The Keeper (30 page)

“But it was exactly that, Ruth, wasn't it?”

She didn't answer, staring into the empty space in front of her. “She actually thought I should get into counseling, tell somebody, and it would all be fine. And she couldn't let me see the children anymore, but I'd understand that. I mean, with my history, she couldn't let me near them, could she? That would be irresponsible. But she wasn't going to turn me in. Although she told me she wouldn't be surprised if I decided to do that on my own. I'd feel so much better. What a fool she was. What a complete and utter fool.”

“So you killed her?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “And the world is a better place for it.”

“What about Hal?”

“What about him?”

“You were going to let him go down for killing Katie?”

She shook her head. “It was never going to come to that. I knew he didn't kill her, you see? There was no evidence. He had a good lawyer. He would walk. I never worried about it.” She took a breath and straightened her back. A bit unsteadily, she got to her feet. “What do we do now, me and you?” she asked. She broke an ice-cold smile. “Usually, it's the guy who says it, but I suppose a blow job is out of the question.”

Glitsky looked up at her. “You think this is funny?”

“Fucking hysterical,” she said. “Really. So what now?”

Glitsky stood up. “Now we are driving downtown.”

“Oh, please, spare me this shit.”

“Please turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

“You're going to handcuff me?”

Glitsky already had his cuffs out. “Please do as I ask.”

“What if I don't?”

“Then I'd be required to use force. Neither of us wants that. Please turn around.”

Ruth threw a glance toward the ceiling. “I need another drink,” she said. “And then I need to use the bathroom. Can we put off the handcuffs that long? You can come in with me if you're so nervous about it.”

Without another word, she headed for the door, got to the hallway, and turned left toward the back of the house. Abe, skittish, grabbed his tape recorder and turned it off before he drew his gun. Carrying it at his side, he followed a few steps behind her. In the kitchen, out of her arm's reach, he stood in the doorway and watched while she poured more vodka into her glass and took one deep swallow, then a second.

Abe took a step forward. “All right,” he said, “that's enough.”

She chortled, met his gaze, and lifted the glass again.

“Ruth! Stop! Now!”

She tipped the glass back, emptying it, then placed it on the counter. “Might as well make a party out of it,” she said. “And now the bathroom.”

He was not going to let her dictate what she did next. She was a suspect, and he knew the protocol for an arrest, and that did not include either her taking that last drink or her using the bathroom. He knew that he needed to get her locked into the backseat of his car without any more compromise.

“Turn around. Hands behind your back,” he said. “You can use the restrooms downtown.”

She sighed, her shoulders sagged, and for an instant she looked like what she was—a pathetic old woman. There was no need for him to be gratuitously cruel to her. She raised her eyes and looked at him. “Really, Abe,” she said, “I have to pee. Please. I won't be a problem. I promise.”

“All right. Move,” he said.

“Thank you.”

She passed by him again, and five or six steps later, she turned in to a door they'd passed on the way up the hallway. Abe closed the gap between them.

She abruptly turned. “Should I leave the door open?”

“Not necessary,” Abe said. “But don't lock it.”

She went in, closed the door. He heard her tinkle and the toilet flush. Then he heard a rinse in the sink, long enough for him to touch the door with the butt of his gun. “All right.”

She came out drying her face. “Now I want to call my attorney. You tricked me into talking to you.”

Glitsky realized that if his goal had been to break her spirit, he had failed. But he had wrung from her a confession, every word of which was recorded. Twice. He decided to let her make the call, then he stood five feet in front of her while she evidently spoke to a secretary, left a ­message, and hung up.

“All right,” Glitsky said, “turn around, hands behind you.”

When he had the handcuffs on her, Abe held her, truly unsteady by now, by the upper arm and walked with her out the front door, down the path to the sidewalk, and over to the city police vehicle that he'd driven down in. Opening the back door, without a word, he helped her get in, then closed the door behind her.

He hit the ignition and turned to see her settled against the door, her eyes closed, to all appearances sound asleep. He put the car into gear and pulled out into the street.

The fog remained impermeable, and thick traffic was backed up crossing Van Ness and then again at Market. In the next twenty minutes, Abe checked the rearview mirror continuously and asked Ruth several times how she was doing. She remained motionless, eyes closed, slumping against the door. She refused to answer or acknowledge him in any way. It took him nearly ten minutes more to cover the two blocks on ­Bryant from Fifth Street to Seventh Street, then another five to get to the parking lot.

When he came around to open the door Ruth was leaning on, she collapsed, almost falling out on the pavement. As he grabbed at the deadweight and lifted her back inside, it occurred to him that she was faking it, but then he recognized the pallor and, hand to her forehead, felt the clammy coldness of her skin.

He tapped at her cheek with his palm, spoke her name.

Straightening, he pulled out his cell phone and punched 911. When he got through to the dispatcher, he said, “This is Lieutenant Abe Glitsky with the DA Investigations Division. I have a prisoner in custody in the back of the Bryant Street jail parking lot, and she is unconscious and unresponsive. I need paramedics immediately.”

