The Hearing (18 page)

After a moment, Banks realized that this was about all he was going to get from Glitsky in the way of absolution. He took in a breath, let it out heavily. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m waiting until somebody in Rigby’s office decides something.” A shrug, a glance at Hardy. “Meanwhile, I’m exploring some other career opportunities.”

“He’s thinking of opening a chop house.” Hardy, poker-faced.

“Not really?” Banks asked.

“It could happen,” Glitsky replied, equally deadpan. “You never know.”

The church bells began to peal, cutting off the riff. It was a quarter to ten, still fifteen minutes until the service, but at the signal, the crowd shifted, began to move.

Ridley wasn’t ready for that, yet. He still wanted some more resolution. “Anyway, Abe, listen, if there’s anything I can do . . .”

Glitsky raised a hand, a farewell. He was going inside now. “Rid, listen, it’s done. Don’t worry about it.” He turned for the cathedral, leaving Banks out where he’d found them.

Hardy hustled a step or two and fell in beside him. “You know what I can’t believe?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“My brother-in-law doesn’t think you have a sense of humor.”

Glitsky threw him a sideways glance. “He’s not paying close enough attention.”

It was the day that Treya was supposed to begin on the
Grayson
project for Mr. Jackman, but he and Mr. Rand had closed down the firm for the morning so that all of Elaine’s coworkers could attend the memorial. Treya had arrived early to pay her own private respects.

She found Grace to be an odd sort of cathedral. With its classic lines, stained glass and cavernous open space, in some ways it almost seemed to fit the medieval mold—an imposing edifice calculated to reflect the majesty and glory of God. But this church, for the past twenty years or so, had also been the locus of compassion, support and empathy for the victims of AIDS. And now the heartbreaking quilts hanging over her seemed to fill all the open space, humanizing the cold stone. In a tragic way, yes, but Treya found it strangely comforting.

She felt it strongly—this was no longer the home of some harsh and angry deity, but a true community center, with an almost palpable sense of forgiveness, acceptance, serenity. Outside the large crowd might be milling uneasily, but in here there was only peace.

She’d wandered about inside for a while and finally seated herself in the sixth row on the right—she had no need to claim any pride of place.

People had begun filing in, talking quietly among themselves. It was no surprise to see a lot of her colleagues, if she wanted to use that word, from the firm. It was even less of one that they held mostly to their cliques. None of them sat in her row.

Clarence Jackman tapped her on the shoulder, said hello, introduced her to his wife Moira, a regal matron in black. Treya recognized some of the students from Hastings who had been to Rand & Jackman for the post-arraignment gathering last week. The mayor, arm in arm with the district attorney. Then her chief assistant, Torrey, the prosecutor at the arraignment, someone who was actually trying to do the right thing, to bring Elaine’s killer to justice.

The volume steadily increased, echoing in the open space, and Treya turned in her pew to catch a glimpse of the incoming flow. She had to catch her breath as, almost directly behind her, she recognized Abe Glitsky and—she had a hard time even believing the gall of it—the lawyer, Hardy, who’d been in the courtroom representing Elaine’s killer.

The lieutenant seemed as disconcerted to see her as she was to see him. He put out a hand, stopping Hardy, then nodded. Now abreast of her, he halted. “Is this pew reserved?”

In somber and measured strides, Gabriel Torrey walked up the center aisle and slowly mounted the lectern to the left of the altar at the front of the cathedral. The dying strains of the string quartet’s powerful arrangement of “Amazing Grace” still seemed to hang in the air. The chief assistant district attorney wore a charcoal Armani suit, a white shirt with a black silk tie. His left lapel sported a little red AIDS ribbon, his right a tiny red rose.

For a short while, he gathered himself. When he was ready, he raised his head and looked out over the enormous congregation—more than five hundred souls were seated in the pews and standing behind them and to both sides, filling in all the space to the far walls.

After adjusting the microphone, he spoke with a quiet, even intimate familiarity, his voice firm and evenly pitched. “This is a remembrance,” he began.

