Damage

by John Lescroart

  “Still,” Lewis said, “ten mil.”

  “It’s ten mil only if Ro skips, and that’s never going to happen. They just put up their house as a property bond, written before they left the building.”

  “So Farrell lied to you?”

  “At least he deliberately misled me. Also,” Jenkins went on, “Farrell’s leaving out that we’re talking a couple of years here before Ro gets his new trial. If even then.”

  “A couple of years?”

  “Who’s going to be pushing for it?” she asked. “Ro’s lawyers don’t want it, for obvious reasons. Farrell isn’t going to press since none of the victim’s family is around anymore. So this way, he can keep the Curtlees happy so they can write nice articles about him. That fucking Sheila Marrenas. Which leaves guess who as the only party interested in putting this scumbag back on trial within the decade? Well, maybe there are two of us.”

  “Who’s the other one?”

  “Glitsky. Perhaps.”

  “Well, if you’ve got to have an ally, you could do worse. Especially with his wife just outside Farrell’s office.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe.”

  Lewis reached a hand and rested it palm side up on the white tablecloth. After a moment of silence, Jenkins put her own hand on top of his. “Farrell doesn’t understand how bad they can be,” she said. “These guys, the Curtlees, not just Ro, although he is in a class by himself. They are truly evil. The thought of going up against them again, it scares the shit out of me. And might Glitsky, for that matter.”

  “Hey, you both already did it once.”

  “And barely survived.” At his skeptical look, she went on, “If that’s an exaggeration, it’s a small one. You know why I got yanked off trying homicides all those many years ago? Was it because I wasn’t good at them? No. It was because I succeeded with Ro. I put him down and his parents spent the next few years trying their damnedest to ruin my reputation. I drank too much. I slept around. I withheld evidence. In the end, Pratt had to send me down ‘for the good of the team.’ You probably read all about it.”

  Trying to lighten it up, Lewis asked, “That was you?”

  But Jenkins wasn’t laughing. “And Glitsky, too.”

  “Amanda, he’s head of homicide and used to be deputy chief. Nobody’s ruined his career.”

  “They came close. You know what he was doing before he got appointed deputy chief? This was after he had already been head of homicide. Give up? Payroll. Head of homicide to payroll. The trajectory there isn’t up.”

  “So what happened? How’d he get back?”

  “Frank Batiste became chief of police, that’s how. He and Glitsky go way back. But without Batiste, Glitsky was done. And he was done because the Curtlees, and Marrenas, never let up behind the scenes. I don’t think even he knows exactly how far they went. But he must have seen at least some of the articles. As head of homicide, Glitsky tolerated sloppy detective work; that was the real reason we had the worst conviction rate in the country. He routinely told his men to plant evidence, his guys kept and/or sold the dope they found serving their warrants. You name it. If it was bad, he did it. Oh, and my favorite, he actually took part in the ambush that killed Barry Gerson.” A previous head of homicide. “Glitsky maybe even killed him himself.”

  “Yeah, but nobody believed that.”

  “Still, the Courier printed it. And don’t kid yourself. People did believe it. People believe anything. Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We never landed on the moon.”

  “Well,” Lewis said, smiling again, “everybody knows those.”

  Jenkins blew out. “Well, you see what I’m saying. The Curtlees print whatever lies they find convenient, and some significant percentage of the lunatic fringe—which in this town is very large, as you know—believes it all. So I’m stuck down in crimes against women instead of homicide and Glitsky works ten years to get back to where he was when he arrested Ro all these many years ago.” She drank off what remained of her cranberry juice. “And so, thanks to Mr. Farrell and the Ninth Circuit, here we are back again with Glitsky and me the only ones trying to get Ro back to trial. I’ll tell you what, Matt, I don’t know if I’m going to have the guts to do it. I don’t know if the Curtlees won’t try to stop me physically. Or Ro himself might.”

  “They’ve never done anything like that before, have they?”

