"You do, do you? Can I see some identification, please?"
She fumbled in the breast pocket of her camo shirt and brought forth a wallet insert with her driver's license, which he took, examined carefully, and showed to his partner. The partner carried a briefcase. He was short, dark, well-dressed, with a soul patch under his lip. Returning the wallet insert to her, Thieu looked her up and down, seemed satisfied with something. "All right, let me ask you again. What are you doing here?"
"I just told you, I…"
He was shaking his head no, patiently but with a determined look. He pointed to the string bag at her feet. "That bag is full of men's clothes and what looks from here like a checkbook. Which makes me believe that we've come upon you here in the act of burglary."
"No! That's not it. Really." She implored each of the men in turn. "Look." She reached into her front pocket. "I have a key. The key John gave me. I didn't break in here. He's a friend of mine. I watch his stuff."
"Clothes," Thieu said, pointing again.
Thinking fast, she offered a hopeful face. "I wash them. He leaves them in the hamper. I was bringing them back."
"In the dark? At one o'clock in the morning? You're one heck of a friend. Do you expect us to believe any of this?"
"Well, he pays me, of course. Not much, but…"
"Do you know there's a warrant out for Mr. Holiday's arrest? For murder?"
"I… I know. I heard that. But that must be a mistake. John wouldn't hurt anybody."
"Do you know where he is?"
"No. You mean now?"
Thieu turned to the other man. "Do you think I meant now, Len? Did you get that impression?"
The other man nodded, shot her the straight line. "He means now."
"No. I don't have any idea where he is. I mean, that's why I came here. I haven't heard from John in a few days, almost a week now." Suddenly, her eyes lit up. "Look, I came by here on Friday, too," she blurted. "When the other officers were here."
"What other officers?"
"The men with the search warrant. They had identification. A black guy and a white guy."
"Cuneo and Russell," the other man said.
"All right, and these inspectors talked to you?"
"Same as you. Checked my ID. Everything."
"And you were here, again, why?"
"That day, the same as now, then picking up John's newspapers."
"They're still down there, I notice."
She shook her head. "Just the last three days. I was going to get them on the way out and throw them away."
"And you told all this to Inspectors Cuneo and Russell?"
"If those were their names."
"And they just let you go back home?"
Thieu was in a pickle.
Earlier tonight, at the house of Glitsky's lawyer friend Hardy, Thieu had told the lieutenant that he'd come here with Faro. It seemed a reasonable risk. But it was turning out to be true what everybody said-that no good deed ever went unpunished.
And that's what, in theory, this trip to Holiday's was intended to be, a good deed, albeit with elements of self-interest. Glitsky, Hardy and their wives had been truly distraught over this problem with Panos. Thieu hadn't seen Abe so angry in years and Treya-in Thieu's opinion a rock of sanity, patience and good humor-was if possible even madder.
Thieu had come to Glitsky this morning with his problem. And this was, he supposed, why Abe was such a valuable friend and mentor. Coming here could be the solution for both of them, and for Hardy as well. Thieu got the feeling that Glitsky and Hardy had come to their decision after quite a lot of internal debate between them, and that neither was thrilled with deciding that their only viable option was to find evidence linking Sephia, Roy Panos and Rez to these murders. Clearly, they would both have preferred some kind of confrontation with these men, but in the end they were lawmen, and they'd do it according to the law.
Finally, Hardy suggested that Thieu come here with Len Faro and dust the place for fingerprints. The CSI team had already done the places where they'd discovered the incriminating evidence from Silverman's. Photographed the stuff in place, dusted the actual articles for prints where possible. But they hadn't done a general sweep of the entire duplex unit-dishes in the sink, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures.
The other three suspects had never been at Holiday's house and Glitsky thought that Thieu ought to be able to get some kind of statement to that effect. Even a verbal admission might do the trick, though written or taped would be better. Once they had that, if they found fingerprints of any of the suspects at Holiday's home, the question of where the planted evidence had come from was going to drive the investigation either to one of the true conspirators' doors, or to Wade Panos.
