The Keeper (9 page)

20

A
T SEVEN-THIRTY,
WHEN
Hal came back into the house after dropping Warren off at the airport, the tenuous truce between Ruth and Ellen that had held since Katie disappeared seemed to have come unraveled. His stepmother was sitting on the living room couch, nursing a glass of clear liquid with ice cubes. She did not get up, merely turned her head and nodded.

“Is everything all right?” Hal asked her.

“Not exactly, no.”

“What's wrong?”

“Your daughter. She can be an exasperating little girl, you know that?”

“She's lost her mother, Ruth. I can't blame her if she's having a hard time. And you shouldn't, either. Where is she?”

“Last seen in your bedroom. I closed the door. Don't worry. She's perfectly safe. She just needed a time-out.”

“I'm going to go see her.”

Ruth lifted her glass. “Please. Help yourself.”

His shoulders sagging under the strain, he went down the hallway and knocked, then opened his bedroom door. “Ellen?” He switched on the lights and saw his daughter wedged into a corner on the floor, holding one of the bed's pillows against her. “Hey,” he said gently, crossing over to her. “Are you okay? Want to give your dad a hug?”

She shook her head. “Where's Mommy?”

“We don't know. We're looking for her.”

“Grandma isn't. She wouldn't tell me where she was.”

“She doesn't know where she is, sweetie. Nobody knows. That's the problem.”

“Why didn't Grandma just tell me that? That she didn't know. That nobody knows. Why don't they know? Where did she go?”

Hal slowly lowered himself to sit in front of her. “If you give me your pillow, it'll make my lap softer.”

She stared him down for a moment, then handed the pillow across and finally crawled into his lap, where she started to cry. “I want Mommy.”

He smoothed her hair and let her lean against him and cry herself out. At last, he asked, “Do you think you want to go to sleep?”

She shook her head. “I want to know where Mommy is.”

He kissed the top of her head. “We all want that. We just have to keep trying to find her.”

“But where? And why would she go away?”

Hal shook his head and rocked her against him, and time stopped while he kept rocking and she settled against him and started to breathe with a deep and easy regularity.

Blessed sleep.

Gradually, he managed to get all the way up without waking her, then carried her into the bedroom she shared with Will. Putting her down in her bed, he covered her and tucked the blankets around her, then leaned down to plant a kiss on her forehead. On the way out, he pulled the door, leaving it a little bit open so that he could hear either of them if they called out or needed him.

It looked as though Ruth hadn't moved an inch, except now her glass was nearly full. She glanced up at Hal. “She wouldn't go to sleep for me,” she said.

“She's worried about where Katie is, Ruth. I don't think that's so inappropriate.”

“No, I don't suppose so. But she was so willful. I told her it was time for bed and we could talk about all this tomorrow, but now she was tired and she needed to be a big girl and do what I told her.”

“She's not used to you, Ruth, that's all.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means how can they get to know me if I'm never around?”

“Ruth. Come on. You know you are always welcome. You've always been welcome.”

She broke into a chilly smile. “You know that's not true, Hal. Maybe welcome to you, but Katie wouldn't let anybody else have any influence on those children. That's the way she was.”

“ ‘Is.' Let's go with ‘is' until we know something different.”

“I didn't mean anything by that.”

“I know.” Hal let out a heavy sigh. “I'm going to get a beer. Do you want a refill?”

“No, thanks. I've had one.” At his questioning look, she said, “One. Really.”

He went to the refrigerator, opened his beer, returned to the living room, and sat down across from her. “I really appreciate all you've done this past week, Ruth. I don't blame you if it's getting tiresome. I've got the time off if you're burning out.”

“It's not tiresome, Hal, and I'm nowhere near burning out. These are my grandchildren, and I'm just so happy I'm finally getting to spend some time with them. Not that I'm happy about the circumstances. Of course they're heartrending. But then I see the way Katie . . . well, how Ellen got so belligerent so fast when I told her she had to go to sleep. Has she ever not gotten her way? I thought it would do her good to have somebody tell her no.”

Hal pulled at his beer. “I don't want to talk about Katie's mothering, Ruth. We didn't always agree about that, but this isn't the time, all right? I think she was getting more flexible; at least I hope she was. And I'm sorry we didn't have you over more often, but we'd stopped seeing many people because a lot of times we weren't having much fun.”

Ruth waved him off. “That's all right. I'm a big girl. I just think that maybe I could have helped, and gotten to know my grandchildren a little more in the bargain. But Katie wouldn't let that happen. You know that's true.”

“If we find her, that's going to change. Lots of things are going to change.”

“I hope so,” Ruth said. “That would be very nice.”

