The Ophelia Cut (18 page)

“Well,” Sher said, “thank you. We’ll keep that in mind when we talk to Mr. Goodman. Actually, we were hoping you might know the names of any of Mr. Jessup’s girlfriends, or women he dated, who might have had significance.”

She was shaking her head. “No, I didn’t know who he dated, and I don’t have—” Abruptly, she stopped. “Wait a minute. A woman he dated?”

“Yes. And broke up with, or she with him, a couple of months ago.”

Diane raised her eyes to one of the room’s corners, and the two inspectors let her remember. At last she came back to them. “A man came by here several weeks ago, asking for Mr. Jessup. He told Rick to stop bothering his daughter, and then they both went out to the hallway. Rick never came back in that day. I think he was out a couple of days after that. The rumor among the interns was that the man had hit him out in the hall. Can you give me a minute?”

“As much as you need,” Brady said.

Getting up, Diane left the room with a resolute stride. Brady crossed his fingers and held them up, and Sher nodded in acknowledgment, then sat back in her chair and crossed her arms to wait.

“Okay,” Diane said as she came back through the door, appointment book in hand. “I’ve got it. I keep the calendar for both Mr. Goodman and Mr. Jessup. It’s critical to have a record of who’s been in to see whom in this business. Even though this man didn’t have an appointment, he introduced himself to me, and I put him in the log. He was”—she looked down as she read—“Moses McGuire, owner of a bar called the Little Shamrock. He said it was about his daughter Brittany.”

B
USINESS WASN’T EXACTLY
booming at the Shamrock. Happy hour wouldn’t start for another forty-five minutes; there were only five customers, a middle-aged tourist couple at one of the tables, Dave with his Miller Lite in his usual place up at the front of the bar, and two hipsters in the back room playing darts. Lyle Lovett’s “This Old Porch” played low through the music system.

Back at the well area, Moses McGuire checked the front door one
more time, just to be sure no one else was coming in, and then—seeing no one—he free-poured a half inch or so of vodka, a tiny refresher, into his club soda, squeezed in another wedge of lime. He’d barely taken the first sip when another couple appeared through the large plate-glass window that looked out onto Lincoln Way. A moment later, they were standing in front of him.

Not customers, as it turned out.

They laid their badges on the bar in front of him, and the glib McGuire said, “I don’t need your IDs. You guys look twenty-one to me.”

Paul Brady’s entirely businesslike smile came and went as he introduced himself and his partner and said they were hoping to talk to Moses McGuire.

“You found him. How can I help you?”

Sher told him what they were investigating and asked if he’d heard about it.

“I have. I read about it this morning.”

“Did you know Mr. Jessup?” Brady asked.

“I did. I talked to him a couple of times. I was wondering when you guys would come by. He dated my daughter a few months ago and treated her badly, so I went and found him and told him he should leave her alone.”

Brady again. “And how did he take that?”

“I think I convinced him that it would be a good idea.”

“Did you strike him?”

McGuire sipped from his glass. “Do you have a report saying that I did?”

“Is that a yes or a no?” Sher asked.

“It’s an entirely separate question,” McGuire said evenly. “Are you talking to me because I’m a suspect in his murder?”

The question obviously set the two inspectors back for a beat or two as they exchanged glances. Sher said, “We don’t have any suspects yet. We’ve barely begun to look.”

Brady added, “That’s another way to say everybody’s a potential suspect.”

“Do you want to answer our question?” Sher asked. “Did you strike Mr. Jessup?”

McGuire lifted his glass again, took a serious pull. “Yes, I did. I didn’t really hurt him. I just wanted to get his attention.” He wiped away an imaginary speck on the bar with his towel, then looked back up at the inspectors. “When was he killed?”

Sher got half a nod from Brady, tacit permission. “Two days ago. Sunday evening sometime.”

“Sunday,” McGuire repeated. “Sunday’s my day off here, as luck would have it. Sunday and Monday.” He hesitated, squinting in apparent concentration as he tried to dredge up the memory. At last it came. “I was fishing from about four o’clock till dusk out on the beach by the yacht club. The St. Francis.”

