John Lescroart - Guilt

Trang had evidently blown all of his appearances money on his door. Once inside, the office reverted to the form of the rest of the building and neighborhood. The long desk was an eight-foot slab of white-washed plywood – in fact, Glitsky realized, it was another door, perhaps the original. At an L to the desk, a table held a computer and printer, the phone and answering machine.

The walls were a fly-specked shiny beige which might once have been white, and they were absolutely bare – not a calendar, not a picture, not even a post-it. Behind the desk, a dark window, without blinds or curtains, was a black hole. There was an off-green couch along the side wall, a wooden library chair with a pillow seat, a folding chair set up facing the desk.

Slowly taking it in as he moved, Glitsky walked around the folding chair. Had it been set up for an appointment? Was it always where it was now?

He stopped. The chair behind the desk had been knocked over – he could see it now up against the back wall.

The body rested along the length of the desk in an attitude of repose, almost as though – no, Glitsky realized, exactly as though – it had been placed there. Carefully laid down.

Trang had been wearing an off-white linen suit, and now it was striped with red, in neat rows. There was a large bloodstain in the center of the chest, but it was roughly circular – it hadn't run down the front of his shirt. Therefore – strangely – it hadn't bled much until Trang was already on the floor.

Glitsky stood looking for a moment, letting it all sink in. He would wait until the coroner arrived, until he'd read the forensic reports, but his impressions were coalescing into a certainty. He knew what the red stripes were. It chilled him.

The killer had used a knife, then had held Trang up in some death embrace, holding him up, maybe for as long as a minute, leaving the knife in, perhaps twisting it toward the heart. Then, with his victim good and completely dead, he'd laid him down carefully on the floor, finally pulled out the knife, then calmly wiped the blade off on Trang's suit – two or three swipes at first glance.

Glitsky had been a cop for twenty-two years, in Homicide for the last seven of them. From the evidence of what he was seeing here, he thought he might be looking at the most cold-blooded, up-close and personal murder of his career.

'Mark, are you all right?'

Christina stood in the doorway, one arm propped against the frame. Her hair was down. She wore a navy blazer over a white silk blouse, two buttons open, just this side of demure. She wouldn't start her summer job until late June, but she'd been coming in regularly for the past couple of weeks – ever since Dooher had counselled her to be supportive yet independent – to help Joe get his workload organized for the move south.

She'd also gotten into the habit of stopping by Dooher's office after business hours, just before she went home. Daylight Savings Time had begun two weeks ago, and the office was above the fog layer, bathed in an amber light from the sunset. 'Is something wrong?'

'No. Nothing's wrong.'

'Something, I think.' Moving into the room, she stopped behind the brocaded easy chair, hands resting on it.

He took in a deep breath, held it a moment, exhaled heavily. 'The Trang thing, I guess. Can't get it out of my mind.'

He raised a hand to his eye and rubbed. Weary and distressed. An apologetic half-smile at Christina, a shake of his head. 'What's the sense in it, huh? Here's a guy who's just getting started, prime of his life, perfect health… I don't know. You wonder. It rocks you.'

'The big plan?'

'Yeah, I guess. The big plan.'

'Maybe there isn't one.'

'It's all random, you mean?'

'If it isn't, what's free will?'

He paused a minute, nodding as though in agreement. 'That's a good lawyer question. I'll have to get back to you on it.'

Her lips curved up slightly and she came around the chair, sat on the edge of it, pulling at her skirt, meeting his eyes, then looking down. 'You do hide behind that, you know? That lawyer pose. The glib answer.'

'I am a lawyer, Christina. If I'm glib, it's a line of defense. First we argue, then we deflect the direction words might be going, and on those rare occasions when it doesn't look like we're going to win, we… obfuscate. But I'm not hiding from you. I hope you believe that.'

'I do. I know that.'

He shook his head again. 'I feel bad about Trang, but what's the point of belaboring it? Nothing's going to bring him back. It's the simple fact of it… of life being so fragile. I don't feel so glib about that. Not at my age.'

'Your age again. How old are you, anyway? Sixty? Sixty-five? You couldn't be seventy.' She was teasing him, trying to cheer him up.

'Eighty-three next month,' he said. 'But I work out.' He pushed around some items on his desk. 'Actually, since you're as young as you feel, I couldn't be a day over eighty-one.' He shook his head. 'Sometimes the world gets to me, Christina. I shouldn't burden you with it.' Shifting around behind the desk, he flashed his self-deprecating grin. 'You're just lucky, I suppose, getting to listen to my moaning.'

'I do feel lucky.'

'Well, I'm glad. I do, too.'

'You do?'

He nodded. 'Why do you think the managing partner takes fifteen minutes at the end of the day just to visit, risking not only the office gossip but the wrath of people who think they need my time?'

'I don't know. Part of me thought you were just watching out for me, after talking me into coming here, that I wasn't screwing up.'

'I don't believe that.'

'Well, a small part, but some…'

'None. Not the smallest bit. I don't take care of people professionally – you either do it here or you're out.'

'No. You wouldn't…'

'I don't recommend you try me. But I have no worries about you. Not one.'

She sat back in the chair. 'Then I don't know why…?'

'Yes, you do, Christina.' He leveled his eyes at her across his desk. The moment called for a matter-of-fact, intimate tone, and he got it. 'You know, life goes along, and people get so they don't talk to people – I mean you talk, but it's mostly surface, but with you and me, maybe we got lucky that first morning, Ash Wednesday, you remember?'

'Of course.'

'What I mean to say is this, it's not common – in fact, it's rare. And valuable. I value it immensely. You ought to know that. I'd hate to die suddenly like Trang did, and you not know. This isn't business. You and me isn't business, okay?'

'Okay.'

'And another thing, while we're on it – I'm happily married. My wife is a great partner and a wonderful person and not a half-bad cook. I'm not going to accept any gossip about you and me that this office is likely to put out, and I hope you don't either.'

She was smiling now, with him. 'I won't. I don't.'

'Good. Now, how are things with your boyfriend?'

Abe Glitsky, in a pair of khaki slacks and a flight jacket, was walking down one of the muted hallways toward Dooher's office, accompanied by the night receptionist, an exceptionally attractive black woman of about twenty-five. She was explaining that Dooher's secretary had gone home – was Glitsky sure he had an appointment for this time, 6:30? Normally, the receptionist was explaining, if she'd known that, she would have stayed.

'I made it with Mr Dooher personally,' he said, non-committal. 'Maybe he didn't mention it to her.'

Glitsky was struck by the color of the light. The doors to several west-facing offices were open and the sun was going down over the cloud banks, spraying the hallway with crimson.

In almost every office he saw a young person hunched over a desk, oblivious to the sunset, to everything but what they were reading or writing. Fun job.