Damage (25 page)

“Anyway, it was a wake-up call telling me that I should actually do something, rather than just taking things as they come and building up resentment against you. If I was choosing to stay around here and just keep taking it, whose fault is that? So I’m going to be staying over at Marianne’s house for at least the next few days and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me my space so I can think about what comes next for us. I don’t know, maybe you won’t want me back once you get used to me being gone, either. You’ve got to admit we haven’t been having much fun lately. I’m not really much of a politician’s wife, or even girlfriend, I’m afraid. I just don’t seem to have much of a stomach for it. The compromises, the deals, Ro Curtlee, all of it.

“I do still love you—I do—and I’m fine. But I don’t know if I can live anymore, or want to, the way we’ve been lately. Sam

“P.S. Gert has had dinner, but probably needs a walk before bed. If you want, you can leave her at the Center during the days, and I’ll drop her back here at night, if you’re going to be around. Just let me know.”

Farrell let himself down on one of the kitchen chairs, laid the note on the table in front of him. Gert had put her head on his leg and he scratched the top of it absently.

After some time had gone by—he had no sense of how much—Gert started nudging his leg and whining. Moving like a zombie, Farrell put her leash on her and retraced his steps back to the front door, and then out into the night.

The street that his house was on mostly encircled the park, and he and Gert had a regular route they walked in the morning and before bed where she took care of her business. The park itself, now in the dark, was its usual open expanse of nothingness, and suddenly tonight, as he walked around its periphery, Farrell in his numbness gradually became aware of an ominous something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Stopping, he looked out into the park’s center. Several of the lights in the street all around were out, and he couldn’t for the life of him remember if they’d been working over the past few days. Ahead of him, there were no lights at all, either in the park or on the street. At the end of the leash, Gert started in with a high-pitched whining. Farrell walked on a few more steps, then stopped again.

He stood completely still for a minute or so. There was no sound at all in the street, not any movement that he could see. Finally he whispered down to his dog, “Come on, girl. Back we go.”

But Gert, with hair standing up now down the center of her back, strained at her leash, growling low and harsh, and now barked at something out in the invisible distance.

Keeping a tight rein on her, Farrell moved up next to her head and petted it. “Come on now, come on.” Pulling her around, heeling, back toward his house.

When they got back inside, he closed and locked the front door behind him. He took off Gert’s leash and started to go back again into the kitchen. As a matter of course, whenever he did this, Gert would tag along next to him. But this time, she turned back to the front door and another low rumbling came out of her.

“Hey, easy now,” he said. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.” But holding her by the collar, he opened the door again and took a quick look outside at his benign street upon which nothing moved.

After he finally got Gert calmed down, doing her business out the back stairs in their tiny backyard and then lying back down on her cushion in the kitchen, Farrell went over to the liquor cabinet and pulled down a bottle of Knob Creek bourbon. He free-poured himself most of a juice glass full, threw in enough ice cubes to take the liquid to the rim of the glass, then drank it all off in a gulp.

This—losing his woman and imagining threats on empty streets—was not by any stretch what he had bargained for when he’d run for DA. In his heart, he didn’t really think that he was that serious a person. He had some verbal skills and he got along reasonably well with people from most walks of society, but he’d never considered himself to be a leader of men. He had originally been talked into running for DA with the thought that he’d bring a measure of enlightenment to the law enforcement community within the city. From his perspective as a lifetime defense attorney, he had believed that there was in fact often a problem with cops using more force than was justified. He thought that police often overstepped their mandates with immigrants as well as many of the other assorted minority populations in town. And by the same token, he’d represented a host of people who had made mistakes and, no question, were not angels—but through a mixture of glib humor and just the right amount of backbone, he had never felt in danger from most of these miscreants.

Well, there had been one. Mark Dooher had been Farrell’s best friend for years. A fellow attorney, but inhabiting an entirely different stratosphere from Farrell’s, Dooher had been counsel to the Archdiocese of San Francisco, among a host of other high-end clients. When Dooher’s wife was killed in a home invasion, the overweening, overreacting police—Abe Glitsky, in point of fact—had launched what Wes took to be a vendetta against his friend, eventually bringing him to trial charged with his wife’s murder. Farrell had taken on his defense, and in a brutal and grueling trial against Amanda Jenkins, had won an acquittal. That trial, moreover, marked the beginning of Farrell’s rise to prominence in the city’s legal community.

The only problem was that Mark Dooher—pillar of the community, wonderful father and husband, legal face of the Archdiocese—had, in fact, been guilty of killing his wife. And also guilty of raping a woman while he’d been in college. And killing another man with whom he’d been selling drugs in Vietnam. And gutting with a bayonet another young attorney with whom he’d been in litigation.

And then he had tried to kill Farrell, too.

Now, with Ro Curtlee, Wes felt that he was once again up against a true sociopath who might have given Mark Dooher a run for his money. He’d been out of prison for less than a month and he’d almost undoubtedly already killed three people, including Farrell’s own investigator. And no one, apparently, seemed to be able to stop him. Vi Lapeer had volunteered to put a watch on him around the clock until the grand jury could issue an indictment against him, but she wouldn’t have had time to do that yet today. Ro could be out there on Farrell’s street right now, sitting in a car, lying in wait. He might break in here and light the place on fire.

