Guilt

by John Lescroart

  'But that doesn't mean the girlfriend or somebody else didn't just happen to drop by.' Thieu wanted to talk about it. Still and always.

  Glitsky was driving the unmarked Plymouth back to Trang's office, trying to keep from jumping to conclusions, glad he didn't usually work with a partner. He was coming to believe that entirely too much credence was given to the round-table discussion. Sometimes – a radical idea in this bumptious age, he knew – but sometimes solitary contemplation did produce results.

  'It had to be somebody he knew, right?' Thieu persisted. 'It wasn't a robbery – nothing was missing.'

  'We don't know that. We don't know what was there to be missing.'

  'I mean his wallet, personal effects…'

  'It might have just been botched.' If Thieu wanted to play these games, Glitsky could at least make them instructive. 'Guy's in there and Trang comes back from dinner…'

  'He didn't leave for dinner.' Paul had done his homework. 'The autopsy didn't find anything in his stomach.'

  'So he came back for his keys or something. Or went to mail a letter. If he left, though, and came back, discovered the perp burglarizing the place, who killed him, then decided he'd better split…'

  'That didn't happen,' Thieu said.

  'No, I don't think so either. But it could have, which is my point. What I think is what you think – a strong male who knew him killed him.'

  'Dooher?'

  'Maybe, or maybe one of his clients. Maybe one of the people he was hassling for business.' Abe gave the other man a sidelong glance. 'That's what they pay us for, to find out.'

  Trang's office didn't look much better in the daytime, and to Thieu it felt worse. The crime-scene tape was still across the door. Inside, the way it had been left by the Forensics and Homicide teams on Friday night created a sense of abandonment that, to Thieu, was overwhelming.

  He noticed that none of whatever weak sunlight there had been outside made it into this cavern. Ever.

  Glitsky had zipped up his flight jacket. His breath showed in the chill. He crossed to the one window – the black hole of the other night – and opened it into the brick of the building next door, about four inches away. He stuck his head out and looked up, down, sideways. 'If the perp came through here,' he said, 'he is one skinny dude.'

  It was the first even remote touch of levity Thieu had heard from the Sergeant. Emboldened by it, he dared ask another question. 'What are we looking for?'

  Glitsky had moved back to the desk, was sitting in the library chair. He motioned to four cardboard boxes lurking in the corner with manila file folders visible in them. 'Anything. Why don't you start by looking through those boxes?' Thieu shrugged – the well of Glitsky's humor was proving to be relatively shallow – and went to work.

  The files weren't alphabetically arranged, and he'd gone through the first three of them – notes from law school! – when he heard a click and a hum behind him, and turned to see Glitsky at the computer, legs stretched out, arms crossed, scowling at the monitor. After a minute, the Sergeant sat forward and began clicking the mouse.

  Thieu left his boxes, straightened up and came around behind him, resolving to ask no questions, though it wasn't his style not to ask. He liked people and believed that the truth emerged from a full and free discussion of ideas and theories. Also, it had been his experience at UCLA that asking professors what they wanted was how you found out what to give them. It wasn't any mystery, just simple communication. And then at the Academy it got drilled into them that you should just ask questions and senior officers would always be happy to help you.

  He didn't think anybody had briefed the Inspector here on that part.

  The monitor was scrolling the pages of a document that was evidently some kind of an organizer. Glitsky got to the day of Trang's death, a week ago yesterday now, and leaned forward. 'Look at this,' he said.

  Thieu already was. There were four entries:

  10:22 – called MD, told him need answer by COB today or filing tomorrow. $3.00 million.

  1:40 – MD message. I called back. He was at lunch. WCB.

  4:50 – MD callback. F. out till 6. Extension till midnight tonight okay.

  7:25 – MD from F's. Settlement possible. Offer $$ still unresolved. Midnight firm.

  Thieu couldn't stop himself. That last one, that's when he called his mother. Who's "F"?'

  Glitsky was scrolling backward now, eyes on the screen. 'The Archbishop,' he said. 'Flaherty.'

