John Lescroart - Damage

“You’re trying to sandbag me, is what you’re doing. You’ve got about two more seconds and then Liza calls the police.”

“It’s your funeral,” Marrenas said. “You brought it on yourself.” And turning, she walked out of the shop.

“No.” Bracco sat with his feet up on his desk in the homicide detail. “That isn’t quite true. I said the investigation is continuing. Beyond that I have no comment.”

“But,” Marrenas countered, “you interviewed Ro yesterday at his lawyer’s in connection with these murders?”

“All right.”

“And you contend that this isn’t part of the pattern of harassment we’ve seen against Ro Curtlee over the past weeks.”

“Absolutely not. There’s been no harassment of Ro Curtlee or anybody else.”

“So you’ve been looking at someone else, besides Ro, as a suspect?”

“We’re looking at the whole world, ma’am.”

“Including Michael Durbin?”

Bracco paused. “We have found no evidence linking Mr. Durbin with the crime.”

“But you have no evidence on Ro, either.”

“I’ve already said everything I have to say on that issue.”

“Why did you feel the need to interview him, then?”

“To give him the chance to eliminate himself as a suspect.”

“And did he do that?”

“Well, as you know, he provided an alibi for the time of Janice Durbin’s death.”

“So that eliminates him, right?”

“Unless the alibi doesn’t hold up.” Bracco brought his feet down off the desk. “Listen, Sheila, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to cut this short. The investigations are continuing. That’s about as much as I can give you.”

“The Matt Lewis investigation, too?”

“I’m not the investigating officer on that case,” Bracco replied.

“But you also asked where Ro was when that crime was committed?”

“A cop gets killed, we throw a wide net.”

“And again, with no evidence against Ro?”

“Both investigations are continuing,” Bracco said. “We have not eliminated anyone as a suspect.”

No sooner had he hung up with Marrenas, though, than Bracco realized that what he’d told her was true-Glitsky hadn’t eliminated any suspects in the Janice Durbin murder. Glitsky and Becker might be 100 percent certain that Ro Curtlee was guilty ofof killing her-and Ro sure as hell looked guilty to Bracco of the Matt Lewis murder-but the plain fact remained that Ro had given Bracco an alibi for Durbin’s time of death and four people who could corroborate it. Granted, by no stretch could this corroboration-his parents, Eztli, and the maid or morning cook, Linda-be deemed unimpeachable. But what if they were all telling the truth? And if Ro, in fact, had not been at the Durbin home-and no physical or other evidence placed him there-that meant that someone else had killed Janice.

“Earth to Bracco. Come in, Darrel.”

He looked up, startled to see Glitsky hovering over his desk. “Abe! Hey.” In his chair, he straightened to attention.

“I’ve got to learn that trick,” Glitsky said. “Sleeping with my eyes open.”

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was thinking.”

“Good. Thinking is one of the approved activities. What about?”

“Well, Sheila Marrenas called me. I just now got off the phone with her.”

“I hope you didn’t tell her too much.”

“I said that our two investigations are continuing. Durbin and Lewis. We didn’t have suspects for either.”

“She believe you?”

“She didn’t care. She’s going to write what she writes anyway, whatever that spin might turn out to be.”

“So what were you thinking about?”

“Well, since that’s what I went out there to find out, it looks like Ro’s got an alibi for Durbin.”

“If you believe it.”

“He’s got four people he says will back it up.”

Glitsky said, “The parents and two servants.”

“True. I’m not arguing with you, Abe. I’m just saying…”

“No. It’s a good point,” Glitsky conceded. He had lowered his haunch onto the corner of Bracco’s desk. His eyes had gone to a half squint. His mouth was tightly closed and a muscle worked in his jaw. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“And,” Bracco hesitated, “while we’re talking, one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Ro’s arm.”

“What about it?”

“It’s in a cast. Still. Righteously broken in the fight with you, was it not?”

“All right.”

“All right, so you told me that Janice Durbin was strangled, didn’t you? Manual strangulation, not a ligature.” Ligature was a strangulation device, such as a rope or a belt.

Bracco stopped and leveled his gaze at his boss, waiting for the impact of his words to kick in. He didn’t have to draw the picture any more clearly. Every homicide cop knows how extraordinarily difficult it is to strangle someone to death, even under the best of conditions, using both of one’s hands. The struggle tends to be violent and protracted. The idea that someone could do it one-handed, while probably physically possible for a very strong and committed person, was close to far-fetched. When he was sure from his lieutenant’s change of expression that Glitsky had understood his point, Bracco went on, pressing it. “Did Strout find any signs she’d been knocked out before she got strangled? Lacerations or abrasions or bruises to the head?”

“I’d have to check to be sure, and I intend to, but my memory says no.”

Bracco leaned back in his chair. “So Ro is holding her down with his knees,” he said, “and she’s bucking and kicking under him and he never hits her to knock her out-I mean, he’s got a heavy cast on, right? And instead he’s got her by the neck and strangles her with one hand? This, when we know he’s in possession of a gun because that’s what he killed Lewis with, and he doesn’t use that?”

Shaken more deeply by Bracco’s objections to Ro as Janice’s killer than he cared to show, Glitsky walked down to the third floor, where he would sometimes drop in on Treya in the middle of the workday just to say hello, share a few bons mots, touch base. Today he made it as far as the hallway that led to the DA’s office and nearly stopped at the outer door to Farrell’s lair-Treya’s office-noticing that her desk was still unoccupied-no replacement, yet, anyway. Standing in the outer doorway, he heard Farrell’s voice emanating from inside. In a few steps, he passed Treya’s workstation and stood in the open doorway where he saw Farrell sitting on one of the couches, a telephone to his ear. “No, I have no comment,” he was saying. “No, sorry, no comment. I’m afraid I’m not going to talk about that.”

Glitsky knocked once on the doorjamb. Farrell looked up and, indicating the telephone, shook his head in disgust, and then waved Glitsky in and motioned him to one of the chairs while he continued listening and then said, “I’m sure, but we’ll just have to see how that turns out… well, no… I mean, yes, of course, you’re going to do what you have to do. But the same is true of me… I know, and I’m sorry about that, but I’ve got an appointment that’s just showed up here and I can’t really say any more at this time… All right… All right, thank you.”

Farrell hung up, flipped the bird at the telephone, then looked at Glitsky, who had not yet sat down, and said, “Some son of a bitch leaked the grand jury. That, if you didn’t guess,” he added, gesturing at the phone, “was Marrenas.”

“She’s getting around today,” Glitsky said. “Twenty minutes ago, she was talking to Darrel Bracco, but not about the grand jury.”