John Lescroart - The Hearing

Treya had gone back to Hardy's building. The big box from Elaine's condominium was there in the Solarium and she wanted to catalogue everything in it on the chance that something might jump out. The slim chance.

At this point, Glitsky felt they were all grasping at straws. Hardy and Freeman doing their legal hocus-pocus, Treya making lists, Jeff Elliot wanting to take down the District Attorney. The kids remained enthusiastic, fascinated by the whole procedure. But they were, after all, lawyers. Hardy had them writing more motions about unconsciousness, temporary insanity, police misconduct. They were more interested in the courtroom strategies that might save Cole Burgess than they were in discovering who might have killed Elaine. For Glitsky, this remained the focus. Someone had killed his daughter. He owed it to her – and to himself – to discover who it was.

What had begun as simple remorse over his own excesses had ripened into a genuine concern that a combination of malice and stupidity might possibly have ensnared the wrong man. And if it had, it was up to him – he was the only trained investigator on Hardy's dream team – to run down the right one.

Try as he might, he couldn't develop any warmth for the idea that it had been Jonas Walsh. The doctor had no alibi, true. He'd fibbed about the state of his relationship with Elaine. He was abrupt, distracted, uncooperative. In short, Glitsky had come to believe, he was in a state of grief, something with which he himself had a visceral connection. He recognized it intuitively, and while he would change his mind in an instant if any evidence came to light linking Jonas Walsh with Sunday night in San Francisco, he really didn't expect that to happen.

Likewise with Muhammed Adek. Glitsky had fifteen years' experience interviewing killers, and he came away from his Monday interview with the law student convinced that he wasn't involved. If he'd been less angry, if the sense of betrayal he obviously felt about Elaine had been less acute, maybe he would have felt differently. But even after he identified himself as a cop – administrative leave or not, that's what he was – Muhammed hadn't attempted to downplay any of his feelings as killers tended to do. The boy had been in love with her and she'd chosen another man, and while this could be a motive for murder, it didn't comport well with what Abe thought he knew about the last night of Elaine's life.

Plus – and this was key – from everything Treya had told him, Elaine would have been far more specific with her on Sunday afternoon if she had been going out to meet with Muhammed. 'But she would never have met with him in the first place, Abe. And if she'd somehow gotten talked into it, she wouldn't have just said she was going to a meeting, believe me. She would have mentioned him by name, and not flatteringly. There was no way.'

Glitsky agreed with her. His theory was simple. Elaine's killer was at least a cordial business acquaintance, maybe a good deal more than that. They'd had dinner, or perhaps done something more intimate. But Abe believed in his guts that the crime wasn't one of passion. It wasn't about jilted love or domestic upheaval. It was a cold-blooded contingency that had become a necessity, then been acted on decisively.

He crunched another cube, drummed his fingers on the table, checked his watch. 'Come on, Paul,' he said aloud.

'I'm here.' Inspector Paul Thieu, with another man in tow, slid into the booth across from him. 'Sorry I'm late. Lieutenant, this is Jan Falk. Narcotics.'

'Abe,' Glitsky said. He reached across the table, shook hands. 'Nice to meet you. I assume Paul told you I'm on leave at the moment, maybe forever.'

Falk badly needed a shave and the dumpster smell seemed suddenly stronger. He wore a roguish grin. 'Sometimes I wish I was. No, always I wish I was. Except now, maybe. So what's goin' down?'

Glitsky turned to check the room another time. It had filled up nicely for lunch. There was camouflage in the numbers and the noise. Still, he leaned in across the table so he wouldn't have to speak too loudly. 'Paul says you know something about Ridley Banks.'

Falk shrugged. 'I don't know what I know, tell you the truth. Monday I heard he'd gone missing and I remembered him from last week, some OD case in the Mish. Long story how we got together, but he was on to something and I thought you guys – homicide – might be interested, but maybe not. I couldn't even get a callback.'

Thieu piped in. 'The place is a disaster, Lieutenant. You wouldn't believe it.'

'I bet I would.'

Thieu felt he had to give Glitsky some feel for it. 'They haven't put anybody in your chair, even temporarily. Nobody's fielding calls, everybody's out all the time. The car's driving full speed and nobody's at the wheel.'

'You're breaking my heart,' Abe said. Then, back to Falk. 'So what happened?'

But he couldn't get right to it. Lou came by for their orders, recommending the special, which today was a dish called Yeanling Clay Bowl. Thieu looked up at him. 'Yeanling? What's a yeanling?'

'I don't know,' Lou admitted. 'It's got rice noodles with lamb and some kind of sauce. Really good, though. I'll put you down for three of them, OK?'

Glitsky saw they had consensus. 'OK, three bowls,' he said.

'It doesn't come in a bowl,' Lou explained. 'That's just the name of it. Yeanling Clay Bowl. From back where they originally made it someplace. My wife could tell you all about it, but she's busy right now.'

'I got an idea, Lou,' Glitsky said.

'What?'

A tight smile. 'Go make her busier, OK.'

Lou got the message and disappeared. Abe looked at Falk. 'You were trying to talk to somebody in homicide.'

'Right. So after a day, nobody's called me back and I ask around and Banks is still missing. So I decide I'll go down the Hall in person and see what's the problem.'

'The problem,' Thieu interjected, 'is that nobody's in charge. Sorry, go ahead.'

'So I go in and there's Paul and I start to talk to him a little about this-'

'And I take it upstairs, the Chief's office himself, and what do they tell me?' Thieu's voice had thickened in outrage. 'That Banks is a missing person. He's not a homicide. Go back downstairs and do my job. If it turns out he's dead, then I can worry about it. Can you believe these guys? So anyway, Abe, this is about when I remember you'd called me about Rid, wanting to reach him at home. I figured maybe you'd know something.'

Falk picked up. 'Then they're talking about Ridley on the news. What he's working on, about him being the main witness in this Elaine Wager case, and this OD is part of that, too.'

'That's true,' Glitsky said. 'So what was he on to, you think?'

Falk finally had a clear field to run on, and he took off. The operation that narcotics had been running out of Jupiter, Cullen Alsop's appearance at the bar, Falk and Banks bopping Damien together, Gene Visser the ex-cop possibly being a source of heroin. 'That's what Banks really sparked to. If Visser had been there in the flophouse with the kid.'

'Then what?' Glitsky asked.

'I don't know,' Falk replied. 'But if this kid was a snitch… the thing about being dead is, it's a lot harder to change your story.'

'A lot harder,' Thieu agreed.

'But you can't testify either, so what good's the snitch to begin with?' Glitsky was chomping more ice now, thinking. When he swallowed it, he spoke. 'I got a question, Jan. You hear on TV that this is part of the Wager thing. You know the hearing's going on right now. How come you don't go to the DA?'

Falk almost spat his tea across the table. 'You know how many times me and my guys are putting something together for like a year, wrapped up nice and tight? Righteous busts, dealers in the slammer, good shit. Then two weeks later it's all over. The case has mysteriously fallen apart. Or it's not charged. Or some fucking thing. My dealers are sprung and I'm made on the street and gotta start over someplace else. Arid half the time my snitches have been exposed and I'm on the line for that.' He drank iced tea, calmed down slightly. 'It's got so… you know what I do now? I go direct to the AG' – the State Attorney General. 'If they don't want it, I've even been known to turn cases over to our generous brothers at the FB-One, even though they'll find some way I get no credit for the goddamn bust. But no way do I go to the DA. No way!'