John Lescroart - Damage

“I needed to talk to somebody,” Durbin said. “I’d leaned on you and Kathy enough. I had to get out of here for a while, that’s all.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. As far as I’m concerned, Janice was murdered by Ro Curtlee and that’s all there is to it. Look at the paintings, too.”

“Jon can’t think I’d have done that.”

And suddenly a new voice-Peter’s, hoarse and choked-from behind them. “He does, Dad. To make it seem more like it was Curtlee.”

Durbin turned to see his younger son. He was still wearing his ripped and bloodstained shirt. His face was swollen, his eyes red, his cheeks glistening with tears, his nose flattened and off center, possibly broken. “Peter.” Durbin, shocked by his sweet son’s battering, spoke more gently than he’d intended. “What the hell?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. Jon just started talking crazy and I went off on him.” He looked past his father at the damage he’d done. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Chuck. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry’s a good start,” Chuck said, “but I’ve got to tell you, Peter, you’ve got a ways yet still to go. Do you know where Jon’s gone to?”

Peter shook his head no. “He was staying at Rich’s, but I don’t know where he is now. And I don’t care, either. I hope he never comes back.”

“No, you don’t hope that. He’s just reacting this way because he misses Mom. We all miss Mom. And he’s really, really angry about it and doesn’t know where to put it so he’s taking it out on me. And you. And maybe all of us.” Durbin touched his son’s arm. “But how did he get this into his head, Peter? Just because I went to see Liza Sato?”

Peter nodded. “He believes you’re having some kind of a thing with her. I told him there was no way. You loved Mom.”

“I did love your mother, Peter. I loved her so much. I still love her.”

“That’s what I told him. I said you and Liza were just friends, that’s all. And that’s true, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t that completely true?”

“Of course it is,” Durbin said. “Completely, one hundred percent true.”

Hearing his father’s emphatic denial seemed to bring some real relief to the boy. He blew out heavily through his mouth and closed his eyes while he let the answer sink in. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, then.”

Eztli and Ro got home at a little after six o’clock.

Ro had originally wanted to get dropped off again at MoMo’s, where he could get some food and drink at the bar until Tiffany got off, but this was Friday night and Eztli was cutting it close getting to the Curtlees’ home on time when he knew he had to put on his tuxedo and drive them to the Saint Francis Hotel by eight for a fund-raising wine auction of some kind. This had been on Eztli’s schedule for the past month and though he got a true rush out of the time he spent with Ro, he also didn’t have any nagging ambiguity about who was writing the check every month, and if Cliff and Theresa needed him to be someplace, then that’s where he would be.

Stoned, mellow, and buoyed by the positive turn of the afternoon’s events with Gloria Serrano, Ro hadn’t objected. And so at seven o’clock, Eztli and the three members of the Curtlee family were all gathered in what they called the “little study”-a quiet, book-lined, relatively small room with a fireplace just off the dining room.

Cliff and Theresa in their black-tie garb were sharing a split of Roederer Cristal champagne, sitting hip to hip on the love seat that directly faced the dancing flames of the fire. Ro, on a wing chair catercorner to them, had showered and changed into a blue silk long-sleeved shirt and a pair of khakis. He had his bare feet up on an ottoman, his hands around a large leaded-crystal brandy snifter with a good strong two fingers of Rémy Martin V.S.O.P. Eztli stood in his own formal wear, across from both the parents and from Ro, closest to the fire, where he could keep an eye on the one entrance to the room. He hadn’t shared any marijuana with Ro on the way up to town, and he wasn’t drinking here tonight with the family, either. Since he would be serving double duty-chauffeur and bodyguard-he was carrying a.40 caliber semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his left armpit, nothing like the weapon that he’d used on Matt Lewis.

Ro was regaling his parents with his good fortune today in locating Gloria. “It was amazing to see, you guys. The change in her, which is I guess what living with guilt can do to you,” he was saying. “She was like a different person. She told me she had nothing but remorse for testifying against me last time.”

“I should think so,” Theresa said. “I always thought, before she told those lies on the stand of course, that she was a nice girl.”

“Very nice,” Cliff concurred. “And I thought one of the prettiest, really.”

“She still is,” Eztli said.

“Anyway, bottom line,” Ro continued, “and this is the really great part, no way is she going to be testifying again. She even asked me if there was any way she could talk to Tristan and recant some, maybe even all, of what she said last time.”

“Ro,” Cliff said, “that is fantastic. Really fantastic!”

“But I’m curious. How did you find her?” Theresa asked. “I understood from Tristan that that was turning out to be a little problematic.”

“Well, he was using a private eye. I used Ez.”

To whom all eyes turned. He shrugged, self-effacing. “I just put the word out in our community. Not much of a deal. There’s a network of like-minded people. And really, she wasn’t hiding.”

“Yes, well, nevertheless, your efforts were a little bit more effective than the attorneys we’re paying, now, weren’t they?”

Eztli smiled. “We got lucky. But I’ll take lucky over smart anytime.”

“Hear, hear,” Theresa said. “And wasn’t she, this Gloria, wasn’t she the last one? I mean, the last witness who was set to come to your next trial?”

Ro sipped contentedly at his cognac. “Well, never set, as it turns out. She didn’t even realize I’d gotten out of prison.”

Theresa’s nearly immobile face almost managed to look surprised. “How could she be unaware of that?”

Ro smiled at her. “I don’t think she’s a big reader of newspapers, Mother. Or watching the news.”

“She has three small children,” Eztli added. “It looked like they keep her busy.”

“Well, that will explain it,” Theresa said.

And Cliff added, “So that’s pretty much their case, then, am I right?”

“Let’s hope,” Ro said. “They’ve got no new witnesses and now pretty much none of the old ones. That’s what Tristan has been hoping for all along, and now it looks like that’s what we’ve got.”

“So they may not send you back?” Theresa asked.

Ro sipped more cognac, put on a rueful expression. “I don’t want to jinx us,” he said. “You know they’re going to try. I can’t see them just giving up. But now there is some real hope.”

“Glitsky won’t give up,” Theresa said. “He’s such a nuisance. We’ve got to find a way to get him transferred into another department or something.”

But Cliff was shaking his head. “It’s not Glitsky. It’s Farrell. If he’s got no case, they don’t retry. And we can get to him. In fact, I’ve already gotten to him. Again, thanks to Ez here.”

Eztli gave another slight acknowledgment, a tip of the head. “I would think Farrell’s pretty well neutralized,” he said.

Cliff looked down at his empty champagne flute. “Well,” he said, “all this calls for a toast. And just as I’ve run out of champagne. Ez, you might even have a sip, just for the celebration of it.”