John Lescroart - Damage

The weapon was loaded.

Chuck’s eyes went quickly from Michael over to the shotgun, then back to Michael. Carefully he closed the door after him, then turned back. “What are you doing?” he said, motioning toward the gun. “What’s that thing doing here?”

“I told you I’m not going to jail, Chuck.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“No. I mean I really wasn’t going to jail. If Glitsky was coming down for me, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I wasn’t going to let him put the kids through the whole ordeal of a trial, with me a murder suspect.”

“The kids would be fine through it, Michael. They’d be way worse if you weren’t there for them at all.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Well, I’m telling you it is.” Chuck half turned and lowered himself down onto the front edge of the leather lounge chair. “We’ll get you the best lawyer in town and…”

But Michael was holding up a hand, shaking his head no. “That’s not happening. In fact, none of this is happening.”

“None of what? What do you mean?”

“I mean I came down here thinking it would be a good place to end things, you know? A little symmetry. Janice betrayed me and I splash my brains all over her office. You see what I’m saying?”

“There’s no reason to end things, Michael. If you didn’t do it…”

“What do you mean, if I didn’t do it?” Michael moved up to the front edge of the couch, his voice raspy. “You of all people know goddamn well I didn’t do it. And you know why you know that?”

“No, I don’t.” Chuck was the picture of rational calm and concern for his brother-in-law. “Except that I believe you if you say it wasn’t you.”

Michael all but collapsed back on the couch. “God, you’re good,” he said.

Like an inquisitive bird, Chuck cocked his head to one side. “What are you talking about, Michael? Good at what?”

Regaining his composure, Michael straightened up. “Maybe it was actually getting close to thinking I was going to end my life over this, Chuck. What a goddamn waste that would be when I knew I was innocent. So while I was sitting here trying to rationalize myself out of it, my brain must have gone into high gear and I remembered something you said.”

“Something I said?”

Michael nodded. “That first weekend after Janice was killed. You told me that Glitsky had asked you about all these cell phone calls to and from you on Janice’s phone, and you’d told him that you were both planning a surprise party for Kathy’s birthday, that was the reason for them. You remember that?”

“Sure.”

“Well, the thing is, Chuck, you in fact weren’t planning a surprise party for Kathy. Janice wasn’t planning a surprise party for Kathy.”

Chuck put on a rueful expression. “I know,” he said. “She found out about it and we had to cancel the surprise part. I don’t see anything sinister in that. I wasn’t hiding anything.”

“No? That’s funny, because once I started thinking about those phone calls, that it might have been you who was having the affair with Janice…”

Stung with a cattle prod, Chuck held up both hands. “Whoa. You’re out of your mind, Michael. Janice and I didn’t-”

Michael cut him off. “So I started thinking you two must have been meeting all those nights she told me she was out with her patients and you were at school, working late. And where would those meetings have been? Probably right here. And since I was down here anyway, I went to the security office, just down the hall, just a couple of hours ago. Did you know they keep track of the nontenant cars that are parked here at night? Hard-copy records, Chuck. With license plate numbers. How about that? So are you going to try to tell me you were visiting somebody else in this building all those times? Or maybe you had become one of Janice’s patients? And you certainly got here fast enough when I called you today, didn’t you? No directions needed.”

Both men were breathing hard in the tense silence. After a long moment, something went out of Chuck’s shoulders. “We didn’t plan it, Michael,” he said. “It was just one of those things that happened. We were trying to stop. We didn’t want it to hurt anybody in the families. I am so, so sorry.”

Crushed by the enormity of this admission, Michael hung his head. When he looked up again, he asked in a hoarse whisper. “So why did you have to kill her?”

Chuck’s eyes went wide as if he couldn’t believe the accusation. “Michael, I didn’t kill her. I swear to God. I had no reason to kill her. I loved her.”

“You loved her, but you were fucking someone else, too?”

“I wasn’t…”

“Chuck, she had chlamydia. She didn’t get it from a toilet seat and she didn’t get it from me. You gave it to her. So who gave it to you? One of your students?”

Chuck held Michael’s gaze until it became too much for him, and this time it was Chuck who hung his head, letting out a deep sigh. Looking back up, he saw that Michael was wiping tears from his eyes. Suddenly as quick as the strike of a snake, he bolted from the chair and reached out across the small room, getting his hands on the shotgun, snapping the barrels shut, and bringing it to bear on Michael’s chest.

“You fucking idiot,” he said. “You stupid, meddling fool.” He let out a one-note bitter laugh. “You and Janice deserve each other. You want to know what happened? One of my students happened to go to her for counseling, fed her a load of shit about being exploited.”

Novio kept talking, working himself up. “All they wanted was their fucking As, you know. They were happy as hell to trade a little tail for it. But Janice thought that was wrong . That wasn’t just fucking. That was taking advantage of the poor students.”

His knuckles were growing white holding the shotgun. “So now it’s not just being mad at me, it’s a moral crusade. And do you know what she was going to do? She was going to go not just to Kathy, but to the school, the dean. You hear that?”

“Sure. I hear it.”

“Well, that would have been it for me. You get it? Turns out the little bitch was seventeen. Like I knew.”

Lowering his voice, he drove in the last nail. “And that’s statutory rape, my friend. Janice was going to call the cops and have them put me in jail. She wouldn’t even admit it was personal. She kept saying that as a therapist, she was mandated to report sexual abuse.”

Michael sat back on the couch, his eyes trained on the twin barrels. “So what are you going to do now? Kill me, too?”

Chuck let out another humorless laugh. “Me? I’m not going to do anything. I’m afraid I’m going to have not gotten here fast enough. I was just coming through the door when my poor brother-in-law, thinking he was about to get arrested for killing his wife, blew himself away.”

Chuck advanced a step. “And, by the way, thanks for the tip about there being no good forensic record with a shotgun.” Coming closer, now within a couple of feet, he cocked back both hammers and went down to one knee. “I like this lower angle,” he said. “Like you put the thing up to your own throat.”

And he pulled both triggers.

Glitsky had started to lead Bracco and the three other inspectors in their charge to the door of Janice Durbin’s office before they heard the pop and came barreling in with their weapons drawn.

“Throw down the gun and put up your hands!” Glitsky yelled. “The gun!”

Chuck Novio dropped the shotgun to the floor with a heavy thud. He stood there, staring down at an unharmed Michael Durbin as though he were looking at a ghost. “What the hell?”