  “Hey, you don’t have to believe me. Maybe I’m paranoid. But I know what they’re capable of. And I’ll tell you something else.” She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “I almost hope they try something.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. You notice I’m carrying a larger purse? For the first time in my career, since Ro’s out, I am packing heat.”

  Amanda Jenkins did not know that she had another ally besides Abe Glitsky in her quest to get Ro Curtlee back behind bars.

  Sam Duncan was sitting at her kitchen table at about eight thirty when she heard the front door open and the sound of Farrell’s voice as he entered their house on the periphery of Buena Vista Park. He was talking to their dog, a yellow Labrador named Gert, in a gentle singsong voice that bore no resemblance to the way he talked most of the time. “I know it’s a long, long day, baby, but you’re doing so good. So, so, so good. That’s a good girl. That’s the best girl. Yes, okay, you’re my very favorite girl.”

  Man and dog got to the kitchen and Farrell stopped, straightening up. “Actually,” he whispered as Gert jumped across the room to greet Sam, “she’s my second favorite girl. But she gets jealous if I don’t tell her it’s her.” Following the dog, he leaned over and kissed Sam on the cheek. “You’re my very favorite.”

  No response.

  “Female,” Wes added. “Gert’s only three years old so I call her a girl, which seems appropriate, even if she is a dog, whereas you are a mature and lovely human woman whom I would never under any circumstances call a girl.”

  She looked up at him. “I can’t believe you let Ro Curtlee out on bail.”

  Farrell stopped halfway to shrugging out of his coat. “ ‘And you’re my favorite male,’ ” he said with a little lilt, meant to mimic Sam. “ ‘Human male, I mean. And how was your day, honey?’ ” He got the coat off and draped it over one of the kitchen chairs. “Actually,” he said, “I didn’t let Ro Curtlee out on bail. Judge Baretto did that.”

  “You were supposed to tell him not to.”

  “I did. My chief assistant made the argument. Maybe you didn’t get that memo.”

  “How could you not go down yourself and argue against bail? You’ve told me yourself Baretto was gutless. Why didn’t you pass the word that you’d challenge him off every criminal case for the rest of his life if he granted bail?”

  “How do you know I didn’t?”

  “Did you?”

  “No.” Farrell backed a step away. “Silly me. I thought that Baretto, being a superior court judge and all, might have reached his own conclusion about whether or not bail was appropriate. And it looks as though he did. Which, for the record, wasn’t the conclusion I wished he’d gotten to.”

  “But you could have stopped him. Or at least headed him off.”

  “Actually, probably not, Sam.”

  “But you don’t know for sure because you didn’t try.”

  Farrell stalled for a little time, pulling one of the kitchen chairs out, turning it around, and straddling it. “Listen, Sam. This thing started back with Sharron Pratt, who in her wisdom decided to charge Ro with rape and murder, but not rape in commission of a murder.” He held up a hand. “And I know, if he did one, he did the other. The charge made no sense, but that didn’t stop Pratt. What it did do was leave it up to the courts to decide on bail. The last judge, Thomasino, denied it. Good choice. Baretto, not so much. Now, could I have threatened him somehow? Yes, but it would have been unethical and he would have only resented the intrusion into what is properly his domain. And I’ve got to work with these guys, the judges, for the next f
our years. I thought it might be a good idea not to antagonize them in my first month.”

  “So now we’ve got a convicted rapist out on the streets?”

  “Sad to say, Sam, we’ve got a lot more than one. Rape’s a bailable offense, as we have seen. It sucks, but what am I going to do? I’m supposed to enforce the laws, not write ’em.”

  Sam fixed him with a flat, disgusted glare. “I don’t know how this whole district attorney thing with you is going to work out. You know that?”

  “I’m starting to get an idea,” Farrell replied.

  3

  Since they’d been kids, Janice and Kathy had worked harmoniously together in the kitchen. Today they were in Kathy’s home in Saint Francis Wood, which was quite a bit more upscale than Janice’s crowded three-bedroom stucco twenty blocks north, in the Avenues. But to hear the two women talking, gossiping, joking, occasionally breaking into song, only the keenest observer might sense that the disparity between their homes and kitchens was a little bit hard to bear for Janice.

