John Lescroart - Damage

But tonight, Glitsky saw none of it.

He’d already considered and rejected the idea of going directly to the night magistrate on duty somewhere down in the lower floors of this building and asking for a search warrant based on Ro’s obvious knowledge that today’s murder victim was female. Though Glitsky took some solace in the fact that if it ever came to trial, he would indeed be allowed to testify to the exchange and Ro’s slip of the tongue, for the moment, it was essentially nothing as far as evidence was concerned. It did, however, perhaps irrationally, remove all doubt in Glitsky’s mind that Ro had killed Nuñez.

Glitsky pulled over a legal pad and scribbled some notes: He had to find Gloria Gonzalvez, the last remaining witness in Ro’s trial, before the rapist-killer could get to her. He needed to assemble a couple of identification six-packs-mug shots of five other people and Ro-to show around.

Other notes: How had Ro found Nuñez? Had he made an appointment with her? Might he have conceivably phoned her? Had one of his lawyers? Had she lived in the same apartment the last time she’d testified against him?

Now, putting aside his legal pad, he checked his Rolodex, picked up the phone, and punched up Arnie Becker’s cell phone number. The arson inspector picked up on the second ring, in spite of the late hour, giving no sign that he was anywhere near turning in. He knew who was calling him and started right in. “Abe. You got something?”

“Couple of somethings, maybe. Including a suspect.”

“That was fast.”

“You still at the fire?”

“Just getting started, really. Your crime scene just left. I’ll be here all night.”

“So has anybody put together who Nuñez was?”

“No. Other than she’s dead.”

“She was also a witness in a murder trial and was going to be one again before too long for the same guy.”

“Who’s that?”

“Ro Curtlee.”

“The guy Farrell let out on bail?”

“Actually it was Baretto, but yeah, him.”

“Shit. And he went and killed her.”

“That’s my bet.”

A long sigh. Then, “Why do they let these fuckers out anyway?”

“That’s a great question, Arnie. Something to do with justice and the right to appeal. Ask your congressman or somebody.”

“Assholes.”

“Yeah, well, the point is he might have been driving a purple BMW Z-Four convertible and parked it somewhere nearby when he went upstairs. Somebody might have seen it. Also, I’m making up a six-pack you can show around the neighborhood tomorrow. Anybody saw him, we at least take him down here and grill him, maybe even get a warrant to take his house apart. You get anything at all down there?”

“Maybe.” Becker paused. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but there might be a small something.”

“Go ahead, get my hopes up,” Glitsky said. “Small is good.”

Again, Becker hesitated. “Well, it might not be conclusive, and I don’t know what it means, if anything, but there were two almost identical burned-up pieces of what looks like rubber or plastic-I’ll know by tomorrow-down by her feet.”

Glitsky’s heart did a little flip in his chest. He’d already had one heart attack several years before, and though this didn’t feel the same at all, now he moved his hand over his chest and sucked in a quick breath. “She was wearing her shoes when he killed her,” he said. It was not a question.

“That’s what it looks like. Maybe. Does that mean anything to you?”

Glitsky still was finding it difficult to draw a breath. “That’s what Ro Curtlee did to his rape victims. He made sure they kept their shoes on.”

“Why?”

“God only knows, Arnie. Why anything?”

“Sorry about the time, Wes, but I wanted you to know first. I say they verify the shoes, we get a warrant.”

Farrell breathed into the mouthpiece on his end. “Can’t do it, Abe. We don’t even know it was Nuñez, for Christ’s sake. And we may never know for sure whether or not it’s her if she never went to a dentist in this country, which I hear is a reasonable likelihood. And without at least that ID, we’ve truly got nothing a jury could even chew on. Did any of that shoe stuff get admitted in his last trial?”

“I don’t know, Wes, but you can find out easy enough. Meanwhile, though, I went and talked to these women before they got bought off, his rape victims, all of them. They all said the same thing about the shoes. It’s what he did.”

“I believe you. But he didn’t kill any of them, the others, did he?”

“He killed one. He beat up three.”

“Okay, but the dead one, Sandoval, she was outside, found in the park, am I right?” He kept going over Glitsky’s silence. “So, my point is, he didn’t burn anybody. Not ever. That’s new, right? It’s not his old MO, so where’s the argument that this has to be him?”

“I know it’s him. Somebody in prison told him it was a good idea when you rape somebody and kill her, then you burn up the place and the evidence with it.”

“Which is why, what you got from Becker earlier, we’re not even going to get proof that this Nuñez woman was sexually molested, are we?”

“Not likely, no.”

“Okay, so we’ve got nothing putting Ro in her apartment, no witnesses…”

“So far.”

“All right, so far. But still. Then no proof of a sexual attack. So we’ve got a woman who died in a fire. We don’t even know cause of death yet, do we? I mean, was she strangled, shot, stabbed? Tell me.”

“We might not get that either, Wes. She’s burned up pretty bad.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Abe. She might… or no, the evidence might not prove a damn thing. She might have been carrying a candle on her way to the bath and had a heart attack and fell down and it set her and then the place on fire.”

“That didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think so, either. For the record, I think you’re probably right. But probably isn’t close to what we need and you know it.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Abe. Hope he screws up.”

“You mean while he’s killing his next victim?”

“No,” Farrell said. “Before that.”

Farrell thought that the furnishing of his office was coming along pretty well. It was a large area that didn’t remotely resemble the workspace of his predecessor and never would. That’s what happens when you replace extremely high-end conservative furnishings for your basic Goodwill/garage-sale style.

Farrell had long eschewed the tyranny of the desk in the middle of the room and preferred a foosball table with room to play cleared all around it. Up by the door and then again behind the foosball table were two seating areas, both of them anchored by a sofa in front of a coffee table, with armchairs facing the couch at the corners. One area was leather and chrome; the other fabric and wood.

His “working” desk was in fact a blond library table against the Bryant Street windows, with a computer, printer, phone, and fax machine covering its entire surface. Another table against the long wall featured a fifty-two-inch television set, with folding chairs arranged in front of it. These could, of course, also be moved to augment the seating around either of the couches. The finishing touch, on the shelf underneath his Nerf ball basket and law books, was a bar of sorts with a Jura espresso machine, cups and glasses, utensils, a wicker basket filled with sweeteners, and half a wall of spirits of varying quality.

Now, at ten forty-five on the Saturday morning after Felicia Nuñez had died, Farrell sat on one end of the leather sofa. Across from him, Amanda Jenkins and Abe Glitsky filled the corner chairs. “So I’m at a loss,” Farrell was saying. “On the one hand, I agree with both of you. I think it’s likely that Ro killed the Nuñez woman. On the other, we’re stuck with probable cause. I don’t really see a way out of that, and don’t believe either of you want to go that route, either.”