The Fall (37 page)

Wes Farrell burnished his credentials as a stand-up guy when he took full responsibility for the fiasco in the Treadway trial. At a press conference in the aftermath of the directed verdict, he resisted the temptation to put the blame on Phil Braden, Abe Glitsky, or the police department. He was the district attorney, he said, and the buck stopped with him.

Meanwhile, Abe got assigned to other work. In one of those assignments, locating the so-called elopers, he had been spectacularly successful. Within two weeks of the
CityTalk
column, four of the five elopers were back in custody, and the fifth man turned up a month after that in Arkansas.

Allie Jensen passed the California state bar and came aboard as the latest full-time (and then some!) associate in Hardy’s firm. She started going out with Greg Treadway over the Labor Day weekend, after being part of a group he’d put together to take a limo and go wine tasting in Sonoma County.

When Bakhtiari had announced his ruling on the directed verdict, the true believers in what had been the Liam Goodman group of protesters in the gallery of Department 24 had put on an impressive display of outrage. They were disgusted and appalled that yet another suspect in the murder of an African-American was being let off. A dozen courtroom bailiffs and several guards from the adjoining jail had to be called in to restore order. Four of the men were arrested, but the rest of the protesters overflowed out through the Hall of Justice, trying to take their message to the street. Over the next few days in the city at large, and in Oakland across the Bay, demonstrators managed to disrupt traffic in several locations and block entrance to a few public buildings, but basically the rage over the purported racial injustice in the Treadway case failed to gain national traction, possibly because the agitators’ charismatic leader had stayed out of sight, under the radar.

With the mayoral election coming up in under a month, Liam Goodman, currently polling sixth in a field of nine, was no longer considered a factor in the race.

•  •  •

T
HE
CASA
HEADQUARTERS
in San Francisco was upstairs over some
graffiti-ridden retail shops on a block of Mission Street that had been perpetually under repair for at least two years, although to the locals it seemed like the improvements had been going on for a decade or more. The offices formerly belonged to a chiropractor, and the haphazard arrangement of the inside rooms reflected a disorganized if entrepreneurial soul—whenever the business needed to grow, the past owner had knocked out a wall or erected a new one, with little thought for symmetry or scale. The new tenants had not removed all of the body and skeletal charts from the walls in the various offices, nor all of the outdated medical equipment, and all of these leftovers gave the space a weird and funky charm.

Adding to that charm (as well as to the general air of funkiness), a large and ancient library desk took up almost half the lobby, and on it, overflowing, were dozens of brochures explaining CASA’s work, announcements about classes and self-improvement programs, volunteer guidelines, knickknacks, craftsman bowls, several different magazines, and other specialty publications: the whole table a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity, commitment, and hope.

The executive director, Rachelle Garza, worked out of one of the smallest internal offices off the lobby at the head of the stairs. She was there in the dimness, closed off from the lobby, eating a healthy lunch of carrots, celery, and yogurt, when a knock made her look up. “Yes. Come in.” The door swung open, and she felt a small twinge in her stomach but managed what she hoped was a believable smile. This visit was not completely unexpected, although the timing was. “Greg,” she said. “How nice to see you. I’m afraid, as you can tell, you caught me at lunch.”

“No worries,” he said. “If you want, I could come back.”

“No. That’s okay. You’re here now. It’s fine. Lunch will keep.”

He stood silhouetted in the doorway. “Probably I should have made an appointment, but I was just in the neighborhood, and I’ve been meaning to come back and say hi for a while. How’s everything going?”

She pushed her food to one side. “About the same. Things don’t seem to change that much. Come on in. Sit down.”

“Thank you.”

Easygoing, genial, polite, confident, and well groomed, Greg settled
himself in the upholstered chair in the corner. “Great chair,” he said. “Has this always been here?”

“At least since I’ve been,” she said. She took a breath, openmouthed, trying to calm herself. “So how have you been?”