The only wrinkle from Thieu's perspective was the imperative to keep himself out of it. The problem as well as the source of his pique was that he wasn't assigned to any of the murders that came in the wake of Sam Silverman. So what excuse could Thieu plausibly invent for why he had to go to Holiday's duplex in the dead of night and dust for fingerprints?
He had to give it to these defense lawyers. They were a devious group and Hardy clearly belonged among them. Thieu simply wouldn't mention it until he had the results. As far as Lennard Faro was concerned, Thieu was doing a routine favor for his two homicide colleagues Cuneo and Russell, just being thorough with housekeeping at the home of a murder suspect. The print lifts would go to the lab- Faro would neither know nor care what they were about, and would never ask. After the results came in, if the fingerprints of Sephia and/or Panos and/or Rez came in, then having at least established the Panos connection to the case, Thieu could come to Gerson and, man to man, admit to his earlier reservations about the evidence and the interpretations of Cuneo and Russell.
Perfect.
Until this woman.
He believed no part of her story. In his heart, he was even insulted that she could think any part of it was plausible. He ached to put handcuffs on her, take her downtown and do a serious interrogation. But that would leave him with the really insoluble problem of explaining to Gerson why he'd been here in the first place. The entire house of cards would come down if he didn't have a positive match on some Panos-connected prints to fall back on. He could certainly find himself out of homicide, possibly cut in rank.
And then there was the even bigger problem. Thieu was morally certain not only that this Michelle Maier knew where the fugitive John Holiday was at this moment, but that he was at her own home. She had come over here to get him some changes of clothes, obviously. Access to his money. He and Len could drive her back to her place, put the cuffs on Holiday and be heroes tomorrow.
Except Glitsky didn't think Holiday did it. From Thieu's perspective, the evidence didn't say he did, either. It was simply good police work to verify whether an alternative set of suspects had a substantial evidentiary problem. And the woman, Ms. Maier, had given him a rationalization- she'd actually been here with Cuneo and Russell just three days ago, and they hadn't seen fit to follow up. It blew Thieu's mind. It wasn't what they were looking for, and so they hadn't seen what it so obviously was. No doubt her explanations had been as lame then as now.
By her own admission, they'd checked her identification. So in theory, Cuneo and Russell knew as much about her as Thieu did, though he'd be surprised if either one of them had thought to write down her last name or address. Or remembered them, as he did.
John Holiday was their suspect. It was their case, not his.
Let them work it.
All this passed through Thieu's agile mind during his brief questioning of Michelle Maier. She had just begun blowing more smoke about the newspapers, how she was planning on picking them up on her way out tonight.
"And they just let you go back home?"
"Yes, sir."
He turned to Faro, shrugged extravagantly. "Well, Ms. Maier, it appears to be your lucky night. Inspector Faro and I have a lot of technical ground to cover here and if you gave your name
and address to the other inspectors, I'm going to assume they followed up as they should. That okay with you, Len?"
Faro tugged at his bug. He held the rank of inspector but wasn't an investigator. He did forensics and crime scene analysis. As far as he was concerned, the woman's presence was only significant to the extent that it sullied the scene. The sooner she was gone, the better. "As long as she doesn't touch anything else going out. Leave the mail," he told her.
Michelle knew what she was hearing, but wasn't sure she believed it. Thieu lifted his hand and waved as he would to a child. "Drive safely," he said.
"Really? I can go?"
Thieu nodded impatiently.
"Thank you. I mean, I'm sorry. I just…" She noticed the string bag at her feet and leaned over to pick it up. Then she walked past the two policemen, and out the front door.
26
Ever since he'd finally gotten his doctor's permission to go back to work after his year and a half of recovery, Glitsky hadn't missed a day. Over a very early breakfast, though-the baby wasn't even up yet-he was telling Treya that he thought he could spend his time more profitably outside today. "But do you want to hear something funny?"
