John Lescroart - A Certain Justice

'You ever read Chekhov?' At her blank expression he said 'Old Chekhov says you don't introduce a gun in the first act of a play unless you're going to use it in the third.'

'All right?'

"The FBI is here with marksmen. Sharpshooters. Believe it, they did not bring them for a dress rehearsal.'

'You can't think they're planning to kill Kevin Shea?'

'That's exactly what I think. While everybody has the perception he's still guilty as hell. That's why Alan Reston isn't going to offer any protection. He's setting up a scenario that he figures is going to protect you, Loretta. Maybe Elaine, too, but mostly you, I think.'

'Me?' The enormity of it apparently settling on her, she half-collapsed backward, molding to the chair. 'Because I made Shea the center of it?'

'That's right.'

'Oh Lord. I do have to call Alan.'

Unsteadily, she got up and walked to her desk, to the phone, pushed the faceplate. As she was waiting Glitsky reminded her not to mention his name, he'd been ordered off the case.

No one picked it up. 'He's not there. I'll try his home.' She pulled her own yellow pad around, flipped some pages and punched more numbers, leaving a message on the service that as soon as he got in, whatever time it was, Alan should call Loretta Wager. It was urgent. She left three numbers – one here at the office, two at her home.

'He'll call,' she said. 'I'll tell him.'

She came back to Abe and put her arms around him again. 'Thank you for talking to me.' Then, pushing away, 'You go see your friend. As soon as I hear from Alan, I'll call you.'

The way Farrell had left it with Hardy was, 'Yeah, you can tell your friend Glitsky to call me.' Damned if Wes was going to call the lieutenant. He didn't want to say he'd call Glitsky, anyway, because he had no idea for sure when – or even if – Kevin Shea was going to call him again. And he couldn't call Shea even if he had something specific to tell him, which he didn't.

Just cool the heels until something broke.

So he'd gone home, waited, killed time watching the news, waited some more. Story of his life the past few days, waiting. Except this time with two pints of Guinness inside him. He dozed, woke up, looked at his watch.

Was Glitsky going to call him or what?

Finally, he again put a leash on Bart and the two of them almost ran out of his apartment. He didn't want to hear the phone ringing again four steps after he'd locked his deadbolt as he made his escape.

They turned north this time, along Junipero Serra, maybe make it all the way to the shopping district on ocean. There were places there where he'd eaten at outside tables with Bart.

It was a typical July evening in San Francisco, cool and breezy. He had changed from his shorts and Pendleton into a gray sweatsuit, incongruously carrying with him the super-wide 'lawyer's briefcase' (now containing only two pens and a yellow legal pad) that he hadn't pulled from his closet in over a year. Waking from his lethargy, beginning to plan his moves, he whistled tunelessly. Bart, his leash in Farrell's other hand, stopped periodically for territory, enjoying the romp.

Actually, except for the disturbing lack of connection with the police, things didn't appear to be going too badly. If what Dismas Hardy had said was true about Glitsky not being the one to have sent Stoner with his warrant, there still might be a chance that they could negotiate some terms that would protect Kevin and at the same time get him into custody.

In fact, Farrell was already into the next step – the trial. He found he was actually looking forward to it. This was a case he could win! And, unlike the one with his ex-friend Mark Dooher, this time he would be on the side of justice – a concept that until only a day ago he had consigned to the trash heap of ancient history. The thought – that he might play some real role in defending an innocent man – galvanized him. Once he got the case moving into the courts, in fact, he was starting to feel that he could maybe get the charges dismissed before it even came to trial.

Turning onto Ocean, his brain had finally kicked in. The whistling had stopped. Abruptly, he ceased to walk and hooked Bart's leash around the top of one of the wrought-iron fence posts that bounded a manicured landscape of bonsai and sedgegrass beside a gingerbread house. He sat on one of the large square stone steps and opened his briefcase, oblivious to the weather or the scenery.

What was it that had gotten to him? Oh yes… the knife wounds. He had to remember when he talked to Glitsky (when? when? – maybe he would break down and make the call) to ask the lieutenant to do a search for people with knife wounds. (Of course, Farrell had no inkling of Colin Devlin or Mullen or McKay.) This was the kind of detail – since it hadn't been released to the public – that a judge might decide constituted a lack of probative evidence to convict Kevin right at the git-go. Oh shit, except that Kevin had mentioned it on his tape. He scratched out what he had written.

But that was just the first significant detail that had occurred to him – he thought of his other arguments to Glitsky at Lou the Greek's. If he could get this client off with an eleven-eighteen motion – a directed verdict of acquittal – at trial, now wouldn't that be sweet?

He made more notes – the lawyer back in his element. There were a million things he could do for Kevin… call Glitsky as a witness – a cop as a defense witness. He loved it. The theater of it should be persuasive to a jury. He had to get a doctor to look at Kevin, and soon. Make some determination on the cracked ribs, if that's what they were. The lacerations on the face.

Shit again. He'd forgotten to take Polaroids of Kevin, and the scratches were healing. Oh, but the videotape would show them. He hoped. He wasn't sure he remembered. He had to start training himself again. Get sharper. Trials were war and you didn't get into one if you weren't prepared to win or die trying.

Other things? What? He was chewing on the back end of his pen, some ink leaking out and staining his lower lip. He had to think about the jury – what the hell was he going to do about the racial makeup of the jury? That was going to be thorny, a crap shoot as always. Still, he was getting so he believed he could find twelve people who wouldn't be racially biased, even in a case this potentially explosive.

How many black friends did Kevin have? Okay, maybe it was a cliché, but it also happened to be a fact. He knew there were at least a couple – they'd all been out drinking together. Good witnesses. Kevin would know the names.

But what he was going to need more than anything was a couple of other suspects – hell, not just suspects - he reminded himself. The guys who goddamn did it.

He tore back another page from his legal pad, scribbling like a madman. Maybe he was mad. Here's a long-haired fifty-year-old pot-bellied man in a sweatsuit, a smudge of black ink emanating from his mouth, mumbling incoherent words. His old fat dog lay curled at his feet – a dog who, truth be told, farted more often than he really should – due to the rich, canned, all-meat (and occasional beer) diet that his owner felt was the proper nutrition for a dog. He hadn't wanted the goddamn animal in the first place, but since he had him, he wasn't going to have the guy live on kibble and meal, not a real man's dog like Bart Dog Farrell. No siree.

The streetlights came up – most of them functioned properly on Ocean Street. As it sometimes did, the wind died at sunset. Wes Farrell looked up, surprised not so much at where he was as at where he'd been.

Caught up in it. Alive.

Marcel Lanier had been snagged by Carl Griffin to go with him and look again at the Dolores Park area, so Ridley Banks, who had been teaming with Marcel the last few days, was on his own.