Midway through the service, she couldn’t take it anymore. Suddenly, she stood, walked the length of the pew away from Glitsky and strode toward the back door of the cathedral. Outside, the cold sunlight glare stopped her, and she stood on the steps, blinking, drawing gulps of air.

“Are you all right?”

She turned, knowing who it was. He’d followed her out. Her hand went to her neck, her hair. She started down the steps before her eyes had adjusted, stumbled. He was right with her and caught her by the arm, preventing her from falling. As soon as she recovered and realized he was still holding her, she all but shook off his hand. Immediately, he let go and stepped back. “Are you all right?” he repeated.

“I’m fine. Fine.” She straightened up. “I don’t need your help.”

“No. It’s just that you . . . I thought you might faint.”

“I don’t faint. I’ve never fainted in my life.” Shaking her head, she spun for a moment back toward the cathedral’s doors, then took another step away from them, toward the park. Getting away. Finally, her breath hitched, and she focused on him. “I can’t believe you came here. I think it’s appalling.”

He backed away a step.

But she wasn’t through yet. “And your friend, that’s a great touch. Elaine’s killer’s lawyer. What’s that all about, him being here? This is supposed to be for her friends, for the people who miss her, not for . . . not for somebody like him. And you.” Having said her piece, she was done. “Good-bye, Lieutenant.” She started down the steps again.

Glitsky didn’t know what he was doing. Not exactly. He certainly hadn’t planned to move into her row in the church, to sit next to her.

To follow her out.

Now she was telling him good-bye again, dismissing him, and he was following after her. “Ms. Ghent. Please.”

After a few steps, she slowed and came to a stop. Her shoulders heaved in a deep sigh, and when she turned to face him, he noticed that her nostrils had flared in anger or frustration or both. Hipshot, she crossed her arms. “What?”

“I’m going to need to look at Elaine’s files.”

He
really
didn’t know what he was doing now. There was no way on earth he could look through Elaine’s files. He was on administrative leave. He couldn’t get a warrant. It was ridiculous even to suggest. But suddenly he knew what he had to do. The police—his own police department—weren’t going to look. It was going to come to him to lock down this case. And Elaine’s files were the best place to begin.

“Haven’t we been through this? Didn’t I just see Cole Burgess arraigned the other day for her murder?” She took a breath. “Look, I know those files and he’s not in them, okay? She didn’t know him.”

“I’m not saying she did.”

“So what
are
you saying?”

He realized that he’d been seeing her face since the last time he’d been with her. Now he raised his eyes, looking out behind her. He had to take off the gloves and he didn’t want to see the effect it would have on her features. “The first thing is I’m wondering why you’re so hostile.”

Now he did meet her eyes. A cold, empty stare came back at him.

He ignored it. “Normally, somebody’s so hostile to the police, we wonder why that might be.”

Her reaction, if she had one at all, seemed to be a greater depth of loathing. If Glitsky thought intimidation would affect her, he was dead wrong. She set her jaw, narrowed her eyes in disparagement. “What’s the second thing?”

“The second thing . . .” He wrestled with it internally. “The second thing is I’m not absolutely, positively beyond any doubt sure that we have the bastard that killed Elaine. And I’ve got to be sure of that.”

“And get, what do you call it, the collar? Another feather in your cap.”

Surprised at this direction, he shook his head. “I don’t care about that.” Another short pause. “I cared about Elaine.”

This time she snapped back at him. “And that’s why you’re here at this memorial, aren’t you? Because you care. Because you were her friend.” She was in a high fury, her eyes threatening to spill over. “And that’s why you brought your friend with you I suppose. Because you both
care
so much. Well, let me tell you something. It’s pretty damn transparent and it makes me sick.”

“What is? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your pretending to be close to Elaine so maybe witnesses will talk to you.”

Glitsky was rocked by her vehemence. He held his hands out, supplicating. “I don’t even have any witnesses. And even if I did, why would I do that? I couldn’t care less if witnesses like me. You never get a witness who likes you. And who cares? They talk if you can make them.” He didn’t realize it consciously, but the habits of twenty years were kicking in. He was a cop. This was turning into an interrogation. “What I want to know,” he said, “is why
you
don’t want to talk to me. You were Elaine’s friend, coworker, maybe confidante. And yet you don’t want to help me make sure about who killed her. I wonder about that.”

