The First Law

25

At a little before midnight, in her camouflage outfit Land with her heart pounding against the wall of her chest, Michelle walked all the way up one side of Casa Street, crossed where it abutted on Marina Boulevard, then all the way back on the other. There were several mature trees sprouting from squares cut in the sidewalk, and these blocked some of the illumination from the streetlights. Still, she thought she could tell if a person, or even two, was sitting in any of the cars parked solidly against the curbs on both sides. She saw none.

This time, she left the newspapers where they were and took the steps to the landing quietly, but two at a time. At the top, a sudden light-headedness came over her so strongly that she thought for a second that she would faint. Straining to hear any sound that would mean discovery, she could hear nothing except the beat of her heart throbbing in her ears. Unable to stop herself, she walked back down the stairs and peeked out for another look at the street.

Back upstairs, she opened the screen door, wincing at the squeak, waiting another minute, listening. Then suddenly in a great hurry, she inserted the key, opened the door and closed it behind her.

She stood in blackness, letting her eyes adjust. After a time, some faint illumination of the streetlights through the front windows seemed to create spectral shadows, and eventually these resolved into shapes and spaces, and she felt she could walk safely. The errand was simple enough- she was picking up some of his clothes, whatever bills might have accumulated, a checkbook and ATM card if she could find them in his rolltop.

Michelle hadn't worried until she'd gotten to the front stoop, when suddenly the entire idea struck her as foolish beyond imagining. Except now she was already here, inside.

It was an older building and the hardwood floor creaked as she moved back down the hallway toward John's bedroom. She'd made the walk several times and had never noticed the sound before, but now the boards seemed to be screaming in agony at her light and cautious tread. What if the people downstairs woke up and called the police? She stopped, pinned to the wall, sweating now even in the chilled hall. She was not cut out for this kind of work. But there seemed nothing to do but continue, and the back half of the hallway was blessedly more quiet. If she walked faster…

She had brought a small but powerful Maglite flashlight and a string shopping bag that could stretch to accommodate everything she needed, and she went right to his dresser-socks and underwear in the top drawer, a couple of shirts in the next one down, an extra pair of jeans, tightly rolled. Her bag was nearly full, but then she was almost done-just the checkbook and the mail.

The rolltop did not budge at first. Nor at her second try. Straightening up, she took several deep breaths, took hold of the two handles. When she jerked at it sharply, the old wood released and the top flew up with a rattle and a crash. For a full minute, she didn't move, barely trusted herself to breathe. But there was no sound from below, from anywhere. Far in the distance, a siren wailed, but then stopped almost immediately. It wasn't about her.

The checkbook with his ATM card was in the top middle drawer, where he'd told her she'd find it. Farther back, a picture frame, face down, stopped her completely. Carefully, she lay the flashlight on the desk and reached in, lifting it with both hands, setting it upright in front of her.

It was, of course, Emma and Jolie. She should have known. Unable to tear her eyes from the image, by the flashlight's beam she studied the faces of John's lost loves. It was the furthest thing from a posed shot with say-cheese smiles and orchestrated effervescence. Perhaps because of that, she knew why this was the one he'd kept, the one he'd framed. It was a feeding moment, the baby in a high chair anticipating the bite, which judging from her clean face might be the first of that meal. The mom bringing a spoon toward her. Although she immediately recognized John in the infant's face, the mouth especially, the baby took after her mother even more. Particularly in this picture, where they wore the same expression, a kind of rapturous expectation. Both so vividly alive. Both so young.

A noise, close by, shattered her reverie. In her nerves and haste she reached both for the flashlight and the picture. The frame escaped her grasp in the now-sudden dark and it came down, the glass breaking with its unmistakable, sickening sound. In the aftermath, the silence was complete again.

But, she thought, not quite as it had been before. Now, glued to the chair, shaking but immobile, she imagined someone else within hearing distance, listening as she was for another sound. She put her hand over her mouth to stop her own breathing, tried in vain to summon some saliva, to swallow.

Someone was at the screen door, which creaked again. A second later, she heard a key turn, and the hallway light came on. A man's voice called out, "This is the police. I have a weapon drawn. Come out where I can see you."

