The Ophelia Cut (22 page)

“Of course, but I haven’t heard of any such lead. You’re saying that you know of one?”

“I believe I do, yes. As you may know, your two inspectors came by my office a couple of days ago. They identified a man who came here, irate over what he thought was Mr. Jessup’s treatment of his daughter. The two men went into the hallway, and I just learned from my staff that this man assaulted Mr. Jessup, injuring him badly enough that he had to take a couple of days off work.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago. I can get the exact date, if you need it.”

After a moment, the chief said, “A couple of months is a relatively long time for this to be automatically, as it were, connected to the murder. You say the inspectors discovered this man when they talked to your people?”

“Yes. His name is Moses McGuire. I don’t know if they had the information that he brutally attacked Mr. Jessup. This was a violent, crazy man who hated Rick.”

“Yes, but if the inspectors got his name, I’m certain they would have interviewed him. Or are planning to soon.”

“They need to know about the beating. That’s a whole different animal than if he stopped by to say hello. Even if it was two months ago.”

“Yes, I understand that. Would you like to talk to the inspectors again, or would you like me to bring it to their attention?”

Goodman took a breath, dialing back the urgency. “God knows, Chief, I’m not telling you how to do your job. Or your inspectors. It could be I’m letting my frustration get the better of me. It’s been a tremendously difficult time, as you might imagine. Everybody loved Rick, and nobody seems to be doing anything to find his killer.”

“Yes,” Lapeer said. “I know it can seem like that.” A pause. “I’ll tell
you what. Why don’t I put in a call to Homicide, convey your information, and see how far they’ve pursued the angle? If there’s anything worth reporting, I’ll get right back to you. Or not. Either way.”

“I just thought it was too important not to mention it.”

“Those are good instincts. I’ll follow up and get back to you. Moses McGuire?”

“That’s the name. Thank you, Chief.”

“Anytime.”

A
S CHIEF OF
police, Vi Lapeer attended a host of mostly ceremonial functions. She took a lot of breakfasts and lunches and dinners and gave a lot of speeches. She went out to neighborhood meetings and talked about problems in the community and how the police could more effectively interface. She talked to business leaders about security issues, to homeless advocates about drugs and other problems on the streets, to the other brass within the police department about union issues, relations with other law enforcement agencies, budgets. She reached out to politicians of all stripes, kept up with the press, met with victims’ groups, child safety groups, youth guidance groups. She had regular meetings on everything from the Muni bus system and cable cars to graffiti abatement, dog policy in the city’s parks, hate crimes, and elder abuse.

What she almost never did, especially alone, was drop in on her rank-and-file officers and inspectors as they went about their daily work.

That was why Glitsky was significantly taken aback when, at the end of the day, sensing a shadow in his doorway, he looked up from a forensic report and saw her standing there, a solidly built, no-nonsense African-American woman in full-dress uniform. Bringing his feet down off the corner of his desk, Glitsky closed the binder and was immediately on his feet. “Can I help you, Chief?”

She stepped inside the door. “At ease, Lieutenant. I just thought I’d drop by and see if you could spare a few minutes of your time.”

“Of course, ma’am. Whatever you need.”

Although a vast chasm in chain of command yawned between them, Lapeer and Glitsky had forged something of a bond in the first weeks of her tenure as chief, just arrived from her assistant chief job in Philadelphia a
little over two years before. She had stood up for him in front of the mayor in a complicated no-warrant arrest Glitsky had felt obligated to make on the son of one of the city’s most powerful political families. In turn, he’d proved her ally against that same mayor—the current one, Leland Crawford—when, in the wake of her not doing his bidding in another matter, he’d polled the police heads in a ham-fisted effort to get a no-confidence vote against her.

“You don’t mind?” She checked behind her, pulled the door closed, turned back to him, and sighed. “I just got off the phone with Liam Goodman.”

Glitsky nodded. “He’s impatient about the Jessup thing.”

“He is. And you know how he loves to talk to the press.”

“So he called you.”

“And if he doesn’t get action from me, you know who gets the next call.” She pulled a chair up to Glitsky’s desk and sat down. “Where the buck stops and all that. I figured I’d see if there’s anything new that I can tell him in the name of progress. Meanwhile, he gave me some information he hoped your inspectors would find useful.”

