The Second Chair (12 page)

Cary lifted his head and shook it. “No. I was just reacting to what you said. I have no idea in the world who it could have been.” He sighed, scratched at Ranger’s head. “I’m so tired of saying that, but it’s true. You had to know Elizabeth. She had no enemies. Really. I mean, nobody’s perfect, but she was a cheerful, sweet . . .” He stopped, blinked a couple of times, finally completed the thought: “A cheerful, sweet woman.”

“We keep hearing that from all reports, sir. And Inspector Belou tells me that the two of you were getting along as well. No conflicts.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

Cary shrugged, then sighed. There wasn’t a trace of defensiveness about him. “We were a team,” he said. “That’s how we always talked about one another. I don’t know what else I can say. We may have had an argument in the past year or so, but if we did, I don’t even remember what it was about. We were a team,” he repeated. “We just lived a normal life.”

Glitsky’s original conception of this interview had been that he would start out slow and gradually grill the husband hard on his movements on the night of the murder, and maybe find a hole in the story he’d given to Inspectors Belou and Russell. But now, in the small room, seeing the man in such obvious, all-inclusive pain, he found himself unable to get warm to the idea that Cary was a killer. “I know the inspectors have gone over this with you, sir, but in the past few days, I wonder if something else might have occurred to you—some disagreement your wife might have had with, I don’t know, a neighbor, one of your relatives, somebody from your children’s school. Maybe even something from a long time ago that you didn’t remember in the first days of shock and grief? That you originally didn’t see as having any possible connection.”

Cary looked down at his dog, stopped petting him and sat back on the couch. He took off his glasses, rubbed them on his pants leg, put them back on. “No,” he said, and shook his head.

“What?”

“Nothing, I’m sure.” But he went on. “This really isn’t possible, I don’t think, but Elizabeth does have . . . I mean she did . . . I mean
he
’s still alive.”

“Who’s that?”

“One of her brothers. She’s got three of them, but one of them, Ted, is crazy. He lives down south at Lake Elsinore. He didn’t make the funeral.”

“And he’s, what? Institutionalized?”

“No. He’s not clinically crazy, I don’t think. Just not completely right, you know what I mean?”

“Why don’t you tell me.” Glitsky had a small notepad out. “Ted. Last name?”

“Reed. R-E-E-D.”

“Okay. And how is he crazy?”

“I shouldn’t say crazy. That’s just how we always refer to him. He was born premature and always had lots of learning problems. His IQ’s probably about eighty-five. He’s sad more than anything, really. I haven’t seen him in, I don’t know, five years or more. But Elizabeth tried to stay in touch on his birthday and Christmas, like that. That’s the way she was, she wasn’t going to abandon her brother.” He sighed. “Anyway, I know she talked to him at Christmas because she made the kids say hi to their Uncle Ted.”

“He yelled at us, too.”

Glitsky looked up in surprise. Ranger ran over to the tall, gangly boy of about fourteen, hands in his pockets, who had appeared in the hallway. Cary stood up. “Scott . . .” He turned. “Inspector, this is my oldest, Scott. He’s sorry that he was eavesdropping. Scott, Inspector . . . I’m sorry.”

“Glitsky.” On his feet, shaking the boy’s hand.

A good solid grip. The boy even made eye contact. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

Cary raised his voice. “You other kids back there, too?”

In a second, the two younger sisters were in the room. Both of them had been crying. Cary introduced them, too, Patricia and Carlene, then apologized to Glitsky again.

He waved it off and looked at the son. “So you were saying, Scott, that your Uncle Ted yelled at you on this phone call?”

“Yes, sir. I finally had to hang up on him.”

“What was he yelling about?”

Scott glanced at his father, got a nod and went ahead. “All the presents I got.”

“What about them?”

“Well, he asked what I’d got for Christmas and I started to tell him and go down the list, like, you know, and suddenly he’s all ‘Your mother’s got that kind of money?’ Really yelling at me. Like if Mom’s got all that money, she could send some to him instead of spoiling us . . .” He turned to his father. “You think it might have been him, Dad?”

“No, I don’t know. I can’t imagine . . .” Cary to Glitsky now: “That’s just the way he is. He thinks because we have a little money, we . . . He just doesn’t understand. But he’s really harmless, I think. Just a little crazy.”

