John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'Then, suddenly, I don't even know how it happened, it was so fast. Or I wasn't paying attention enough, but there were people behind us, on the car, and Chris was saying roll the windows up, let's get out of here. But there really was no getting out – I mean, all at once the mob was in front of us, blocking the street, the people behind starting to try to bounce our car, so I put it into reverse and decided to try to get out that way. Chris and I were both turned around. We're backing through this crowd, people are slamming the windows, screaming at us. Some rocks hit the car, something, I don't know, but I just kept going, not too fast, I didn't want to run anybody over, but we had to get out of there…

'And then we were through them, or I thought we were. I was still backing up, faster now with nobody in the way. We got to the end of the block and I stopped, figuring we could now go forward. Chris was still turned around, still looking behind us to make sure we were clear, and then, I don't know what – all of a sudden his window exploded and there was this man and I see he's pointing a gun at me now, so I jam the accelerator to the floor just as he fires again and I'm turning up Guerrero. Chris is slumped over. After that I guess I… I don't really know. I drove until I saw a police car, then I stopped.'

Glitsky sat forward on the couch. His face was impassive. 'Could you identify the man, the shooter?'

She thought a long moment, then shook her head. 'I don't think so, Abe. It was dark, I was mostly looking at the gun. He was white and if I had to guess, probably under thirty.'

'You see what he was wearing?'

' Some kind of jacket – it was open, I noticed, it flapped – maybe a T-shirt, jeans, nothing really distinctive.'

'Hair, beard…?'

Again, she shook her head. 'I really did tell all this to the inspectors upstairs, Abe. They said they'd look, they'd try. Try to find the gun, match it with something, see where it leads, but the man himself… he could have been anybody.'

A lengthy silence. Loretta Wager leaned back into the curve of the couch. Glitsky remained, hunched over, hands clasped between his knees, eyes on the floor. He flicked off his tape recorder.

When he finally spoke it came out husky and strained with fatigue, not unlike the tone he used with his boys. It wasn't his cop voice. 'I didn't mean to be so abrupt today. When you called. I started to apologize but you'd hung up.'

'I was… you were right. I shouldn't have intruded.' She seemed to pull herself back, farther from him, waiting, reading his posture. Their eyes met. Both of them looked away.

He had gotten up, gone over to the window, was rewinding his tape player. Then that was done and he still didn't move. Time passed. From across the room, she asked it so quietly he almost didn't hear it: 'You haven't talked about your wife yet, have you? You haven't told anybody.'

She wasn't prying. Anyone else, maybe even Loretta at any other time, he would have snapped off some answer that would have ended that kind of personal inquiry, but right now he was drained, empty, without even the strength to lift his guard.

She'd read something in him. He could at least explain why he wouldn't explain. 'It's not something you talk about.'

He never had, not since the diagnosis. His role had been to tough it out, support Flo in her own struggle, keep the boys from breaking…

'All right,' she said.

If she'd pushed at all, he would have pulled away. He didn't turn around, spoke into his reflection in the window, kept it matter of fact. 'She had ovarian cancer. By the time they discovered it there wasn't anything they could do. It took nine months.'

'Oh, Abe. I'm so sorry.'

'It's funny,' he said at last, 'all the planning we did, I mean so we'd be prepared, so Flo wouldn't feel so much like she was leaving us in the lurch. I think we really convinced ourselves that we were doing something. But then when… when she wasn't there, I looked at all these lists we'd made, all the things I'd have to remember to do with the boys, all of this… activity that was supposed to do something, keep us on some kind of even keel. I didn't have a clue.'

He lifted his head, took in a breath, stared at the black space outside.

'How many boys do you have?' she asked.

'Three.'

'Has it been a long time?'

'Sixty-four weeks Saturday.' He looked at her. 'I don't know why, I just remember it in weeks, like I don't want to admit it's been months, or a year. I mean, you can handle a week. A week isn't that long. How it feels is even less than that. Sometimes I… it seems like an hour ago, she was here. She's just gone an hour and she'll be right back. It's stupid really. Denial. Just a way to handle it.'

'Not so stupid.'

His shoulders moved. 'The only thing is, you run up against real time, against how nothing is the same, it's all changed. That's how you know how long it's been. Everything about your kids, how things work with them, that's all different. How you work with yourself.' Winding down, stopping. 'Sorry. Running on.'

'Hardly that.'

'Well…'

After a beat, she rose from the couch and walked over to him. 'I was luckier with Dana. He died when Elaine was almost seventeen. And he was so much older. He'd lived his life.' She looked up at him. 'And still it took me a couple of years. You do whatever works.' She touched his arm. 'Would you mind driving me home, Abraham? I truly am exhausted.'

He'd been driven down to the Hall by a squad car, so he had to check out another city-issued vehicle, the same model car Loretta had been driving with Chris Locke earlier in the night. They didn't do any more talking as Abe filled out the requisition form for the car or on the walk down the outside staircase so they would avoid the media clustered still and always in the lobby of the Hall of Justice.

Now as they pulled out of the city lot she sat all the way across the seat from him, against the window, still silent, the intimate discussion upstairs now a barrier between them.

Glitsky was all eyes on the road. The previous driver of the vehicle had left the radio on and some bright-voiced deejay was telling whatever audience might remain in the traumatized city that it was exactly midnight, the first hour of Thursday, June 30. One more day until the official start of the Fourth of July long weekend and Happy Birthday America. It was sure going to be fun if we just make sure we load up on the beer and hot dogs and…

Abe reached over and snapped it off. 'That guy broadcasting from Mars or what?'

"They all do,' Loretta said.

They were in her circular brick driveway in front of the colonnaded white mansion at one of the city's high points in Pacific Heights, overlooking the entire world, less than two blocks from where Kevin Shea had rested at the top of his climb earlier in the day. The landscaping around Loretta's house had been done before either she or Glitsky had been born, and now stately maples folded their branches over them, enclosing the space, insuring its privacy.

The ride had continued quiet, tense, laden with all that was unspoken. Glitsky was angry at himself for what he considered self-indulgence. And, unreasonably, at her for giving him the opening. Then seeing where Loretta lived – the involuntary comparison with his own physical setting, his cramped duplex – seemed to ratchet everything up another notch.

Between the fatigue and the unfamiliar rush of emotion, he knew he was in a dangerous mood – he should just open her door, help her out and say goodnight. But he didn't, he wanted to settle something. He'd waited long enough. 'Well, you married the right man after all, didn't you?'