John Lescroart - Guilt

'About what?'

'About what? About all this is what!'

'This isn't anything, Paul. This is squat. We are nowhere yet on this.' He didn't really want to bite off Thieu's head. After all, what the man was saying could be correct. But there was, as yet, no evidence that it had been Dooher, not even enough to insult him by asking him pointed questions. And Glitsky was still smarting from his fiasco with the undoubtedly guilty Levon Copes, where he had just known what had happened. He wasn't going to make the same mistake here. But he was really being an unnecessary hardass. He didn't want to burn the kid out before he even got lit.

Although he knew he wouldn't require any translator with Lily Martin, Glitsky decided on the spur of the moment to invite Thieu to remain for the interview with her. Besides, Glitsky knew there was a chance he might need him again. 'Let's talk to the girlfriend first, Paul. See what she's got to say.'

'One million six hundred thousand dollars was the settlement figure. Which was… would have been… five hundred and thirty-three thousand for Victor.'

Lily Martin was absolutely certain.

She was conservatively and, Glitsky thought, inexpensively well dressed, and she spoke English perfectly, having been in this country since she was four. Her father, Ed Martin, had fought in Vietnam, married her mother over there and brought them all back here. Now she was twenty-five. Working, as she did, as a junior accountant doing her internship with a Big 8 firm, the money angle was no mystery to her.

'Victor's mother said he told her he wasn't going to call anybody to tell them,' Abe said gently. 'He didn't want to jinx the deal.'

'He didn't call me -I called him. Like a minute after he got the call.' She broke a brittle smile, which cracked almost immediately. 'This was going to be the start of our life, of everything. Of course I called him.'

'That night? Last Monday?'

'Yes.'

'And what did he say?'

'He said that Mr Dooher had just called from the Archbishop's office, and he wanted… before he presented a final number to the Archbishop… he wanted to run it by Victor to see if they were going to be in the ballpark.'

'And that number was…?'

'What I just told you, Sergeant, a million six.'

'I just want to get this straight, ma'am. Dooher told him they were going to be talking in that range?'

That's right.'

'And if they – Dooher and Flaherty – if they didn't come through?'

'Then Victor was going to file, but he didn't think… no.' She folded her arms, too quickly, over her chest. Glitsky recognized the classic body language – she'd decided to clam up about something.

'No, what?'

'Nothing. I'm sorry. Go ahead.'

The interrogation room was small and windowless. There was no art on the walls. The furnishings consisted of three folding chairs around a pitted wooden table. This setting could play on the nerves of even the most cooperative witness. The air got stale. People froze, imagined things, got weirded out in any number of ways.

Suddenly Glitsky leaned back, straightened, shook his shoulders, getting loose. He lifted the corners of his mouth, scratched his face. Finally, there was the trick he did with the eyes, letting them go out of focus. He fancied this made people think there was something soft in there. He turned his head to include Paul Thieu. 'How about if we all take a break, get a cup of tea or something?'

'So then, after you talked this night…?'

'He was going to come to my place. He asked me not to call again – Dooher might be there. He'd call when he knew, or when it was over.'

'And when he didn't?'

'I just thought it must have gone real late. He just went home. I waited all the next day at work, but no call. I tried his office, his home… even Mr Dooher's office.'

'And what did he say?'

'He didn't talk to me.' Glitsky and Thieu exchanged glances. Lou the Greek's seemed unusually cavernous, nearly empty here in the mid-afternoon. It provided a better environment for talking than the tiny interrogation room at the Hall. 'So eventually I went by the office and knocked, but there wasn't any answer. Of course.' By now she was sniffling occasionally into a napkin. 'And then I called the police.'

Glitsky kept it casual. 'Why wouldn't Dooher talk to you?'

She shook her head. 'I don't think it's so much he wouldn 't, he just didn't. His secretary took my message, which was that I was a friend of Victor Trang's and did he have any idea where Victor was? Had he seen him? Then she called back and said he was concerned, too. Maybe we should both call the police. So that's where I left it.'

Glitsky was tearing his own napkin into tiny bits and piling them neatly on the table. 'Ms Martin. Upstairs a while ago there was something you didn't want to talk about, about the settlement with Dooher…'

She cast her eyes to the ceiling and sighed deeply. 'Okay,' she said.

That night, at the Glitsky home, it was almost the way it used to be. His sons were watching television, perhaps even doing some homework to the mindless background, in the bedroom shared by the two younger boys.

Flo was feeling better today. It went up and down. But tonight it was way up. She was dressed in tight bluejeans, gold sandals and no socks, a maroon blouse. Diamond stud earrings and a brush of makeup, a light touch of lipstick. A maroon scarf artfully curled around her head to hide the hair loss.

The nurse was off at night. And Flo had sent Glitsky's dad back to his home. She told him he needed some time for himself. He should take in a movie, go solve one of the mysteries of the Talmud.

Nat must be sick of taking care of things here and Flo was able to cope today. Who knew how long it was going to last, but for now – maybe a couple of days, maybe more – she craved some semblance of normalcy for them all.

And somehow – she was a genius – she'd done it. Created that feel. Made dinner of stuffed flank steak (everybody's favorite), home fries with onions and peppers, broccoli and cheese sauce, vanilla ice cream over cherry pie. 'You know, I just never seem to worry about cholesterol anymore.'

Jokes yet.

Now she was rinsing dishes – about a freightcar full – piling them carefully in the dishwasher. Glitsky sat on the counter next to her, telling her about his day, just like old times, about what Lily Martin had suddenly gone quiet about, which was that her boyfriend never really thought he would win the lawsuit if he filed it.

'You mean he was basically trying to extort money from the Church?'

'Lily didn't want to put it so bluntly, but essentially, yeah.'

'That is scuzzy.'

Glitsky shrugged. 'He's a lawyer. Was a lawyer.'

'You think that's why he got killed?'

'Just because he was a lawyer? I don't know, Flo, that's a tough theory. There's lot of lawyers out there and many of them are alive.'

She gave him the eye. 'Because of the deal, Abraham.'

He temporized. 'I don't know yet. I think it might be possible.'

Another look. 'Sergeant goes out on limb. Film at eleven.'

He smiled at her, his real smile. My problem is this: so what? This guy Dooher may have had all this against Victor Trang, but you don't go out and kill somebody who's suing your client. And this killing was personal.'

'How about if you thought you might lose your client if you lost?'

'But they weren't even playing yet. Nobody was going to lose that big. They were settling.'

'Maybe the client wasn't happy about the settlement terms. They'd go with this one because they had to, it had gone too far, whatever – but afterwards they fire the lawyer. Or he thinks they might.'

'So he kills the guy?' Abe shook his head. 'I just don't see it. It doesn't make any sense. Besides, this lawyer we're talking about, Dooher, he's managing partner of a big firm downtown. He's been at this all of his life. He's not going to kill a professional adversary over a case. Besides, they lose a case, they lose a client, it's not the end of the world. His firm's probably got a hundred clients.'