John Lescroart - Damage

“Wrong. The what?”

“The Battle of Thermopylae. And how can you say it’s wrong when you don’t know what it is?”

“I know what it is, or was. It was a battle between the Greeks and somebody, maybe the Persians, I think.”

“Correct. Very good. What year?”

“What year? I’m sure. Sometime around ancient Greece. Close enough?”

“How about four-eighty BC.”

“I’d say definitely yes. What a relief to have that nailed down. That sounds just perfectly right.”

“It is completely right. And yet you said it was wrong.”

“It was wrong because it definitely wasn’t the answer to my question, which was going to be, if I remember correctly, if you felt as guilty as I did.”

“What’s it going to be now?”

“What’s what going to be?”

“Your question.”

She shook her head, smiling. “That silver tongue of yours got to wagging so much I don’t even remember.”

“Something about if I felt guilty.” He reached over the table and put his hand over hers. “You really feel guilty?”

She cocked her head sideways. “A little bit.” Now sighing. “I feel like I’m letting Wes down. He’s clueless enough about his appointments and his schedule as it is anyway. If I’m not there to spoon-feed him…”

“He’s a big boy.”

“Not so much, really. And pretty much out of his depth.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You’re not the only one. I know you don’t read the Courier , but he’s taking some pretty serious abuse there.”

“That paper’s a rag. Nobody reads it.”

“Well, that’s half right. The ‘rag’ part. But don’t kid yourself, Abe. People read it. It swings a lot of votes.”

Glitsky shrugged. Votes were not part of his universe. And his respect for those people to whom votes were the issue was minuscule. “I don’t know. You want my opinion, Wes deserves to swing in the wind a little.”

“I don’t know how you can say that, Abe. He came down on the right side with you last week.”

“Only under great duress. And let’s not forget that the reason Ro Curtlee’s out in the first place, and the reason we got threatened, is because Wes didn’t step up and do the right thing the first chance he got. He could have demanded no bail, and got it.”

Now she covered his hand with hers. “I know that. He was naïve, hoping to keep the Curtlees happy. He knows that, too, now. And I know you did the right thing. But I don’t think Ro would dare do anything to us now.”

Glitsky made a face. “Well, that’s the hope. I’d be a lot happier if Wes pushed a little on getting his new trial date set. But as to whether I feel guilty taking a day off… I don’t plan to make a habit of it, but after Monday, and now he’s out again, and I still don’t have enough inspectors or the budget to hire more.” He let out a breath. “I don’t know, Trey. I feel I’m a toxic presence at the Hall, and I’ve got to let some of this anger leach out before I poison my own troops. If I’m going to do that, I might as well quit altogether.”

“Are you really thinking about that?”

“Sometimes. Frequently, in fact. I don’t know what the point is anymore.”

“Same as it’s always been, babe. Putting killers in jail.”

“Yeah,” Glitsky said. “But then they let ’em out.”

“Not always. Not even often.”

“I know, I know. You’re right. But that’s why I need a day off here. Get some perspective back. Speaking of which…”

He reached down and pulled his cell phone off his belt.

“If it’s the office, don’t…,” Treya said.

But Glitsky was shaking his head. “It’s not downtown,” he said. “It’s Arnie Becker. I ought to get this.” And he pushed the connect button. “Arnie, it’s Abe. What’s up?”

“Of course,” Becker was saying, “we won’t know for sure until-”

“Arnie.” Glitsky held up a hand and cut him off. “You got any doubt at all?”

Becker drew in a large breath through his mouth. The stench of the burn was strong, but a whiff of the pervasive scent of cooked meat could bring even a strong man’s stomach up. “Very little,” he said.

They were standing, hands in their pockets, on the second floor in the bright sunlight that shone through the collapsed roof of Michael Durbin’s home. The temperature was in the midforties, abnormally cold for San Francisco in February. The body was still in place in the burned-out shell of the upstairs bedroom, itself pretty thoroughly destroyed. The coroner’s van had just arrived out front, but the crime scene unit, with their surgical masks in place, had been photographing and collecting what little evidence they could since before Glitsky’s arrival about twenty minutes ago.

Though the face was unrecognizable, this body was in somewhat better condition than Felicia Nuñez’s had been. Neither of this woman’s shoes, in this case low-heeled black pumps, had been burned away completely. One had come off, possibly from the power of the hoses during the active phase of fighting the fire, and had wound up under the bed, about eight inches from the woman’s right foot. But the other shoe still appeared to be a snug fit on her left foot. There were no unburned scraps of clothing under the body, no sign of a bra or other underwear, and Becker’s conjecture from those facts was that the woman had been naked either at or shortly after the time she died and was set ablaze. Due to the relatively light amount of charring where the woman’s body was in contact with the floor, Becker told Glitsky that if she’d been wearing any clothes, they would not all have burned away.

“What about DNA?” Glitsky asked. “I mean, if the burning wasn’t really so bad.”

“Well,” Becker said, “it’s all relative. You can see for yourself that not so bad doesn’t mean not bad. And it’s also pretty clear where the fire got started, same as with Nuñez. So all in all, I’d say DNA’s not a good bet, although of course we’re going to try.” Becker glanced again over at the body. “So the similarities. That’s why I called you directly, of course.”

“I appreciate it.” Glitsky sucked carefully through his teeth, turned away so the body was out of his line of vision. “Although I can’t say it makes much sense.”

“What has to make sense?”

“I mean, if this was Ro Curtlee. First, the sheer balls of it. After last week.”

“He’s telling you to go fuck yourself.”

Glitsky’s mouth twitched at the profanity. “So he just picks some random woman?”

Becker shrugged. “Maybe he knew her.”

“Yeah, but everybody else he’s done has been a domestic. How’d he meet somebody out here? A normal civilian, I’m guessing, right? Any word about whether this was the cleaning lady or somebody like that?”

“I don’t think so, Abe. The husband and some other family are down there.” He pointed out to the street. “They’re all wrecked, and they all think it’s the wife. She’s the only female who would have been in the house. The daughter’s still at school. He called and checked.”

Glitsky looked up through the gaping hole in the roof above them. “Dear God,” he said. “How old is she? The daughter?”

Another shrug. “I don’t know. School age.”

“You’re right,” Glitsky said. “What difference does it make?” He took a last look at the body, closed his eyes against the horror of it, and shook his head. “So who is she?”

“If it’s the wife, her name’s Janice Durbin. Her husband’s…”

Glitsky put his hand on Becker’s arm and gripped it. “Michael.”

“Yeah. How’d you…?”

Nodding, verifying to himself the sudden and unmistakable clarity, Glitsky pulled in a last, quick breath. “He was the jury foreman at Ro’s trial.”