A Certain Justice

Glitsky's scar stretched a little. 'Now you didn't say anything about a shower…'

She pushed him outside. 'Git… but tomorrow.'

He pointed a finger at her. 'Tomorrow.'

He walked to the car and stared back at her mansion, which was, he thought, far more intimidating than the woman herself.

It must have been Dana's. It was strange to think of her living here, so close to him, all these years. Of course, for most of them, he'd had Flo, he hadn't been looking, told himself he wouldn't have seen it if it had danced in front of him.

Another siren, this one not far away. He turned and looked at the orange glow of more flames somewhere in the eastern sky. Come on, Mr Farrell, he thought, let's get this over with.

It was still early enough – not yet ten. And he knew no one was home chez Glitsky. It was literally the most free that he'd been in probably fifteen years and he was going to check back in at work. Somebody might need him.

He got in the car. The seat was still jammed up under the steering wheel where Loretta had needed it. He smiled to himself and said 'one two three,' pushing it back to where he could drive. Small packages, he was thinking. What was that expression? What was it that came in them – good things? Or was it dynamite?

This late at night Glitsky's first inclination was to pull directly up to the front of the Hall on Bryant Street and park along the curb. He was aware of heavy traffic even north of Market, and by the time he got where he worked he was barely crawling. Black-and-whites were double- and triple-parked along the entire length of the block. Near the center of the street, by the entrance to the Hall, where he'd been interviewed earlier in the day, the television vans had staked their turf. There was a line of busses for transporting people. He could see the traffic backed up both coming off the Freeway at 7th and down from the lower Mission on Bryant, and he knew at least one of the other side streets was a parking lot. Finally, turning into an alley jammed with what he knew were unmarked police cars parked on the curbs and sidewalks, he crept through the one open lane to the city lot behind the Hall.

A long, partially covered corridor ran between the new jail and the old morgue and led to the back door of the Hall. Although it had grill-covered light bulbs spaced infrequently, at this time of night the walkway had a spacey, almost eerie dimness. Maybe it was in contrast to the startling brightness visible through the tall windows in the Hall's lobby or just the sense that you were entering some kind of cave that happened to abut where they stored dead people, but when it was dark out, this walkway always gave Glitsky the creeps. He half-expected bats to be scared out of their resting places when he passed, exploding by him in a flurry of wings and squeaks.

So he was hurrying and didn't even notice John Strout until the man said hello from the shadowed entrance to the morgue.

After Glitsky landed, the coroner smiled genially. 'I didn't mean to startle y'all.'

'You're working late.' He gestured toward the main building. 'So's everybody else.'

Strout nodded. 'I don't suppose you're down here just to take the waters, either, Lieutenant.'

'I don't suppose so.'

'Anything specific?'

This was an unusual question from Strout. It could be he was making conversation, but Glitsky suddenly didn't think so. 'Not really,' he replied. Then, on reflection: 'Why?'

Mr Noncommittal, Strout shrugged, considered, raised his eyebrows. 'No reason, just-'

'Just what?'

'Just Art Drysdale was by here near closing time, wanted to pay his respects to Mr Locke. Also probably wanted to hide out a while, everybody on his ass for everything he did or didn't do the last five years.' This was a justified beef – Strout and Drysdale had worked together a long time with great mutual respect. 'Mr Locke's death hit him pretty hard.'

Glitsky hadn't been much of a Locke fan, but he understood Drysdale's reaction – the two had been on the same team, fought the same battles for a long time together. It was natural that a bond would develop.

'All the events of the day, I think he was finally gettin' around to the story on what actually happened with Mr Locke. Asked me who was handlin' it and I told him you'd been by.'

For the usually laconic Strout, this much conversation qualified as a philippic. Glitsky thought he was probably going somewhere with it and waited for him to continue.

'Well, he went on up to your place and one of your men told him he didn't think it had been formally assigned, something like that. It was on your desk but-'

Glitsky straightened up. 'John, Marcel Lanier and I both interviewed Loretta Wager, who was our only-'

Strout had his hands up. 'This is not me, Lieutenant. I'm not in the middle of this, this is Art's reaction, that's all.'

'All right.'

'Art seemed to think that some inspector might have gone out and spent the day down by Dolores Park' – the riot location where Locke had been shot – 'and put a little effort into finding this shooter, done some door-to-door in the neighborhood…'

'You know, John, it's not exactly been a slow news week. Maybe Art hasn't noticed.'

'I think he has, Abe. I really do. I think he just knows how fast these trails get cold. Now a day's gone by an' nobody seems inclined to do the routine. Mr Locke bein' the district attorney an' all, he thought it might have gotten itself a little more priority, the investigation, I mean.'

'There were other-' Glitsky didn't mean to snap. He stopped himself. Drysdale, of course, was right as far as he went. Glitsky should have assigned someone to go canvass the area of the shooting, wherever that had been exactly. But that was the point – he should have that knowledge, should know for a certainty that there wasn't any forensic evidence at the site. Maybe there was a strand of fabric, a bloodstain, a shoe print, a bullet casing (although Glitsky knew that the caliber of the bullet that killed Locke didn't come from an automatic so it wouldn't have ejected). Still, something…

Drysdale was right – his boss and buddy Chris Locke had been killed and Glitsky, the head of homicide, was neglecting to investigate the death thoroughly. No wonder Art had come down and mentioned it to Dr Strout.

But damn – Glitsky's blood was rushing – he couldn't do everything. He had every one of his inspectors, including himself, triple-assigned – hell, quintuple-assigned – and he knew that the odds of getting even a long-shot lead to finding the man who had shot Chris Locke – on a dark evening in the midst of a riot – approached absolute zero.

This was the kind of extra helping of the unexpected personal stuff that made his job so frustrating. Not that Drysdale didn't have a point. Not that he wasn't justified that his best friend's death wasn't getting the priority he felt it deserved. But that no matter how hard you tried, no matter how responsible you were – he remembered Loretta's remark – you could never do enough. You were going to piss off someone, hurt someone, let someone down.

And Drysdale, whom Abe worked well with, was having a tough enough time. In fact, he knew, he should have assigned it, long shot or no. Many – most – murder investigations were long shots. The simple, galling truth was that he'd gotten distracted and hadn't entirely been doing his job. And that made him furious at himself, at Drysdale, even at the messenger right here.

But there was no point in losing it with Strout. The person with whom he was really put out lived closer.

'You see Art before I do,' he said evenly to Strout, 'tell him I realized the same thing, thought I'd come down and correct the oversight.'

Just as he entered the building someone started yelling in the cavernous, packed lobby.