Damage

by John Lescroart

  Durbin stopped mid-drink and set his glass down. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why does that possibly matter now?”

  “Why would it matter any less than two days ago?”

  “Because two days ago we didn’t know that Ro had killed Janice. Now we do, so what difference does it make if things had been a little difficult lately?”

  Glitsky framed his answer carefully. “Just because Ro had a reason to kill Janice doesn’t mean that he did, or someone else did not. We don’t know that Ro did.”

  Durbin’s voice got loud. “The hell we don’t. What the hell more do you need?”

  Keeping his calm, Glitsky replied. “We need evidence, sir. Fingerprints, DNA, somebody seeing him at your house. Something a jury will need to convict.”

  “So go look around him to find your evidence. You’re not going to find it sniffing around whatever problems my wife and I might have been having.”

  Glitsky, somewhat taken aback, slowed himself down before he replied. “I get to ask the questions here, sir. If you don’t want to answer them, that’s fine. But we’ll have the answers sooner or later.”

  “Are you seriously telling me I’m a suspect here?”

  “I don’t have a suspect yet. I’m looking for one.”

  Durbin slammed his fist on the desk. “You got one, for Christ’s sake. You need a map? Can I draw you a picture? It’s Ro Curtlee.”

  Glitsky took a beat. “Was it you who was having an affair?”

  Durbin shook his head. “Jesus Christ! I don’t believe this.” He paused. “Should I be getting myself a lawyer?”

  “That’s your absolute right, if you feel you need one.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  “No, sir. It’s a murder investigation.” Glitsky sat back, his mouth set in a thin line. “And for the record, you should know that I’m not a fan of that kind of language. So we can either be civil with each other or not. Again, it’s your choice. I’m trying to find out everything I can about your wife so I’ll have a better idea of where to look if I’m going to locate her killer. Do you want to help me or not?”

  “Of course. In fact, I’ve given him to you.”

  “And I’ll be looking into that, I promise. In the meantime, you’re here and I need to know who your wife might have been seeing. Or who you were.”

  Slumping back, Durbin sucked in a lungful of air. Brooding for another moment, at last he said, “I wasn’t having an affair. With her, I’d bet one of her patients.”

  “Do you have any idea how long this might have been going on?”

  “I don’t know anything about it, except just the bare fact, and maybe not even that. We hadn’t been ... intimate . . . for a couple of months. At least a couple of months, though I wasn’t keeping track. A long time, I’ll say that. But I don’t want you thinking I didn’t love her anymore, because I did. I do. I was sure we’d come out of it.”

  “So you never called her on it? Confronted her directly?”

  “No.”

  “Not on last Friday, either?”

  “No. Not then. Not ever.” He suddenly reached for the glass in front of him and drank deeply from it. “You ever go through a bad time with your wife, Lieutenant? Sometimes you just wait it out, you hope something gives.”

  “Of course.” Glitsky had no intention of discussing anything about his marriage with Michael Durbin, or anyone else for that matter. “Would you happen to have a list of her patients?” he asked.

  “No. They’d be at her office, over by Stonestown.” Durbin gave him the exact address and suite number. “If you can get at ’em. She was super-protective about her records. Patient/doctor privilege, you know.”

  “I’ve heard of it. Is there anything else you can think of that you might want to tell me about?”

  18

  The way it worked with Eztli was that nearly every day he got most of the day off. He had no regular duties down at the Castro Street offices of the Courier, where Cliff and Theresa spent most of their time during daylight hours. Back home, Eztli was in charge of the general upkeep of the house, though, supervising the cleaning, kitchen, and gardening staff, coordinating visits from repair-men and deliveries. He was a very efficient manager, and these duties, even at their most onerous, would rarely keep him occupied until noon, after which his afternoon time was his own. When he wasn’t out on special projects, the Curtlees expected him to be home and dressed in his business suit to greet visitors and to serve as a generally unobtrusive bodyguard and butler.