“We didn’t ask,” Brady said.

“No, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to get that out of the way.”

Sher asked, “Any luck? Fishing, I mean?”

“Couple of small ones I threw back.”

“Were you alone?”

McGuire inclined his head a fraction of an inch. “I was, except for the usual half dozen Asians or so, who would probably remember me, since I was the only Irish guy down there. Now I’ve got one for you, if you don’t mind. If I’m not a suspect in this killing, what did you want to see me about?”

At the end of the bar, Dave brought his empty beer bottle down with a thump. Several years north of seventy, Dave wasn’t much of a raconteur, and when the service slowed to the point where the bartender didn’t notice he’d gone dry, he’d tap his bottle with increasing intensity as the seconds ticked.

Lyle Lovett had given way to Michael Bublé crooning “Everything.”

McGuire excused himself, turned and opened the refrigerator, then popped another bottle of beer and took it down to Dave. When he came back, he asked, “Where were we?”

Brady told him, “You were asking why did we want to see you. And the answer is we didn’t necessarily. The fact is, we wanted to talk to your daughter Brittany, and you were the fastest way to get to her.”

“Why do you want to talk to her?”

Brady came right back at him. “Why don’t you tell us how to reach her, and then she can tell you after we talk?”

“Because you’re Homicide inspectors, and if you want to talk to Brittany, it’s going to be about Mr. Jessup, isn’t it? What is it, exactly, that you want to know?”

“Mr. McGuire”—Sher stepped in to ramp down the intensity—“we understand your concerns and your desire to protect your daughter. We can tell you that she is not an active suspect, but she may have information on the case, and we’ll need to talk to her to find out if it relates and how. Does that seem so unreasonable?”

“I never said it was unreasonable. I asked why you wanted to talk to her, and now you’ve told me. Which you could have done from the get-go instead of laying all of this suspect nonsense on me first.”

“Look,” Brady said, “you assaulted a guy who later got killed. At some point, we were going to follow that up, so while we had you here—”

“Look yourself,” McGuire shot back, “the guy assaulted my daughter. I delivered a message that I’m pretty sure he got the gist of. Which I thought would be the end of the story. And now you want to talk to Brittany but won’t tell me what you think she knows. Damn straight I’m trying to protect her.”

A
S THEY WERE
rolling back downtown, Sher said, “Bottom line, he gave us her number. We ought to be thankful for small favors.”

“Favor my ass.” Brady was hot from the conversation. “You’re telling me that the guy finds out his daughter’s been raped and he doesn’t do something about it? I wanted to take his picture on my phone and go show him to some of our witnesses.”

“Oh yeah, getting his permission for that? That would have calmed things down.”

“I didn’t want to calm things down. I wasn’t necessarily going to ask his permission, either. McGuire admits he assaulted our victim. That puts him closer than anybody else.”

“Paul, come on. Maybe there’s a connection between hitting a guy and knocking his brains out with a club. Let’s remember, we don’t even know for sure that Brittany was raped. All we know is she was dating Jessup at one time. It could have been anybody he happened to rape on Saturday. We’ve got to get to that first if we’re going to get anywhere with McGuire.”

“No. First we pull his DL picture and six-pack it to our witnesses.”

“Well, of course.” That was standard procedure, taking McGuire’s photograph from his California driver’s license, inserting it into a plastic sleeve with five other photographs—a six-pack—and hoping to get a positive identification. “I just don’t want you to get all psyched up.”

“Perish the thought. I think we can at least admit there’s a likelihood that the rape and the murder are connected, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s what we’re going on,” Sher said. “It’d be a stretch if it were anything else.”

W
HEN
W
ES
F
ARRELL
got home—a small Victorian house across the street from Buena Vista Park in the Haight—his keen perceptive ability sensed something amiss right away. The chair tipped over on its side in his dining room was the first clue, but the full roll of paper towels on the kitchen floor was another good indication.

Sighing, he picked up the offending debris, then took off his suit coat and hung it over the back of the chair. He considered removing his dress shirt and tie, hoping for a little giggle with today’s T-shirt—which read M
AMMALS
S
UCK
—but if history was any indication, his sense of humor would not assuage Sam when she was embroiled in a holy cause.

