Guilt

by John Lescroart

  'I do feel lucky.'

  'Well, I'm glad. I do, too.'

  'You do?'

  He nodded. 'Why do you think the managing partner takes fifteen minutes at the end of the day just to visit, risking not only the office gossip but the wrath of people who think they need my time?'

  'I don't know. Part of me thought you were just watching out for me, after talking me into coming here, that I wasn't screwing up.'

  'I don't believe that.'

  'Well, a small part, but some…'

  'None. Not the smallest bit. I don't take care of people professionally – you either do it here or you're out.'

  'No. You wouldn't…'

  'I don't recommend you try me. But I have no worries about you. Not one.'

  She sat back in the chair. 'Then I don't know why…?'

  'Yes, you do, Christina.' He leveled his eyes at her across his desk. The moment called for a matter-of-fact, intimate tone, and he got it. 'You know, life goes along, and people get so they don't talk to people – I mean you talk, but it's mostly surface, but with you and me, maybe we got lucky that first morning, Ash Wednesday, you remember?'

  'Of course.'

  'What I mean to say is this, it's not common – in fact, it's rare. And valuable. I value it immensely. You ought to know that. I'd hate to die suddenly like Trang did, and you not know. This isn't business. You and me isn't business, okay?'

  'Okay.'

  'And another thing, while we're on it – I'm happily married. My wife is a great partner and a wonderful person and not a half-bad cook. I'm not going to accept any gossip about you and me that this office is likely to put out, and I hope you don't either.'

  She was smiling now, with him. 'I won't. I don't.'

  'Good. Now, how are things with your boyfriend?'

  Abe Glitsky, in a pair of khaki slacks and a flight jacket, was walking down one of the muted hallways toward Dooher's office, accompanied by the night receptionist, an exceptionally attractive black woman of about twenty-five. She was explaining that Dooher's secretary had gone home – was Glitsky sure he had an appointment for this time, 6:30? Normally, the receptionist was explaining, if she'd known that, she would have stayed.

  'I made it with Mr Dooher personally,' he said, non-committal. 'Maybe he didn't mention it to her.'

  Glitsky was struck by the color of the light. The doors to several west-facing offices were open and the sun was going down over the cloud banks, spraying the hallway with crimson.

  In almost every office he saw a young person hunched over a desk, oblivious to the sunset, to everything but what they were reading or writing. Fun job.

  Dooher was standing in his doorway, talking to yet another beautiful woman. Glitsky figured they grew on trees at this altitude. 'Sergeant Glitsky?'

  She was smiling at him, holding out her hand, and he realized he knew her – from the rape clinic, and then that visit to his office. What was she doing here?

  'Christina Carrera.' Helping him out.

  'Right. Levon Copes,' he said. 'And I'm still looking.'

  This seemed to register positively. 'I'm glad.'

  The man with her – Glitsky presumed it was Dooher – stepped forward. Protectively? 'You two know each other?'

  Christina quickly explained while Glitsky checked out the man in his thousand-dollar pale gray Italian suit. The only wrong note was the hair – no gray, which meant the guy was vain and had a bottle of Grecian Formula hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Glitsky figured if he looked like Mr Dooher, he'd be vain, too. But he'd have to go some before he decided to dye his hair.

  The receptionist had disappeared. Christina was asking if Glitsky was the only Homicide Sergeant in town. 'Sometimes it feels like it.'

  'I don't know how you do it,' Christina said. 'Up until a couple of months ago, I never knew anybody who'd been murdered, and now I've met two -Tania Willows and Victor Trang. It's unsettling.'

  'You knew Trang?'

  'I met him here in Mr Dooher's office once. Still…'

  'It is easier if you don't know them first.' Glitsky tried to mitigate the cop humor of what he'd just said by smiling, but his scar got in the way. 'I know what you mean, though.'

  'It's terrible,' Dooher said. 'Christina here and I were just talking about Victor Trang, the waste of it.'

  'You were in Vietnam?'

  Christina had gone away – Glitsky had no questions for her. He and Dooher went into the big corner office and they had more or less finished with the routine questions. Glitsky was still seated on the sofa, his tape recorder spinning silently on the coffee table. The receptionist had brought him a cup of tea, and it was excellent. With a slice of lemon yet. He would take the moment of peace until the cup was drained. They were hard enough to come by.