63

CityTalk

by JEFFREY ELLIOT

The long and winding road that has been the investigation into the death of Katie Chase came to an abrupt ending yesterday with the suicide of Ruth Chase, the victim's mother-in-law. Following a lengthy tape-recorded interrogation by Abraham Glitsky, the former head of San Francisco's ­Homicide detail, who had become the lead investigator in the case, the elder Mrs. Chase confessed to four murders: her two former husbands; Katie Chase; and Chief Deputy Adam Foster, whose death by gunshot last Saturday was previously considered a suicide.

During the interrogation, Mrs. Chase apparently decided to end her life rather than face prosecution and probable imprisonment. According to police, she was able to consume a massive dose of the prescription drug Elavil without being observed.

According to Ruth Chase's taped statement, Katie Chase had discovered that the deaths of both of Ruth's husbands, which had been ruled accidental, might have been murders. In each case, the elder Mrs. Chase had received substantial life insurance payments. When Katie Chase confronted her mother-in-law with her suspicions, supporting them with documents retrieved on Internet searches, Ruth Chase decided that she had to act. Knowing that Katie would be alone while her husband was driving to the airport on the day before Thanksgiving, Ruth confronted her daughter-in-law at gunpoint, somehow got her to a nearby park, and shot her.

Later, after her stepson, Hal, had been arrested and charged in his wife's death, Ruth Chase saw and took an opportunity, perhaps under the guise of a proposed sexual encounter, to meet with Mr. Foster, who was already a suspect in three other murders: Alanos Tussaint, Maria Solis-Martinez, and Luther Jones. Meeting with Mr. Foster in a Presidio parking lot, she shot him in his car and was successful in making it look like a suicide, complete with a handwritten suicide note.

Although Mrs. Chase's confession clears Mr. Foster of any involvement in Katie Chase's death, it also leaves unresolved the investigations into those latter murders.

A
S
J
EFF
E
LLIOT
had noted in “CityTalk,” Ruth Chase's arrest and suicide essentially negated the solutions to the murders of Alanos Tussaint, ­Luther Jones, and Maria Solis-Martinez. Since Ruth had no possible connection to any of those individuals, and since she had confessed to shooting Adam Foster with her husband's old service revolver, there was no longer any reason to believe that the chief deputy had played a role in those other three deaths.

For Burt Cushing, this was unacceptable.

So on the Monday following Ruth's demise, after a weekend of feverish activity among the jail guards, and in cooperation with the Homicide Department, Sheriff Cushing stepped before the microphones in front of the mayor's office at City Hall. He carried an impressively thick manila folder. With His Honor Leland Crawford hovering behind him and making the flattering and supportive introductory remarks, he was flanked by SFPD Homicide chief Devin Juhle and by the city's medical examiner, John Strout. (Rather conspicuous in his absence was the district attorney, Wes Farrell, who had begged off because of a previous speaking engagement.)

When he got to the podium, Cushing's usual jovial political face was nowhere to be found; in its place was a stern and solemn law enforcement officer with some serious news to convey. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “we're going to take all the time we need to answer your ­questions regarding the results of the examination that is the subject of this press conference today, but first I'd like to present you with the conclusions that have been reached by a joint task force of the Sheriff's Department, working in tight partnership with the SFPD, especially with Devin Juhle here, who, as you all know, is the head of Homicide.

“A week ago Saturday, my chief deputy, Adam Foster . . .”

Cushing went on to reiterate the salient points: the apparent suicide with the damning note; the conclusion shared by all that Foster had murdered Katie Chase, Alanos Tussaint, and Maria Solis-Martinez; the startling confession of Ruth Chase regarding Foster and Katie, followed by the even more shocking fact of her own suicide, which, Cushing ­gratuitously noted, took place in the presence of Glitsky, “whose actions in that setting are even now the subject of a major investigation.”

Cushing looked down at his notes, raised his eyes, and surveyed his audience, then started in again. “When I first heard about Ruth Chase's confession, the first thing that occurred to me was Adam Foster was ­innocent of the murders that had been attributed to him. My trusted lieutenant, even more than the other men under my command, had been like a son to me”—here he wiped a finger under his right eye—“and I did not want to believe him capable of those kinds of heinous acts.

“Nevertheless, upon reflection, I realized that my duty came first, far above my personal feelings. If Adam was indeed responsible for these crimes, it was my job to find out about it. I'll admit right here that my original intention in ordering a task force investigation was to find proof that Adam was innocent. To that end, we began a series of interviews and searches that, to my great sadness, revealed a long-term pattern of corruption and institutional malfeasance, at the center of which was Adam Foster.”

He held up the manila folder. “In these pages are a collection of memoranda, emails, phone records, testimony of other jail guards, and personal notes that unequivocally document the bare fact of the matter: Chief Deputy Foster ran a large contraband smuggling ring into and out of the jail. Of course, Chief Deputy Foster could not have done all of this ­without the cooperation of several of his coworkers, many of whom worked under extreme duress and threats. Over the course of the past five days, we have identified most, if not all, of these accomplices, and we will be determining the proper disposition of these individual cases on an ongoing basis over the next several days, weeks, and months.”

