Damage

6

The Curtlee mansion and its grounds took up the last third of Vallejo Street on the uphill side in the last block before it abutted into the abundant greenery of the tamed forest that was the Presidio.

Glitsky sat in his city-issued Taurus, driver's side window down, and stared across the street at the imposing structure. Set back about sixty feet from the curb, but otherwise surprisingly open to the street, the vast white block of stucco rose three stories up into the trees on the escarpment behind it. The driveway and its landscaping blocked an unimpeded view of the ground floor, but on the two upper floors, lights shone in six of the sixteen windows. From where he sat, Glitsky could only just make out some flickering light and occasional movement behind the enormous bay window through the well-tended shrubbery on the house's right side.

He didn't know precisely why he was there. He might have told himself that he was investigating a murder in which a resident of this house, recently released from prison, was already his prime suspect, and this was true as far as it went. But it was also true that everything Wes had told him was probably correct-he had neither evidence nor a warrant to search for it. Ro would have an alibi and would probably refuse to talk to him in any event. The Curtlees were not only wealthy, they were by now experienced in dealing with, and frustrating the efforts of, law enforcement. They would have a lawyer down here the minute Glitsky showed his face, and he would wind up having nothing to show for all of his trouble.

But he didn't care.

He wanted them-the whole family-to know that he knew. And to remind them that in spite of their money and power, he'd won last time, and that he would win again. And that this time-with the Nunez murder rather than the retrial of Ro for murdering Dolores Sandoval-he would get his special circumstances, and maybe even succeed in putting Roland Curtlee on death row, where he belonged.

It was juvenile, undisciplined, visceral, and Glitsky was acutely aware of, even somewhat embarrassed by, all that, but basically, at bottom, he wanted to put this dangerous and irresponsible family on notice that the damage they'd done to his career had not broken him. And that, in fact, he had resurrected himself to the relative eminence he had enjoyed before. In spite of the Curtlees' best efforts to ruin him through slander, libel, and innuendo, he was back at his job in homicide.

He opened his car door, and as the inside light came on, he checked his watch. It was ten fifteen, much later than a San Francisco policeman was authorized to pay a call on a citizen who was not actively involved in a crime or its aftermath either as perpetrator or victim. Glitsky knew that by ringing their doorbell, he was giving the Curtlees ammunition to claim that he was harassing them. But he had a ready response: The circumstances surrounding Felicia Nunez's death, along with the role she had been about to play in Ro's new trial, necessitated a swift, early police interrogation, if for no other reason than to eliminate Ro as a suspect. He could argue that, if anything, he was doing them a favor.

In a cathedral of old-growth cypress, he stepped out of his car and into the hushed and imposing street. The servant who opened the door was new since the last time Glitsky had been to the Curtlees' home. Ten years ago, they hadn't had a formal butler, but now it seemed that had changed. This guy was impressive, with the build of a wrestler. He looked to be in his late forties, with a full head of perfectly groomed salt-and-pepper hair. In a dark gray business suit and black tie, the man exuded a quiet and cold-blooded competence. His frankly Aztec face betrayed neither curiosity nor concern at Glitsky's arrival, his request to talk to the Curtlees if they were home, or the badge he proffered.

He spoke with an exaggerated politeness, in an exceptionally deep, unaccented voice. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No. As I said, I'm with the police department."

"Yes. I understand. Do you have a warrant?"

"No. I hope to get a few words with one of the Curtlees to apprise them of a situation that has come up."

"Can you give me the message?"

"I'd prefer to speak to one of them personally."

The man took a long moment, deciding. "And the name again?"

"Lieutenant Glitsky. San Francisco homicide."

"Yes, sir. One moment, please. I'll see if one of them is available."

Gently but firmly, he closed the door on Glitsky's face.

Glitsky turned around and distracted himself by looking down the driveway to the street beyond. There was no gate. He'd been able to walk unimpeded up to the front door. For the first time, this struck him as unusual, and he wondered what, if anything, it said about this family, about its arrogance and its culture. True, this block didn't get much foot traffic, and what there was of it wasn't particularly threatening in the mold of, say, the Tenderloin district; but every other domicile on this block had its fence and its gate. Maybe the Curtlees figured first that everyone would know who lived here and second that no one would dare disturb them because to do so would be to invite the family's wrath and retribution.

So a fence wasn't necessary; neither was a gate. The psychic barrier was enough.

When he heard footsteps approaching from back inside the mansion, Glitsky turned back and was facing the door when it opened on Ro Curtlee.

The young man had filled out some in the years he'd been away, but with the milky blue eyes and the weak jawline, he still had a bit of the look of a sullen child. His light blond hair had grown out in the weeks that he'd been out on bail. Somewhere he'd acquired a scar that began high on his forehead and disappeared into his hairline. The white tank top he wore tucked into his slacks revealed all of his arms, now with well-defined biceps; he'd clearly spent a lot of time working out in prison.

