Damage

by John Lescroart

  “That was fast.”

  “You still at the fire?”

  “Just getting started, really. Your crime scene just left. I’ll be here all night.”

  “So has anybody put together who Nuñez was?”

  “No. Other than she’s dead.”

  “She was also a witness in a murder trial and was going to be one again before too long for the same guy.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Ro Curtlee.”

  “The guy Farrell let out on bail?”

  “Actually it was Baretto, but yeah, him.”

  “Shit. And he went and killed her.”

  “That’s my bet.”

  A long sigh. Then, “Why do they let these fuckers out anyway?”

  “That’s a great question, Arnie. Something to do with justice and the right to appeal. Ask your congressman or somebody.”

  “Assholes.”

  “Yeah, well, the point is he might have been driving a purple BMW Z-Four convertible and parked it somewhere nearby when he went upstairs. Somebody might have seen it. Also, I’m making up a six-pack you can show around the neighborhood tomorrow. Anybody saw him, we at least take him down here and grill him, maybe even get a warrant to take his house apart. You get anything at all down there?”

  “Maybe.” Becker paused. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but there might be a small something.”

  “Go ahead, get my hopes up,” Glitsky said. “Small is good.”

  Again, Becker hesitated. “Well, it might not be conclusive, and I don’t know what it means, if anything, but there were two almost identical burned-up pieces of what looks like rubber or plastic—I’ll know by tomorrow—down by her feet.”

  Glitsky’s heart did a little flip in his chest. He’d already had one heart attack several years before, and though this didn’t feel the same at all, now he moved his hand over his chest and sucked in a quick breath. “She was wearing her shoes when he killed her,” he said. It was not a question.

  “That’s what it looks like. Maybe. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Glitsky still was finding it difficult to draw a breath. “That’s what Ro Curtlee did to his rape victims. He made sure they kept their shoes on.”

  “Why?”

  “God only knows, Arnie. Why anything?”

  “Sorry about the time, Wes, but I wanted you to know first. I say they verify the shoes, we get a warrant.”

  Farrell breathed into the mouthpiece on his end. “Can’t do it, Abe. We don’t even know it was Nuñez, for Christ’s sake. And we may never know for sure whether or not it’s her if she never went to a dentist in this country, which I hear is a reasonable likelihood. And without at least that ID, we’ve truly got nothing a jury could even chew on. Did any of that shoe stuff get admitted in his last trial?”

  “I don’t know, Wes, but you can find out easy enough. Meanwhile, though, I went and talked to these women before they got bought off, his rape victims, all of them. They all said the same thing about the shoes. It’s what he did.”

  “I believe you. But he didn’t kill any of them, the others, did he?”

  “He killed one. He beat up three.”

  “Okay, but the dead one, Sandoval, she was outside, found in the park, am I right?” He kept going over Glitsky’s silence. “So, my point is, he didn’t burn anybody. Not ever. That’s new, right? It’s not his old MO, so where’s the argument that this has to be him?”

  “I know it’s him. Somebody in prison told him it was a good idea when you rape somebody and kill her, then you burn up the place and the evidence with it.”

  “Which is why, what you got from Becker earlier, we’re not even going to get proof that this Nuñez woman was sexually molested, are we?”

  “Not likely, no.”

  “Okay, so we’ve got nothing putting Ro in her apartment, no witnesses . . .”

  “So far.”

  “All right, so far. But still. Then no proof of a sexual attack. So we’ve got a woman who died in a fire. We don’t even know cause of death yet, do we? I mean, was she strangled, shot, stabbed? Tell me.”

  “We might not get that either, Wes. She’s burned up pretty bad.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, Abe. She might ... or no, the evidence might not prove a damn thing. She might have been carrying a candle on her way to the bath and had a heart attack and fell down and it set her and then the place on fire.”

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “I don’t think so, either. For the record, I think you’re probably right. But probably isn’t close to what we need and you know it.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Abe. Hope he screws up.”

  “You mean while he’s killing his next victim?”

