Damage (24 page)

Farrell himself sat on the sturdy oak library table. After he asked them to turn off their cell phones and then thanked everyone for coming at his summons, he got down to it. “I think it’s pretty clear with this Durbin homicide that Ro’s taking this time out of jail as an opportunity to pay back some of the people who helped put him away in the first place.

“Abe and Amanda, I know you’ve both argued that same thing right from the start, and I want to apologize to both of you for not making a stronger case against bail in the first place. You were both right. I was wrong.

“And for the record, Abe, your instincts were also right about trying to arrest him for the threat against you. Even if you’d waited and gotten a warrant, I believe Her Honor Erin Donahoe would have done what she did, bail-wise. So now the situation really couldn’t be clearer—if we’re going to override these bail decisions, and we must—we’ve got to get him indicted, and I mean yesterday, for no-bail murder.

“So”—he spread his palms, supplicating—“I need you all to help me. I know we’ve got the shoes on both victims, we’ve got the connections and motivations related to his trial, the fire in both cases. None of which, I’m sorry to say, rises to the level of convincing evidence. It might work for the grand jury if I tap-dance enough around the related motives, but it would be nice to have something else in the line of evidence since we’re going to get huge media on this, and I’m predicting they’re not going to give us a pass just ’cause we’re the good guys.”

For a moment, no one spoke.

Glitsky looked at Becker, over to Amanda, back to Farrell. “That’s all we’ve got, Wes. Except they were all strangled and naked except for the shoes. But that’s not enough evidence, either.”

All of the people in the room knew the extent to which the grand jury was a prosecutor’s tool. There was no judge at the proceedings and no defense attorneys allowed to refute or even argue against any of the DA’s assertions. Still, although the standard of proof was low, it was in theory nevertheless based on evidence. And so far they didn’t have much.

“How about witnesses?” Farrell asked. “Arnie?”

“On Nuñez, we have two people over on Baker who saw a car like Ro’s around the corner. Probably the same car. And no, they didn’t catch or notice the license number, and nobody saw him get in or out of it. Otherwise, pretty much zero.”

“How about the same car at the Durbin site?”

Becker shook his head. “Not yet. Still canvassing, but I’m not holding my breath.”

Farrell let out a disappointed sigh. “John?” he asked.

The ancient doctor scratched at his white hair. “I know y’all been talking about rape an’ hopin’ to pick up some DNA, but the Nuñez woman was too burnt for any analysis whatever. Wasn’t anything like fluid left to test. And Durbin, best I can tell, there wasn’t any rape at all. Although I did, I told Arnie here this morning, I did find that she had a dose of chlamydia. The bottom line is that there’s nothin’ I can point out proves either one of’em was raped at all. So I wouldn’t be comfortable putting that in your MO.”

“What about the chlamydia?” Farrell asked. “Would she have been contagious?”

“Yeah, but even if it got passed on to Curtlee, there’s no provin’ it came from her. So what’s that get you?”

Amanda Jenkins cleared her throat. “If I may?” she said. “How about if we think about the one trial that Ro’s had? I mean, there was no question about evidence in that case. We had the two witnesses solid, and his DNA with his victim.”

“Yeah,” Farrell said, “but he’s already been tried, convicted, and appealed out on that one. You can’t punish somebody for winning an appeal by recharging him with something more serious.”

“Of course. But how about if you take it from a completely different angle? Tell the grand jury that you’re joining that first case,
Sandoval
, with these later two. So you’re not upping the charge in
Sandoval
, which is the legal objection. And why are you joining the cases, then? Because the first one is the motive for the others. So now you’ve got multiple murder, and that’s a special circumstance, and that’s no bail. And that way—I really like this, Wes—you also make a neat end-run around the sixty-day issue. If his attorneys press for trial, they’re shooting themselves in the foot because we’ve got him again cold on the first one.”

Farrell, swinging his feet as he contemplated, sat with the idea for a long moment. “It’s good, Amanda, but I still think we’re on some pretty shaky legal grounds.”

“Not really. If we tried charging the Sandoval rape again, definitely. But we’re not. So the specials this time out aren’t murder/ rape, but multiple murder. And if we’ve got the evidence to convict him on one, and we do, that’s all we need.”

Farrell, clearly warming to the general idea, still wanted more specifics. “So how exactly do I sell it to the grand jury?”

“That these are all connected? Aside from the fact that it’s pretty self-evident on its face, you just tell them, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Janice Durbin was a suburban housewife. She wasn’t robbed, she didn’t have any known connection to gangs or to drugs. Who else in the world would want her dead except Ro Curtlee, and what was his motive? Revenge on her husband, pure and simple.’ ”

Really into it now, Amanda looked around the room and found herself selling it to everyone. “You remind the jury that their standard of proof isn’t reasonable doubt, but merely probable cause. Could any one of them really believe that Mrs. Durbin getting killed right now was just a coincidence? Did they want to live with that? No, even though there’s ten years between them, these murders are obviously all connected, so obviously that it can’t be ignored. And more murders are going to keep happening, with who knows how many other victims, until Ro is back in jail.”

Farrell, nodding easily now, finally said, “I think so. I think that might work.” He looked around. “Anybody else have anything to add?”

Vi Lapeer spoke up for the first time. “It would be better if this didn’t leak.”

“I hope,” Farrell said, “that goes without saying.”

“Sorry.” Lapeer’s smile was tight and unyielding. “In Philadelphia, sometimes that wasn’t always so clear.” Now she turned to Glitsky. “I’d try to get your investigations on these two new cases assigned to an event number”—this meant that the investigations would have an unlimited budget from the city’s General Fund—“but I’d have to get His Honor to sign off on that, and we can’t go there. So given that that’s not going to happen, do you have enough personnel, Abe?”

