John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

There were maybe a dozen officers in uniform, standing loose guard over their charges. Why, she thought, were there so many police cars in front of the building? Where were the rest of them? The disconnected observation struck her like a message from a half-remembered world. She had no idea.

The men in the line this morning were the usual unkempt and motley collection, shuffling along, exhausted, black-eyed. As she was waiting for the elevator one of them caught her attention.

She had been planning to take the elevator up, get to her office, close the door. Maybe try calling her mother again, talk to Jerry Ouzounis or to Chief Assistant DA Art Drysdale… somebody upstairs… find out what had happened, what she could do. She had to do something. Do something for Chris.

Walking to the yellow tape that delineated the temporary booking area, she stepped over it and got a better look at the man.

'Excuse me,' she said to an officer talking to another uniform.

'Yes, ma'am.' Then, seeing she was a civilian: 'I've got to ask you to go back over there. You're not supposed to be behind the yellow tape.'

There weren't any cordial smiles left in Elaine. 'I'm with the DA,' she said, flashing her ID. 'Elaine Wager.'

If either of the two cops in earshot put together any relationship between this attractive young woman and the senator from California, they hid it well. But the DA was the DA, and if this woman was part of that office she could talk to them and they would listen.

'Yes, ma'am,' the officer repeated, 'how can I help you?' Elaine gestured with her head. 'Isn't that man Jerohm Reese?'

'Hey, hey, this ain't right. Hey. I'm talking to you. You hearing me. I am talking to you.'

Elaine ignored him. The officer, with J. Dealey on his name tag, was between her and Jerohm, and he told Jerohm to shut up. They were riding up in the visitors' jail elevator, which was faster than the public elevator and stopped at the sixth floor only – the entrance to the jail.

'No, I mean it, 'cause hey, this is no shit. They got no warrant on me. I just got sprung. This is bullshit, man; just a pure hassle. I didn't do nothing

Dealey turned to Elaine, as though they were enjoying a stroll in the park: 'We pulled him over in a curfew zone, in a stolen car loaded with merchandise he'd looted from-'

'Hey, now, hey… that wasn't no stolen car, that-'

'Did I mention shut up , Jerohm?' Dealey gave a jerk on the handcuffs, almost lifting Jerohm off his feet.

'This is brutality! Po-lice brutality. You seein' it, sister. This is it, now. Hey, c'mon, this guy-'

'I'm not your sister,' Elaine told him, meeting his eye and staying with it. 'I am your worst nightmare.'

Art Drysdale, the chief assistant district attorney, was living his worst nightmare. It wasn't yet nine in the morning and he'd been up all night, getting downtown by five-forty. He refused to work even temporarily in Chris Locke's office – he didn't want any misinterpretation, he wasn't angling to become the new DA – and his own space wasn't even marginally close to big enough for the parade of humanity he'd been entertaining this morning, everybody wanting answers or consolation or decisions he wasn't empowered to make.

Normally Drysdale had a carefree style, often juggling baseballs behind his desk – he'd been a major-league player for several weeks in his youth – while he discussed office policy or negotiated plea bargains with defense attorneys. Today he wore a white shirt, his tie loosened, arms resting on his desk and hands folded in front of him, knuckles whitened. 'All right, send her in.'

Elaine came through the door and stood in front of him. 'I hope I didn't hear this right,' he began. 'You've got Jerohm Reese… the same Jerohm Reese we released two days ago without charging him with murder – that Jerohm Reese we've got back upstairs?'

'Yes, sir.'

Drysdale brought a hand to his forehead and rubbed. He squeezed his temples. 'On the same charges as everybody else we're letting go with citations?'

'A few more,' she said.

'A few more. Enough to make an arrest mandatory? From downstairs in the GODDAMN LOBBY! Excuse me, I don't mean to yell, but we can't have this. We don't need Jerohm Reese here right now.'

'I'm sorry-'

'I'm sure you are.' He shook his head. 'Elaine, why did you feel you had to do this?'

'I thought… I thought if word got out that we'd arrested Jerohm Reese again and let him go again-'

'I know, I know. But now we've got him in jail. And we're not keeping anybody else in jail for doing the same things he's done.'

'But we can't let him go now. We can't just give him a ticket and let him walk.'

'No, I don't think we can. Not now.' He sucked in a breath, let it out in a whoosh. 'Goddamn it.'

'I just felt I had to do something. I wasn't thinking clearly. This thing with Chris, Mr Locke…'

Drysdale held up his hand. He was sensitive to the realities of this situation. Elaine was the daughter of Loretta Wager. She was black. In the real world she couldn't be seriously reprimanded, much less suspended, for something like this, possibly not for anything. She was as bulletproof as Kevlar. And he had Jerohm Reese upstairs, which maybe he could somehow keep the media from discovering and exploiting. But meanwhile there was nothing of substance to charge him with, beyond, of course, the usual crimes that Boles was letting everybody else walk on.

'This thing has us all upset, Elaine. I don't know what I'm going to do and I don't know what's going to happen to this office. But our job is putting on trials, not facilitating arrests. We're supposed to think clearly before we take any action like this, you understand that?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I know you do.' Drysdale's hands were back together, the knuckles white again. He'd make some decision on what to do with Jerohm Reese. Legally, the DA had only two days to charge him, but Drysdale was getting an idea that with the Fourth of July weekend coming up he might be able to finagle putting off an arraignment until the following Tuesday, which might be long enough to avoid continuation of this disaster.

He brought himself back to Elaine. 'You're on the Arthur Wade case.' It wasn't a question. 'You're working with homicide on this, right? Closely?'

She wasn't, but she remembered talking with Lieutenant Glitsky at length about it just yesterday, so she wasn't strictly lying when she said, 'Yes, sir.'

'Just see that you do, all right. If you need any help, come to me, ask for it. You don't have to do this alone.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you.'

'Right. Don't mention it. And send in the next victim.'

He didn't smile when he said it.

Glitsky was in the police lot behind the Hall of Justice inspecting the last car Chris Locke had ever ridden in.

It was the same year, make and model of the car he had driven back to the Hall this morning, the same one he had taken Loretta home in the previous night, or, for that matter, the same as the one he had driven home earlier last night and sent a patrolman to retrieve and return to the city lot this morning.

The colors were different, that was all. The city had bought a fleet of twenty-seven Plymouths for the convenience of its employees and guests – plainclothes policemen, assistant district attorneys, the occasional visiting dignitary.

Inspector Marcel Lanier, putting in yeoman's hours building up his comp time, was giving Glitsky the grand tour of the crime scene. It was cold and foggy and some wind had come up. The two men wore heavy flight jackets, and Marcel kept his hands in his pockets. Glitsky, into feeling things, had the front-side passenger door open.

Halfway bent over, Glitsky squinted at the passenger's window. It had been rolled up when Locke had been shot and what was left of it was a cobweb of safety glass with a fist-sized hole in the middle of it.