Glitsky 02 - Guilt (22 page)

'See?' she said. 'The mute beasts concur.'

Wes got up and took the top off the kettle cooker. A couple of T-bone steaks filled the whole grill. He gave them a turn and came back to sit down. 'You know why people cry at happy endings in movies? Or at weddings? Or even, some incredibly weak slobs, at country-music lyrics?'

'They're crybabies?'

'I'm going to hit your broken arm.'

'Crybabies isn't the answer?'

He shook his head. 'They want it that way again. Something in them remembers that they used to think it was that way, that things in life could turn out good, and seeing that hope, being reminded of it, it's too much to take. So they cry.'

'But you still think things turn out good, don't you?'

'No. I still wish they did just as bad, but I don't think so anymore.'

She reached and took his hand. 'Seeing your wife today?'

'Lydia?' He let out a long breath. 'No, Lydia's over. It was more, I think, the kids. Mark's kids.'

'What about them?'

Again, he sighed. 'I don't know. All the effort, the hopes, the lessons, the tears, the fights, the sicknesses – and at the end, what do you get? You get some kids who are total strangers, who don't want anything to do with you.'

'Your kids?'

'Well, some of that, maybe. But mostly Mark's. They really hate him.'

'Maybe he wasn't a good father.'

'That's just it. He was a
great
father. I was around. I saw him. Baseball, tennis, soccer, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, private schools, great summer camps – you name it, those kids had it.'

'But did they have
him?'

He seemed to deflate. 'I guess I don't know that. Did my kids have
me?
I mean, both of us – Mark and I – we worked like dogs so Lydia and Sheila didn't have to. This was, of course, the Middle Ages. Back then wasn't considered the height of oppression.'

The silence, as well as the difference in their ages, hung between them. 'I better get the steaks,' Wes said, but he didn't get up. He didn't want to let go of Sam's hand. He turned to her. 'His kids really hate him, Sam, and I know them. They're not bad. They're fine with me. They call me Uncle Wes even, sometimes. But their dad… I just don't get it.'

'Maybe he's not the person you think he is. Not with everybody else. He seemed pretty cold to me.'

Now he did let go of her hand. 'Let's not take my best friend apart four days after his wife was killed, okay?'

'I'm not taking him apart, I'm saying he seemed cold. Maybe he was cold to his kids, that's all.'

'And maybe he's trying to keep from breaking down, so he's guarded right about now, how's that?' He had raised his voice and Bart sat up, growling.

Sam took a beat, a breath. 'You're right, I don't know him at all, I'm sorry. The steaks aren't going to be rare.'

Downstairs, in his, kitchen, they sat at the table. Sam stared down at her food. Wes couldn't stop the smile that crept up. She wasn't going to be able to cut her steak. 'Your cast.' Standing up, he came around the table and kissed her. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I don't want to fight.'

Sam lay her head against him. 'Don't be mad at me. I'm not attacking your friend.'

'I know. With your permission.' He pulled another chair out from the table, sat down, picked up a knife and began cutting. 'And the fact is, Mark might have been a terrible father. I don't know. Maybe husband, too. We didn't pride ourselves on that so much in those days. He's just my friend. Some of us white males – even if we're not angry – occasionally feel unfairly attacked here in this modern world. It's tempting to band together. So I suppose I've got a gut reaction to protect him. Especially now.'

'I can see that. But I'm not attacking you either, okay?'

'I know, but I wonder if it's just that I didn't see what he might have really been like with his kids, couldn't let myself see because I was doing the same thing.'

'And what about now?'

That stopped him again. For a moment. 'What about now?'

She only dared meet his eyes.

'No,' he said. 'Flatly, emphatically no.'

'Okay, but since we were talking…'

'I don't understand how you can even say that?'

'I didn't, actually. I looked it. But I was talking to Christina today – her reaction to Mark being under suspicion kind of reminded me of you.'

'You told her about it?'

'A little. It's okay, Wes, she won't alert the media.'

'So how was her reaction like mine?'

'Just very knee-jerk. Not really looking at it. She's in love with him, you know.'

'She told you that?'

'No.'

He rolled his eyes.

'But a girl can tell.'

'So Christina's in love with Mark. And he's my best friend. Now let me get this straight – because of those reasons we both don't believe he killed his wife while he was out driving golf balls. How strange. Do you think he killed her?'

She shook her head. 'No. Your steak's getting cold. It's perfect, by the way.'

Standing up, he kissed her and went back to his seat.

'All I'm saying,' she continued, 'is that I have a hard time believing Sergeant Glitsky goes around planting evidence to convict people for no reason.'

'Well, I hope you're right.' He cut a piece of meat. 'Christina's in love with him?'

'Tis the season,' she said sweetly. 'She may not even know it yet, but you wait. Six months.'

Wes stopped chewing. The words were almost exactly those used by Mark's kids when he hadn't known what they were talking about. He did now, and it made him nervous.

Most nights, Sam stayed with her brother Larry. She was apartment hunting in a haphazard fashion, but it was never easy finding the right place. And tonight she was staying at Wes's.

