John Lescroart - Guilt

'I'm listening.'

'Big metropolitan area like Oakland, there's maybe ten towers around the city – cells, hence the name. Clever, huh? And they work like a combination amplifier/receiver. If you're in your car, you move from one cell to the next and there's a record of it.'

'Okay.'

'But, and this is the cool part, within each cell there are also pie-shaped cones that pick up the signals. So this guy, the kidnapper, he's talking on the phone, calling again, yack, yack, yack. They figure out exactly which block he's driving around, and they nail him.'

Glitsky was nodding. Amanda was right. This, if true, was cool. 'But I don't see how it helps me here,' he said.

'I don't either, Abe. But Thomasino said he only needed a little more to get to probable cause, right? So maybe your perp was ten miles away when he said he was at the driving range, that kind of thing. Prove he lied. Hell, you've got the warrant for the phone records already. Might as well use it all up.'

Sheila told him what she'd done.

'Are you kidding me?! That son of a bitch! He came in here, lied to you, invaded our privacy? I'm calling Farrell, calling somebody. This is pure harassment. I'll have the bastard's badge!'

He threw his leaded crystal bourbon glass with all his might and it smashed into the bottom pane of one of the French doors, shattering glass all over the kitchen. 'That son of a bitch!'

Sheila was in a deep couch in her living room, crying. She was of a class and station that had grown up believing in authority. Sergeant Glitsky had represented that to her. And he had betrayed her, tricked her and used her to insult her husband. She had put her husband in jeopardy. She couldn't stop sobbing.

Mark came over and handed her a large glass of white wine and she held it with both hands. He sat down next to her. 'It's all right, Sheila. How could you know?'

She shook her head, mumbling through her tears, over and over: 'I should have known. I should have just called you.'

He put the palm of his hand under her glass and helped her raise it to her lips. She had to admit that it helped. She took another mouthful, the good cool wine.

She'd been getting back to a glass or two regularly lately and it hadn't caused her any ill-effects. The doctors nowadays were always so paranoid about alcohol. She should have started out taking their dire warnings with a grain of salt. This wasn't hurting her at all. In fact, it was helping.

She got her breathing back under control. 'The whole story didn't make much sense to me, Mark, but I just thought-'

'It's all right,' he repeated. 'There's no harm done. I didn't even have any damn bayonet.'

'I know. But I didn't remember.'

'I lost the damn thing on a camping trip five ten years ago, maybe longer. You don't remember?'

'But why would he think, the Sergeant…?'

Her husband shook his head. 'I have no idea. I knew Trang. Maybe I'm the most convenient warm body. I think that's how these guys work.' He reached out, laid a hand on her shoulder.

'So what happens now?' she asked timidly.

Mark sat back into the couch. 'Now I think he'll probably come back with a warrant and tear the house apart, and maybe my car, and the office. I've got the M-16, after all, and he's seen it, and some Judge will probably believe that means something and give him the search warrant. After all, I did steal it from the Army, demonstrating my long-standing history of criminal moral character.'

'You were twenty-three years old!' she cried. 'You haven't broken a law in almost twenty-five years.'

'Well, I did cut the tag off a mattress once.'

'Don't be funny. Please, not now.' She was shaking her head. 'God, this is unbelievable. This can't be happening to us.'

Farrell kicked himself for being so stupid, but at the moment he hadn't seen any alternative. He had to drive all the way home in the lower Sunset District to leave Bart anyway, and he decided to make his calls to hospitals from there. Ten minutes later, he found himself in his car again, driving the three miles back, nearly an hour at this time on a Friday night, to within 500 yards of where he's started – St Mary's Hospital.

Wes hated almost everything about hospitals – the smells, the light, the sound which somehow always seemed to be simultaneously muted and amplified. As the elevator opened on the fourth floor, he let out a sigh of relief. This wasn't the Intensive Care Unit. He realized he'd been afraid to ask.

He stopped at the door to the room. The bed wasn't visible – the room separators had been pulled halfway around it – but Larry and Sally, Sam's brother and his wife, were sitting next to one another, talking quietly.

'Hey, comrades,' he said. 'She never calls, she never writes. Is this the party?' Then, seeing Sam, her head wrapped in gauze, one arm above the blanket and one strapped to her body, he came forward, up beside her bed. 'Hi.'

He found his hand clutched by her free one. There were sickly black and yellow wells under both of her eyes, a bandage over the bridge of her nose. He saw her make the effort, to try to smile to greet him, but it cost her. Her eyes moistened, and he leaned over to her, gently brought his cheek next to hers, left it there. 'God,' he said. 'Thank God.'

'She's going to be okay.' He heard Larry behind him. 'Couple more days and she's out of here.'

He straightened up, still holding her hand, looking at her. 'I'll ask these guys,' he said.

Larry and Sally told him. Sam had, actually, been very lucky, suffering only a concussion, a broken nose, a broken collarbone, multiple bruises and abrasions. She'd been buried by brick and mortar, but the beams in the ceiling had prevented the house from collapsing on her. They'd pulled her out within three hours.

'And how's Quayle? Is he okay?'

Her grip tightened. She shook her head and a tear broke and rolled across her cheek.

Glitsky thought the day might never end, but the trail was getting hot, and this was where you didn't quit.

After he left Amanda, he ran up the outside stairs to Homicide, where he called the cellphone company. Because of the earthquake, a supervisor, Hal Frisque, was actually on duty, working late, pulling a ton of overtime. He would love to help.

So five minutes after faxing a copy of his warrant to Frisque, Glitsky was again on the phone at his desk, a map of San Francisco open in front of him.

'We're talking the seven-forty call, is that right?' Frisque asked.

That's what I've got here,' Glitsky said.

'Okay.' A pause. 'That's zone SF-43. You got a map there? Looks like he was on the 280 Freeway. Had to be, because a minute later, he got picked up in SF-42, so he was going west.'

Glitsky was lost in possibilities, but none of them helped him very much. True, Trang had been killed near the 280 Freeway, south of it, on Geneva Avenue, but to get to the San Francisco Golf Club and Driving Range, or to Dooher's home for that matter, his car could have taken the same route.

But Frisque was continuing. 'Okay, now he moves to DC-3.'

'Further west?'

A short moment, then: 'No, mostly south. DC, Daly City picked him up. Check your map. I'd say it looks like he left the freeway at Geneva and went south. No way to tell how far, because the call ends. Sergeant Glitsky?'

'I'm here.'

Dooher left the freeway and turned south on Geneva at 7:41, knowing at that time that Trang was sitting in his office alone.

Got him!

Archbishop Flaherty had canceled his other appointments for this Monday morning. This was more important. The entire situation was getting out of hand, as a matter of fact. Over the weekend, the police had torn apart Mark Dooher 's world, finding nothing that tied him to Victor Trang in the process. It was unconscionable, irresponsible and appalling.