She challenged him with her expression, spoke into his face. “I don’t believe you. How about that? I don’t believe anything you say. You didn’t care about her then, and you don’t now.” She moved forward, almost close enough to kiss him. “She knew,” she whispered hoarsely. “About you. Don’t you understand? Her own father, her real father. And you never acknowledged her, never even tried.”

Glitsky’s mouth opened to defend himself. But there was no defense and no words came.

Treya kept at him. “And she didn’t dare approach you. Big, tough, hard-ass homicide lieutenant with the big sign saying ‘Keep away. Everybody keep away.’ And you’re trying to tell me you cared? Well, excuse me, but I was there, I saw how much you cared. How much it hurt her. How you broke her heart.”

Glitsky was a stone embedded in the pavement. Behind them, the doors opened and the strains of the string quartet floated out. A lone trumpet played a mournful solo, piercing the morning air. Finally, Glitsky turned as the first mourners appeared.

There was a tingling sensation in his face and then, on its heels, a great, almost unendurable pressure in his chest. He turned back to Treya Ghent, the beautiful outrage, the righteous indignation.

He opened his mouth again, and again no words came. His own heart felt as though it was exploding. Pain shot out through his limbs and he felt himself falling, crumbling.

He felt the cold of the day come up at him. He had a vision of an almost purple sky, of a noise like a rushing wind, of Treya Ghent somehow reaching for him just as he’d caught her minutes earlier.

And then it was dark.

I
t was dark.

Hardy rubbed his hand over his eyes and realized that night had fallen outside while he’d been sitting at his desk. He looked at his watch—9:15. Had he called Frannie to tell her he was missing dinner? Said good night to the kids? He didn’t even remember.

Oh yes, he did now. Frannie knew what he was going through and he could stay down and catch up as long as he needed. Things at home were under control—the kids had already finished homework and were on their way to bed. Tomorrow would arrive bright and early. Maybe it wouldn’t kill him if he wanted to put something off, come home? But it was his call. No pressure.

He stood up and put his hands on the small of his back, did a half turn in each direction trying to get the crick out. Coming around his desk, he flicked on the room lights by the door to his office. He’d been reading in the pool of light created by the green banker’s lamp on his desk, studying the first of the discovery documents in the Cole Burgess case—pictures of the crime scene, the arresting officers’ reports, autopsy, interrogation transcript with Ridley Banks.

Outside in the hallway, he stood a minute listening for other signs of life in the building.

Nothing.

He walked down the half-dark stairs until he could get a view of David Freeman’s office. The door was closed and no hint of light came from under it, so apparently even the old man had gone home for the night.

The laggard, he thought. Imagine Freeman going home before ten o’clock. Whatever for? He had no life outside the law. But Hardy wished he had been there, wished he could talk to him. He stayed for a long moment on the stair, then walked the rest of the way down, into Freeman’s unlocked office. If Phyllis could only see him now, he thought. But it gave him no real solace.

He went to the wet bar and poured himself three inches of Scotch, then went back to the door with his glass and took a last look at the room. “Lazy slug,” he muttered aloud.

Back upstairs in his office, his drink on his desk, he pulled three darts from the board and paced off the distance to the tape line he’d put down at the eight-foot mark. Throwing easily, willing his mind to go empty, he hit the “20,” “19” and “18” on the first round. He noticed, but just barely, and went to the board to retrieve the round, then went back around his desk, swallowed a mouthful of his drink and picked up the telephone again, punched in the hospital’s number. “Intensive care nurses’ station,” he said.

Glitsky was still incommunicado. As of now, it wasn’t certain he would ever again be otherwise. He was under heavy sedation.

The call got bounced to the nurses’ station, where they filled him in on more of the nothing that had changed in the two hours since he’d called last time. There was no one else at the hospital that Hardy could talk to. Glitsky’s father and son had gone home. His condition was listed as guarded.

Hardy hung up, looked at the darts, still in his hand, wondered where they had come from. He drank some Scotch. Halfheartedly, he opened one of the folders in front of him.

