Allie sighed. “You’d really do that?”
“Come on. What are friends for? Give it two more months, and if nothing’s happening still, then okay, nobody can say you didn’t try. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to my dad and see what he can do, or one of his friends. Something will come up. We’ll make it happen.”
Allie sniffed. “You’re the best.”
“Okay, I think we’ll all agree to that.” Rebecca got to her feet. “Hug?”
Allie stood up and the two women embraced.
“Better?” Rebecca asked when they’d separated.
“Much. Thank you.”
Rebecca gave her a slight nod. “As my dad says, ‘I live to serve.’ ”
“Do you think he’d really take me on?”
“I don’t know, but it’s worth asking. I’m going over to see them for lunch today. If you want to get dressed in the next half hour, you could come with me, and we could call it an interview and ask him flat out.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Why not?”
“It just never occurred to me that . . . Oh!”
“What?”
“I forgot. I mean, I just remembered. You got a phone call on the landline when you were out running. Your uncle, he said. Abe?”
“Uncle Abe called here? Did he say what he wanted?”
“Just that he needed to talk to you as soon as you got back. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you till now.”
Biting back her frustration at the already lost time, Rebecca managed to conjure up a smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll give him a call. Meanwhile, you go get some clothes on, and I’ll take a shower, and we’ll be ready to go.”
“Got it.” Allie disappeared down the hallway.
Rebecca followed her out the kitchen door but turned the other way, jogging to her own room, where she picked up the cell phone she’d left charging on her desk.
He picked up on the second ring. “Glitsky.”
“Uncle Abe? Hi. It’s The Beck. What’s up? Is everybody okay?”
“Sure. Everybody’s fine. Actually, the reason I’m calling? I’m afraid it’s business.”
“Business?” she asked, as if it were a foreign concept. “Okay.”
“I understand that you’re representing Gregory Treadway. The Anlya Paulson homicide.”
Rebecca felt her head go light. This was her father’s best friend in the world, her wonderful uncle Abe, who’d bounced her on his knee when she was a baby, whose children she’d babysat. On the other hand, this was the daunting and powerful Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky, former head of Homicide and now an investigator with the district attorney’s office. If this call was business, as he’d just admitted, he was calling her in the latter capacity, and even the mere possibility of that scared the living shit out of her. “Yes, I . . . I am,” she stammered. “Is Greg all right?”
“I assume so. I was calling you because we’ve had a development in that case, Beck, and Eric Waverly told me you were the person we should contact if we wanted to talk to him.”
“Okay?” She took a breath, tried to gather her thoughts. “That’s true. It’s what I told him yesterday so they wouldn’t keep trying to hassle him. But why was he telling you about that? Are you back in Homicide?”
“Short-term only. Wes Farrell assigned me to assist on this case. I’m calling you now as a courtesy because we need to take a DNA sample from him. Your client.”
Rebecca found herself shivering from head to foot. She lowered herself into the chair at her desk. “What do you need the DNA for? What’s going on?”
“I really can’t say, Beck. As I did say, this call is more of a courtesy. We would like you to bring your client down and have him provide a sample.”
“So you found something to compare his DNA with. What kind of sample was it? What have you got?”
“I’ve got a chance for him to prove that the DNA is not his. You know, it doesn’t take a minute for a swab. But I figured that if you didn’t want anybody to talk to him without you being present, you wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of the swab without you there, either.”
“Not too, no, I don’t suppose.” She ransacked her brain for the appropriate words. “I’m sorry, Uncle Abe.” Should she be calling him Uncle, or even Abe? “You’re saying . . . what, exactly?”
“I’m saying exactly what I said. We want a DNA sample from your client. We’d like you to bring him down. I thought the easiest way would be if I just asked.”
“I don’t see why not, but I’ve got to ask him first.”
“Sure. If it’s not his DNA, you know this can only help him.”