  “No,” Farrell said. “Before that.”

  7

  Farrell thought that the furnishing of his office was coming along pretty well. It was a large area that didn’t remotely resemble the workspace of his predecessor and never would. That’s what happens when you replace extremely high-end conservative furnishings for your basic Goodwill/garage-sale style.

  Farrell had long eschewed the tyranny of the desk in the middle of the room and preferred a foosball table with room to play cleared all around it. Up by the door and then again behind the foosball table were two seating areas, both of them anchored by a sofa in front of a coffee table, with armchairs facing the couch at the corners. One area was leather and chrome; the other fabric and wood.

  His “working” desk was in fact a blond library table against the Bryant Street windows, with a computer, printer, phone, and fax machine covering its entire surface. Another table against the long wall featured a fifty-two-inch television set, with folding chairs arranged in front of it. These could, of course, also be moved to augment the seating around either of the couches. The finishing touch, on the shelf underneath his Nerf ball basket and law books, was a bar of sorts with a Jura espresso machine, cups and glasses, utensils, a wicker basket filled with sweeteners, and half a wall of spirits of varying quality.

  Now, at ten forty-five on the Saturday morning after Felicia Nuñez had died, Farrell sat on one end of the leather sofa. Across from him, Amanda Jenkins and Abe Glitsky filled the corner chairs. “So I’m at a loss,” Farrell was saying. “On the one hand, I agree with both of you. I think it’s likely that Ro killed the Nuñez woman. On the other, we’re stuck with probable cause. I don’t really see a way out of that, and don’t believe either of you want to go that route, either.”

  “I’d consider it,” Glitsky said.

  Farrell shrugged that off and continued, “But the main thing is that I can’t have either of you thinking you don’t have my support, because you do. I’ll be happy to entertain any concrete suggestions from either of you, which is why I called you both down here, but I can’t just pull the guy in off the street for no reason.”

  Jenkins, sitting back with her legs crossed, said, “Yeah, you can. He gets pulled over and appears to be drunk. He’s acting suspicious in a high narcotics neighborhood, he spits on the sidewalk, we haul him in. Any cop worth his or her salt can find ten reasons to arrest anybody they need to before breakfast. Isn’t that right, Abe?”

  “Generally.”

  “Generally is good.” She nodded at Glitsky and came back to Farrell. “But specifically, Wes, Matt says he’ll go out and bring Ro in on anything we decide on anytime you want. Anything. Anytime. We’ve talked about it.”

  “I’m glad for you. But who’s Matt?”

  Jenkins just barely did not roll her eyes. “Matt Lewis,” she said with exaggerated patience. “One of our DA inspectors. Not to mention my long-standing boyfriend, not that that’s important.”

  Farrell looked chagrined. “I guess the politician in me should have remembered that,” he said. “Or known it in the first place. But I’m just naturally hopeless at that stuff. I can’t help it. Matt Lewis. I’ll remember from now on.” Then, with a
smile, “What’s he look like?”

  “Clark Kent,” Jenkins deadpanned, “without the glasses. But the point is he’ll bring Ro in on any charge we want and there you go.”

  “No, there we don’t go.” Farrell was shaking his head back and forth. “Guys, so we hold him ten minutes and look stupid in the process. Besides which, we’d get crucified in the press. But that’s not the point either. Bottom line, we don’t do that. It’s not happening. End of discussion. You’re going to need . . . no, we’re going to need a real offense.”

  “Murder ought to do it,” Glitsky said.

  Farrell sighed. “Get me any evidence, and it’s done, Abe. I promise.”

  Glitsky looked over at Jenkins and she took the lead. “Wes, hear me out, okay? This is where you’ve got discretion. You can make this call on your own.”

  Farrell suddenly showed his fatigue, bringing his hand up to his head and rubbing his eyes before he pressed his fingers to his temple. In fact, feeling more than a degree of responsibility for Felicia Nuñez’s murder, he hadn’t slept much after Glitsky’s call the night before. “How do I do that, Amanda? Make that call?” he asked.

