The Keeper

by John Lescroart

  Hal was finishing up the explanation of who Glitsky was and why he was there when Warren cut him off. “You mean to tell me the actual Missing Persons police aren’t looking into where she’s gone? What’s that about?”

  “It’s about them thinking she’s been”—Hal looked over at his daughter, engrossed in her drawing, and lowered his voice—“done away with. And,” he added, “apparently, they think I had something to do with it.”

  “They can’t really think that.” Ruth, carrying a tray with a teapot and cookies, stopped in the doorway. “When did all this happen? Nobody was saying anything like that over the weekend.”

  “Maybe not, but they were thinking it. This morning, a couple of Homicide cops came to see me at work. It was obvious I was a suspect, and they thought Katie . . .” Again, he looked over to his daughter, who was paying them no mind, then he shrugged at the adults. “It was obvious what they thought.”

  “So you went to a lawyer?” Ruth asked.

  Hal nodded. “It seemed like a good idea. If they were going to be questioning me, I wanted some advice on what I should say.”

  “How about the truth?” Ruth asked.

  “Sometimes they can twist the truth and make it sound pretty bad.”

  “But getting a lawyer, isn’t that going to make you look guilty no matter what?” Warren asked. “I mean, you don’t need a lawyer unless you’ve done something.”

  “No. Sometimes you need a lawyer before anything happens. If only to keep it from happening.”

  Ruth crossed to the table, placed a cup and saucer in front of Glitsky, and poured. “The bottom line is that no one’s looking for Katie?”

  “They say they are,” Hal said. “But they’re looking for her body.”

  “That’s just wrong,” Ruth said. She turned to Glitsky. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

  “I hope I can help find out where she is,” Glitsky said, trying to keep everything low-key. “Basically, I’m investigating her disappearance. If she doesn’t use a credit card and we don’t hear from her or whoever took her, I can’t—”

  “What do you mean, whoever took her?” Warren asked. “You think somebody kidnapped her?”

  Glitsky put his cup into its saucer and held his hand out, palm down. “Easy,” he said softly to Warren. “Your brother and I talked on the way out here. He doesn’t think she would have left on her own, not with the kids asleep in the next room. Do you think it’s possible she did?”

  Warren, flustered, met eyes around the table. “She could have had some sort of breakdown, couldn’t she?”

  “Possibly,” Glitsky said. “She also could have slipped and banged her head and woken up and wandered outside. Neither very likely.”

  “You were saying,” Ruth put in, “that if she doesn’t use a credit card or get in touch with us . . . ?”

  “Then there’s no trail,” Glitsky said. “And without a trail, finding her is going to be problematic.”

  Ruth asked, “What are you looking for?”

  “A reason,” Glitsky replied. “Something that makes sense, that leads somewhere, possibly to where she is now.”

  “You mean, in her life?” Ruth asked. “What could that be? I mean, she was, is, a stay-at-home mother of infants. I don’t say that disparagingly. I raised two boys, and it can be a noble calling. Are you saying she might have been involved in something that got her in trouble? That seems a stretch.”

  “It might be,” Glitsky agreed. “If there’s a rational answer at all.”

  “What if it was a random crazy person?” Warren asked. “He saw Hal leave, and he looked through the window and saw Katie here alone and knocked at the door and had a weapon . . .”

  Glitsky nodded. “Entirely possible. I don’t have any idea. I’ve barely begun with this.” He sipped his tea. “At least I’m not trying to build a case against Hal. I’m trying to find out what happened to Katie and why. I’m not working with the police. Really. If there’s an answer to be found, wherever it leads, I’ll try to run it down. That’s what I’m here for.”

  “If there’s an answer . . .” Hal said. “What if there isn’t?”

  “Let’s not go there,” Glitsky said. “Not for a while, anyway.”

  9

  AT ABOUT THE same moment, JaMorris and Abby knocked at the front door of the Dunne home on Guerrero Street in the Mission District. It was a three-story structure on its own lot that gave the impression of having been the project of several shabbily genteel architects over its thirty years of life. Odd angles jutted from corners and roofs; the entire second floor seemed to float behind plate-glass windows; a fountain splashed over perennial reeds into a koi pond in the half-covered courtyard that doubled as the welcoming lobby on the first floor.

  Exposing a fairly common vein in San Francisco’s über-liberal culture, some past owners (or perhaps the Dunnes themselves) had spent serious money in an effort to render the home aggressively proletarian.

  The detectives, negotiating around the bicycles parked along the walls, followed the head of the household down the hallway that ran inside along the courtyard, and came to a large family room at the back of the house, where three women sat on stools in front of a bar, turned to face their incoming visitors. Each had a full glass of white wine at her elbow, and all of their eyes showed signs of tears.

  With an air of exhaustion, Curt Dunne stopped just inside the door and said with some formality, “These are Inspectors Monroe and Foley. Inspectors, my wife, Carli—Katie’s mother—and my daughters, Barbara and Sherrie. My son, Daniel, couldn’t get off work, but he told me he’d be glad to talk to you by appointment; I believe you have his numbers.”

