Damage (49 page)

Amanda Jenkins felt about as attractive as a turnip.

She hadn’t slept more than three hours at any stretch since she’d heard about Matt, and the past weekend—in spite of the apparent closure and cosmic justice represented by the deaths of the Curtlees and their butler—had been more grueling still. She had dated him for more than a year, but she had never met Matt’s parents or his three sisters or his older brother. Nevertheless, on Saturday she’d been included in the extended family for the huge funeral Mass at Saints Peter and Paul at Washington Square, and then the burial down in Colma, after which she’d been seated between his mother, Nan, and his sister Paula at the reception at Fior d’Italia.

That had gone on until seven or so, and then she and Nan—by now her best friend—had gone out on an old-fashioned roaring drunk around North Beach, where they hooked up with some other assistant DAs and cops who’d also been at the funeral. In spite of the alcohol, or maybe because of it, she woke up before dawn yesterday, Sunday, and cried pretty much nonstop until the late afternoon, when her crushing hangover finally began to fade after a two-hour doze. She had moderated the drinking somewhat last night, ate some Chinese at home and then didn’t fall asleep again until three A.M.

So when she got to the police lab at nine thirty, she knew she wasn’t at or even near her physical peak. Still, you had to play the cards you got dealt, and she knew that her aces were her legs, so it would be foolish not to play them. She wore her shortest miniskirt, dark green, under a severely plunging green pullover sweater. And three-inch heels. Checking herself in her mirror before she went out, she was reasonably certain that nobody was going to spend much time noticing the pallor of her face, the sag in her cheeks, the red in her eyes.

She’d handed in the request early Saturday morning, to one of the CSI guys, who promised he’d take it out to the lab as part of their general delivery. Glitsky had been right and there had been no legal issue at all with serving a search warrant at the Curtlee mansion. Amanda was still there, going on two o’clock in the morning, when they found the safe in Eztli’s room and broke into it. What they found inside brought to six the number of handguns in the house—the Curtlee/Eztli murder weapon, the gun under Eztli’s armpit, an S&W .357 in his safe, and three other pistols in another unlocked safe in the headboard of the Curtlees’ bed. Four of the weapons were .40 caliber and could have been the weapon used to kill Matt Lewis.

For some reason, Amanda had become fixated on getting all the details right about Matt’s murder. She thought she knew that Ro had killed him, but somehow it had become very important to her to make absolutely sure, if only so that it might help her better understand, although to understand precisely what was something she could not have elucidated.

From Linda Salcedo’s statement, the murder weapon in Friday night’s massacre had been Ro’s personal gun, so what Amanda had requested was that the lab conduct a ballistics test with a bullet from that gun against the bullet that had killed Matt. Since she’d marked it as high priority and rush, she’d hoped to have it by first thing Monday morning, assumed that someone would have pulled some overtime to get it.

When she’d called at eight, hoping to get some results, they hadn’t even started yet. When she got the name of the ballistics tech, Vincent J. Abbatiello, and realized that it was a guy who sounded on the phone to be about in his late twenties, probably straight if he was a cop, she’d reached for her miniskirt.

Now Abbatiello had invited her back with him, showing off the still relatively new lab in the department’s Building 606 facility in Hunters Point Naval Shipyard with ill-concealed pride. This was an enormous and modern structure, a far cry from the tiny and cramped lab of the past. Amanda oohed and aahed her way along with him, and by the time they reached his area, what she wanted was his first priority.

Given that no one had seen fit to get to it over the weekend, Amanda was amazed at how little time it took. The lab really had modernized its capabilities, and the shooting and computer analysis of ballistics results took no more than five minutes per test, including shooting the gun and retrieving the bullet to test against the standard.

Fighting her nerves and the residual alcohol, the tension while she waited on the first test—with Ro’s gun, a Smith & Wesson Military and Police semiautomatic 9 mm—was nearly unbearable. She sat next to the microscope that Abbatiello used and while he calibrated the machine, she had to lean over, her hands over her stomach. And the result of this first test was obvious, although not in the way she hoped. It was clearly a mismatch.

“Oh God,” she said to Abbatiello. “How could that be?”

“It’s all right. We got three more tries.”

They got it on the second one.

Glitsky was down on the third floor in Amanda’s office, leaning back against one of the counters with the door closed behind him. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t Ro,” he said.

“But it was this guy Ez’s gun. I mean, it was in his safe. It’s registered to him. He’s got a carry permit. And while we’re at it, tell me, would you, how in the world does that happen? How’s a guy like this get a carry permit?”

“He’s a citizen, right? Naturalized, but even so. He works in security. He’s got no criminal record. But mostly, Cliff Curtlee is behind him pulling strings with just a tiny bit of influence. No problem.”

“So here’s the problem with that. I don’t see him letting Ro shoot his gun. I don’t know if I see anybody letting Ro even hold a gun, much less shoot it. He might point it back at you and pull the trigger just for jollies.”

“He might.” Glitsky chewed his cheek. “Any of Ro’s prints on the gun itself?”

“No.”

“Any of this other guy?”

“Several.”

“Hm.”

“So what’s it mean, Abe? If Ro didn’t shoot him . . .”

“For what it’s worth, I think Ro probably shot him.”

“I know. But what if he didn’t? I mean, then what would that have all been about?” She was back on the verge of tears.

