And yet she has already passed her verdict on Mr. Burgess, and has rendered her judgment. Politics dictate that she must call for the death penalty.
The district attorney has chosen well the first victim of her war on crime. Cole Burgess isn’t going to have many defenders. A straight white male, he is politically unconnected in our Balkanized burg. As a homeless man, he is already hated by the majority of San Francisco’s citizens, who have grown weary of panhandlers and bums. As a heroin addict, he is confused, outcast and without hope.
One is hard-pressed to believe that Ms. Pratt does not know all this, and has not considered it cynically. But it will get her votes, and she’s going to need every last one.
She should be ashamed of herself.
Although it wasn’t ten blocks from his own duplex, Glitsky had never before been to the home of the chief of the Inspectors’ Bureau, Captain Frank Batiste.
Now, still before eight o’clock this miserable morning, he found himself shrouded in fog, ringing the doorbell on the front porch of a charming Victorian house on Cherry Street. He’d passed from the sidewalk up through a trimmed yard. A couple of matching white wicker chairs claimed some proprietary spots on the porch, thriving plants sprouted out of pots all over the place. For a fleeting moment, he felt a stab of envy. Batiste had been Glitsky’s immediate predecessor as head of homicide. Other cops whose careers had followed pretty much the same trajectory as his own, how could they live in such serenity? How did they get there? Not that his place was a dump, he didn’t think so, anyway. It was clean, but . . .
The thought, unwelcome in any case, got interrupted by the door opening, Batiste’s honest face, his hand outstretched. “Hey, Abe. You’re the first one here, come on in.”
“Sorry to bother you at home, Frank.”
A “get real” look. “Please. You want some coffee? No, I remember.” Batiste snapped his fingers. “Tea. Earl Grey okay?”
“Better than that.”
“Good.”
They walked the long hallway to the back, Glitsky vaguely aware of the family pictures all along the wall, the dozens of sports trophies on a long, thin table. He’d known Frank for twenty years and was hardly aware that he was married, much less the father of what looked to be at least four kids.
In the kitchen, a huge black Lab lay sprawled by the back door. “That’s Arlene,” Batiste said, crossing over to her, petting her head. “She won’t bite. In fact, she probably won’t move. She might be dead, I’m not sure.” He grabbed a handful of pelt and pulled it back and forth. “Arlene, you dead yet?”
The giant old dog opened one eye and Batiste lit right up. “Whoa! Arlene. Putting on a show for our guest, now, aren’t you?” He turned to Abe. “She must like you.” Then, an afterthought. “Not dead.”
After he’d left Hardy’s office the previous night, Abe had paid a call on his old, wise father, Nat. They’d shot things around awhile, and when they’d finished, Abe had called the captain. He and Batiste had served together in the homicide detail. They had a long professional history and understood each other, especially in their shared belief that politics sucked.
In the past couple of years, Glitsky had realized with certainty that in spite of his exalted rank, Frank was at odds with the movers in the department. The chief, Dan Rigby, inhabited a different landscape, seldom venturing from the rarefied air of policy—money, budgets, numbers, arrest rates, diversity issues. Rigby “interfaced” with the other city departments—the mayor’s office, the D.A., all the crap for which Glitsky had no use.
And in this, he was sure that Batiste was still a cop’s cop, and hence his ally.
Which was why he’d finally called him and laid out his role in this situation, clearly and without any excuses. He admitted that things had gone wrong in the Burgess case from the very beginning, and it had largely been because of him, his influence, his attitude.
Abe didn’t feel he could do much in the way of correcting things until he’d first cleared the slate with his coworkers, with Batiste, Medrano and Petrie, with Ridley Banks. That matter of honor was his priority. After that, he could take his fight anywhere else he needed, but not without telling his men first. He also wanted the coroner, John Strout, to hear what he had to say. So Batiste had suggested the early morning meet.
