John Lescroart - Damage

“I’d consider it,” Glitsky said.

Farrell shrugged that off and continued, “But the main thing is that I can’t have either of you thinking you don’t have my support, because you do. I’ll be happy to entertain any concrete suggestions from either of you, which is why I called you both down here, but I can’t just pull the guy in off the street for no reason.”

Jenkins, sitting back with her legs crossed, said, “Yeah, you can. He gets pulled over and appears to be drunk. He’s acting suspicious in a high narcotics neighborhood, he spits on the sidewalk, we haul him in. Any cop worth his or her salt can find ten reasons to arrest anybody they need to before breakfast. Isn’t that right, Abe?”

“Generally.”

“Generally is good.” She nodded at Glitsky and came back to Farrell. “But specifically, Wes, Matt says he’ll go out and bring Ro in on anything we decide on anytime you want. Anything. Anytime. We’ve talked about it.”

“I’m glad for you. But who’s Matt?”

Jenkins just barely did not roll her eyes. “Matt Lewis,” she said with exaggerated patience. “One of our DA inspectors. Not to mention my long-standing boyfriend, not that that’s important.”

Farrell looked chagrined. “I guess the politician in me should have remembered that,” he said. “Or known it in the first place. But I’m just naturally hopeless at that stuff. I can’t help it. Matt Lewis. I’ll remember from now on.” Then, with a smile, “What’s he look like?”

“Clark Kent,” Jenkins deadpanned, “without the glasses. But the point is he’ll bring Ro in on any charge we want and there you go.”

“No, there we don’t go.” Farrell was shaking his head back and forth. “Guys, so we hold him ten minutes and look stupid in the process. Besides which, we’d get crucified in the press. But that’s not the point either. Bottom line, we don’t do that. It’s not happening. End of discussion. You’re going to need… no, we’re going to need a real offense.”

“Murder ought to do it,” Glitsky said.

Farrell sighed. “Get me any evidence, and it’s done, Abe. I promise.”

Glitsky looked over at Jenkins and she took the lead. “Wes, hear me out, okay? This is where you’ve got discretion. You can make this call on your own.”

Farrell suddenly showed his fatigue, bringing his hand up to his head and rubbing his eyes before he pressed his fingers to his temple. In fact, feeling more than a degree of responsibility for Felicia Nuñez’s murder, he hadn’t slept much after Glitsky’s call the night before. “How do I do that, Amanda? Make that call?” he asked.

“You have Abe bring him in on the Nuñez murder. That’s not harassment. That’s a real charge that (a) he’s guilty of, and (b) a vast percentage of the public will buy.”

“Yes, maybe, but…”

“No ‘buts.’ Listen. You’re worried because in the normal course of events, there’s nowhere near enough to bring him to trial. Right?”

“Try nothing. ”

“Well, not exactly nothing. But even so… so what? That’s not the point.”

“It’s not. Then what is?”

“The point is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got enough to get him on Nuñez. You’re never going to have to get to Nuñez. At least we’ve got him upstairs behind bars while his lawyers gear up for the retrial, however long that is. Meanwhile, Ro’s off the street and nobody else gets killed.”

Farrell slumped, sitting back, and let his head rest on the cushion behind him. He sighed again. “Did I actually expend energy to get elected to this job?” he asked. “And can either of you tell me why if I did?” Then, abruptly he sat up. “It’s a lovely idea, Amanda, but we’ve got this old-fashioned notion called probable cause, without which Mr. Curtlee’s out again in forty-eight hours, and P.S., Lieutenant Glitsky here gets sued for false arrest.”

“I think we’ve got probable cause,” Jenkins said.

Farrell gave her the bad eye. “All right, let’s be wildly imaginative and say you do. Next up, as you know, is a preliminary hearing. Maybe you’ve heard of it? A guy gets arrested, charged by this office, makes it over the probable-cause hurdle, then there’s a hearing in ten days to look at the evidence. If it’s not there, he walks.”

“Wes, come on.” Jenkins came forward in her chair. “How many PXs”-preliminary hearings-“have you seen where they let the guy go? Zero, am I right? Maybe one in a decade. It never happens. Standard of proof is again only probable cause, ‘a strong suspicion…’ ”

Farrell patiently held up a hand. “Please, spare me. I know the law. The law reads that probable cause is defined as ‘a strong suspicion in the mind of a reasonable person that the offense was committed and that the defendant committed it.’ ”

“So, think about it,” Jenkins continued. “We’ve got Ro’s past conviction, the connection to Nuñez, the threat of Nuñez coming up at his retrial, the shoes… my point, though, is that any reasonable person-which includes most of our judges-is going to strongly suspect Ro did Nuñez, and that’s all we need. It’s a simple call, Wes, and it’s all yours.”

“It’s an unacceptable risk,” Farrell said.

“It’s a small risk,” Jenkins countered. “Insignificant. Less than crossing the street. But if it’s beyond your comfort level, you’ve still got the grand jury.”

Farrell knew that this was true, and in fact had already contemplated it, though it, too, of course, had risk associated with it. If he went and sold his weak case and got a grand jury indictment on Ro in the Nuñez murder, then he could avoid the possible pitfall of a preliminary hearing. A grand jury indictment obviated the need for a preliminary hearing; by itself, it was authority enough to bind a defendant over to trial. But if Farrell went that way, Ro’s attorneys, as was their right, would demand the trial begin within sixty days, and there would be no continuance. Farrell could ask the court to join the cases for trial, but the way things were going with Baretto, that motion might well be denied. Under those circumstances-that is, if Wes prosecuted Ro for the Nuñez murder only-a San Francisco jury would never convict him. He’d be freed again. Within two or three months. Making his retrial for the rape and murder of Sandoval-already hugely problematic-logarithmically more difficult.

“But the grand jury,” Glitsky said, “you’re still looking at ten days, two weeks before they could even get to the indictment. Ro could do a lot of damage in that time.”

“Which is why our vote’s for an arrest and indict before the prelim,” Jenkins said. “Short and sweet. Take him out.”

When the meeting broke up, Glitsky went back upstairs to his office with a couple of ideas rattling around in his brain, both of them having to do with Arnie Becker. He wanted the identification of the murder victim to be rock solid and also to be accomplished as soon as possible. If the dead person was not, in fact, Felicia Nuñez, then the theory that Jenkins and he were betting on would not fly-there had to be an immediate connection to Ro Curtlee, and they had to establish it quickly. Possible dental records were okay, but Glitsky knew that he could wait a very long time for dental records, to say nothing of the fact that finding the victim’s dentist so that they even had a chance at a comparison might be flatly impossible. So they’d have to try to find another way to identify her.

But when he reached Becker-the man apparently didn’t need to sleep-the arson inspector was at least a step ahead of him. The identification of the victims of fires was one of the inspector’s most critical tasks. And over the years, Becker had picked up more than a few tricks. “It’s her all right,” he said. “Nuñez. When she cooked, her hands closed up into fists like they do. You noticed that, I’m sure.”