The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  “They gave us his name at Goodman’s office,” Sher added. “Jessup dated his daughter a few months ago.”

  The chief was nodding, paying attention. “That’s what Supervisor Goodman told me. I had a discussion with him a little while ago, and he seemed to think you didn’t have all the information you needed.”

  “You mean that McGuire hit Jessup?” Brady asked.

  The chief tilted her head to one side. “So you did hear about that?”

  Glitsky, blindsided anew with McGuire’s name, leaned back in his chair, rested both his hands on his stomach, and tried to be subtle as he clawed at it.

  While the discussion continued.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sher said. “We asked him directly, and he didn’t make any bones about it. Jessup evidently hurt his daughter Brittany—pushed her, knocked her down, something like that—and McGuire came downtown to, as he put it, get Jessup’s attention and get him to stop harassing her.”

  Lapeer considered that. “The supervisor’s version is that Jessup dumped her and she went wacko on him, filling her father’s head with lies.”

  The two inspectors shared a glance.

  The chief didn’t miss it. “Not true?”

  Brady took it. “We don’t think so. We think he manhandled her.”

  “Why do you think that? Why her word over his?”

  “First,” Sher answered, “we never got his.”

  “And second?”

  Sher threw a mildly desperate, questioning look at Glitsky, then at her partner. She drew a breath, checked Glitsky again, came up with something that would probably fly for the moment. “Second, the admin in Goodman’s office didn’t paint too flattering a picture of Jessup.”

  “In any event,” Lapeer said, “Goodman characterized McGuire’s visit as a brutal beating that kept Jessup out of work for at least a couple of days.”

  “Maybe,” Brady said. “But McGuire reminded us that Jessup didn’t file any report. You’d think if it had been that bad, he might have. Except then it might have come out that he’d pushed around McGuire’s daughter.”

  Lapeer nodded again. “So you’ve looked at McGuire, but you’re not considering him a suspect?”

  “We haven’t ruled him out,” Sher said, “but . . .”

  Lapeer finished her sentence. “But it’s been a couple of months since this alleged beating, and why would he just jump up on Sunday night and decide to go and finish things with Jessup? That’s what I told Goodman, and that’s what I’ll tell him again. It doesn’t make much sense, even if McGuire’s a hothead. He’s already made his point to Jessup. He doesn’t need to go kill him.” She put it out to the three of them. “The bottom line, I guess, is there’s no reason to focus on McGuire over anybody else. That’s what you’re all saying, right?”

  After a moment, Brady cleared his throat. Sher studied the tile on the office floor. Glitsky moved his right hand from his stomach to his desk and drummed his fingers a couple of times, quickly.

  The chief eyed them each in turn. “Or maybe not right,” she said. “What are you not saying?”

  Clearing his throat again, Brady came out with it. “Brittany went and had a drink at Perry’s with Jessup last Saturday night.”

  Lapeer’s back went straight. “The night before he was killed?”

  Sher nodded. “He couldn’t seem to get the message. He wanted to see her again or else he was going to file charges against her dad for the beating. She decided to go down and see if she could talk him out of it.”

  “You’re saying they had a date Saturday night?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Although I don’t know if I’d call it a date.”

  On the street below, someone’s car alarm went off. No one in Glitsky’s office said a word while it ticked off uncounted time.

  Finally, the noise stopped, and the chief found her voice. “That strikes me as a moderately important fact. Is there some reason you were stonewalling me on it?”

  Sher dared a response. “We said we hadn’t ruled anybody out, ma’am. Including McGuire.”

  “True, but this is exactly the kind of thing I could bring to Supervisor Goodman to get him off my back. Tell him that we are making progress and are maybe close to making an arrest.”

  “That may not be true, ma’am,” Brady said. “We’re very light on evidence. We need to work with some of our eyewitnesses and see what we can come up with before we go back to McGuire. If we’re led in that direction.”