  Dooher was volunteering information. It probably had no connection with Victor Trang, but Glitsky's experience was that a murder investigation led where it took you, and the most innocuous comment or detail could be the hinge upon which it all eventually turned. He sipped his tea and leaned back in the soft leather, waiting for whatever was coming next.

  The strange red sky had gone mother-of-pearl and Dooher had loosened his tie. He was drinking something amber without ice, pacing around, leaning on the edge of his desk, crossing to the easy chair, to the floating windows. Nervous, Glitsky thought. Which wasn't unusual. He knew that people -even attorneys – got jittery when they talked to Homicide cops. It would be more suspicious if he wasn't.

  'That's why I was surprised I found myself liking him. Trang, I mean.' Dooher sighed. 'I don't like to admit it, but it's one of the prejudices I've carried around all these years. Maybe it's genetic. My dad had the same thing with the Japs – the Japanese. He always called them Japs. Me, now, some of my best friends…'

  Glitsky kept him on it. 'So how'd you like it, Nam?'

  'You go?'

  He shook his head. 'Bad knees. Football.'

  'Yeah, well, maybe you've heard – it sucked.'

  Glitsky had come upon that rumor. 'You see action?'

  'Oh yeah. We got ambushed and most of my squad got killed.' He swigged his drink. 'I still don't know why I survived and the other guys… and then the warm welcome at home, that was special.' He looked over at Glitsky. 'I was bitter for a while. Blamed it on the Vietnamese. Ruined my life – all that.'

  'Did they?'

  Dooher took in his plush surroundings. 'No, that was all youth, I suppose. Excuses. Look around, my life isn't ruined. I've been lucky.'

  Suddenly he snapped his fingers, went around his desk and opened a drawer; he pulled something out and handed it to Glitsky. 'These were the guys.'

  It was a framed color photograph of a bunch of soldiers, armed and dangerous, goofing and scowling. Dooher was in the front row, on the far right, with his captain's bars, his weapon propped next to him. 'I had this up in that space in the bookshelves here till just before Trang came up here the first time. Then I realized it would be offensive to him. I guess I can put it back up now.'

  Glitsky handed it back. 'They're all dead?'

  'I don't know all. Three of us came home, I know that. But I haven't seen either of the other two in maybe fifteen years.'

  The tea had cooled. Dooher went back around the desk and placed the frame in its former space, in full view now. 'Anyway, they trained me pretty well,' he was saying, 'to hate 'em. Charlie, I mean.'

  'So what happened with Trang?'

  'Like anything else. You finally meet one personally, get to know 'em a little, and you realize they're people first. I just put off meeting any of them for a long time. I wanted to keep hating them, you see? So the war would make some kind of sense. Dumb. It's so long ago now.'

  'So who still hated him?'

  'Trang? I don't know.'

  'I understand he was suing you.'

  Dooher had settled in the easy chair. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. 'Well, that's technically accurate. He'd filed a lawsuit where some priest took money from a wo
man. He was amending the suit, that was all. Trying to get more. Hey, it's his job. Anyway, I represent the Archdiocese. The whole thing hadn't gone very far. That's just our business. Litigation. Personally, we were on good terms.'

  Glitsky didn't have any reason to doubt Dooher. He did believe that the killer was probably a tall, strong male, and though that described Dooher, he didn't have a patent on the build. 'I'm wondering if he mentioned anything to you about anybody else – clients, colleagues…'

  The attorney gave it a long moment. 'Honestly, I can't think of anybody. I'll put my mind to it if you'd like.'

  'I'd appreciate that.' Standing, Glitsky turned off his recorder and slipped it into his pocket. He handed Dooher his card. 'If something comes to mind, that's me, day or night.'

  Dooher accompanied him to the door, opened it for him. The cotton clouds out the window had begun to glow with the lights coming on in the streets below. 'Do you have any leads at all, Sergeant, on who might have done this?'

  'No, not yet. It's still early, though. Something may come up.'