“He’s a jerk,” the son said. “A total jerk.”

Cary’s face relaxed into something like a smile for the first time. “I can’t really argue with that. Even Elizabeth thought he was a pain in the ass. And she liked everybody.”

“And he didn’t come to the funeral?” Glitsky asked.

“Thank God,” Scott said.

“No,” Cary answered. “Nobody could reach him.”

“So he might not have been down at Lake Elsinore?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if the other brothers have reached him yet.”

“I bet he did it, the son of a bitch.”

“Scott! That’s enough. All right.” The rebuke’s tone wasn’t harsh, but it was firm, and effective. The boy still fumed, but in silence. Cary turned to Glitsky. “I’ve got an address and a phone number down there I can give you, but I’d be very surprised.”

Glitsky shrugged. “You never know. It’s worth following up.”

“I’ll go get it.”

As Cary went out to the hallway, Glitsky faced the children. “Do any of you guys have any ideas of who might have wanted to hurt your mother?”

The two young girls started crying again, quietly. Ranger started whimpering around them and Scott, repeating over again that he bet it was Uncle Ted, went over to join in the comforting. Glitsky’s own emotions began to roil, and incredibly moved, he had to look away for a moment.

Then Cary was back with Ted’s numbers on a yellow Post-it. He absently handed it to Glitsky as he gathered his children around him, telling them to go back into the kitchen and finish dinner, then do the dishes and get going on their homework. He’d be in to help in a minute.

When they’d gone, Glitsky said, “You’ve done well with them. They’re good kids.”

“All Elizabeth,” he said. “I’m only here for decoration.” He sighed. “I notice the girls were crying again. Did something happen?”

“I asked if they had any idea of anyone who might have wanted to hurt their mother.”

Cary’s shoulders sagged. “That’s just it. No one could have wanted to hurt her.” He seemed to be searching for a way to express it more compellingly. “I mean, she couldn’t abide anything even remotely violent, so what reason could anyone have to do this to her? She refused to be in the same room with me when I watched
Law & Order
because she said it reminded her too much of a murder trial she had to sit on a long time ago before I even knew her. That’s how she was. So how could someone hurt a person like her? It makes no sense . . .”

But suddenly, Cary’s explanation had sparked a question. “What was this murder trial?” Glitsky asked.

“The one Elizabeth was on? I don’t really know anything about it. She didn’t like to talk about it. As I said, it was before we were even together. At least twenty-five years ago. They found the man guilty and he went to jail.”

“You remember his name?”

“No. I don’t know if I ever knew it.” Cary pushed at the bridge of his eyeglasses. “She really wouldn’t talk about it at all. It bothered her that she’d been a part of putting this guy away forever. She just felt tremendous guilt about the whole thing.”

“Why? Didn’t she think they reached the right verdict?”

“No. It wasn’t that. Mostly it was she didn’t feel like she should have been sitting in judgment of another person. Even if he was guilty. She wished she’d never done it.” Cary put his hand to his head and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them again.

“Was it here in San Francisco?” Glitsky asked.

A shrug. “I don’t even know that, for sure. I think it must have been right after she got out of school, college. She went to Santa Clara. She may have still been living down there. Maybe one of her brothers would know.” He pointed to the Post-it. “Anyway, I’ve included them in with Ted’s number there. But again,” he said, “I can’t imagine . . .” His voice petered out. “It doesn’t really matter anyway. It won’t bring her back, will it?”

Even though it was a Monday night, by a little after nine-thirty the crowd was four deep at the bar of the Balboa Cafe, at the corner of Greenwich and Divisadero. Although the intersection had four corners and not three, it went by the nickname of “the triangle”—after the Bermuda Triangle—where singles went to disappear for the weekend. By ten o’clock every night of the week, the three major bars and the streets in front of them were clogged mostly with young professionals, but also (what gave the place its uniquely privileged character) with the sons and daughters of the older generation of San Francisco’s elite society.

These people weren’t out slumming—they owned the bars and restaurants, and this was where they played with their friends. But the influence and surface glitter drew a fast, smart, ambitious crowd—local politicians, music celebrities, movie stars in town for a shoot or a party. And, of course, all the others—lawyers on the make, lovelies of both sexes, suppliers of different kinds of fuel.

