27
THEY HELD THE funeral Mass at St. Ignatius the following Monday morning. It was a tense and brittle affair.
In the days since the discovery of Katie’s body, the suspicions about her husband had coalesced into what seemed a nearly universal acceptance that he was her killer and it would be only a matter of time before the police arrested him. No one with inside knowledge was supposed to be talking about the investigation, which, in San Francisco, meant everybody was. Both major city newspapers got up to speed quickly on everything that Glitsky and the two Homicide inspectors had discovered: Katie’s counseling, Hal’s refusal to be a part of it, his inconclusive alibi, his affair with Patti Orosco. Perhaps most damning was the revelation that just after the birth of Ellen, Hal and Katie had taken out a life insurance policy that paid the surviving spouse five hundred thousand dollars should the other die, double that for accidental or violent death.
No one could deny that it was a huge amount of money, especially for a family struggling to cover everyday expenses. As a purely objective matter, it painted Hal in a terrible light, in spite of his explanation that because of his stepmother’s experience with his father’s pension and a generous insurance policy, the family culture believed in insurance. Indeed, Ruth told any reporter who asked that Hal’s father’s insurance and pension had allowed her to raise and educate two sons in relative peace and comfort.
The topic of Hal’s guilt was ubiquitous, with the ever salacious Courier publishing a poll on the day before the funeral indicating that sixty-eight percent of its readers thought Hal had “probably” killed Katie.
The high-pressure system of the past week held steady, and the skies were clear, although the temperature had been dropping each day. When the service began at eleven o’clock, it was forty-two degrees.
Inside the cavernous space, it didn’t seem much warmer. Adding significantly to the chill was the very apparent estrangement between the two sides of the family, which had become entrenched since the discovery of Katie’s body. The Dunnes wanted nothing to do with the Chases. Katie’s entire extended family—sixty or so people—waited outside in the cold until it was clear on which side of the church Hal would sit (the right). Following Curt Dunne’s lead, they walked not up the center aisle but all the way around to the left, as far from Hal as they could get. Also in those left pews were Katie’s six playgroup friends and their husbands, all of whom had spent significant amounts of social time chez Chase and now apparently viewed Hal as a pariah. Abby Foley and JaMorris Monroe were there too, since it was not unheard of for a murderer—even if it wasn’t Hal—to be among the mourners at services.
The Chase contingent was significantly smaller and more spread out. With the exception of a decent show of solidarity from Hal’s boss, the sheriff, his chief deputy, Adam Foster, and thirty of his colleagues among the guards, bailiffs, and other deputies, barely a dozen souls had taken their places in the right-hand pews. Hal, Ruth, Warren (back in town for the funeral), and the two children sat in front. A scattering of guys from Hal’s earlier life—bowling and fishing and drinking buddies—had entered on their own and filled in empty bench space. Three rows behind Hal, Dismas and Frannie Hardy sat with Abe Glitsky. Despite Hardy’s advice to the contrary, Patti Orosco showed up. Although she tried to keep a relatively low profile, she wore a stunning hooded brown leather and fox-fur parka that looked like it cost five thousand dollars if it cost a penny, which immediately sparked a feeding frenzy in the media, some of whose bolder members had to be removed from the church.
Since he was the spouse of the deceased, Hal’s wishes trumped those of his wife’s nuclear family. The tensest moment came at the end of the service, when Daniel and Curt Dunne seemed to want to fight Hal about who would be pallbearers—they and their friends, or Hal and Warren and the sheriff’s people. Finally, Cushing took charge; he and Foster and two other deputies stepped forward with Hal and Warren and got the casket lifted into the waiting hearse.