A Certain Justice

'You're saying that Arthur Wade is being chased by a crazed mob, they get a rope around his neck, they're pulling him up, and he goes hey, I remember now, I've got a Swiss Army knife in my pocket, I'll just cut myself down. I don't think so. I don't think a jury will think so. Plus I just talked to a witness not an hour ago – a sweet elderly woman from Lithuania with no reason to lie about it – who says it looked to her like Kevin Shea was lifting Wade up, not pulling him down. That he had gotten out his knife and handed it to Wade, trying to get the guy to cut himself down, he just couldn't keep at it long enough.'

'That's not possible,' Elaine said.

'It's inconvenient if it is.' Drysdale was in the business of putting on successful trials, and strategically this was a case-breaker. That the argument could even be made…

'If I were you,' Glitsky said to Elaine, 'I'd get that photographer down here again and find out for sure what order he took those pictures in, if he can remember.'

Drysdale swore quietly.

Glitsky looked at his watch again. 'I've really got to go.'

'There are probably twenty witnesses out there who could testify to Shea pulling down…' Elaine was back in a challenge-mode, her eyes hard on him, not giving up on anything.

'But they haven't come forward and we haven't found them. And if they were in the mob, they're accessories. Which is why we haven't found them.' Glitsky held up his hands, avoiding further confrontation. 'Look, folks, I'm on your side, but you better know your cards, that's all I'm saying.' One last look at his watch. 'Besides good-bye.'

'Alan Reston isn't going to like this.' Drysdale was back at the desk next to Elaine's. 'Maybe I ought to get back and make the man's acquaintance. You say you know him?'

'I met him through Mom. I don't think you can tell him anything about this.'

'It's trial strategy. That's my job. I've got to bring it up.'

'He won't listen to you.'

'So you do know him?'

She shrugged. 'I've seen things like this enough. If he's got this job already, my mom is somewhere in the picture, and Kevin Shea is her program, so it's going to be Alan's.'

'Not if it can't hold up.'

'Who says it can't hold up? Any argument you make to Alan is going to come out like a rationalization, not a trial strategy. I still don't think there's any doubt Shea did it, but Abe's right – it's going to be a little harder to prove at trial.'

'Which is what I should tell Reston, which is what I'm going to-'

'Art, please. Let me. When we know a little more. Maybe my mom…'

She let it hang, and Drysdale subsided back into his chair. 'We present evidence to a court, Elaine, you know that. That's what we do.'

'I know that, Art.'

'Whether or not the shit heads get off…'

'I know.'

'If you don't think that's Reston's primary commitment – and say what you will about Chris Locke, that was his – then somebody ought to know about it real soon. I don't care if he's black or in your mother's hip pocket. Pardon my lack of circumlocution.'

She waved it off. 'I don't know what his agenda is, Art. I don't.'

Drysdale got his long frame up out of his chair. 'You know, about the only thing I'm more tired of than the word "agenda" is the fact that so many people seem to have one. How we go

'I don't-'

'I don't either, Elaine. I just pray to God you don't look at me and see a white man first, 'cause I'm not any more a white male first than you're a black lady first. What I am first is just a plain old human person.' He stood at the door. 'Now, I hope you're feeling better than you were, and I know you've got some phone calls to make, and I've got to go do what I do.'

'Art…'

'It's all right. I'll let you take it up with Mr Reston. Just remember, this is your case. It's not your mother's. That's all.'

Elaine placed a call to the photographer Paul Westberg and left a message on his machine that she would like to see him again at his earliest convenience.

She sat and stared at the second picture, then suddenly realized what had not registered when she had heard it. And found herself grappling with the question of how Lieutenant Glitsky knew her mother well enough for her to ask him to pass along the message to Elaine that she was worried about her.

'We were together in college.'

'What do you mean, together?'

Loretta Wager let out a sigh over the telephone. Elaine could picture her in the small unmarked office at City Hall, her shoes off, her feet on the ratty old desk. 'I think you can figure that one out, honey. He was… my boyfriend.'

'Abe Glitsky was your boyfriend? Were you serious about each?'

'For that age, I'd say yes.'

'And what now?'

Her mother hesitated. 'Now we are friends.'

Elaine had some trouble with this. 'Mom, I have been around you just a little bit, and I have never heard you mention his name before.'

'We lost track of each other, hon. That happens, you know. He had family. So did I.'

'But he couldn't have lost track of you – '

'Because I have a public life? Maybe not. But there was no reason for him to look me up. Now, since the other day, with this… anyway, he interviewed me about Chris…'

Elaine was silent.

'Are you there, hon? You okay?'

'I don't know what I'm going to do.'

'You haven't told anybody, have you? About you and Chris?'

'No, but I think Art Drysdale kind of has a feeling about it. He was here with me for a long time. We talked.'

The words came out carefully. 'Let him have a feeling, Elaine, but don't ever admit it. Would you promise me that?'

'Mom, I wasn't going to…'

'It will give him too much on you. Anybody, in fact…'

'Not Art. He's not-'

'He's your supervisor. If he needs it he'll use it. That's the way the world works. And you, especially – you're not allowed to have a scandal.'

'Mom, it's you who's not allowed to have a scandal. You're the senator. I'm just-'

'No. This isn't for me. I'm thinking about you.'

'Art Drysdale isn't going to say anything. How did we get on this? I don't even care if he does. What matters is Chris.'

Her mother sighed again. 'Chris is gone, hon. You'll find somebody else.' A pause. 'Somebody better for you.'

'I don't want somebody better for me.' Tears threatened again.

'You will, Elaine, believe me. Someday you will.'

44

It might have been interpreted as a nice domestic scene – the clean-shaven young man with the bandaged leg sitting around the coffee table with his parents and their well-dressed friend, all of them listening politely to the overweight blue-collar guy with the heavy black shoes, perhaps a repairman telling them all about the leaking water heater, the pros and cons of getting a new one.

It was turning into a much more formal police interview than Carl Griffin had ever intended.

Colin Devlin was twenty-four years old and still lived with his parents in a renovated Victorian on Clifford Terrace in the upper Ashbury. Griffin had called from Dr Epps's office and reached the young man, asked a couple of cursory questions and got a minimal response, then wondered if he could call on him, have him make a statement about his injury, keeping it all vague. Colin, sounding nervous on the phone, had said okay. Griffin had reasoned he wouldn't have been able to say anything else without creating suspicion, and he was proved right.

On the way to Devlin's, Griffin ran into an area that had been cordoned off by the National guard and had to detour for half a mile. Then, in spite of the eggplant submarine sandwich he'd wolfed at lunchtime, he also suffered a Mac attack and found he needed a burger. So he set no landspeed marks getting up to Ashbury, and by the time he arrived so had the reinforcements – Colin's parents and their lawyer, a Mr Cohen.