Now she slept peacefully next to him. Unable to do the same, he carefully lifted the blanket from his side of the bed and got out, threw on his old terrycloth robe, and padded into the living salon, sitting on the futon. The streetlights outside painted their designs on his hardwood. He'd left the kitchen window open over the table where he and Sam had eaten, and the breeze coming through it still felt almost balmy.

Bart climbed up next to him and he petted him absently. His mind wouldn't stop racing. Maybe he ought to write a country song, he thought, 'bout settin' up all night while your girl's asleep, your love is deep but you're feelin' blue, what's a poor country boy to do? It had possibilities.

But that thought didn't hold. He kept returning to Christina Carrera… which brought him to Mark. Of course, as he'd told Sam, Mark had an airtight alibi. Hell, it wasn't even that, he reminded himself, it was the truth.

The past twenty-five years of Wes's professional life had been spent in the mud and trenches of criminal law, taking on the causes and cases of a seemingly endless procession of people who'd been careless, negligent – and who found themselves called to answer for their mistakes and misdeeds.

He didn't often torture himself with whether any of his clients had done what they'd been accused of. He generally preferred to ask them about the evidence against them and how they might explain it. Sometimes, if he liked his clients, he'd provide two or three explanations and ask if any of them had a particularly nice ring.

He
never
asked
directly if a client were guilty. That was a conclusion for the jury. Similarly, he tried not to ask any open-ended questions about what someone had or hadn't done because he might get an answer he didn't like, and then be stuck with it. And there was always the very real possibility that his client would lie to him anyway. This was in the very nature of people, he believed, and hence understandable, human, acceptable.

But his adult pragmatism was a far cry from the idealism that had drawn him to the law in the first place. It was a rationalization, as so much of his life had become. You did what you had to. And that was okay.

Most of the time.

He'd been trying to convince himself of all this now for the last decade or so. It was the recurring topic in his 'retreats' with Mark Dooher, who would always argue the opposite – you didn't do what you had to do, you did what you
believed
in.

Before these troubles, Farrell thought that had been easy for Dooher to say. He'd never had to struggle in his career, in his life. He could afford the luxury of idealism, of believing he was always on the side of the angels. He was Job before the curses.

But Dooher was right about one thing. The accommodation ate at you. It made you cynical. Sometimes it seemed to Wes that the endless litany of 'good enough', 'good enough', 'good enough' was a prescription for failure. That there really wasn't any such thing as
good enough.
There was your best, and then there was everything else.

And, in his darkest moments, Wes sometimes believed that his marriage had failed, his business had never really prospered, he'd never achieved all he'd set out to do – in law school, he'd dreamed of being appointed to the Supreme Court! – because he'd burned himself, his best self, out on the altar of 'good enough'. Lord knew, it had been
hard
enough, raising the kids, getting and keeping clients, making time for Lydia. He'd put in all the energy he thought he could spare, instead of all he had, on just about everything he put his mind to.
What had he been saving the rest for?

Was this the source of his mediocrity? The secret of the nonentity he'd become?

He knew the reason for his nervousness after dinner. Because for once, now, he'd committed. He had a potential client and best friend that he totally believed in.

And now there was Christina Carrera, his own albatross. Why couldn't she just go away?

Farrell, too, had caught a glimpse of them together for a moment on Mark's lawn this afternoon. Witnessing first-hand the almost embarrassing connection between them, he kept coming back to the one salient fact that he wished he could forget. Or – better – never have known.

Which was that Mark had wanted her from the first moment he laid his eyes upon her.

But what did that mean? Nothing, he told himself. It was merely one of those late-night chimeras that tantalize or frighten, and then in the morning turn out to have been a shadow falling on an uneven surface, a wisp of white fabric blowing lonely in a faraway tree.

'Wes?'

Sam's quiet whisper from the bedroom. Worried, obviously caring. Was he all right? Did he need her?

Petting Bart a last time, he pushed himself up. The doubt, the ghost, the mirage – whatever it was – would be gone in the morning.

He was sure of it.

The next day, Glitsky was at Marine World with Nat and the three boys.

He still hadn't found a nanny, and had decided that what they all needed was some time together, a change of scene, a nice day outside, away from the city. So he'd picked them up at the friend's house where they were staying, and they'd made the drive across the Bay and north to Vallejo.

At the amusement park, the sun was out and although there was a steady breeze, it didn't have that Arctic intensity you got off the ocean out in the Avenues where they lived.

Now he was sitting high in the grandstands, watching the killer whale show. Isaac and Jacob had gone down to the seats by the water with their grandfather, all of them, including Nat, deciding that they really needed to get soaked. But O.J., ten years old, didn't want to do that and didn't want to leave his dad, either.

In fact, after the older boys had gone down, O.J. asked Abe if he minded if he sat in his lap. Which was where he was now.

The huge mammals entered the pool, but O.J. couldn't have cared less. 'Dad,' he said, 'can I ask you something?'

Ever since Flo had first gotten sick, O.J. had preceded nearly every remark with this question. Glitsky thought it was because he was such a sensitive little kid, so aware of the pressure everybody was under. He didn't want to add to it by asking any question that someone would have to answer. He didn't want to be a bother.

