Damage (17 page)

After they left messages at their jobs saying they wouldn’t be in, both leaving their excuses suitably vague, Abe and Treya dropped the kids off together at their respective school and preschool, then had come home and gone back to bed. Closing in on noon, they had finally gotten dressed and now sat in a booth at Gaspare’s.

“This is the best pizza in the city, you know that?” Treya said. “I don’t care about any of those newfangled places, or even the other old ones.”

“Tommaso’s?” Glitsky said.

“Very good, no question. Just not this good.”

“A-sixteen.”

Treya shook her head. “Again, delicious, but too long a wait. So let me ask you a question.”

“General category of pizza?”

“No.”

“Okay, hold it.” Glitsky put down his pizza slice. “No, wait, it’s coming to me. The Battle of Thermopylae.”

“Wrong. The what?”

“The Battle of Thermopylae. And how can you say it’s wrong when you don’t know what it is?”

“I know what it is, or was. It was a battle between the Greeks and somebody, maybe the Persians, I think.”

“Correct. Very good. What year?”

“What year? I’m sure. Sometime around ancient Greece. Close enough?”

“How about four-eighty BC.”

“I’d say definitely yes. What a relief to have that nailed down. That sounds just perfectly right.”

“It is completely right. And yet you said it was wrong.”

“It was wrong because it definitely wasn’t the answer to my question, which was going to be, if I remember correctly, if you felt as guilty as I did.”

“What’s it going to be now?”

“What’s what going to be?”

“Your question.”

She shook her head, smiling. “That silver tongue of yours got to wagging so much I don’t even remember.”

“Something about if I felt guilty.” He reached over the table and put his hand over hers. “You really feel guilty?”

She cocked her head sideways. “A little bit.” Now sighing. “I feel like I’m letting Wes down. He’s clueless enough about his appointments and his schedule as it is anyway. If I’m not there to spoon-feed him . . .”

“He’s a big boy.”

“Not so much, really. And pretty much out of his depth.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You’re not the only one. I know you don’t read the
Courier
, but he’s taking some pretty serious abuse there.”

“That paper’s a rag. Nobody reads it.”

“Well, that’s half right. The ‘rag’ part. But don’t kid yourself, Abe. People read it. It swings a lot of votes.”

Glitsky shrugged. Votes were not part of his universe. And his respect for those people to whom votes were the issue was minuscule. “I don’t know. You want my opinion, Wes deserves to swing in the wind a little.”

“I don’t know how you can say that, Abe. He came down on the right side with you last week.”

“Only under great duress. And let’s not forget that the reason Ro Curtlee’s out in the first place, and the reason we got threatened, is because Wes didn’t step up and do the right thing the first chance he got. He could have demanded no bail, and got it.”

Now she covered his hand with hers. “I know that. He was naïve, hoping to keep the Curtlees happy. He knows that, too, now. And I know you did the right thing. But I don’t think Ro would dare do anything to us now.”

Glitsky made a face. “Well, that’s the hope. I’d be a lot happier if Wes pushed a little on getting his new trial date set. But as to whether I feel guilty taking a day off . . . I don’t plan to make a habit of it, but after Monday, and now he’s out again, and I still don’t have enough inspectors or the budget to hire more.” He let out a breath. “I don’t know, Trey. I feel I’m a toxic presence at the Hall, and I’ve got to let some of this anger leach out before I poison my own troops. If I’m going to do that, I might as well quit altogether.”

“Are you really thinking about that?”

“Sometimes. Frequently, in fact. I don’t know what the point is anymore.”

“Same as it’s always been, babe. Putting killers in jail.”

“Yeah,” Glitsky said. “But then they let ’em out.”

“Not always. Not even often.”

“I know, I know. You’re right. But that’s why I need a day off here. Get some perspective back. Speaking of which . . .”

He reached down and pulled his cell phone off his belt.

“If it’s the office, don’t . . . ,” Treya said.

But Glitsky was shaking his head. “It’s not downtown,” he said. “It’s Arnie Becker. I ought to get this.” And he pushed the connect button. “Arnie, it’s Abe. What’s up?”

“Of course,” Becker was saying, “we won’t know for sure until—”

“Arnie.” Glitsky held up a hand and cut him off. “You got any doubt at all?”

Becker drew in a large breath through his mouth. The stench of the burn was strong, but a whiff of the pervasive scent of cooked meat could bring even a strong man’s stomach up. “Very little,” he said.

They were standing, hands in their pockets, on the second floor in the bright sunlight that shone through the collapsed roof of Michael Durbin’s home. The temperature was in the midforties, abnormally cold for San Francisco in February. The body was still in place in the burned-out shell of the upstairs bedroom, itself pretty thoroughly destroyed. The coroner’s van had just arrived out front, but the crime scene unit, with their surgical masks in place, had been photographing and collecting what little evidence they could since before Glitsky’s arrival about twenty minutes ago.

