John Lescroart - Guilt

He opened the car door into what was, by San Francisco standards, blazing heat. It was not yet noon and already in the mid-eighties. Thieu was wearing an ivory linen suit and decided he could leave his raincoat on the passenger seat where he'd thrown it. It was misting heavily in San Francisco, forty miles away. The temperature was in the fifties.

A couple of guys in old fatigues nudged each other as he passed them on the way to the imposing doors, but he smiled and said hello and was past them and through the doors before they had moved two steps.

The place had that old institutional-building feel and smell. A wide entryway with linoleum floors made every sound inside echo. To his left, a waist-high counter separated the government workers from the veterans, who were for the most part queued up waiting for their numbers to be called. Across from the counter, a shiny, light-green wall sported wood-framed photographs of all the Presidents since Eisenhower, as well as a decent assortment of Admirals and Generals (including another one of Eisenhower in uniform). At the end of the entryway, a large paned window let in a lot of light.

Thieu stood a minute, getting his bearings, reading from the Building Directory in its glass bulletin board. Gradually, he became aware that the noise had ceased behind him.

Deciding to ignore it, he found the room number for his appointment and moved out directly.

'Hey!'

Somebody was calling after him, but he came to the big window, hung a left, and took the stairs two at a time.

They had been lucky, locating Chas Brown here at the south peninsula VA detox. Neither Thieu nor Glitsky had really known where Brown might lead them, but Glitsky was directing this investigation and he'd sent Thieu down to conduct the interview.

Last Thursday and Friday, he'd run around trying to get a handle on either a Chas Brown or a Michael Lindley, the two other survivors of Mark Dooher's platoon in Vietnam. Their names had been provided, during the Trang investigation, by Dooher himself.

Now, Glitsky smelled blood. He told Thieu that they simply had to find out everything they could about Dooher, from whatever source. Glitsky was working St Francis Wood, talking to the neighbors, working the pawnshops in the adjoining neighborhoods, still looking against hope for the bayonet, the clothes Dooher was wearing, something.

And Thieu, with his background, started out to find yet another missing person.

Chas Brown wasn't a total burn-out case. True, in his faded jeans and flannel shirt, with his long, unwashed graying hair and beard, he didn't look like anyone who worked for a living, blue or white collar. But his eyes were clear, his handshake firm.

He showed up at his counsellor's office on time, promptly at noon, exhibiting no signs of prejudice toward Thieu. After a couple of minutes, Thieu offered to take him to lunch. There was a terrific pizza place not far away named Frankie, Johnny & Luigi Too.

Brown looked like he wouldn't turn food down – he weighed about a hundred fifty pounds. He was nearly six feet tall.

Thieu also thought he'd get franker answers if he was away from his counsellor.

So now they were sitting at a table outside under the green and white umbrellas, sharing a large pizza, of which Thieu wouldn't be able to eat more than one enormous piece. Fully loaded with pepperoni, sausage, olives, mushrooms, peppers, double cheese and anchovies, one slice weighed in at nearly a pound.

Judging from how he started it, Thieu guessed Chas would finish the entire large pitcher of Budweiser he'd ordered. He was already on his third glass. Thieu was having iced tea.

The two men weren't yet friends, but the beer wasn't exactly making Chas taciturn. The pocket tape recorder was rolling and they'd already covered Thieu's background, verifying that he was too young to have fought in Vietnam. His father hadn't been in uniform, either, though he'd been anti-Communist all the way. A capitalist in the silk trade in Saigon, the elder Mr Thieu had to leave when the city was abandoned by the U.S. So Thieu and Chas were on the same side.

'That's when my name changed.' Brown had a lot of nervous energy. Tics and scratches, eyes moving all the time. But he was talking clearly, if a little rushed. Maybe the beer would eventually mellow him out. 'Before I got in country I was Charles, Charlie Brown. When I was a kid, I would have done anything not to be named Charlie Brown, so of course it stuck like glue. Then I get to Nam and Dooher says there's no Charlie in his platoon, I'm Chas. So I'm Chas. I thought it was a good omen at the time. I thought Dooher was a good guy. Shows you what I knew.'

Thieu didn't want to stop him, and remained silent as Brown downed another deep slug of beer, the eyes going blank a moment. Another drink, more emptiness. Blink, the lights went back on, led to the abrupt segue. 'Tried to be my friend, y'know, after.'

'After what?'

The eyes came back, then darted away. 'You know.'

'I don't know.'

'About the dope, all that. I thought that was what you came down here for.'

In fact, Thieu's main avenue of inquiry was going to be about the ease of smuggling bayonets and rifles out of the country when your hitch was up. Instead, a bonus, Chas Brown was heading in a different direction.

'What dope?' Suddenly, Brown's expression closed up. Was Thieu trying to sandbag him in some way? The open camaraderie – the ruse of drinking together, having lunch – faded. The change in Brown was palpable. Suddenly Thieu was the heat and that wouldn't help his investigation, so he moved into damage control mode. 'I'm not interested in dope, Chas. I'm interested in a murder.'

'Well, yeah.' Meaningless, unforthcoming.

Thieu pressed it. 'Look, Chas, it's none of my business what drugs you're taking, or took. I want you to understand that. Here,' he pointed at the tape recorder on the table between them, 'I'm saying it on this tape. It's on the record. This has nothing to do with you except insofar as you know something about Mark Dooher. Did he take drugs, was that it?'

Brown moved out of the blazing sun, into the shadow of the table's umbrella. He wiped his high forehead and took a long pull of beer. 'Everybody took drugs,' he said. 'Everybody.' He scratched at his neck.

'Dooher bought our drugs. He was the connection.'

'Mark Dooher was selling marijuana?'

Brown laughed. 'Marijuana? Look at me, you think I'm strung out on marijuana? You think thirty years down the line, my brain's fried on some doob?' He shook his head, amazed at Thieu's world view. 'We're talking shit here, china white, skag.' Thieu digested this. 'Horse, man. Heroin.'

'You're saying Mark Dooher sold you heroin?'

A continual nod. 'That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Not just me. The whole platoon. Got his own stash free and sold to his guys. Did us a favor, lowest price in Nam.'

Thieu sat back, rocked by this information.

But Brown was going on unbidden. 'And you know, if you look at it the way it really was, Dooher's the one who let it all happen. It was his job to keep us straight. Instead, he kept us wired.'

Thieu leaned forward. 'Let what happen?'

Brown wasn't good with direct questions. They seemed to spook him. He leaned back, found himself out of the umbrella's shadow, his face in the sun, and that moved him forward again. 'You don't know about this, why did you want to see me?'

'I wanted to see if the guys in your platoon – Dooher specifically -smuggled out their weapons. If you knew if Dooher had.'

'Why?'

Though it had nothing to do with Sheila Dooher, which was his case, Thieu ran with what he had. 'We think Dooher used a bayonet to kill somebody, that's why.'

Brown's face cracked – a broken smile. Thieu had just verified something for him. 'Yeah,' he said.