Strout retrieved the name in about three seconds. “A month, maybe six weeks ago. Blunt force head trauma.”
“Homicide?”
“My ruling was that it wasn’t inconsistent with homicide. It also wasn’t inconsistent with accidental slip-and-fall.” He shrugged. “They found him in his cell. He had the top bunk. Could be he fell down and banged his temple on the corner of the bed, which is concrete. That’s what the investigation went with.”
“Okay, but let’s go back a step. He fell down? What made him fall down?”
“I don’t know for sure. He was loaded up with Oxy. But he’d also been in a fight with some other inmates. The guards broke it up and put him in the closest empty cell, and that’s where he either passed out or slipped and fell.”
“You believe that, John?”
Strout cocked his head, obviously wondering if he should take offense. “I believe he died of what I put on the death certificate, Abe. You know, whenever somebody dies over there, there’s an investigation.”
“Right.”
“They had one in this case.”
“I’m sure they did. But the guards there, they’re all their brother’s keepers, aren’t they?”
“I’ve heard the same about guys on the regular force. I always think those rumors are just interoffice squabbling.”
Glitsky nodded. “There’s some of that. But sometimes it’s not the case.”
“You think this is one of those times?”
“This time we had an inmate tell a different story, then retract it.”
“Well, inmates . . .” Strout gestured extravagantly and let the words hang in the air. It was no secret that jailhouse snitches were not the most trustworthy witnesses on the planet. Many would testify to almost anything in exchange for a slight improvement in their situations, the smallest reduction in their sentences. As a class, they were inherently unreliable, and everyone in law enforcement knew it.
“This inmate,” Glitsky said, “was named Luther Jones. Ring a bell?”
Strout drew a frown. “That would be the Luther Jones on the slab in there?”
“The same. I just came from Farrell’s office, and he told me that Luther called to set up an appointment to meet with a DA investigator yesterday and maybe retract his retraction of his testimony about Alanos Tussaint. She told Frank Dobbins about it. Her name was Maria Solis-Martinez.”
Strout had no doubt spent a good portion of his afternoon performing an autopsy on the young woman. His face hardened further. “That was a damned heinous thing to do. I heard it was a robbery gone bad.”
“You also heard Alanos Tussaint slipped and fell in an empty cell. There’s always a story, John. Purse snatchers usually don’t execute their victims with a shot to the face.”
“You’re saying somebody from the jail . . . ?”
“I’m not saying anything yet. I’m asking questions, trying to get a feel for things. What I know is that Luther told a DA inspector that Adam Foster had killed Tussaint.”
“Adam Foster? Himself?”
Glitsky raised a hand. “Hear me out. Luther then retracts that statement. Wes Farrell decides he believes the first version and sends Maria over to the jail to make a deal with Luther. A few days go by. Finally, Luther decides to play. He talks to her, and on that same night, Maria gets hit. Luther ODs the next morning.”
Strout digested for a moment, then shook his head. “My, my, my.”
“So far it’s just a story,” Abe said. “I’m nowhere near charging anybody yet. I don’t have any evidence. Certainly nothing on Maria. Nothing on Katie Chase . . .”
“Katie Chase?”
“You remember her from the last time we spoke.”
“She’s in this?”
“Same threat to Foster.”
“How’s that?”
“Hal’s his alibi for Tussaint. He told Katie it was a lie, and we think she called Cushing and threatened to talk.”
“You are truly shitting me.”
“I’m not, John. I wish I were.” Glitsky let out a breath. “The logjam, of course, is that we don’t have, and we’re not likely to get, any new evidence on either Maria or Katie. You’ve already ruled on Tussaint, not inconsistent with homicide. I was just wondering if you might be persuaded to go back to your records on him, maybe take another look, see if anything new jumps out at you. And when you examine Luther, you might keep all these circumstances in mind. At least that might put some more evidence in play.”
Strout’s lips were tight with concentration. Eventually, he nodded. “If there’s anything to find,” he said, “I promise you, I’ll find it.”
46
* * *
CityTalk
by JEFFREY ELLIOT
District Attorney Wes Farrell has wasted no time filling the vacancy in his Investigations Division caused by the murder of brand-new investigator Maria Solis-Martinez. Yesterday Farrell announced the hiring of Abe Glitsky, a longtime veteran of the Police Department, as assistant chief of inspectors and, most recently, head of the Homicide detail. Mr. Glitsky will be inheriting Ms. Solis-Martinez’s caseload, but his first order of business, he said in an interview, will be an investigation into the killing of his predecessor, who was gunned down on Wednesday evening outside of her Mission District apartment’s lobby. Her assailant fled with her purse, and investigators from the Homicide detail have described the crime as most likely a murder in the commission of a robbery.
Sources close to the investigation have said that Maria was developing information on a case involving a death originally ruled accidental in the San Francisco jail. Ms. Solis-Martinez was allegedly investigating the possibility that the death was not accidental but, in fact, connected to another homicide, that of Katie Chase, which happened outside the jail. The DA has indicted Ms. Chase’s husband, a former jail guard, for that murder. Nevertheless, it appears the investigation has widened to include general allegations of corruption and wrongdoing in the jail.
