John Lescroart - Damage

“You were supposed to tell him not to.”

“I did. My chief assistant made the argument. Maybe you didn’t get that memo.”

“How could you not go down yourself and argue against bail? You’ve told me yourself Baretto was gutless. Why didn’t you pass the word that you’d challenge him off every criminal case for the rest of his life if he granted bail?”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Did you?”

“No.” Farrell backed a step away. “Silly me. I thought that Baretto, being a superior court judge and all, might have reached his own conclusion about whether or not bail was appropriate. And it looks as though he did. Which, for the record, wasn’t the conclusion I wished he’d gotten to.”

“But you could have stopped him. Or at least headed him off.”

“Actually, probably not, Sam.”

“But you don’t know for sure because you didn’t try.”

Farrell stalled for a little time, pulling one of the kitchen chairs out, turning it around, and straddling it. “Listen, Sam. This thing started back with Sharron Pratt, who in her wisdom decided to charge Ro with rape and murder, but not rape in commission of a murder.” He held up a hand. “And I know, if he did one, he did the other. The charge made no sense, but that didn’t stop Pratt. What it did do was leave it up to the courts to decide on bail. The last judge, Thomasino, denied it. Good choice. Baretto, not so much. Now, could I have threatened him somehow? Yes, but it would have been unethical and he would have only resented the intrusion into what is properly his domain. And I’ve got to work with these guys, the judges, for the next four years. I thought it might be a good idea not to antagonize them in my first month.”

“So now we’ve got a convicted rapist out on the streets?”

“Sad to say, Sam, we’ve got a lot more than one. Rape’s a bailable offense, as we have seen. It sucks, but what am I going to do? I’m supposed to enforce the laws, not write ’em.”

Sam fixed him with a flat, disgusted glare. “I don’t know how this whole district attorney thing with you is going to work out. You know that?”

“I’m starting to get an idea,” Farrell replied.

Since they’d been kids, Janice and Kathy had worked harmoniously together in the kitchen. Today they were in Kathy’s home in Saint Francis Wood, which was quite a bit more upscale than Janice’s crowded three-bedroom stucco twenty blocks north, in the Avenues. But to hear the two women talking, gossiping, joking, occasionally breaking into song, only the keenest observer might sense that the disparity between their homes and kitchens was a little bit hard to bear for Janice.

Janice Durbin was, after all, the elder by four years, the better educated, the harder working, the more beautiful. Nevertheless, Janice often had to stifle the pang of envy that would lance her heart when she found herself confronted anew, as she was today, by her sister’s material possessions-the newly redecorated island kitchen, the Tuscan tile work, the huge Sub-Zero refrigerator, the Viking stove, brushed stainless steel everywhere you looked.

In her darker moments, much more frequent of late, Janice sometimes found herself wondering why Kathy had gotten all this, what she’d done to deserve it. Could it all be a matter of luck?

And it wasn’t just the stuff . Although to be sure there was plenty of that-furnishings, clothes, jewelry. Beyond that, Kathy’s life was so smooth, so effortless, so serene. And why wouldn’t it be? She’d gotten it exactly right in making the single most important choice of her life-the man she had married. Chuck Novio, tenured professor of American history at San Francisco State University, was one of the most effortlessly gifted men Janice had ever met. Kathy had snagged him soon after he transferred here from back East. Whip-smart, tall, trim, athletic, and funny, he also possessed a calm strength and sensitivity that seemed to rub off on Kathy and on their well-behaved twelve-year-old twin daughters, Sara and Leslie.

It was only because of this comparison that Janice sometimes let herself sink into self-pity that in turn primed the pump of her recurrent bouts of self-loathing. She knew about these things, about how they worked-after all, she was a psychiatrist. In reality, in real life, she was not any kind of a loser herself-she knew that. And neither were her husband, Michael, or any of their own three children, Jon, Peter, and Allie. It’s just that Michael ran his own business, a UPS franchise on Union Street, and the stress of that took its continual toll, making him sometimes seem much older than his forty-one years. And add to that, the kids were all in high school now at the same time. Three teenagers in the home did not generally equate to much serenity.

Janice stood in front of the sink with the cold water running over her hands and into the colander of peeled potatoes. Through the window, Chuck and Michael and the boys were playing touch football in the late-afternoon sunlight. She went still and sighed.

“Janice? Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” she told her sister. “Everything’s fine. Just looking at them playing out there. They grow up so fast, the boys, don’t they?”

“That’s funny.” Kathy came over and stood next to her. “You see your sons growing up and I see our husbands staying young, still boys themselves in a lot of ways.”

“That’s probably a healthier way to look at it.”

“I don’t know about healthier. It’s just how I see it.”

“It’s healthier, trust me.” She turned off the running water and put her hands on either side of the sink, leaning her weight into them.

Kathy touched her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Janice shook her head. “It’s just been a long week.” Now she straightened up. “I’m sorry. I’m just so glad we’re here, getting this break out of our house. And Sunday night dinner is always great. I don’t mean to be a downer.”

“You’re not.”

“Well, I’m not exactly Pollyanna, either.” She glanced outside again. “I should be happy Michael’s even out there with Chuck and the boys at all. This whole past week it’s almost like he’s been paralyzed. And in our house, with everybody on top of one another, moods tend to pile on up. So everybody’s been a little snappy.” She broke a brittle laugh. “Did I say a little snappy? I mean I know why it’s smart we don’t keep guns in the house.”

“Janice. Come on.”

“Well, not really, of course.” Janice dried her hands on a dish towel, then handed it to her sister. Crossing over to the island, she pulled out a stool for Kathy, then sat on one herself. “But let’s just say it’s good for us all to be here and out from under each other’s feet for a few hours.”

“What’s Michael been paralyzed about? Work?”

“No. Work’s been good. Christmas was way better than anybody predicted. Crazy busy but good.”

“So. What? Not you guys?”

“Well.” Janice paused. “We’ve been better, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s that, either. Does the name Ro Curtlee ring a bell?”

Kathy scrunched her face in concentration for a second. “No. I don’t think so. Who is he?”

“Remember the jury Michael was on, like, ten years ago?”

“Vaguely. Although ten years ago I had two-year-olds and everything was pretty much a blur. Michael was the jury foreman or something, right?”

“Right. And they found Ro guilty and sent him away.”

“Good. Right. I remember now. But then his parents came after you, something like that.”

“Exactly like that.” The memory was still all too clear to Janice Durbin: When the newspapers did interviews with the other jurors after the trial, it came out that Michael had played a prominent role in getting the guilty verdict. The jury had started out at only 50 percent for conviction, but Michael kept at them in the deliberations and finally got the other six to go along with him and vote guilty.