And there it was again, staring him in the face—the damning, nearly incontrovertible evidence against Cole Burgess.

Who, Hardy reminded himself not to forget, had never, not once, denied that he had killed Elaine Wager after all. At best, he’d said he couldn’t remember.

And Hardy didn’t kid himself. He thought that there was an excellent chance that Cole had in fact killed Elaine. He might be able to fashion an argument to convince a jury that his client was legally innocent. He absolutely believed that this was not a special circumstances death penalty murder no matter what. But nothing could hide the terrible
fact
of what had happened.

And if Cole had been prowling the alleys looking for prey—and that appeared to have been the case—and then killed Elaine because he was strung out and just didn’t quite understand what exactly was happening—then Hardy didn’t like where he was.

And the more he looked, the more he saw.

Both of the two arresting officers told essentially the same story, even if their reports had slightly different details—most notably, one of them said he heard a shot and its ricochet during the chase. But the rest of the facts were undisputed and, from Hardy’s perspective, depressing and damning.

One of the most difficult problems Hardy was going to face when this thing came to trial was the whole question of the character of the defendant. Now, the good news regarding character is that neither side could mention character in any relevant context
unless the defense brought it up first
. After that, though, it was open season.

So Hardy sensed that he was going to be faced with a dilemma. If he brought it up that Cole was really an okay person who just had a disease—addiction—and could supply witnesses such as high school teachers, old friends, his mother and so on to prove it, then Torrey could bring up the years of theft, petty crimes and minor assaults that were part and parcel of Cole’s history. And even if Hardy didn’t raise Cole’s character in the guilt phase of the trial, the jury would hear about the facts of this crime.

And they were particularly ugly.

The police had come upon Cole after he had picked the body clean of its jewelry. They discovered all of it on his person, in his pockets. He had ripped a heavy gold necklace from around Elaine’s throat, slicing the skin of her neck in the process. He’d pulled a half-carat diamond engagement ring off her finger, breaking the finger at the knuckle as he did so. He had ripped the earrings from her pierced earlobes. He had inflicted all of these injuries postmortem, according to the autopsy. They were the only bruises and marks, except the bullet entry wound, on Elaine’s body.

And Cole had—quite definitely—inflicted them.

He didn’t remember that, either.

He’d gone through her purse, taking the money from her wallet, leaving the credit cards, apparently realizing, even in his stupor, that no one would mistake him for an Elaine.

Which led Hardy to the whole question of Cole’s sobriety or lack of it during the commission of the crime. Everyone—the arresting officers, Banks, Glitsky—agreed that he seemed to be either drunk or stoned, but as he read over the documents, Hardy realized that there was no proof of that either. No one had given him a breath or blood test, and they’d sweated him long enough that by the time he’d been admitted to the hospital, his blood-alcohol level was about at zero. The prosecution could easily argue that Cole’s apparent unconsciousness after his arrest in the police car was an act, and Hardy would be hard put to refute it.

Especially in light of Cole’s flight when the arresting officers flushed him. His eventual crash into the hydrant notwithstanding, Cole had run swiftly and with determination away from the pursuing officer, so much so that he had been pulling away during the chase and, if not for the hydrant, nearly invisible on the dark night at street level, would quite possibly have escaped. He was not staggering, not speaking with any slur more noticeable than his usual drug-addict drawl.

After they put him in the squad car, he apparently passed out. Hardy could argue that the adrenaline had kicked in, then worn off. But it was not going to be an easy sell.

He closed the folder again, looked at his drink, which had evaporated, checked his watch. It was ten-thirty. He considered calling the hospital again, but realized he couldn’t bear to hear it tonight.

If Glitsky were dead, he’d still be dead in the morning.

The alcohol hadn’t touched him. It was time to go home.