One thing seemed certain—Ro was committed to staying out of jail. It seemed obvious to Farrell that he’d prefer to die resisting arrest—look how he’d fought with Glitsky and his two men—than go back to prison. So he wasn’t afraid of anything. He would attack any and every person whom he wanted to punish or who threatened his freedom. Felicia Nuñez, Janice Durbin, Matt Lewis. Gloria Gonzalvez, wherever she was. And to that list Farrell felt he could confidently add Amanda Jenkins, Glitsky, and his family.

And himself.

Glitsky turned the keys—first the dead bolt, then the regular lock—in his front door as quietly as he could. It was sometime after midnight. Inside, he untied his shoes and slipped out of them, then picked them up and went around the corner to his small living room, where Treya stood up from where she was sitting on the couch and said, “Thank God you’re home. If you could spare one, I could use a hug.”

She stepped forward into his arms. Held him as tightly as she could. He dropped his shoes onto the floor and she felt something give in him and she reached up behind him and pulled his head down to the crook of her neck. He let his head rest where it was, heavy, and she could feel the thick, strong muscles in his neck letting go of the tension in them. After another moment, his arms came up around her, too, pressing her against him, so hard she almost, for a second, couldn’t breathe.

She didn’t care. This was all she wanted. If she couldn’t catch a breath, she would do without it.

He exhaled completely, nuzzled his head into her neck and kissed it two, three times. Then straightened up. “You’ve been up all this time?”

“Apparently.”

“How’s Amanda?”

“As bad as you’d think. Maybe worse. She thinks it’s her fault.”

“It’s not.”

“No. I know that. It’s going to take her a while, though. You want to sit?”

“I believe I could.”

Treya sat back down where she’d been waiting on the couch and pulled the blanket she’d brought out of their bedroom up around her. Glitsky eased himself down sideways at the other end of the couch.

“You get anything?” she asked.

“Do you want to count getting rejected on the search warrant?”

“Even with the chief herself requesting it?’

“Even then. Same rules for the chief. You need probable cause.”

“How about Matt Lewis was following him and Ro shot him?”

“How do we know Lewis was following him?”

“That was his assignment.”

“How do we know he ever caught up with him?”

“Because we do. Didn’t he call Amanda?”

“At lunchtime. This, the shooting, was at least an hour later, maybe more. Maybe in that time he lost them and went on to something else, and whatever that was got him killed.”

“Does anybody really believe that?”

“No.”

“And who’s ‘them’ now?”

“Another guy was driving, not Ro. Matt Lewis didn’t know him but told Amanda he looked more or less American Indian. They came out of the Curtlees’ house together. I’m thinking it’s the bodyguard I met the first time I went out there.”

“So Matt Lewis followed them for an hour. Isn’t that probable cause right there? They must know the chief isn’t making this up.”

“They might know it, but they’re not signing the little piece of paper.” Glitsky drew a hand down the side of his face as though he were wiping dirt off it. “A law enforcement officer, Matt Lewis, is shot execution-style in his car on a deserted street in a very bad part of town. Crawling with the drug trade. Fifty people within the sound of the shot could plausibly have done it. Why pick on Ro Curtlee?”

“Because we know he did it?”

“Well, one little bit of proof, and the judge signs off. But . . .” He shrugged.

“So who was the judge?”

“Chomorro.”

Treya clucked disapproval. “So now there’s three of them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Baretto, Donahoe, Chomorro. Doesn’t anybody on the bench want to put this guy in jail?”

“Not more than they want to protect his civil rights.” Glitsky went on, “Do you know what it takes to win a contested judicial race, Trey? A hundred and fifty grand walking away, two fifty if you want a landslide, and there’s no limit on contributions to a judicial race. Slick, huh. Bottom line, the whole bench is terrified of the Curtlees.”

“So who did his initial trial, again?”

“Thomasino.”

“How about taking him your warrant to sign?”

Glitsky was shaking his head. “No. You want a warrant signed, you’ve got to go to the sitting magistrate, and this week it’s Chomorro. Randomly. This, I need hardly tell you, ensures the impartiality of the law.”

“I don’t want impartial. Not in this case.”

“Well,” Glitsky said, “in fact, you do. But it wouldn’t break my heart if we got lucky now and again.”

Treya tightened the blanket around her shoulders. Sitting with her thoughts for a minute, she said in a small voice, “Do you think we need to be worried? Us, I mean.”

Glitsky heaved a sigh and moved down the couch next to her. “I’d say I’m worried enough for all of us, but that’s probably not what you want to hear.” He took her hand in both of his. “I like to think he’s made his point with us just to rattle my chain. Hurting you or the kids doesn’t get him anything, and he knows I’d hunt him down and kill him. Coming after me or us doesn’t help him with his retrial, either. So, logically I think he’s probably done with us. I hope. Beyond which, the chief’s putting on a few teams to follow him around the clock.”

“You don’t think he’ll be able to shake them?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Treya closed her eyes, took in a breath. “Well, be that as it may, after tonight . . . I mean, I’ve been thinking. I don’t know if I can feel right leaving the kids with Rita anymore. Or at school. Even if you say there’s no risk ...”

“I’m not saying that.”

“I know.” She took another shaky breath. “This isn’t like anything else, Abe. This is a truly crazy person.”

After a moment, Glitsky nodded. “I can’t argue with you. You’re right. What do you want to do?”

“I think I want to go away for a while. All of us. Until this blows over somehow.”

Glitsky’s nostrils flared and his mouth went tight, the scar going white through his lips. “I can’t do that, Trey. Not in the middle of this.”

“Why not?”

“Well, if for no other reason, that’s telling Ro he wins.”

“So what if he wins?” Treya’s voice took on an edge. “It’s not you against him.”