No one in the District Attorney’s office would comment on the record that the investigation had taken that turn. However, they would confirm that Glitsky, who previously worked as an investigator for Hal Chase’s defense team, had obtained a waiver from his client so that any and all information in his possession, or garnered through future investigation, would be shared with police.
* * *
DISMAS HARDY NEARLY spat out his breakfast coffee in shock and disbelief as he got to the end of the lead item in Elliot’s column.
“What?” Frannie asked him.
He was already on his feet, pushing the paper over in front of her. “Read that.”
They had a wall-mounted landline telephone in the kitchen, and he punched in Glitsky’s speed dial. It picked up on the second ring.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hardy asked in clipped tones. “What are you thinking?”
“Which one? Doing or thinking?”
“Either. Do you want to get yourself killed? Did you clear the interview with Wes?”
“No. I’m a grown-up, Diz. I can talk to the press if I want. Witnesses, too.”
“What did you hope to accomplish? What do you think you did accomplish, other than put yourself right in their crosshairs and tell them we were coming?”
“That’s not a problem.”
“No? Well, it turned out to be a little problem for Maria Solis-Martinez and Luther Jones, didn’t it?”
“Look, Diz. It’s not like they don’t get it. They see me in DA Investigations, they’re going to know exactly what I’m doing. The best thing we can do is stir this up and see if we can put some pressure on the people around them. Foster’s not going to crack. Not Cushing, either, but it’s got to make people working with them nervous when they start to kill people, especially cops. So far, the heat’s been all on us. Let’s put some on them.”
“Swel
l. And what about Hal?”
“What about him?”
“Well, he remains in jail, in Cushing and Foster’s care or lack thereof. What about him?”
“He’s in solitary under watch. Even Foster can’t touch him.”
“Except that you’ve basically given Hal yet another reason to have killed Katie. Because he was ordered to.”
“One more reason to have killed Katie doesn’t change this case at all.”
“So you think Foster killed Katie. How’d you pick him out of all the possibilities? Why not Cushing or anybody else who works for him?”
“Foster did Tussaint. That’s what Luther said the first time, and that’s what I believe. Cushing can’t have that many people under him ready to commit murder. I’m betting if Foster did one, he did the others, including Katie Chase.”
“That would be nice, but have you even checked to see if he has an alibi for any of the other killings?”
“Diz, the man makes up alibis out of thin air, complete with corroborating witnesses.”
“Maybe. But maybe he was with thirty members of his extended family and all his neighbors on Thanksgiving eve. Maybe last Wednesday was his bowling night. You ought to at least check those out.”
“They’re on my list. I promise.”
“Jesus,” Hardy said.
“Hey,” Glitsky replied. “Didn’t you tell me it wasn’t Hal? Didn’t you hire me to find the other dude? Well, I got him. It’s Adam Foster. I don’t see your problem. You ought to be doing cartwheels.”
• • •
HARDY HAD BARELY hung up when his phone rang. It was Wes Farrell, in fine fettle himself. “I never figured Abe as such a loose cannon, Diz. I’ve got to fire him. “
“You can’t.”
“Sure I can.”
“Not the day after you hired him, Wes. You’d look like a fool.”
“I already look like a fool for letting him run off like that. Now I’m going to be at war with Cushing and the mayor and probably half the judges in the building. Frank Dobbins, who, let us remember, is my own goddamn chief of investigations, is going to shit a brick. My idea was to go after this with a little finesse, and the first thing Abe does is go riding off the goddamn reservation. Christ, Diz. Stirring the pot might not even be a totally bad idea, but he can’t do shit like that without talking to me first.”
“He’s already been on the case a couple of weeks, Wes. He’s getting antsy for some results.”
“What case? He’s not on any case. I just brought him on.”
“Hal Chase.”
“Hal Chase? We’ve got no proven connection on that. It’s just a theory.”
“True. But it fits together as well as anything that’s turned up in Hal’s case, if not better. Now he starts digging, and I won’t be surprised if he turns something up.”
A silence descended on the line.
At last Farrell said, “You know, the really devious, nasty part of myself thinks that maybe you suggested I bring him back aboard so that he could undermine my case against Chase and nothing else.”
“That would be the incorrect part of yourself, too. The grand jury jumped too soon on Mr. Chase, which I believe I mentioned to you at the time. He’s going to wind up walking, you watch.”
“If Abe has any exculpatory evidence on him. And you will recall that an explicit part of this deal your client signed off on was that Abe was going to hand over any evidence in the Chase case, regardless of where it pointed. I hope his next stop will be Frank Dobbins’s office with that material in hand.”
“I hope that, too, Wes. But he seems to be off on his own mission.”
“I’m going to fire him.”
“Suit yourself. You’re the boss. But it’s a bad idea.”
“Shit.”
“Yes, sir. I couldn’t agree more.”
47
FARRELL WAS RIGHT about the big guns circling. By the time Burt Cushing showed up for the nine-thirty appointment in Farrell’s office that he’d demanded, he had already spoken to Mayor Leland Crawford, denying the unfounded accusations in the strongest possible terms, and getting, he said, the mayor’s vote of confidence.