  “Have you talked to the girl? Brittany?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does she say? How did the date go? Did Jessup mistreat her again? Did McGuire have a new reason to confront Jessup? Maybe kill him? Come on, people. It sounds like progress to me. It’ll sound that way to Mr. Goodman. We don’t have to name McGuire, but at least we can say we’ve got some real leads and we’re looking at some persons of interest, how’s that?”

  Sher once again looked at Glitsky. “Sir?”

  Pulling himself up to the desk, he clasped his hands. “Here’s the deal, Vi,” he said. “We got a tip through the DA’s office that a woman was raped on Saturday night. That woman may or may not have been Brittany McGuire. Brittany has not admitted it, and the information is privileged. We may never know. In any event, the victim of the rape identified her assailant as Rick Jessup.”

  “So Brittany went home and told her dad—” Lapeer began.

  “We don’t know it was Brittany,” Glitsky said.

  “We know she went out with Jessup that night?”

  Brady nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, then.” Lapeer wiped a hand across her forehead. “Jesus Christ, I’m not going to believe we’re talking about coincidence here. It’s too long a stretch, and without that, it sounds to me like you’ve got yourselves a prime suspect.”

  “Except,” Sher said, “we can’t use the rape, because we can’t prove it happened.”

  “So go show his picture to your eyewitnesses. Bring a witness in and pick him out of a lineup. Get this man off the street, and I mean yesterday. Do any of you have any doubt that he’s got at least motive and history?”

  No one answered, because the answer would have been “So what?” and that would have been insubordinate. They all knew—even the chief—that motive and history played little real role in convicting criminals. What mattered in a courtroom was direct evidence, preferably someone who saw a crime being committed. Here, though it would be nice to have a witness positively identify the suspect near the scene, even that would not be evidence of a crime, since none of the witnesses had seen whoever it was doing anything but walking down the street.

  They had nothing yet. On what evidence were they supposed to act?

  Nevertheless, the chief wasn’t here to split hairs. Her visage was stern and unyielding, and looking at her, Glitsky felt a thrum of foreboding—perhaps their subtle alliance had taken an irrecoverable body blow. It didn’t help that she was standing, looking down at him, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m serious as a heart attack here, all of you,” she concluded. “I don’t want excuses. Find a way and git ’er done.”

  “IN SPITE OF the chief’s good intentions,” Glitsky said, “I would caution you against arresting Mr. McGuire until we’ve got something in the way of physical evidence tying him to the crime. Even if your eyewitnesses are on board. Not that I don’t agree that, as far as motive goes, he looks pretty good for it. But motive is highly overrated.”

  “Maybe not so much,” Sher said.

  “No?” Glitsky came forward. “My personal theory is that every human being who has reached the age of reason has already provided a motive for at least half a dozen people to kill him. Or her. Even as we speak, I can probably think of ten or fifteen people who’d be happier if I were dead.”

  Brady grunted. “There’s an optimistic worldview.”

  Glitsky shrugged. “Just a comment on motive.”

  In spite of the banter, the mood after Lapeer’s departure stayed strai
ned. Sher had lowered herself into a chair. Brady sagged against one of the filing cabinets. He said, “I don’t know, Abe. I thought she was pretty clear that we ought to turn up the heat. If McGuire’s the guy, we need to find a way. Talk to his family. Check his alibi—”

  “He’s got an alibi?”

  Sher raised her head. “Volunteered it first thing. He went fishing. Alone.”

  “He knew somebody from Homicide would want to talk to him,” Brady added. “He told us that. He was ready. It was all thought out.”

  “I’m thinking if we get an ID,” Sher said, “and it’s him—the guy with the club, I mean—we bring him downtown.”

  “Still,” Glitsky said, “I’m not hearing any evidence.”

  Brady stepped in. “At that time we get a warrant.”

  “Good luck with that,” Glitsky said, although he knew Brady was right.

  “Why not?”

