60
“YOU THINK THAT’S conclusive?” Hardy asked. Glitsky sat across from him in his office, where Faro had dropped him on the way back downtown.
“I don’t see a flaw in it.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good, but let me play devil’s advocate here for a minute.”
“An hour, more likely. But go right ahead.”
“Take the GSR first. As we know, it’s notoriously transferrable. If it was on Foster’s coat by the front pocket, when Faro took out the slip of paper, it could have picked up the stuff from whatever cloth it rubbed against. Probably would have, in fact.”
“You’re making my argument for, not yours against, Diz. As it turns out, the paper didn’t have just trace amounts of GSR. It was loaded with the stuff. And if anything, putting the paper in the pocket would have transferred some of it to the coat’s fabric, taken it off the paper. Therefore, it wasn’t in the pocket at the time of the shot. Couldn’t have been. It was in his lap or in his hands or on the seat. It’s a sure bet that after the shot, Foster being dead and all, he didn’t put it in his pocket. Same with the blood.”
“Lots of blood?”
“Plenty. Invisible till we tested it at the lab, then everywhere. DNA is probably going to tell us it’s Foster’s blood, but so what? So the paper wasn’t in his pocket when he got shot. It went in afterward. As you would say, conclusively. And that can only mean one thing.”
Hardy rolled his chair back, put his feet on his desk, templed his hands at his mouth. “You’re thinking Cushing.”
Glitsky nodded. “You’ll like this. Cushing called Foster on his cell phone about twenty minutes after I left his house on Saturday.”
“Instead, I’m going to do what I should have done in the first place, and that is invite in the FBI. They’ll be so happy to launch a covert operation, maybe put a few agents secretly in the jail, whatever they want to do, including a little more sophisticated lab testing on the one piece of paper you’re basing all this on. If they agree with your opinion, Abe, then they can subpoena everything they need—financials, phones, computer files, you name it—and nobody will have to know they’re even around until they’ve got something strong enough to make a case, and then guess what? They make a righteous arrest. If it’s one of the jail killings, it’s a federal case. If not, it’s ours. Meanwhile, I’m not going to put anybody else in harm’s way. Especially if it does turn out to be Cushing, which, don’t get me wrong, is what I think, too. He is one devious and cold-blooded motherf*cker, and I’d like nothing better than to take him down, but this time we’re going by the book. Agreed?”
“I still think—” Glitsky started.
Farrell slammed a flat palm down on the table. “I said, ‘Agreed?’ Are you going to make me fire you before you’ve even put in a full week? Is that what you want?”
“No, sir.”
“All right, then, let’s do it my way this time. How’s that sound?”
? ? ?
TRUTH BE TOLD, it didn’t sound too good to Abe, but he didn’t think it was a fortuitous time to argue. In his opinion, the positive evidence that was all over the small sheet of notebook paper did not leave room for conjecture at all. In Hardy’s words, it was conclusive. There was no possible way that Adam Foster had killed himself. This also meant that the same person who had murdered Katie Chase had killed him.
Abe felt he was this close.
“Even so,” Treya said, “you’ve got to let it go. At least for now. You’ve come up with this last crucial bit that changes everything, and Wes recognizes that, but . . .”
“But he won’t let me close the deal.”
“He doesn’t want you to get killed, Abe. How about that?”
“I’m not going to get killed.” He lowered his voice. “That ship has sailed. Killing one cop more won’t change anything.”
“Famous last words.”
“No, they’re not. This is when I can get him. I can taste it.”
The phone on her desk rang. Reaching over, she picked it up. “District Attorney’s office, how can I help you? . . . Hello, Lieutenant . . . Yes, he’s still here. I’m talking to him just now, as a matter of fact . . . Sure, just a second.” Handing Abe the phone, she said, “Devin Juhle.”
The Homicide chief said it was important. The summons was also a fine excuse to end the conversation with Treya, which wasn’t really going Abe’s way. He told her they could resume later but stopped short of telling her that he would let the whole thing go.
Though he understood that Wes was concerned for the safety of everyone involved, Abe planned to let none of it go. He couldn’t shake the feeling that with the smallest push on his part, Cushing would make a mistake and the whole enterprise would come tumbling down. But he might have to go underground to make that happen.
Five minutes later, he knocked on his old office door on the fifth floor. The door was open, as usual, and somewhat to his surprise, Abby and JaMorris sat on the folding chairs in front of Juhle’s large desk, both wearing a bit of the attitude of scolded schoolchildren. “Abe,” Juhle said as he waved him in. “Thanks for coming on up. You mind getting the door?”
Glitsky pushed it closed and said, “What’s up?”
Juhle scratched at the wood on the top of his desk. “Abby and Jambo and I have just been discussing this thing we’re not supposed to talk about.” He chuckled. “Which I guess right there is saying something.”
“I think, among ourselves, it’s not much of a problem,” Glitsky said.
“In this case,” Juhle replied, “I expect we’ll be glad we did. Last I heard about this was Monday, with that column in the paper, Adam Foster killing himself, and Sheriff Cushing going on about how shocked he was that anything illegal had ever gone on at his jail. You all remember that?”
Nods all around.
“I thought you would. It turns out that Foster’s gun is the same one that killed Katie Chase, and I’m thinking, like everybody else, ‘Good, we got the bastard.’ Or he got himself, but either way, it’s three one-eighty-sevens”—the Penal Code section for murder—“off the books. At this point, I’m not thinking too much about the details. Obviously, the guy killed the Chase woman, then himself. What more was there to think about? Everybody with me so far?”
Abby Foley cleared her throat and spoke up. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then I get this call from Wes Farrell a few minutes ago telling me to hold on, Foster wasn’t a suicide after all. Abe’s done some yeoman police work, and all of a sudden it’s looking like a murder. And if it’s one, it’s pretty much got to be two: Foster and Chase. Then Farrell tells me the main suspect—although we’re not going to talk about it—is Burt Cushing. So I go, ‘Okay, I’ll keep it to myself,’ and then hang up. I know something’s nagging at me, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it, and since we’ve just been told we’re not doing anything about these two cases for a while, I put it aside”—he now spoke directly to Abe—“figuring I’d catch up with these two when they checked in. Which I did.”
“Okay,” Glitsky said.
“Not okay, as it turns out, Abe. The three of us start talking, and about the first thing Jambo mentions is Katie Chase got killed on the night before Thanksgiving, which wasn’t something I’d really thought about since it happened. But I hear that, and I’m like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. What time?’ ‘Seven, eight, somewhere in there.’ And I say, ‘The day before Thanksgiving? Absolutely?’ They’re both sure. I mean, this is one fact that’s in no dispute whatsoever, right? Katie Chase is killed on Wednesday night, the day before Thanksgiving.”
“Right,” Glitsky said. “No question.”
“Okay, “ Juhle said. “Here’s the problem. You want to know where I was on the night before Thanksgiving? I was at Burt Cushing’s yearly Thanksgiving party at his house. I was there from sometime around eight until maybe eleven, eleven-thirty. So was Cushing. So, in fact, was Adam Foster. And in case you were wondering, I promise you I’m not one of the sheriff’s stooges, backing up his alibi. There must have been two dozen of us there, and you can check with any or all of them. They’ll all tell you the same thing. The point is, if Katie Chase got shot that night, Burt Cushing flat-out didn’t do it. And neither did Adam Foster. I hate to say it, Abe, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”