And because so much juice flowed to this one spot, a regular contingent of hangers-on was also always on hand, literally out in the street, adding to the color. Two well-connected, extremely personable and relatively hip San Francisco cops—Dan Bascom and Jerry Santangelo—had the best and most lucrative permanent assignment in the city. Eight to two, they kept their squad car parked across from the entrance to the Balboa, a presence that only rarely required any muscle. The two of them, along with Tommy Amici, the Balboa’s chief valet, hauled in Cuban cigars, tickets to every artistic, cultural or sports event in the tricounty area, business cards and introductions, as though they ran clearinghouses. The
Bay Guardian
had done a story on Amici a few months before where he claimed he made eight thousand dollars a month to park cars. Bascom and Santangelo, also featured prominently in the piece, refused to comment about their income or the other undocumented perks.

Three and a half months ago, Amy Wu had come here for the first time. Since then she’d become one of the regulars.

Tonight she had somehow claimed a stool before the nighttime mob had begun to appear in strength. Now, two cosmopolitans down, she sat sideways to the bar near the front door with her back held straight. A lot of her crossed legs showed beneath her black leather miniskirt.

The noise wasn’t jet-engine level, but between the canned music, the buzz of the hundred or so customers in a space that could comfortably hold eighty, and the televisions, nobody here was sharing intimate secrets. Wu was half watching the Giants game and half stringing along two guys, Wayne somebody and his friend. The two of them couldn’t seem to decide which one was going to make a move. Wayne wore a wedding ring and Wu ached to tell him, if he did come on to her, that he might want to think about the ring next time.

But for the moment, that was premature.

So far he’d only bought her a drink, wedged himself up next to her stool, told her she was too pretty to be a lawyer, only the thousandth time she’d heard that one, whatever it was supposed to mean.

So he was moving toward it, but not there yet.

The crowd suddenly cheered and Wu looked up at the TV. One of the Giants was in a home-run trot.

Wu drank off half of her drink, put it back down. Wayne had a fist raised as though he’d hit the home run himself, and under his arm a space opened in the press of bodies and she caught a glimpse of Jason Brandt as he pushed his way through the swinging door.

And he saw her, flashed a genuine enough smile, started moving in her direction. In a minute, really before she could do anything even if she’d known what it was she wanted to do, he’d come up beside Wayne, pointed to Wu and said to him, “Excuse me, that’s my girlfriend,” and was standing at the bar, calling over the bedlam to his good friend Cecil to give him a double JD rocks. Then he turned to her, still smiling. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Then, to Wayne: “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Before Wayne could respond, Brandt turned and looked him up and down. “Are you married, dude?” he asked, and clucked disapprovingly, then came back to Wu. “That is bad form. If he’s looking to hook up, the least he could do is lose the ring.”

“I wasn’t trying to hook up,” Wayne said. “I just bought the lady a drink. I’m not looking for any trouble.”

Brandt’s own drink, delivered in seconds, was in his hand, and he raised it to clink Wayne’s beer glass. “Then we, my friend, are on the same page. Can I buy you another beer?” He turned and yelled out over the noise, “Cecil?” But Wayne had already put the remainder of his beer on the counter and was gone.

Brandt turned back to Wu and cracked a grin. “Predators. Scumbag’s got a wife at home with the kids and he’s hitting on babes in bars. There ought to be a patrol out for those guys, publish their names and pictures in the papers. Wanna bet he’s going across the street, checking out the action at Indigo’s?” Suddenly he seemed to notice that Wu wasn’t smiling. “What?”

“That’s what I want to ask you. What are you doing, Jason? Chasing off somebody I’m talking to? What’s that bullshit?”

He cocked his head. “You kidding? You think that guy, like, wants to be your friend?”

Wu’s eyes flashed. “Whatever he wants to be, whatever I want him to be, it’s none of your business. How about that?”

He drew his mouth into a pout, picked up his drink and had some. “You’re mad about today, aren’t you? This afternoon?”

“No.”

He looked surprised. “You’re not. I would be.”

She shrugged. “It was always a detention case. I knew that going in.”

“Okay. So what are you mad about? You
are
a little pissed off.”