  He had a license to carry a firearm, courtesy of a sheriff from a small county in the Central Valley, so when he was dressed up in the house, he packed an ugly black semiautomatic under his arm in a shoulder holster. Sometimes he also wore it when he was outside. He had not shot anyone since a few months before he’d come to the United States.

  Today, since Eztli was out with Ro and had already learned that anything might happen—he really liked the vibe around this kid—his gun rested snug up under the arm of his black Oakland Raiders jacket. Eztli had both dropped and then picked up Ro at Tadich Grill and now he pulled the 4Runner out into traffic with his passenger back aboard and said, “Somebody joined in with us. Waited with me in the garage the whole time.” When Ro turned around, Eztli said, “The white Honda, looks like an Accord. White guy, tie, no coat, half bald ...”

  “Got him,” Ro said, and came back around facing front. “You know him?”

  “Never seen him before.”

  “So. One of Glitsky’s plainclothes guys.”

  “Got to be.”

  “All right.”

  They drove a few blocks farther west until just short of Polk, Ro told Eztli to pull over into the next parking spot he saw and keep the car running. When he did, the white Honda, which had been following about three cars behind them, cruised on by, the driver apparently whistling to the radio, eyes straight ahead.

  “Guy’s going for the Academy Award,” Eztli said. “Now what?”

  “Now he’s going to turn to go around the block and catch us again, so let’s get on his ass instead.”

  Eztli pulled out in a squeal of rubber, then at the corner and against the light cut in front of a bus coming up Polk Street and fell in behind the white Honda just in time to see it turn right again at the next corner. Eztli didn’t need any instructions—accelerating up the block, he almost went onto two wheels as he turned steeply uphill and had gained half his ground by the time the Honda turned right again at the next corner.

  This time, as Eztli got within sight, they saw that the Honda had done their old trick of pulling off to the side and coming to a halt.

  “Block him off,” Ro said, and Eztli pulled a hard right into the driveway just in front of the Honda. Before their 4Runner had even come to a complete stop, Ro was out onto the street, the middle finger of his uncasted hand extended. “Hey!” he yelled, all the while flipping off the man who’d been tailing him. “Hey!” Coming right up to the window, now. “You want to get off my ass? What the hell are you doing?”

  The window came down and the man, not at all impressed with Ro’s outburst, held his wallet up with his left hand, flashing his badge. In his right, he held a gun that was pointed directly at Ro’s face.

  “And who the fuck are you?” Ro asked. “I’ve about had it with you guys, you know that?”

  Seeing Eztli coming up, too, hands in the pockets of his Raiders jacket, the man held the badge up farther so that Eztli could see it, too. So there would be no misunderstanding. “I’m an inspector with the DA’s office, and I’m here to make sure you two boys don’t get yourselves into any more trouble.”

  “Well, I’m here to tell you to stay the fuck out of my life. I’ve got my rights here. I can go where I want and do what I want. You hear me?”

  Eztli put a restraining hand on Ro’s arm and leaned down. “Did Wes Farrell put you on this?” he asked quietly.

  “We have other DAs,” Matt Lewis said. “I take assignments from many of t
hem. Now get back in your car and move along.”

  “Fucking Jenkins,” Ro said to no one, then to Eztli, “Got to be Jenkins.”

  “She’s an extraordinarily determined woman, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, and those legs go all the way up, I bet. I’d like to get myself some of that, wouldn’t you, Ez?”

  “I would not turn it down.”

  “I’m telling you exactly once more, move along.”

  “Ooh,” Ro said, leaning in toward the car. “I’m thinking maybe we hit a nerve here, Ez. Maybe the man here’s already had some of that.”

  Matt Lewis raised his gun hand a little higher.

  Ro, eyes on the gun, began to step back, but Eztli was right behind him, solid as a wall. “So Farrell didn’t assign you,” Eztli said. He did not retreat one single step. “Nice wheels, by the way. Is that the Accord?”

  By way of answer, Lewis pointed the gun at him and said, “One.”

