The Keeper

by John Lescroart

  “But he won’t let me close the deal.”

  “He doesn’t want you to get killed, Abe. How about that?”

  “I’m not going to get killed.” He lowered his voice. “That ship has sailed. Killing one cop more won’t change anything.”

  “Famous last words.”

  “No, they’re not. This is when I can get him. I can taste it.”

  The phone on her desk rang. Reaching over, she picked it up. “District Attorney’s office, how can I help you? . . . Hello, Lieutenant . . . Yes, he’s still here. I’m talking to him just now, as a matter of fact . . . Sure, just a second.” Handing Abe the phone, she said, “Devin Juhle.”

  The Homicide chief said it was important. The summons was also a fine excuse to end the conversation with Treya, which wasn’t really going Abe’s way. He told her they could resume later but stopped short of telling her that he would let the whole thing go.

  Though he understood that Wes was concerned for the safety of everyone involved, Abe planned to let none of it go. He couldn’t shake the feeling that with the smallest push on his part, Cushing would make a mistake and the whole enterprise would come tumbling down. But he might have to go underground to make that happen.

  Five minutes later, he knocked on his old office door on the fifth floor. The door was open, as usual, and somewhat to his surprise, Abby and JaMorris sat on the folding chairs in front of Juhle’s large desk, both wearing a bit of the attitude of scolded schoolchildren. “Abe,” Juhle said as he waved him in. “Thanks for coming on up. You mind getting the door?”

  Glitsky pushed it closed and said, “What’s up?”

  Juhle scratched at the wood on the top of his desk. “Abby and Jambo and I have just been discussing this thing we’re not supposed to talk about.” He chuckled. “Which I guess right there is saying something.”

  “I think, among ourselves, it’s not much of a problem,” Glitsky said.

  “In this case,” Juhle replied, “I expect we’ll be glad we did. Last I heard about this was Monday, with that column in the paper, Adam Foster killing himself, and Sheriff Cushing going on about how shocked he was that anything illegal had ever gone on at his jail. You all remember that?”

  Nods all around.

  “I thought you would. It turns out that Foster’s gun is the same one that killed Katie Chase, and I’m thinking, like everybody else, ‘Good, we got the bastard.’ Or he got himself, but either way, it’s three one-eighty-sevens”—the Penal Code section for murder—“off the books. At this point, I’m not thinking too much about the details. Obviously, the guy killed the Chase woman, then himself. What more was there to think about? Everybody with me so far?”

  Abby Foley cleared her throat and spoke up. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Then I get this call from Wes Farrell a few minutes ago telling me to hold on, Foster wasn’t a suicide after all. Abe’s done some yeoman police work, and all of a sudden it’s looking like a murder. And if it’s one, it’s pretty much got to be two: Foster and Chase. Then Farrell tells me the main suspect—although we’re not going to talk about it—is Burt Cushing. So I go, ‘Okay, I’ll keep it to myself,’ and then hang up. I know something’s nagging at me, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it, and since we’ve just been told we’re not doing anything about these two cases for a while, I put it aside”—he now spoke directly to Abe—“figuring I’d catch up with these two when they checked in. Which I did.”

  “Okay,” Glitsky said.

  “Not okay, as it turns out, Abe. The three of us start talking, and about the first thing Jambo mentions is Katie Chase got killed on the night before Thanksgiving, which wasn’t something I’d really thought about since it happened. But I hear that, and I’m like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. What time?’ ‘Seven, eight, somewhere in there.’ And I say, ‘The day before Thanksgiving? Absolutely?’ They’re both sure. I mean, this is one fact that’s in no dispute whatsoever, right? Katie Chase is killed on Wednesday night, the day before Thanksgiving.”

  “Right,” Glitsky said. “No question.”

