Damage (51 page)

Even with no discernible makeup and a light sheen from sweating, the woman who opened the door nearly tied his tongue in knots. Clad only in a red leotard, she wore her blond hair shoulder length, held back with a red headband. It showed off the broad, fair forehead over eyes of pure jade. Perhaps in her early forties, she had trace lines at the corners of those distinctive eyes, but otherwise her face might have belonged to a twenty-year-old. “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Holly.”

“Hello.” Glitsky shook her hand, showed his badge, kept it simple. “I’m Abe Glitsky, with San Francisco homicide. Can you answer a few questions?”

She cast a glance back over her shoulder at the obviously empty studio and shrugged. “Sure. This must be about Janice, right?” And then suddenly her incredible eyes flashed. “That fucker.”

The vehemence surprised Glitsky. “You mean Dr. Durbin?”

“No, no, no.” Hands waving in front of her face. “Of course I don’t mean Janice. I mean that fucker who killed her.”

“So you knew her?”

“Yes. I mean, not that we’d been friends a long time—I just started the studio here two months ago—but she was ... I thought we were going to be friends forever, you know how that is. You meet somebody, wham, right?”

“Actually not too often,” Glitsky said.

“No. I know what you mean. Not too darned often.”

“So you felt you were getting to know her well?”

She nodded, now dead somber. “I thought she was starting to be my best friend. Some days she’d get an hour or two between appointments and she’d come down here, and as you can see, it gets a little slow here, too. So we’d just talk.”

“What about?”

“Everything. Kids, staying in shape, getting old, running your own business, books, movies. You name it, we talked about it.”

“Men?”

She cocked her head to one side. “Sure.”

“Not just her husband?”

“Not always, no.” Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she added, “I guess what you want to know is was she seeing someone else. She was.”

“One of her patients, did she say?”

“No. I mean, yes, she did say. No, not one of her patients.”

“You’re sure?”

“Unless she was lying to me, which she wasn’t.”

“So who was he? Did you ever meet him? Or see him?”

“No.”

“Did she ever mention him by name?”

“No. She really wasn’t comfortable talking about it. It was like she didn’t want it to be happening, but she didn’t know how she could stop. She wasn’t really proud of it.”

“So she wanted it to stop?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, really. She was just mostly worried that she’d get caught. She didn’t want to lose her family life. And her husband. But she was infatuated with the guy, even though she was pretty sure he was a player.”

“A player?”

“You know. Lots of partners. A player.”

“Lots of partners? Where would he get lots of partners?”

The question clearly amused her. “Hello? A straight guy in San Francisco? Finding partners isn’t your problem, trust me. You look a little frustrated.”

Glitsky nodded. “I am. If this guy wasn’t one of her patients, I’ve got basically no place to start looking for him. He could be anywhere.”

“You think he’s the guy who killed her?”

“I think he might have a motive, or given her husband one. Either way, I’d like to find him. Do you know where they hooked up? Some motel, maybe? An apartment?”

“Why?”

“If he used a credit card, we got him. If he paid cash, he had to show an ID and they keep it on file. I’m grasping at straws here.”

After a small silence, she said, “If it’s any help, Janice told me he came by here a few times after hours. Maybe somebody would have seen him then.”

“I’ll be sure to ask,” Glitsky said. And then, berating himself for not getting to any of this much earlier, he thanked Holly and continued on his door-to-door down the hallway. In the end, he’d spoken to a living person in every one of the twenty-two businesses in the building, and except for Holly, no one had known Janice Durbin as other than a professional acquaintance.

Waiting for Michael Durbin to get back to the Novios’ after his day of work, Glitsky sat alone for the moment at the dining room table with a cup of tea that Kathy had brewed for him. Then she appeared in the doorway leading to the kitchen with a platter that held a plate of cookies and a china cup of coffee on a matching saucer. Glitsky watched her place the tray down on the table. Sitting across from him, she picked up her cup and saucer as though afraid that it would shatter.

“How are you holding up?” Glitsky asked her gently.

She gave him a weak smile. “Is it that obvious? Every minute I feel like I’m going to break. She wasn’t only my sister, you know. She was my best friend.”

“Have you thought about talking to somebody?”

“A grief counselor, you mean?” She shook her head. “I’ve had a couple of my other friends recommend that. Maybe I should look into it. Although something tells me that what it’s going to take, mostly, is time. Which right now seems to have stopped moving, so it feels kind of hard to depend on.”

“It can seem like that, I know.”

She lifted her cup, put it back down. “That sounds like experience talking.”

He nodded. “My first wife,” he said. “Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

Glitsky shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“It sounds like it still hurts.”

“There are moments. Mostly, though, you remember the good times.”

“The good times. Sometimes you feel like they’re never going to come back. Like it’s completely impossible.”

“I know.”