  Eztli kept his calm. “The officer wants us to back up, Ro,” he said.

  “I hear him.”

  “Then by all means let us comply.” He backed up and pulled Ro along with him, talking easily as they walked back to the 4Runner, “The city doesn’t use Hondas as city vehicles, so how does he stay in touch without a radio?”

  “His cell?” Ro replied.

  “Not when he’s driving,” Eztli said. “That would be against the law.” He went around the bumper of the 4Runner, opened his driver door, got in, and started the engine.

  Matt Lewis, shaking from adrenaline, put his Glock back into its holster. He turned on the ignition and waited for the 4Runner to back out and drive away.

  As they turned back west onto California Street, Ro asked, “What was all that about his car? The Honda?”

  Eztli glanced at the rearview mirror. “What’s he doing now?”

  Ro turned around to look. Lewis was right behind them. “Just driving.”

  “No phone?”

  “No. Unless he’s on speaker.”

  “Does he appear to be talking?”

  “No.”

  “I’m thinking not. No Bluetooth on that model. It’s too old.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s his own car. He doesn’t have a radio. He’s not using the phone.”

  “Right.”

  “So no one knows where he is or what he’s doing.”

  “Somebody knows he’s assigned to tail us.”

  “How do they know we didn’t shake him?”

  “Okay, but again, so what?”

  “So you’ll see.”

  They rolled across Van Ness, Franklin, Gough, Eztli’s eyes flitting back and forth between his rearview mirror and the road ahead. As they approached Fillmore, he suddenly flicked on his signal and pulled over into the left-turn lane.

  “Where’re we goin’?” Ro asked.

  “Just taking a little detour. Too much traffic up here.”

  Heading south now, they stayed on Fillmore as it morphed in only a few blocks from a well-traveled, high-end shopping street to a nearly empty thoroughfare through one of the city’s ghettos. Eztli, already driving slowly, slowed further at each corner while he checked the traffic on the cross streets. Turk Street was deserted in both directions, and he suddenly turned right, continued about halfway down the block, then pulled over and came to a stop.

  “What now?” Ro asked.

  “I’m tired of this guy. You tired of this guy?”

  “I’m tired of all of ’em.”

  “Okay, then. You see anybody?”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  Ro spun around, checked the sidewalks, the street itself. “No.”

  Eztli nodded. “Me, neither.”

  Behind them, Matt Lewis had pulled over as well and put the car into park, but he hadn’t quite decided what he was going to do. There was no point in following these clowns all over the city so long as they knew he was following them. Amanda’s original idea, sprung on her own initiative, had been to see if they would lead him back to any of their suspected crime scenes or to her missing witness, Gonzalvez. Or, failing that, to someplace where they simply did something else illegal, and then he could call in the troops and arrest them again. They both had figured, given who these guys were, it wouldn’t take too long.

  But now when Matt Lewis looked up, he saw Eztli coming again around the back of his car. Impatient now with the absurdity of this situation, he’d just about decided to drive around them and come back another day. But now here came the Aztec in his Raiders jacket, looking like he had something to say. So Lewis lowered his window and leaned his head outside. “What now?”

  Eztli was almost up to him, his face placid, even apologetic. “Oh,” he said. “Nothing much. I just forgot ...” With no further warning, he brought his gun around from where he’d been holding it out of sight, and in one fluid movement pressed it up close to Matt Lewis’s head and pulled the trigger.

  19

  Dismas Hardy’s suggestion to have the grand jury indict Ro Curtlee on a no-bail multiple-murder charge had grown on Farrell all day as he prowled the offices on the third floor of the Hall of Justice, taking the pulse of his staff.

  When he’d started on his rounds, he still didn’t quite trust that he was contemplating the right decision. Indeed, when he’d first heard about the Nuñez killing, he’d considered and rejected the grand jury solution for what he thought had been sound reasons: that he’d only have sixty days to bring Ro to a trial that would probably not convict him; that his acquittal on that charge would make it much more difficult to bring him back to a retrial in his initial case; that in any case, he’d be out on bail again in another couple of months. He could have asked the court to join the cases for trial, but he couldn’t count on having that motion granted. And if the cases had been kept separate, it would have been a train wreck.