  “You have Abe bring him in on the Nuñez murder. That’s not harassment. That’s a real charge that (a) he’s guilty of, and (b) a vast percentage of the public will buy.”

  “Yes, maybe, but . . .”

  “No ‘buts.’ Listen. You’re worried because in the normal course of events, there’s nowhere near enough to bring him to trial. Right?”

  “Try nothing.”

  “Well, not exactly nothing. But even so . . . so what? That’s not the point.”

  “It’s not. Then what is?”

  “The point is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got enough to get him on Nuñez. You’re never going to have to get to Nuñez. At least we’ve got him upstairs behind bars while his lawyers gear up for the retrial, however long that is. Meanwhile, Ro’s off the street and nobody else gets killed.”

  Farrell slumped, sitting back, and let his head rest on the cushion behind him. He sighed again. “Did I actually expend energy to get elected to this job?” he asked. “And can either of you tell me why if I did?” Then, abruptly he sat up. “It’s a lovely idea, Amanda, but we’ve got this old-fashioned notion called probable cause, without which Mr. Curtlee’s out again in forty-eight hours, and P.S., Lieutenant Glitsky here gets sued for false arrest.”

  “I think we’ve got probable cause,” Jenkins said.

  Farrell gave her the bad eye. “All right, let’s be wildly imaginative and say you do. Next up, as you know, is a preliminary hearing. Maybe you’ve heard of it? A guy gets arrested, charged by this office, makes it over the probable-cause hurdle, then there’s a hearing in ten days to look at the evidence. If it’s not there, he walks.”

  “Wes, come on.” Jenkins came forward in her chair. “How many PXs”—preliminary hearings—“have you seen where they let the guy go? Zero, am I right? Maybe one in a decade. It never happens. Standard of proof is again only probable cause, ‘a strong suspicion . . .’ ”

  Farrell patiently held up a hand. “Please, spare me. I know the law. The law reads that probable cause is defined as ‘a strong suspicion in the mind of a reasonable person that the offense was committed and that the defendant committed it.’ ”

  “So, think about it,” Jenkins continued. “We’ve got Ro’s past conviction, the connection to Nuñez, the threat of Nuñez coming up at his retrial, the shoes . . . my point, though, is that any reasonable person—which includes most of our judges—is going to strongly suspect Ro did Nuñez, and that’s all we need. It’s a simple call, Wes, and it’s all yours.”

  “It’s an unacceptable risk,” Farrell said.

  “It’s a small risk,” Jenkins countered. “Insignificant. Less than crossing the street. But if it’s beyond your comfort level, you’ve still got the grand jury.”

  Farrell knew that this was true, and in fact had already contemplated it, though it, too, of course, had risk associated with it. If he went and sold his weak case and got a grand jury indictment on Ro in the Nuñez murder, then he could avoid the possible pitfall of a preliminary hearing. A grand jury indictment obviated the need for a preliminary hearing; by itself, it was authority enough to bind a defendant over to trial. But if Farrell went that way, Ro’s attorneys, as was their right, would demand the trial begin within sixty days, and there would be no continuance. Farrell could ask the court to join the cases for trial, but the way things were going with Baretto, that motion might well be denied. Under those circumstances—that is, if Wes prosecuted Ro for the Nuñez murder only—a San Francisco jury would never convict him. He’d be freed again. Within two or three months. Making his retrial for the rape and murder of Sandoval—already hugely problematic—logarithmically more difficult.

  “But the grand jury,” Glitsky said, “you’re still looking at ten days, two weeks before they could even get to the indictment. Ro could do a lot of damage in that time.”

  “Which is why our vote’s for an arrest and indict before the prelim,” Jenkins said. “Short and sweet. Take him out.”