21

W
EDNESDAY MORNING, AFTER
he dropped his kids at school, Abe Glitsky decided to try to clear up as many of the outstanding uncertainties about Katie's disappearance as he could. As his first stop, he drove out and parked by the Highway Patrol station on the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Over the course of his career, he'd been out here dozens of times, but the familiarity of the place did little to erase the negative energy he attached to it. Getting out of his car, even wearing his heavy leather fighter jacket, he felt the cold wind cut through him. He found it hard to believe that people chose to come out here by the hundreds, if not thousands, for recreation; even as he wondered about it, a trickle of people was passing him on all sides, wrapped up for the weather, enchanted by the view. Before they got on the bridge proper, all of them had to pass the sign over the telephone hotline that read
CRISIS COUNSELING. THERE IS HOPE. MAKE THE CALL.

There might be hope, Glitsky thought, but not enough of it to go around. Although no accurate figure was possible because so many ­suicides off the bridge went unnoticed, it was generally accepted to be among the most popular places on the planet for people to take their own lives. In spite of the Highway Patrol's success in talking down perhaps eighty percent of the potential jumpers they encountered, the known or suspected suicide rate every year held steady at around thirty, or about one every two weeks.

Glitsky put his hands in his pockets and, into the wind, made his way across the small lot. If he'd learned anything over the past couple of days, it was that his name still carried some weight in legal circles. Sure enough, when he dropped it at the back door, they knew who he was, or used to be, and let him in.

A Highway Patrol officer led him back to a small and crowded room with desks that could sit a total of eight, each with a computer. At the moment, five other Highway Patrol officers filled the space. One glass wall faced the recently redundant tollbooths; another faced video screens showing different live shots of segments of the bridge—people on the walkway, cars in the road going both directions, overhead distance shots from up in the cables, pretty much the entire bridge on videotape all the time.

The sergeant running the operation of the office today was Ted ­Robbins, from the looks of him an all-business career officer in his mid-forties. If a detective from Homicide was here, there would be only one reason for it, to Robbins's mind, and he got right to it. “You're looking for a jumper.”

Glitsky nodded. “A mother of two named Katie Chase. She went missing last Wednesday.” He started to give more details but hadn't ­gotten too far before Robbins was shaking his head, and Glitsky stopped. “What's wrong?” he asked.

“You're saying she was at her home at seven o'clock last Wednesday?”

“Right.”

“We don't let pedestrians out after dark.”

Though this statement contained the potentially good news that Katie was not dead from suicide off the bridge, it also closed off at least one possibility that would have left Hal Chase in the clear for her murder. Glitsky bit at his cheek in some frustration. “You actually close the gates?”

“That's right.”

“And when do you open them again?”

“Basically, first light. I could check the exact time for any given day, but you don't think she waited out here all night and then went out in the morning, do you?”

“No. I don't really see that. Any other way she could have gotten on the bridge without being seen?”

Robbins considered. “Do you think there's a chance she rode out here on a bicycle?”

“What difference would that make?”

“It might not, but bicyclists are allowed after dark. They buzz at the gate, and we get them on the security camera and open up for them.”

“Bicyclists are allowed and walkers aren't?” Glitsky asked. “What's that about?”

“You got me,” Robbins said. “I don't make the rules. But bikes are allowed.”

Glitsky asked, “Would it be all right if I looked at some tapes?”

“DVDs. We back everything up nowadays. You could look, but what would you be hoping to find?”

“Some bicyclist buzzes and you open the gate. It's open for a few seconds behind the biker, isn't it? If people are waiting, they could stroll right through, couldn't they?”

“In theory, it could happen. But I wouldn't bet on it.”

“I wouldn't, either, but I'm here, and it couldn't hurt to make sure.”

22

P
ATTI
O
ROSCO OPENED
her front door to two Homicide inspectors and, under the impression that she'd made an appointment for this visit, invited them in.

Barefoot, Patti was wearing jeans and a blue sweater. She led the way up the stairs and into the living room. When they got there, the view stopped Abby in her tracks. “Wow,” she said.

Patti turned and said with an air of apology, “I know. It's kind of ridiculous, isn't it?”

“I wouldn't use that word. If I lived here, I wouldn't get much done. I'd just sit and stare out that window.”

As everyone took a seat around the coffee table, Patti said, “I spend some time doing that myself. Probably too much. If I were working, I'd have to go someplace else to get anything done.”

“You're not working?” Abby asked.

“I don't. No. I haven't in some time.” Patti offered another apologetic smile. “Sometimes I think I'm one of the luckiest people in the world, except for my personal life. But how I really feel is that I'd trade it all, straight up, the money for the other stuff. People don't believe me, but sometimes I think I would.”