Seeing Glitsky, he let out a scornful note of laughter, shaking his head in mock disbelief. "Ez said it was you out here disturbing our peace so late on a weekend night, and I told him you knew better than that. So I had to come see for myself, and here you are, in the flesh. You got yourself a giant set of balls, I'll give you that, showing your face around me again. So what the fuck do you want this time?"

"I hoped to try to eliminate you as a suspect in a murder that happened today."

"Sure you did. Who got herself killed?"

Glitsky paused. "Who said it was a female?"

Ro's face went blank for an instant before a cracked smile flittered back. "Oh. Ouch! Got me with a little zinger there right out of the gate. Nice work. I better get my lawyer down here before I incriminate myself. You got your tape recorder going?"

"Nope."

Ro clucked. "That's a shame. You could have used that moment in court."

"I still can."

"Okay, you got me shakin' now, and especially if it turns out it was a woman got killed."

"You want to guess?"

"I don't suppose I do. Especially if I got it right. How would that look? You know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah. You're way too smart for a silly trick like that, Ro. But what I'm really here for, maybe you can tell me where you were this afternoon and who, if anyone, you were with."

"Maybe I don't have to tell you dick."

"That's right, you don't. But you could save us both some trouble if you did."

"That's my goal, Sergeant. Save you some trouble."

"It's lieutenant now. I got promoted."

"No shit! Well, congratulations on that one. I thought I heard your career had kind of gone in the toilet after my trial, arresting the wrong guy and all."

Glitsky's lips turned up a fraction of an inch. "Actually not so much. You getting convicted and all. You know? So?"

"So what?"

"Today. This afternoon. Where were you?"

"Out. Taking a drive."

"Alone?"

"You bet. Enjoying my freedom."

"Where'd you go?"

"Up to Napa, across to Sonoma, back down here by dinnertime."

"You stop anywhere?"

"I got a burger and a milkshake at Taylor's Refresher in Napa. You know that place? Awesome food. None of that fancy shit they serve everyplace else up there."

"Yeah," Glitsky said. "It's a good spot. What kind of milkshake?"

"Chocolate."

"Well, there you go. You think anybody up there, maybe working at Taylor's, would recognize you?"

"I got no idea."

"How about your car?"

"How about it?"

"What were you driving?"

"The Z-Four. The Beemer, you know. Top down."

"What color is it?"

"Purple."

"So it's pretty visible?"

"People notice it, yeah. It's bitchin' wheels. That what you wanted to know?"

"It's a good start."

"So who got killed?"

Glitsky looked at his watch. "It ought to be on the news right about now. You can check it out yourself."

"Ro." A female voice from upstairs. The mother, Theresa. "Who's there at this time of night?"

Ro Curtlee hesitated about a second before he allowed himself another dismissive half smile and looked Glitsky straight in the eye. "Nobody," he said.

And closed the door. Glitsky could have-perhaps should have-gone back home. But his blood was racing and he knew he'd keep Treya up if he stayed in the living room and simply paced, or even sat.

So he drove back downtown, parked in the city lot, and ascended back to the self-contained little universe that was his office. Switching on his lights, he crossed over to his desk.

High on his left-hand wall, five grimed-over identical windows provided a tenuous connection to the real world outside, although when the room lights weren't on, even in the daytime, his office was almost too dark to read in. Under his framed personal photographs and departmental honors-Glitsky had been San Francisco Policeman of the Year in 1987, among other accomplishments-low shelves filled with bric-a-brac, memorabilia (his patrolman's hat, a football signed by his old teammates at San Jose State), and random case files half filled his right-hand wall. Behind him a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf sported an array of reading material, eclectic for a policeman: hundreds of paperbacks; a complete collection of Patrick O'Brian's seagoing novels along with their obscure reference volumes; a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica; an abridged but still enormous Oxford English Dictionary; the Compendium of Drug Therapy; a couple of dozen sports books; the translated librettos of The Barber of Seville and Tosca (one of Glitsky's older sons by his first marriage, Jacob, was a rising baritone in the opera world); the California Penal Code; and many other legal tomes.

But tonight, Glitsky saw none of it.

He'd already considered and rejected the idea of going directly to the night magistrate on duty somewhere down in the lower floors of this building and asking for a search warrant based on Ro's obvious knowledge that today's murder victim was female. Though Glitsky took some solace in the fact that if it ever came to trial, he would indeed be allowed to testify to the exchange and Ro's slip of the tongue, for the moment, it was essentially nothing as far as evidence was concerned. It did, however, perhaps irrationally, remove all doubt in Glitsky's mind that Ro had killed Nunez.

