Guilt

by John Lescroart

  Thieu sat back, rocked by this information.

  But Brown was going on unbidden. 'And you know, if you look at it the way it really was, Dooher's the one who let it all happen. It was his job to keep us straight. Instead, he kept us wired.'

  Thieu leaned forward. 'Let what happen?'

  Brown wasn't good with direct questions. They seemed to spook him. He leaned back, found himself out of the umbrella's shadow, his face in the sun, and that moved him forward again. 'You don't know about this, why did you want to see me?'

  'I wanted to see if the guys in your platoon – Dooher specifically -smuggled out their weapons. If you knew if Dooher had.'

  'Why?'

  Though it had nothing to do with Sheila Dooher, which was his case, Thieu ran with what he had. 'We think Dooher used a bayonet to kill somebody, that's why.'

  Brown's face cracked – a broken smile. Thieu had just verified something for him. 'Yeah,' he said.

  'Yeah what?'

  'That's how he did Nguyen, too.'

  Thieu was learning about the art of interrogation with this man. Don't ask directly. Just keep him talking. 'Nguyen?'

  'His source – Andre Nguyen. Had a little shop just outside Saigon, pretended to sell groceries.' Thieu must have looked confused. Brown put his beer mug down, brought his face in close, eye to eye. 'Come on, man! The guy he killed.'

  The story came out. There had been no ambush with a platoon of stoned soldiers. Nguyen had sold Dooher a load of bad heroin, or maybe it was extra-good heroin. In any event, Dooher sold it to his troops and it overdosed all but two of them.

  'And this never got reported?'

  Again, an expression that told Thieu that his world and Brown's operated on different planes. 'Dooher covered it. He wasn't part of it. We – me and Lindley – we weren't part of it. We all alibied each other. We were out on patrol, the guys left back at camp had this bad load of shit, and it killed them.'

  'And the authorities believed you?'

  Brown nodded. 'Enough, but that wasn't really the end of it.' A slug of beer. 'Problem is, Dooher knows it's his fault. And we know it's his fault. So now he like wants to be friends, afterwards. Make sure Lindley and me, we got no hard feelings.'

  'How'd he try to be your friend?'

  'You know, pulled us – me and Lindley – some cherry R and R in Hawaii. He had a knack of getting what he wanted. He thought he'd show us a good time, make up for the other, some bullshit like that. Lindley wouldn't do it.'

  'Why not?' It was a direct question and Brown hesitated again, but Thieu couldn't stop himself. 'Chas, why didn't Lindley want to go out with Dooher?'

  'He thought he was going to kill us.'

  'Why?'

  'Why? 'Cause we knew he'd fucked up, that's why. We could ruin him if we told. We were the only witnesses left and we were pretty bitter.'

  'At Dooher?'

  Brown shrugged. 'At the whole thing, man. You get tight over there with your guys. You're like twenty years old and then, wham, they're all dead but you. It makes you bitter.'

  Thieu believed it. 'But you went out with Dooher? In Hawaii?'

  Chas nodded. 'I just didn't see it. He wasn't going to kill nobody. Lindley was just paranoid. I thought.'

  'Now you don't think he was?'

  'Well, he didn't try to kill me. There's the proof of that.'

  The eyes seemed to go empty again, but Thieu saw something in them that Chas Brown was trying to keep hidden. Chas grabbed for the crutch of his beer glass, but Thieu surprised himself, reaching out, grabbing his wrist, stopping him.

  'What?' he asked.

  'I always thought, later, that if Lindley had come along, he might have. Killed us both, I mean. When I showed up at his hotel alone, it was like he freaked out, goes all quiet on me, like, "What the fuck? I ask my guys out for a good time, on me, and they stand me up. What kind of bullshit is that?'"

  'So what did happen? That night?'

  'Nothing. We got drunk. Well, tell the truth, first time in my life, somebody got drunker than me. I was, I guess, still a little scared what he might do.' Brown's ravaged face creased into a little-boy smile. 'I poured out a lot of good rum that night. Still breaks my heart to think about it.'

  'I bet it does.' Thieu found the thread again. 'And so, after that, you became friends?'

  'Not hardly.'

  'Why not?'

  'Cause he was an officer.' This time he got the beer to his mouth. 'No, not that. I thought he was pathetic, I guess. That's why.'