“Rather than call them directly at the numbers on the cards they left at his office?”

“That wouldn’t have sufficiently underscored his importance, now, would it? Or what he had to say. I might not hear that he’s personally interested.”

“No, I suppose not.” Glitsky shook his head in disgust. “What a clown.”

Lapeer broke the hint of a smile. “Yes, but he’s our clown for the moment, not the mayor’s, which I predict will be his next stop if we don’t pat his hand. And for the record, what he gave me might have some relevance, even though it sounds like old news.” She glanced up at the whiteboard with all of Homicide’s active cases. “Brady and Sher?”

“That’s the team.”

“Have they checked in with you recently?”

“Yesterday.”

“You mind if we see where they are today? Are they out in the detail?”

“I’ll find out.” Glitsky picked up his phone, punched some numbers. “Paul, Abe. If you and Lee have a minute, I’ve got the chief in
here, and she’d like a word. That’s right, yes. Chief. Yes. Of police.” He hung up. “They’ll be right in.”

“Y
ES, WE KNOW
who Moses McGuire is,” Brady said. “We’ve already talked to him. He’s in a six-pack we’re showing our eyewitnesses today.” Since the chief remained standing, neither he nor Sher saw fit to avail themselves of folding chairs. They stood at one corner of Glitsky’s desk, hands clasped behind their backs.

“They gave us his name at Goodman’s office,” Sher added. “Jessup dated his daughter a few months ago.”

The chief was nodding, paying attention. “That’s what Supervisor Goodman told me. I had a discussion with him a little while ago, and he seemed to think you didn’t have all the information you needed.”

“You mean that McGuire hit Jessup?” Brady asked.

The chief tilted her head to one side. “So you did hear about that?”

Glitsky, blindsided anew with McGuire’s name, leaned back in his chair, rested both his hands on his stomach, and tried to be subtle as he clawed at it.

While the discussion continued.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sher said. “We asked him directly, and he didn’t make any bones about it. Jessup evidently hurt his daughter Brittany—pushed her, knocked her down, something like that—and McGuire came downtown to, as he put it, get Jessup’s attention and get him to stop harassing her.”

Lapeer considered that. “The supervisor’s version is that Jessup dumped her and she went wacko on him, filling her father’s head with lies.”

The two inspectors shared a glance.

The chief didn’t miss it. “Not true?”

Brady took it. “We don’t think so. We think he manhandled her.”

“Why do you think that? Why her word over his?”

“First,” Sher answered, “we never got his.”

“And second?”

Sher threw a mildly desperate, questioning look at Glitsky, then at her partner. She drew a breath, checked Glitsky again, came up with something that would probably fly for the moment. “Second, the admin in Goodman’s office didn’t paint too flattering a picture of Jessup.”

“In any event,” Lapeer said, “Goodman characterized McGuire’s visit
as a brutal beating that kept Jessup out of work for at least a couple of days.”

“Maybe,” Brady said. “But McGuire reminded us that Jessup didn’t file any report. You’d think if it had been that bad, he might have. Except then it might have come out that he’d pushed around McGuire’s daughter.”

Lapeer nodded again. “So you’ve looked at McGuire, but you’re not considering him a suspect?”

“We haven’t ruled him out,” Sher said, “but . . .”

Lapeer finished her sentence. “But it’s been a couple of months since this alleged beating, and why would he just jump up on Sunday night and decide to go and finish things with Jessup? That’s what I told Goodman, and that’s what I’ll tell him again. It doesn’t make much sense, even if McGuire’s a hothead. He’s already made his point to Jessup. He doesn’t need to go kill him.” She put it out to the three of them. “The bottom line, I guess, is there’s no reason to focus on McGuire over anybody else. That’s what you’re all saying, right?”

After a moment, Brady cleared his throat. Sher studied the tile on the office floor. Glitsky moved his right hand from his stomach to his desk and drummed his fingers a couple of times, quickly.

The chief eyed them each in turn. “Or maybe not right,” she said. “What are you not saying?”

Clearing his throat again, Brady came out with it. “Brittany went and had a drink at Perry’s with Jessup last Saturday night.”

Lapeer’s back went straight. “The night before he was killed?”