  “Where’s your probable cause? You think some judge is going to sign off without one tiny piece of actual evidence?” Glitsky didn’t know why he was continuing in this vein. He knew that an eyewitness ID, along with the motive evidence, would probably be enough for a judge to sign off on a warrant. Somehow, he realized he wanted to slow his inspectors down, buy a little more time. But for what? For whom? He couldn’t have said.

  “It could happen,” Brady persisted. “With enough details. If he’s got a blue car or our witnesses pick him out of a lineup.”

  “That’s still just the guy walking down the street.”

  “Okay, so in a pinch, we mention the rape,” Sher said.

  Glitsky shook his head. “The rape’s a nonstarter, guys. It might not be Brittany, and even if it was, we can’t prove it.”

  “Same old song,” Brady said.

  “I hear you,” Abe said, “but that’s what’s playing right now.”

  After a short silence, Sher looked up again. “So what do you suggest, Abe? Clearly, the chief wants him brought in.”

  And with good reason, Glitsky thought. His inspectors were calling him on his untenable objections. But let them believe he was playing devil’s advocate. Let Brady and Sher think he was being hypothetical, trying to keep them from procedural error. “Clearly,” he said. “But there’s no point bringing him in if we’re just going to have to let him go, now, is there? So my suggestion—not too groundbreaking, I know—is find something that’ll speak to a jury. Otherwise, you’re wasting everybody’s time, including your own. That’s just reality.”

  “So what about the chief?” Brady asked.

  “What about her?

  Sher said, “She’s not going to be happy unless we come up with something pretty soon.”

  “She’s making this bed,” Glitsky said. “She can lie in it.”

  ON A TIP from his wife, Glitsky caught up with Farrell in the reporters’ room on the third floor. It was nearly twenty minutes after five, all the trial departments had closed for the day, and Farrell was alone with a can of Dr Pepper in the small room with its big pitted table, surrounded by vending machines that dispensed nearly every form of snack and nonalcoholic drink imaginable. The wrappers from two PayDay bars bore silent testimony to Farrell’s last few minutes.

  Glitsky closed the door and slid in across the table from him. “Treya said she thought I’d find you here.”

  “It was supposed to be a secret. I was going for a minute without interruption.”

  “She knew you’d want to make an exception for me. She made me promise not to tell anybody else. What happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look in the mirror recently? Your eyes?”

  “Oh, them?” Farrell didn’t laugh, though his shoulders rose and fell once. “It’s the next new thing. I call it the Beagle. Anybody can do it. Just don’t sleep.” He scrunched his eyes closed, then opened them. “Sam’s moving out. I think this time she means it. You know what it’s like being basically a left-wing kind of guy and your girlfriend dumps you because you’re too conservative? She thinks I’ve sold out to the prosecution side.”

  “I don’t see how that breaks right or left. What? She wants bad guys to go free?”

  “Most of the time, yeah. I think so. They need to be understood, you know, more than punished.”

  “Again,” Glitsky said, “not mutually exclusive.”

  “Don’t tell Sam.” He closed his eyes again. “She thinks I betrayed her on this Jessup thing.”

  “How’d you do that? He was dead when you found out about him, wasn’t he?”

  “Deader than hell, but that’s not the point.”

  “What is?”

  “I should have somehow known that giving his name up would eventually expose her victim. But this just in, Abe, I don’t even know her victim. Shit. Excuse me.”

  Glitsky was famous for deploring the use of profanity, but this time he waved it off. “You want Sam to go? To leave?”

  “Not at all. I love the damn woman, pain in the ass though she is.”

  “I’ve got an argument for you, if you want to use it, maybe change her mind.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She’s mad at herself.”

  “She is? Why?”

  “Because she’s got it backward. She’s the one who betrayed the privilege, not you. And she knows it. That’s why she’s so angry. As soon as she said the name Jessup out loud to you, you had no choice. If his name let you bring us in to help find his killer, you had to use it. She’s the one who let it out. And once she did that, it was public.”

  Farrell lifted his soda can, took a sip. “That might be worth saying.”