  Janice Durbin was, after all, the elder by four years, the better educated, the harder working, the more beautiful. Nevertheless, Janice often had to stifle the pang of envy that would lance her heart when she found herself confronted anew, as she was today, by her sister’s material possessions—the newly redecorated island kitchen, the Tuscan tile work, the huge Sub-Zero refrigerator, the Viking stove, brushed stainless steel everywhere you looked.

  In her darker moments, much more frequent of late, Janice sometimes found herself wondering why Kathy had gotten all this, what she’d done to deserve it. Could it all be a matter of luck?

  And it wasn’t just the stuff. Although to be sure there was plenty of that—furnishings, clothes, jewelry. Beyond that, Kathy’s life was so smooth, so effortless, so serene. And why wouldn’t it be? She’d gotten it exactly right in making the single most important choice of her life—the man she had married. Chuck Novio, tenured professor of American history at San Francisco State University, was one of the most effortlessly gifted men Janice had ever met. Kathy had snagged him soon after he transferred here from back East. Whip-smart, tall, trim, athletic, and funny, he also possessed a calm strength and sensitivity that seemed to rub off on Kathy and on their well-behaved twelve-year-old twin daughters, Sara and Leslie.

  It was only because of this comparison that Janice sometimes let herself sink into self-pity that in turn primed the pump of her recurrent bouts of self-loathing. She knew about these things, about how they worked—after all, she was a psychiatrist. In reality, in real life, she was not any kind of a loser herself—she knew that. And neither were her husband, Michael, or any of their own three children, Jon, Peter, and Allie. It’s just that Michael ran his own business, a UPS franchise on Union Street, and the stress of that took its continual toll, making him sometimes seem much older than his forty-one years. And add to that, the kids were all in high school now at the same time. Three teenagers in the home did not generally equate to much serenity.

  Janice stood in front of the sink with the cold water running over her hands and into the colander of peeled potatoes. Through the window, Chuck and Michael and the boys were playing touch football in the late-afternoon sunlight. She went still and sighed.

  “Janice? Is everything all right?”

  “Fine,” she told her sister. “Everything’s fine. Just looking at them playing out there. They grow up so fast, the boys, don’t they?”

  “That’s funny.” Kathy came over and stood next to her. “You see your sons growing up and I see our husbands staying young, still boys themselves in a lot of ways.”

  “That’s probably a healthier way to look at it.”

  “I don’t know about healthier. It’s just how I see it.”

  “It’s healthier, trust me.” She turned off the running water and put her hands on either side of the sink, leaning her weight into them.

  Kathy touched her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Janice shook her head. “It’s just been a long week.” Now she straightened up. “I’m sorry. I’m just so glad we’re here, getting this break out of our house. And Sunday night dinner is always great. I don’t mean to be a downer.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly Pollyanna, either.” She glanced outside again. “I should be happy Michael’s even out there with Chuck and the boys at all. This whole past week it’s almost like he’s been paralyzed. And in our house, with everybody on top of one another, moods tend to pile on up. So everybody’s been a little snappy.” She broke a brittle laugh. “Did I say a little snappy? I mean I know why it’s smart we don’t keep guns in the house.”

  “Janice. Come on.”

  “Well, not really, of course.” Janice dried her hands on a dish towel, then handed it to her sister. Crossing over to the island, she pulled out a stool for Kathy, then sat on one herself. “But let’s just say it’s good for us all to be here and out from under each other’s feet for a few hours.”

  “What’s Michael been paralyzed about? Work?”

  “No. Work’s been good. Christmas was way better than anybody predicted. Crazy busy but good.”

  “So. What? Not you guys?”

  “Well.” Janice paused. “We’ve been better, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s that, either. Does the name Ro Curtlee ring a bell?”

  Kathy scrunched her face in concentration for a second. “No. I don’t think so. Who is he?”

  “Remember the jury Michael was on, like, ten years ago?”

  “Vaguely. Although ten years ago I had two-year-olds and everything was pretty much a blur. Michael was the jury foreman or something, right?”

