The Hearing

John Lescroart

The Hearing

The third book in the Abe Glitsky series, 1999

The legal world created in my books owes whatever verisimilitude it has to the rigorous oversight and unfailing intellect of my great friend and true collaborator Al Gia

Then there's Don Matheson, pere

Others contributed in important ways: Fred Williams of the Davis Police Department saved one day; Mark Nicco told me all I needed to know about Special Masters; San Francisco Homicide Inspector Joe Toomey and Officer Charles Lyons were informative tour guides to the Evidence Room in the Hall of Justice. I'm indebted to Richard B. Seymour, MA, Managing Editor of Haight-Ashbury Publications, and Dr David E. Smith of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics for their insights into the terrible scourge of drug addiction.

I'm continually gratified by the generosity, expertise, and support of many friends and associates: A

To Barney Karpfinger and to Lisa M. Sawyer, the love of my life

'Where life is more terrible than death, It is then the truest valor to want to live.'

Thomas Browne

PART ONE

1

Next to Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky's bed, the telephone rang with a muted insistence.

A widower, Glitsky lived in an upper duplex unit with his youngest son Orel and a housekeeper/na

He located the source of the noise in the dark and picked up the receiver, whispering hoarsely, 'Glitsky. What?'

Surfacing slowly into consciousness, he didn't really have to ask. He was the head of San Francisco 's homicide detail. When he got calls in the dead dark, they did not tend to be salespeople inquiring about his satisfaction with his long distance service provider. It was nearly two hours past midnight on Monday, the first day of February, and the city had produced only two homicides thus far this year -a slow month. In spite of that, Glitsky spent no time, ever, wondering if his job was going to dry up.

The caller wasn't the police dispatcher, but one of his inspectors, Ridley Banks, on his cell phone directly from the crime scene. It wasn't standard procedure to call the lieutenant from the street – so this homicide must have an unusual element. Though Ridley spoke concisely with little inflection, even in his groggy state Glitsky detected urgency.

A downtown patrol car had seen some suspicious movement in Maiden Lane, a walking street just off Union Square. When the officers had hit their spotlight, they flushed a man squatting over what looked like, and turned out to be, a body.

The suspect ran and the officers gave chase. Apparently drunk, the man staggered into a fire hydrant, fell in a heap, and was apprehended. Cuffed now, in the back seat of the squad car, he had passed out awaiting his eventual trip to the jail.

'Guy appears to be one of our residentially challenged citizens,' Ridley said drily. 'John Doe as we speak.'

'No i.d. of course.' Glitsky was almost awake. The digital clock on the bedstand read 1:45.

'Not his own. But he did have the wallet.'

'The victim had a wallet?' To this point, Glitsky had been imagining that this homicide was probably another incident in the continuing tragedy of San Francisco 's homeless wars, where an increasingly violent population of bums had taken to beating and even killing each other over prime downtown begging turf. Certainly, the Union Square location fitted that profile.

But if the current victim had a wallet worth stealing, it lowered the odds that the person was a destitute vagrant.

'Taken from her purse, yeah.'

'It was a woman?'

'Yeah.' A pause. 'We know her. Elaine Wager.'

'What about her?'

'She's the stiff.'

Glitsky felt his head go light. Unaware of the action, he moved his free hand over his heart and clutched at his breast.

The voice in the telephone might have continued for a moment, but he didn't hear it. 'Abe? You there?'

'Yeah. What?'

'I was just saying maybe you want to be down here. It's going to be crawling with media jackals by dawn or the first leak, whichever comes first.'

'I'm there,' Glitsky said. 'Give me fifteen.' But after the co

When the phone started beeping loudly in his hand, reminding him that it was still off the hook, it brought him to. Abruptly now, he hung up, threw the covers to one side, and swung himself up to a sitting position.

And stopped again.

Elaine Wager.

'Oh God, please no.' He didn't know he'd said it aloud, didn't hear his own voice break.

Elaine Wager was the only daughter of Loretta Wager, the charismatic African-American senator from California who'd died a few years before. Elaine – tonight's victim – had worked for a couple of years as an assistant district attorney in the Hall of Justice.

No one was supposed to know it, but she was also Glitsky's daughter.

Somehow he'd gotten dressed, made it to his car. He was driving, the streets dark, nearly deserted.

No one knew. As far as Glitsky was aware, not even Elaine herself. She believed that her biological father was her mother's much older husband, Dana Wager- white, rich, crooked and co

For nearly thirty years, the senator had kept her daughter's paternity secret, even and especially from the girl's true father. Until, finally, a time came when she thought she could use the fact as a bargaining chip to get Glitsky to agree that sometimes it was OK for a senator to commit murder.

That strategy hadn't worked. Abe and Loretta had once been lovers, true, but now he was a cop in his bones, and three years ago she'd killed someone in his jurisdiction. The knowledge that their past union had produced a daughter wasn't going to change what he had to do. Which was bring her to justice.