The Motive (4 page)

They’d avoided pretty much all discussion of whether they’d have more children after Rachel, but Treya didn’t feel as though she’d been sneaky with this latest development. They both knew they were doing nothing to prevent it. Surely that was a sign of Abe’s tacit approval.

But she wasn’t completely sure.

While watering the plants in Jackman’s outer office, which doubled as a no-frills reception area for the DA’s appointments, she caught sight of herself in the wall mirror and realized that she’d been biting her lips and had scraped her lipstick off, top and bottom. Stepping closer to the mirror, she saw traces of it on her teeth. Nerves. She had to call Abe and let him know right now. She had just finished scratching the lipstick off and was returning around the front of her desk to do just that when Dismas Hardy, Jackman’s eleven o’clock and Abe’s great friend, knocked at the side of the open hallway door. And the phone rang.

“If that’s for me, I’m in training for a marathon and can’t be disturbed,” Hardy said.

Treya shot him an amused and tolerant look and reached over the desk to pick up the phone. “DA’s office.” She came around the desk and sat in her chair, frowning. “No,” she said, “what about her?” Treya listened for another moment, then shook her head. “I haven’t heard a thing, and nobody’s called Clarence about anything like that. Yes, I’m sure. Do you want me to ask Diz? He’s here.”

Hardy looked over in some surprise.

Treya held up a finger, listened, then spoke across to him. “Kathy West”—the mayor, on her job now for about five months—“wants to see Abe. He wonders if you might have heard about anything going on at City Hall?”

“Just the rumor that she was firing him, but I don’t believe it.”

Treya spoke into the phone. “He hasn’t heard anything
either.” She listened. “Okay. Well, whatever it is, I wouldn’t worry. No, I know. Good luck.”

She hung up, and realizing that she hadn’t told her husband her own news,
their
own news, she bit at her lip again.

“Are you all right?” Hardy asked.

“I’m fine. Just a little distracted.

“Well,” Hardy copped Billy Crystal’s old
Saturday Night Live
accent, “it’s not how you feel but how you look, and dahling, you look mahvelous.” When Treya didn’t react, Hardy went sober. “Is Abe really worried? Are you?”

“I don’t think so. He’d just rather be prepared whenever it’s possible.”

“You’re kidding? Abe?” Then: “I do wonder what Kathy wants, though.”

“Whatever it is, it’s got to be important, don’t you think? She wanted him ASAP,” she said. “And in person.”

Kathy West had been a city supervisor for six terms and, during the last couple of years before her election to mayor, had been a regular at Clarence Jackman’s informal “kitchen cabinet” meetings, held most Tuesdays at Lou the Greek’s bar and restaurant, located just across the street from the Hall of Justice. Glitsky—and Treya and Hardy, for that matter—were also members, so there was a history of goodwill and mutual respect between the deputy chief and the mayor.

Nevertheless, Glitsky did not feel free to sit down and relax in her office, but stood at ease in the center of her rug.

Nor did Kathy West come out from behind her large and ornate desk. Through the open double windows behind her, downtown San Francisco shimmered mostly white as the fog burned away. Small-boned and delicate, West’s fragile packaging all but disguised a ferocious will and laser intellect. Completely at home in polite society, raised to an old standard of born-to privilege mixed with a heightened sense of civic responsibility, she was in her bones a pragmatic, skillful politician, now somewhere in her late fifties. Playing somewhat against type, she talked the good talk about believing in getting her hands dirty if that’s what it would take, whatever it was. And that had gotten her elected.

This morning, Glitsky was discovering firsthand that it wasn’t all talk. “I just can’t accept any part of it, Abe. The Paul Hanover I knew—and I’ve known him for thirty-five years—did not shoot his fiancée, and then himself, and then burn down his house. That is just not what happened.
I can’t accept it.”
She stabbed the open flat of her desk blotter with a bony index finger. “I don’t care what the medical examiner rules.”

Glitsky wasn’t going to fight her. At least not yet, before he knew anything. He assumed she just needed her hand held. “I don’t think John Strout is anywhere near making a ruling,” he said. “It’s just the usual media madness, filling that awful silence they hate so much.”

West’s mouth went up in a tic of appreciation that vanished quickly. “I think it’s more than that. They were, and I quote, ‘police sources.’”