  'Pathetic?'

  A nod. 'You ever have somebody push on you too hard they want to be friends so bad?'

  'And Dooher wanted to be your friend?'

  It was all coming back now, and Brown's head swung from side to side. 'No, no, no. He wanted to be forgiven, that's all he wanted. I mean as long as we were alive, and he wasn't going to kill us, then he wanted us to understand how bad he felt, how he had proved it, how he'd made fucking amends.'

  'How did he do that?'

  'Shit, I shouldn't be telling you this. You're a cop.'

  'I am a cop. So what?'

  Thieu's hand was still locked around his wrist, and suddenly Brown became aware of it; he moved it, raised the beer to his mouth. Drained it. Took a deep breath. 'So he killed Nguyen, the guy who sold us the shag. Went to his store and gutted him with his bayonet, wiped the fucking blade clean on his pajamas. Told me all about it, man to man, how he'd taken this great risk and all to get the guy who'd been responsible for everybody's o.d. So I'd forgive him, see what a hero he was. Can you believe that?'

  'My Lord.' Glitsky, sitting on the table in one of the interrogation rooms on the 4th floor, the door closed behind him, flicked off the tape recorder.

  'That's what I thought,' Thieu said, 'except I didn't use exactly those words.'

  'He wiped his bayonet on the guy's pajamas!'

  'That was my favorite part, too. Do you think this is enough to play for Drysdale?'

  'I think we're getting there. You know, you came barging in with this, you didn't hear the other news.'

  'What's that?'

  'We got the blood lab report in today. You know what EDTA is?' Glitsky consulted his notes.

  'Sure. Ethylene Diamine Tetra-Acetic Acid.' Glitsky's mouth hung open. 'My sister's a nurse,' Thieu explained. 'I used to test her on stuff. But what about it, the EDTA?'

  Glitsky was still shaking his head. 'You think – well, most people think -when you give blood, they take it out, put it in a vial, spin it down or whatever, do their tests, right?'

  'Right.'

  'Right. But often they need to add an anti-coagulant to the blood to keep it from clotting, and that, my son, is EDTA. Actually, that's not precisely right. They don't add it to the blood. It comes in the vials. They've got purple stoppers on the top.'

  'So?'

  'So the blood all over Sheila Dooher's bed, supposedly left there by the perp when he was cut in the struggle, was loaded with EDTA.'

  'Which means?'

  'Which means that Dooher got his hands on some blood – maybe at his doctor's, maybe the same place he got the surgical glove, I don't know. He thought he'd leave a bunch on the bed, send our slow-witted selves off in search of a man with A-positive blood, which couldn't be him. But, sadly for him, the vial he picked up wasn't pure.'

  Thieu tsked. 'And how could he have known?'

  Glitsky stood up. 'Of such questions are tragedies made.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  At 10:15 on Tuesday morning, Glitsky, Thieu, Amanda Jenkins, and Frank Batiste were all jammed in front of Art Drysdale's desk. The door was closed behind them.

  Art was sitting back in his chair, getting an angle on them. 'It's awful swell having you all stop by at once. If I'd a' known you was comin', I'd have baked a cake. Any of you know that song? No?'

  Glitsky was thinking that he bet Thieu knew it, but didn't want to draw attention to himself. The other guests looked around at each other, and it was Amanda Jenkins who
spoke up. 'We want to talk about Mark Dooher, Art.'

  'Okay. What about him?'

  'He killed his wife,' Glitsky said.

  'All right. What's the problem? I don't need a committee to tell me that.'

  Since Glitsky had the ball, he decided to keep rolling it. 'The problem,' he said, 'is that he also killed Victor Trang, and Frank here tells me that Mr Locke may have had a hand in shutting down that investigation. And if he's got some kind of political tie with Dooher…'

  Drysdale held up a palm. 'Whoa. Stop right there. Chris Locke didn't stop any investigation, period. Chris Locke does not obstruct justice, and we're not going to talk about that here. Everybody understand that?'

  Everyone nodded.

  Drysdale pointed at the Head of Homicide. 'Frank, did I tell you to drop the Trang investigation?'

  Batiste swallowed. 'You did say that unless we got some real evidence pretty soon, we ought to move along.'

  'And did we get some real evidence? Physical evidence that would withstand the rigors of a jury trial?'

  'No.'