Sher nodded. “He couldn’t seem to get the message. He wanted to see her again or else he was going to file charges against her dad for the beating. She decided to go down and see if she could talk him out of it.”

“You’re saying they had a date Saturday night?”

“Yes, ma’am. Although I don’t know if I’d call it a date.”

On the street below, someone’s car alarm went off. No one in Glitsky’s office said a word while it ticked off uncounted time.

Finally, the noise stopped, and the chief found her voice. “That strikes me as a moderately important fact. Is there some reason you were stonewalling me on it?”

Sher dared a response. “We said we hadn’t ruled anybody out, ma’am. Including McGuire.”

“True, but this is exactly the kind of thing I could bring to Supervisor Goodman to get him off my back. Tell him that we are making progress and are maybe close to making an arrest.”

“That may not be true, ma’am,” Brady said. “We’re very light on evidence. We need to work with some of our eyewitnesses and see what we can come up with before we go back to McGuire. If we’re led in that direction.”

“Have you talked to the girl? Brittany?”

“Yes.”

“What does she say? How did the date go? Did Jessup mistreat her again? Did McGuire have a new reason to confront Jessup? Maybe kill him? Come on, people. It sounds like progress to me. It’ll sound that way to Mr. Goodman. We don’t have to name McGuire, but at least we can say we’ve got some real leads and we’re looking at some persons of interest, how’s that?”

Sher once again looked at Glitsky. “Sir?”

Pulling himself up to the desk, he clasped his hands. “Here’s the deal, Vi,” he said. “We got a tip through the DA’s office that a woman was raped on Saturday night. That woman may or may not have been Brittany McGuire. Brittany has not admitted it, and the information is privileged. We may never know. In any event, the victim of the rape identified her assailant as Rick Jessup.”

“So Brittany went home and told her dad—” Lapeer began.

“We don’t know it was Brittany,” Glitsky said.

“We know she went out with Jessup that night?”

Brady nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, then.” Lapeer wiped a hand across her forehead. “Jesus Christ, I’m not going to believe we’re talking about coincidence here. It’s too long a stretch, and without that, it sounds to me like you’ve got yourselves a prime suspect.”

“Except,” Sher said, “we can’t use the rape, because we can’t prove it happened.”

“So go show his picture to your eyewitnesses. Bring a witness in and pick him out of a lineup. Get this man off the street, and I mean yesterday. Do any of you have any doubt that he’s got at least motive and history?”

No one answered, because the answer would have been “So what?”
and that would have been insubordinate. They all knew—even the chief—that motive and history played little real role in convicting criminals. What mattered in a courtroom was direct evidence, preferably someone who saw a crime being committed. Here, though it would be nice to have a witness positively identify the suspect near the scene, even that would not be evidence of a crime, since none of the witnesses had seen whoever it was doing anything but walking down the street.

They had nothing yet. On what evidence were they supposed to act?

Nevertheless, the chief wasn’t here to split hairs. Her visage was stern and unyielding, and looking at her, Glitsky felt a thrum of foreboding—perhaps their subtle alliance had taken an irrecoverable body blow. It didn’t help that she was standing, looking down at him, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m serious as a heart attack here, all of you,” she concluded. “I don’t want excuses. Find a way and git ’er done.”

“I
N SPITE OF
the chief’s good intentions,” Glitsky said, “I would caution you against arresting Mr. McGuire until we’ve got something in the way of physical evidence tying him to the crime. Even if your eyewitnesses are on board. Not that I don’t agree that, as far as motive goes, he looks pretty good for it. But motive is highly overrated.”

“Maybe not so much,” Sher said.

“No?” Glitsky came forward. “My personal theory is that every human being who has reached the age of reason has already provided a motive for at least half a dozen people to kill him. Or her. Even as we speak, I can probably think of ten or fifteen people who’d be happier if I were dead.”

Brady grunted. “There’s an optimistic worldview.”

Glitsky shrugged. “Just a comment on motive.”

In spite of the banter, the mood after Lapeer’s departure stayed strained. Sher had lowered herself into a chair. Brady sagged against one of the filing cabinets. He said, “I don’t know, Abe. I thought she was pretty clear that we ought to turn up the heat. If McGuire’s the guy, we need to find a way. Talk to his family. Check his alibi—”