  “Right. And they found Ro guilty and sent him away.”

  “Good. Right. I remember now. But then his parents came after you, something like that.”

  “Exactly like that.” The memory was still all too clear to Janice Durbin: When the newspapers did interviews with the other jurors after the trial, it came out that Michael had played a prominent role in getting the guilty verdict. The jury had started out at only 50 percent for conviction, but Michael kept at them in the deliberations and finally got the other six to go along with him and vote guilty.

  When the Curtlees realized this, they set out to destroy her husband, and nearly succeeded. At the time, he’d worked for one of the city’s big law firms as a word processing supervisor, a daytime job that left him time for his painting. The Curtlees had connections with the people he worked for and Durbin got accused of a lot of mischief—stealing supplies from the storeroom, using the firm’s computers for his own work—until he got fired. He received no severance after seven years of employment and was told he was lucky they weren’t prosecuting him criminally.

  Finally, after a Courier article on Durbin the hypocrite vigilante and now thief who’d railroaded Ro Curtlee into jail, he found himself blackballed in the legal firms and couldn’t get work for almost a year. Couldn’t find the heart to get back to his painting.

  Janice sighed. “I think having to abandon the painting was the hardest thing.”

  “That was a bad time,” Kathy said. “I’d almost forgotten all about it. And his painting.”

  “Well, Michael hasn’t. He’s never really come to grips with having to quit that.”

  “Three kids,” Kathy said.

  “I know. But still . . .” Her mouth tightened at the memory. “It’s a miracle he eventually got the UPS franchise, somehow under the Curtlees’ radar. At least we thought they were more or less forever out of our lives.”

  “They’re not?”

  “They might be. We hope so. But maybe not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because last week some idiot judges let Ro out of prison on appeal, and another moron of a judge here in town gave him bail while he’s waiting for a retrial, and now he’s out. Ro, the convicted murderer, walking around free as a bird. And Michael’s thinking it’s all going to start again, that everything h
e went through, everything we went through, was all just in vain. And the idea, as I said, just paralyzes him. If Ro’s out again, then Michael’s stand with the jury basically made no difference. It was all just a big cosmic joke.”

  Out in the street, Michael Durbin took the hike from his younger boy, Peter.

  When they’d been choosing up sides, Durbin had almost as a matter of course chosen Peter to be his teammate against Uncle Chuck and Jon. Both boys were athletic, but Jon had an indefinable special something as well as—much as he tried to deny and even hide it—a special place in Durbin’s heart. Though he loved both of his sons and tried to treat them exactly equally, Durbin and his firstborn shared a natural simpatico and deep connection that Durbin knew might prove hurtful to his very sensitive younger son if he let down his guard and inadvertently revealed his instinctual favoritism.

  It was a lifelong struggle.

  So whenever he got the chance—as here choosing who would be his teammate—Durbin leaned over backward to pick his younger son over his older. He knew that Jon intuitively understood why Durbin did this, why he almost always appeared to favor Peter. The insecure younger boy needed the overt signs, the trappings of his father’s love and approval. Jon did not. It wasn’t something he and his dad had to talk about. They simply “got” each other.

  Now Durbin faded to his left with the football as his brother-in-law, Chuck, started counting to five at the scrimmage line and Peter raced down the street, cutting first right, then left, trying to shake his brother Jon’s coverage. When Durbin saw Peter cut back again, gaining a step on Jon, he threw a high arching spiral that led his younger boy perfectly.

  Or almost perfectly.

  Jon jumped and with a cry of jubilation came down with the ball. Putting a move on Peter, he shook him and then sprinted up the street, yelling for Chuck to “block him, block him, block him,” meaning Durbin.

  But Durbin feinted right, left, right again and broke around Chuck, then got enough in front of Jon to slow him down a step, which in turn allowed Peter to come up from behind Jon and get him just as Durbin reached him, too. Even though they were playing touch football, Durbin threw his arms around his beloved son and held him in a hug for a full second, maybe two.