Cushing glanced at his notes, squared his jaw, and continued. “As to the main event—the allegations of the murders of Alanos Tussaint, Maria Solis-Martinez, and Luther Jones—it is my terrible duty to inform you that these, too, appear to be the work of Adam Foster. Several guards who had provided an alibi for Mr. Foster on the day of Mr. Tussaint's murder have come forward and, no longer under the sway of Mr. Foster's coercion, admitted their roles. Likewise, all of the so-called poker group members who had verified Mr. Foster's alibi on the night of Ms. Solis-Martinez's murder have recanted their earlier testimony. One of them, Michael Maye, has further testified that Mr. Foster admitted the killing to him. All of these men lived under the constant threat of reprisal by Mr. Foster if they did not play along with his nefarious plans. Let me be clear: That behavior is not acceptable, especially for people in law enforcement, and the Sheriff's Department, again, will be dealing with these cases individually to restore public trust in the department.”

Cushing drew himself up straight. “I would be remiss if I tried to deny my own responsibility for this scandal. As sheriff, I supervise the jail. The buck stops here. I should have seen or intuited what I did not see. I let a culture develop on my watch that is unacceptable in every respect, and if the citizens of this city, in their wisdom, choose to remove me from office, I will humbly do their bidding.

“But if, as I hope, the city can forgive me, I promise that in the future, I will earn your trust and your respect once again, and that this Sheriff's Department will again be a beacon of efficiency, organization, and most of all, compassion.

“Now I'll be happy to take your questions.”

•  •  •

O
VER HIS PETRALE
at Tadich, Abe was enduring Dismas Hardy's scorn over the events surrounding the death of Ruth Chase. From Hardy's perspective, though he had gleaned essentially all the amusement he could from the situation (which was not especially funny), Diz wasn't quite ready to give up. “I think about what you would have done to one of your own troops, back when you were in management, if they'd arrested somebody and then stopped for a drink on the way downtown.”

“We didn't stop for any drink. It was just her, at her house.”

“Oh, much better.”

Glitsky pushed the fish around on his plate. “You had to be there. I'm not defending it. I've already admitted to the universe at large that it was a huge mistake, but . . .”

“But you're saying it was okay this time.”

“What do you want me to say? I never expected it, not in a million years. Nothing like that had ever happened before. She totally blindsided me.”

“You're lucky she didn't have a gun in the bathroom closet. You wouldn't be here now.”

“Possibly not. On the other hand, I might have shot her first. On the third hand, look at the bright side. I am here now. Plus, I probably saved the city half a mil on her trial. Maybe more.”

“More. I promise.”

“See? Win-win.” Abe took a bite. “Anyway, I'm done beating myself up over it. Do you know how many people that woman killed?”

“Sure. Katie, two husbands, and Foster. Three humans.”

“More.”

“Five? Six?”

Glitsky nodded. “At least six, maybe seven.”

Hardy put his glass down. “What?”

“These four. Then one of her uncles who apparently raped her, a high school teacher, ditto, and a kid in juvie, never proved but probable. To say nothing about both her parents. And who knows how many ­others.”

“Are you making this up?”

“No.”

“Where'd you get this? If she was in juvie, the record's expunged.”

“Right, but what do you think I've been up to the last week while they were deciding what they were going to do with me?”

“Polishing your résumé?”

“Funny. No. Being a trained investigator, I was investigating, following leads and checking out the truly depressing and scary childhood of Ruth Paley Johannson Chase.”

“Hal didn't know about it?”

“Not much. He got me to Redwood City, and I took it from there. One of the DAs down there—Mary Patricia Whelan-Miille, who says she knows you, by the way—knew all about Ruth, off the record, of course. Said she was the bad seed all over again. You'll love this: She'd been following Katie's case all along and told me if she'd known Ruth Chase was Ruth Paley, she would have called and clued us in, maybe saved a few lives in the process.”

“There's an upbeat story.”

Glitsky nodded. “I'm an upbeat kind of guy.”

“Oh yeah. People say that all the time.” Hardy sipped some wine. “So, upbeat guy, what are you doing next?”

“Hanukkah, then Christmas. All the kids are blowing through town.”

“Nice. After that?”

“I thought by then, the investigation will be finished, and I'll get a formal reprimand and then go back to working for Wes.”

“The old Abe would have been bothered by a formal reprimand.”

Abe shrugged. “Sticks and stones. Worst case, they let me go. Then I'll stop by Wyatt Hunt's place and check out the PI business, where you don't have to follow all those rules.” A glint of humor appeared in his eyes. “If it comes to that, I thought maybe you would give me a reference.”

“As an investigator?”

“Either way, with Wes or with Wyatt, I'm going to be an investigator. That's what I do, Diz. That's who I am.”

“You're killing me,” Hardy said. “After all the madness this past month, I would have thought you'd had enough.”

Glitsky spread his palms and broke into what was, for him, a wide smile. “Apparently not.”