John Lescroart - Guilt

Glitsky pointedly ignored Thieu. 'That's all right, Mrs Trang, just do your best.'

She came back to him, began talking again. Thieu picked it up: '… to settle it… before going to court. They were not going to go to court and he thought he would make a lot of money.'

'He was pretty certain of that?'

'Yes. He seemed very sure, very hopeful. But also worried.'

'What about?'

'That it wouldn't happen. That something would go wrong.' A pause. 'As it has.'

'Did he say what might go wrong? What he was worried about?'

'That this was a lot of money, and the Church might use… connections… in the court, perhaps, so that even though Victor was right, even if the law was on his side, they could stop him.'

'Did you think he meant violently?'

'No. Now, I don't know. Maybe so.'

'How much money was he talking about?'

'He didn't say exactly. Enough to pay off his loans. He thought he would move his office, get a secretary. He wanted to get me a new place.' She motioned around their cramped quarters. 'Buy me some new clothes.'

'Okay, then, how about the next night, when he called? Did he call or did you call him?'

'He called me. The attorney for the Archdiocese…'

'MarkDooher?'

'Yes, I think that was his name. He had called Victor and asked him to stay in the office to wait for a phone call, and they were going to offer more money that night.'

'Did he say when he'd gotten that first call, from Dooher?'

'I thought it was just then, just before he called me.'

Glitsky made a note on his yellow pad. There would be a phone record of the precise time.

Mrs Trang said a few more words, which Thieu related. 'It's why he stayed late.'

'Would he have called anyone else about this, to tell them, perhaps, about the possible settlement?'

'No. I wanted to call my sister and tell her and he told me to wait, that he was going to wait, too. Not to talk to anyone until it was done. He didn't want to…' Thieu frowned, trying to find the right word '… to bring it bad luck, to jinx it. He told me this.'

'But that doesn't mean the girlfriend or somebody else didn't just happen to drop by.' Thieu wanted to talk about it. Still and always.

Glitsky was driving the unmarked Plymouth back to Trang's office, trying to keep from jumping to conclusions, glad he didn't usually work with a partner. He was coming to believe that entirely too much credence was given to the round-table discussion. Sometimes – a radical idea in this bumptious age, he knew – but sometimes solitary contemplation did produce results.

'It had to be somebody he knew, right?' Thieu persisted. 'It wasn't a robbery – nothing was missing.'

'We don't know that. We don't know what was there to be missing.'

'I mean his wallet, personal effects…'

'It might have just been botched.' If Thieu wanted to play these games, Glitsky could at least make them instructive. 'Guy's in there and Trang comes back from dinner…'

'He didn't leave for dinner.' Paul had done his homework. 'The autopsy didn't find anything in his stomach.'

'So he came back for his keys or something. Or went to mail a letter. If he left, though, and came back, discovered the perp burglarizing the place, who killed him, then decided he'd better split…'

'That didn't happen,' Thieu said.

'No, I don't think so either. But it could have, which is my point. What I think is what you think – a strong male who knew him killed him.'

'Dooher?'

'Maybe, or maybe one of his clients. Maybe one of the people he was hassling for business.' Abe gave the other man a sidelong glance. 'That's what they pay us for, to find out.'

Trang's office didn't look much better in the daytime, and to Thieu it felt worse. The crime-scene tape was still across the door. Inside, the way it had been left by the Forensics and Homicide teams on Friday night created a sense of abandonment that, to Thieu, was overwhelming.

He noticed that none of whatever weak sunlight there had been outside made it into this cavern. Ever.

Glitsky had zipped up his flight jacket. His breath showed in the chill. He crossed to the one window – the black hole of the other night – and opened it into the brick of the building next door, about four inches away. He stuck his head out and looked up, down, sideways. 'If the perp came through here,' he said, 'he is one skinny dude.'

It was the first even remote touch of levity Thieu had heard from the Sergeant. Emboldened by it, he dared ask another question. 'What are we looking for?'

Glitsky had moved back to the desk, was sitting in the library chair. He motioned to four cardboard boxes lurking in the corner with manila file folders visible in them. 'Anything. Why don't you start by looking through those boxes?' Thieu shrugged – the well of Glitsky's humor was proving to be relatively shallow – and went to work.

The files weren't alphabetically arranged, and he'd gone through the first three of them – notes from law school! – when he heard a click and a hum behind him, and turned to see Glitsky at the computer, legs stretched out, arms crossed, scowling at the monitor. After a minute, the Sergeant sat forward and began clicking the mouse.

Thieu left his boxes, straightened up and came around behind him, resolving to ask no questions, though it wasn't his style not to ask. He liked people and believed that the truth emerged from a full and free discussion of ideas and theories. Also, it had been his experience at UCLA that asking professors what they wanted was how you found out what to give them. It wasn't any mystery, just simple communication. And then at the Academy it got drilled into them that you should just ask questions and senior officers would always be happy to help you.

He didn't think anybody had briefed the Inspector here on that part.

The monitor was scrolling the pages of a document that was evidently some kind of an organizer. Glitsky got to the day of Trang's death, a week ago yesterday now, and leaned forward. 'Look at this,' he said.

Thieu already was. There were four entries:

10:22 – called MD, told him need answer by COB today or filing tomorrow. $3.00 million.

1:40 – MD message. I called back. He was at lunch. WCB.

4:50 – MD callback. F. out till 6. Extension till midnight tonight okay.

7:25 – MD from F's. Settlement possible. Offer $$ still unresolved. Midnight firm.

Thieu couldn't stop himself. That last one, that's when he called his mother. Who's "F"?'

Glitsky was scrolling backward now, eyes on the screen. 'The Archbishop,' he said. 'Flaherty.'

As expected, it didn't appear that Victor Trang had had a lot of business. The screens reflected few clients, appointments or telephone numbers. At the screen for a couple of weeks earlier, Glitsky stopped on another screen: MD, $600KH! Declined.

'That's something,' Thieu said.

Glitsky nodded. 'Youbetcha.'

'He turned it down?'

'Looks like. I guess he thought he could get more.'

There was an answering machine with calls from Trang's girlfriend, Lily Martin, and Mrs Trang and Mark Dooher and Felicia Diep, all wondering if Victor were there, why he'd not called back, would he please call when he got the message.

They also found the folder on the lawsuit, including the amended complaint, pre-dated for Tuesday, the day after Trang's murder. There was a yellow legal pad with pages of notes that were mostly unintelligible to Glitsky, but on the first page Thieu had been able to read enough to learn that Trang had felt 'threatened' in his first visit to McCabe & Roth.

'Dooher?' Thieu asked. They were heading back downtown where Glitsky was to talk to Lily Martin, who'd volunteered to come to the Hall of Justice for an interview. 'I'd just bring him in and grill him.'