37
ABBY AND JAMORRIS, with an indicted and arrested suspect, had been doing some grunt police work, interviewing Hal’s neighbors. They had all been interviewed before by Missing Persons, but this time the two inspectors had a different agenda. They were focused on narrowing down the time Hal had left to go to the airport on that Wednesday night. If they could expand that window and prove that he’d had more time to commit the murder, it would be all to the good.
But their strategy backfired. Ray and Jeannette Rice, a middle-aged couple who lived three houses downhill from the Chases, had been taking a walk around the block on the night before Thanksgiving. They not only saw Hal exit his front door sometime very close to seven-thirty to go to his car parked in the driveway, they wished him a happy Thanksgiving, and he wished them the same. No, he hadn’t been in any particular hurry. No, he hadn’t seemed upset, had in fact volunteered that he was off to the airport to pick up his brother. He invited them to come by the next day for a cocktail.
Lieutenant Devin Juhle, head of Homicide, sitting behind the desk in his office, frowned. “The truth may set you free, but first it will make you miserable. Hal never mentioned this to Missing Persons?”
“It’s not in the record if he did,” JaMorris replied.
“And Hal never brought it up on his own?” Juhle asked. “He should have, since it helps him.”
“Other things on his mind,” Abby said.
Juhle sat back in his chair. “Naturally, you taped your interview with these Rices? They’re sure it was close to seven-thirty?”
JaMorris said, “It would be better if he’d left around six or even before, but given that his kids had to be asleep first, we always figured that what Chase told us about when he left was close enough to the truth.”
“He leaves the house at seven-thirty, and then what?” Juhle asked.
Abby took it up. “Drives around the block once or twice, pulls back into his driveway. Plenty of time.”
Juhle chewed at his cheek.
“That’s always been pretty much the timetable,” JaMorris said. “It doesn’t really hurt us.”
“I’m not so much concerned about the time,” Juhle replied, “although it’s a bit of an issue. I’m worried about Mr. Chase wishing them a happy Thanksgiving and inviting them over for drinks if he’s already got this plot to kill his wife in motion.”
“He’s a con man,” Abby said. “Scott Peterson all over again.”
Juhle still didn’t like it, but there wasn’t anything he could do. “Well,” he said. “Get it typed up and run it by me when you get the transcript. I’ll see how bad the damage is. Meanwhile, anything new on Glitsky?”
Abby nodded. “He was at the funeral on Monday, went over to Chase’s afterward.”
“What’s he doing in this?”
Abby and JaMorris exchanged a glance, and Abby said, “He’s working for Chase. Looking for the other dude.” This unknown and unnamed person, they all knew, was the linchpin of the oft-favored SODDI defense: “Some other dude did it.” Quite frequently, that other dude didn’t exist, but juries could still be persuaded that he did.
“Is he impeding your investigation?”
“No,” JaMorris said. “There isn’t any other dude.”
“Good point. But he’s going to try to muddy the waters, isn’t he?”
Abby said, “Dismas Hardy will, that’s for sure.”
“Abe’s a good cop,” Juhle said, “and I just hate to see him over on the dark side. Maybe I ought to give him a call.”
JaMorris looked at Abby. She looked back at her partner. “Couldn’t hurt,” they said in unison.
? ? ?
MARIA T. SOLIS-MARTINEZ GOT the call from Luther Jones at around six o’clock. She contemplated having him pulled out of the jail immediately for the follow-up interview. She had already made plans, just in case, to have him housed in the Santa Clara county jail under an assumed name as soon as he decided to cooperate. It was clear from her phone conversation that Luther was coming on board and, as they had hoped, claimed to have even more information than he had let on initially.
They would need to get his new statement on tape and be ready to follow up immediately on anything he gave them. But her main job was to get him safely out of the jail and into some kind of living situation where he could remain anonymous and protected. So it was a matter of logistics, getting Luther sprung more or less surreptitiously from the jail and settled into his new home. She didn’t want to go near him again until she had her own guys ready to get him down to Santa Clara and be sure that Santa Clara would take him once they arrived.
Maria was a little uncomfortable with the delay. She knew that jail phone calls were taped, and Luther hadn’t been entirely discreet on the phone. In the end, it was more important that the move go smoothly. A few hours’ delay seemed inevitable, but she could live with it.