This sometimes translated to Glitsky as though his youngest son didn't want to exist, and that drove him crazy. But he kept his voice modulated and answered the way he always did.

'You can always ask me about anything, O.J. You don't have to ask permission to ask.'

O.J., as always, then said, 'But can I ask you something?'

Patience, Glitsky told himself. Patience. 'Yes, you can ask me something.'

'Okay. What if all the sudden, you know Merlin?'

'Merlin?'

'Yeah, Merlin, King Arthur's musician.'

'Magician. But yeah, okay, I know. Merlin.'

'Right. So what if Merlin came back to life and he decided all the unicorns were going to be down on earth from now on?'

O.J. had also been playing with variations on the coming-back-to-life idea for the past few months. What if Robin Hood came back to life and got disguised as one of the Power Rangers? What if George Washington really didn't die, but was just waiting to see if he could live to be 300 and then he could be President again? What if Bambi's mother…?

'Things don't come back to life,' Abe said, gently but as firmly as he could. 'Dead means you're gone forever. That's what dead is.'

'I know that, Dad, but Merlin was a musician and he could come back if he wanted to, and then he could decide the unicorns could live on the earth.'

He wanted to tell him there were no unicorns, either. The boy was ten years old, closing in on puberty, and he really ought to stop seeking comfort in these fantasies.

But somehow his energy failed him. He let out a long breath. 'Instead of where? Where do they live now?'

O.J. couldn't believe his father's ignorance. 'Well, now they live in the clouds, in Unicorn Land.'

'Okay.'

'And then they could come down and be here on the earth and we could ride them, and maybe even have one as a pet. What if that happened?'

Glitsky tightened his arms around his gangly son, came up with the answer he always wound up with. 'If that happened, O.J., that'd be really neat.'

Isaac was still very wet. He exceeded by several years the twelve-year-old limit for the playground, but dripping as he was, he didn't look it. And even though he was a cop, pledged to enforcing the laws, Abe wasn't going to call him on it.

He and Nat had left their food – French fries and corn dogs – on one of the picnic tables behind them, where the ravenous seagulls had spirited it away and scarfed it all down.

Now the two men stood at the fence that kept the adults in their place. All three of the boys were clustered together, up high in a corner of a climbing structure made of rigging rope. Hanging together.

The killer whales had dumped a couple of swimming pools worth of water into the lower galley. By now, Nat's hair was re-combed, but his clothes stuck to him. He was marching in place, his tennis shoes making squishing noises. 'This is a good place, Abraham, but I wish someone had told me about this getting splashed. They don't mean a little damp, let me tell you.'

'I didn't know.'

'But I noticed you didn't go down yourself, am I right?'

'O.J. didn't want to get so close to the water. That's why I didn't go down.'

'I wish I believed this completely. I don't want to think you sandbagged your old man.'

'I would never do that. You didn't raise that kind of boy.' A sideways glance.

'That's a good answer.' He pulled his shirt away from his body, did a little dance with his pants. 'And O.J., I happened to see, he was on your lap.'

Glitsky nodded. 'He's having a hard time. He's trying to figure it out.'

'And you are back to work?'

'I've got to work, Dad. It's what I do.' But he realized that his father needed more of an explanation. 'Look. The Hardys are great people, Frannie's taking better care of them than I can right now. And the boys are in school anyway most of the day. I'm there for them. I see them. I go over some nights. We go out on weekends. Like now, Dad, like right now. I've got a lot to get set up.'

'I understand this.'

'So?'

'So nothing.'

'But what?'

Nat shrugged. 'Just to think about, that's all.'

He knew what his father was getting at, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. He should have taken some more days off, he supposed, gone over every single night to be with the kids, but when he'd gotten the call about Sheila Dooher, his priorities found themselves rearranged.

Or maybe it was just an opportunity to dwell on something other than the emptiness. His father had implied that, to some degree, he was running away, denying what he needed to confront, shunting off his responsibility to his children. And maybe there was an element of that. He had something to do, something that needed to be done, and it was consuming. The simple doing of it – regardless of the outcome – could save him, could pull him through this time.

He didn't know, but he had to try.

This was why on Sunday night, the boys were back at his friend's house and he was at his desk downtown on the 4th floor, reading the autopsy report on Sheila Dooher that had finally come in. He had done legwork all week long – interviewing neighbors and driving-range employees and Dooher's co-workers and anybody else he could think of. Going over the initial lab reports, studying the room-painting videotape, combing the Dooher house (again, with another warrant, while Dooher was downtown working) for fibers and hairs and fluids.

But without the autopsy he was whistling in the wind and he knew it, and there had been some bottleneck on paper coming out of the coroner's. Autopsies normally took almost six weeks to get typed, but he'd asked for a rush on this one.

He had the report in front of him now, and he scanned it once, trying to make sense of it, wondering if it might be the wrong one. For a different body.

Because the autopsy report he was looking at listed the cause of death as poisoning.

And what the hell was
that
about?