7
“TELL ME ABOUT the night,” Glitsky said as Hal pulled his Subaru out into traffic. “Wednesday, wasn’t it?”
Though Hal’s sideways look telegraphed what Glitsky read as impatience, he sighed in resignation and started in. “There wasn’t any drama before. It was just a regular night, except with me going down to pick up Warren. My brother. Half brother. He was coming up from L.A. for the holiday.”
“What did you have for dinner?”
“What does that matter?”
“I’m not sure it does,” Glitsky said, “but when I was at Missing Persons, the lieutenant said there was blood in the kitchen. I just wonder if your wife was cutting something you were going to be eating.”
“I don’t remember that. I don’t think it happened before I left. I saw the blood when I got back, of course, and left it where it was. It wasn’t like a flood of it. A few drops on the counter by the sink, a couple more on the floor. I don’t think the blood means anything. We had spaghetti and salad, so she might have been slicing tomatoes or bread and cut herself by accident.”
“And she didn’t wipe it up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one of the kids started crying. In which case, she would have dropped everything and come running.”
Glitsky noted the change of tone, the first negative thing about Katie that he’d heard out of Hal, namely that she might be a little fanatical about her duties as a mother. Maybe this was part of why she’d been seeing Frannie Hardy.
“Okay,” Glitsky said. “Let’s leave the blood. Tell me about the kids. Two, right?”
“Will and Ellen. What about them?”
“They must have been asleep when Katie went missing.”
“That’s my assumption. We put them down early when we can. Our goal is seven o’clock, so we can get a little time as adults. Wednesday, they were both in bed when I left, and still sleeping when we got back.”
“Where are they now?”
“At the house. My stepmother, Ruth, is staying with them. Warren’s here, too. They’re holding down the fort.”
Glitsky sat back and watched the city roll by for a few blocks. The sun was low in the sky in front of them, but the day remained cold, clear, and windless as they made their way across Arguello and down into the Avenues. “So you left for the airport when?” he asked.
“Seven-thirty or so. The Homicide cops don’t know why I left so early for an eight-fifty pickup, but hey, the day before Thanksgiving, I thought I’d be late, even leaving when I did.”
“And then what?”
“Then I picked up Warren—”
“Before that. Did you park at the airport and wait?”
“No. When I saw there wasn’t any traffic, I checked my cell for flight information and found out it would be another hour before he got in—”
“You could have done that before you left.”
“Right. I know that. Should have, in fact. But I didn’t. I didn’t think of it. To tell you the truth, I was looking forward to getting out of the house and having some company around to lighten things up. Katie and I had a lot we weren’t talking about. Anyway, when I realized Warren was going to be late, I stopped by the Hungry Hunter down in South City and had a beer and watched ESPN.”
“Did you talk to anybody?”
“I sat at the bar and ordered from the bartender. I paid cash, and I’m not a regular. We didn’t have any conversation. He might remember me, but I don’t know why he would. The place was jumping. I was one guy out of a barful. Even if he could ID me positively, there’s most of an hour unaccounted for. I realize that as alibis go, this one isn’t much, but that’s what I did.”
Glitsky looked across at Hal. It occurred to him that, if anything, the weakness of the alibi spoke to its plausibility. If Hal were going to construct a story, he would have made sure the bartender remembered him. He would have established the time of his arrival at the bar. He would have made it seem impossible that he could have killed his wife. And he hadn’t done any of those things. “So,” Glitsky said, “then you picked up your brother?”
“That’s the whole story, Lieutenant.”
“Abe,” Glitsky said. “I’m not a cop, and I’m on your side, remember. Okay, so then you get home. When you drive up, do you notice anything suspicious?”
“Nothing. I know Katie’s car is in the garage, so I pull into the driveway. The light outside the front door is on, and so are some inside lights, like they were when I left. So Warren grabs his stuff and we go in the front door and first I think Katie must be in with the kids, so we wait a couple of minutes, staying quiet so we don’t wake anybody up, then I go into the kids’ room and she’s not there. It’s totally bizarre. I mean, you come home and your kids are sleeping and your wife is gone. It takes a while to kick in.”
“What did you do?”
“Whatever I could think of. I tried her cell. No answer. Tried again. Texted her. And the whole time I’m with Warren, just stumped. It doesn’t seem real. I mean, where is she? Is this some kind of sick joke? There’s no way she’s not there. Finally, I go upstairs. I go out in the backyard. I check the garage, and her car’s there. I leave Warren at the house in case the kids wake up, and I go knock on the neighbors’ doors, see if anybody’s seen anything. It starts to sink in. I mean, really.” He turned to face Glitsky. “You know?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“I didn’t kill her. I truly did not.”
After a pause, Glitsky asked, “You think she might have just up and left? I mean, left the kids upstairs sleeping?”
Hal drove in silence for most of a block before he shook his head. “Never,” he said. “Never ever ever ever.” Letting out a sigh, he went on. “Here’s the thing, Lieutenant. Having kids has been incredibly tough on her. At the same time, they’re the most important things in her life. That’s probably why raising them has been so hard. She cares so goddamn much about every part of it. If she was giving up so much of the rest of her life, she was going to be the absolute best at it. And they in turn were going to be perfect children. And then she felt guilty about how much she resented what they’d done to her life, how much of it they were taking up, and she hated herself for that. It was complicated, to say the least. But would she have walked out on them? Honestly, I can’t imagine it.”
“All right. What about you and her? Did you have problems?”
Hal shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”
“Maybe they were more serious than you thought.”
“No, I thought they were serious. We don’t have enough money, she’s too protective of the kids, I’m not sensitive enough with them, I yell, she doesn’t. She doesn’t like my job or the people I work with. We were getting pretty bad at just talking to each other, and that wasn’t good. So, yeah, some problems. But that’s the thing. We never had any kind of physical fight. I never hurt her. I never would hurt her. And really, what I said, she wouldn’t leave the kids.
“That was one of her main things. We couldn’t even get a babysitter and go out on a date. Even with Ruth living half a mile away, ready to watch them at any time. But Ruth wasn’t good enough. Nobody else was good enough. Bottom line, she didn’t leave the kids sleeping and walk out of the house under her own power. Somebody took her and forced her.” He looked over again at Glitsky. “You’re not saying much.”
“Nothing very comforting is springing to mind.”