It was a modern kitchen and Batiste moved about it easily. He produced a genuine whistling teakettle, then a separate teapot. He spooned leaves from a porcelain canister into a silver ball and closed it up, dropping it into the pot. “Be a minute,” he said, then added, without missing a beat, “So. This thing’s going to heat up?” He wasn’t talking about the teakettle.
***
Arms crossed and face set, Batiste stood leaning against his kitchen counter. The rest of them had taken seats around a battered wooden plank kitchen table that had seen a zillion meals—the remnants of some recent ones still remained.
Glitsky finished his spiel and scratched at a petrified lump of ketchup, waiting for the reactions. Judging from the body language and the palpable air of tension in the room, they were not going to be positive.
Arlene, still not dead, groaned in the agonies of some dog dream.
Inspector Ridley Banks scraped his chair forward, straightening up at the table. His face was a dark mask, the voice strained. “The man confessed, Abe. On tape, he admits he shot her.”
“That’s right. And that’s why we’re here, Rid.” Glitsky didn’t blame Ridley for his fury. He had given his lieutenant what he had wanted. Now, because of it, he was screwed. “The message here today is that the buck stops with me on this one. I’m taking the heat.”
“If we dump the confession,” Ridley said.
This, of course, wasn’t the job of the police, but Glitsky knew what he meant. “If we go to the D.A., yeah . . .”
“And you want to run by me again why we want to do that?” Ridley’s insubordinate tone would ordinarily have drawn a rebuke, but not today.
“Because of what I just told you,” Glitsky replied. “There are problems matching what Burgess said with what apparently happened.”
“So what? There’s always problems. The guy confessed. He had the GSR . . .”
As Batiste had noted, things were heating up. “It’s not about guilt, Rid. Nobody’s talking about guilt. But there’s going to be a hearing on the confession, and I’m going to tell the truth.”
Ridley glared. “You’re saying I’m not?”
“No. I’m not saying that.”
“You weren’t in the room, Abe. I was.”
“I saw the tape, Rid. I know what I told you to do.”
“And I did it. By the book. It’s my ass on—”
“Guys, guys. Easy.” This was Batiste, stepping in. “I think the point is we’re trying to get clear here on the confession. Isn’t that right, Abe?”
Glitsky nodded.
“Excuse me, sir.” Ridley hadn’t cooled off much. He was talking to Batiste, not Abe. “I must be missing something. I got a confession from this dirtball. Anybody see on the tape where I’m telling him he gets some smack if he talks? No? No, I don’t think so. What? I’m an idiot?”
“Nobody’s saying that, Rid.” Glitsky again.
“No? That’s funny. ’Cause it sounds like you’re saying I made him lie, then tried to hide it off tape.”
“No. Only that he should have been cleared by the paramedics and I ordered otherwise.”
“Uh-uh, no.” Banks wasn’t having it. “You didn’t sweat him. I did. It’s me on the tape. And it’s a righteous confession.”
“I don’t think so,” Glitsky said. “A good chunk of what he said is just wrong. He said he crossed over to her. After she was shot. He remembered she was this lump on the ground.”
The lanky coroner figured it was time he got on the boards. Meeting the eyes of the men around the table, he stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles, inserting his laconic drawl into the silence. “She was shot with the gun right up against her
hair. There wasn’t no abrasions on her knees, legs, anywheres. She was laid down gentle as you please.”
Glitsky, the voice of reason. “Burgess was drunk as a lord, Ridley. If he’d tried to hold her up and let her down easy, he’d have fallen with her.”
“Maybe he did,” the inspector replied. “He fell under her, broke her fall.” He turned to Strout. “No abrasions then, am I right, John?”
Strout cast a glance at Glitsky. “It could have happened.”
Banks continued. “I really don’t see the problem, Abe. I didn’t put a gun to this kid’s head and make him talk.”
“He wasn’t in withdrawal? He wasn’t just agreeing to what you said?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember exactly, it was a long day. But either way, nobody’s gonna prove it. And even if he was, what of it? He could tell the truth and get the interrogation over with. So for once in his life the scumbag made a good decision.”