  When the meeting broke up, Glitsky went back upstairs to his office with a couple of ideas rattling around in his brain, both of them having to do with Arnie Becker. He wanted the identification of the murder victim to be rock solid and also to be accomplished as soon as possible. If the dead person was not, in fact, Felicia Nuñez, then the theory that Jenkins and he were betting on would not fly—there had to be an immediate connection to Ro Curtlee, and they had to establish it quickly. Possible dental records were okay, but Glitsky knew that he could wait a very long time for dental records, to say nothing of the fact that finding the victim’s dentist so that they even had a chance at a comparison might be flatly impossible. So they’d have to try to find another way to identify her.

  But when he reached Becker—the man apparently didn’t need to sleep—the arson inspector was at least a step ahead of him. The identification of the victims of fires was one of the inspector’s most critical tasks. And over the years, Becker had picked up more than a few tricks. “It’s her all right,” he said. “Nuñez. When she cooked, her hands closed up into fists like they do. You noticed that, I’m sure.”

  “Sure,” Glitsky lied.

  “So I had the morgue pry ’em open, and as I’d hoped, we got four just-about-perfect fingerprints, two on each hand. So I had’em run them in the INS database . . .”

  “On a Saturday morning?”

  “I got a pal I called in records. So anyway, he loads in the prints and, bingo, up pops Felicia Nuñez.”

  “You ever want a job in homicide,” Glitsky said, “just give me a call.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind, thanks. But I’m happy where I am.”

  “I can see that. Getting to sleep in on the weekends and all like you do.”

  “Sleep’s overrated,” Becker said. “You said there were two things?”

  “The shoes. Or maybe the shoes.”

  “What about ’em?”

  “Do we know that the rubber or plastic near her feet came from her shoes?”

  “Oh yeah. When you told me last night they might be important, I brought ’em home to my own lab and checked ’em out this morning. They’re the soles from an Adidas tennis shoe, the Honey Low, retails around fifty-five bucks. Size seven, by the way. The top burned away completely.”

  The fire scene was on Farrell’s way driving back home from work.

  He passed by once without really seeing it, although the yellow police tape must have stuck somewhere in his preoccupied brain, because half a block beyond the apartment building, the location registered. He checked his rearview in a double take, hung a U-turn at the next intersection, and drove back down, parking across the street in a space cleared by the tape.

  Glitsky and Jenkins had kept at him for nearly an hour, until in the end he had run out of arguments. Which was not to say he’d made any decision, other than to go home
for the afternoon and lie around the house in comfortable clothes before he had to go out this evening and give yet another speech somewhere about something important. Maybe even get in a little sack time with his girlfriend—stranger things had happened.

  Now, at a few minutes past noon, the weather had turned foul with a gusty wind blowing around a gauzy drizzle that might as well have been rain. Farrell rolled his window down and looked at the shattered glass in what used to be the windows of the upper left-hand apartment.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t get the place to speak to him.

  He didn’t go to crime scenes. He was a lifelong defense attorney, and that was a job for the police and the prosecution.

  And yet here he was, a prosecutor and top law enforcement person in the city of San Francisco. The job was bunching at him from every direction like an ill-fitting suit.

  Although before he’d actually run for DA, he had been notorious for his oft-stated belief that all defendants were factually guilty of whatever crime they’d been charged with, his professional life had always been about getting these people off. Or more commonly getting them a plea bargain they could accept. In the working defense attorney’s world, the objective rarely was to get your client off. Mostly you tried to reduce a charge or a sentence or a bail. Because it happened so infrequently, if at all, no one gave much thought to the idea that a client might actually be innocent.

  So the fact that Ro Curtlee probably killed this Nuñez woman didn’t make the impression it might have on Farrell. He’d worked with murderers before as clients. He would probably draw the line at saying that they were nice people in general, but he’d formed a sort of attachment with several of them based on their common humanity. They often had relatives they cared about—mothers, girlfriends, children. They sometimes felt bad about why they’d done what they did. They were not all irredeemable souls.

  So the tectonic plate of Farrell’s natural-born inclination and culture was slamming up against that of Glitsky and Jenkins. Talking with them this morning, trying to be accommodating and receptive to their arguments, he could not help but be aware of the Everest looming between them.