What she didn’t know was that, within twenty minutes of the call, Chief Deputy Adam Foster was fully aware that Luther Jones had made a connection with somebody in law enforcement, probably in the DA’s office. With one call to his contact at the phone company, he quickly got the name and billing address to the number that Luther had called. He didn’t know how much this woman knew in addition to what was in the phone call, but even that was too much.
? ? ?
AS THE LIEUTENANT who coordinated the efforts of the Homicide detail, Devin Juhle knew that your most important task was to protect your people. You backed them up in their investigations. Where possible, you eliminated obstacles, whether political, administrative, or personal. You also tried to keep them from error, which Juhle felt he had done in the Chase matter by counseling Abby and JaMorris to proceed methodically, in light of the dearth of physical evidence against Hal. Though Juhle thought Hal Chase probably had killed Katie, he wasn’t inclined to pressure his troops to make an arrest with insufficient evidence if the political climate became such that the grand jury could get involved and issue an indictment first, which is what had happened.
In terms of Gliksky’s friendship with Dismas Hardy and his involvement in the Hal Chase matter, Juhle had more respect and empathy for him than he let on to his inspectors, which was why he had tolerated his presence up to this point. After all, both men had “San Francisco Police Person of the Year” on their résumés. Beyond that, Glitsky had been shot in the line of duty, so by Juhle’s reckoning, he automatically deserved—and got—all the slack Juhle could conjure up. There was also the simple fact that Glitsky, as the lieutenant when Juhle was an inspector, had several times walked a very fine line about Juhle’s own informal partnership (and friendship) with another mostly defense guy, Wyatt Hunt, a private investigator.
To the objective eye, Juhle might have seemed more than once to be working at cross-purposes with regard to his duties as a Homicide inspector. His arguments to Glitsky had always been that he was just trying to get to the truth of things, that Hunt had convinced him to look for alternatives to the man or woman they had arrested. He was making sure that the Homicide detail got it right so they wouldn’t be embarrassed.
Now it looked like Glitsky was doing essentially the same thing. And it was Juhle’s job—protecting his people—to sound out his old boss on his direction and his progress. He’d put it off long enough. He got the number out of his Rolodex, then pulled the phone on his desk over in front of him. Lifting the receiver, he paused for a second or two, then punched in the numbers.
“Glitsky.”
“Abe, it’s Devin Juhle.”
A dry chuckle. “I was wondering when you were going to call. How are you?”
“Fine. We’ve got Hal Chase in jail, as you know. You mind if I ask you what you’re doing around that?”
“Trying to find out who killed Katie.”
“Not Hal, huh?”
“No. I don’t think so. But listen, I’ll be easy to convince otherwise if you’ve got some evidence I’m not aware of.”
“I hear you’re working with Hardy. He’ll have everything the DA’s got as soon as he asks for it.”
“Well, that’s the DA.”
“Yes.”
“I’m assuming Abby and Jambo are still looking.”
“They’re in the field, yes. Talking to people. Tightening up the case.”
A pause. “From where I’m sitting, Dev, it needs considerable tightening.”
“No comment. As you know, the grand jury made that call. Do you know anything I don’t that you want to talk about?”
“You called me, Dev. If I had something that freed Hal, you’d know about it already.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s a pretty wide-open question. The good news from our perspective is that I’ve got nothing on Hal. The bad news is that I’m pretty much the same with anyone else. Hardy and I were talking about evidence this morning, and it’s a barren landscape out there.”
“So what are you working on?”
“You want the truth, Dev, I’m down to the dregs. There’s a rumor that Katie had an affair a couple of years ago. Had you heard about that?”
“That’s what her brother said. He mentioned it to my guys.”
“Did he know who it was with?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t pursue it as any kind of lead. It didn’t connect much to Hal that we know of. Plus, this was, as you say, two years ago. You think it’s really got something to do with now?”
“I don’t have any idea. All I know is it’s an unanswered question. Otherwise, all I’ve got is Patti Orosco, and she just doesn’t sing for me.”
“Maybe that’s because Hal did it.”
“Well, either him,” Glitsky said, “or somebody else.”