Wearing his paper slippers and orange jail jumpsuit, a sullen inmate named Cullen Leon Alsop sloped into the visitors’ room in the homicide detail. He got himself arranged in his wooden chair—leaning back as comfortably as he could with his hands cuffed, a slack-jawed smirk in place. It was the middle of the night, after lockdown, and he was alone here except for the cop who’d escorted him over from the jail, a black guy he incorrectly figured to be about his age. Cullen knew he was a cop but he couldn’t have told from what he wore—a blue nylon windbreaker, black shirt with the top button loose, royal blue tie.

Across the table in the airless room, the cop adopted pretty much the same posture as Cullen, and the inmate found this disturbing. He was the one turning over important evidence in a murder case. They ought to be treating him with more respect, give him some doughnuts and coffee or something, at least get his cuffs off, and instead here’s this spear-chucker yo-yo giving him ’tude. He had half a mind to call the whole thing off, but he had to get out of here and this was the only way, so he settled deeper into the unyielding wood and waited.

The cop finally came forward with a weary exhalation of breath. He withdrew a small portable tape recorder from a pocket and put it on the table. “Sergeant Ridley Banks, Badge Fourteen-oh-two. It’s ten-thirty on Monday, Feb 8, and I’m in an interrogation room on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice, San Fran, talking to . . .” Consummately bored, he consulted the folder in front of him. “. . . Cullen Leon Alsop, white male, twenty-five years old. Case number . . .” He rattled off a bunch of numbers.

Alsop had had enough. He’d been through this type of thing more than once, and this wasn’t feeling right to him. He interrupted. “Hey.”

Banks looked up, eyes dead. “Quiet please.”

Cullen shook his head, made some “I don’t believe this” gesture, straightened up in his chair. “Hey,” he repeated, “I got a deal going here with the D.A., and you—”

Banks reached for the recorder and snapped it off. “Did I just tell you to shut up? When I ask you a question, you answer me. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear you. Do you hear me?”

Cullen shrugged.

And Banks came forward like an attacking animal, up out of his chair, slamming a flat palm with a noise like a gunshot on the table. “THAT WAS A QUESTION! I asked if you could hear me. So if you’re smart you say ‘Yes, sir.’ Do you hear
that
?”

Cullen decided to be smart. “Okay, yeah. Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Banks picked up the recorder, pushed the button again, resumed in his monotone, “Now, Mr. Alsop, for the record, you’re in jail for selling crack cocaine, your fourth offense, is that correct?”

“Yeah.”

“But you were out on the street again. On probation.”

This seemed vaguely amusing to Cullen. “Three probations, man. I mean, I don’t know why you guys don’t all talk to each other or something.”

“Who?”

“All you guys. Cops, D.A.’s, the judges. Decide between you whether it’s against the law or not to deal in this town.”

“Okay, next time you’re worried about it, here’s the answer. It is.”

Cullen barked out a laugh. “So tell it to some judge. I got three convictions in the last seventeen months—I’m talking
convictions,
man, not arrests. The judge says, ‘Hey, cut it out, really.’ I tell him okay, I promise, and he puts me out on the street that day, and tomorrow I’m back in business. Next time, it’s ‘Hey, you promised.’ So I say I’m sorry and promise again. Then the third time, same thing.”

“Well, this time it isn’t the same thing.”

A shrug. “Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, it’s why we’re talking right now.”

“About the gun.”

“Yeah, that. The one I lended to Cole.”

“Lended?”

“Yeah. Lended. Something wrong with that?”

“He paid you money for it?”

“He was gonna. That was the plan.”

“When. After he got a day job?”

Cullen Leon Alsop conveyed his disbelief at Banks’ stupidity, but saw something in the inspector’s eyes and cut it off. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “We hang a lot together. Sometimes I get him stuff, you know, put him in touch. But Saturday he’s got no money and he needs to score. I mean, bad, you know. And I’m out, too, or he woulda done me I’m sure, friends or no friends. But I got a hold of this little popgun.”

“How’d that happen?”

An evasive shrug, eyes all around the room. “Somebody traded me one a few weeks ago.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Some guy.”

“For what? What did you trade it for?”

“I don’t remember. Something I had. You know, you got a big barter community out there.” Banks made an impatient face, and Cullen got back onto the point. “Anyway, so I showed it to Cole.”

“And why did he want it, the gun? To rob somebody?”