John Lescroart - Betrayal

And Glitsky was at a juncture-the crux of it, really-his desire in life was to be with his wife, Treya, and their two young children, Rachel and Zachary. The last couple of years, since Zack had been born, had been something of a strain. Treya worked as the secretary for San Francisco's district attorney, Clarence Jackman. She was at her desk at nine and left at five. There had been weeks while Glitsky had been deputy chief that they'd basically only gotten to speak to each other in this building, the Hall of Justice.

Now, having made sure that his desk was cleared, Glitsky was getting ready to check out for the day. He went out his door, closing it behind him. Passing through the empty computer room, he entered the inspectors' area and saw that fully eight of the fourteen homicide inspectors were in the room. This was unusual, since most of the time, these people were out interviewing witnesses, assessing crime scenes, building cases, and working out rebooking details and/or charges with assistant DAs.

Darrel Bracco looked over and raised a hand in greeting-at least one person in the unit apparently okay with the new status quo. As the vibe of Glitsky's presence passed through the room, other inspectors looked up. Glitsky caught a few nods from veterans who went back to their conversations and coffee, was ignored by a couple of others.

This was the way it had been since he'd come down here, his people misunderstanding his reappointment to homicide, wondering if in reality he was some kind of spy sent down by the brass to shake up the detail, screw up their jobs.

Glitsky hoped that this was simply the effect of change on his people, and that it, too, would shortly pass. But until it did, he wasn't having a good time. Getting up to Bracco's desk, he summoned a neutral tone. "I'm out the door, Darrel. Anything happening I might want to know about before I go?"

Bracco thought a minute, then shook his head. "Nothing new, Lieutenant," he said. "Slow day on the prairie, I guess."

"I guess so." Glitsky did a quick scan of the room. He didn't want to seem to be checking on anyone. In fact, he wasn't, but that didn't mean people might not think he was. "See you tomorrow, Darrel."

"Yes, sir," Bracco said. "Have a good one." Glitsky had turned and gone two steps when Bracco spoke again. "Wait a sec, Abe. I just remembered. There was something you might want to put back on your board." This was the active homicide board in Glitsky's office. Usually, once a name left that board, it stayed off forever, either because a suspect in the case had gotten arrested, or because the trail had gone too cold to waste the inspectors' time anymore, or if the only eyewitness fell terminally ill with lead poisoning, or if, for any of a zillion reasons, the case wasn't being actively worked anymore.

"Back on the board?"

"Yeah. One of my old ones. Bowen. But it's been closed since before your time. We can get to it in the morning. Here, I'm writing myself a note so I won't forget."

"How 'bout if I just walk back in there and write it back up?"

Sheepish, Bracco nodded, getting to his feet. "That would probably work too. I didn't want to keep you if you were leaving."

"How long can it take?" Glitsky asked. "B-O-W-E-N, is that right? Five letters. Shouldn't take me more than a few minutes." He was already back at his door, turning the key in it. "So what's the case?"

"Hanna Bowen. Finally ruled a suicide by hanging."

Glitsky turned and faced his inspector. "What? She unhang herself?"

"It's more like I promised the daughter that I'd take another look at it. She can't seem to get her arms around it. That her mom killed herself, I mean."

"Okay. But the coroner ruled suicide? And you're going to help this daughter how?"

"I know it's a long shot, Abe, but the girl's still torn up. You know all the classes we take that tell us to be sensitive to the victim's pain, and all that. I figure what can it hurt, and it might help her."

"What, though, exactly?"

"Well, evidently the mother kept a diary. Or the daughter-her name is Jenna-Jenna thinks her mom might have kept a diary and she asked me if I could try to find it."

"And do what with it?"

"See if it gave us any reason to think her mom's death might have been a homicide."

Glitsky boosted himself back onto his desk. "This was your case originally?"

"Yeah."

"Anything point to homicide back then? When was this?"

"Maybe early February, and not really, no. Except that Jenna had such a hard time with accepting that her mother would do that."

"Well, God knows we've seen that before, Darrel. Not that I blame her. Your mother goes that way, you don't want to believe it. Maybe you honestly can't believe it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"I know. I told her I'd look, that's all. No promises."

"For this diary?"

"I don't know, Abe. That might not be all. I worked the case pretty hard when it was live. There were other elements at the time. Well, to be honest, mostly one other element, but it seemed worth checking out, although at the time I couldn't get anything on it."

"What was that?"

"The dad, Charlie. He disappeared last summer. That's supposedly why the wife killed herself."

"What do you mean, disappeared?"

"I mean poof, gone, vanished. No trace. Jenna thinks he wouldn't have just disappeared either. She thought he might have been killed."

"By who? Why?"

"No idea."

"Very strong, Darrel. So she thinks her father was killed, too, and that it's somehow connected to her mother's suicide?"

"Not suicide. She doesn't buy suicide. She thinks her mother was another homicide."

"Two homicides." Glitsky sat with it for another few seconds.

Bracco made a face. "The daughter lost both parents in the same year. If the diary turns up…" He shrugged. "Who knows. We might get something."

"So where are you gonna start?"

"I suppose I'll meet her and go through all the evidence again. Then maybe get to the father's files, which I never really looked into last time."

"What files?"

"His work files. He was a lawyer. Maybe it was something he was working on."

"What was?"

"The reason he was killed."

Glitsky scratched for a second at the corner of his mouth. Bracco had always been an enthusiastic cop, but he'd gotten promoted up to homicide originally because his father had been a driver to a former mayor, and sometimes his lack of experience showed. "You realize, I know, Darrel," Glitsky said, "that most middle-aged guys who disappear…I'm assuming this Charlie Bowen was middle-aged?"

"Fifty."

"There you go. Sometimes guys like him just walk away from it all on their own. They're not murdered."

"Right. I know that, Abe. Of course."

"And the wives of those men, who have been deserted by their husbands of, say, thirty years, might they find themselves depressed in the months following the desertion, even to the point of wanting to kill themselves?"

"Sure."

"Did we investigate Bowen as a homicide when he went missing?"

"No."

"And that was because…?"

"He was considered a missing person."

"Not a homicide?"

"Not a homicide. No, sir."

"Okay, then. Just to make the point."

"I hear you." Bracco shrugged away his misgivings. "Anyway, I'll be logging some time to the case and I thought you'd want to know."

"Okay." Glitsky pushed himself off his desk and wrote the word BOWEN onto the board, with the name BRACCO in the investigating inspector's column. "But, Darrel?"

"Yes, sir."

"Maybe not too much time, huh?"

OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, Glitsky's grown boys-Isaac, Jacob, and Orel-and Treya's grown girl, Raney, had created a diaspora of their own to places as far-flung as Seattle, Milan, Washington, D.C., and-not so far-flung-Orel was living in San Jose. Now the new family unit with two toddlers ranged in the same old upper duplex on a cul-de-sac above Lake Street.