“Pretty good, considering.” He made a face mixing equal parts chagrin and embarrassment. “Still dealing with some of the fallout from the trial, actually. You’d think once you got acquitted, people would just accept that you weren’t guilty, but I’m finding that’s not always the case.”

“That would be hard, I imagine.”

He shrugged. “I guess it’s just what it is. You just try to keep moving ahead.”

“I hear a ‘but.’ ”

“Good call. But, not to burden you with my problems, the job thing is turning out to be a bit of an issue.”

“You’re not teaching?”

A bitter chuckle. “There’s a good example. It’s safe to say I won’t be teaching anymore. Anywhere. Two years experience, every district supposedly dying for good teachers, and I haven’t even gotten a callback.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged again. “As I say, it is what it is. Something will turn up, though probably not in the teaching field.” He crossed a leg, ankle on knee, casual and relaxed. “In any event,” he said, “the few friends I’ve got left are unanimous that I should try to get back to what used to be my regular life. Let some time go by, let things shake out a little. Meanwhile, I’m doing something, keeping busy, maybe making some kind of contribution instead of just sending out résumés all day.”

“Probably a good plan.”

“I thought so. Which is I guess what really brings me down here.”

Rachelle let out a sigh and broke a tepid and, she hoped, kind smile. “I was afraid you might say something like that.”

“And you’re afraid,” he said softly, “you’re not going to be able to help me.”

“I’m really sorry, Greg. You know it’s nothing personal. I’ve always thought you were a good guy and an excellent CASA, but now . . .”

“With me being a murderer and all . . .”

“That’s not it.”

“No? Then what is it?”

“I
guess the best word would be ‘perception.’ ”

“So the actual facts don’t matter?”

“Well, no, of course they matter. They matter a lot.”

“But?”

Someone was coming up the stairs, and Rachelle hoped that whoever it was would stop in and interrupt the conversation, but that didn’t happen, so she had to come back to Greg and his very difficult questions. “Like I said, it’s about perception as much as anything. You know we depend so much if not entirely on donations, Greg. And frankly, we got huge negative feedback from many, if not most, of our donors when you were arrested. They were all like, ‘How could we have let this happen? What kind of show were we running? Didn’t anybody supervise the volunteers?’ I mean it, it was a giant problem and still is.”

“But I didn’t do it, Rachelle. You know me. You know the kind of person I am. I am not capable of killing anybody. And that’s what the trial found. Why can’t people see that?”

Without a real response to give him, Rachelle inhaled and pursed her lips.

“What?” Greg asked.

Buying more time, Rachelle cleared her throat, inhaled again, finally found her voice. “I’m so very sorry.”

Greg, sitting back in his comfortable chair, shook his head. “You realize how hard it is to accept this when all I’m trying to do is get some normalcy back in my life, and when I didn’t do anything except get caught in the system.”

“I do. It must be terrible.”

“But you can’t help me?”

She kept hoping he would let it drop, thank her for her time, leave her office. But nothing in his body language spoke to that inclination. If she were going to get him to understand, if not accept, the basic problem, she would have to bring up the topic she’d been hoping to avoid, because the very idea scared her. “As you probably guessed, Greg, this has come up with the board, and it’s really not in my power to overrule them. They’ve made up their minds.”

“How about if I came in and talked to them personally?”

“That’s not a viable possibility. I think you just have to accept this, Greg. They’ve
made their decision, and they’re going to stick to it. And you know, if I may say so, under these circumstances, I don’t know why you’d even want to come back. There have to be other jobs out there, and I’m not talking volunteer work—”

He cut her off. “I’ve got to start someplace, Rachelle. I’ve got to have somebody be the first to trust me, to give me a chance, to get around the stigma. I don’t care about money. I need to be doing something and get my credibility back. I don’t understand how you can’t even let me talk to your board. You know me. I’m good at what I do. And you always need volunteers. I could help some of the kids, I know I could.”

“Helping is not the issue, Greg. Again, perception is the issue.”

“But I didn’t—”

She held up her hand, stopping him. As she’d half expected and feared, he was going to make her tell him. “You didn’t kill her. All right. Maybe that’s the truth and—”

“It is the truth.”

