John Lescroart - Guilt

Dooher was standing in his doorway, talking to yet another beautiful woman. Glitsky figured they grew on trees at this altitude. 'Sergeant Glitsky?'

She was smiling at him, holding out her hand, and he realized he knew her – from the rape clinic, and then that visit to his office. What was she doing here?

'Christina Carrera.' Helping him out.

'Right. Levon Copes,' he said. 'And I'm still looking.'

This seemed to register positively. 'I'm glad.'

The man with her – Glitsky presumed it was Dooher – stepped forward. Protectively? 'You two know each other?'

Christina quickly explained while Glitsky checked out the man in his thousand-dollar pale gray Italian suit. The only wrong note was the hair – no gray, which meant the guy was vain and had a bottle of Grecian Formula hidden in the back of his sock drawer. Glitsky figured if he looked like Mr Dooher, he'd be vain, too. But he'd have to go some before he decided to dye his hair.

The receptionist had disappeared. Christina was asking if Glitsky was the only Homicide Sergeant in town. 'Sometimes it feels like it.'

'I don't know how you do it,' Christina said. 'Up until a couple of months ago, I never knew anybody who'd been murdered, and now I've met two -Tania Willows and Victor Trang. It's unsettling.'

'You knew Trang?'

'I met him here in Mr Dooher's office once. Still…'

'It is easier if you don't know them first.' Glitsky tried to mitigate the cop humor of what he'd just said by smiling, but his scar got in the way. 'I know what you mean, though.'

'It's terrible,' Dooher said. 'Christina here and I were just talking about Victor Trang, the waste of it.'

'You were in Vietnam?'

Christina had gone away – Glitsky had no questions for her. He and Dooher went into the big corner office and they had more or less finished with the routine questions. Glitsky was still seated on the sofa, his tape recorder spinning silently on the coffee table. The receptionist had brought him a cup of tea, and it was excellent. With a slice of lemon yet. He would take the moment of peace until the cup was drained. They were hard enough to come by.

Dooher was volunteering information. It probably had no connection with Victor Trang, but Glitsky's experience was that a murder investigation led where it took you, and the most innocuous comment or detail could be the hinge upon which it all eventually turned. He sipped his tea and leaned back in the soft leather, waiting for whatever was coming next.

The strange red sky had gone mother-of-pearl and Dooher had loosened his tie. He was drinking something amber without ice, pacing around, leaning on the edge of his desk, crossing to the easy chair, to the floating windows. Nervous, Glitsky thought. Which wasn't unusual. He knew that people -even attorneys – got jittery when they talked to Homicide cops. It would be more suspicious if he wasn't.

'That's why I was surprised I found myself liking him. Trang, I mean.' Dooher sighed. 'I don't like to admit it, but it's one of the prejudices I've carried around all these years. Maybe it's genetic. My dad had the same thing with the Japs – the Japanese. He always called them Japs. Me, now, some of my best friends…'

Glitsky kept him on it. 'So how'd you like it, Nam?'

'You go?'

He shook his head. 'Bad knees. Football.'

'Yeah, well, maybe you've heard – it sucked.'

Glitsky had come upon that rumor. 'You see action?'

'Oh yeah. We got ambushed and most of my squad got killed.' He swigged his drink. 'I still don't know why I survived and the other guys… and then the warm welcome at home, that was special.' He looked over at Glitsky. 'I was bitter for a while. Blamed it on the Vietnamese. Ruined my life – all that.'

'Did they?'

Dooher took in his plush surroundings. 'No, that was all youth, I suppose. Excuses. Look around, my life isn't ruined. I've been lucky.'

Suddenly he snapped his fingers, went around his desk and opened a drawer; he pulled something out and handed it to Glitsky. 'These were the guys.'

It was a framed color photograph of a bunch of soldiers, armed and dangerous, goofing and scowling. Dooher was in the front row, on the far right, with his captain's bars, his weapon propped next to him. 'I had this up in that space in the bookshelves here till just before Trang came up here the first time. Then I realized it would be offensive to him. I guess I can put it back up now.'

Glitsky handed it back. 'They're all dead?'

'I don't know all. Three of us came home, I know that. But I haven't seen either of the other two in maybe fifteen years.'

The tea had cooled. Dooher went back around the desk and placed the frame in its former space, in full view now. 'Anyway, they trained me pretty well,' he was saying, 'to hate 'em. Charlie, I mean.'

'So what happened with Trang?'

'Like anything else. You finally meet one personally, get to know 'em a little, and you realize they're people first. I just put off meeting any of them for a long time. I wanted to keep hating them, you see? So the war would make some kind of sense. Dumb. It's so long ago now.'

'So who still hated him?'

'Trang? I don't know.'

'I understand he was suing you.'

Dooher had settled in the easy chair. He leaned forward, elbows on knees. 'Well, that's technically accurate. He'd filed a lawsuit where some priest took money from a woman. He was amending the suit, that was all. Trying to get more. Hey, it's his job. Anyway, I represent the Archdiocese. The whole thing hadn't gone very far. That's just our business. Litigation. Personally, we were on good terms.'

Glitsky didn't have any reason to doubt Dooher. He did believe that the killer was probably a tall, strong male, and though that described Dooher, he didn't have a patent on the build. 'I'm wondering if he mentioned anything to you about anybody else – clients, colleagues…'

The attorney gave it a long moment. 'Honestly, I can't think of anybody. I'll put my mind to it if you'd like.'

'I'd appreciate that.' Standing, Glitsky turned off his recorder and slipped it into his pocket. He handed Dooher his card. 'If something comes to mind, that's me, day or night.'

Dooher accompanied him to the door, opened it for him. The cotton clouds out the window had begun to glow with the lights coming on in the streets below. 'Do you have any leads at all, Sergeant, on who might have done this?'

'No, not yet. It's still early, though. Something may come up.'

'Well, good luck.' They shook hands, and Glitsky turned to leave as the door closed quietly behind him.

Wes Farrell and Sam had been going out for a couple of weeks now and hadn't yet moved into the 'serious' phase, as they called it, of what they were also calling their quote relationship unquote. There was no plan as yet to escalate. Things were nicely physical. They were getting along, moving back and forth between their places, taking care of their respective dogs, although Quayle and Bart had yet to meet.

Wes was flirting with what felt like his first happy and carefree moment in about half a decade. It was the Saturday evening after a noon wake-up, followed by love-making and the Planetarium in Golden Gate Park. They'd sat in the plush reclining seats holding hands as the night sky came up indoors – Farrell learned more than he ever thought he'd need to know about the planet Neptune. Although you never knew – facts had a way of coming in handy.

They ended up sharing a short drink at the Little Shamrock, the bar where they had met.

It didn't hurt that the winter cold had lifted. Not that it was balmy, but anything above forty-five degrees seemed a gentle gift. The wind and fog were both gone, and here at dusk Wes was comfortable half reclining in the chaise outside, wearing blue jeans and a sweater on Sam's tiny fenced-in deck, surrounded by potted greenery, in the cupola created by three large redwood trees. She'd handed him a perfect martini – gin had always been, to Wes, the harbinger of summer – and told him she'd be out in a minute to join him, as soon as she'd put the game hens on to roast.