“The details are all wrong.”
“So his brain’s fried. He gets things wrong. Big surprise. Let a jury work it out. We got plenty, more than enough to charge him. Isn’t that what we do?”
Glitsky was unwilling to give it up. “We can’t get him this way. That’s all I’m saying.”
Banks shook his head. “Burgess was there, Abe. He took her stuff, he had the gun, he fired the gun, he fucking said he did it, all right? Jesus. So he changes his story when he starts feeling better? Who wouldn’t?”
Batiste cleared his throat. “Abe?”
The lieutenant raised his eyes.
“It’s admirable that you wanted to protect your men when you thought you’d pushed them to excesses, but I don’t see evidence that anything went too far here. I’m coming down with Ridley. Going back to Pratt at this point would be pointless. We’re going to stand behind the confession. We’re going to stand together on it . . .” He let that hang, the message clear.
Glitsky, defeated, scanned the faces around the table. “Well,” he said, “I want to thank you all for coming.”
11
Hardy checked his watch—8:35. Cole was already supposed to have been delivered. After his experience at the jail three days ago, he was finding himself challenged in the patience arena regarding the jail’s employees. But here in the hallway behind the courtrooms on the second floor of the Hall of Justice, he knew that five minutes was a unit of time that had no real meaning. Until somebody was at least fifteen minutes late, they were on time, so he cooled his heels outside the holding cell behind Department 11 and tried to ignore the show, which—given the traffic—was not all that easy.
The hallway, which ran most of the length of the building behind the courtrooms, hummed with life or, more precisely in Hardy’s view, with lowlife. Defendants in their orange jumpsuits went shuffling and clanking along—in handcuffs and sometimes chains—escorted by their bailiffs. This was the morning delivery from the jail next door to the courtrooms here, a steady and depressing parade.
It reminded him of nothing so much as a zoo, the inmates chained and moved from one cage to another by their handlers, who only forgot the dangerous nature of their charges at their own peril. Hardy had been here a hundred times and it never failed to depress him, because in fact he knew that every one of these defendants was a human being who’d been born with rights, dignity, hope. Even, in most cases, a mother and perhaps a father who had loved them, at least for a while. Now, here, they were reduced to little more than animals—to be caged and controlled.
Sadly, he realized that this was pretty much the way it had to be if the system was to handle them. Because he didn’t fool himself—nearly all the inmates passing him had lost their hope, abandoned their dignity, forfeited all but their most basic rights.
He wished they’d hurry up and deliver Cole. He’d be ready for Prozac himself by the time his client arrived. So he leaned against the cell door, then went inside and sat. He put his briefcase on the concrete bench, intending to take the opportunity to get some paperwork out of the way, keep his attitude up.
But it wasn’t to be.
He saw the whole thing, since he was just checking the holding cell for Cole’s arrival one last time when it began. He heard the bell of the elevator and, as the doors cracked open, the sharp command. “Move it! Move it! Now!” From the tone, something was already going very wrong.
Looking over, he was watching as something huge filled the elevator door opening. Two bailiffs stood slightly behind and to either side of a gigantic Samoan. The man probably weighed three hundred pounds. The bailiffs had no room to move.
The man was handcuffed but not shackled. He wore a hair net. The jumpsuit he’d been issued didn’t even come close to covering the enormous flesh of his tattooed torso; the sleeves ended midway between the elbow and the wrist. Hardy didn’t know what had been going on in the elevator, but by the time the doors opened, the inmate’s face was a mask of rage.
One of the bailiffs prodded him—it didn’t seem to Hardy as though it was the first time—and suddenly, with a true primal scream, the man slammed himself backwards into the bailiff. Then, with surprising agility, he shifted and body-slammed the other guard into the elevator’s walls.
The two guards were both on the floor.
“Jesus Christ!” Hardy leaped back toward the holding cell, putting distance between himself and the Samoan, who was exploding out of the elevator in his direction.