  “For what it’s worth, it’s true.”

  “If that’s really what’s bothering her. Sometimes I think it’s just me.”

  “If it’s that, I can’t help you. But if it’s a fight over this one thing . . .”

  “It’s an idea, anyway, Abe. I appreciate it. It’s something.” Farrell picked up one of the wrappers expectantly, went to the second one. Same result. He forced a tired smile. “But if memory serves, you came down here to talk to me. And probably not about Sam.”

  “Probably not,” Glitsky said, “although it’s about Jessup.” He took a breath. “Chief Lapeer came by my office just now.”

  “In person?”

  “Very much so. She’d been talking to Liam Goodman, who had some information about somebody who’d beaten up Mr. Jessup a couple of months ago because Jessup had beaten up his daughter. You want to take a stab who that was?”

  “You mean the guy who beat up Jessup? You’re saying I know him?”

  Glitsky nodded, dropped the familiar name.

  Farrell’s jaw went slack. “You’re shitting me.” The DA leaned back, his gaze off in the distance. “Wow,” he whispered. “Fuck. Is he a suspect? In Jessup’s murder?”

  “Vi wants him to be, in the worst way.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s close at hand. It gets Goodman off her case before he goes running to the mayor. I’m coming to you because after the chief’s pep talk to my people, there will be pressure to move ahead, and I thought you’d want to be in the loop.”

  Farrell met Glitsky’s eyes. “McGuire? What do you think?”

  “It’s possible. Brittany saw Jessup not just two months ago but last week. They had a date the night before he got killed.”

  “The night before?”

  Glitsky nodded. “Saturday. Although when our guys went to see her yesterday, she wouldn’t admit anything about the rape, so we don’t know for sure that she was the victim, but if she was and she told McGuire about it . . .”

  “Holy shit,” Farrell said. “Yes, we do know she was the victim. We do now.”

  “What do you . . . ?”

  “My fight with Sam. The real, actual rape victim—the one who had named Jessup as her assailant—called Sam yesterday, in hysterics that the cops had just come to visit, asking her about Saturday night. Now you’re telling me that your team wen
t out and interviewed Brittany yesterday, which more or less brings it full circle and identifies her as our victim, doesn’t it?”

  The two men went silent.

  “Jesus Christ,” Farrell whispered. “You know what else? This is Sam, too.”

  “What is Sam, too?”

  “She told me about the call she got from Brittany, without which . . .”

  “. . . we’d never know it was Brittany who got raped. And now we do.”

  “Fuck,” Farrell said. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

  19

  FROM TIME TO time, to keep his hand in as a bartender, which he didn’t really need to do, Dismas Hardy worked behind the bar that he co-owned.

  Wednesday was usually date night, when Hardy and Frannie would leave the kids with a babysitter (when the kids were still home) or (now) go out alone and explore the restaurant subculture of San Francisco, one of the greatest food towns in the world. Often these excursions would begin with a drink at the Little Shamrock, some bons mots with Moses, a reaffirmation of the family connection.

  But on this Wednesday night, there was no sign of Frannie, and of course none of Moses, still in bed nursing his monster of a hangover. Even though Frannie hadn’t gotten up as early as her husband this morning, she had basically pulled an all-nighter herself before getting dressed and off to work at seven A.M. The hour and a half of sleep she’d managed hadn’t been remotely restorative, and tonight, date night or no, she was crashing early at home.

  Hardy, in some ways worse off in terms of fatigue, nevertheless felt a responsibility to his bar and—gallingly—even to his stupid eccentric genius of a brother-in-law who was the source of so much heartache and trouble.

  What the hell had Moses done?

  Hardy wasn’t going to work a full shift. Although nobody in the family, least of all Rebecca, was thrilled that Tony Solaia appeared to be hooking up with Brittany, Hardy had called him somewhat reluctantly, and Tony would be arriving shortly to take the late shift and close the place up. But Hardy wanted to open up and work awhile for reasons that were obscure even to him.