  As expected, it didn't appear that Victor Trang had had a lot of business. The screens reflected few clients, appointments or telephone numbers. At the screen for a couple of weeks earlier, Glitsky stopped on another screen: MD, $600KH! Declined.

  'That's something,' Thieu said.

  Glitsky nodded. 'Youbetcha.'

  'He turned it down?'

  'Looks like. I guess he thought he could get more.'

  There was an answering machine with calls from Trang's girlfriend, Lily Martin, and Mrs Trang and Mark Dooher and Felicia Diep, all wondering if Victor were there, why he'd not called back, would he please call when he got the message.

  They also found the folder on the lawsuit, including the amended complaint, pre-dated for Tuesday, the day after Trang's murder. There was a yellow legal pad with pages of notes that were mostly unintelligible to Glitsky, but on the first page Thieu had been able to read enough to learn that Trang had felt 'threatened' in his first visit to McCabe & Roth.

  'Dooher?' Thieu asked. They were heading back downtown where Glitsky was to talk to Lily Martin, who'd volunteered to come to the Hall of Justice for an interview. 'I'd just bring him in and grill him.'

  'About what?'

  'About what? About all this is what!'

  'This isn't anything, Paul. This is squat. We are nowhere yet on this.' He didn't really want to bite off Thieu's head. After all, what the man was saying could be correct. But there was, as yet, no evidence that it had been Dooher, not even enough to insult him by asking him pointed questions. And Glitsky was still smarting from his fiasco with the undoubtedly guilty Levon Copes, where he had just known what had happened. He wasn't going to make the same mistake here. But he was really being an unnecessary hardass. He didn't want to burn the kid out before he even got lit.

  Although he knew he wouldn't require any translator with Lily Martin, Glitsky decided on the spur of the moment to invite Thieu to remain for the interview with her. Besides, Glitsky knew there was a chance he might need him again. 'Let's talk to the girlfriend first, Paul. See what she's got to say.'

  'One million six hundred thousand dollars was the settlement figure. Which was… would have been… five hundred and thirty-three thousand for Victor.'

  Lily Martin was absolutely certain.

  She was conservatively and, Glitsky thought, inexpensively well dressed, and she spoke English perfectly, having been in this country since she was four. Her father, Ed Martin, had fought in Vietnam, married her mother over there and brought them all back here. Now she was twenty-five. Working, as she did, as a junior accountant doing her internship with a Big 8 firm, the money angle was no mystery to her.

  'Victor's mother said he told her he wasn't going to call anybody to tell them,' Abe said gently. 'He didn't want to jinx the deal.'

  'He didn't call me -I called him. Like a minute after he got the call.' She broke a brittle smile, which cracked almost immediately. 'This was going to be the start of our life, of everything. Of course I called him.'

  'That night? Last Monday?'

  'Yes.'

  'And what did he say?'

  'He said that Mr Dooher had just called from the Archbishop's office, and he wanted… before he presented a final number to the Archbishop… he wanted to run it by Victor to see if they were going to be in the ballpark.'

  'And that number was…?'

  'What I just told you, Sergeant, a million six.'

  'I just want to get this straight, ma'am. Dooher told him they were going to be talking in that ra
nge?'

  That's right.'

  'And if they – Dooher and Flaherty – if they didn't come through?'

  'Then Victor was going to file, but he didn't think… no.' She folded her arms, too quickly, over her chest. Glitsky recognized the classic body language – she'd decided to clam up about something.

  'No, what?'

  'Nothing. I'm sorry. Go ahead.'

  The interrogation room was small and windowless. There was no art on the walls. The furnishings consisted of three folding chairs around a pitted wooden table. This setting could play on the nerves of even the most cooperative witness. The air got stale. People froze, imagined things, got weirded out in any number of ways.

  Suddenly Glitsky leaned back, straightened, shook his shoulders, getting loose. He lifted the corners of his mouth, scratched his face. Finally, there was the trick he did with the eyes, letting them go out of focus. He fancied this made people think there was something soft in there. He turned his head to include Paul Thieu. 'How about if we all take a break, get a cup of tea or something?'