  But that was before Janice Durbin.

  With that murder, Farrell’s personal priorities had evolved. He’d finally come to believe that keeping Ro behind bars was a valid end in itself, for no matter how long a time. If he could get the grand jury to indict, he’d take sixty days as a good start and work on getting more jail time from there—try to move up the retrial date, work on Baretto and Donahoe to revisit their bail decisions, whatever it took.

  The lawyers on his staff were generally a bunch of hard-core prosecutors, and the events of the past few days, particularly Ro’s bail hearing, had cut into the team’s morale in a big way. Now Farrell’s suggestion that he circumvent the judges’ rulings met only with untainted enthusiasm. Finally he was the boss and acting like it.

  Taking charge.

  Not one of Farrell’s assistant district attorneys had any doubt about Ro’s guilt, both originally on the rape and murder charges at his trial, and then with the two latest victims—Felicia Nuñez and Janice Durbin—and all of them seemed to believe that the grand jury idea was legal and liable to conclude with Ro sitting in a jail cell where he belonged.

  Now, closing in on five o’clock, having made his decision, Farrell called his own task force together. If he was going to go to the grand jury, he needed to know everything relevant that anyone could give him on Ro Curtlee. His office continued to be logistically challenged, however, and so he had his invitees seated willynilly, Medical Examiner John Strout and Police Chief Vi Lapeer on the couch, Arson Inspector Arnie Becker on an ottoman, Glitsky and Amanda Jenkins on a couple of folding chairs brought in from Treya’s office.

  Farrell himself sat on the sturdy oak library table. After he asked them to turn off their cell phones and then thanked everyone for coming at his summons, he got down to it. “I think it’s pretty clear with this Durbin homicide that Ro’s taking this time out of jail as an opportunity to pay back some of the people who helped put him away in the first place.

  “Abe and Amanda, I know you’ve both argued that same thing right from the start, and I want to apologize to both of you for not making a stronger case against
bail in the first place. You were both right. I was wrong.

  “And for the record, Abe, your instincts were also right about trying to arrest him for the threat against you. Even if you’d waited and gotten a warrant, I believe Her Honor Erin Donahoe would have done what she did, bail-wise. So now the situation really couldn’t be clearer—if we’re going to override these bail decisions, and we must—we’ve got to get him indicted, and I mean yesterday, for no-bail murder.

  “So”—he spread his palms, supplicating—“I need you all to help me. I know we’ve got the shoes on both victims, we’ve got the connections and motivations related to his trial, the fire in both cases. None of which, I’m sorry to say, rises to the level of convincing evidence. It might work for the grand jury if I tap-dance enough around the related motives, but it would be nice to have something else in the line of evidence since we’re going to get huge media on this, and I’m predicting they’re not going to give us a pass just ’cause we’re the good guys.”

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  Glitsky looked at Becker, over to Amanda, back to Farrell. “That’s all we’ve got, Wes. Except they were all strangled and naked except for the shoes. But that’s not enough evidence, either.”

  All of the people in the room knew the extent to which the grand jury was a prosecutor’s tool. There was no judge at the proceedings and no defense attorneys allowed to refute or even argue against any of the DA’s assertions. Still, although the standard of proof was low, it was in theory nevertheless based on evidence. And so far they didn’t have much.

  “How about witnesses?” Farrell asked. “Arnie?”

  “On Nuñez, we have two people over on Baker who saw a car like Ro’s around the corner. Probably the same car. And no, they didn’t catch or notice the license number, and nobody saw him get in or out of it. Otherwise, pretty much zero.”

  “How about the same car at the Durbin site?”

  Becker shook his head. “Not yet. Still canvassing, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  Farrell let out a disappointed sigh. “John?” he asked.