John Lescroart - Guilt

But what did that mean? Nothing, he told himself. It was merely one of those late-night chimeras that tantalize or frighten, and then in the morning turn out to have been a shadow falling on an uneven surface, a wisp of white fabric blowing lonely in a faraway tree.

'Wes?'

Sam's quiet whisper from the bedroom. Worried, obviously caring. Was he all right? Did he need her?

Petting Bart a last time, he pushed himself up. The doubt, the ghost, the mirage – whatever it was – would be gone in the morning.

He was sure of it.

The next day, Glitsky was at Marine World with Nat and the three boys.

He still hadn't found a nanny, and had decided that what they all needed was some time together, a change of scene, a nice day outside, away from the city. So he'd picked them up at the friend's house where they were staying, and they'd made the drive across the Bay and north to Vallejo.

At the amusement park, the sun was out and although there was a steady breeze, it didn't have that Arctic intensity you got off the ocean out in the Avenues where they lived.

Now he was sitting high in the grandstands, watching the killer whale show. Isaac and Jacob had gone down to the seats by the water with their grandfather, all of them, including Nat, deciding that they really needed to get soaked. But O.J., ten years old, didn't want to do that and didn't want to leave his dad, either.

In fact, after the older boys had gone down, O.J. asked Abe if he minded if he sat in his lap. Which was where he was now.

The huge mammals entered the pool, but O.J. couldn't have cared less. 'Dad,' he said, 'can I ask you something?'

Ever since Flo had first gotten sick, O.J. had preceded nearly every remark with this question. Glitsky thought it was because he was such a sensitive little kid, so aware of the pressure everybody was under. He didn't want to add to it by asking any question that someone would have to answer. He didn't want to be a bother.

This sometimes translated to Glitsky as though his youngest son didn't want to exist, and that drove him crazy. But he kept his voice modulated and answered the way he always did.

'You can always ask me about anything, O.J. You don't have to ask permission to ask.'

O.J., as always, then said, 'But can I ask you something?'

Patience, Glitsky told himself. Patience. 'Yes, you can ask me something.'

'Okay. What if all the sudden, you know Merlin?'

'Merlin?'

'Yeah, Merlin, King Arthur's musician.'

'Magician. But yeah, okay, I know. Merlin.'

'Right. So what if Merlin came back to life and he decided all the unicorns were going to be down on earth from now on?'

O.J. had also been playing with variations on the coming-back-to-life idea for the past few months. What if Robin Hood came back to life and got disguised as one of the Power Rangers? What if George Washington really didn't die, but was just waiting to see if he could live to be 300 and then he could be President again? What if Bambi's mother…?

'Things don't come back to life,' Abe said, gently but as firmly as he could. 'Dead means you're gone forever. That's what dead is.'

'I know that, Dad, but Merlin was a musician and he could come back if he wanted to, and then he could decide the unicorns could live on the earth.'

He wanted to tell him there were no unicorns, either. The boy was ten years old, closing in on puberty, and he really ought to stop seeking comfort in these fantasies.

But somehow his energy failed him. He let out a long breath. 'Instead of where? Where do they live now?'

O.J. couldn't believe his father's ignorance. 'Well, now they live in the clouds, in Unicorn Land.'

'Okay.'

'And then they could come down and be here on the earth and we could ride them, and maybe even have one as a pet. What if that happened?'

Glitsky tightened his arms around his gangly son, came up with the answer he always wound up with. 'If that happened, O.J., that'd be really neat.'

Isaac was still very wet. He exceeded by several years the twelve-year-old limit for the playground, but dripping as he was, he didn't look it. And even though he was a cop, pledged to enforcing the laws, Abe wasn't going to call him on it.

He and Nat had left their food – French fries and corn dogs – on one of the picnic tables behind them, where the ravenous seagulls had spirited it away and scarfed it all down.

Now the two men stood at the fence that kept the adults in their place. All three of the boys were clustered together, up high in a corner of a climbing structure made of rigging rope. Hanging together.

The killer whales had dumped a couple of swimming pools worth of water into the lower galley. By now, Nat's hair was re-combed, but his clothes stuck to him. He was marching in place, his tennis shoes making squishing noises. 'This is a good place, Abraham, but I wish someone had told me about this getting splashed. They don't mean a little damp, let me tell you.'

'I didn't know.'

'But I noticed you didn't go down yourself, am I right?'

'O.J. didn't want to get so close to the water. That's why I didn't go down.'

'I wish I believed this completely. I don't want to think you sandbagged your old man.'

'I would never do that. You didn't raise that kind of boy.' A sideways glance.

'That's a good answer.' He pulled his shirt away from his body, did a little dance with his pants. 'And O.J., I happened to see, he was on your lap.'

Glitsky nodded. 'He's having a hard time. He's trying to figure it out.'

'And you are back to work?'

'I've got to work, Dad. It's what I do.' But he realized that his father needed more of an explanation. 'Look. The Hardys are great people, Frannie's taking better care of them than I can right now. And the boys are in school anyway most of the day. I'm there for them. I see them. I go over some nights. We go out on weekends. Like now, Dad, like right now. I've got a lot to get set up.'

'I understand this.'

'So?'

'So nothing.'

'But what?'

Nat shrugged. 'Just to think about, that's all.'

He knew what his father was getting at, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He should have taken some more days off, he supposed, gone over every single night to be with the kids, but when he'd gotten the call about Sheila Dooher, his priorities found themselves rearranged.

Or maybe it was just an opportunity to dwell on something other than the emptiness. His father had implied that, to some degree, he was running away, denying what he needed to confront, shunting off his responsibility to his children. And maybe there was an element of that. He had something to do, something that needed to be done, and it was consuming. The simple doing of it – regardless of the outcome – could save him, could pull him through this time.

He didn't know, but he had to try.

This was why on Sunday night, the boys were back at his friend's house and he was at his desk downtown on the 4th floor, reading the autopsy report on Sheila Dooher that had finally come in. He had done legwork all week long – interviewing neighbors and driving-range employees and Dooher's co-workers and anybody else he could think of. Going over the initial lab reports, studying the room-painting videotape, combing the Dooher house (again, with another warrant, while Dooher was downtown working) for fibers and hairs and fluids.

But without the autopsy he was whistling in the wind and he knew it, and there had been some bottleneck on paper coming out of the coroner's. Autopsies normally took almost six weeks to get typed, but he'd asked for a rush on this one.

He had the report in front of him now, and he scanned it once, trying to make sense of it, wondering if it might be the wrong one. For a different body.