Glitsky couldn’t offer much in the way of solace. “Look,” he said, “whoever actually pulled the trigger, Ro was responsible for it. He’s responsible for all of this.”

Glitsky’s vitamin D overdose, if that’s what it was, had worn off completely by the time he stopped in front of Darrel Bracco’s desk out in the middle of the homicide detail. His inspector was filling in an administrative report of some kind, engrossed in it, when Glitsky put a haunch on the corner of his desk, sat, and said, “I don’t even want to start to tell you how much I don’t want to ask you this question.”

Bracco looked up. “Then don’t.”

“Yeah, but here’s the deal. This morning I come in to work and the world is a rosy place. Ro Curtlee is out of our hair forever. All of his cases are closed. There’s a high degree of certainty about all of this, right?”

“Right. As in none.”

“Right. So then Amanda Jenkins gets into work this morning and she’s been down at the lab doing ballistics on the bullet that killed her boyfriend.”

“Okay.”

“Actually not so okay. That bullet didn’t in fact come from Ro’s gun. It came from the bodyguard’s gun.”

Bracco clasped his hands behind his head. “Doesn’t mean Ro wasn’t shooting it.”

“That’s what I said, too. It doesn’t mean Ro didn’t shoot it. But you know what it does mean? It means it wasn’t
definitely
Ro. It might have been the other guy, the butler.”

Bracco snapped his fingers. “That’s why he offered to take a polygraph. The son of a bitch would’ve passed it, too.” He broke a sudden grin. “But here’s the good news. Fourteen years a cop and I finally get to say ‘the butler did it.’ How cool is that?”

“I don’t want it to have been the butler, so not very cool at all.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Abe. It probably was Ro. What does it matter anyway? Anybody it matters to is dead.”

“Not true. It matters to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I was completely and absolutely certain that Ro had killed Matt Lewis. I mean, he had motive. He had opportunity. He had the means. No question, he did it. Now there is doubt. Maybe not a lot of it, but real honest-to-God doubt. He might not have done it.”

“But again, Abe, so what? Why does it matter now?”

“It matters now because now I’m starting to have doubts about the other case I was equally certain about. Janice Durbin.”

“No,” Bracco said. “There’s no doubt there. With the shoes and the fire and then the paintings getting slashed. That was definitely Ro.”

“Right,” Glitsky said. “Except if he wasn’t there.”

“But he was.”

“Well, remember your talk with him at Denardi’s office, where he essentially admitted to killing Matt Lewis, when it turns out maybe not after all?”

“Sure. But I still think he pulled that trigger.”

“Well, think it all you want, but he also in that same interview gave us an alibi for the morning of Janice Durbin’s murder. You remember that?”

“Of course. His parents, the butler, and the maid.”

“The maid,” Glitsky said. “That would be Linda Salcedo, wouldn’t it?”

Bracco sat all the way back in his chair; his eyes had closed. “This was the thing you didn’t want to ask me.”

“ ‘Didn’t want’ isn’t strong enough.”

“Then I’ll say it again. Don’t.”

“I’ve got to. She’s the last person in the world who’d want to give Ro an alibi for anything. She hasn’t been to court yet and doesn’t have a lawyer. I want you to go over to the jail and see if she’ll talk to you. Ask her if she remembers any time Ro went out early in the last couple of weeks. She’s already told us he’s a late sleeper. If she corroborates his alibi ... if he really couldn’t have been there . . .”

“He was there, Abe, at Durbin’s. He had to have been there.”

“Yeah, I know. But it would be better if we made sure. Way better.”

Jon Durbin got called out of his English class at eleven fifteen and was asked to report to the principal’s office. When he got there and gave his name, the secretary instructed Jon to go to one of the counseling rooms down a short hallway off the main lobby. His stomach doing cartwheels and his head light—
what else could have happened now?—
he got down to the third doorway on his right and knocked once.

The door opened away from him and he stepped inside, not seeing his father until the door was nearly closed behind him. Jon looked from side to side in anger and frustration, trapped. “I don’t have to stay here. Let me out.”

Michael Durbin stood his ground, holding the door closed behind him. “I wanted to have a few words with you,” he said, “after which you’re free to go.”

“I’m free to go now. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Well, that makes one of us. I’ve got something to say to you, short and sweet. I did not kill your mother. I don’t know where you got that idea . . .”

“You don’t? You don’t think we all heard you fighting all the time?”

“It wasn’t all the time. We were having some issues. That’s what parents do sometimes. I did not kill her. We were trying to work things out so we could stay together. We got a little vocal from time to time.”

“Ha. A little?”

“So what, Jon? Really, so what? The issues were serious. Okay?”

“I know what the issues were. Or rather, the main issue.”

“You do? Maybe you could tell me, then.”

“You and Liza, that’s what. How’s that?”

“Well, that’s just completely wrong, is how that is.” Michael’s arms were crossed over his chest—protecting the door, protecting himself—and now he dropped them to his sides. “You think we could sit down a minute?”

The room held a table and four chairs. Jon hesitated, then finally sidestepped over to the nearest chair and lowered himself into it. His father pulled another chair from where it sat against the wall over to him. He wasn’t going to leave an open shot at the door to his son. Now, though, seated in front of it, he came forward with his elbows on his knees and raised his eyes directly to Jon’s. “I don’t know how I’m going to convince you of this, but Liza is a friend of mine and that’s all she is. That’s all she has ever been.”