  “Okay, “ Juhle said. “Here’s the problem. You want to know where I was on the night before Thanksgiving? I was at Burt Cushing’s yearly Thanksgiving party at his house. I was there from sometime around eight until maybe eleven, eleven-thirty. So was Cushing. So, in fact, was Adam Foster. And in case you were wondering, I promise you I’m not one of the sheriff’s stooges, backing up his alibi. There must have been two dozen of us there, and you can check with any or all of them. They’ll all tell you the same thing. The point is, if Katie Chase got shot that night, Burt Cushing flat-out didn’t do it. And neither did Adam Foster. I hate to say it, Abe, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  61

  GLITSKY DIDN’T FEEL like he could face a living soul.

  He sat in his car in the waning daylight, caught in rush-hour traffic leaving the city. He didn’t have a destination in mind. Badly shaken, he’d called Treya immediately after leaving Juhle’s office and told her that he was going to be busy until late, checking on some evidence. No, he had promised her, it wasn’t about Cushing. He wasn’t looking into Cushing anymore. Wes was right, Abe was sorry. He’d get home when he could.

  How could he have been so completely wrong?

  Every single fact about Burt Cushing fit perfectly into his theory, except the tiny flaw that he was somewhere else when the first crime was committed. Abe had neglected to perform the most perfunctory police work—checking his suspect’s alibi. Or, really, both Cushing’s and Foster’s alibis. That oversight had rendered all of his other efforts useless at best, pathetic at worst.

  By the time he’d gotten down as far as Candlestick Point, he’d conjured up another theory that might still fit his facts: Another deputy might be the button man within the Sheriff’s Department. He thought about Andy Biehl and his brand-new Audi. He considered Mike Maye of Foster’s poker alibi. It could be any one of a dozen deputies, maybe a hundred.

  He’d said it to placate Treya, but by the time he reached Burlingame, he had come to the decision that Wes Farrell was right. Whatever this was, it was too big for him to handle alone. Or even to be a part of. He’d just demonstrated how badly his investigative chops had deteriorated. He might not be a true menace, but neither was he much of a help.

  Farrell was also right about keeping Abe out of harm’s way. Chances were, if he could be this wrong about a case, he could be this wrong about his ability to defend himself. His instincts and skills had rusted to the point that anyone could walk straight up to him, wish him a Merry Christmas, and put a bullet through his eye before he’d had a chance to blink.

  He was old, old, old. He might not have loved retirement, but retirement was clearly where he belonged.

  But God, it galled. It galled.

  • • •

  NOW, WITH FULL dark having fallen, he sat again in the evidence room at the lab, the cardboard box with Adam Foster’s stuff on the table next to him. He hoped something in that box would speak to him again. He had been wrong in the conclusion he’d reached about the sheriff, but no one could deny that his main insight and discovery—that Adam Foster was not a suicide but a murder—was the breakthrough moment in that case, as well as Katie Chase’s.

  And that moment had been his and his alone.

  He belonged here. This was his world. For nearly forty years, his work and his passion had been bringing murderers to justice, and he was not about to abandon all of that now. He was who he was. He keenly felt the scorn of his unknown quarry and vowed anew that somehow he would bring it down.

  Foster’s cell phone was the most likely and obvious source of something Glitsky might have missed while he’d found what he expected. For nearly an hour, he went through Foster’s deleted emails of the past month. Foster was on LinkedIn and had a couple of hundred connections; he was asked for connections, endorsements. But it se
emed that he mostly accepted people who wanted to connect with him and didn’t do much afterward. Glitsky could relate, since he treated the social networking app the same way.

  There were also several dozen administrative emails either up or down the chain of command at the jail. A flurry of messages in early November about Alanos Tussaint segued into an equal number about Luther Jones. Glitsky knew that these would probably be helpful to the FBI if they took over the investigation; they could follow up on Foster’s home computer. Aside from that, Adam Foster had a few friends, almost all of them male, and there was the usual assortment of purportedly funny attachments that pretty much identified him as the redneck asshole Glitsky had always considered him.