  'So then, after you talked this night…?'

  'He was going to come to my place. He asked me not to call again – Dooher might be there. He'd call when he knew, or when it was over.'

  'And when he didn't?'

  'I just thought it must have gone real late. He just went home. I waited all the next day at work, but no call. I tried his office, his home… even Mr Dooher's office.'

  'And what did he say?'

  'He didn't talk to me.' Glitsky and Thieu exchanged glances. Lou the Greek's seemed unusually cavernous, nearly empty here in the mid-afternoon. It provided a better environment for talking than the tiny interrogation room at the Hall. 'So eventually I went by the office and knocked, but there wasn't any answer. Of course.' By now she was sniffling occasionally into a napkin. 'And then I called the police.'

  Glitsky kept it casual. 'Why wouldn't Dooher talk to you?'

  She shook her head. 'I don't think it's so much he wouldn 't, he just didn't. His secretary took my message, which was that I was a friend of Victor Trang's and did he have any idea where Victor was? Had he seen him? Then she called back and said he was concerned, too. Maybe we should both call the police. So that's where I left it.'

  Glitsky was tearing his own napkin into tiny bits and piling them neatly on the table. 'Ms Martin. Upstairs a while ago there was something you didn't want to talk about, about the settlement with Dooher…'

  She cast her eyes to the ceiling and sighed deeply. 'Okay,' she said.

  That night, at the Glitsky home, it was almost the way it used to be. His sons were watching television, perhaps even doing some homework to the mindless background, in the bedroom shared by the two younger boys.

  Flo was feeling better today. It went up and down. But tonight it was way up. She was dressed in tight bluejeans, gold sandals and no socks, a maroon blouse. Diamond stud earrings and a brush of makeup, a light touch of lipstick. A maroon scarf artfully curled around her head to hide the hair loss.

  The nurse was off at night. And Flo had sent Glitsky's dad back to his home. She told him he needed some time for himself. He should take in a movie, go solve one of the mysteries of the Talmud.

  Nat must be sick of taking care of things here and Flo was able to cope today. Who knew how long it was going to last, but for now – maybe a couple of days, maybe more – she craved some semblance of normalcy for them all.

  And somehow – she was a genius – she'd done it. Created that feel. Made dinner of stuffed flank steak (everybody's favorite), home fries with onions and peppers, broccoli and cheese sauce, vanilla ice cream over cherry pie. 'You know, I just never seem to worry about cholesterol anymore.'

  Jokes yet.

  Now she was rinsing dishes – about a freightcar full – piling them carefully in the dishwasher. Glitsky sat on the counter next to her, telling her about his day, just like old times, about what Lily Martin had suddenly gone quiet about, which was that her boyfriend never really thought he would win the lawsuit if he filed it.

  'You mean he was basically trying to extort money from the Church?'

  'Lily didn't want to put it so bluntly, but essentially, yeah.'

  'That is scuzzy.'

  Glitsky shrugged. 'He's a lawyer. Was a lawyer.'

  'You think that's why he got killed?'

  'Just because he was a lawyer? I don't know, Flo, that's a tough theory. There's lot of lawyers out there and many of them are alive.'

  She gave him the eye. 'Because of the deal, Abraham.'

  He temporized. 'I don't know yet. I think it might be possible.'

  Another look. 'Sergeant goes out on limb. Film at eleven.'

  He smiled at her, his real smile. My problem is this: so what? This guy Dooher may have had all this against Victor Trang, but you don't go out and kill somebody who's suing your client. And this killing was personal.'

  'How about if you thought you might lose your client if you lost?'

  'But they weren't even playing yet. Nobody was going to lose that big. They were settling.'

  'Maybe the client wasn't happy about the settlement terms. They'd go with this one because they had to, it had gone too far, whatever – but afterwards they fire the lawyer. Or he thinks they might.'