As she was today.

He climbed the steep staircase to their bedroom and, when he discovered she wasn’t there, continued to the ladder off the hallway that ended in a half doorway out to the roof. Sam, most beautiful when she was fiery, sat facing him in a low director’s chair, arms crossed. Behind her, the sun was unmolested by cloud cover all the way out to the horizon, and in the insane perversity that was San Francisco’s weather, the temperature hovered near eighty with nary a hint of breeze—a gorgeous evening.

Wes ascended onto the flat deck they’d built, sixty square feet surrounded by little peaks of roof, protecting them from sight and, on most nights, from wind. He offered an apologetic smile and said, “I just think the kitchen chair looks better the normal way, on its legs. But the paper towels were a good idea. Who knew? Just unroll ’em first, and it saves a ton of time.”

She had her head canted to one side. Her voice, when it came, was barely audible. “I told you about the connection to Rick Jessup because I thought it might help bring his murderer to justice, but only under the
express condition
that his victim would remain unnamed, as always. Do you remember that?”

“Yes, of course, but—”

“No buts. This is not a new deal. I believe we’ve had more than a couple of discussions about it over the years. Who do I hear from twenty minutes before it’s time to go home but the woman herself, completely distraught—overwrought, Wes, betrayed by us, the very people who promised to protect her!”

“I didn’t—”

“
Yes, you did.
How else could they have found her so fast? The police were at her apartment today. Today! Hours after I told you.”

“And I’m supposed to feel bad?”

“How can you not? This is completely wrong. The last few days have been traumatic enough for the poor girl, and now she finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation that she doesn’t want any part of. She might even be a suspect, because getting raped is a motive to kill someone, isn’t it? Look where she is now. And all because I thought you could keep it to yourself.”

“Which I did. Listen, ask yourself this: how could they get the woman’s name from me? This just in, I never had it. As you know. They went looking for Jessup and found a connection. It was good police work, that’s all. So what are they supposed to do? Ignore it, ignore her? I don’t think so. Maybe she did kill him. We don’t know yet.”

“How can you say that? She’s the
victim
, Wes.”

“Victims have been known to fight back, even to kill.”

“Spoken like a true prosecutor.”

“Hey! Check it out. That’s what I do. Prosecute people.”

“People I’m trying to protect.”

“Not usually, Sam. Usually, I prosecute bad people, people who’ve done terrible things. Did your victim tell you they’re charging her?”

“No.”

“Well, then. Did she admit that Jessup raped her? I mean, to the cops?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? All of this angst and accusation, and you don’t know?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It sure seems like the point to me.”

“No. The point is that what happened to her is confidential unless she chooses to disclose it. She came to us and trusted us, and because I told my boyfriend her rapist’s name, trying to do the right thing, the cops are at her home. That is plain wrong. You never should have given them Jessup’s name.”

“Let me repeat, neither of us has a clue how the inspectors got to this woman whose name, P.S., I still don’t know. Plus, that’s exactly what I had to do if he raped somebody on Saturday night—”

“He did.”

“All right, he did. Seeing as he did, somebody might have killed him because of it. If your victim can help us find that person, then we need her, and we’ve got every right to talk to her to find out. How is that not obvious?”

She sulked down into herself. “You never would have argued this before you were the DA.”

“You know what, Sam? I don’t care. I’m arguing it now because it’s right. Your victim wants to keep the shame of the rape—if there is any—to herself? That’s her call. But when she comes to you, it’s on the record. If you want my real opinion, you and your center should be mandated to report. You hear about a rape—especially a date rape, like this one—you get the guy’s name, if the victim knows it, and call the cops. That’s the only thing that will put these scumbags in prison: victims who will testify against them. If that’s too big a burden, well, excuse me all to hell.”

Sam stared at him for a good twenty seconds, then shook her head. “I don’t know you anymore.” Standing up, she walked by him, got to the ladder, and stopped. “I really don’t.” She started down and pulled the door shut behind her.