“These are the most irresponsible accusations that I’ve ever heard in the course of my twenty years of service to the city and county of San Francisco, first as a supervisor and then for the past six years as the county sheriff.” Cushing was pacing like a caged animal between the couches and love seats in Farrell’s office. “You got a problem with me or how I run my organization, you come to me, we talk it over, see if there’s anything to it. Which in this case, there isn’t. This is pure slander. SFPD says nobody up there is talking to Jeff Elliot. If you’ve got somebody in your shop who’s running amok, I hope you goddamn well get him under control.”
In spite of his earlier anger at Glitsky’s half-cocked decision to go public with his suspicions of Cushing, Farrell found himself surprisingly pleased that things between him and the sheriff were out in the open. He more than halfway believed that Cushing had played some role in Maria’s execution, up to and including ordering it. So he wasn’t inclined to apologize for Abe or anybody else. “Nobody in my office is freelancing, Burt. We’ll be doing our investigation in a professional and straightforward manner, so I’m sure you won’t have anything to worry about.”
Cushing stopped pacing and pointed a finger. “You’re not going to find anything in my shop.”
“Well, then, you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you?”
“So you are behind this?”
“I’m behind asking Maria Solis-Martinez to look into the Tussaint business, if that’s what you mean. And I think it’s possible that the assignment led to her death. Which grieves me more than I can say.”
“There was nothing in the Tussaint business, Wes. That was investigated by SFPD right after it happened, as you well know. Nobody found any sign of foul play.”
“Luther Jones did.”
For an instant, Cushing gaped, openmouthed. “Luther Jones was a lowlife snitch who’d sell out his mother for a cigarette. He was a nonentity who lied to try to get something a little better for himself, Wes. That shit happens twenty times a day in the zoo.” He spun around, worked up in a fury now, and came back to Wes. “Luther Jones. Give me a semi-fucking break.”
Two could play the anger game, but when Farrell came down off the table, he wasn’t playing. Getting right up into Cushing’s face, he all but snarled, “You give me a break, Sheriff. Yeah, Luther Jones, who died of a heroin overdose in your jail and, as far as anyone can tell, never used heroin in his life. Luther called Maria on the day she was killed. He was going to deal and give up one of your thugs. And you knew it. So yeah, we’re going to be looking into what’s happening in that cesspool you run over there. You don’t like it, you go fuck yourself.”
Cushing’s eyes narrowed. A muscle pulsed in his jawline. “You’re making a huge mistake.” He turned, yanked at the doorknob, and slammed the door behind him on his way out.
• • •
BESIDES HIS CALL from Dismas Hardy, Glitsky had also heard from Ruth Chase (“It makes all the sense in the world”), Patti Orosco (“I’m so glad to see that you have suspects who really might have done it besides me”), and Devin Juhle, who wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. The Homicide chief, who had a pretty good idea that Abe was the unnamed source, didn’t waste time asking him to confirm or deny. He just wanted to know if Abe had any support for his theories, particularly about Maria’s killer, and if he did, would he please be so kind as to share his information with Abby and JaMorris, who had drawn Maria’s murder and were again laboring under a dearth of evidence. Did the DA really have something, and if he didn’t, what was this baloney doing in the paper?
Abe suggested that Juhle have his inspectors interview Adam Foster and get his alibi for the time of Maria’s deat
h. Juhle left it unclear whether he was going to follow up on that, but he told Glitsky that he’d try to hook up with him when he got downtown a little later.
With all the talking and explaining he’d done by phone from his home, by the time Glitsky walked into the Investigations Division for the first time that Friday morning, it was almost ten o’clock. He expected an onslaught of profound silence, and even overt resentment, from the inspectors up here. As a lifelong cop, he knew exactly what he’d done and why he’d done it, but he didn’t fool himself that it would endear him to his professional associates.
But he hadn’t made it halfway across the bullpen on his way to Chief Inspector Frank Dobbins’s office when the women at the desks nearest the door got to their feet and started to applaud. Chairs scraped against the floor as the other inspectors stood up and put their hands together. Glitsky stopped and looked from face to face, his own visage softening as he took in this rare display of support. Other people were coming out from the hall where Maria had kept her office. Dobbins came and stood in his doorway, clapping three times himself and nodding in welcome.
“About fucking time,” someone said ambiguously, and Glitsky, back in character, frowned at the profanity.
Five minutes later, Tom Scerbo came back to Dobbins’s office and dropped a manila file on the desk. “That’s everything I’ve got on Tussaint, including the transcript of the first talk I had with Luther. It’s also got the names of the five guards who swore they were out delivering inmates to San Bruno with Adam Foster. I only talked to two of them—Barani and Maye—and didn’t have the heart to go through the motions with the other three.”
“Not forthcoming?” Glitsky asked.
“Oh, to the contrary,” Scerbo said. “They both knew the exact time they left the jail, the route they took, who sat where in the bus, who drove each way. Impressively well rehearsed, and of course the written records and logs all agree.”
“Or they’re telling the truth,” Dobbins put in.
Scerbo was grim. “Of course. Or that.”
The Keeper Page 21