“I mean, when I think of how it was even so recently. Here we are, me and Chuck and the girls, sitting here around this table, no more than a month ago. Everybody getting along, everybody laughing and loving one another. And here I am, about to turn forty next week, and Chuck made up this song they were all going to sing at my big old monster birthday party we were going to have. ‘Old, old, really old,’ or something like that, the chorus, you know. ‘Really, really, really old.’ Then the girls each wrote their own verse, just cruel and witty and funny as hell. We were all cracking up. And now I see the girls all just so sad, and me and Chuck in this awful funk.” She stared across at him. “The idea that we could ever have a time like that again, carefree and happy, it just doesn’t seem possible.” Suddenly she straightened up, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t need to hear this.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s part of it.”

“I don’t know how you do it.” She brought her coffee up and sipped at it. “All the victims and their families. They’re all like us a little, aren’t they?”

“A little. Everybody deals with it in their own way, but it’s never easy.”

“That must be good for your motivation. In your job, I mean. The pain of the victims.”

Glitsky felt the impulse to smile and resisted it. “It’s a factor,” he said.

They both went to their drinks and sipped. “Can I ask you another question?” Kathy asked.

“I don’t know that you’ve asked even one yet, but go ahead.”

“What are you here to talk to Michael about? I thought it was pretty clear that this, that Janice, was Ro Curtlee.”

Glitsky killed a couple of seconds with his tea. Then, “There are some unresolved issues.”

“Like what?” She brought her hand up to her mouth. “You mean it might not have been Ro? You can’t think it was Michael, do you?”

“Not necessarily. I’ve got some questions for him, that’s all.”

She put her arms out on the table. “He didn’t do this, Inspector. You don’t know him. He couldn’t have. He loved Janice.”

“All right.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“I’m sorry,” Glitsky said. “I don’t really have a better one.”

“She had chlamydia,” Glitsky said.

They were in the library/office, the door closed to keep them out of earshot of the rest of the household. Glitsky half leaned, half sat against Chuck’s desk while Michael sat at one end of the leather couch, his feet up on the coffee table.

“What?” And now he brought them down as he came forward to the edge of the couch. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a sexually transmitted—”

“No, no. I know what chlamydia is. You’re saying that Janice had it?”

“You didn’t know this?”

“No. How would I—?”

“If we subpoena your medical records, we wouldn’t find that you’d had yourself treated for chlamydia?”

“Absolutely not. How did you find this out?”

“The autopsy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At the time, we thought it might save you from some pain. That’s when we thought Ro Curtlee had killed her.”

“You don’t still think that?”

“Not so much. His alibi stands up. He wasn’t there.”

“I wasn’t, either.”

“That’s what you’ve said. Did Janice tell you she had an STD?”

“No. I’ve told you. We hadn’t had sex for two months. Which is one reason why I thought she was having an affair. So now I know why the sex stopped, don’t I? I would have gotten the chlamydia, and then would have known for sure, wouldn’t I?”

“And knowing for sure about that, and knowing all about how Ro Curtlee set up his victims, and also knowing that he was out on bail . . . if you were going to make it look like him, you should have gotten in touch with Ro and made sure he didn’t have a solid alibi. Maybe invited him to come by your house on some pretext, planted something to look like he’d been there . . .” Glitsky stared down at him, waiting.

Michael Durbin met his gaze. “You know, Lieutenant, I agreed to meet you voluntarily tonight, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m not going to listen to this. I’m trying to keep my family together and deal with the tragedy of my wife’s death, and I just don’t have the energy to argue with you anymore about it. If you’re going to arrest me, find some evidence and take me downtown. Otherwise, get the hell out of my face so I can go back to trying to live my life and make it worth something.”

At dinner, all eight of the extended family about to start digging into the huge platter of spaghetti and meatballs at the big table, Michael clinked his wineglass and drew a shaky breath. “First,” he said, “before we move out of here on Wednesday, all of us Durbins want to thank all of you Novios for your incredible generosity in letting us share your home these past ten days. It makes us realize that this is what family is all about. Hanging in there together when the times are hardest.

“Second,” he went on, “here’s to Jon for coming back to us.” Michael looked at his oldest son. “I know you’ve still got reservations, but I’m confident they’re all going to get resolved. I want to thank you for putting your trust back in me.”

Michael held Jon’s eye, knowing that this little speech was mostly for the benefit of Peter and the girls, to calm the waters. Jon didn’t look exactly like he was sold on his father’s story, but for the moment he was giving it the benefit of the doubt, and Michael felt that was good enough—in any event, it was all he was going to get. His glance went over to Peter. “And to both of you boys for burying the hatchet.”

“And finally,” Kathy put in, “can I just say? Here’s to Janice. We will always love you and miss you.”

“Hear, hear,” Chuck intoned and tipped his glass.

“And now,” Kathy said. “Let’s start passing the food before it gets cold.”

But the pasta platter hadn’t even gone halfway around the table when Jon spoke up. “So, Dad, what did Glitsky want to talk to you about?”

Michael made a face. “He’s frustrated that he can’t seem to put Ro Curtlee at our house that morning.”

“Why not?” Chuck asked.

“Well, evidently his housekeeper says he was at home and Glitsky believes her. So now he needs something he can point at and prove to shut up his critics. He’s taking a lot of flak about Ro, that he blamed everything on him without any real evidence to back him up.”