John Lescroart - Damage

Ro waited.

The door opened and he was facing an attractive black woman who was almost his own size. “Yes. Can I help you?”

Ro could not believe she simply opened the door and greeted him. If she’d looked through the peephole, he’d missed it. And there was no chain to offer even token resistance if he decided he was going to get himself inside.

He thought that this was either supreme confidence or idiocy.

She was wearing a purple sweat suit and tennis shoes. Just beside her, holding her hand, a young girl of about five or six stood looking up at him with an appraising and confident air that Ro thought she might have lifted wholesale from her father’s playbook.

Ro gave the daughter a fast glance and a quick, shallow smile and then brought his eyes back to the mother. “I was hoping to talk to Lieutenant Abe Glitsky,” he said.

“He’s not home right now,” she said. “I expect him in the next couple of minutes.” For a tantalizing second, Ro got the impression that she was considering inviting him in to wait. Instead, she backed up a half-step and put her hand on the edge of the door, as though preparing to slam it, although nothing changed in her eyes, which remained friendly, inquisitive. “If you’d like to come back, maybe in a half hour or so, you’ll probably catch him.”

“That’s all right. I’m sure I’ll run into him downtown and I’ll talk with him then. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by unannounced and hope to reach him at home, the way he did with me last night.”

“Last night?”

“Right.” He gave her a smirk. “If you wouldn’t mind telling him that Ro Curtlee stopped by, I’d appreciate it.”

This time the woman’s eyes narrowed and her face went slack. Instinctively she moved farther back away from him, pushing her child partially behind her as she did so. Her hand tightened on the edge of the door. “What are you doing here?”

It was all the reaction of fear and anger that he’d hoped for.

“Really just telling your husband that I know where he lives, you know. Like he did with me.”

She pulled the door around in front of her. “You’d better leave right now,” she said. “You’ve got no business coming here.”

With an exaggerated expression of disappointment, he said, “And just when we were all getting along so well.” He pointed down at the little girl. “That’s a real pretty little daughter you’ve got there.”

At this, the door slammed on him, and from behind it he heard, “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

“You don’t have to bother,” he said through the door. “I’ll be long gone.”

He started back down the stairs toward the street and his waiting car.

Glitsky was sitting in Jenkins’ cluttered office on the third floor, drinking a cup of tea and filling her in on Becker’s information-the positive ID on Nuñez, the soles of the Adidas-when Treya’s call came in on his cell. As he listened to the sound of her voice-quivering beneath the controlled, low-pitched, and calm recital of events-he realized how close to panic she was, how proximate the danger had been.

Without realizing it, he stood up and paced from the door and back to the desk while the scar between his lips grew more pronounced, an angry white line. He lowered a haunch onto Jenkins’ desk and with his free hand pulled at the skin of his face.

“Abe?” Treya asked into the extended silence.

“I’m here. Is he gone?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw him drive away.”

“And you’ve got both the kids with you?”

“Right. We’re all okay. A little shaky, that’s all.”

Glitsky let out a breath. Another one.

“Abe?” she asked again.

“Still here. Thinking.”

“You want to come home? That would be good. Rachel wants to say hi to you.”

Before he could object, he heard his daughter’s voice. “Hi, Daddy. Mommy’s upset. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. But that man who came to the house. He’s not a good man.”

“You should arrest him.”

“I know. I think that’s what’s going to happen. Are you okay now?”

“Just worried. For Mommy. He really scared her. Are you coming home soon?”

“Real soon. Can I talk to your mom again?”

“Okay.”

And then Treya: “Hey.”

“Trey, I’m sending a squad car by.”

“No. I don’t think we need…”

“We’ll negotiate about that when I get there. But meanwhile, I’m sending some men if for nothing else to take a report. I’ll be right behind them. But when they knock, check the peephole and make sure it’s really them first, okay? And keep the dead bolt on until then.”

“I never thought, with Ro…”

“It’s okay,” Glitsky said. “You got away with it once. Now we know. We check the peephole, huh?”

“All right. We’ll be waiting for you.”

“I’ll be home in half an hour. You just keep everybody close till then.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I won’t. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Get home soon.”

“I will.”

When he closed the phone, he looked over at Jenkins. “You heard that.”

“Ro came by your house?”

“Yes, he did.” His shoulders sagged with the weight of this latest burden. “He made a point of saying that Rachel was a pretty little girl.” Glitsky’s eyes went to the corners of the room, then back down to Jenkins. He let out a breath and shook his head.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“About what you’d expect. Blow his head off.”

“I wouldn’t blame you, but you’d probably get caught and go to jail.”

“Somebody’s got to stop him.”

“There’s another way.”

“It couldn’t be better than popping him.”

“No. Better for you though. Arrest him.”

“Wes didn’t seem too hot on that idea.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t have anything to charge him with then. And now we do.”

“What?”

“Threatening an executive officer. That’s you. Or any member of your family. Penal Code sixty-nine or four twenty-two, take your pick. Both felonies.”

“Is that true?”

Glitsky should have been used to attorneys knowing sections of the Penal Code by heart, but every time he ran up against it, it impressed him. Jenkins, unoffended, spun in her chair, closed her eyes, and said, “Sixty-nine: ‘Every person who attempts, by means of any threat or violence, to deter or prevent an executive officer from performing any duty imposed upon such officer,’ blah blah blah. And here’s four twenty-two: ‘Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person, with the specific intent that the statement’ blah blah ‘is to be taken as a threat,’ and this is the good part, ‘ even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out , which, on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made, is so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate, and specific as to convey to the person threatened, a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat, and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family’s safety,’ et cetera.”

“You’ve got a good memory,” Glitsky said.

Jenkins shrugged. “Comes with the territory. You can’t remember stuff, don’t go to law school. Anyway, I think we go for four twenty-two.”

“What about Wes?”

“Wes said if we got something real, he’d charge it. And that’s what our boy just gave us. I’ll be your witness to the fact that right now you are in a state of sustained fear for your safety and your family’s. Is that about true?”