Guilt

He was still in his clothes, one hand over his eyes, squinting at the digital clock. He reached for the telephone.

'Glitsky.'

'Abe, this is Frank Batiste. I know you're on leave and you can say no, but they got me at home and asked, and I thought you'd want to decide for yourself. We just got a nine one one from a frantic husband in St Francis Wood. His wife's been stabbed. She's dead.'

'Okay.'

'The caller was Mark Dooher. The woman's his wife.'

His feet were over the edge of the bed, on to the floor. 'Send a squad car by. I'll hitch a ride with it.'

Glitsky didn't hear Batiste start to ask if he was sure, he didn't have to… he'd already hung up.

He remembered the house more vividly than he would have thought. He saw a lot of homes in his job and they tended to blur together. But this one was distinctive with its tiled front courtyard behind the low stucco fence, the turret in the front, the semi-enclosed entrance, the broad sweeping lawn with its fifty-year-old magnolia tree which was in bloom, scenting the clear, still-warm air.

Glitsky stood a minute surveying the front of the house, now all lit up. Someone was moving in the turret, but he couldn't see through the blinds. The coroner's van hadn't yet arrived, but there was an ambulance in the driveway. Three other black and white squad cars from the early responding officers were parked on the street. The yellow crime-scene tape had been hung over a wide perimeter around the driveway and across the lawn. Within it, a couple of uniforms were standing guard, talking.

Glitsky had to remind himself that this was St Francis Wood, and that police response time here was measured in minutes, not hours as was often the case in less tony neighborhoods.

He was directed to the driveway and saw three other men standing in front of the ambulance. The two in uniform would be the Lieutenant and the Sergeant from the district station, which was Taraval. The third saw Glitsky and started walking down toward him. It was Paul Thieu.

On Glitsky's recommendation, Thieu had recently been detailed full-time to the death department, and he'd been in the office at the Hall pulling long hours when the eight-oh-two – a coroner's case – had been patched through from emergency services. Thieu had called Batiste, which was why Abe was here.

Glitsky met him halfway. Further up the drive, he noticed the pool of light under an open side door. 'Where's Dooher?'

'Library downstairs, over in that turret area. Couple of guys are with him.' Thieu had quickly improved in the chatter department. He'd also learned how to answer questions. 'Okay. I guess he'll wait.'

They approached the Taraval station people – Lieutenant Armanino and Sergeant Dorney – and Thieu introduced Glitsky around. Armanino was taking pains to explain to the downtown Homicide Inspectors that the guys from his station had secured the place well. The woman upstairs was, in fact, dead. She'd been obviously and thoroughly dead when they got here. So the paramedics hadn't moved the body or touched anything.

Thieu needed to talk. 'Stabbed in her bed, Abe. It looks like a burglary gone bad, maybe attempted rape. Sheets and blankets tossed pretty good. Lots of blood – she must have cut the guy.'

Hands in his pockets, Glitsky nodded. 'Okay, let's go on up.'

'Before you do,' Armanino interrupted, 'there are a couple of other things, Sergeant. The paramedics and responding officers were here when we arrived, but we got here right after. Nobody else had been on the driveway. There was no obvious blood on it, though there might be a drop or two, some spatter. I'll keep it clean till the crime-scene guys get here.' Armanino was a stickler for details. Glitsky thought it was undoubtedly how he'd made Lieutenant. 'But in the meanwhile, one of my guys' – he indicated the policeman standing on the driveway – 'found this.' He showed Glitsky a Ziploc bag containing something white dotted with red.

Glitsky took it. 'What is it?'

'It's a surgical glove. It was there in the dirt by the back door, which was evidently the point of exit. Maybe entry, too. The light bulb, by the way,' again he indicated with gesture, 'was dark, unscrewed.'

'Unscrewed?'

Armanino nodded. 'Dorney here put on his own gloves and turned it and it came right back on. And this.'

Another, larger bag contained what, at a glance, appeared to be the murder weapon – a high-quality kitchen knife. The blade's pretty clean, isn't it?'

'It got wiped.'

'But a lot upstairs?'

Armanino shrugged. 'You'll see.' What it meant, if anything, wasn't for him to determine. Neither was Glitsky's definition of 'a lot'. He was simply reporting what he and his men had found.

'That it?'

Armanino looked at Dorney and the Sergeant nodded. A well-oiled machine, these two. Good cops. 'For now, I think so.'

'Okay, Paul,' Glitsky said, 'let's go.'

At the side door, he turned and added quietly, 'Thanks for having Batiste call me.'

The side door opened on to a laundry room with black and white checkered tile floors, a washing machine and dryer. They walked through into the beautiful, marble-countered kitchen, where Glitsky had once sat with Sheila Dooher and had tea.

There were voices coming out of the turret room, but Glitsky followed Thieu as he turned into the foyer and they ascended the stairs to a balustraded landing. It seemed that every light in the house must be on.

A large, circular rug with a Navajo design covered the floor up here. Two panelled doors on the left were now closed.

The bedroom was huge and well lit. Double French doors led to a balcony. There were two darkwood dressers, and a door through which he could see a makeup area and, beyond that, the bathroom.

The woman lay diagonally across the king-sized bed in an awkward position – half turned with one arm under her, the other splayed. Glitsky stood a minute, registering it. Something, though he couldn't say precisely what, struck him as odd. She looked almost as though she'd been dropped.

He remembered the face and looked at it now. In death, there was no sign of fury in Sheila Dooher's last moments – in fact, Glitsky thought, her expression was remarkably peaceful. The hair, mussed from sleeping, still bore the traces of its last brushing and, perhaps tellingly, no visible blood.

Which is not to say there was no blood elsewhere. A blood-spattered white cotton nightie was bunched around her neck, covering her left breast, leaving the right exposed. Only one wound was visible, a inch-long slit out of which seeped a brownish-red ribbon. Her underpants were still on, though they'd been pulled down forcefully, and were ripped.

Glitsky straightened up, backing away a step for a wider angle. Thieu's statement about the blood was a relative one. But Glitsky knew that blood was one of those things – if you weren't familiar with it, a little could go a real long way.

Glitsky's first take on the blood in this case was that there wasn't nearly enough of it. Even Victor Trang had bled substantially more than this, and his killer had used the bayonet to plug the flow. If the knife-wound here had gone to the heart with the victim on her side, which was what it looked like, there should have been massive quantities of blood. Pints. Not a cupful.

'What?' Thieu asked.

But Glitsky didn't answer. Instead, from his new vantage point, back a little from the bed, he noticed something he should have seen immediately. He wasn't going to touch or move the body to make sure, but there were four or five other apparent blood marks on the nightie – he leaned in to see more clearly, now that he thought he knew what he was looking at. They were like brush strokes – straight-sided and tapering, the concentration of blood heavy at one end and lighter at the other.