"More than anything."
"I feel guilty about it."
"About what? Taking the day off?"
"Calling in sick when I'm not. I've never done that before."
"You're kidding?" Treya put her bagel down. "Never, not once?"
"I told you it was funny."
"Hysterical. Except I don't think I have, either. No wonder we're a good couple. We're probably the only two people in America."
"Which leaves me with a problem. I was hoping you'd be able to tell me the proper etiquette for when I call in, but now it turns out you wouldn't know."
"I don't think there's really much of an etiquette. You call, leave a message…"
"Yeah, but I'm supposed to be sick. So, for example, do I try to sound miserable?"
"How would they tell the difference?"
Glitsky faked a pout. "That was cruel."
"I'm in a cruel mood." This was and had been true since yesterday, since soon after Glitsky's meeting with Jackman. Glitsky thought she was proving herself to be one of the premier grudge holders. "I haven't decided if I'm going in, either," she said. "And I'm talking about ever. How dare that man treat you that way?"
"It wasn't personal."
"That's kind of my point, Abe. It should have been personal. You and Dismas are about half the reason he got that job in the first place."
"Maybe true. But we're not going to be why he gets to keep it." Glitsky picked up a slice of lox, rolled it up, and popped it into his mouth. "When I was a kid, I thought the ultimate food was lox, you know that? If you ate lox, you were a mega success like a movie star. If somebody had ever told me that one day I, a mere cop, would commonly eat lox at home, I wouldn't have believed them. And yet look at us. Sometimes I still can't believe it."
"That was subtle," she said, "but I caught it. You're changing the subject away from Clarence and I want to vent some more."
"You can if you want, but he wasn't all wrong. Diz and I really have nothing, and Clarence's reaction was probably a good portion of why we decided we had to look rather than just accuse. Besides, if he's getting calls from Washington and Rigby"-the mayor and police chief, respectively- "on the weekends, it's helpful for us to know how high Panos's influence extends. In a way, his coming down on me was a pretty good heads up. He might have even meant it that way."
"I'm sure."
He shrugged. "As you so astutely observed, he's playing the political game. Right now he's got his hands on the power and he's the best DA we've had in years. So he wants to keep it. I can't blame him. It's high stakes."
"And the ends justify the means?"
"Sometimes. Not always. I think Clarence is trying to figure out that balance himself. If Diz and I actually get something that does break this case, he'll jump on it with both feet."
"Do you really think that? After what he's already done to you both?"
"Absolutely."
Treya chewed silently, sipped at her tea. "All right, I'll go to work. But he can get his own darn coffee."
*****
At a quarter to eight, Glitsky flashed his badge at the manager of the Diamond Center lot. At 9:45, he and Hardy were still in Hardy's car, in a VIP parking space just to the side of the entrance, and directly across the street from the Georgia AAA Diamond Center. Hardy still hurt. He dozed fitfully behind the wheel until Glitsky backhanded his shoulder. "Panos," he said.
It was Roy, on foot and in uniform. Stopping at the huge double doors, he checked his watch, paced to the corner, looked both ways, then came back to the doors and looked at his watch again. He wasn't sixty feet from where they were parked. Both men slumped in their seats, awaiting developments. They weren't long in coming. Two men coming up out of the lot passed within five feet of Glitsky's window. Again, he ticked Hardy's shoulder, and pointed. Sephia in a black leather calf-length coat and Rez in tight black chinos and a tan, torso-hugging sweater that he tucked into his pants.
They crossed to where Roy waited at the doors. He wasted no time but immediately grew animated, gesticulating, all bulldog. "Next time we bring one of those distance microphones, tape everything they say," Glitsky said. When Hardy didn't reply, he said, "That was a joke, Diz."
But Hardy still didn't answer. He just sat, watching the trio across the street. After a few minutes of back and forth, Roy seemed to have shot his wad in terms of aggression, and then the meeting, abruptly as it had begun, was over. Roy resumed the walk on his beat. Sephia and Rez went to the double doors of the Diamond Center and disappeared inside.