  “We do, thank you.” JaMorris turned to the women. “Thank you all for agreeing to sit down with us this afternoon. I know it’s been, and continues to be, a tremendously difficult time.”

  He silently ceded the floor to Abby, who picked up where he left off. “As you know, it’s been nearly five full days since Katie’s gone missing, and in that time we haven’t heard from any third parties, such as kidnappers demanding a ransom. We haven’t gotten any messages from Katie, and we don’t have a record of her having accessed her credit cards or used her cell phone.” She paused. “Given all of these realities, we are forced to consider the possibility that Katie was the victim of foul play, perhaps even—I know you’ve all considered this—murder.”

  At the word, Carli Dunne brought her hand to her mouth. Curt crossed over to stand directly behind her, his arm along the bar. The younger women, in tandem, reached for their wine.

  JaMorris pulled up a stool from near the wall, sat down, and picked up the narrative. “This means that we’re shifting the object of our investigation somewhat. It’s not that we’re not doing everything we can to locate Katie or some sign of where she could be, but if she was murdered, our next order of business is to identify a suspect whom we might profitably question to see whether we can move along this investigation and get to the bottom of what happened to Katie.”

  “Since you are among the people who know her best and love her”—Abby, taking over, was careful to keep references to Katie in the present tense—“we thought an interview might help to get us off on the right foot. Now we understand, as you made clear to our colleagues last week, that you’ve always been on reasonably good terms with Hal, and that you’re all going through this tragic time together, but—”

  Suddenly, Curt Dunne blurted out, “No buts. Let’s forget all that. Hal was the last one to see her alive. He had almost three hours between when he left the house and got home with his brother. Which is more than enough time to have done whatever he decided to do and—”

  “Curt!” His wife put her hand down on his arm. “Wait! We can’t just . . .”

  “The hell we can’t. We can call a spade a spade. Can you give me any other plausible scenario? Who the hell ev
en knew he would be gone at exactly that time?”

  JaMorris threw a glance at his partner. “So I’m gathering that you, at least, Mr. Dunne, think Hal might have played a role in Katie’s disappearance? Missing Persons didn’t mention anything about your suspicions. They said you were all coming from basically the same place, which was wondering what could have happened. Has something changed since last week?”

  Curt Dunne didn’t wait for a consensus. “You’re damned straight something’s changed. It’s become obvious that Katie didn’t just walk out on her own. None of us can imagine she would have abandoned the kids, not even for a couple of minutes. And once that’s clear, who does that leave?”

  “Well, sir,” Abby said, “it leaves the whole universe, unless you’ve got some specific reason to think it was Hal.”

  The woman nearest the inspectors spoke up. “We never really thought about Hal until we started talking about him. I mean, it’s just not something we’d ever considered. We’d always assumed that they got along the way most of us did.”

  “I’m sorry,” Abby said. “Your name again?”

  “Barbara. Barbara Payson.” She spelled her last name.

  “And what did you start talking about?”

  “You know, stuff between them that we didn’t think was very important before. Stuff Katie had told us.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well,” Barbara said, “you know she was seeing a family counselor. Hal wouldn’t go with her. He thought it was a waste of money and didn’t believe they needed counseling. But their fights were getting more serious, and she was worried about them.”

  “Physical fights?”

  “No. She never said that he hit her.”

  The other sister, Sherrie, said abruptly, “She wouldn’t have said if he did.”

  “How do you know that?” JaMorris asked.

  “That’s who she was,” Sherrie replied. “She was the oldest of us and . . .”

  Carli joined the discussion. “She definitely would have left him if he’d been abusing her. But I don’t like how we’re demonizing Hal because she was going to counseling and he wouldn’t go.”

  “Was there any talk of them breaking up?” Abby asked. “Did she talk about divorcing him?”

  “I never heard that,” Barbara said.

  Sherrie added, “We really didn’t acknowledge they were in trouble until . . . until this thing. And now she’s gone, and we may never know.”

  “Still, do any of you have a specific reason for suspecting Hal?”

  “They could have had a real fight that night,” Curt said. “I mean where he actually hit her. And then he had to get rid of her so there wouldn’t be any sign of it.That could have been why he did it. To cover it up.”

  “Although you are not aware of any evidence of a physical fight between them. Am I right?” Abby asked.

  Curt answered, “He could have gotten rid of any evidence. Straightened things up.”

  “That’s all conjecture, dear,” Carli said. “You know it is. Whether he hit her, whether they were fighting. We don’t know.”

  “We do, Mom,” Sherrie said. “At least arguing.”

  “Okay, so they were going through a rough spell, maybe, but with two young children, is that really so unusual? She wanted or needed help dealing with what was bothering her, and he was too proud to go along with her. That could have been all this is. We all talked to Hal last week. We know he’s truly devastated. I looked in his eyes, and he was in agony. He wasn’t faking that. I don’t think we should accuse him of anything unless we find out something that he definitely did.”

  “That’s good advice,” JaMorris said. “Anything you do find, whether it’s about Hal or anybody else, please come to us first. We know the newspapers have been bothering you, and it wouldn’t be productive to have them put Hal on trial in the press.”