“I heard that, too. Saying they couldn’t rule out murder/suicide. Which, in all fairness, they can’t. It might have been.”

Glitsky reserved judgment as he always did, but if Strout eventually came to this conclusion, it wouldn’t be a shock. At this stage, it certainly looked like it could have been a murder/suicide. But he wasn’t going to press that argument with the mayor. “I don’t blame you for being angry at the stupid reporting, but it’s not like we don’t see it every day. If you want, I’ll see to it you’re informed with every development. Then you can call the press conferences yourself and maybe even have some fun.”

But fun wasn’t on the mayor’s agenda. Impatient, she was shaking her short bob of gray hair, a quick birdlike movement. “No,” she said, “I want more than that. That’s why I called you here, Abe. I want somebody I trust working on this. This cannot be what it seems. I will not have Paul Hanover’s name slandered over something that he didn’t do.” She asked abruptly, “Do you know Dan Cuneo?”

“Sure.”

“What do you know about him?”

Glitsky knew he did not like him. He guessed that the feeling was mutual. Cuneo had never worked in homicide under Glitsky, and worse, a couple of years before he’d actually accused
Glitsky of collusion with Dismas Hardy for trying to deflect a murder rap from one of Hardy’s clients. But West didn’t need the history lesson about him and Cuneo. “Marcel Lanier says he’s okay. He makes his numbers.”

“My, what a ringing endorsement.” West’s bright eyes stayed on Glitsky, waiting.

His mouth went up a fraction of an inch—a pass at a smile—and he shrugged. “I don’t know him personally. If I can ask, what about him?”

“The latest version of the news I’ve seen named him as the police source. He’s the inspecting officer on this case. I think he’s a hog for press and he’s already jumping to conclusions. I think he’s the wrong man.”

After a minute, Glitsky nodded. “Would you like me to talk to Lanier? Maybe he can assign Cuneo a partner, although I hear he likes to work alone.”

“I’ve heard he can’t keep a partner.” Kathy West scratched at her blotter. “Actually, Abe,” she said quietly, “before I asked you to come up here, I called Frank Batiste.” This was the chief of police, Glitsky’s boss, the man who’d promoted him. West’s mention of his name in this context—low-key, to be sure—marked a change in the dynamic of things. “I asked Frank who, in his opinion, was the single best homicide inspector in the city, and he said it was you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Glitsky said, “though of course I’m flattered. But I’m not in homicide anymore, as you know. They have good people down there.”

West stared at him for a long moment. “Abe, I don’t want to beat around the bush. I’d consider it a personal favor if you would agree to help investigate this case. Chief Batiste has agreed to assign someone else temporarily to your administrative duties, press conferences, public appearances and so on, during the interim. You’ve made no secret about how little you like that stuff. You’ll enjoy the break.”

“And what about Cuneo?”

“That’s a police matter, Abe. I’m confident that between you, Frank and Lieutenant Lanier, you’ll be able to come to some resolution there.”

Glitsky looked out over the mayor’s shoulder to the city
beyond. Though it wasn’t particularly warm in the room, he had broken a light sweat and wiped a sleeve across his forehead. “Ms. Mayor,” he began.

“Abe, please.” She held up a hand. “It was always Kathy at Lou the Greek’s,” she said. “It’s still Kathy.”

He had the permission, but that didn’t tempt him to use it. Nodding, noncommittal, he drew a breath. “I was going to say that it’s impossible to predict where an investigation is going to lead. I’m concerned that I won’t find what you’re looking for.”

“But I’m not looking for anything,” she said.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but it very much sounds like you don’t want me to find that Hanover killed anybody. Or himself.”

“No, if that’s what he did, then that’s what you’ll find. And I’ll live with it. But what I want is somebody who’ll really look. Somebody who won’t go to the press on day one and say it looks like a murder/suicide, that it looks like Hanover killed his girlfriend.”

Glitsky chewed at one side of his cheek. “All right, then. I need to ask you something else.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“What was your relationship with him? Hanover?”

The mayor’s eyes closed down. “He was a friend and a donor to my campaign.”

“Nothing more?”

She straightened her back. “What are you implying?”

“I’m implying nothing. I’m asking. Call it the start of my investigation.”

“All right, I will, and I’ll give you the same answer. He was a friend and contributor. Nothing more.”