“Did that cause friction between you and the Chases? The fact that you were wealthy?” Abby asked. “We've heard that they were having ­trouble with money.”

“I think that was part of it, at least recently, after Katie stopped working and her cash flow dried up. In a way, I couldn't blame her if she was jealous about my situation. I mean, what happened to me was so weird.”

“And what was that?” JaMorris asked. “What happened to you?”

Patti brushed some hair off her forehead, let a sigh escape. “It's nothing to be embarrassed about, I suppose, but it usually hits people funny.”

“Do you want to tell us?”

“When I got out of college, I got a job as a secretary with Bazoom! Nobody remembers them anymore, but back then they were a happening start-up. They gave us the option to take some of our pay in stock. Anyway, long story short, I took them up on it, and about two years later, say '03 or '04, Sprint bought us out and I made about three million dollars.”

JaMorris nodded in appreciation. “That must have been a good day.”

“It was completely amazing. But then—for better or worse, depending on where you were—I invested in some other stocks, and everything doubled over the next few years. On top of that, I got freaked out at my exposure in the market and pulled it all out and into cash about two months before the crash. I've been so stupidly lucky, and all I do now is feel guilty about everything.” She shook her head. “Oh, but listen to me, the poor little rich girl.”

“I love that story,” Abby said. “So it really happens.”

“It does.” Patti brought her hands together. “But where are my manners? Can I offer you anything, or do you want to just get down to it?”

A small silence settled before JaMorris asked, “Down to what, ­exactly?”

“You know. Me and Hal. What you called me about yesterday.”

The two inspectors shared a questioning glance. JaMorris took up the ball. “Sure,” he said. “You and Hal.”

“All right. Then let's start with I know he didn't kill Katie.”

“How do you know that?” Abby asked. “Do you have any solid proof or evidence? Did you see him or talk to him or anything that night?”

“No, but I know he was trying to get back with her and make it all work.”

“Get back with her from what?” JaMorris asked.

“Well”—Patti looked quizzically from one inspector to the other—“from us.” He had made up his mind that we weren't going to be together anymore, so there was no reason he had to do anything drastic about Katie. Isn't that pretty much what I said yesterday?”

Abby could stand it no longer. “Patti. Who did you talk to yesterday?”

Patti was looking at JaMorris. “It wasn't you?”

“No.”

“I thought it was you. You said you'd be by this morning, and then when you guys showed up here . . .” She stood up. “Just a minute.” She left the room and came back after a moment with a small notebook. “You're not Abe Glitsky?”

“No, ma'am. I'm JaMorris Monroe. Abe Glitsky used to be head of Homicide. You're saying you talked to him yesterday? About Hal? And Katie's disappearance?”

She nodded. “I told Hal we should tell the truth about us, that hiding it would just make us look bad. So he told Inspector Glitsky, and he called me last night . . .”

“Glitsky called you last night?” JaMorris asked.

Patti nodded. “Yes. He asked if he could come by and talk a little this morning, so when you showed up . . . I mean, you said you were inspectors . . . I just thought . . .” Clearly flustered, she sat down on the edge of her couch. “So who are you guys if you're not working with Glitsky?”

Abby had her ID out. “We're inspectors with the Homicide Department, Patti. We're investigating Katie's disappearance. We came to see you because Daniel Dunne, Katie's brother, told us that you and Hal were probably in a relationship.”

“I just told you about that. But wait a minute. Who is Glitsky, then?”

“He's retired,” JaMorris said. “You say he's working with Hal?”

“That's what he said.”

Abby raised her eyebrows—a question—at her partner, who could only shrug.

Then the doorbell rang.

•  •  •

“I
CAN'T SAY
it was my finest hour.” Glitsky sat in Hardy's office, trying to look relaxed in one of the comfortable chairs by the Sutter Street windows. But he drummed his fingers on the chair's arm and hadn't touched the tea that Hardy had poured for him.

“You had every right to be there,” Hardy said. “You were a private citizen paying a call on another private citizen, with whom you had a scheduled appointment. Nothing about that is remotely illegal.”

“True enough, but everybody knew I was really investigating Katie's disappearance, and possibly impersonating a law officer in the bargain.”

“Did you state or imply to Ms. Orosco that you were a cop?”

“Not in so many words, but she must have gotten the general idea somehow.”

“Again, not your problem, and you broke no law.”

“I'm not worried about breaking a law. Nobody cares if I'm breaking a law. What they're going to care about is that I'm sniffing around and maybe obstructing what's starting to look like a righteous homicide ­investigation. I hated that kind of stuff back in the day. I still do, if I think about it.”