  Finally, Glitsky got to Saturday morning and Foster’s cell phone. The only calls from unknowns were from the same number. Glitsky assumed that would be the number of the woman Foster had presumably made his date with on the night of the killing.

  Thinking what an idiot she must be, Glitsky got out his own cell phone—he did not want to add or subtract anything on Foster’s phone—and punched in the numbers on his keypad, then pressed the call button.

  He was holding the phone to his ear, listening to the ring. The phone eventually kicked over to the recorded message, and he felt the room come up at him.

  “Hi,” the voice said. “This is Patti Orosco. You know what to do.”

  • • •

  HE COULDN’T UNDO it. He’d left his name and phone number on Patti Orosco’s telephone, and knew she would call him back before long.

  In his car driving home, he decided that the wisest course of action was to pretend that he was a concerned servant of the people and following up on things with Patti and Hal and the gang. He would tell her that maybe they could make an appointment and get together to do a little debriefing. He would lie to her about this being the normal routine following a murder investigation. He would remember not to refer in any way to the murder, as opposed to the suicide, of Adam Foster.

  First and above all, he would get her alibi for Saturday night.

  When he got home at 8:45, Treya had already put both kids to bed. In their years together, tension had only rarely invaded their home, but tonight it entered draped on Abe’s shoulders and spread out to cover every inch of the duplex. Glitsky, seeking comfort where he could, opened the number one forbidden food item in the house of a heart attack victim—a can of Spam—and fried it as patties with three eggs. Treya started to say something—about the job, about Spam, his health, retiring again—but Abe’s excessive politeness drove her to a frigid kiss good night, then to their bedroom, where she turned off the lights and closed the door after her.

  Glitsky washed and dried his dishes. Sitting in the living room under his reading light, he didn’t so much as pick up a book.

  The silence in the home felt like a physical presence.

  At 9:23, he punched Hal Chase’s number into his cell phone. If nothing else, he told himself, he wanted to make sure Hardy’s ex-client was alive. Hal picked up on the second ring, and the two men said their hellos. Glitsky apologized for calling so late.

  “No worries. We’re just sitting up talking, having some wine.”

  “You and your mom?”

  “No. Patti and me. Mom and Warren both left today. And no offense, but not a minute too soon, if you know what I mean. I’m so ready to get back to real life.”

  “Are you going back to work?”

  “Maybe not. I mean real life outside of work. My kids. Patti.”

  “I’m glad for you. Listen, that’s part of the reason I called. I tried reaching Patti earlier to follow up on a few things—just routine bookkeeping—and I couldn’t reach her on her cell phone.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” Hal said. “She lost it on Saturday.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s a drag, but I’m sure it’ll turn up. She probably just put it down someplace and forgot, what with all the chaos this weekend.”

  “Chaos?”

  “She was over here, helping out. Mom was at the end of her rope, and Warren . . . well, you know Warren. So Patti volunteered to lend a hand and wound up staying the weekend.” Glitsky could hear that Hal said the next for her benefit. “This is what we call a good woman. Patti plus Warren plus Mom equals let the good times roll.”

  Abe heard Patti’s laugh, heard her say, “Better times if Mom goes to a movie.”

  “When was that? This movie?” Abe asked.

  “Saturday night. Mom was driving everybody nuts, so they sent her to a movie. Evidently, it made for a better night. But what is it you wanted to talk to Patti about?”

  “Actually, it’s you, too.” Abe was riffing blindly, since he’d just heard that Patti Orosco apparently had an alibi and a witness—Warren—on Saturday night.

  Which meant . . . what?

  He all but stammered, “I just wanted to personally follow up how you’re doing with the whole Adam Foster thing.”

  “Still in a little shock,” Hal said. “But not really surprised. On the other hand, the son of a bitch got me out of jail. I’ll probably get it all worked out someday. Maybe I’ll go to the counseling you and I were talking about. Get so I can put it all someplace. It would be nice to have some of it make sense, but I think that might take awhile.”

  Abe heard Patti comment in the background and asked, “What did she say?”