Michelle went to stand up, then thought better of it. "I'm in the bedroom, down to your left," she said. "My hands are over my head. I won't move until you say so."

Like last time, there were two of them, but not the same two. The Asian man, the one who'd been holding the gun when he walked in, put the thing in its holster, then approached her with his wallet out and badge showing. After asking her to stand up, he introduced himself as Sergeant Inspector Paul Thieu of San Francisco homicide. He didn't waste any time at all. He patted her down quickly and thoroughly, then asked what she was doing here.

She thought she'd go with the same basic story that had worked before. "I watch John's apartment when he's away."

"You do, do you? Can I see some identification, please?"

She fumbled in the breast pocket of her camo shirt and brought forth a wallet insert with her driver's license, which he took, examined carefully, and showed to his partner. The partner carried a briefcase. He was short, dark, well-dressed, with a soul patch under his lip. Returning the wallet insert to her, Thieu looked her up and down, seemed satisfied with something. "All right, let me ask you again. What are you doing here?"

"I just told you, I…"

He was shaking his head no, patiently but with a determined look. He pointed to the string bag at her feet. "That bag is full of men's clothes and what looks from here like a checkbook. Which makes me believe that we've come upon you here in the act of burglary."

"No! That's not it. Really." She implored each of the men in turn. "Look." She reached into her front pocket. "I have a key. The key John gave me. I didn't break in here. He's a friend of mine. I watch his stuff."

"Clothes," Thieu said, pointing again.

Thinking fast, she offered a hopeful face. "I wash them. He leaves them in the hamper. I was bringing them back."

"In the dark? At one o'clock in the morning? You're one heck of a friend. Do you expect us to believe any of this?"

"Well, he pays me, of course. Not much, but…"

"Do you know there's a warrant out for Mr. Holiday's arrest? For murder?"

"I… I know. I heard that. But that must be a mistake. John wouldn't hurt anybody."

"Do you know where he is?"

"No. You mean now?"

Thieu turned to the other man. "Do you think I meant now, Len? Did you get that impression?"

The other man nodded, shot her the straight line. "He means now."

"No. I don't have any idea where he is. I mean, that's why I came here. I haven't heard from John in a few days, almost a week now." Suddenly, her eyes lit up. "Look, I came by here on Friday, too," she blurted. "When the other officers were here."

"What other officers?"

"The men with the search warrant. They had identification. A black guy and a white guy."

"Cuneo and Russell," the other man said.

"All right, and these inspectors talked to you?"

"Same as you. Checked my ID. Everything."

"And you were here, again, why?"

"That day, the same as now, then picking up John's newspapers."

"They're still down there, I notice."

She shook her head. "Just the last three days. I was going to get them on the way out and throw them away."

"And you told all this to Inspectors Cuneo and Russell?"

"If those were their names."

"And they just let you go back home?"

Thieu was in a pickle.

Earlier tonight, at the house of Glitsky's lawyer friend Hardy, Thieu had told the lieutenant that he'd come here with Faro. It seemed a reasonable risk. But it was turning out to be true what everybody said-that no good deed ever went unpunished.

And that's what, in theory, this trip to Holiday's was intended to be, a good deed, albeit with elements of self-interest. Glitsky, Hardy and their wives had been truly distraught over this problem with Panos. Thieu hadn't seen Abe so angry in years and Treya-in Thieu's opinion a rock of sanity, patience and good humor-was if possible even madder.

Thieu had come to Glitsky this morning with his problem. And this was, he supposed, why Abe was such a valuable friend and mentor. Coming here could be the solution for both of them, and for Hardy as well. Thieu got the feeling that Glitsky and Hardy had come to their decision after quite a lot of internal debate between them, and that neither was thrilled with deciding that their only viable option was to find evidence linking Sephia, Roy Panos and Rez to these murders. Clearly, they would both have preferred some kind of confrontation with these men, but in the end they were lawmen, and they'd do it according to the law.

