John Lescroart - Guilt

She had been working for six years for the same couple – the references were glowing. The couple were having their third child, and the woman had decided that she was going to take an extended leave from her job in advertising and stay home with her new baby and the other two, so they wouldn't need a nanny anymore. But it did mean that Rita could not start for Glitsky until after the baby was born. It was due any day.

He thought that for Rita Schultz it would be worth the wait.

The light had faded long ago and Christina was sitting alone in her office at McCabe & Roth. The room was small, stark and utilitarian, with a desk, a computer terminal, a bookshelf, a gun-metal legal file. With her door open, she could look out across the open reception area and catch a glimpse of the Oakland Bay Bridge, but she had no windows of her own. The walls in her office had been bare when she'd moved in, but she'd tacked up a couple of posters to lessen the claustrophobic feel. On her desk she had a picture of her parents smiling at her from the pool deck in Ojai.

She heard a noise somewhere on the floor and glanced up from the brief she was writing. Seeing her parents in the picture, smiling and carefree in the bright sunlight, she felt a pang and looked at her watch.

9:35.

What the hell was she doing with her life?

She stretched and stood, thinking she'd go see what other lunatic was burning the oil the way she was. At her door, she paused – it was Mark's office, the light on now. He hadn't been back into work yet. She crossed the reception area.

The sense of disappointment when it wasn't Mark brought her up short.

She hadn't really been consciously aware that she was waiting to see him, wanting to see him again. She'd been biding her time until he could face coming back into work, and then, thinking it must be him in his office this late at night, her heart had quickened.

But it wasn't him. Another man was standing by the wraparound windows, looking out at the mezmerizing view. She knocked on the open door. 'Wes?'

Farrell turned, smiled weakly. She couldn't help but notice how drawn and tired he seemed.' C 'est moi. I thought everybody would have gone home by now.'

She took a step into the room. 'Can I help you?'

'I don't think so.' He held up a key by way of explanation. 'Mark asked if I'd stop by on my way home and pick up his in-box. He must be thinking about coming back to work.' Wes moved over to Dooher's desk, picked up his briefcase and opened it. 'What are you still doing here?'

Christina shrugged. 'Brownie points, I guess. I wanted to finish my brief by the morning. How is Mark doing?'

Farrell raised his eyes. 'He's lying pretty low. I haven't seen him since the funeral. We've done some phone.' He finished stowing Dooher's papers in his briefcase, snapped shut the lid. 'He'll be all right, Christina. He's pretty tough.'

'I don't know if tough helps at a time like this.'

'Well,' he smiled ruefully, 'it doesn't hurt.' Lifting the briefcase, he came around the desk, over next to Christina. He gestured her out, turned off the lights in Dooher's office, closed the door and locked it.

'Wes, are you worried?'

'About what?'

'Mark. The police. Sam said-'

He turned to her and his shoulders sagged. 'I don't want to talk about Sam. And I don't know what's going on with the police, to tell you the truth. I don't think Mark does either. So far they've left him alone. Maybe that's a good sign.'

'You don't sound very confident.'

'I don't think I am.'

'But if he wasn't there…'

'I know. But if you're predisposed to see something, you'd be amazed how often you'll see it. I think the police got stuck on the Trang murder and suddenly Mark went from being an upstanding businessman to potential suspect. And once you're a potential suspect, well, you know this. It's a lot easier to accuse somebody a second time.'

'But not if he wasn't even there!'

'Maybe. But all they've got to do is have somebody at the driving range say they couldn't swear he stayed there all night, and then they walk around the neighborhood asking everybody if they saw Mark Dooher or somebody who looked like him, or his car, or a car that looked like his car. And somebody will have seen something, or thought they did, and that's all they'll need.

'Even Sam… no. I've got to get going.'

He started toward the elevator.

'What about Sam? Wes!'

He made it another couple of steps before the spring gave out and he stopped.

'What happened with Sam?'

He turned around. 'Actually, Sam is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.'

After he hired Rita and she left, Glitsky was back in his kitchen, rattling around, when his beeper went off. He called the number and learned that Paul Thieu was still working, had beeped him from a pay phone not ten blocks away.

Glitsky had sent him out on what appeared to be another wild-goose chase, and for the second time in two days Thieu had discovered something. Glitsky gave him his home address and told him to come on up.

No sooner had he opened the door when Thieu enthused: 'Dr Peter Harris. I realized going over to his place that I couldn't ask – he wouldn't know -about any missing surgical gloves, they're not any kind of a controlled item. But the blood, he's sure of. He even thinks he knows precisely whose blood it was, though we'll never be able to prove it.'

'And why is that, Paul?'

'Because the man is dead and cremated. He's gone.'

It had been Glitsky's idea to question Dooher's physician to see whether any vials of blood had gone missing in the past month or so. He reasoned that Dooher had to have gotten it somewhere, and his own doctor's office seemed the most likely spot. So he'd told Thieu that the place to start would be Sheila's female doctor, whom they already knew. It might not be much of a stretch to suppose that the family physician – Mark's doctor – would be somewhere on Sheila's documentation or records.

'Did you have to mention Dooher?' The police were keeping the EDTA angle out of the news for the time being, so it would be better if no names were used.

Thieu's face, already animated, lit up ever further. 'No. He didn't even ask. I showed him my ID and told him we were talking to a lot of doctors, doing a kind of informal survey on how often blood got lost from their offices or labs.'

'You made this up?'

'Yeah. I told him that with our new DNA tracking and all, we were seeing more and more criminals contaminating crime scenes with – we thought -stolen blood, to throw us off. So we were trying to track the sources of it.'

'And he bought this?'

Thieu broke a grin. 'I have an honest face. Anyway, he said it almost never happens, especially since AIDS. Blood is a high-security item. But it turns out his lab did lose this one vial last month. The doc was really upset because the patient was an old guy with bad veins who pitched a fit over having his blood taken at all, and then they had to do it again.'

'And he is Mark's doctor, Harris?'

'I couldn't help but notice Dooher's name in the Rolodex on his receptionist's desk. So unless it's a coincidence…'

Glitsky still hadn't closed the door or invited Thieu in, but neither of them seemed to notice. 'Okay, let's get a subpoena tomorrow for Harris's records and find out the last time Dooher saw him.'

'Do we need to do that? If we're letting the cat out of the bag about the EDTA, why don't I just call him back and ask him? If you want to invite me in?'

In ten minutes they knew. Dooher had gone for his yearly physical a couple of weeks ago. Dr Harris would doublecheck on the exact date in the morning, and also when the blood was reported missing. But he thought the two dates were in the same general time span.