John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

Elaine looked at the floor. 'All the way,' she whispered, 'as far as it could go.' She exhaled, the tension of letting it out.

'You sayin' you and Chris Locke made love in his office last night?'

'Don't be mad at me. I-'

Loretta held up a restraining palm, cold fury in her face. 'It's not you , child, not you, I ain't likely gonna be mad at you.' It was her turn to sigh. 'But you are my baby. How could he…?'

'It wasn't just him… I guess I-'

'I know, I know,' Loretta said. 'I know how it goes.' She stared over the desk at her beautiful daughter. 'The man got the heat, don't he?'

'He's always been so distant, I mean, good and kind and my true mentor, but distant. And I know you and he… I know he helped you, politically. But it was like, I don't know, this whole thing – this lynching, all of it – it just suddenly seemed to break him down.' Elaine looked across the desk, asking for understanding. 'He needed me, Mom, he really did.'

'I believe you, honey. So where you now?'

Her head down. 'I don't know . I haven't slept. I feel guilty. Confused. I don't know what it meant, means…'

'How's he…?'

Elaine sighed. 'Back to business today, but what can you expect with all this going on?'

'And you think you might love him?'

'I don't know.' Their eyes met and held for an instant, and Loretta knew that here, self-protectively, her daughter wasn't telling the truth. God help her, she was in love with her boss, with DA Chris Locke.

Loretta took a bite of her now-tasteless food, a sip of her Coke. 'I just want you to think on one thing, hon. I'm not sayin' word one against you now. But you consider that it might be your boss hit on you when you , not him, when you weren't able to stand up-'

'He didn't force anything, Mom.'

'I'm not sayin' he did. I'm sayin' you are emotionally drained – your old schoolmate is the victim, for God's sake. You haven't slept all night. The city's burning and you're suddenly elevated to the man's right hand. You're the one who's vulnerable here, you're the easy mark, child. Your boss, Mister Locke, he ain't got a damn thing to lose.'

'It wasn't like that.'

'That's all I'm asking, that you be sure it wasn't, that's all. Because it could have been.'

'It wasn't.'

Loretta reached out her hand, a peace offering. Elaine looked at it for a moment, then put her own hand over her mother's halfway across the desk.

'I believe you,' Loretta said. 'I just don't want you hurt. You still ain't too big to get hurt.' She softened it with a smile. 'Now tell me about Kevin Shea, what you all got?'

Bowing to pressure brought to bear by the District Attorney, the mayor and a visit by the United States senator from California, the grand jury met in special session, adjusted its agenda and took only three hours deliberating before it issued an indictment on Kevin Shea for the murder of Arthur Wade.

Which had a double-edged effect on Glitsky's team – they were no longer responsible for making the decision about whether Shea himself had to be brought in; on the other hand, their work trying to identify the other members of the mob who might have been equally involved fell back under the mantle of normal procedure, with nominally still a high – but in practice a far lower – priority.

'I am… I was Mike Mullen's brother.'

Brandon Mullen had tried to make himself presentable – decent clothes and neatly combed hair – but he had failed. Glitsky thought he looked like hell, lips cracked and swollen, eyes bloodshot. Blood, too, had seeped through the sling he wore on his right arm.

Glitsky had farmed out the interrogations – he had Jamie O'Toole down the hallway with Marcel Lanier, Brandon Mullen here in Homicide A with his African-American rookie inspector Ridley Banks, Peter McKay in the B-room with Carl Griffin.

Later the inspectors would get together and see if they could make something out of the stories, see where they connected and where they fell apart, and later still Glitsky planned, if he got the time, to read all the transcriptions, and maybe even view the videotapes, but for now he was getting a feel, looking in on one, then the other.

It still wasn't one o'clock. Around the Bay Area, Oakland, Richmond and East Palo Alto were on fire. In the city itself, there were ongoing civic disturbances – Conrad Aiken, sensitive to terminology even in crisis, had decreed that riots should be called civic disturbances and thus, somehow, lessen their severity – in the Tenderloin, Hunter's Point, the Wester Addition, and down by City College. The homicide count in San Francisco for the day had risen from two to four, going on five – a sniper had killed a black man getting into his car on Fulton, and two white teenagers had been pulled from a convertible while they'd been stuck at a stoplight at 3rd and Palou. One of them was still alive though his condition was critical.

Glitsky had called his home four times, ordering Rita not to let the boys out, he didn't care what. He'd deal with getting them somewhere safe as soon as he could.

Now he stood in the witness room by the door behind Ridley Banks and looked across at Brandon Mullen with his hurt arm and cracked lips. He'd assigned Banks to Mullen because a week before, when Mike Mullen – the brother – had been a righteous innocent victim, Ridley had been the inspector on the case, going out and seeing the bereaved family. He'd be a sympathetic interrogator, on Brandon 's side.

Glitsky would go in and play bad cop. He was in the right mood for it.

'It started there, yeah,' Brandon Mullen was saying.

'The Cavern?' Glitsky, of course, knew this. He'd gotten the men's names from Jamie O'Toole the night before. It was why they were down here getting questioned.

'The Cavern, yeah. I mean, Petey and I…'

'Petey?'

'My cousin, Pete McKay, we were together, so…'

'And you had some drinks there. And cut your arm on a wine glass?'

This wasn't bad cop, it was pure belligerence, and Glitsky knew better. Mullen drew himself back on his seat, his head to one side, hostility now all over him.

'Look, man, I'm here voluntarily. I thought I could help. I don't even have a lawyer 'cause there's nothing I'm afraid of. Now you want to listen or hassle me or charge me with something? It's your choice.'

Ridley, the good cop, said they weren't planning to charge him with anything. 'We 're just trying to get a sense of what happened.' He glanced at Glitsky, a hand extended. Back off.

'That's what I'm trying to tell you.'

'Okay, go ahead.'

'I thought I should go, y'know. They were havin' this, like, memorial, so Petey and I thought we'd go down an' have a drink. For Mikey. How it would look if we didn't?'

'And what time was this?'

'Must have been seven, seven-thirty.'

'Okay.'

'So we drank a few pints.'

'Was the place filling up by then?' Glitsky, in a calmer tone, leaned casually against the door, with his arms crossed.

'I don't know. Half the bar, maybe. Fifteen or twenty heads spread around.'

Banks leaned over the table. 'Was Kevin Shea there?'

'I didn't notice.'

Glitsky again: 'You know Shea?'

Mullen's eyes went from Glitsky to Banks. 'To nod at, I guess.'

Banks picked it up. 'And then…?'

'And then we thanked Jamie and packed it up.'

'You went home?'

'To Petey's. Do a wake of our own.' He spread his hands, sincere. 'We knew we were gonna get good an' pissed and we didn't want to drive.' At Glitsky's expression Mullen said, 'Believe me or don't.'

Glitsky shrugged it off. 'So what happened to your arm?'

'Petey and I got to swinging at each other…'

'About what?'