Damage

by John Lescroart

  Which led to Glitsky’s next question: “So when did you come upon all this?”

  “Just before I called you.”

  “You just remembered these were back here?”

  “No, Lieutenant. Obviously I knew they were here all along. And I knew the fire hadn’t touched the garage, so there was no urgency to see how they’d made it.”

  “So were you coming back in here today to paint?”

  “Why does it matter why I was coming back here? My wife’s dead. My kids are falling apart. My life as I’ve known it is over. After what Marrenas wrote this morning—and you should know this as well as me—the vibes even at my real job got too weird to handle. Plus, it seems one of my people there is leaking to her . . .”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Somebody told her about me getting in late last Friday.”

  “Do you know who it is? Or why?”

  “Liza Sato thinks it’s a guy named Peter Bassey, who’s jealous because she likes me.” A nonplussed look. “Hey, what can I say? We like each other. We get along. Not a crime last time I checked. So Peter’s poisoning the well at work, and I had the whole afternoon off and yawning before me. So I came to hang out here.” He raised a hand at the destruction. “And found this. And then called you. If Ro’s been here, maybe he left some sign of it. What do you think?”

  Glitsky didn’t answer. He was punching numbers on his cell phone. Bringing it up to his ear, he said, “This is Abe Glitsky with homicide. I need a crime scene unit as soon as I can get one.”

  Her cheeks wet with tears, Sam Duncan sat disconsolately on one of the sagging sofas in the raggedy reception area where she worked. Wes Farrell, all cried out, sat beside her, holding her hand. Gert’s body lay on the other side of him, her head in his lap, his other hand gently stroking her head. Animal control was on its way and Sam was still trying to get a grip on what exactly had happened. Although to Wes, this was not a mystery.

  “I mean,” Sam said, “she’d been out there on the bench all morning, just lying in the sun like she does.”

  “Did you see anybody stop?”

  “Wes, everybody stopped. Little kids, old ladies, every homeless person that passed by. This was Gert, remember. Everybody’s favorite dog, you know?”

  “I do know. But then somebody stopped and poisoned her.”

  “We don’t know that. Not for sure.”

  “I do.”

  “How?”

  “I just do. She was—what?—five years old, in perfect health, and now suddenly she’s foaming at the mouth and she’s dead. That doesn’t just happen.”

  “Sometimes it does. Why would somebody want to kill a sweet dog like her?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with her. You remember the horse’s head in the bed in The Godfather? This was the same thing. This was Cliff Curtlee.”

  “But I’ve met him, Wes. He’s a charming man. He gives money to the Center, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t do something like this.”

  “Not himself, no. And he’s charming all right, but he’d order this in a heartbeat, and I’ll bet you a million dollars that he did.”

  “But why?”

  “To warn me that he’s serious. He’s not kidding around. And to give me a good idea what he’d do next. Except next time, to someone closer to me, like you. Maybe even to me myself.”

  “He’d do next if what?”

  “If I continued to pursue this grand jury thing on his little boy.”

  She ran her free hand over her head, through her hair. “God, I can’t believe this. How can this be happening?”

  “We both know the answer to that, Sam. I didn’t push hard enough denying Ro bail. Now he’s had a taste of freedom again and he’s not giving it up without a fight. Or a whole lot of fights.” His eyes went down to his dog. “Goddamn it!”

  Sam reached over and touched Gert’s head gently, left her hand on Farrell’s thigh. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really have any idea. Take Ro out right now. Convene the grand jury for an emergency session, like, tomorrow, and just march in with Amanda’s basic case.”

  “But you were saying this was Cliff Curtlee, not Ro.”

  “I know. It probably was. I don’t know if it even matters. It’s all so fucked up. Which is why another part of me wants to just call Cliff and tell him I’ve gotten his message and he wins. We’re calling everybody off anything that has to do with Ro except the retrial, which isn’t calendared until next August anyway. Maybe that would slow down the carnage.”

  “You believe that?”

  Farrell shook his head. “No. Ro’s still going to want to find the other main witness, a woman named Gloria Gonzalvez. She’s still going to be in danger. No, she still is in danger, which is pretty much why I can’t just give up, either, besides the fact that it’s the last thing I want to do. Giving up is not happening. I’ve got to keep the pressure on these pricks. Let them know that they picked the exact wrong guy if they think they can pull this shit and get away with it.”

  “But what if they come back at you with something worse?”

  “One of us, you mean?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to give them any time. Although I know that if they’re capable of this”—he gave Gert’s body a pet—“there’s nothing they wouldn’t do. I could get you moved to someplace safe until this is over.”

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  “No, but it might be smart.”

  Sam let go of Wes’s hand, stood up, and crossed over to the door. Standing there, arms crossed, looking out into the darkness and fog, she might have been a statue but for the slight rise and fall of her shoulders. Finally she took in a big breath and turned around. “Fuck that. If they’re not driving you off, they’re not pushing me out, either.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t sign up for this, and I did. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Close enough.”