Glitsky pulled over a legal pad and scribbled some notes: He had to find Gloria Gonzalvez, the last remaining witness in Ro's trial, before the rapist-killer could get to her. He needed to assemble a couple of identification six-packs-mug shots of five other people and Ro-to show around.

Other notes: How had Ro found Nunez? Had he made an appointment with her? Might he have conceivably phoned her? Had one of his lawyers? Had she lived in the same apartment the last time she'd testified against him?

Now, putting aside his legal pad, he checked his Rolodex, picked up the phone, and punched up Arnie Becker's cell phone number. The arson inspector picked up on the second ring, in spite of the late hour, giving no sign that he was anywhere near turning in. He knew who was calling him and started right in. "Abe. You got something?"

"Couple of somethings, maybe. Including a suspect."

"That was fast."

"You still at the fire?"

"Just getting started, really. Your crime scene just left. I'll be here all night."

"So has anybody put together who Nunez was?"

"No. Other than she's dead."

"She was also a witness in a murder trial and was going to be one again before too long for the same guy."

"Who's that?"

"Ro Curtlee."

"The guy Farrell let out on bail?"

"Actually it was Baretto, but yeah, him."

"Shit. And he went and killed her."

"That's my bet."

A long sigh. Then, "Why do they let these fuckers out anyway?"

"That's a great question, Arnie. Something to do with justice and the right to appeal. Ask your congressman or somebody."

"Assholes."

"Yeah, well, the point is he might have been driving a purple BMW Z-Four convertible and parked it somewhere nearby when he went upstairs. Somebody might have seen it. Also, I'm making up a six-pack you can show around the neighborhood tomorrow. Anybody saw him, we at least take him down here and grill him, maybe even get a warrant to take his house apart. You get anything at all down there?"

"Maybe." Becker paused. "I don't want to get your hopes up, but there might be a small something."

"Go ahead, get my hopes up," Glitsky said. "Small is good."

Again, Becker hesitated. "Well, it might not be conclusive, and I don't know what it means, if anything, but there were two almost identical burned-up pieces of what looks like rubber or plastic-I'll know by tomorrow-down by her feet."

Glitsky's heart did a little flip in his chest. He'd already had one heart attack several years before, and though this didn't feel the same at all, now he moved his hand over his chest and sucked in a quick breath. "She was wearing her shoes when he killed her," he said. It was not a question.

"That's what it looks like. Maybe. Does that mean anything to you?"

Glitsky still was finding it difficult to draw a breath. "That's what Ro Curtlee did to his rape victims. He made sure they kept their shoes on."

"Why?"

"God only knows, Arnie. Why anything?" "Sorry about the time, Wes, but I wanted you to know first. I say they verify the shoes, we get a warrant."

Farrell breathed into the mouthpiece on his end. "Can't do it, Abe. We don't even know it was Nunez, for Christ's sake. And we may never know for sure whether or not it's her if she never went to a dentist in this country, which I hear is a reasonable likelihood. And without at least that ID, we've truly got nothing a jury could even chew on. Did any of that shoe stuff get admitted in his last trial?"

"I don't know, Wes, but you can find out easy enough. Meanwhile, though, I went and talked to these women before they got bought off, his rape victims, all of them. They all said the same thing about the shoes. It's what he did."

"I believe you. But he didn't kill any of them, the others, did he?"

"He killed one. He beat up three."

"Okay, but the dead one, Sandoval, she was outside, found in the park, am I right?" He kept going over Glitsky's silence. "So, my point is, he didn't burn anybody. Not ever. That's new, right? It's not his old MO, so where's the argument that this has to be him?"

"I know it's him. Somebody in prison told him it was a good idea when you rape somebody and kill her, then you burn up the place and the evidence with it."

"Which is why, what you got from Becker earlier, we're not even going to get proof that this Nunez woman was sexually molested, are we?"

"Not likely, no."

"Okay, so we've got nothing putting Ro in her apartment, no witnesses…"

"So far."

"All right, so far. But still. Then no proof of a sexual attack. So we've got a woman who died in a fire. We don't even know cause of death yet, do we? I mean, was she strangled, shot, stabbed? Tell me."

"We might not get that either, Wes. She's burned up pretty bad."

"That's what I'm saying, Abe. She might… or no, the evidence might not prove a damn thing. She might have been carrying a candle on her way to the bath and had a heart attack and fell down and it set her and then the place on fire."

"That didn't happen."

"I don't think so, either. For the record, I think you're probably right. But probably isn't close to what we need and you know it."

"So what are we going to do?"

"I don't know, Abe. Hope he screws up."

"You mean while he's killing his next victim?"

"No," Farrell said. "Before that."