The Fall (13 page)

“No. I know that. And going by the book, he shouldn’t call anybody. He should just show up and ask for a sample. That’s the correct protocol.”

“But . . .” Beck didn’t like the way this was going.

“But
more important, you’ve been dealing with Waverly all this time, haven’t you? Why would Abe be calling you instead of the guy you’ve been talking to?”

“He’s on the case now. Maybe they divided it up some way.”

“Maybe,” Hardy replied. “Entirely possible. But also maybe, because you’ve got a long history and you love each other, and because—no offense—you’re inexperienced, he’s trying to avoid embarrassing you by pulling your client off the street and taking a swab without notice. But it comes out the same way. If they’ve got probable cause, they can get a warrant and take a sample. If they don’t, there’s no way you should let Greg provide one. So you call your dear uncle and tell him if he gets a warrant, you’d be happy to bring your client down, but if they can’t get a warrant, you still hope he has a nice day.”

“Warrant or not, why not let him give a sample if he’s innocent? I mean, how can it hurt if Greg didn’t do it?”

“A better question would be, how can it help Greg in any way?”

“If the DNA doesn’t match . . .”

“Then it’s not his DNA. So what? You don’t even know what sample they’re comparing it to. What does that have to do with her getting killed? Did the person who left the DNA necessarily have anything to do with that? No. If Greg takes the DNA test and there’s no match, does that take him off the hook for the murder? Not necessarily. Can it possibly do him any good at all? You tell me.”

“I didn’t think of it that way. I saw it as trying to be cooperative after not answering any of Homicide’s questions yesterday.”

“Getting back in their good graces, especially Abe’s?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“On the other hand, ask yourself what happens if they didn’t have probable cause for a warrant, but you get Greg to provide his DNA and they get a match. Suddenly it’s a whole new ball game. It could be a lot worse than one more tiny little lie he told about the night he went out with her. Depending on what they’re trying to match, or what sample they’re comparing his to, it could change everything.”

The Beck’s shoulders settled in disappointment. “But then they’ll say we’re not cooperating, which must be because he’s guilty, right? Otherwise, why wouldn’t he
volunteer to give them the swab if it could prove he didn’t do it?”

“Think about it. It doesn’t prove he didn’t do it. Whatever the result, Beck, only two things can happen. If it isn’t a match, it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her; and if it is, it increases the chances that he did. Either way, it’s at best a no-win and at worst a dead loss for you and Greg, so why would you even consider it?”

Chagrined, Rebecca said, “Because Uncle Abe asked me, and it sounded so reasonable.”

“Right.”

“I can’t believe he would try to play me like that. It makes me feel like such an idiot. I mean, if I hadn’t talked to you about this . . . I think I’m really mad at Uncle Abe.”

“That’ll happen. I’ve wanted to murder him several times. And maybe he was just trying to do you a solid. Maybe he knows he can get a warrant and take the swab, but you can’t count on that. Even if he was trying to pull something, you can’t take it personally. As it turns out, this was a good lesson with no real harm done. You’ll have your chance to get back at him.”

“It’s not really that I want to do that.”

“Get back at him? Yeah, it is. You’ll see.”

“So meanwhile, what about Greg?”

“What about him? What’s changed? Have they found anything that proves him guilty?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay, then. Until they do, he’s innocent. Don’t forget it.”

J
UHLE WAS ON
the telephone that Saturday afternoon with Wes Farrell. “So now he’s a liar who also refused to give us a swab until we got our warrant. All things being equal, and all politics aside, I’d say this makes him at least a true person of interest. And when the lab tells us his DNA matches the semen on Anlya’s underwear, he’s a hell of a lot more than that.”

“Well, fine,” Farrell said, “he’s a person of interest. But really, what we’ve got here, Devin, is a lot of nothing. You’ve got a twenty-seven-year-old lying about having a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old. Lying about sex doesn’t make somebody a murderer. There are a whole lot of reasons he could have told those lies about Anlya that have nothing to do with killing her. What you need to find is something positive, actual real live evidence. You know this. I’m not just making it up. This is how we do it.”

