8
THE HOUSE WAS a small stand-alone two-story on Stanyan Street in the Upper Haight-Ashbury District. Hal parked in the driveway in front of the garage door, and he and Glitsky walked up the sidewalk to the stairway leading to the porch. The front door featured a stained-glass half-moon window that glared in the rays of the setting sun.
Chase knocked twice, lightly, at the door. Footsteps sounded from inside, and then the door swung open and they were looking at an attractive fortysomething woman holding a swaddled baby up against her shoulder. Accepting a quick buss from her stepson, Ruth Chase pulled the door all the way open, while from behind her, another child came running up: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
Hal Chase leaned down to grab up his daughter and press her to him, raining a flurry of kisses onto her face. “How’s my very, very favorite girl?”
More kisses as the greetings continued to play out. Hal Chase might be an insensitive guy who yelled a lot, Abe thought, but his daughter gave every indication that she loved him absolutely.
Five minutes later, Ruth had settled Will into a playpen in the living room. Effectively out of earshot, Ellen sat at her own little table across the kitchen, drawing with crayons. Hal and Warren drank coffee from mugs while Glitsky, across the dining room table from the brothers, waited for the tea that Ruth was brewing in the kitchen.
If the half brothers shared genes, they weren’t much in evidence. Hal was medium to stocky, with thick dark hair and ruddy coloring. Warren, perhaps a dozen years younger, was tall and lean, with wispy blond hair that he wore almost to his shoulders. He sported some grungy facial hair, a UCLA sweatshirt, well-worn jeans, and flip-flops—to Glitsky’s mind, the typical college look.
Hal was finishing up the explanation of who Glitsky was and why he was there when Warren cut him off. “You mean to tell me the actual Missing Persons police aren’t looking into where she’s gone? What’s that about?”
“It’s about them thinking she’s been”—Hal looked over at his daughter, engrossed in her drawing, and lowered his voice—“done away with. And,” he added, “apparently, they think I had something to do with it.”
“They can’t really think that.” Ruth, carrying a tray with a teapot and cookies, stopped in the doorway. “When did all this happen? Nobody was saying anything like that over the weekend.”
“Maybe not, but they were thinking it. This morning, a couple of Homicide cops came to see me at work. It was obvious I was a suspect, and they thought Katie . . .” Again, he looked over to his daughter, who was paying them no mind, then he shrugged at the adults. “It was obvious what they thought.”
“So you went to a lawyer?” Ruth asked.
Hal nodded. “It seemed like a good idea. If they were going to be questioning me, I wanted some advice on what I should say.”
“How about the truth?” Ruth asked.
“Sometimes they can twist the truth and make it sound pretty bad.”
“But getting a lawyer, isn’t that going to make you look guilty no matter what?” Warren asked. “I mean, you don’t need a lawyer unless you’ve done something.”
“No. Sometimes you need a lawyer before anything happens. If only to keep it from happening.”
Ruth crossed to the table, placed a cup and saucer in front of Glitsky, and poured. “The bottom line is that no one’s looking for Katie?”
“They say they are,” Hal said. “But they’re looking for her body.”
“That’s just wrong,” Ruth said. She turned to Glitsky. “That’s why you’re here, right?”
“I hope I can help find out where she is,” Glitsky said, trying to keep everything low-key. “Basically, I’m investigating her disappearance. If she doesn’t use a credit card and we don’t hear from her or whoever took her, I can’t—”
“What do you mean, whoever took her?” Warren asked. “You think somebody kidnapped her?”
Glitsky put his cup into its saucer and held his hand out, palm down. “Easy,” he said softly to Warren. “Your brother and I talked on the way out here. He doesn’t think she would have left on her own, not with the kids asleep in the next room. Do you think it’s possible she did?”
Warren, flustered, met eyes around the table. “She could have had some sort of breakdown, couldn’t she?”
“Possibly,” Glitsky said. “She also could have slipped and banged her head and woken up and wandered outside. Neither very likely.”
“You were saying,” Ruth put in, “that if she doesn’t use a credit card or get in touch with us . . . ?”
“Then there’s no trail,” Glitsky said. “And without a trail, finding her is going to be problematic.”
Ruth asked, “What are you looking for?”
“A reason,” Glitsky replied. “Something that makes sense, that leads somewhere, possibly to where she is now.”
“You mean, in her life?” Ruth asked. “What could that be? I mean, she was, is, a stay-at-home mother of infants. I don’t say that disparagingly. I raised two boys, and it can be a noble calling. Are you saying she might have been involved in something that got her in trouble? That seems a stretch.”
“It might be,” Glitsky agreed. “If there’s a rational answer at all.”
“What if it was a random crazy person?” Warren asked. “He saw Hal leave, and he looked through the window and saw Katie here alone and knocked at the door and had a weapon . . .”
Glitsky nodded. “Entirely possible. I don’t have any idea. I’ve barely begun with this.” He sipped his tea. “At least I’m not trying to build a case against Hal. I’m trying to find out what happened to Katie and why. I’m not working with the police. Really. If there’s an answer to be found, wherever it leads, I’ll try to run it down. That’s what I’m here for.”
“If there’s an answer . . .” Hal said. “What if there isn’t?”
“Let’s not go there,” Glitsky said. “Not for a while, anyway.”