John Lescroart - Guilt

'Does this mean you're on retainer?'

Farrell nodded. 'Yeah. Of course. What do you think?'

It was quarter past noon on Friday afternoon. Glitsky was walking the hallway on the 4th floor, heading back to Homicide. He'd spent the morning interviewing witnesses who lived in apartments on either side of his seventy-year-old victim, who'd owned a handgun for protection – the man whose last thought had been that his gun was going to help him if a burglar ever broke in.

Nope.

The last couple of days had been well over the line into surreal. At home, the earthquake damage had been serious but, miraculously, all cosmetic. They'd straightened up the armoire and rehung the clothes. In the boys' room, Jake had been crying out because it was dark and he'd been tipped out of his bed. Isaac and O.J. had remained so quiet because they'd slept through it all. (As he had, he reminded himself. If Flo hadn't yelled out for him…)

Then, all day yesterday, his wife wouldn't stay still. She had been up and around, throwing away the broken dishes, shards of pottery and glass, straightening, vacuuming, rearranging, even washing the windows. Nesting, nesting.

The day of the quake he'd stayed home. (A good day for it, as it turned out. There was not one homicide reported in San Francisco.) Today, day two, he couldn't stand seeing Flo working so hard, singing to herself, reborn. So much energy and sense of purpose – it was going to come crashing down. He couldn't let himself get his hopes up.

This was pure adrenaline – hers.

He wanted no part of it, and she didn't want him moping around, bring her down. They'd almost had a fight about it – would have, if he hadn't left.

So he'd gone to his morning interviews. Now, back at the Hall, his plan was to call around, line up some more witnesses on his other cases, call the phone company and check on the progress of Mark Dooher's records.

There was a package on his desk and he ripped it open. The phone records on Dooher weren't supposed to be delivered for at least another day, maybe two or three, but now here he was holding them in his hands.

Wonders did never cease.

Dooher's home was easy. He'd made no phone calls at all on the Monday that Trang had been killed. His office was a little more interesting. He'd called Trang twice – 1:40 and 4:50 – precisely the times noted in the dead man's computer.

Which meant that if Trang had been making up a story to impress his mother and girlfriend, major elements of it were close to the truth. His pulse quickening – the thrill of the chase indeed – Glitsky turned to the last little packet of sheets. There, as promised by Trang, was the third call, from Dooher's cellphone, at 7:25.

And even though Glitsky thought the official policy on miscreants in San Francisco was, 'Three strikes and you're misunderstood,' this time he was getting willing to call Dooher out. He sat back in his chair, feet up on his desk, wondering what, if anything, it meant.

Trang's computer notes might have been cryptic, but they also told a consistent story – Mark Dooher was working on the settlement, not acting as an adviser on a personal injury case as he'd claimed. Glitsky could imagine no reason why Trang would lie to himself in his electronic notebook.

And here was another tantalizing entry -MD from F. 's. The 7:25 call that Glitsky had interpreted to mean that Dooher had called from Flaherty's office. But, in fact, he'd made it from his car. What did that mean? Was it possible that F wasn't Flaherty?

Another thought – did Trang even have any personal injury cases in his files? This, Glitsky thought, was a job for the ever-eager Paul Thieu. And the note? MD message. There might be something the lab could salvage from the tape that had been in Trang's answering machine, even if it had been recorded over. He leaned forward, pulled his yellow pad toward him, and started writing.

He longed to catch Dooher in his lie. In any lie. There had to be one. In a kind of trance, he was lost in his notes. Then staring into the space in front of him, he picked up the telephone and punched some numbers.

'Law Offices.'

'Hello. This is Sergeant Glitsky, San Francisco Homicide. I'd like to talk to Mr Dooher's secretary, please. And I'm sorry, I don't remember her name.'

'Janey.'

'That's it. Thanks.'

'Mr Dooher's office.'

'Janey?'

'Yes.'

Another introduction, a little riff of bureaucratese, then he was saying: 'Janey, I need to confirm a couple of things your boss told me. This is just routine.'

It turned out Janey did remember the call from Trang on the day he had died. He'd called while Dooher was at lunch, left an urgent message that Dooher get back to him.

'This was about the settlement deadline, isn't that right?'

Janey paused, perhaps wondering if she was saying too much. Glitsky didn't want to lose her. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'that was the impression I had.' Let her think he'd gotten it from Dooher.

It worked. Janey continued: 'Mr Trang reminded me to tell Mr Dooher that he needed to hear from him before five, no later, or that he'd have to go ahead and file the amended complaint the next day.'

So Trang's call to Dooher had been about the settlement. Janey had said as much. And that made Dooher a liar.

And if that were true, it dramatically increased the odds that, at the very least, Dooher knew more than he was letting on, and at the most, that he was a killer.

Glitsky was bouncing it off Frank Batiste. The Lieutenant was sitting forward in his chair in his office, arms on his desk, pencil in hand, shaking his head. 'I believe you, although I'd be a little happier if you had any idea why.'

'Wasn't it you who's told us a zillion times that we're not in the motive business, we're in the evidence business?'

'Yep, that was me, and I was right.'

'So?'

'So what? Where's your evidence then?' Batiste continued drumming his pencil. 'Because we agree you don't have a motive.'

But Glitsky didn't want to let the motive go. In his experience, people didn't often get killed – not by someone they knew – for no reason whatever. 'Look, the Archdiocese is Dooher's biggest client. If the case gets filed, he gets fired.'

'Why would that happen?'

'Because he hasn't done his job, which is keep the lawsuit hush hush.'

'And why would that be?'

Glitsky rolled his eyes. 'Because, Frank, it's politically embarrassing to the Archbishop.'

'So to keep it from getting filed, Dooher kills Trang? That's a reach, Abe.'

'I know. But it's all I can think of.'

Batiste straightened up, bopped his pencil a couple more times, stretched out the crick in his neck. 'Are you sure you're not just on Dooher because you haven't got any other suspects?'

'Maybe there aren't any other suspects because he did it, Frank.'

'Maybe that's it.' Batiste didn't want to fight about it. He took a beat. 'Well, that was instructive and a hell of a lot of fun. We should do it again sometime. This was where we started, isn't it? No motive? So let's leave motive. You came in here wanting to talk evidence. Evidence is good. What do you got?'

But there wasn't much. Glitsky had gotten his search warrant for Dooher's phone records by trotting out the old probable cause argument to Judge Arenson, who knew him fairly well and was aware that he didn't abuse the privilege.

Now the question was whether the information in the phone records – the three calls that coincided with Trang's notes – moved things along the probable-cause trail. Glitsky knew that the Judge wasn't about to give him carte blanche on the more invasive search warrants he was going to want to request – Dooher's house, office, car, and so on – unless there was something real, whether or not it was physical evidence, to back up Glitsky's suspicions.