John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'Evidently our little news interviews got played back-to-back and it came across that I was saying you were wrong, which isn't what I meant.' He paused. 'I meant what we had talked about earlier this morning – that we just didn't know yet.'

'That's all right,' she said. 'Everything I've done today seems to have been wrong anyway. Isn't that right, Art?'

Shrugging, Drysdale said maybe so, and then added enigmatically, 'Not that you don't have a reason.'

'I don't care about reasons too much anymore. They're all just excuses for doing what you shouldn't have done if you'd thought about it a little longer, which I didn't, or been a little stronger. I'm sorry.'

Glitsky bobbed his head. 'If you say so.'

Drysdale took the ball. 'We were talking about… about extenuating circumstances. About why people do things, have a bad day. Why Kevin Shea did what he did, all the environmental crap in his background

'Everybody's got environmental crap.'

Elaine was almost pleading. 'That's what I'm saying, Abe. I got both of you guys in trouble today and I don't care about any excuses – I just plain screwed up.'

'I thought this was my apology,' Glitsky said, and it loosened things up a bit. 'And I do have to go, but listen…' He handed her the folders he'd been holding, motioning down to them. 'This is exactly the kind of thing I was telling you about earlier, that's going to kill you at trial if you're not ready for it. I don't even know what it means at this point, but Strout's forensic report shows that Wade died of asphyxiation – that's his ruling.'

'Okay. We knew that. That's what happens when you hang, when you get pulled up.' Elaine had the folder open, and Drysdale got up and was looking with some intensity at the second picture.

'Yeah, that's what Strout said.'

Drysdale straightened up. 'So what are you getting at, Abe?'

'I'm getting at the story you guys have developed for Kevin Shea, that these pictures seem to show so clearly. That he repeatedly pulled down on the body'

They both got it at the same time. A moment's silence. '… which would have broken his neck.'

Glitsky nodded. 'Right. Not strangled him, and strangulation is what Strout says he died of. You can bet Shea's attorney is going to mention that when it goes to court and you'd better have an answer for him. That's all I'm saying. As both of you know, niggling facts can, you should pardon the phrase, hang you.'

Drysdale had the second picture out, studying it more closely. 'And what's this?'

Elaine was ready with her answer. She launched into her first explanation, that Shea had pulled out his knife to stab Arthur Wade, who had been trying to grab it from him in self-defense.

Glitsky and Drysdale gave it a courteous listen, which led her to go on to her knife-in-Wade's-own-pocket theory, where Arthur had pulled it out in an effort to try to cut himself down. This time impatience took over. Glitsky didn't want to, but felt he had no choice. He had to speak up.

'You're saying that Arthur Wade is being chased by a crazed mob, they get a rope around his neck, they're pulling him up, and he goes hey, I remember now, I've got a Swiss Army knife in my pocket, I'll just cut myself down. I don't think so. I don't think a jury will think so. Plus I just talked to a witness not an hour ago – a sweet elderly woman from Lithuania with no reason to lie about it – who says it looked to her like Kevin Shea was lifting Wade up , not pulling him down. That he had gotten out his knife and handed it to Wade, trying to get the guy to cut himself down, he just couldn't keep at it long enough.'

'That's not possible,' Elaine said.

'It's inconvenient if it is.' Drysdale was in the business of putting on successful trials, and strategically this was a case-breaker. That the argument could even be made…

'If I were you,' Glitsky said to Elaine, 'I'd get that photographer down here again and find out for sure what order he took those pictures in, if he can remember.'

Drysdale swore quietly.

Glitsky looked at his watch again. 'I've really got to go.'

'There are probably twenty witnesses out there who could testify to Shea pulling down…' Elaine was back in a challenge-mode, her eyes hard on him, not giving up on anything.

'But they haven't come forward and we haven't found them. And if they were in the mob, they're accessories. Which is why we haven't found them.' Glitsky held up his hands, avoiding further confrontation. 'Look, folks, I'm on your side, but you better know your cards, that's all I'm saying.' One last look at his watch. 'Besides good-bye.'

'Alan Reston isn't going to like this.' Drysdale was back at the desk next to Elaine's. 'Maybe I ought to get back and make the man's acquaintance. You say you know him?'

'I met him through Mom. I don't think you can tell him anything about this.'

'It's trial strategy. That's my job. I've got to bring it up.'

'He won't listen to you.'

'So you do know him?'

She shrugged. 'I've seen things like this enough. If he's got this job already, my mom is somewhere in the picture, and Kevin Shea is her program, so it's going to be Alan's.'

'Not if it can't hold up.'

'Who says it can't hold up? Any argument you make to Alan is going to come out like a rationalization, not a trial strategy. I still don't think there's any doubt Shea did it, but Abe's right – it's going to be a little harder to prove at trial.'

'Which is what I should tell Reston, which is what I'm going to-'

'Art, please. Let me. When we know a little more. Maybe my mom…'

She let it hang, and Drysdale subsided back into his chair. 'We present evidence to a court, Elaine, you know that. That's what we do.'

'I know that, Art.'

'Whether or not the shit heads get off…'

'I know.'

'If you don't think that's Reston's primary commitment – and say what you will about Chris Locke, that was his – then somebody ought to know about it real soon. I don't care if he's black or in your mother's hip pocket. Pardon my lack of circumlocution.'

She waved it off. 'I don't know what his agenda is, Art. I don't.'

Drysdale got his long frame up out of his chair. 'You know, about the only thing I'm more tired of than the word "agenda" is the fact that so many people seem to have one. How we gonna all work together, much less live together, with this shit going on?'

'I don't-'

'I don't either, Elaine. I just pray to God you don't look at me and see a white man first, 'cause I'm not any more a white male first than you're a black lady first. What I am first is just a plain old human person.' He stood at the door. 'Now, I hope you're feeling better than you were, and I know you've got some phone calls to make, and I've got to go do what I do.'

'Art…'

'It's all right. I'll let you take it up with Mr Reston. Just remember, this is your case. It's not your mother's. That's all.'

Elaine placed a call to the photographer Paul Westberg and left a message on his machine that she would like to see him again at his earliest convenience.

She sat and stared at the second picture, then suddenly realized what had not registered when she had heard it. And found herself grappling with the question of how Lieutenant Glitsky knew her mother well enough for her to ask him to pass along the message to Elaine that she was worried about her.

'We were together in college.'

'What do you mean, together?'

Loretta Wager let out a sigh over the telephone. Elaine could picture her in the small unmarked office at City Hall, her shoes off, her feet on the ratty old desk. 'I think you can figure that one out, honey. He was… my boyfriend.'

'Abe Glitsky was your boyfriend? Were you serious about each?'