55
GLITSKY DIDN’T KNOW whether to blame it on the six months he’d spent being a civilian, or on his disgust with the ease with which law enforcement professionals could and did game the system, but he felt that the only progress made in any of these investigations had been because he’d followed his own path, not necessarily the rules of procedure about which he’d always been so punctilious, and which sworn officers were supposed to follow.
His ‘CityTalk’ interview, his chat with Allison Beale, his decision to go to Strout for a second look at the Tussaint autopsy: All of these moves had brought him new and important facts, as well as a sense that he was closing the net around Foster and Cushing; eventually, he felt, if he kept at it the way he was going, he’d get them, along with the evidence to put them away. If he personally kept up the pressure, one of the principals—Cushing, Foster, a guard, a guard’s wife—would break.
He wanted to rattle some more cages. Play people off against one another. Make something happen.
So he didn’t call Farrell when he hung up with Hardy. Hardy was right—when Farrell heard about Tussaint, he would almost undoubtedly call in the feds, which would be a clarion call to everyone in Cushing’s realm to go into severe lockdown mode. Everybody would lawyer up and take the Fifth. Nobody was going to give up the truth about San Bruno. No witnesses would turn up to say they saw the Tussaint beating. Nobody was even going to point a finger at Hal. This was blue-collar-cop culture, where the code of silence was all but absolute.
Around one o’clock, Glitsky found himself knocking on Burt Cushing’s front door, a beautiful house on Clay in outer Pacific Heights that Glitsky thought could have gone a long way toward supporting an investigation, not to say an indictment, for corruption. How a career civil servant who’d gone to City College and never earned a salary over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars could afford to live in this stately mansion was the sort of question that tended not to get asked of politicians.
The sheriff wore khakis, black cop shoes, and a blue pullover sweater. He greeted Glitsky with a firm handshake and some small talk as he led him though a lavishly furnished living room with a view to rival Patti Orosco’s—Golden Gate Bridge, Marin headlands, sailboats on the bay—and into his dimly lit office down a short hallway to the left. In that room—floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, high-backed red leather chairs, latticed windows, a huge globe of the earth—he went around his desk and sat down, indicating that Glitsky should take one of the chairs.
“All right, Lieutenant,” he began, and came out swinging. “I admire your balls, I’ll give you that. Cutting into my weekend when you’ve got to know I have nothing to say to you. I only agreed you could come by because I assume Wes Farrell ordered you to apologize to me in person for that ‘CityTalk’ horseshit, and I would like things to run smoothly between our departments down at the Hall.”
The opening was fine with Glitsky, who didn’t want to pretend to be friends or even colleagues anymore. “That’s not it, Sheriff. Not even close.”
Cushing’s nostrils flared. He put his palms down on the top of his desk. “Well, then, I don’t know what else you think is important enough to get in the way of the kickoff.”
“I got a call this morning from John Strout,” Glitsky said. “He no longer thinks that Tussaint’s death was an accident.”
“Really?”
“Really. You’ve got a handful of guards who have sworn that he was alone in his cell when he died. Now Strout’s saying somebody killed him.”
Cushing showed no sign of surprise or alarm. Shrugging elaborately, he said, “The old fool got it wrong the first time, then got it wrong again. So what?”
“I talked to another witness yesterday who said Adam Foster killed Tussaint. A credible witness. Not one likely to die of an overdose anytime soon, and that witness is on tape.”
Cushing shot a flat hostile glance over the desk. “How many times I got to say this, Lieutenant: So the f*ck what? Who’s this witness?”
“No comment.”
Cushing huffed out a small laugh. “Oh yeah. Very strong. Stop the presses. So Strout says he was killed. Who cares? He’d been in a fight. Everybody says there was a fight, the animals going at it like they do. If Strout thinks it’s one of them instead of the fall that killed him, who gives a shit? The guy’s just as dead either way. They want to do another investigation, be my guest.” Shaking his head, he sounded almost apologetic. “Look, Lieutenant, I don’t know any more about it. Are you about done?”
“Not quite. I thought we might talk a little about Katie Chase.”
Cushing’s eyes briefly went to the corner of the room. Then back to Glitsky. “What about her?”
“You told me you didn’t have any special relationship with her.”
“Right. I’ve been married twenty-five years. I’ve got three daughters.” He pointed a finger. “Don’t you f*ck with my marriage, Lieutenant. I’m warning you.”
“You’ve already threatened your marriage, Sheriff. And it’s going to come out, just like all the rest of this is going to come out.”
“There’s nothing to come out.”
“You deny talking to Katie Chase on the phone several times a day over a two-and-a-half- or three-month period a couple of years ago?”
“She helped my daughter with some medication. We talked a few times about that.”
“I’m not talking a few times, Sheriff. I’m talking every day for a couple of months.”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t? Katie’s phone records indicate otherwise.”
“Those records couldn’t show anything.”
“There are records, though. Is that what you’re saying?”
Cushing made no reply.
“The answer is yes,” Glitsky said. “There are records of her calling you at your office.”
“Records don’t show what you’re talking about.”
“So you admit there were calls and the records are correct.” Glitsky sat back into the chair. “Listen to me, Sheriff. Nobody outside of you and your family is going to care about your infidelity, but those folks are going to care a lot, aren’t they? And you know that it’ll be a piece of cake to verify wherever you met and whatever you did once it’s part of a homicide investigation. And it will be.”
Cushing made a move to get up. “We’re finished here.”
Glitsky put out a hand, stopping him. “Not quite. I’m not talking about infidelity. I’m talking about homicide. I’m talking about Tussaint, and Maria, and Luther, and Katie Chase. I’m talking about Adam Foster.”
“Good for you,” Cushing said. “I’m not talking about any of it or any of them. Not here, not now, not ever. It’s all a house of cards.”
Glitsky shook his head. “What I’m telling you is that we and probably the feds are going after Foster for the homicides, at least on Tussaint and Luther and Maria, and the wider the investigation grows, the more likely it is that your infidelity will be part of the story.”
“It’s not part of the story, Lieutenant.” Cushing pushed on his hands and got to his feet. “You can’t prove a lick of it, and I’ve wasted enough of my day talking to you. So now I’m telling you to get your meddling ass out of my house. And I mean now. Before I call the real cops.”