John Lescroart - Damage

Pairs of strong hands took each of his arms, jerked them back behind his back, and fastened them together with handcuffs.

Glitsky was already around Novio next to Durbin on the couch, looking for signs of burns or other damage.

“I think I’m okay,” Durbin said. “Maybe a little deaf.”

“You did good,” Glitsky said. “You did amazing.”

Behind them, Bracco was telling Chuck Novio that he was under arrest, that he had the right to remain silent, that anything he said could and would be used against him.

Glitsky turned back to Durbin. “Sorry we didn’t get in sooner. We thought he’d give a little more warning but he moved too fast. But the good news is you’re okay and we got it all. Quite a confession.”

As the inspectors marched Novio out of the room and down to the waiting car, Durbin tried to get to his feet, but found that he didn’t have the strength. “I’ve just got to sit here a minute, Lieutenant,” he said. “I can’t seem to get my legs to work. I feel like I might faint. Jesus Christ. Poor Kathy. Those poor girls.”

“Take a deep breath,” Glitsky said. “Put your head down between your knees. You’ll get all the time you need to think about it later. For the time being, though, you’re a bona fide hero.”

“I don’t feel anything like a hero.”

“Well, join the club,” Glitsky said. “Most of ’em don’t.”

“There was no evidence,” Glitsky said. “Even after I thought it probably was him, I needed evidence. I had to trick him.”

He was in a booth at Lou the Greek’s two days later. It was after the lunch hour, and hence there was no pressure to order the special (yeanling clay bowl for the second time in two weeks), so Abe was drinking iced tea. Across the table, Vi Lapeer and Amanda Jenkins sipped their Diet Cokes. It wasn’t altogether a casual meeting. Lapeer had come up to Glitsky’s office needing to understand why he’d done what he’d done so that she could go and defend it to Leland Crawford, while Jenkins-who’d drawn the prosecution case against Chuck Novio-simply wanted to get all the information she could on general principles.

“But what made you even think of him in the first place?” Lapeer asked.

“Well, I didn’t remember it right away, in fact almost not at all, but he told me a lie. The very first time I talked to him, I asked him about him being all over Janice’s cell phone, and he said he and Janice were planning a surprise party for his wife. But later his wife, Kathy, was telling me about how they were all planning for her big monster blowout fortieth birthday party. She was in on it, so it wasn’t a surprise, now, was it? Luckily the contradiction came back to me.”

Lapeer still didn’t like it. “And on that one lie, Abe, you risk a citizen’s life?”

“Well, two things. First it wasn’t just the one lie. The lie got me to wondering about Novio and Janice, which led to his car in her parking lot.”

“Still a long way from murder.”

“Granted. And I wouldn’t have risked any life on it, civilian or otherwise, if that was all I had. But it wasn’t. Once I was up and had Novio on my mind, and I admit I was desperate with Mr. Crawford and the Curtlees and all that, I surfed the Web about half the night. Novio’s got about fifteen thousand hits on Google.”

“Thousand?” Jenkins asked.

Glitsky nodded, sipped his tea. “So naturally I just found what I wanted in five minutes or so.”

Jenkins stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“Yes,” Glitsky said. “It was more like three hours, and even then it was lucky.”

“I’m sorry, Abe, but what were you looking for?” Lapeer asked.

“Anything, nothing, I didn’t know. All I know is that if somebody lies to me during an investigation, there’s usually a reason. And his lie was deliberate around a woman who I knew was having an affair.”

Jenkins got him back on point. “So what’d you find?”

“A couple of articles in a small New England newspaper in 1995 about this scandal they evidently were having where Novio was named as one of the professors who was selling grades for sex. The second article just said that all the charges had been withdrawn and a settlement reached.”

Jenkins nodded. “They hushed it up, paid off the girl, and shipped him out to San Francisco with great recommendations.”

“That’s what I think,” Glitsky said. He chewed some of his ice. “So, Chief, I had Janice’s affair, Novio’s past sex with coeds, the chlamydia, and the lie. So I went to Janice’s office and found out he’d been parking there after hours, basically your smoking gun. So I had the affair with Janice, but still no evidence and no murder.”

“Okay,” Lapeer said. “This is where it gets squirrelly. So then you go to Michael Durbin? Why him?”

“His wife was the victim, Chief. He wanted to catch the killer, no matter who it was. You want to know the truth, I came up with the wire idea, okay, but he’s the one who came up with the shotgun, which was just brilliant. And remember, Novio would never have admitted any part of this if we interrogated him, even if we had him dead to rights on the affair. To get him to talk about the murder, it had to be with someone he didn’t suspect.”

“But it could have killed him, Durbin.”

Glitsky shook his head. “Not really. Not even probably. Not with empty shells in the shotgun. At the worst, he could have maybe gotten burned.”

“Badly burned. And sued the city for a zillion dollars.”

“True.” He met the chief’s eyes. “Entirely possible, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t much care about that. And Michael wasn’t going to do that anyway. I knew the guy was a justice freak from the Curtlee trial. He’d do what it took and take the consequences. He was all the way on board when he realized about Novio and Janice. Devastated, but on board.”

“So,” Amanda continued, “to go back to the beginning. What got Novio thinking about this? Ro getting out?”

“Exactly,” Glitsky said. “Janice had just told Novio what she was going to do to him. She just didn’t make up her mind fast enough to actually expose him. And the hesitation-maybe a couple of days, a week at most-that’s what killed her. Because Chuckie boy thinks he’s ruined and he’s going to jail, and he’s probably right. Meanwhile, just at this time, Ro gets out and burns up Felicia Nuñez’s apartment. Novio knows the connection between Ro and Durbin, and comes up with this great idea. Make it look like Ro did it! And hey, while we’re at it, slash the paintings. That would be Ro all over.” Glitsky’s face went sour. “And I almost helped him get away with it.”

Lapeer reached a hand across the table and touched his. “That’s a big ‘almost,’ Abe. I wouldn’t get yourself too wrapped up in it. And meanwhile, if this whole thing comes up in shall we say loftier surroundings, which it will, you’re comfortable with me saying Michael Durbin got into this because he volunteered?”

Glitsky gave a measured nod, thought a minute, then nodded again. “That would not be inaccurate,” he said.

Since the slaughter last Friday, the Courier ’s offices had been in a state of upheaval. Cliff and Theresa Curtlee had been hands-on managers, and without their presence, the ship was rudderless and Marrenas felt it keenly. The office manager was already engaged in a three-way power struggle with the managing editor and the head of sales; the stock had plummeted, and rumors of a hostile takeover by the McClatchy Group had put everyone on edge.

The past four columns by Heinous Marrenas had eulogized the Curtlees and their legacy, such as it was. Beyond that, she’d made as much hay as she could blasting the police department and the district attorney for their unscrupulous persecution of Ro Curtlee, a man who was “guilty of nothing more than coming from a family who had dared to take on the city’s entrenched law enforcement establishment while it trotted out every trick in the book in a concerted effort to deny him his civil rights.”