John Lescroart - The Second Chair

Glitsky picked up the receiver, then pulled a pad over and wrote, furiously taking notes. "How many times?" he said. "What's the name? Anybody see him? Enough for a composite? Do they video the visitors down there?" Glitsky's mouth went tight. "Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. Keep checking."

He hung up, raised his voice. "Everybody listen up," and the other noises in the room stopped. "That was Darrel Bracco down at Corcoran. Lucas has got a son, Ray Welding, visited him in prison forty times in the last three years. No address, no listing. Bracco's requested the phone calls from the pay phone at his father's block and they're going to fax it up direct. Sarah," he turned to Evans, "you pick three people. I want every four one five, four oh eight, five one one, six five oh"- all the telephone area codes for the Bay Area-"every one reversed for names and addresses. This might be the guy."

"This guy, Welding, the dad." Brandt, wanting to contribute, couldn't stop himself and spoke to Glitsky. "If he won an appeal, he must have had a lawyer. The lawyer would know the son, wouldn't he? Where he lives?"

"He might," Glitsky said. "But he won't talk to us. We're the cops, remember, the bad guys."

"But if the son's the Executioner?"

Glitsky didn't answer because someone else told him to pick up the phone. This time he listened without writing or saying much, and by the time he put the phone down, the room had hushed. His head hung, chin to chest. He slowly fisted the table in a black fury.

Everyone waited until he raised his head. "The last local juror," he said. "Wendy Takahashi, maiden name Shui. The one that just moved last month." Which was why they hadn't been able to locate her sooner.

"She's already dead?" someone asked.

"Before we got there," Glitsky said. "Maybe just before. Belou's been standing outside her place since about two, protecting a dead woman." Glitsky's eyes, opaque with fatigue and anger, were glazed over.

Brandt wandered out to the reception room, stopped next to a uniformed officer. "What did he mean, the last local juror?"

The man, studying a computer printout, answered like a zombie. "There were six locals. Mooney, Reed- that's Cary- Montrose, Wong, Tollman, and now Shui/Takahashi. She was the last one."

The mention of Mooney as the first Executioner victim did not escape Brandt's notice. "What about the other six?" he asked.

"Four moved away, two died. We're trying to find the four. We figure the other two- the dead ones- are out of immediate danger."

Wu got back to the Sutter Street office and, after accepting congratulations from the small group gathered in Hardy's office, excused herself to go and call Brandt back at the YGC. He wasn't in and she left a message that she wanted to see him, with her work and home phone numbers. Maybe, she said, they could even have dinner later tonight. Start over and take things more slowly. In the flush of confidence she was feeling after Johnson's decision on Andrew, she allowed herself to believe that sometimes the right thing could happen in this world.

But Brandt wasn't at his office. She'd have to wait a bit longer.

Her in basket was filled to overflowing with work- mail that she'd neglected, returned materials from word processing and her secretary. On the top was the most recent draft of the notice rule memo she was writing for Farrell- billable work- and she lifted it up from the pile, kicked back from her desk, put her feet up and began to read it over.

Ten minutes later she was back in her working hunch, red pen in hand, scratching out and rewriting, when somebody knocked at her door. "Come in."

"You're working," Hardy said.

"That's what you pay me for. What's up?"

"I'm going down to the Hall, see if I can find Glitsky and get a word with him. Maybe get a commitment on some action with the Mooney scene."

"You want me to come with you?"

"Actually, I was going to suggest that you give yourself a break. As managing partner, I wanted you to know that I've declared today a clear win for the good guys. And they're not so common you want to ignore them, ever. David Freeman, lesson six. So it's your sacred duty to take the evening off and savor the victory."

"David Freeman never took time off."

"Not true. Every time he won, he burned the city down."

Wu glanced down at the draft on her desk, let out a sigh. "I don't consider this over yet, sir. Not till next Wednesday. If then."

"It's over," Hardy said. "Jackman hears that the Salarcos never heard a shot, my guess is that even without scuffed slugs from Mooney's, he'll never go forward. Andrew's home tonight, Wu. You've got to call that a win."

"All right, but it wasn't a win for me."

"How do you figure that?"

"You're the one who found everything that made the difference. I just made problems we shouldn't have had at the outset. Then made them worse as we went along."

Hardy stood a minute in the doorway, then took a step in and closed the door behind him. "Look, Wu" he said, "this was your first major case. So you weren't perfect. Nobody is. The point is, do you think you learned anything?"

Gradually, she softened. Nodded her head in acknowledgment.

"Okay, then. Your client's free, your team just took the flag, your boss is telling you to take the rest of the day off, and you're splitting hairs about how we didn't really win and it wasn't really you and how it could have been better? Don't do that. It could always be better, but you ought to recognize when it's good enough, don't you think?"

She sighed again, glanced at her in box, finally looked up and gave him a chagrined smile. "All right."

"You can go back to punishing yourself tomorrow. I won't stop you. But tonight, give yourself a break and get out of here."

Hardy was right, she thought. You had to take these moments when you could.

It was a bit after five, suddenly warm and still now after all the spring wind, with an almost buttery softness to the air and the light. She parked just off Chestnut and decided to stroll along the avenue, letting her senses dictate where she'd stop, what she'd buy for a private celebration dinner at home. She'd open all the windows to let in some of the outside, then sit alone at her table with her view of the bridge and some great bread and selections of the awesome take-out Marina food and fresh flowers. After, she'd curl up in her chair and read or put on some music or both, and Jason would call or he wouldn't, but either way there would be tomorrow and if it was meant to be, it would be.

It took her most of an hour, dawdling along, stopping in at half a dozen shops, chatting with the merchants and even some of the other customers. She bought daffodils and some fresh Asiago cheese bread, marinated artichoke hearts, a spinach salad, some pot-stickers, an early pear.

The staircase up to her apartment was suffused with still-bright sunlight as she walked up. When she got to the fourth-floor landing outside her door, she stopped and took another moment to look down over the neighborhood, then the view beyond- the dark green cypresses in the Presidio, a hundred pleasure boats on the bay.

What a gorgeous place!

Suddenly, for perhaps the first time in her adult life, she realized that she felt blessed and even lucky.

She put down the bag of food and flowers. Taking her keys from her purse, she inserted the house key into the door, picked up her groceries again and walked inside. Closing the door behind her, she threw the deadbolt and set the chain lock.

Behind her, a male voice said, "Turn around slowly and move away from the door."

The after-work crowd at the Balboa Cafe wasn't quite as thick as the after-dinner mob, but Jason Brandt still felt fortunate to get a seat at the bar. He laid a twenty-dollar bill down and ordered a beer.