  'Okay. So much for the old news. Now what's this about his wife – Sheila, right?'

  Glitsky took over again. 'I'd like to just run the whole thing down – it's a little complicated – and you tell me how you think it looks.'

  'Excuse me, Abe.' Drysdale's gaze went to Jenkins. 'Amanda, you've heard this already?'

  'Yes, sir. But you remember I heard Levon Copes, too, and you and I came to different conclusions.'

  'This is like Copes?'

  Glitsky butted in. 'It's one of those times – like Copes – where we know the perp, yeah. We know that first.'

  Drysdale was shaking his head, his lips tight. 'And you know how uncomfortable that makes me?'

  'Which is why we're here seeking your counsel and advice.'

  Drysdale laughed out in the small room. 'Beautiful,' he said. 'Let the record reflect that I am truly snowed by this display of sincerity and trust.' He leaned forward, elbows on his desk. 'All right, tell me all about it. If I like it, we'll ask my wife. If she likes it, we'll go to the Grand Jury. I promise.'

  Later, around 11:30, Drysdale poked his head into Homicide on the 4th floor, saw Glitsky at his desk, and walked over.

  'I just called Lou's,' he said, referring to Lou the Greek's, 'and today's special is Kung Pao Chicken Greek Pizza.' Lou's wife was Chinese and the menu at the place often featured interesting culinary marriages such as this. 'I ordered a medium, enough for two, and it's going to be ready in,' Drysdale checked his watch, 'precisely seven minutes.'

  'Sounds delicious,' Glitsky said, getting up, 'but I'm really only going because I want to see how they do it. I make that stuff at home, it almost never turns out.'

  They were in a booth along a wall in the back of the darkened restaurant. The table was below street level. The wood-slatted windows began at their eyes, and outside the view of the alley included two garbage dumpsters, the barred back door of a bail bondsman's office, rainbows of graffiti on every surface.

  At the big meeting in his small office, Drysdale had listened attentively and said he wanted to review the reports, but tentatively wasn't going to object to proceeding with the Grand Jury indictment on Mark Dooher.

  But he and Glitsky had a bit of a longer personal history, which was why they were having lunch now.

  Lou the Greek himself was hovering at the table, wondering how today's masterpiece was being received. 'It's good,' Drysdale was saying, 'but -you want my honest opinion, Lou? – I'd leave off the goat cheese.'

  Lou was in his fifties and he'd lived underground in a cop bar for twenty-five years, so he looked closer to a hundred. But his eyes still sparkled in a long, lugubrious face. 'But the goat cheese is what makes it Greek.'

  'Why does it have to be Greek?' Glitsky asked. 'How about just plain old Kung Pao Chicken pizza like everybody else makes?'

  'You've had this before?' Lou asked. It bothered him. This was San Francisco, a major restaurant town, and Lou featured his wife's cuisine as cutting edge, which, in fact, it was. Not particularly good, but nobody else made anything like it.

  'Lou, they got this at the Round Table, just without the goat cheese.'

  The Greek turned to Drysdale. 'He's putting me on.'

  'It's possible,' Art agreed. 'But here's an idea. The chicken. Why don't you just serve it over rice – forget the pizza altogether. Call it Kung Pao Chicken?'

  'But then it's Chinese food.' The idea clearly distressed Lou. 'Everybody makes Kung Pao Chicken. People come here to eat, they expect Lou the Greek's, something Greek, am I right? I let my wife take over completely and pretty soon I'm Lou's Dragon Moon, a Chinese place. I'm fighting for my ethnic identity here.'

  Glitsky took a bite of the pizza. 'On second thought, leave the goat cheese, maybe sprinkle on some grape leaves.'

  Lou straightened up, struck by some merit in Glitsky's suggestion. 'Kung Pao dolmas,' he said. 'You think?'

  Drysdale nodded. 'Worth a try. Abe?'

  Glitsky's attention had suddenly wavered. He was staring blankly out the window at the alley.

  'Abe?' Drysdale repeated. 'You with us?'

  'Yeah, sure.'

  'I was telling Lou. King Pao dolmas? Good idea?'

  Coming back from far away, Glitsky nodded. 'Yeah, good idea. Definitely.'

  But the real purpose of the lunch.