  Curt wasn’t ready to give it up. “Let’s not forget that he could have simply woken up that morning and done what he did with no new reason. He could have gotten to the end of whatever he was going through and decided to act.”

  “Yes,” Abby said, “that could have happened. But usually, there’s a reason of some kind, and without any hint of what that might have been, we’re in the dark. More important, we don’t have grounds to charge anyone.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s him,” Curt said. “Hal. No one else fits.”

  Abby nodded. “We’re going to keep looking and hope we turn up something in the line of motive or evidence. If it’s any consolation, at the moment, he certainly remains a person of interest.”

  10

  “PREJUDICE,” GLITSKY SAID, “is a powerful thing.”

  “What makes you say that?” They’d just finished doing the dishes, and Treya was drying her hands.

  “Because I am in the grip of it.”

  “Ahh. And who are you being prejudiced against?”

  “Hal Chase. Husband of missing, probably now-dead person Katie Chase.”

  “You think he had something to do with it?”

  “That’s the thing. It’s not a thought, although in ways it’s much stronger. It’s like an automatic default. Woman disappears from her home with no sign of struggle, my very first reaction is to look at the husband. So I look at the husband—any husband—and what do I see? I see a guy who probably killed his wife.”

  She put the towel down. “After hanging out with him all afternoon, do you still think that?”

  “As I said, I don’t think it, not rationally. I just feel it. And I know I’m not supposed to. But my gut keeps pointing in the same direction it always points. Meanwhile, my brain is trying to come up with plausible alternatives.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a random snatch, some guy walking along the street who decides to abduct a woman out of her house, but this guy can’t be walking down the street, because then what does he carry the woman away in if he’s not in a vehicle of some kind, so that means he’s got a car or something and drove up while Hal was driving away, but then how would he know that Hal wasn’t just driving to the store for a six-pack and wouldn’t be back in five minutes?”

  She smiled at him. “That might be the longest sentence of your life. And what you’re describing probably didn’t happen.”

  “Right. I agree. But somebody came by, apparently, who knew when Hal would be gone and used that time to grab Katie and take her away. Which leads to the question: Why take her away? If they were going to kill her, why not kill her in the house? Whereas, if it was Hal, he’s got a reason to take her away, which is that without a body, it’s probably not going to get charged as a murder.”

  “Wouldn’t that be true of anybody?”

  “Yeah, but look at the hassle. Taking the body somewhere, then hiding it, and meanwhile, you’re left with traces of the victim in your car and maybe on your person. Alternatively, you could shoot her in the house, and in that case it goes down as a B and E that went wrong, and every criminal in San Francisco will be suspect. Which brings us back around to Hal, who’s Diz’s prospective client and who I’m supposed to believe is innocent, although I’m having somewhat of a hard time with that because it’s not what I feel.”

  “So I see.”

  “Prejudice.”

  “There you go. So you’re going to stick with this for a while, this investigation?”

  “If you’re not still going to be mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you. I was just getting used to the idea that you weren’t going to be involved in murder cases anymore. For the record, I was comfortable with that.”

  “Also for the record, this isn’t yet a definite murder case, although I must admit it’s leaning in that direction. And my prejudice about Hal isn’t doing anybody any good. I’m trying to imagine what happened to this woman if it wasn’t something to do with her husband.�
��

  “Maybe you shouldn’t focus on the husband, Abe. Maybe you could go about getting to know her better. Who was Katie?”

  • • •

  FRANNIE HARDY WAS sipping her coffee at the dinner table. Putting the cup down, she shook her head and leveled an admiring gaze at her husband. “Sometimes,” she said, “you simply astound me.”

  “Thank you. You mean because I’m already on board with Hal Chase?”

  “Not really that, no.”

  “What, then?”

  “The fact that you’ve been home for about two hours, and we’ve just had a leisurely and pleasant dinner together, and you have spent nearly every minute of that time talking to me about your perfect game of darts this morning.”

  “I know. It was groundbreaking.”

  “Evidently so. Making every single shot from twenty down to and including the bull’s-eye without one miss. Not even the bull’s-eye.”

  “Bull’s-eye’s the killer.”

  “Of course it is. And you’ve described it all so perfectly, I feel like I was there, witnessing it all firsthand. The thrill of victory.”

  “Especially the last round,” Hardy said. “Could you believe how I cleared my mind, instead of thinking about it and letting the tension get to me? That’s what could have done me in. But no, I just picked those suckers out of the board, walked back to the line, turned, and threw. Bam. Bam! BAM!”

  “I think you did mention the mind-meld the first time. Or the second. One of them, anyway.”

  “And that’s not what astounded you?”

  “No. Actually, it was nothing about the dart game.”

  “Do you want me to guess?”

  “I don’t think you could, so I’ll tell you. What astounded me is that my client’s husband came to your office this morning and asked you to be his lawyer because he was afraid they were going to charge him with murder, and then you met Abe for lunch and got him on board as your investigator. And all of this was really further down your list of interesting things that happened today than your perfect score in Twenty Down.”