Guilt

The Chief of Homicide, Lieutenant Frank Batiste, had come out of his cubicle to see if anything was wrong. Glitsky hadn't laughed here in the Homicide Detail in his memory. Maybe nowhere else either.

'You okay, Abe?'

Glitsky had it back under control. He raised a hand to Batiste, looked over at Christina. 'That never happens to me. I'm very sorry.' His eyes glistened with tears. The fit had gone on for nearly half a minute.

'It's okay.' Christina had lost it for a second or two herself. 'It's supposed to be good for you.'

Glitsky wiped his eyes, took in a breath, sighed. 'Whew.' Batiste went back inside his office. 'Sorry anyway,' he repeated. Then, unexpected: 'I don't know what I'm doing here.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't recognize you four hours after our interview. I crack up over some rapist's tattoo. I ought to take a leave, come back when I'm worth something.'

She didn't know how to respond to such a personal exposure, but felt she should say something. 'You said your wife was sick. Maybe your brain is concentrating on her?'

Truly sobered now, Glitsky reached for the Willows file. 'That could be it,' he said.

'Maybe you should call her? See if she's feeling better?'

He waited, deciding whether he should say it. Denial didn't seem to help, so maybe admission once in a while wouldn't hurt. 'She's not going to get better,' he said. 'She has cancer.'

Christina sat back. 'Oh, I'm so sorry.'

He waved it off, opened the file, stared at it for a few seconds. 'Was there anything else you remembered?'

CHAPTER SEVEN

Outside Dooher's windows, the city lights glowed up through the clouds. He sat in his darkened office, elbows on the arms of his chair, his fingers templed at his lips. In the hallways, he could hear the occasional voice – all of the associates at McCabe & Roth worked late.

Dooher ran a tight ship. His crew – the young men and women who hoped, after seven years, to make partner and thus in theory secure their financial future – were expected to bill forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year. This left them no time during the 'regular' 9-to-5 workday to do administrative work, answer their mail, talk to husbands, wives, significant others, eat, take breaks (or vacations, for that matter), go to the bathroom, small details like that.

To bill eight hours, the associates had to work at least ten, and more likely twelve hours every day. If they wanted their two-week vacation on top of that, they could count on working at least ten weekends a year. So at this time every day, the firm hummed along. Mark Dooher, who had overseen the downsizing and belt-tightening that had made the place profitable again, felt a profound satisfaction in what he'd wrought. People weren't necessarily happy, but they put out some serious work.

For which, he reminded himself, they were handsomely rewarded. And nobody had ever said a law firm was in business to make its members happy.

He rose and walked around his desk, stopping at the edge of the windows again to look out. Now, with the clouds, there was no view, merely a sensation of floating.

She'd left her resume!

Telling him it was his move.

Joe Avery was at his desk, plugging away. Dooher knocked quietly at his office door and Avery looked up in surprise. Two visits from the managing partner in two weeks! Unheard of.

'Still at it?' Dooher asked. 'I thought after last night you'd call it early.'

Avery struggled for the proper tone. 'That was a good party, sir. I meant to come up and thank you earlier, but this Baker matter…'

Dooher waved him down. Shut the kid up. 'I'm sure it's in good hands, Joe. I came down to pick up the summer apps file.'

A worried look crossed Avery's face. 'It's not…? I mean, is there some problem?'

'Not at all, not at all.' Stepping into the office, he closed the door behind him. 'We're handing off your summer clerk duties to another associate, Joe. I think you're going to find yourself with more meaningful work.'

'Sir?'

Dooher cut off the expected barrage of questions, raising his hand again. 'I've said more than I should, Joe. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned anything, but you might as well know. The summer clerks are going to have to get by without your involvement. There are bigger items on your agenda, and more than that I really can't say.'

In another minute, he had the wine box full of resumes under his arm.

On his cellphone in the car, driving home, he left a message. 'Christina. This is Mark Dooher. Just wanted to thank you for keeping me in the loop on your application. I'm proud of you. You made the right decision. If you need to talk to me, anytime, the number here in my car is…'

He left his home number as well.

Christina didn't hear Dooher's message. She'd talked to her parents in Ojai when she'd finally gotten home from her meeting with Glitsky, and then decided that her day – which had begun with ashes at 6:30 – was over. She was plain done in.

If the phone rang at this time of night, it would just be Joe anyway, and she really didn't feel like talking to him. So, with the sound turned down on her machine, she was snuggled under her comforter, in bed and begi

The doorbell rang, and she heard Joe's voice. 'Christina?' Then a soft knock. 'Christina, you there?'

She knew she could just lie there and pretend she was asleep, but she wasn't able to do it. Exhausted and angry, she grabbed her bathrobe, wrapping it around her. 'One second.'

Unhooking the chain, she opened the door.

'You're in bed already?'

'No. Actually I'm standing here in the doorway. You got a problem with that?'

'No. I just thought we might… what's the matter?'

'Oh, nothing. Not a thing.' She whirled around, crossed the front room, snapped on the floorlamp and plopped herself down on the sofa. 'You coming in or not?'

He closed the door after him. 'Why are you so mad?'

She pulled her robe close around her, glaring up at him. 'See if maybe you can guess?'

He spread his arms, all i

'File… that's good. It really is.'

'That's a fact. It's on Mark Dooher's desk at this instant, as we speak, in fact.'

'In fact,' she repeated.

He went on, oblivious: 'He picked them all up tonight. They're giving the summer hires to somebody else.'

'Why?'

'Because I'm moving up.' He ventured a step closer. 'Come on, Chris, don't be mad at me, not tonight. Tonight we should celebrate.'

'I don't want to celebrate. I don't even know what we'd be celebrating. I don't even know if there should be a "we" anymore, I really don't.'

'Chris…' He sat on the far end of the couch.

'I mean it, Joe. Okay, you're moving up, maybe, and I'm glad for you, but where are we going? Are we getting engaged? Are we getting married? I mean, what is all this? I don't get to apply to your firm because we might be an item someday?'

'We are.. .'

'No, we're not.' She held out her left hand. 'You see a ring there? I don't. We're still trying to decide, Joe, aren't we? We're still looking at the facts.'

He went silent. 'How am I supposed to respond to that, Chris? You know it's-'

'No! You're just getting to where you think that after all the time you've put in on our relationship, it would be nice if it worked out, after all.' She swiped at the angry tears that had broken. 'But the truth is that you don't like how I act, how I am. You certainly don't want me working around you, that's obvious.'

'But I do!'

'Which is why you didn't want me to apply?'

'That's not true. You know there's a rule about-'