  'I'm just going to pretend to be a meddling, picky defense attorney here now for a couple of minutes,' Drysdale was saying. 'I can see you and Amanda want to run with this and my instinct tells me it's going to go high profile in about ten seconds, so I'd like to have answers for some questions that I predict will be asked by our ever-vigilant media, to say nothing of my boss.'

  The pizza was done, the tray cleared away. Glitsky had his hands folded around a fresh steaming mug of green tea on the table in front of him. 'Okay, shoot.'

  'All right. Dooher comes home from work, brings some champagne, into which he intends to put some chloral-hydrate, thereby to knock his wife out so that he can come back later and kill her. But when he gets home, she is already dead. This is the theory?'

  'Right.' This was, of course, the nub of the problem. 'But he doesn't know she is dead. He's got his plan all worked out and he's moving fast, all nerves. He comes in, says thank God she's not awake, not moving, and he sticks her, rearranges the body to make it look like a struggle, gets back to the driving range before anybody notices he's gone.'

  'But he was gone, Abe. He's been gone at least a half-hour. And nobody noticed? You talked to people there at the driving range, right? Anyway, forget that. Let's go back. You're saying he poisoned her with chloral-hydrate, is that it? How do we know she just didn't take the stuff? What if she was committing suicide?'

  Glitsky spun his tea slowly. 'So your argument is that Dooher waits until his wife commits suicide and then comes in and stabs the body with a knife and makes it look like a burglary?' He shook his head. 'No, Art. The knife-wound is why it's not suicide. The drugs is why it's not a burglary. Besides, there wasn't enough chloral-hydrate to kill her.'

  Drysdale spread his palms. 'I thought she was poisoned. Didn't you just say the chloral-hydrate…?'

  'The chloral-hydrate is the drug Dooher gave her to knock her out, make her go to sleep. But what he didn't know was that she was evidently having a tough time with menopause and was already taking a drug called Nardil for depression. Also, just that day she had evidently dosed herself up with Benadryl. She had an allergy shot that morning. So she was already drugged to the gills. Then she drank the champagne. Add alcohol, mix and pour. The chloral-hydrate pushed her over. It did her in.'

  'Okay.' Drysdale sighed. 'So what, exactly, does that leave us with? The stabbing is a crime, okay, but it's not Murder One. Hell, it's not Murder Anything to stab a dead body.'

  'It is Murder One to poison somebody to death.'

  Drysdale sat back in the booth, contemplating it.

  A quiet edge crept into Glitsky's
voice. He leaned in over the table. 'This works, Art, listen: Amanda's argument isn't going to be that he meant to kill her with chloral-hydrate, even though that was the result. He didn't intend to kill her until he stabbed her later, but he did intend to give her poison, and she died from that. And the beauty is that stabbing her is what proves it.'

  'And, of course, we can prove that?'

  'We know he stabbed her.'

  'Not exactly my question.'

  'Okay. This is what we've got. You tell me.' Glitsky outlined it all. It was Dooher's knife and contained only his fingerprints. He had left his house alarm system off and his next-door neighbor had seen him unscrewing his side-door light on the way out to the driving range. Another neighbor saw his car parked on the street around the corner from his house during the time he was supposedly hitting golf balls. Then there was wiping the blade on the victim's clothes, which Glitsky had never encountered before in all his years in Homicide – and now it had happened twice in cases implicating Mark Dooher, three times if you included Chas Brown's Vietnam story. Finally, there was the blood that had been contaminated with EDTA. 'And who else would have stabbed a dead woman and then faked a burglary?'

  When Glitsky finished, Drysdale sat still for a moment. 'You've got an eyewitness for the car?'

  Glitsky nodded. 'Emil Balian. Swears it was Dooher's car, swears it was that night, that time. Rock solid.'

  Drysdale appeared satisfied. There's your case,' he said. 'Don't let that guy die.' A beat. 'But now, just for me, Abe, one more thing. You want to tell me why he did it?'

  'Frank's always telling me we don't need motives. We just need evidence.'

  'And Frank's right, Abe, he's right. But Chris Locke is going to be curious as to why a model citizen suddenly decides to kill his wife.'

  'Don't forget Victor Trang.'

  'Okay. Him, too, maybe – two of them for no apparent reason. Why did he do this?'

  'Maybe Sheila and Trang were having an affair.' Glitsky held up a hand. 'Just kidding. The real answer is we don't know. Not yet.'