“This is exactly the kind of thing that keeps us from arresting guilty people, Wes. You and I both know it, and it sucks.”

“Look, Dev, I appreciate your passion. I might even believe that this guy’s our guy. But it doesn’t do either of us any good to build a case against him that’ll fall apart at the first big push. And there’s no way in hell I’m going public with calling him a person of interest. The only purpose for doing that would be to smear a kid we can’t charge, and I won’t sink to that level.”

“But if I do nothing, the way Goodman’s talking—”

“To hell with Goodman. You’re not doing nothing. You’re trying to find a viable suspect. Sometimes that takes a couple of days, sometimes a week, and as you know, sometimes it never happens. If you’re worried about your job, you know what I’d do, no kidding?”

“Tell me.”

“I’d call Her Eminence Vi Lapeer. Yes, Vi the Chief. Tell her what you’ve
been up to and get her to make a statement about Mr. Goodman and his irresponsible call for haste. She may have a bone to pick with Abe, but she’ll have to stand behind you for trying to do the job right. Because any criticism of you and your guys is also a criticism of her and the way she runs the department. Treat her as one of your allies, and she’ll have no choice but to become one.”

“Unless she thinks Goodman’s going to be mayor and won’t call him on his bullshit.”

“That’s not going to happen. Mainly because Goodman isn’t ever going to be mayor, but also because it would make Chief Lapeer look terrible as a leader and administrator. Nobody expects anybody to solve a bona fide murder mystery in a day or even a week. If it came out that that was her expectation, she’d be a laughingstock in the whole law enforcement community. I’d really call her, Dev. Give her a report and bring her up-to-date on the investigation. And speaking of that, is there anybody else your guys are talking to?”

•  •  •

W
AVERLY AND
Y
AMASHIRO
were planning to have interviews with all of the residents at the McAllister Street home, and they wouldn’t need Glitsky’s help for that.

This left Abe with nothing to do until Monday morning, a prospect he found intolerable, so he sat at his desk reading the exceedingly slim case file on Anlya’s murder. Looking it over, he was struck anew by the paucity of relevant material, and by the almost total lack of information about Anlya’s life and general situation. Waverly and Yamashiro were partially addressing that problem today by talking to her housemates, but with the exception of Greg Treadway, there was so far no other person—no name—connected to Anlya as even a remote person of interest.

This made Abe somewhat nervous. It was always better to have more than one potential suspect whom the police had interviewed, if only to combat the eventual defense attorney’s accusation that the investigation hadn’t been rigorous enough, that the police had decided on one suspect early and hadn’t followed up on any other promising leads.

The way the file read today, three days after Anlya’s death, was that Greg T
readway was their quarry and they were going to pursue him until they brought him to ground.

Maybe the inspectors would make some progress today, he thought. But he knew that the lack of alternative suspects was not a deal breaker, especially when the prime suspect was, like Treadway, a proven liar who wouldn’t even cooperate in supplying a DNA swab without forcing the police to get a warrant for it.

Still, if they were building a case against Treadway, and the case file made it clear that they were, they needed a lot more than they’d gathered to date.

To that end, he suddenly had an idea.

Twenty-five minutes later, he stood at the southern opening to the Stockton tunnel, where Anlya had gone over, cars whizzing by him every few seconds. Stepping just inside the tunnel proper, he turned right, into the stairwell, and walked up to the midway landing. Above his head, in the corner, the surveillance camera kept its silent vigil. Turning left, he continued up the stairs until they let him out on Bush.

For the next hour, he circumnavigated the neighborhood, stopping to chat with every homeless man he ran across. On this atypically warm Saturday afternoon, they were even thicker on the ground than usual, and usual in this zip code was about three or four per block. Out of the twenty-six people he spoke to, none was particularly happy to talk to him when he identified himself as an inspector, but neither was anyone actively hostile. He knew that, in general, the homeless in the city were a blight on the landscape, but a nonviolent one, unless one of their own tried to take over a prime begging site—several times in the past few years, that situation had turned bloody, twice resulting in death.

