29
GLITSKY STOOD AT the back of the crowd of mourners shivering around the Colma grave site. Coming to the actual interment wasn’t his idea of a good time, but he thought there was a slim chance that it might be unpredictably instructive, so the cop in him had said goodbye to Frannie and Hardy at St. Ignatius and tagged along. As had been the case at the church, the sides were strictly segregated, and as he had done earlier, Abe gravitated to Hal’s side.
They hadn’t quite gotten started. Glitsky was keeping his eye on the interaction between Hal and Patti Orosco—the word was long since out about their affair, and to Glitsky, they seemed skittish as thoroughbreds in their careful dance around each other—so he was surprised when he felt a tap on his arm and turned to face Burt Cushing.
“Abe Glitsky.”
“You got me.” Glitsky nodded amicably. “Sheriff.” He touched his forehead in a casual salute. “Nice turnout of your people.”
“They’re a good crew, and Hal’s among the best of them. He’s a popular guy. You here officially? I thought you’d retired.”
“I did.” Glitsky enjoyed watching Cushing do the math for a minute before he helped him out. “You notice I’m over here on Hal’s side, same as at the church. I’m working with his defense attorney.”
“He’s smart to have one on board already. They’re going to try to string him up. I’m surprised he’s still walking around a free man.”
“Me, too. Though I don’t think that’s going to last too long.”
“Me, neither.” Cushing hesitated, then asked, “So who’s the lawyer?”
“Dismas Hardy.”
Cushing whistled. “Top-drawer guy. Last week I would’ve asked how Hal could afford him, but I guess that’s not an issue anymore.”
“Which, in itself,” Glitsky replied, “is an issue.”
“I hear you.” The sheriff cast a quick glance over the assembly. “Little tense back there, wasn’t it?”
“Little tense here, too,” Glitsky said. “Katie’s side looks like they’re ready to string him up right now. I’m halfway expecting it.”
“Not with my guys here. No question who they’re with.”
“I see that.” Over the past few days, Glitsky had followed the television updates and read every word of conjecture about the case; that had brought him up to speed on the progress of the Homicide inspectors, including some stuff he hadn’t come upon in his own investigation. One of those stories had been Daniel Dunne’s theory about Katie’s purported threat to expose Hal for his role in the alleged cover-up of abuses by the jail guards. Obviously, Cushing had been made aware of that theory as well, and Glitsky thought it couldn’t hurt to probe a little. “Are your guys taking a lot of heat on Katie’s brother’s idea?”
“Which one is that? I’ve heard so many these past few days.”
“That Hal had to shut her up before she blew the whistle on him and the other guards.”
Cushing chuckled without mirth. “The only problem with that, and the other stories like it, is there isn’t one grain of truth behind them. My jail’s a f*cking model of restraint and due process, and any report to the contrary is irresponsible and unfounded drivel.”
Glitsky hated profanity but also knew that once in a while someone’s lapse into it could be useful. Despite Cushing’s dismissive chuckle and all of his protestations notwithstanding, Glitsky knew that he’d hit a nerve.
“Say what you really mean,” Glitsky told him.
“We get that shit all the time,” Cushing said. “If these bleeding hearts knew what it was like being in the cages day in day out with those animals, unarmed and outnumbered. It’s a miracle there’s as little violence as there is. But hey, you’re a cop. You know this. Sorry to go off.”
Glitsky shrugged. “No worries. So if Hal did it, that wasn’t why.”
“Couldn’t have been, but beyond that . . .”
“What?”
Cushing looked over to where Hal was placing some flowers on the casket. “I know the guy. I knew his dad, Pete, back when I was a probationary deputy. He’s good people. Katie was good people.” Sighing, he went on, “There’s just no way he killed her. They might have been going through a rough patch, but they had a real connection. I know that, which is why I can’t believe any of this.”
“That’s good to hear,” Glitsky said. Then, realizing what else Cushing had perhaps inadvertently admitted, he asked, “You knew her, too? Katie?”
The sheriff’s visage darkened, and for a startling moment Glitsky thought he caught a glimpse of what might have been a tear in the other man’s eyes. “I know most of the spouses,” he said at last. “Something like this happens to one of us, it’s a loss to the whole family.”
? ? ?
WHEN THE MOURNERS got back to Hal’s house, Glitsky found himself struck by the similarities between this gathering and his own return to his duplex after the funeral of his first wife, Flo, who’d died of cancer many years before. Like Hal, Abe had young children at the time. His living room and kitchen had been filled to overflowing, mostly with somber men in uniform. His father, Nat, had been the only tie to the past generation, as Ruth was. The food, in both cases, was a couple of Safeway party trays.