“I could move people around, maybe assign out overtime,” he said, “but who’s going to pay for it?”

“How about if you go over budget, you don’t get dinged? On my guarantee.”

“Thank you,” Glitsky said. “I’ll find some troops and put them on it.” He turned to Farrell. “So what’s our time frame on this?”

Farrell shrugged, looked over to Jenkins. “Amanda?”

“If I drop everything else, I can present most of it next week, that is a week from tomorrow. Or you could, Wes, if I brought you up to speed.”

“It’s your case,” Farrell said.

“All right.” Jenkins, clearly pleased, let out a breath of relief. “I’ll need every witness I can get, both from Ro’s trial and from the ongoing investigations. If all goes perfectly, maybe we can hope for an indictment two weeks from tomorrow.”

“Jesus Christ,” Arnie Becker said. “That long? He could wipe out half the city in that time.”

Jenkins threw him a look. “Maybe, but that long would basically be a world record for speed, Inspector,” she said.

“In the meantime,” Lapeer said, “I can keep it out of the homicide budget and authorize putting someone on him twenty-four/ seven.”

“I’ve already done that,” Jenkins said.

This was news to Farrell. “You did?”

“Well, he volunteered, actually. Matt Lewis. One of our inspectors,” she explained to Lapeer. “Matt thought I might be a next possible target and wanted to keep an eye out. And it wasn’t twenty-four /seven. Just his shift and then maybe a few hours at night.”

“He’ll want some backup, then,” Lapeer said.

“That would help,” Jenkins said.

Farrell surveyed the room briefly. “All right,” he said, “it looks like we’ve got a workable plan with a reasonable timeline. Longer than I’d like in a perfect world, but probably the best we can do. Amanda, since you’re going to be presenting to the grand jury, why don’t you take point coordinating all these efforts with what you’re going to need. Couple of weeks, with any luck, we’ll get this animal back where he belongs before he can do any more damage. I want to thank you all again for ...”

A knock on the door interrupted him, followed immediately by Treya from the outer office. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but Abe, somebody hunted you down and there’s an urgent call for you out at my desk.”

In the decade or so that it had been since he’d last shot anybody, Eztli had almost forgotten the pure adrenaline rush and pleasure of violent action, of simple pure killing. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed it, having to make do over the years with the vicarious thrills of gamecock or dog fighting. Now, the taste of blood still fresh in his mouth, it was as though he’d been sensation deprived, weaned slowly, methodically, and successfully off his drug and then reintroduced to its power and its beauty.

In ways he didn’t try to understand, he knew that Ro was somehow the source of this drug. Before Ro had gotten out of jail, Eztli had been marking time, comfortable and secure, with the Curtlees. And then, suddenly Ro appeared at the home with his energy and fearlessness, and Eztli, riding around with him, catching the high-tension vibe of the younger man, had in the past days woken up from what felt like a long sleep. Ending in the climax of the gunshot to the man’s head this afternoon. Ro, perhaps even unwittingly, had been the catalyst, the gateway to the drug.

And Eztli was going to protect that source.

Now at around nine o’clock, he was sitting in his car alone, parked across the street from Buena Vista Park in the Upper Haight. Wes Farrell lived in a medium-size Victorian home just down the block that Eztli and Ro had checked out—the address compliments of one of Denardi’s private investigators—as one of Ro’s first excursions after he’d gotten home. Farrell, Eztli knew, was going to be the key to whatever happened with Ro—and Farrell was weak and indecisive.

He could be controlled, and much more effectively than with Cliff and Theresa’s carrot-and-stick, relatively subtle approach.

The trick, Eztli felt, was to see the man in his natural environment and determine where, when, and what kind of pressure to bring to bear on him to control his decision-making. What Eztli had said to Ro was true—Farrell was his best friend. It really wasn’t in Ro’s, or Eztli’s, best interests to eliminate Farrell, to take him entirely out of the picture. No, Farrell needed to be part of any equation that could keep Ro permanently out of prison. He would be crucial to that.

Eztli simply had to make him understand the seriousness of the situation. So far, Farrell had mostly stood aside and let things happen, and the Curtlees’ influence had carried the day. But eventually he was going to have to make a decision—to prosecute Ro or to let the matter drop. Eztli did not want him confused as to the proper choice.

So he had to get to know him a little more. See where the pressure points were.

When Farrell dragged himself back into his home at nine thirty that Monday night, he could not ever remember being so tired. Somewhat to his surprise, the house was completely dark. Well, he wouldn’t blame Sam if she had decided to go out to have dinner somewhere by herself or even with one of her friends. He’d been terrible company lately.

Tonight he hadn’t called her to tell her he’d be late, hadn’t even thought about it in the hurricane of emotion and upheaval that had swept through his office at the news that Matt Lewis had been found shot to death in his car out in the Fillmore district. Amanda Jenkins breaking down, inconsolably wedged between grief and guilt, John Strout, Treya, and Farrell himself administering to her while Glitsky and Becker headed out to the crime scene. Lapeer herself, the chief of police, had gone down to the magistrate on duty to try to get whoever it was to sign off on a search warrant for the Curtlee home, since no one had the tiniest doubt as to who was responsible for Lewis’s death.

Farrell flicked on the light by the front door and in a second he heard the familiar
click, click, click
of Gert’s nails on the hardwood floor as she came padding out of the kitchen to meet him. She’d probably been sleeping in her bed in there, and now he reached down and petted her. “Where’s your mom?” he asked, putting down his briefcase, turning on more lights, heading for the refrigerator.

The answer came in the form of a note she left him on the kitchen counter:

“Wes—Sorry if this seems abrupt, but we both know I’ve been thinking about taking a little time off from us for a while now. You not calling or making it home tonight, after all of our discussions about just keeping on communicating with one another ...