John Lescroart - The Motive

At twelve minutes after seven on this fog-bound May morning, when Glitsky pulled his city-issued car to the curb at Alamo Square, he couldn't have dredged up a smile on a bet. He'd routinely called his office from home for messages soon after he woke up and had learned about the double homicide and the five-alarm arson. The scene wasn't much of a detour from his duplex above Lake on his route to work at the Hall of Justice, and he felt he needed to see it with his own eyes.

Getting out of his car, he stood for a moment surveying the still-smoking disaster that had occurred here last night. Before most of the city's firefighters had finally stopped the spread of flames at around 3:00 a.m., all but two of the Painted Ladies had been affected to some degree or another. The one in the center was destroyed except for its steps and a circular area on the first floor behind the front door. On either side of that structure, the adjacent homes would have to be completely rebuilt. The one on Glitsky's left as he faced the wreckage, which must have been slightly windward last night, was nothing but a burned-out skeleton. The former gingerbread house on the right was a gutted shell of broken-out windows and charred, peeling timbers. On either side of those houses, the adjacent homes yawned vacant and bereft-more broken windows, open front doors, obvious water and fire damage. Cleanup crews were spraying and sweeping all over the area. Teams of ax-wielding firemen jabbed and poked through the various wreckages, locating hidden hot spots for the hose crews.

Glitsky finally moved away from his car. Muted activity hummed all around him as he crossed down to the IC's car. Hoses still snaked to fire hydrants. Two engines remained parked back to back in front of the middle home. Three trucks lined the near curb. The coroner's van was double-parked by the engines near the middle of the street. Most of the onlookers had dispersed.

On the bumper of a car, a man in a white helmet sat holding a steaming cup in both hands. Glitsky, introducing himself, thought the man looked like he'd just come from a battlefield-and in a sense he supposed he had. Slack with fatigue, the IC's face was blackened everywhere with soot, his eyes shot with red.

After they shook hands, Shaklee said, "My arson guys are still in there with Strout." John Strout was the city's medical examiner. "And your guy. Cuneo?" he added.

"Dan Cuneo, yeah." Glitsky lifted his chin toward the houses. "All I got word of was fatality fire."

"You don't know who lived here?"

"No."

"You know Paul Hanover?"

"No kidding?" Glitsky looked at the house. "Was he inside?"

"Somebody was. Two people, actually. From the sizes, a man and a woman, but we won't know for sure who they were for a while." Shaklee sipped at his drink. "They're not identifiable." He paused. "You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"They were dead when the fire started. Shot." Glitsky's eyes went back to the house. "The gun's still in there," Shaklee said. "Under the bigger torso."

"Paul Hanover."

"Probably."

"And his girlfriend?"

"That's the rumor. You can go in."

Glitsky blew a vapor trail, hesitating. Finally, he shook his head. "That's all right. I've seen enough bodies to last me. Better if I didn't step on Cuneo's toes. It's his case."

Shaklee shrugged. "Your call."

"Yeah." Another pause, a last look toward the house. If anyone else from homicide besides Cuneo had drawn the case, Glitsky would have gone inside. "I'll catch him and Strout downtown after they know a little more what they've got." After a last glance at the destruction, he met Shaklee's eye and shook his head at the waste and loss.

Crunching over broken glass and charred debris, he started walking back to his car.

The only time Abe and Treya Glitsky had ever seriously disagreed was before they got married. The issue was whether they would have children together.

Both of them had survived the deaths of their first spouses, and had raised their respective children as single parents. Treya had a teenage girl, Raney, and Abe already had two sons, Isaac and Jacob, out of the house, and Orel at the time he met Treya with only a couple of years to go. Abe, fifty-two then, figured he had already done the family thing and done it well. He didn't suppose, and really wasn't too keen about finding out, whether he'd have the energy or interest necessary to be an active and involved father again. To Treya, in her midthirties, this was a deal breaker, and the two broke up over it. The split had endured for eleven days before Abe changed his mind. Their baby, Rachel, was now nearly two and a half years old.

This morning-Thursday-Treya, seventeen days late, had taken the home pregnancy test, and it had been positive. Her husband invariably left their duplex by 7:00 a.m., so he'd already gone in to work when she found out. She worked in the same Hall of Justice as he did, as personal secretary to San Francisco's district attorney, Clarence Jackman, but though she'd now been at her job for the better part of three hours, she hadn't worked up the courage to call Abe and tell him.

They'd avoided pretty much all discussion of whether they'd have more children after Rachel, but Treya didn't feel as though she'd been sneaky with this latest development. They both knew they were doing nothing to prevent it. Surely that was a sign of Abe's tacit approval.

But she wasn't completely sure.

While watering the plants in Jackman's outer office, which doubled as a no-frills reception area for the DA's appointments, she caught sight of herself in the wall mirror and realized that she'd been biting her lips and had scraped her lipstick off, top and bottom. Stepping closer to the mirror, she saw traces of it on her teeth. Nerves. She had to call Abe and let him know right now. She had just finished scratching the lipstick off and was returning around the front of her desk to do just that when Dismas Hardy, Jackman's eleven o'clock and Abe's great friend, knocked at the side of the open hallway door. And the phone rang.

"If that's for me, I'm in training for a marathon and can't be disturbed," Hardy said.

Treya shot him an amused and tolerant look and reached over the desk to pick up the phone. "DA's office." She came around the desk and sat in her chair, frowning. "No," she said, "what about her?" Treya listened for another moment, then shook her head. "I haven't heard a thing, and nobody's called Clarence about anything like that. Yes, I'm sure. Do you want me to ask Diz? He's here."

Hardy looked over in some surprise.

Treya held up a finger, listened, then spoke across to him. "Kathy West"-the mayor, on her job now for about five months-"wants to see Abe. He wonders if you might have heard about anything going on at City

Hall?"

"Just the rumor that she was firing him, but I don't believe it."

Treya spoke into the phone. "He hasn't heard anything either." She listened. "Okay. Well, whatever it is, I wouldn't worry. No, I know. Good luck."

She hung up, and realizing that she hadn't told her husband her own news, their own news, she bit at her lip again.

"Are you all right?" Hardy asked.

"I'm fine. Just a little distracted."

"Well," Hardy copped Billy Crystal's old Saturday Night Live accent, "it's not how you feel but how you look, and dahling, you look mahvelous." When Treya didn't react, Hardy went sober. "Is Abe really worried? Are you?"

"I don't think so. He'd just rather be prepared whenever it's possible."

"You're kidding? Abe?" Then: "I do wonder what Kathy wants, though."

"Whatever it is, it's got to be important, don't you think? She wanted him ASAP," she said. "And in person."

Kathy West had been a city supervisor for six terms and, during the last couple of years before her election to mayor, had been a regular at Clarence Jackman's informal "kitchen cabinet" meetings, held most Tuesdays at Lou the Greek's bar and restaurant, located just across the street from the Hall of Justice. Glitsky-and Treya and Hardy, for that matter-were also members, so there was a history of goodwill and mutual respect between the deputy chief and the mayor.