Abe found himself a bare stretch of living room wall and leaned back, hands in his pockets, trying to shake off his own ghosts. Suddenly—he hadn’t really noticed her approach—Ruth was standing in front of him with a glass in her hand, the contents of which looked like Coke and smelled like rum. “How did this tradition of throwing a party after a funeral ever get started?” she asked him. “You see anybody here who looks like they want to party, Mr. Glitsky?”
“Not so much,” Abe replied. “Maybe it puts off the finality of it all for another day. Then you go back to real life, or try. Meanwhile, it’s a last opportunity to drink enough to forget.”
“That’s exactly it,” she said, “and spoken like one who’s been through it.” She cast her eyes around the room. “Sometimes I think someone put a curse on this family. On me, really. I never would have believed I’d be doing this again so soon.”
“So soon?”
“After Pete. Hal’s father. He overdosed, you know. By mistake. They eventually admitted it was an accident, which turned out to be good for us, since we could collect the insurance. But it was awful, no matter what.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know about that. When did that happen?”
“Warren was five. He’s twenty-two now. And I guess Hal must have been fifteen. So seventeen years.” She took a pull of her drink. “But it’s like it was yesterday, especially here, now . . . all these uniforms. It brings it all back. Nothing ever changes.”
Glitsky didn’t want to air out his own memories, so similar to hers. Instead, he said, “Sometimes it seems that way, but things do get better. It may be hard to keep believing that, but it happens. It happened to me.”
“Well, you’re not cursed.”
“Ruth, you’ve got two healthy sons and two grandchildren. You can look ahead. There can be a future. You’re not cursed.”
This made her laugh, a bitter and shrill note that already seemed more than a bit fueled by alcohol. Lifting her glass, she drank again. “No? How many people do you know who have lost two family members? And now they’re going to arrest Hal. It’s obvious that’s where they’re going with all that. They already think he’s guilty. Everybody does.”
Glitsky heard himself say, “I don’t,” and realized that this was what he intuitively believed, even if he couldn’t marshal the facts to support it.
She took his words at face value. “Thank you for that. But you’re in the minority. Everybody else thinks he walked behind her up that path and turned right through the bushes and shot her while she walked, maybe while she was talking, pleading over her shoulder. And that’s just not something Hal could do. I know my boy, and he never could have done that.”
“If it comes to it, and it may not, I think a jury will agree with you. He’s got a great lawyer, and this city doesn’t like to convict, even with lots of evidence.” Except, he thought, in cases of domestic violence, where the accusation alone was often enough to convict a male suspect. This wasn’t something he wanted to share with her now, though. “And here, there’s basically no evidence,” he repeated. “So I’d keep a little hope.”
“I am. The hard thing is I never thought they’d arrest him. I really thought, because he didn’t do it, they’d never get to that.”
“And they haven’t yet. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“All right. You’re right. I’m just . . . my brain . . .” She stopped in apparent confusion and tipped up her glass, finishing it. “At least I’ll be here for the babies,” she said. “There’s one silver lining. They’ll be in my life again. I suppose I should think of things like that.”
“That’s a good idea. At the very least, you’ll get to share them.”
She hesitated and cocked her head. “What do you mean, share?”
“With the other grandparents. Katie’s family.”
She shook her head with a firm show of defiance. “That is not happening. I’m not sharing with those people. Hal’s their natural father, and he’s the only parent left, and he gets to make that decision, even if he’s in jail. He won’t let those children go and live with those awful Dunnes, not even for a day. I know he won’t.”
Glitsky knew that this could, in fact, become a pitched custody battle over the next several months, but now wasn’t the time to try and convince a grieving, drunk woman about something she obviously didn’t want to consider. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “And speaking of Hal . . .” Glitsky pointed to the other room, then excused himself and made his way through the press of deputies to where Hal stood, holding a sleeping Ellen in his arms, at the kitchen counter. “How are you holding up?”
Hal gave him a perfunctory smile. “Minute to minute. It ought to be over soon, although I’m not sure I want it to be.”
Glitsky knew what Hal was talking about; it reflected his own former anguish at the prospect of dealing with the world without Flo. Eventually, for Abe, life had returned to what felt something like normal, but it had taken a very long time, and while he was waiting, he never felt anything like a guarantee that it would arrive at all.
“I’m going to head out,” Glitsky said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yeah,” Hal said. “Find out who did it.”
“I’m looking,” Glitsky replied, then added, “I really am.”
And found—again with some surprise—that he meant it.