat her up, and then this woman’s father went and assaulted him. We got a soap opera going on here.”
“A little bit,” Brady said.
They were in Glitsky’s office, on the folding chairs in front of his desk, first thing in the morning.
“Why do you think Jessup raped this woman and not someone else?”
Sher sat hunched forward. “We don’t know if we think it, Abe. We went and talked to her and—”
“How did you find her?”
“Her father all but left his card at Goodman’s office,” Sher said. “The secretary there had him in the calendar.”
“Okay, nice work. Go on.”
Brady took it up. “So we went and talked to her yesterday, and she seemed . . . distraught.”
“She was being interviewed by Homicide cops, and an ex-boyfriend had been murdered. You think that might have contributed to her distress?”
The two inspectors shared a glance, after which Sher nodded. “Of course.”
The Ophelia Cut Page 15
