John Lescroart - Damage

Glitsky sat back and crossed a leg. “When I talked to the husband, Michael, he said they were having some problems. Serious, but nothing to kill her over. Now I know what kind of trouble it was, and maybe it was more serious than he let on.”

“So we know she was having an affair,” Becker said.

“Or he was,” Glitsky countered. “She finds out he’s given her chlamydia and they get in a fight and he kills her. Or she’s given it to him. Same result.”

“Yeah,” Becker said, “except he didn’t kill her. Ro did. Married people have problems all the time and they don’t necessarily kill their spouses over them.”

Glitsky theatrically used his finger to clean out his ear. “I’m sorry, Arnie. I thought I just heard you say spouses don’t kill each other. In which case, this department might have enough inspectors after all.”

“Are you getting squishy on Ro?” Becker asked.

“No,” Abe replied without hesitation. “I’m just trying to fit this chlamydia thing into the picture.”

“Well, the good news,” Becker said, “is that Ro’s going to test positive for chlamydia, too, when you get him locked up again.”

“Not necessarily, not if he used a condom,” Glitsky said. “Not if he didn’t rape her at all, and there’s no forensic evidence that he did, am I right?”

“No, not yet,” Becker said, then added, “Do rapists use condoms?”

“Your higher class of rapists, you bet. All the time.” Glitsky sat back in his chair, his right hand stretched out before him, drumming his fingers on his desk. When he spoke, it sounded like he was working it out for himself. “Ro might not have raped Janice, if in fact he didn’t, because she wasn’t like his other victims. She wasn’t anything personal to him. Just a way to get to Durbin. How’s that sound?”

“Anything that includes Ro sounds good to me, Abe. I examined the Nuñez scene and the Durbin scene, so you’re talking to a true believer.”

“That’s two of us,” Glitsky said.

In his personal parking space behind his store, Durbin sat in his car and waited for some inner voice to give him the secret password that would get him moving. The solid cloud cover had finally broken up and splotches of sunlight had been coming and going for the past ten minutes, pushed along by a strong freshening breeze. He didn’t really know what he was doing here. But then he hadn’t really known what he was doing earlier that morning back at Chuck and Kathy’s either, except rattling around in the big house after the kids had all gone off to school. So he’d gotten into his car and told Kathy he was going to go check on things at his place of business.

At last, he opened the car door and let himself into the back of the shop. The little bell rang over the door and a couple of his employees turned at their windows, registering surprise and worry, but he simply waved a hand in acknowledgment, turned into his office, and sat down behind his desk.

It didn’t take Liza Sato ten seconds to appear in the doorway. Wearing jeans and a cowled fisherman’s sweater, with her hands on her hips, she wore an expression of equal parts frustration and concern. “What in the world are you doing here, Michael?”

He tried a smile that died halfway. “I’m not all that sure, to tell you the truth. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” A vague gesture. “How’s everything out there?”

“Everything out there is fine. Except you shouldn’t be here.”

“Where else should I be?”

“How about back home?”

“That’s kind of the problem, Liz. Home’s gone.”

Her eyes widened and her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t mean…”

“It’s all right. I know what you meant. You want to come in?”

“Sure.” She closed the door behind her, then leaned back against it with her arms crossed. “Michael, I don’t know what to say. I am just so, so sorry.”

His shoulders rose and fell. He spread his hands on the surface of his desk, then simply shook his head and shrugged again.

Liza pushed herself off the wall and came around the desk, where she draped an arm around his shoulders, leaned down, and kissed the top of his head. She felt his body heave in a sigh, then she let go and boosted herself onto the desk. “Really,” she said, “you don’t need to be here.”

“I know. But I don’t know where else I should be.” He let out a breath. “I stopped by the house, where the house was, this morning. You know how weird that was? I mean, I leave there Friday and it’s my home, where my kids live, where all of our stuff is, where most of everyday life happens. And then this morning I go by and all that’s gone. And Janice with it.” He looked up at her. “I just don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do now.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“No. I’ve at least got to somehow be there for my kids. Although thank God for school, which is where they are now. I don’t know how they’re… hell, who am I kidding? I don’t know anything.” He paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come down here to cry on anybody’s shoulder.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “You can cry all you want, Michael. Crying’s okay.”

“Well, it’s not. Not really.” He quickly patted her knee, right there next to him. “But thanks for the offer.” Pushing himself back a little farther away from her, he said, “I heard you met Inspector Glitsky on Saturday morning.”

She nodded. “He came by, yes.”

“And evidently I was late getting to work on Friday?”

“Were you?”

“That’s what he said. Or rather, somebody who works here said I was. He seemed to think it was important.”

“In what way?”

“In the way that I might have stayed around to make sure the fire was well advanced before I started driving to work.”

Liza’s face went dark. “That’s just nuts! He can’t really think that.”

“I was late, though, wasn’t I?”

She thought a moment. “Well, I remember I opened up, but beyond that…” She shrugged. “But really, though, so what?”

“Well, I finally remembered, wracking my brain all weekend, just a couple of other little things on my mind. I stopped for gas coming in, got stuck behind an RV who needed like a hundred gallons, then got caught in a line inside after the pump told me I had to go to the cashier to get my receipt, which I never wound up getting anyway because the guy two people in front of me started screaming something about getting the wrong Lotto ticket. Anyway, in case anybody asks again, which they probably won’t.”

“I don’t think it was a big deal anyway, Michael.”

“Well, Glitsky kind of made it seem like one. And you’d think I would have remembered all that insanity at the gas station. But I swear to God, it all just went away.”

“Maybe something to do with your house burning down and your wife dying. You think that could do it?”

“Yeah. Maybe that. But I just wanted to tell you.”

“I never thought anything about it, Michael. Really.”

“Well, good. But I think the question is going to be moot anyway.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m pretty sure I know who did it.”

Ro Curtlee and his lawyer, Tristan Denardi, sat at the bar at Tadich Grill, both of them eating cioppino.

“I know you’re not supposed to ask,” Ro was saying. “I know you don’t want to know. But I’m telling you anyway. I wasn’t anywhere near the place. I did not kill Nuñez, though it doesn’t break my heart to see her out of the picture.”

“Well, she’s not quite out of the picture, Ro.” Denardi, for all of his theatrics in the courtroom, cut a more or less paternal, patrician, low-key figure. A full head of silver hair, an unlined face that suggested time spent in a tanning salon, a beautifully cut Italian suit with a gold silk tie. “They’re still going to use her testimony from last time.”