“I see that,” she said. “I get it. Let me talk to him, and I’ll get back to you. Would that be okay?”
“Perfect. Although sooner would be better.”
“Of course. As soon as I can reach him, I’ll call you back one way or the other.”
“I knew you would. Talk to you soon?”
“I’m sure you will. Bye, Uncle Abe.”
“Bye, Beck. Take care.”
• • •
THE FOG HAD burned off and the temperature topped seventy, which in San Francisco happened about twenty times a year. Frannie and Dismas decided to take advantage of the weather by turning their lunch into a picnic on the grounds of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, which was a few hundred very uphill yards from the Hardys’ home on Thirty-Fourth Avenue.
Since both of them had known Allie for the past three years, the job “interview” lasted about five minutes and was over before they even left the house. She should start at Hardy & Associates the following Monday, if she could accept the wage of twenty dollars an hour. She would be doing paralegal work, which the firm billed out at eighty-five dollars per hour. She would be evaluated after three months and either kept on as a full-time employee or let go. If she passed the bar and had been retained to that point, she would be offered a job as an associate, beginning at ninety thousand dollars a year, with full benefits. If she didn’t pass the bar, she could continue on as a paralegal, as long as her evaluations were positive.
When Allie began to express her gratitude, Hardy cut her off. “I can’t believe that between the two of you, you didn’t come to me sooner.”
“I didn’t think it would be fair,” Allie said, “since you’d already taken Beck. I wouldn’t even let her ask you.”
“But you said you applied to every other firm in the city.”
“Most of them twice,” Allie said.
“Okay, so why would you decide to deprive us of your skills and talents when everybody else in town was getting a fair shot at them?”
“I wasn’t thinking of it that way. Since I didn’t pass the bar—”
Hardy stopped her. “Allie, you graduated from one of the top law schools in the country. You are going to pass the bar, I guarantee it. Do you know my associate Amy Wu? She’s a genius, but the bar freaked her out, and it took her four tries to pass it. Four! And she’s probably done more to keep the firm afloat than any other single employee. So let’s put all this ‘I haven’t passed the bar’ nonsense behind you and start fresh Monday morning. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“All right, then. You’re hired. Let’s go have some lunch.”
The four of them were sitting on a blanket among the cypress trees, eating roasted chicken, sourdough bread, and potato salad, and drinking rosé wine (all except Rebecca, who was hoping to have a more or less imminent interview with her client). From this prime vantage, they could look straight north past the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, across the sailboat-studded bay, and all the way up beyond the green hills of Marin County.
For the third time, Rebecca got up, moved out to the edge of the cliff that fell off precipitously from their picnic spot, and made a phone call. Evidently, yet again, to no avail. When she got back to the blanket, she said, “Why do people have cell phones if they’re not going to turn them on or take them along?”
Frannie said, “I
f you’d just left one message, I’m sure he’d call you back.”
“But not as fast as if he got three messages.”
Frannie shrugged. “Well, that remains to be seen.”
“What’s so urgent?” Hardy asked.
The Beck sighed. “I don’t know if it really is, although it would be great to get Homicide off Greg’s case, and what I’ve got to talk to him about would move things along in that direction. At least that’s what Uncle Abe seemed to think, and I agree with him.”
Hardy finished his sip of wine and slowly lowered his glass. “You talked to Abe?”
A nod. “He called me this morning, letting me know as a courtesy that they wanted to ask Greg for a DNA sample. We talked an hour ago. Why? Does that bother you?”
“Not really.”
“Not really, but really yes? For the record, it looks like it bothers you.”
“Okay, it’s of some slight concern, yes.”
“How come?”
“First off, it means that Abe is formally part of the investigation.”
“Is that bad?” Beck asked.
“On the face of it, maybe not. After all, bringing him on was at least half my idea.”
This made Frannie sit up. “It was? How did that happen?”
He gave everybody the short version: his lunch with Farrell, the strategic political decision to convince Juhle to bring Abe aboard on the investigation.