  'So he kills the guy?' Abe shook his head. 'I just don't see it. It doesn't make any sense. Besides, this lawyer we're talking about, Dooher, he's managing partner of a big firm downtown. He's been at this all of his life. He's not going to kill a professional adversary over a case. Besides, they lose a case, they lose a client, it's not the end of the world. His firm's probably got a hundred clients.'

  'Only probably? You didn't check?'

  Glitsky had to smile. 'Yeah, Flo, in my free time I ran a D &B on them. Firms don't usually run on one client.'

  Flo shrugged. 'Okay, so who then, if it's not money?'

  'I know. I just hate to see a money motive go nowhere.'

  She put the last dish into the dishwasher, closed it up, and came to stand in front of her husband, between his legs. She put her arms around him. They kissed.

  'I remember that,' Glitsky said.

  Flo nodded toward their bedroom. 'Race you.'

  For a half-hour, he'd forgotten all about real life.

  Then she was breathing regularly and he was back in it. The clock said 9:45. It was a school night – he had to get the boys down to bed. He had to move, but if he didn't, maybe it would all just stop right here, where he was, where they all were.

  She shifted slightly. 'Abe?' Not sleeping after all. 'Find somebody else. Promise me that.'

  There was a tremor, a tic, above his eye. The muscle of his jaw tightened. The scar through his lips went white with a surge of anger so sharp it grabbed his next breath.

  'I don't want to talk about it.' He stood. 'It's time I got those kids to bed.'

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Christina knew it had happened at the dinner on Saturday at Sam's… its aftermath.

  On the drive back to her apartment, Joe going on and on. How could Christina think she knew Mark Dooher so well? What was with the two of them? Where did she get off, saying he was nothing like a bastard? And while they were at it, what was the real story behind her knowing about these retreats with Dooher and Farrell?

  And she'd closed her eyes, too tired to fight him anymore, to explain, to care. The certainty had come in a flash – that Joe wasn't right for her, and all the rationalizing and wishing in the world wasn't going to change that.

  He would never be right. She didn't love him.

  There had been early admiration, then a desire born of curiosity, followed by a leap of faith. But the fact was that she didn't feel much about him one way or the other. Except when he started talking about /acts. And even then she didn't hate him – she just found him irritating and boring.

  Pleading a headache, she'd gone into her apartment alone, said she'd call him when she felt better.

  Which wasn't Sunday. The
n on Monday he'd flown to LA and stayed overnight. She'd been out both nights, studying. She'd come home and listened to his petulant messages and it all got clearer.

  Now, Wednesday morning, she stood at his office door. He was, as always, hip-deep in work. Ear stuck to his telephone, he was signing something and reading something else, passing paper to his secretary, who hovered beside him with a notepad and an expression of exasperated fear.

  Yep, Christina thought, Joe is going to make it.

  Fate sealed the decision. At that moment Joe reasonably spoke into the telephone: 'I don't think you've got all your ducks lined up, Bill, and that's the plain fact of it.'

  She came forward into the room. Seeing her, Joe held up one finger, pointed at the phone and smiled as though she were a client he'd been expecting. He mouthed, 'Be right there.'

  She sadly shook her head and put the envelope containing the ring and her letter on his desk. Patting it once, she turned and walked out.

  'I feel like a coward, just running out like that. I should have faced him.'

  'And said what?'

  'I don't know. Told him.'

  'Would he have listened?'

  'Maybe to the fact that I was leaving him. Maybe that.' She looked out at the whitecaps pocking the blue bay, sailboats half-keeled in the breeze, San Francisco in the distance, the Golden Gate beyond the Sausalito curve to her right. At Sam's expression, she laughed. 'No, you're right. Not even to that. And that look isn't fair.'

  'What look? And I didn't say anything.'

  'You know what look. And you didn't have to.'

  They were at Scoma's, having taken the ferry to Sausalito. Sam had two experienced volunteers working at the Center and decided she could afford a few hours off. For her part, Christina, after leaving her envelope, had been tempted to go to Dooher's office and tell him about it, but thought it would smack of leading him on, which she flatly wasn't going to do.