After his first complete circle of the surrounding five-block area, Glitsky wanted to bludgeon the uniformed officer who had talked to the homeless witness inside the tunnel the previous Thursday morning and neglected to get so much as a name, to say nothing of any contact information (though that might not have been a possibility). Back at the top of the tunnel, he considered taking another round in the opposite quadrant, this time up through Chinatown, but in the end decided that he could come back tomorrow, and he should really get home and see his family.

So he started down the steps again, and right there in front of him, on
the landing under the surveillance camera, a husky black man was arranging his bag full of stuff and getting settled on his sleeping bag. Abe stopped a few steps up; he didn’t want to barge down and spook the guy. But a few seconds later he heard footsteps and laughter coming from the tunnel below and moved to one side as a gay couple came around the landing, dropped some coins in the man’s hat, and continued past. The homeless man barely noticed.

Abe pulled out his wallet and badge and walked down the last few steps, introducing himself and getting right to it. “By any chance were you here on this landing when all the trouble was going on last Wednesday night?”

The man was a mountain of hair—over his shoulders, drifting into a waterfall of a beard. He squinted into the light coming in where Glitsky had come down, then brought his clear gaze back to Abe. “Sure was. I’ve been staying here forever. Couple of weeks, at least.”

“So. Wednesday?”

“Got to be a regular madhouse, didn’t it? I don’t think the place cleared up till morning. Anyways, I had to lay down someplace else.”

“Down Bush, was it?”

“I can’t really say. Other places are pretty much all the same. Except here. This place is pretty good. Out of the wind, usually. Warmer.”

“You mind if I ask you some questions?”

“What you been doing up till now?”

Glitsky had to smile. The man was right. “You mind if I see some identification?”

“Some what?”

“An ID.”

The man chuckled. “Tell me where to find one, and I’ll be happy to show it to you.”

Glitsky cocked his head. The city had dozens if not hundreds of social service nonprofits and other similar organizations—food banks, free clinics, various shelters and other overnight accommodations—and the homeless population was supposed to provide identification at these places so the organizations could keep track of whom they were serving.

But, evidently, not always.

Glitsky tried again. “What’s your name?”

“What
do you need my name for?”

“Don’t do me like that. I just want to call you something. I’m Abe. Who are you?”

The homeless man considered a moment before answering. “Malibu.”

“Got it. Like the city.”

“No, man. Like the car.”

“Like the car,” Glitsky repeated. “Got it.”

“That’s my street name.”

“Sure,” Glitsky said. “Malibu, the car.”

“Just so you know. ’Cause they got me down as Omar Abdullah over at Glide. But I don’t mostly go by that no more.”

He was referring, Glitsky understood, to the soup kitchen at Glide Cathedral, where Malibu was apparently registered under the other name.

“I got it,” Glitsky said. He reached in and turned on the recorder in his shirt pocket. “So anyway, Malibu, when did you arrive on this landing last Wednesday night?”

“Just about this time, I suppose. Seemed like, somewhere in there. What is it now?”

Glitsky checked his watch. “Quarter to five.”

“Yeah. About this time.”

“And how long did you stay?”

“Until just after all the noise. When I could tell everything was going to get crazy.”

“What was the noise about?”

“Well, first somebody was having an argument up the stairs there.”

“You mean the steps behind me that lead up to Bush Street?”

“Yeah.”

“You heard people arguing?”

“Yelling, more like.”

“How many voices?”

“Two. A man and a woman.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing. I was just waking up. The yelling turned into what sounded like they were struggling with each other. And then the woman screamed and the scream got cut off and there was all kinds of screeching tires and crashing cars down in the tunnel. So I’m like, ‘Jesus.’ ”

“And what happened next?”

Malibu scratched at his scalp, moved down to his beard. “You know, this is pretty much what I told the other cop when he got to me that night. If you want something new, I don’t think I got it for you.”

“That’s all right,” Glitsky said. “There wasn’t any record of what you said last time. Plus, I think I’ve got something new for you in a minute here. Meanwhile, you heard the scream and the crash . . . Then what did you do?”