  “No, it’s not. Aren’t you the one who moved out a couple of days ago because of how badly I was doing the job? And you know, you were right. I couldn’t have proven it any better these last couple of weeks if I’d tried.”

  She had moved now back to the couch, going down to one knee in front of him. “That wasn’t about your job, Wes. It was about you and me communicating about what you were doing, what was in your life. The way we are right now, for example. And you can’t let these people get away with stuff like . . . like this. And worse.”

  He looked at her imploringly. “I have to be honest. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to stop them, Sam, what I’m precisely going to do, but I’m sure as shit going to try. There are just no other options. Even if it’s probably true that I’m not the best man for the job.”

  “But you are, Wes. You might be the only man left standing who can actually do it.”

  “You got any ideas on how?”

  “Not just at the moment, but we’ll get one. I promise.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. Of course, we. What did you think?”

  30

  Durbin stayed at the garage behind his burned-out house with Glitsky and the CSI unit for about two hours. The team worked quickly and efficiently, lifting fingerprints from likely surfaces and taking photographs, gathering dust devils and sweeping up fibers and hairs and whatever else they might have been looking for. They found nothing that might have been immediately incriminating to Ro Curtlee or anybody else—no probable slashing instrument, for example—and since the next steps of the investigation would take place at the police lab, they declared themselves finished and left. The whole time, Glitsky was a desultory and vaguely threatening presence, keeping Michael away from the other officers and offering little in the way of information or even conversation.

  Now, at around eight o’clock, Durbin let himself in the kitchen door at the Novios’ home. The house was dark and mostly quiet, although it sounded as if someone was watching television somewhere. Michael was a bit surpris
ed to see Kathy all alone perched on a stool at their granite counter, with a drink of some kind in front of her.

  She’d been crying recently and looked up as he came in. “Hey,” she said at the low range of audible.

  “Hey.” He got to the counter and stopped. “You all right?”

  She lifted her shoulders an inch.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Bourbon, I think.”

  “You feel like company? I know you’ve had nothing but company all day, so if you don’t ...”

  “No. If you want. It’s fine. The bottle’s on the counter over there. You can hit me again, too, if you don’t mind.”

  Michael got himself a glass and ice and filled it with bourbon, then crossed over and refilled Kathy’s. Sitting down on the stool next to her, he took a sip. “Has Jon come back?” he asked.

  “Not yet. He texted me and said he was staying out.”

  “Till when?”

  She gave him a glance. “Till he gets back, I’d imagine. He’s all right, Michael. He’ll be okay.”

  “He thinks it’s possible I killed Janice.”

  She shook her head. “I doubt it. He’s just upset. Everybody’s upset and everybody shows it differently.”

  He took another pull at his bourbon. “So where’s everybody else?”

  “The girls are watching TV. Peter’s already asleep upstairs, I think. Chuck’s at school.”

  “At school?”

  “Papers he’s got to grade.” She sipped her drink. “It never ends.”

  “I don’t know where he gets the energy.”

  She gave him a sideways look that he couldn’t read. “He conserves it in other places.”

  Not knowing what to make of that response, Michael said, “I guess so.”

  They both drank again.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” Kathy said. “I think I’m probably drunk.”

  “That’s all right. You’ve earned it.”

  “No, but I shouldn’t criticize Chuck. But sometimes it’s just so difficult, a day like today, for example, with a million people in and out and so much going on emotionally and sometimes you just think wouldn’t it be nice if your husband didn’t have to go out and work and instead could stay and be with you and maybe be ... I don’t know. Be like we were.” She wasn’t sobbing, but tears were again suddenly rolling down her cheeks. “I mean,” she said, “I just think of poor Janice dying with no warning, one minute alive and then gone forever and it makes you question what’s important and why you’re doing the things you do and why you’re not spending more time with the person you supposedly love when she really, really needs you instead of correcting your goddamn papers for your stupid students.”

  She wiped her cheeks with her hands, picked up her drink, took another sip and put it down. “I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m just still all so upset. It’s just I feel so alone. So completely alone. I know you know.”

  “I do.”

  “I shouldn’t be mad at Chuck. It’s not him. I’m just mad at the whole world.”

  “That’s a good thing to be mad at,” Michael said. “I’m pretty much at the same place.” He picked up his drink and drained the glass.

  Dismas Hardy, the managing partner in Wes Farrell’s firm, was Abe Glitsky’s best friend. He lived with his wife, Frannie, out on Thirty-fourth Avenue near Clement Street. And though this was not directly on the way home from Durbin’s house, it wasn’t far out of the way, either. When Glitsky drove by, lights shone in the living room and smoke emanating from the chimney was faintly visible for a few seconds before it disappeared into the fog. A parking space on the opposite curb clinched the deal and Glitsky hung a U-turn and pulled into it.

  Hardy opened the door to his stand-alone Victorian home, wearing an old worn pair of jeans, destroyed Top-Siders, and a faded blue pullover sweater that had seen better days. “Sorry,” he said, “no solicitors. Maybe you didn’t see the sign by the gate.”

  And he closed the door on him.