“All right, Greg.” Her patience at an end, she came forward in her chair, elbows on her desk. Her voice took on an edge. “Even granting that you didn’t kill her, let me ask you this: How do you explain the DNA evidence? Because let me tell you, the perception, and the very strong presumption, of everyone I’ve talked to on the board is that you took advantage of Anlya sexually. Did you do that? Did you have sex with her?”

His head snapped back as though she’d slapped him. He looked to the room’s corners as though he were trapped and seeking a way out. When he came back to her after a few seconds, he sat up straight. “The DNA was flawed.”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” Rachelle said. “I’m asking if you had sex with her. Because the perception is that you did, and there doesn’t seem to be much arguing against that, is there?”

He met her gaze. “So that’s how it is.”

“It’s a simple enough question,” she said. “Your DNA was on her underwear. Nobody remembers that being in dispute. So the question again: Did you have sex with her, yes or no?”

“What’s the point? I’ll never convince you or any of them, will I?”

“You might. You might have some explanation that makes sense. And a simple no would be a good start.”

He
stared at her for another long beat before he got to his feet. “You’re mixing me up with a different kind of person,” he said. He strode to the doorway and out into the lobby.

Rachelle brought her shaking hands up to her eyes and leaned back in her chair, nearly overcome with relief.

That relief was short-lived, as almost immediately, she heard a guttural groan and then a sound that struck her as almost as violent as an explosion. The floor actually shook underneath her feet, and for the next second or two she thought it was an earthquake, but there was a different quality to what she’d felt, more like something had been dropped from a great height and shaken the floor to the building’s foundation.

She jumped up, coming around her desk. When she got to her door, all three of her current staffers were appearing in the hallway from their rooms, the question clear on everyone’s shocked faces:
What the hell was that?

The answer was an insult hurled directly in front of her. The huge wooden library table lay on its side, all of its brochures and magazines and knickknacks covering nearly every square inch of the lobby floor.

Down the stairs, a door slammed with another ungodly crash, and without seeing any part of it, Rachelle knew what the latest noise was—it was Greg Treadway letting himself out.

•  •  •

A
T SEVEN-THIRTY ALLIE
and Greg were sitting down to dinner at Verbena on Polk Street, a favorite place only a moderate walking distance from Allie and Beck’s apartment. She had come straight from work, hopeful that her new boyfriend would have something good to report on the job front, which otherwise was not progressing very well.

“So how’d it go?” Allie asked after she’d kissed him hello and they’d taken their seats.

“Not great. Much to my surprise and regret, Rachelle seems to hang with the ‘he still did it’ crowd.”

“How can she think that? I mean, after the trial? I thought you said she was your friend.”

“I did. She was, too. I didn’t know she was so afraid of the board. I guess it’s just easier for her not to have me come back in any capacity where she’d have to defend me.”

A waiter came over and they ordered—white wine for Allie and a second or possibly third bourbon drink for Greg. “Well,” Allie said, “you thought it was a long shot, and it wasn’t like it was going to pay you anything.”

“No. But I thought if they let me go back to volunteering, I’d at least have some leverage talking to other people. If CASA could trust me, it might be someplace to start.” He tipped up his glass. “But they can’t, and they were pretty much my last resort.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth. I don’t see how this is ever going to end. I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

“Maybe try for some other kind of job, Greg. Forget about teaching. Forget about kids.”

He made a face. “Starbucks?”

She nodded. “If you have to. Or anyplace else. It wouldn’t matter to me.”

“You say that now. But a few more months of this . . .”

“I’ll say the same thing.”

He let out a small breath. “You’re great. Thank you.” Their round of drinks arrived, and they clinked their glasses. “Here’s to us,” Greg said, “and getting through this.”

“Deal.”

He drank and put his glass down. “Can I ask your opinion about something?” he asked.

“Anything. Shoot.”

“Do you think it might be worthwhile to ask Rebecca to go talk to Jeff Elliott?”