Finally, Hardy suggested that Thieu come here with Len Faro and dust the place for fingerprints. The CSI team had already done the places where they'd discovered the incriminating evidence from Silverman's. Photographed the stuff in place, dusted the actual articles for prints where possible. But they hadn't done a general sweep of the entire duplex unit-dishes in the sink, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures.

The other three suspects had never been at Holiday's house and Glitsky thought that Thieu ought to be able to get some kind of statement to that effect. Even a verbal admission might do the trick, though written or taped would be better. Once they had that, if they found fingerprints of any of the suspects at Holiday's home, the question of where the planted evidence had come from was going to drive the investigation either to one of the true conspirators' doors, or to Wade Panos.

The only wrinkle from Thieu's perspective was the imperative to keep himself out of it. The problem as well as the source of his pique was that he wasn't assigned to any of the murders that came in the wake of Sam Silverman. So what excuse could Thieu plausibly invent for why he had to go to Holiday's duplex in the dead of night and dust for fingerprints?

He had to give it to these defense lawyers. They were a devious group and Hardy clearly belonged among them. Thieu simply wouldn't mention it until he had the results. As far as Lennard Faro was concerned, Thieu was doing a routine favor for his two homicide colleagues Cuneo and Russell, just being thorough with housekeeping at the home of a murder suspect. The print lifts would go to the lab- Faro would neither know nor care what they were about, and would never ask. After the results came in, if the fingerprints of Sephia and/or Panos and/or Rez came in, then having at least established the Panos connection to the case, Thieu could come to Gerson and, man to man, admit to his earlier reservations about the evidence and the interpretations of Cuneo and Russell.

Perfect.

Until this woman.

He believed no part of her story. In his heart, he was even insulted that she could think any part of it was plausible. He ached to put handcuffs on her, take her downtown and do a serious interrogation. But that would leave him with the really insoluble problem of explaining to Gerson why he'd been here in the first place. The entire house of cards would come down if he didn't have a positive match on some Panos-connected prints to fall back on. He could certainly find himself out of homicide, possibly cut in rank.

And then there was the even bigger problem. Thieu was morally certain not only that this Michelle Maier knew where the fugitive John Holiday was at this moment, but that he was at her own home. She had come over here to get him some changes of clothes, obviously. Access to his money. He and Len could drive her back to her place, put the cuffs on Holiday and be heroes tomorrow.

Except Glitsky didn't think Holiday did it. From Thieu's perspective, the evidence didn't say he did, either. It was simply good police work to verify whether an alternative set of suspects had a substantial evidentiary problem. And the woman, Ms. Maier, had given him a rationalization- she'd actually been here with Cuneo and Russell just three days ago, and they hadn't seen fit to follow up. It blew Thieu's mind. It wasn't what they were looking for, and so they hadn't seen what it so obviously was. No doubt her explanations had been as lame then as now.

By her own admission, they'd checked her identification. So in theory, Cuneo and Russell knew as much about her as Thieu did, though he'd be surprised if either one of them had thought to write down her last name or address. Or remembered them, as he did.

John Holiday was their suspect. It was their case, not his.

Let them work it.

All this passed through Thieu's agile mind during his brief questioning of Michelle Maier. She had just begun blowing more smoke about the newspapers, how she was planning on picking them up on her way out tonight.

"And they just let you go back home?"

"Yes, sir."

He turned to Faro, shrugged extravagantly. "Well, Ms. Maier, it appears to be your lucky night. Inspector Faro and I have a lot of technical ground to cover here and if you gave your name and address to the other inspectors, I'm going to assume they followed up as they should. That okay with you, Len?"

Faro tugged at his bug. He held the rank of inspector but wasn't an investigator. He did forensics and crime scene analysis. As far as he was concerned, the woman's presence was only significant to the extent that it sullied the scene. The sooner she was gone, the better. "As long as she doesn't touch anything else going out. Leave the mail," he told her.

Michelle knew what she was hearing, but wasn't sure she believed it. Thieu lifted his hand and waved as he would to a child. "Drive safely," he said.

"Really? I can go?"

Thieu nodded impatiently.

"Thank you. I mean, I'm sorry. I just…" She noticed the string bag at her feet and leaned over to pick it up. Then she walked past the two policemen, and out the front door.