  Glitsky could have simply knocked on the door, or rung the bell again, but this of course in some obscure but important way would have been losing, so he put his hands into his jacket pockets and settled in for the long haul. Hardy held out for nearly a minute and it might have gone longer if Frannie hadn’t somehow gotten in the act and finally opened the door, to all appearances surprised to see him.

  “Abe. Jesus, you guys. How long were you going to stand out there?”

  “As long as it took. Diz would have opened the door eventually.”

  “Would not,” Hardy said. Then added, “All he had to do was knock.”

  “In your dreams,” Glitsky said.

  “So would you like to come in now?” Frannie asked. “Rather than stand out here freezing all night.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “Ask him to say please,” Hardy said. “That ought to be good for another fifteen minutes while he decides.”

  She turned on her husband. “There’s something truly wrong with you, you know that?”

  “Not so much wrong,” Hardy answered, “as elusive, fleeting, ethereal, hard to define. In the best possible way.”

  “I’m with you, Fran,” Glitsky said. “I define it as wrong. I’ve been telling him the same thing for years.”

  “Okay, that does it. Now he’s really going to have to say please.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Frannie grabbed Glitsky by the arm, pulling him inside and closing the door after him.

  “This is why I love her,” Hardy said. “She makes the tough decisions look easy.”

  Five minutes later, Hardy and Glitsky were sitting in armchairs in front of the fire, Hardy with a neat Scotch and Glitsky with a cup of green tea that Frannie had made for him. “And okay,” Glitsky was saying, “I know what you read about this morning, how I’m all over Ro Curtlee about these murders . . .”

  “I don’t read the Courier except under grave duress.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. But the plain fact is Ro’s got an apparent alibi for this Janice Durbin thing, and her husband really doesn’t.”

  “You’re thinking it’s him?”

  “I’m thinking more it could be him. But I really don’t see it. I mean, the guy’s a legitimately talented artist. I can’t see him slashing his own paintings, trying to frame Ro, and then not leaving anything around that ties it to Ro. Does that make sense?”

  “Not much.”

  “So yeah, I’m thinking it’s still probably Ro, but if I’m wrong and Wes takes my case to the grand jury . . . You see the problem?”

  “Of course. He gets off on one charge and the whole thing falls apart. So don’t use Janice.”

  “But without her, we don’t have the motive connection to Ro.”

  “Sure you do. The witness—what’s her name?—the first woman he killed when he got out.”

  Glitsky nodded. “Felicia Nuñez. And that’s one connection with his trial, but without Janice Durbin, that’s all we’ve got, the one. That’s not a pattern.”

  Hardy looked at the fire, sipped at his drink. “How about Matt Lewis?”

  Glitsky held his palm out and rotated it. “Tenuous at best. And again, Ro and his butler, they both have an alibi. Evidently the two astronomy buffs decided to take in the planetarium show.”

  “Well, at least it’s credible,” Hardy replied, tongue well in cheek. Then, more seriously, “I don’t trust too many perfect alibis,” he said. “It smacks of premeditation.”

  “Doesn’t it, though?”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. It looks like it’s all going to come down to Janice Durbin, but we don’t have anything solid on Ro there. At least I’d like to resolve my doubts about the husband before Wes goes ahead with the grand jury.”

  “Well, something will either break there or it won’t.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want the nex
t break to come in connection with another murder.”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Anybody. Wes, Amanda, me. I’m not kidding you. The other and now last witness from his trial, if he can find her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Gloria Gonzalvez. One of his rape victims.”

  “You got her in protection?”

  “No.” Glitsky’s face showed his frustration. “I can’t find her, either.”

  A frown creased Hardy’s brow. “So as it stands now, she’s not testifying in the retrial?”

  “Not unless we can locate her.”

  “So even that retrial ... you’ve got testimony but no actual witnesses?”

  “Right.”

  Hardy made a noise in his throat that Glitsky read very clearly—without witnesses, even the retrial was in very serious jeopardy. Ro might never actually get back into prison. Hardy had another sip of Scotch. Frannie appeared from the back of the house and asked Abe if he’d like a refill on his tea.

  “I think I’m good, thanks.”

  Frannie nodded, hesitating, and then said, “I know it’s short notice, but we just found out our little darlings are both going to be home this weekend. Maybe you and Treya and the kids could come over on Saturday for dinner, just simple.”

  Glitsky took another moment before he said, “They’ve all gone down to her brother’s in LA. More of this Ro Curtlee stuff. Treya’s afraid Ro’s going to come after one of the kids.”

  “Treya’s not afraid of anything,” Frannie said.

  “Well, not much,” Glitsky admitted. “But Ro Curtlee got her attention. She’s definitely afraid of him.”

  “So when’s she coming back?” Frannie asked.

  “That,” Glitsky said, “is a good question. Hopefully someday.”

  Hardy reacted immediately, coming forward in his chair, leaning in toward his friend. “Oh, come on, Abe. Of course she’s coming back.”

  Glitsky nodded thoughtfully, as though he were considering the question. At last, he let out a short breath. “That’s the hope,” he said, “but I’m not sure I’d bet on it.”