But everyone on the floor had heard the scream, and now doors were opening all over the place, alarms going off, bailiffs appearing from courtrooms, judges from their chambers, other inmates—already under escort—starting to get into it.
A Klaxon sounded and voices were yelling “Lock it down! Lock it down!”
The Samoan had obviously been in the hallway before and knew just where he wanted to go. He broke left in a shambling run, taking out another bailiff who was, stupidly, trying to pull his radio and perhaps try to fight it out in a hallway jammed with humanity.
Stopping the man was going to be a problem.
The Samoan had reached the end of the hall, bailiffs and other inmates hugging the walls lest they be crushed in the rush. But there was no real way out. The same alarm that sounded the Klaxon effectively closed off the corridor, automatically locking the double doors at the end of it. By the time the Samoan realized he couldn’t open them and turned again for another run at the hallway, three bailiffs stood in his way, as well as three uniformed officers with their guns drawn.
Hardy heard another scream, an anguished and rage-driven cry. Other bailiffs and cops were backfilling behind the original six until, in under another minute, a phalanx had formed, effectively sealing off any possibility of escape.
The Samoan turned back to the locked doors. Turned around again, held his cuffed hands out in front of him. “Shoot me,” he screamed. “Please, shoot me.”
Because of the incident, Cole was even later. He told Hardy that they’d picked him up at the hospital during the night, and this had obviously disturbed his beauty rest. In his orange jumpsuit, with his slack posture and unkempt hair, the boy appeared malnourished and pathetic. But Hardy thought his eyes were clearer than they had been the day before. That wasn’t saying much, but it was something, and this morning Hardy would take whatever he could get.
He was still shaken by what he’d witnessed. A little more critical mass of inmates and it would have been a riot. Another rush by the Samoan and he would have been shot dead. Instead, he had finally gone terrifyingly quiet. He sat on the floor and let them come and shackle him and take him away, belted down to a gurney.
Cole sat on the concrete bench. Hardy had already done enough time on the damn thing this morning—he was standing now, leaning back against the door.
Because the morning’s routine had been so violently interrupted, they weren’t going to get much time to work out any kind of strategy—but Hardy wanted to get at least a few things straight if he was going to defend this boy. The plea. Bail. Money. Timing issues.
<
br /> But again, it wasn’t going to be that simple.
“What’s waiving time mean?” Cole asked after Hardy had told him he was going to have to do just that.
To Hardy, this was merely a logistical detail. Cole had an absolute right to a speedy trial. In practice, though, defendants very rarely wanted one. The conventional wisdom was that it was always to the defendant’s advantage to delay. Delay put off an eventual verdict, and until a verdict was rendered, you were presumed innocent, a small detail but a critical one. Delay also provided the opportunity for key witnesses to get run over by a bus or disappear or forget what they had once clearly remembered, thereby strengthening your case. The victim or the family of the victim might lose emotional fire, the need for revenge or, if the delay was long enough, sometimes even closure. The cop who arrested you might get another job. D.A. priorities could change and you could get offered a better deal to cop a plea.
The possibilities varied, but the general rule held true: A continuance is half a dismissal. Delay was a good thing.
Hardy tried to explain this to Cole. “The courts are so backed up that no judge wants to assign a preliminary hearing in ten days, so we just say we’re okay with putting it off for a few months . . .”
“A few months?”
“Maybe. Longer if we can.”
Cole was shaking his head. “And I stay in here? No way. I can’t do that.”
“I hate to break it to you, Cole, but you have to do that. You’ve got a D.A. who’s talking death penalty to help her get elected, so at the very least we want to put off the trial until after the election, which is next November, nine months. At least.”
But Cole was still shaking his head, frowning, struggling with it. “I can’t stay in here for nine months,” he said. “I’d die.”
“You’ve got a lot better chance of dying shooting smack for nine months out on the street.”
The Dismas Hardy Novels Page 11
