John Lescroart - Guilt

So his spartan office was crowded with a gaggle of lawyers. His full-time staff corporate counsel, Gabe Stockman, was punching something into his laptop. Dooher and he had been in touch over much of the weekend, and now he and his attorney, a man unknown to Flaherty named Wes Farrell, had arrived. They were pouring themselves some coffee from the small table near the window that overlooked the schoolyard.

'What I'd like to know,' Flaherty said, 'is why they seem to have settled on you, Mark.'

Wes Farrell, the new guy, stopped stirring his coffee. 'Mark owned a bayonet once. He talked to Trang. They don't have anybody else. That's what they have. Beyond that, I've got a theory if you'd like to hear it.'

'At this point, I'd like to hear anything that makes sense.'

'Glitsky. Sergeant Glitsky. I understand you've met him, too. That he attacked you, as well.'

'That might be a little strong,' Flaherty said. 'He wasn't very sociable, let's just say that.'

'Well, regardless, Your Excellency, I did a little checking, a couple of people I know at the Hall of Justice. He is having some serious personal problems. His wife is dying. He screwed up his last major investigation – which happened to be another one of my clients. At the same time, he's bucking for promotion and he needs a high-profile success in a bad way. And guess who oversees police promotions? The Chief, Dan Rigby, who's a pawn of the Mayor, who is, in turn, just a little bit left-wing.'

Flaherty interrupted. 'You're telling me this is political.'

Now Stockman looked up, putting in his own two cents. 'Everything's political.'

Emboldened by the support, Farrell was warming up. 'So here's how it breaks. The Mayor's support is ninety percent blacks, women's groups and gays, am I right? Hell, he's got two gay supervisors in his pocket. The Catholic Church, represented by my client here, Mark Dooher, is anti-abortion, anti-women priests, anti-gay.'

'That's not entirely accurate,' Flaherty said. He really didn't like the anti-this and anti-that rhetoric. If Farrell was going to be representing Dooher, he'd have to try to get him to re-tool his vocabulary. The Church was pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage. It was not a negative institution.

But Farrell waved off his objection and kept rolling. 'So Glitsky is willing to go the extra mile to bring Mark to grief. Even if the evidence is lame, and it's less than that, he puts himself on the side of the people who can promote him, who can watch out for his ass. Pardon the language.'

The room went silent.

'Could that really be it?' Flaherty asked. 'That's very hard to believe. I mean, this is the police department of a major city.'

Farrell sipped his coffee. 'It's one man.'

Dooher held up a hand. His voice was cool water. 'Glitsky's not the issue here, Wes. There is absolutely no evidence tying me to Victor. I was out driving golf balls. I forgot to tell Glitsky that I had stopped on Geneva to get gas on the way out to the range. I foolishly paid with cash. The attendant who took my money had his nose buried in some Asian newspaper and consequently didn't remember me or my car. Or anyone else, I'd wager. So Glitsky thinks I lied, covered up. That's not it. Even if Glitsky's out to get me, somebody out there has got to believe I'm innocent. Maybe the DA himself, Chris Locke.'

This, Flaherty realized, was why he valued Dooher so highly. He saw things clearly. Even here at the center of this maelstrom, he was formulating a firm, effective strategy. It was ridiculous to think that Mark Dooher would ever have to resort to violence of any kind. He was too smart. He could destroy without a touch. 'Let me try that,' Flaherty said. 'I'll call Locke, explain the situation. See if he can help clear things up.'

Chris Locke was the city's first black District Attorney and a consummate political animal, and he was sitting alone in his office thinking about Archbishop James Flaherty, with whom he had just spoken.

Locke knew that Flaherty influenced a lot of votes in San Francisco through parish homilies, position papers, public appearances, pastoral letters. He also knew that conservatives, comprising perhaps thirty percent of the city's voters, played at best only a peripheral role in any election, but that it would be foolish to ignore them completely. Locke, though a prosecutor, was on the Mayor's liberal team (as any elected official in San Francisco had to be), but his private support of the Archbishop might in some future election tip the scales in his favor. Locke thought that cooperating with a powerful conservative like Flaherty, behind the scenes, was worth the risk.

But something in Locke knew it wasn't just the votes. It was more visceral, more immediate, and he was addicted to it – having something on people who held authority and power. And Flaherty had taken the unusual step of asking Locke for a favor. That was worth looking into.

Though he directed all prosecutions in the city, Locke was rarely current on the progress of investigations being conducted at any given time – they were police business. The DA came later.

But, of course, he had his sources. He could find out.

Art Drysdale sat behind his desk juggling baseballs. Now in his late fifties, he'd played about two weeks of major league ball for the Giants before he'd gone to law school, and the wall behind him still sported some framed and yellowing highlights from college ball and the minors.

For the past dozen years, Drysdale had run the day-to-day work of the DA's office, and Locke depended on him for nearly all administrative decisions. The DA had come down to Drysdale's smaller office, knocked on the door, and let himself in, closing the door behind him.

Drysdale never stopped juggling.

'How do you do that?'

'What? Oh, juggling?'

'No, I wasn't talking about juggling. What makes you think I was talking about juggling?'

The balls came down – plop, plop, plop – in one of Drysdale's hands, and he placed them on his desk blotter. 'It's a gift,' he said. 'What's up?'

'What do you know about Mark Dooher?'

The Chief Assistant DA knew just about everything there was to date about Mark Dooher. Drysdale believed in a smooth pipeline from the police department, through the DA's office, and on to the courts. He stayed in touch with Chief Rigby, with the Calendar Judge, with his Assistant DAs, such as Amanda Jenkins. He generally knew about things before they officially happened, if not sooner. If asked, he would undoubtedly say that his prescience, too, was a gift.

So he ran the Dooher story down for his boss. It was a tasty mixture: Flaherty's fears, Dooher's mysterious turnoff onto Geneva near the time of the murder, the bayonet question, the interviews with Trang's women, Glitsky's recent over-aggressive stand on Levon Copes, the stress he was under because of his wife's illness.

'But not much evidence yet?'

Drysdale shook his head. 'Not that I've heard. They searched all weekend.'

'Flaherty says this Dooher is a pillar of the community.'

'Community pillars have been known to kill people.'

'We know this, Art. But His Excellency thinks that maybe Glitsky's harassing Dooher for some reason.'

'The famous "some reason"

'The point is, Flaherty is really unhappy. Really unhappy. He's also worried that Glitsky will arrest Dooher for murdering Trang anyway, even if he's light on evidence.'

Drysdale was shaking his head no. 'Glitsky's a stone pro, Chris. He's not going to arrest him without a warrant. If there's no evidence, there's no evidence.'

'And there is none?'

'Nowhere near enough. So far.'

'So I can tell the Archbishop he needn't worry?'

'If things don't change. But,' Drysdale held up a warning finger, 'they often do.'