John Lescroart - Damage

Which led to Glitsky’s next question: “So when did you come upon all this?”

“Just before I called you.”

“You just remembered these were back here?”

“No, Lieutenant. Obviously I knew they were here all along. And I knew the fire hadn’t touched the garage, so there was no urgency to see how they’d made it.”

“So were you coming back in here today to paint?”

“Why does it matter why I was coming back here? My wife’s dead. My kids are falling apart. My life as I’ve known it is over. After what Marrenas wrote this morning-and you should know this as well as me-the vibes even at my real job got too weird to handle. Plus, it seems one of my people there is leaking to her…”

“Why do you say that?”

“Somebody told her about me getting in late last Friday.”

“Do you know who it is? Or why?”

“Liza Sato thinks it’s a guy named Peter Bassey, who’s jealous because she likes me.” A nonplussed look. “Hey, what can I say? We like each other. We get along. Not a crime last time I checked. So Peter’s poisoning the well at work, and I had the whole afternoon off and yawning before me. So I came to hang out here.” He raised a hand at the destruction. “And found this. And then called you. If Ro’s been here, maybe he left some sign of it. What do you think?”

Glitsky didn’t answer. He was punching numbers on his cell phone. Bringing it up to his ear, he said, “This is Abe Glitsky with homicide. I need a crime scene unit as soon as I can get one.”

Her cheeks wet with tears, Sam Duncan sat disconsolately on one of the sagging sofas in the raggedy reception area where she worked. Wes Farrell, all cried out, sat beside her, holding her hand. Gert’s body lay on the other side of him, her head in his lap, his other hand gently stroking her head. Animal control was on its way and Sam was still trying to get a grip on what exactly had happened. Although to Wes, this was not a mystery.

“I mean,” Sam said, “she’d been out there on the bench all morning, just lying in the sun like she does.”

“Did you see anybody stop?”

“Wes, everybody stopped. Little kids, old ladies, every homeless person that passed by. This was Gert, remember. Everybody’s favorite dog, you know?”

“I do know. But then somebody stopped and poisoned her.”

“We don’t know that. Not for sure.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“I just do. She was-what?-five years old, in perfect health, and now suddenly she’s foaming at the mouth and she’s dead. That doesn’t just happen.”

“Sometimes it does. Why would somebody want to kill a sweet dog like her?”

“It’s got nothing to do with her. You remember the horse’s head in the bed in The Godfather ? This was the same thing. This was Cliff Curtlee.”

“But I’ve met him, Wes. He’s a charming man. He gives money to the Center, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t do something like this.”

“Not himself, no. And he’s charming all right, but he’d order this in a heartbeat, and I’ll bet you a million dollars that he did.”

“But why?”

“To warn me that he’s serious. He’s not kidding around. And to give me a good idea what he’d do next. Except next time, to someone closer to me, like you. Maybe even to me myself.”

“He’d do next if what?”

“If I continued to pursue this grand jury thing on his little boy.”

She ran her free hand over her head, through her hair. “God, I can’t believe this. How can this be happening?”

“We both know the answer to that, Sam. I didn’t push hard enough denying Ro bail. Now he’s had a taste of freedom again and he’s not giving it up without a fight. Or a whole lot of fights.” His eyes went down to his dog. “Goddamn it!”

Sam reached over and touched Gert’s head gently, left her hand on Farrell’s thigh. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really have any idea. Take Ro out right now. Convene the grand jury for an emergency session, like, tomorrow, and just march in with Amanda’s basic case.”

“But you were saying this was Cliff Curtlee, not Ro.”

“I know. It probably was. I don’t know if it even matters. It’s all so fucked up. Which is why another part of me wants to just call Cliff and tell him I’ve gotten his message and he wins. We’re calling everybody off anything that has to do with Ro except the retrial, which isn’t calendared until next August anyway. Maybe that would slow down the carnage.”

“You believe that?”

Farrell shook his head. “No. Ro’s still going to want to find the other main witness, a woman named Gloria Gonzalvez. She’s still going to be in danger. No, she still is in danger, which is pretty much why I can’t just give up, either, besides the fact that it’s the last thing I want to do. Giving up is not happening. I’ve got to keep the pressure on these pricks. Let them know that they picked the exact wrong guy if they think they can pull this shit and get away with it.”

“But what if they come back at you with something worse?”

“One of us, you mean?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to give them any time. Although I know that if they’re capable of this”-he gave Gert’s body a pet-“there’s nothing they wouldn’t do. I could get you moved to someplace safe until this is over.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“No, but it might be smart.”

Sam let go of Wes’s hand, stood up, and crossed over to the door. Standing there, arms crossed, looking out into the darkness and fog, she might have been a statue but for the slight rise and fall of her shoulders. Finally she took in a big breath and turned around. “Fuck that. If they’re not driving you off, they’re not pushing me out, either.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t sign up for this, and I did. It’s not the same thing.”

“Close enough.”

“No, it’s not. Aren’t you the one who moved out a couple of days ago because of how badly I was doing the job? And you know, you were right. I couldn’t have proven it any better these last couple of weeks if I’d tried.”

She had moved now back to the couch, going down to one knee in front of him. “That wasn’t about your job, Wes. It was about you and me communicating about what you were doing, what was in your life. The way we are right now, for example. And you can’t let these people get away with stuff like… like this. And worse.”

He looked at her imploringly. “I have to be honest. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to stop them, Sam, what I’m precisely going to do, but I’m sure as shit going to try. There are just no other options. Even if it’s probably true that I’m not the best man for the job.”

“But you are, Wes. You might be the only man left standing who can actually do it.”

“You got any ideas on how?”

“Not just at the moment, but we’ll get one. I promise.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Of course, we. What did you think?”

Durbin stayed at the garage behind his burned-out house with Glitsky and the CSI unit for about two hours. The team worked quickly and efficiently, lifting fingerprints from likely surfaces and taking photographs, gathering dust devils and sweeping up fibers and hairs and whatever else they might have been looking for. They found nothing that might have been immediately incriminating to Ro Curtlee or anybody else-no probable slashing instrument, for example-and since the next steps of the investigation would take place at the police lab, they declared themselves finished and left. The whole time, Glitsky was a desultory and vaguely threatening presence, keeping Michael away from the other officers and offering little in the way of information or even conversation.