  'Well, good luck.' They shook hands, and Glitsky turned to leave as the door closed quietly behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wes Farrell and Sam had been going out for a couple of weeks now and hadn't yet moved into the 'serious' phase, as they called it, of what they were also calling their quote relationship unquote. There was no plan as yet to escalate. Things were nicely physical. They were getting along, moving back and forth between their places, taking care of their respective dogs, although Quayle and Bart had yet to meet.

  Wes was flirting with what felt like his first happy and carefree moment in about half a decade. It was the Saturday evening after a noon wake-up, followed by love-making and the Planetarium in Golden Gate Park. They'd sat in the plush reclining seats holding hands as the night sky came up indoors – Farrell learned more than he ever thought he'd need to know about the planet Neptune. Although you never knew – facts had a way of coming in handy.

  They ended up sharing a short drink at the Little Shamrock, the bar where they had met.

  It didn't hurt that the winter cold had lifted. Not that it was balmy, but anything above forty-five degrees seemed a gentle gift. The wind and fog were both gone, and here at dusk Wes was comfortable half reclining in the chaise outside, wearing blue jeans and a sweater on Sam's tiny fenced-in deck, surrounded by potted greenery, in the cupola created by three large redwood trees. She'd handed him a perfect martini – gin had always been, to Wes, the harbinger of summer – and told him she'd be out in a minute to join him, as soon as she'd put the game hens on to roast.

  Sam was making him dinner, a first step into the heretofore dreaded return of the domesticity that had failed him so miserably the first time around.

  They had talked about the implications of the dinner and decided they could risk it. Besides, Sam had pointed out, it wasn't going to be just the two of them and Quayle. Nothing that intimate. Other guests would be there to buffer the raging magnetic attraction that was nearly ripping the skin off their bodies. There was going to be some lawyer woman from her office, Christina, and her fiance, another lawyer, Joe. And Sam's brother- remember Larry and Sally? – would serve to balance out the lawyer ratio.

  Wes sipped his drink. Sam thought he might be nervous meeting all these people in her circle at the same time. He supposed one day long ago this kind of situation might have had that effect, but today there was nothing but a sense of the exhilaration of new beginnings. Hope. It was great.

  The door creaked. A hand on his shoulder. The scent of her as she leaned over from behind the chaise, laid a soft hand against the side of his face.

  'You know what I can't believe?' she said. She came around the lounge chair, holding her own martini. Farrell loved a woman who drank like he did. He also loved the look of Sam – the way she had filled her glass right to the rim, slurping at it delicately to get that first taste, puckering her lips around it. 'Um-um.' She was wearing jeans, too. And a white sweater. And hiking boots. She looked seventeen.

  He smiled up at her. 'What can't you believe?'

  'I can' t believe that Pluto' s going to be inside the orbit of Neptune for the next eleven years. So it's not Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto anymore; it's Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Pluto, and Neptune.'

  'That wacky old solar system,' Wes said. 'Just when you think you got it all figured out.' He moved his legs off the recliner, patted it with his palm, and Sam sat, the haunch of her leg tight up against him. He grinned at her. 'The good news is that this is the kind of fact on which I believe we can make some money.'

  Larry and Sally arrived first. The sun was down and Wes was back inside with Sam – another round of gin poured and good smells emanating from the kitchen – everybody already getting along, laughing about St Patrick's Day.

  'Hey, the parts I remember were great.' Larry, defending himself from his sister's mock attack.

  'And how many parts do you remember?'

  Larry paused, considering. 'At least two.'

  'Including meeting Wes?'

  He gave Farrell an appraising glance, shook his head. 'I'm afraid that particular moment didn't make the cut. Where were we exactly? No offense, Wes.'

  'You had the T-shirt,' Sally said to Wes. She was as tall as her husband, with long dark hair that had gone about a third gray. Her friendly, attractive face showed more age than Sam's. She also wore nicer clothes, some makeup, dangling earrings.

  'That's what did it,' Sam said.'The shirt. I saw that shirt and read the message and said, "Here's a guy I've got to meet.'"

  'I thought it was how it fit me.'

  That, too,' she said. That's what I meant.'

  'You guys.' Sally was smiling. 'No foreplay until after dinner. It's one of the rules.'