“But then why would that be a problem?” Beck asked. “I always thought Uncle Abe was one of the good guys.”
“Of course. Personally, no question, he’s a great guy. But it would be bad luck to confuse that with thinking he’s got some sort of a soft spot for the defense. Even if he was just brought on to balance the ticket, so to speak. If he’s working a homicide, don’t kid yourself, whatever else he’s up to, his main commitment is getting a suspect behind bars. If he’s interested enough in Greg Treadway to call you about him, then I’m willing to bet that your boy is still very much a live suspect. It’s also disconcerting that he called you first and not me.”
“He should call me, shouldn’t he? I’m Greg’s lawyer, not you.”
“No. I know that. And going by the book, he shouldn’t call anybody. He should just show up and ask for a sample. That’s the correct protocol.”
“But . . .” Beck didn’t like the way this was going.
“But more important, you’ve been dealing with Waverly all this time, haven’t you? Why would Abe be calling you instead of the guy you’ve been talking to?”
“He’s on the case now. Maybe they divided it up some way.”
“Maybe,” Hardy replied. “Entirely possible. But also maybe, because you’ve got a long history and you love each other, and because—no offense—you’re inexperienced, he’s trying to avoid embarrassing you by pulling your client off the street and taking a swab without notice. But it comes out the same way. If they’ve got probable cause, they can get a warrant and take a sample. If they don’t, there’s no way you should let Greg provide one. So you call your dear uncle and tell him if he gets a warrant, you’d be happy to bring your client down, but if they can’t get a warrant, you still hope he has a nice day.”
“Warrant or not, why not let him give a sample if he’s innocent? I mean, how can it hurt if Greg didn’t do it?”
“A better question would be, how can it help Greg in any way?”
“If the DNA doesn’t match . . .”
“Then it’s not his DNA. So what? You don’t even know what sample they’re comparing it to. What does that have to do with her getting killed? Did the person who left the DNA necessarily have anything to do with that? No. If Greg takes the DNA test and there’s no match, does that take him off the hook for the murder? Not necessarily. Can it possibly do him any good at all? You tell me.”
“I didn’t think of it that way. I saw it as trying to be cooperative after not answering any of Homicide’s questions yesterday.”
“Getting back in their good graces, especially Abe’s?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“On the other hand, ask yourself what happens if they didn’t have probable cause for a warrant, but you get Greg to provide his DNA and they get a match. Suddenly it’s a whole new ball game. It could be a lot worse than one more tiny little lie he told about the night he went out with her. Depending on what they’re trying to match, or what sample they’re comparing his to, it could change everything.”
The Beck’s shoulders settled in disappointment. “But then they’ll say we’re not cooperating, which must be because he’s guilty, right? Otherwise, why wouldn’t he volunteer to give them the swab if it could prove he didn’t do it?”
“Think about it. It doesn’t prove he didn’t do it. Whatever the result, Beck, only two things can happen. If it isn’t a match, it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her; and if it is, it increases the chances that he did. Either way, it’s at best a no-win and at worst a dead loss for you and Greg, so why would you even consider it?”
Chagrined, Rebecca said, “Because Uncle Abe asked me, and it sounded so reasonable.”
“Right.”
“I can’t believe he would try to play me like that. It makes me feel like such an idiot. I mean, if I hadn’t talked to you about this . . . I think I’m really mad at Uncle Abe.”
“That’ll happen. I’ve wanted to murder him several times. And maybe he was just trying to do you a solid. Maybe he knows he can get a warrant and take the swab, but you can’t count on that. Even if he was trying to pull something, you can’t take it personally. As it turns out, this was a good lesson with no real harm done. You’ll have your chance to get back at him.”
“It’s not really that I want to do that.”
“Get back at him? Yeah, it is. You’ll see.”
“So meanwhile, what about Greg?”