“Well,” Hardy said. “It was only a matter of time.”

“Thanks. That's heartening.”

“You're welcome.” Hardy stood by the windows, looking down at the traffic. Finally, he turned back to Abe. “What's she like, the other woman? Worth killing for?”

“You know I've only got eyes for Treya, so my opinion can't be relied on. But I think most normal males would find her irresistible in the extreme.”

Hardy raised his eyebrows. “In the extreme?”

“At least.”

“So the answer to ‘worth killing for' would be yes.”

“If anybody is.”

“And yet Hal broke up with her.”

“That's what they say.”

“Now I'm hearing reservations from you.”

Glitsky crossed one leg over the other. “You know when I said she was ‘irresistible in the extreme'? I lied. She's about two or three times that. If Foley and Monroe hadn't been there, and in spite of my only having eyes for Treya, I don't know if I would have been able to talk to her without babbling.”

“I'd like to see you babble.”

“Many people would, but few get the chance. Patti Orosco would have gotten a large dose of full-blown babble. Really, she's so beautiful, it's silly—no other word for it. Oh, and she's worth ten million dollars, too. Did I mention that?”

“How did it come up in casual conversation?”

“Hal mentioned it to me last night. To prepare me, I suppose.”

“For?”

“For the whole package. He told me that when I met her, I would have a hard time believing he'd let her go. He was right, but he wanted me to know what I was walking into.”

Hardy said, “You know what this is starting to remind me of? When he first came in to meet me. Homicide had only just had their first talk with him, but he wanted to prepare me for when they turned up the heat, so I'd be ready.”

“There are similarities,” Glitsky said. “Strategically.”

“I wish I knew what they meant.”

“Maybe it's the way Hal handles things. Of course, he tries to leave me with the impression that he knows nothing about Katie's disappearance, and if I'm forewarned about all the stuff that makes him look bad, suddenly, I'm not surprised. Therefore, I don't jump to conclusions.” Glitsky shifted in his chair. “I'm assuming you still want my basic mind-set to be that he didn't do it.”

Hardy allowed himself the germ of a grin. “Until you find a bit of evidence that says he did.”

“I haven't. But on that, I've been trying to imagine other scenarios and have come up with a couple.”

“Hit me.”

Glitsky reached for his tea, took a sip, and made a face. “This stuff is cold.”

“Think of it as iced tea that's gotten warm. What are your scenarios?”

After a rundown of his visit to the Golden Gate Bridge that morning to check on the feasibility of Katie's suicide—in an hour of tapes, fast-forwarded, there hadn't been any sign of a woman sneaking onto the bridge behind an unsuspecting bicyclist on the night in question—Glitsky concluded, “So that took the idea of her suicide, which I think was slim to begin with, pretty much out of the running.”

“You really think she might have killed herself?”

“Maybe. If she found out about Hal and Patti, if life at home with the kids was hell . . .” He shrugged. “I can't rule it out entirely. People have been known to get creative, doing themselves in. She might have walked into the ocean and swum till the current got her. Did Frannie say she was depressed?”

“No. We haven't talked about their sessions, Abe. Privilege.”

“My favorite. Would she talk to me?”

Hardy didn't have to think about his reply. “Not unless they find her body, and even then maybe not. You're welcome to try, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Is that all you had with alternative scenarios, possible suicide?”

“Actually, no. Next was checking the lovely Patti Orosco's alibi, which is the primary reason I'd gone by to meet her.”

Hardy nodded in appreciation. “Isn't it fun to force your brain out of its ruts? If you'd gone on the assumption that it was Hal, you never would have met Patti, not to mention suspect her of murder. What was she doing on the night in question?”

“She went to the movies by herself. She thinks it was the seven-fifteen showing.
Life of Pi.
She loved it. And no, she did not keep her ticket stub. She also called Katie the day before—covering the phone records that will surely be discovered—and while that gave a plausible excuse why she couldn't make the Thanksgiving dinner, it also would have allowed her to find out, if she didn't already know, exactly when Hal would be leaving to pick up his brother at the airport.”

Leaning against his desk, Hardy crossed his arms and let out a small sigh. “You think they were in it together?

Glitsky replied, “I'm under orders not to think it was Hal, remember. Patti didn't need him to be part of it, and if she can avoid suspicion, she comes out smelling like a rose, the sexy rich best friend who stood by Hal in his moment of torment and need. But one thing is certain: Both of their lives are immeasurably better if Katie is out of the picture.”

“You really like them for it,” Hardy said.

Glitsky's mouth ticked up a quarter of an inch. “I'd be lying if I said I wasn't warming to the idea.”