  “She said,” Hal replied, “‘tell that mean Mr. Glitsky I don’t care what he thinks. I could never kill anybody.’”

  • • •

  GLITSKY WAS PADDLING upstream alone in a kayak. Dense jungle hung over the water, and the hanging vines and foliage swiped at his face with regularity. He had both hands on the oar and couldn’t wipe any of the stuff away. A helicopter’s rotor sounded behind him, coming up low and fast, and he shored the kayak, coming up on the muddy bank. He ran up the steep and slippery trail as the helicopter got louder. Finally, he got some traction and forced himself up through the waist-high brambles, pushing them aside. They were following him on the main trail, but a smaller path broke off to his right. He took it and broke into a jog but almost immediately tripped on a log across the path. Except, turning, he saw it was not a log but a body . . . a woman’s body.

  With a terrified yell, he sat upright.

  Treya woke and put her arms around him, holding him. “It’s okay. You’re all right. It was just a dream.”

  Glitsky gripped his chest with his right hand. His breath was coming in gulps. He felt his wife’s hand moving up and down over his back, her lips brushing his shoulder, shushing him as if he were a baby.

  Closing his eyes, he let his body settle, his breathing slow down, forcing one deep breath, then another. He moved his right hand to cover Treya’s, gave it a small squeeze. “Sorry I woke you up.”

  “It’s okay.” She kissed his shoulder again. “Bad one?”

  He nodded. “I’m going to get up for a minute.”

  “All right. If you need me, come and get me.”

  “I will.”

  He padded into the kitchen, ran cold water into his hands and drank some of it, then splashed the rest of it onto his face. Closing his eyes, he let his weight settle on his hands, braced on either side of the sink. He summoned back the scenes from his dream, climbing the muddy trail, breaking to the right, pushing through the brambles.

  Breaking right.

  Opening his eyes, he could barely make out his reflection in the window over the sink, more a shadow within the shadows than a mirror image. He couldn’t see any of his specific features: the shape of his head more like an apparition, the guy from his dream.

  The dream, coalescing into something tangible. A memory.

  He had it.

  62

  THERE WAS NO question what Abe should do.

  There was also no question that he wasn’t goi
ng to do it.

  What he had done: He had called Wes Farrell at his home at six-thirty A.M.; by seven-thirty, at the Hall of Justice, he had included Devin Juhle, along with Abby and Jambo, and he had shared all the information he had. He then gathered a number of relevant facts, for a change. Certain he wasn’t giving anything away, he’d spoken on another pretext with Hal first thing in the morning and followed up on what he’d learned from him. With all the resources at their disposal, Homicide could undoubtedly move the case along to its conclusion, or at least to an arrest, much more quickly and efficiently than he could. Abe knew that Abby and JaMorris had already gotten their first search warrant and that several others would be forthcoming before long.

  He was finished. He had done his work and should just butt out.

  He didn’t care.

  He had amends to make with these people, all of whom he had led down the primrose lane over the past weeks, pursuing a theory that turned out not to have been based on the facts.

  There was also his reputation.

  This time he wasn’t taking any chances. He still had some critical questions to which he’d much prefer to have answers before he dropped another theory in everyone’s laps. He was confident that he could get them.

  Alone.

  • • •

  THOUGH IT WAS now late morning, the fog clung as heavy as ever.

  Glitsky parked within a block of the address on Upper Ashbury. To his surprise—although he should have expected it—the house was not just beautiful but large and elegant: a dark brown two-story bungalow set a bit farther back from the street than most of its neighbors. Its surrounding shrubbery was well kept, perfectly trimmed. A colorful array of flowers trimmed the walkway up through the lawn. A brace of large ceramic urns graced the steps leading up to the wide wraparound porch. The front door was paneled glass.

  Glitsky stood in his heavy jacket on the welcome mat and took a breath. He carried two small tape recorders: one that would remain hidden in his jacket pocket and another that he would put out for the world to see.