Though the face was unrecognizable, this body was in somewhat better condition than Felicia Nuñez’s had been. Neither of this woman’s shoes, in this case low-heeled black pumps, had been burned away completely. One had come off, possibly from the power of the hoses during the active phase of fighting the fire, and had wound up under the bed, about eight inches from the woman’s right foot. But the other shoe still appeared to be a snug fit on her left foot. There were no unburned scraps of clothing under the body, no sign of a bra or other underwear, and Becker’s conjecture from those facts was that the woman had been naked either at or shortly after the time she died and was set ablaze. Due to the relatively light amount of charring where the woman’s body was in contact with the floor, Becker told Glitsky that if she’d been wearing any clothes, they would not all have burned away.

“What about DNA?” Glitsky asked. “I mean, if the burning wasn’t really so bad.”

“Well,” Becker said, “it’s all relative. You can see for yourself that not
so
bad doesn’t mean not bad. And it’s also pretty clear where the fire got started, same as with Nuñez. So all in all, I’d say DNA’s not a good bet, although of course we’re going to try.” Becker glanced again over at the body. “So the similarities. That’s why I called you directly, of course.”

“I appreciate it.” Glitsky sucked carefully through his teeth, turned away so the body was out of his line of vision. “Although I can’t say it makes much sense.”

“What has to make sense?”

“I mean, if this was Ro Curtlee. First, the sheer balls of it. After last week.”

“He’s telling you to go fuck yourself.”

Glitsky’s mouth twitched at the profanity. “So he just picks some random woman?”

Becker shrugged. “Maybe he knew her.”

“Yeah, but everybody else he’s done has been a domestic. How’d he meet somebody out here? A normal civilian, I’m guessing, right? Any word about whether this was the cleaning lady or somebody like that?”

“I don’t think so, Abe. The husband and some other family are down there.” He pointed out to the street. “They’re all wrecked, and they all think it’s the wife. She’s the only female who would have been in the house. The daughter’s still at school. He called and checked.”

Glitsky looked up through the gaping hole in the roof above them. “Dear God,” he said. “How old is she? The daughter?”

Another shrug. “I don’t know. School age.”

“You’re right,” Glitsky said. “What difference does it make?” He took a last look at the body, closed his eyes against the horror of it, and shook his head. “So who is she?”

“If it’s the wife, her name’s Janice Durbin. Her husband’s . . .”

Glitsky put his hand on Becker’s arm and gripped it. “Michael.”

“Yeah. How’d you . . . ?”

Nodding, verifying to himself the sudden and unmistakable clarity, Glitsky pulled in a last, quick breath. “He was the jury foreman at Ro’s trial.”

“I don’t know why I agonize about taking days off,” Glitsky said. “Nobody else even seems to notice when I do.”

“Maybe,” Amanda Jenkins said, “that’s because you’re actually physically here in the building talking about a case, so to someone who isn’t paying close attention it seems like you’re on the job somehow. And just for the record, can you explain to me how it would be different if you weren’t taking a day off?”

“Not too, I guess. You put it that way.”

“Well, there you go.” She pushed her chair back from her desk, leaned back, and put her feet up on its surface, displaying a good 80 percent of her extraordinary legs in the process. “You want to get the door? Certain people see us talking, they’re liable to think we’re colluding to obstruct justice, like we did last time.”

Glitsky turned and closed it.

Jenkins crossed her arms, gave him a flat look. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here talking to you. You might have an idea.”

“Not any that I’m proud of. Well, that’s not true. I’ve got one.”

“Hit me.”

“Before anything else, I’d rule out arresting Ro again.”

Glitsky allowed himself a small, grim smile. “That was my thought, too. Which, of course, leaves him free to go around killing other people whenever the mood strikes him. But hey, that’s not my decision.”

“Don’t be bitter.”

“No. Why would I be bitter?”

“Good. For a minute there, I thought I detected a trace.”

“Nope. Bitter-free, that’s me.” A wooden chair sat along the wall next to the cabinets, and Glitsky pulled it around and straddled it backward. “But in actual fact, I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to pretend Ro isn’t any part of this Durbin murder, lower my own profile.”

“That’s probably smart. You show up around Ro again, it’s a circus before it even starts.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not going to be all over it.”

“No. I didn’t think it did. So what’s the plan?”

“The plan is I don’t make the connection to Ro. Not in public, anyway.”

“And what’s that get you?”

“Time, if nothing else. Maybe the Curtlees back off. Meanwhile, I go out and talk to people like any homicide inspector would. Develop a theory of the case, maybe even a list of suspects. I don’t get near Ro until something, some solid evidence, leads back to him, which is what we’re going to need anyway if the good Mr. Farrell is ever going to charge him with anything again in our lifetimes.”

“Except you’ve already got that up front. Something leading back to Ro.”

“What’s that?”

“The shoe, the MO, the jury foreman’s wife. Take your pick. The guy all but drew you a picture.”

“Well, that’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“Arnie Becker’s theory is that this is Ro flipping me off. Actually, flipping both of us off, you and me.”

“I’m flattered.”

Glitsky shrugged. “So how’s he going to feel if he’s gone to all the trouble of killing somebody else and leaving all these clues to rub what he can get away with in our faces, and I don’t put it together? Instead, I go barking up another tree and don’t give him the satisfaction.”

It took her a moment, but then she nodded. “He’s going to want to tell us what he did. And dare us to try and prove it.”

“
Need
is more like it. It’s going to flush him. Or, it might. At least it’s a shot.”