“All right.”

West cocked her head to one side. “You don’t believe me?”

“If you say it, I believe you, but you’ve got lots of friends and lots of contributors. Your interest in how one of them is remembered after his death seems a little…unusual.”

West scratched again at her blotter. “That’s not it, how people remember him,” she said. “Or rather not all of it. Maybe it’s a corollary.” She took a minute. “What I’m getting at,” she said, “is if he didn’t do it, somebody else did—killed him, I mean.”

“Don’t you think that would probably have been the girlfriend, Missy? I’m assuming from what I’ve heard that she was the other body.”

“If she was, then, all right. At least we’ll know for sure. At least someone would have really investigated, and Paul deserves that.” She lowered her voice, narrowed her eyes. “I want to be satisfied that whoever killed him is either dead or caught. Call it simple revenge, but I liked the man and I don’t buy that he killed himself or anybody else. And okay, maybe it was this Missy, but if it wasn’t…”

Glitsky jumped. “Is there any reason you think it might not have been?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Business problems, family issues, something you’d got wind of?”

“No. But I’d be more comfortable if the various possibilities got eliminated.” She turned a palm up. “So how about it, Abe? You want to help give a tired old lady some peace of mind?”

It wasn’t really a request. West seemed about as tired as a hummingbird, as old as a schoolgirl. Glitsky had no choice. He gave her a salute. “It would be my pleasure,” he said.

As a deputy chief, Glitsky had a city car and a driver—Sergeant Tom Paganucci—assigned to him for his personal use. Paganucci, humorless, taciturn and loyal, suited Glitsky well. He did not make suggestions or offer opinions, and only asked questions related to his work, though he would answer them on other topics if Glitsky asked him directly. He started no conversations at all, but waited for orders that, once given, he obeyed with what seemed to be a complete commitment of his body and soul.

He was forty-three years old, heavily built, clean-shaven, prematurely gray. Because he’d asked on their first day together, Glitsky knew that his driver was married and child-less, but that was the extent of his knowledge of Paganucci’s personal life, except he was reasonably certain that he didn’t do stand-up comedy on his nights off.

Paganucci had kept the car running where he’d left his boss off a half hour before, out in the street in front of City Hall, and now Glitsky slid into the backseat. He closed the
door after him and leaned back for an instant into the comfortable black leather. He looked at his watch—11:50. “Do you think the chief’s in, Tom?”

Paganucci reached for his intercom. “I’ll call.”

“No, wait. What am I going to say to him anyway?” Glitsky didn’t want an answer from Paganucci and wasn’t going to get one in any event. He let out an audible breath. “All right,” he said, “let’s go.”

“Yes, sir. Where to?”

“Alamo Square.”

Paganucci put the car in gear and they started to roll.

“He was here ’til they bagged the bodies, sir,” Becker said. “Then I guess he went home to get some sleep.” They were standing outside on the concrete steps, where Becker had come out in response to Glitsky’s hail.

“What about you?” Glitsky asked.

“What about me?”

“And sleep.”

The firefighter chortled. “Not a priority. Not ’til I’m satisfied here anyway.”

“And you’re not?”

“I’ve got a pretty good basic idea, but I’d be more comfortable if I had more answers.”

“Like what?”

Becker shrugged. “Like multiple flash sights. The place went up so quick and thorough, it looks like somebody knew exactly what they were doing.” He motioned behind him at the charred remains of the house. “But we’ve only got the one spot. You want to go in, take a look?” Without waiting for an answer, he led the way through the still-standing front doorway. Some of the ceiling above the lobby was intact, but with the fog burned off, the day was bright with sunshine and there was sufficient natural light to see clearly.

Glitsky squatted over an area of rug that appeared less scorched than its surroundings. There was another, similar spot about eight feet farther into the lobby, at the entrance to what might once have been a hallway. “This is where you found them?”

“Yeah. Plus, it’s where the fire started. Get down and you can still smell the gasoline.”

Glitsky leaned over and inhaled, but couldn’t smell anything except fire. “You’ve probably gone through all this with Cuneo, but I’d be grateful if you ran it by me one more time. The mayor’s personally interested. She was friends with Mr. Hanover. I’d like to sound reasonably intelligent when I brief her. I’m assuming it was Hanover?”