“What about him? What’s changed? Have they found anything that proves him guilty?”
“Of course not.”
“Okay, then. Until they do, he’s innocent. Don’t forget it.”
18
JUHLE WAS ON the telephone that Saturday afternoon with Wes Farrell. “So now he’s a liar who also refused to give us a swab until we got our warrant. All things being equal, and all politics aside, I’d say this makes him at least a true person of interest. And when the lab tells us his DNA matches the semen on Anlya’s underwear, he’s a hell of a lot more than that.”
“Well, fine,” Farrell said, “he’s a person of interest. But really, what we’ve got here, Devin, is a lot of nothing. You’ve got a twenty-seven-year-old lying about having a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old. Lying about sex doesn’t make somebody a murderer. There are a whole lot of reasons he could have told those lies about Anlya that have nothing to do with killing her. What you need to find is something positive, actual real live evidence. You know this. I’m not just making it up. This is how we do it.”
“This is exactly the kind of thing that keeps us from arresting guilty people, Wes. You and I both know it, and it sucks.”
“Look, Dev, I appreciate your passion. I might even believe that this guy’s our guy. But it doesn’t do either of us any good to build a case against him that’ll fall apart at the first big push. And there’s no way in hell I’m going public with calling him a person of interest. The only purpose for doing that would be to smear a kid we can’t charge, and I won’t sink to that level.”
“But if I do nothing, the way Goodman’s talking—”
“To hell with Goodman. You’re not doing nothing. You’re trying to find a viable suspect. Sometimes that takes a couple of days, sometimes a week, and as you know, sometimes it never happens. If you’re worried about your job, you know what I’d do, no kidding?”
“Tell me.”
“I’d call Her Eminence Vi Lapeer. Yes, Vi the Chief. Tell her what you’ve been up to and get her to make a statement about Mr. Goodman and his irresponsible call for haste. She may have a bone to p
ick with Abe, but she’ll have to stand behind you for trying to do the job right. Because any criticism of you and your guys is also a criticism of her and the way she runs the department. Treat her as one of your allies, and she’ll have no choice but to become one.”
“Unless she thinks Goodman’s going to be mayor and won’t call him on his bullshit.”
“That’s not going to happen. Mainly because Goodman isn’t ever going to be mayor, but also because it would make Chief Lapeer look terrible as a leader and administrator. Nobody expects anybody to solve a bona fide murder mystery in a day or even a week. If it came out that that was her expectation, she’d be a laughingstock in the whole law enforcement community. I’d really call her, Dev. Give her a report and bring her up-to-date on the investigation. And speaking of that, is there anybody else your guys are talking to?”
• • •
WAVERLY AND YAMASHIRO were planning to have interviews with all of the residents at the McAllister Street home, and they wouldn’t need Glitsky’s help for that.
This left Abe with nothing to do until Monday morning, a prospect he found intolerable, so he sat at his desk reading the exceedingly slim case file on Anlya’s murder. Looking it over, he was struck anew by the paucity of relevant material, and by the almost total lack of information about Anlya’s life and general situation. Waverly and Yamashiro were partially addressing that problem today by talking to her housemates, but with the exception of Greg Treadway, there was so far no other person—no name—connected to Anlya as even a remote person of interest.
This made Abe somewhat nervous. It was always better to have more than one potential suspect whom the police had interviewed, if only to combat the eventual defense attorney’s accusation that the investigation hadn’t been rigorous enough, that the police had decided on one suspect early and hadn’t followed up on any other promising leads.
The way the file read today, three days after Anlya’s death, was that Greg Treadway was their quarry and they were going to pursue him until they brought him to ground.
Maybe the inspectors would make some progress today, he thought. But he knew that the lack of alternative suspects was not a deal breaker, especially when the prime suspect was, like Treadway, a proven liar who wouldn’t even cooperate in supplying a DNA swab without forcing the police to get a warrant for it.
The Fall Page 10