  'What shirt?' Larry asked.

  Farrell recognized them both immediately. Shaking Joe's hand, taking in the woman – Christina Carrera. Yep, it was her, no doubt about it. Not looking any uglier either, he noticed. And it looked as though she'd found the right guy. Joe Avery was tall and thin, with an angular, clean-shaven face, shoulders a yard wide and no gut at all. It wasn't fair.

  'You're at McCabe and Roth, aren't you?'

  Joe included Christina. 'We both are.'

  'Not quite yet.'

  'Close enough.' Then, placing Wes. 'You've been to the office…'

  'No more than two, three hundred times. Mark Dooher's my best friend.'

  Christina snapped her fingers. 'That's it.' Explaining: 'I knew I knew the name Wes Farrell. When Sam told me… it's been driving me crazy. You go on camping trips or something with Mark, right?'

  'Occasionally. Retreats, we call them.'

  Joe Avery was looking a question at Christina, but Sam was coming up, kissing her on both cheeks, getting introduced to Joe. 'Okay, you lawyers, break it up. No professional talk until we've all said hello. At least.'

  The moment passed.

  Sam and Sally were in getting dessert and Larry had gone to the bathroom.

  Joe turned to Christina. 'So how do you know about these retreats?'

  'Mark told me about them, one of the first times we talked. I don't remember exactly. It just came up.' She turned to Wes, hoping to deflect the line of questioning from Joe. 'He said you guys go out and get re-charged on life.'

  Farrell shrugged. 'Mostly we drink,' he said. Then, continuing to make light of it, 'Get away from the day-to-day. Talk about what we believe in, in theory. Try to beat the burn-out which you know, Joe, is a constant.' Wes drank some more wine and smiled at Christina. 'You'll find out after you've been at this business a year or so.'

  Joe shook his head. 'I can't see it with Mr Dooher… Mark. He doesn't seem like he's on the burn-out track. He's always geared up.'

  'Joe, he's got to act that way,' Christina, rushing to Dooher's defense, nearly blurted it out. 'You don't want your managing partner moping around, making you feel like it's all so hard.'

  'Well, he d
oesn't do that, that's for sure.'

  'Yeah, but I think Christina's right. He acts tough, but if you know him…'

  Christina laughed. 'Don't tell me he's a pussycat. A gentle heart, maybe, but…'

  'No way,' Joe couldn't envision it. 'Maybe with you guys, but I've worked for him a lot of years, and Mark Dooher does not invite closeness.' Joe looked around the table, perhaps realizing he was being too negative. He caught himself, nearly knocking himself over backtracking. 'Although, lately, I must admit -I don't know exactly what happened – he's been fantastic.'

  'You got over the hump, that's all,' Farrell said. 'You proved yourself.'

  'Is that it?'

  Farrell nodded. 'That's Mark. He used to be too soft – one of the guys, you know. Didn't want to give orders, set himself above anybody.'

  Avery laughed. 'Well, he sure got over that one.'

  'Joe!'

  'That's a fact, Christina. Say what you want about Mark, being afraid to give orders isn't what he's about anymore.'

  Farrell stopped them. 'You're responsible for ten people dying, Joe, it hardens you right up.'

  In the silence, Christina finally spoke up. 'What do you mean, dying?'

  Farrell made a face. He hadn't intended to bring this up. It was too personal. One of Dooher's true ghosts. But to drop it now would only arouse more curiosity. Better to downplay it – God knew it did relate to their discussion.

  'Mark was in Vietnam,' he said. 'Platoon captain, about a dozen guys under his command. This being Vietnam, as you may have heard, the guys smoked some dope.'

  'Did they inhale?' Joe asked. 'Mr Dooher smoked dope?'

  Farrell shook his head. 'No, I don't think so. But his men did.'

  'So what happened?' Christina asked.

  'So Mark knew how bad things were over there, and he knew the dope made it bearable for his troops – regular guys pretty much his age – so he made an unspoken policy that they had to be straight when they were going out on maneuvers, but otherwise he wasn't busting anybody for a little dope. He thought it was a reasonable rule and so everybody would follow it.'