"Well," Hardy said, "they're all involved in something together, but we already knew that. I'd love to go inside and have a few words with Nick."
"What good would that do?"
"I don't know. Maybe none. But it would be fun to bait him a little. Cast aspersions about his mother's heritage or something. See if I could get him to take a poke at me with witnesses around."
"It's nice to see you thinking about having fun again. I wasn't going to mention it, but your company's been less than scintillating this morning."
"Yeah, but I had all the ideas last night. Speaking of which, no word from Thieu?"
Glitsky shook his head. "Too soon." His eyes had never left the double doors, and now he bobbed his head that way. "See? You wouldn't have had any time anyway. Keep low."
But they needn't have worried. Sephia carried a plain paper bag and he and Rez passed them again close enough to touch, but they were deeply into their own conversation now and never slowed.
"Now what?" Hardy said.
"Gentlemen, start your engines."
So they were ready. Glitsky, looking back over his shoulder, said "Okay." Hardy let them pass, said, "That's the car!" and fell in behind them.
"What car?"
"The gray sedan. The one they were driving when they shot at me and John. The bastards are so smug they didn't even use a rental or a throwaway. Can you believe that?"
Glitsky had his pad out and got the license number. They were heading west on Geary now, back a couple of car-lengths, but no one in between. "Speaking of fun, if we can ever get somebody to start issuing search warrants, it might be fun to dig around in that thing."
"There it is," Hardy said, "fun again." But as he said it, he was rolling the muscles of his back. He didn't look like he was having fun.
They followed as the car did the one-way-street boogie until it was heading south now on Van Ness, then down Mission to Twenty-first Street, where it turned right and finally pulled to a stop at the curb in front of a nicely maintained, freestanding Victorian house. Hardy drove by as both men were getting out of their car. There was no paper bag, although Sephia walked with both of his hands inside the pockets of his black coat.
Hardy pulled over a couple of houses up the road. "What's this?" he asked.
"I don't know." Glitsky was writing down the address, though. "Drug drop maybe? I don't know," he said again.
It wasn't a long wait, perhaps ten minutes. When they came out of the house, this time Rez was holding a briefcase. They got back on the road and the tail continued.
By noon, when they turned back into the Diamond Center lot, they'd made four similar stops, from the Mission out to Diamond Heights and then to a palatial, gated home in St. Francis Wood. By this time, both Hardy and Glitsky had concluded that whatever the boys were up to, it wasn't kosher. But they didn't get much time to air any of their theories. They were parked in a loading zone, waiting for the two men to exit the lot again. Hardy had just turned off the motor when he looked into the rearview mirror and said, "Okay, here they come."
At the same moment, Hardy's cell phone rang. He watched Sephia and Rez, each with a briefcase now, as they crossed the street, but he stopped paying attention to them when he heard his wife's voice, crying. "Dismas," she managed to get out. "Please…"
"What is it, Fran? Do you hear me? Easy."
"I can't be easy!" she screamed. Then, "Dismas, you've got to come home."
"I will, but…"
"Please! Now!"
"Are you all right? Should I call nine one one?"
"No, but it's…" Her breathing came in ragged gasps. "Just get here."
"Okay, sure. I'm on my way, but what's…"
"I can't explain. You'll have to see. Oh God, I've got to call the school."
"The school? Why? Are the kids…?"
"I've got to call the school," she repeated, and hung up.
"Fran? Frannie?" He stared at the dead phone.
"What is it?" Glitsky asked.
"Not good," Hardy said. A muscle twitched at the side of his jaw. "Whatever it is, it's not good. She's calling the school." He turned to his friend. "Listen, Abe, I'm done here. I've got to go now." He hit the ignition. "I can drop you someplace on the way."
"No." Glitsky was already halfway out of the car. "You go."
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