Farrell let himself down on one of the kitchen chairs, laid the note on the table in front of him. Gert had put her head on his leg and he scratched the top of it absently.
After some time had gone by-he had no sense of how much-Gert started nudging his leg and whining. Moving like a zombie, Farrell put her leash on her and retraced his steps back to the front door, and then out into the night.
The street that his house was on mostly encircled the park, and he and Gert had a regular route they walked in the morning and before bed where she took care of her business. The park itself, now in the dark, was its usual open expanse of nothingness, and suddenly tonight, as he walked around its periphery, Farrell in his numbness gradually became aware of an ominous something that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Stopping, he looked out into the park's center. Several of the lights in the street all around were out, and he couldn't for the life of him remember if they'd been working over the past few days. Ahead of him, there were no lights at all, either in the park or on the street. At the end of the leash, Gert started in with a high-pitched whining. Farrell walked on a few more steps, then stopped again.
He stood completely still for a minute or so. There was no sound at all in the street, not any movement that he could see. Finally he whispered down to his dog, "Come on, girl. Back we go."
But Gert, with hair standing up now down the center of her back, strained at her leash, growling low and harsh, and now barked at something out in the invisible distance.
Keeping a tight rein on her, Farrell moved up next to her head and petted it. "Come on now, come on." Pulling her around, heeling, back toward his house.
When they got back inside, he closed and locked the front door behind him. He took off Gert's leash and started to go back again into the kitchen. As a matter of course, whenever he did this, Gert would tag along next to him. But this time, she turned back to the front door and another low rumbling came out of her.
"Hey, easy now," he said. "It's okay. Everything's okay." But holding her by the collar, he opened the door again and took a quick look outside at his benign street upon which nothing moved.
After he finally got Gert calmed down, doing her business out the back stairs in their tiny backyard and then lying back down on her cushion in the kitchen, Farrell went over to the liquor cabinet and pulled down a bottle of Knob Creek bourbon. He free-poured himself most of a juice glass full, threw in enough ice cubes to take the liquid to the rim of the glass, then drank it all off in a gulp.
This-losing his woman and imagining threats on empty streets-was not by any stretch what he had bargained for when he'd run for DA. In his heart, he didn't really think that he was that serious a person. He had some verbal skills and he got along reasonably well with people from most walks of society, but he'd never considered himself to be a leader of men. He had originally been talked into running for DA with the thought that he'd bring a measure of enlightenment to the law enforcement community within the city. From his perspective as a lifetime defense attorney, he had believed that there was in fact often a problem with cops using more force than was justified. He thought that police often overstepped their mandates with immigrants as well as many of the other assorted minority populations in town. And by the same token, he'd represented a host of people who had made mistakes and, no question, were not angels-but through a mixture of glib humor and just the right amount of backbone, he had never felt in danger from most of these miscreants.
Well, there had been one. Mark Dooher had been Farrell's best friend for years. A fellow attorney, but inhabiting an entirely different stratosphere from Farrell's, Dooher had been counsel to the Archdiocese of San Francisco, among a host of other high-end clients. When Dooher's wife was killed in a home invasion, the overweening, overreacting police-Abe Glitsky, in point of fact-had launched what Wes took to be a vendetta against his friend, eventually bringing him to trial charged with his wife's murder. Farrell had taken on his defense, and in a brutal and grueling trial against Amanda Jenkins, had won an acquittal. That trial, moreover, marked the beginning of Farrell's rise to prominence in the city's legal community.
The only problem was that Mark Dooher-pillar of the community, wonderful father and husband, legal face of the Archdiocese-had, in fact, been guilty of killing his wife. And also guilty of raping a woman while he'd been in college. And killing another man with whom he'd been selling drugs in Vietnam. And gutting with a bayonet another young attorney with whom he'd been in litigation.
And then he had tried to kill Farrell, too.
Now, with Ro Curtlee, Wes felt that he was once again up against a true sociopath who might have given Mark Dooher a run for his money. He'd been out of prison for less than a month and he'd almost undoubtedly already killed three people, including Farrell's own investigator. And no one, apparently, seemed to be able to stop him. Vi Lapeer had volunteered to put a watch on him around the clock until the grand jury could issue an indictment against him, but she wouldn't have had time to do that yet today. Ro could be out there on Farrell's street right now, sitting in a car, lying in wait. He might break in here and light the place on fire.
One thing seemed certain-Ro was committed to staying out of jail. It seemed obvious to Farrell that he'd prefer to die resisting arrest-look how he'd fought with Glitsky and his two men-than go back to prison. So he wasn't afraid of anything. He would attack any and every person whom he wanted to punish or who threatened his freedom. Felicia Nunez, Janice Durbin, Matt Lewis. Gloria Gonzalvez, wherever she was. And to that list Farrell felt he could confidently add Amanda Jenkins, Glitsky, and his family.
And himself. Glitsky turned the keys-first the dead bolt, then the regular lock-in his front door as quietly as he could. It was sometime after midnight. Inside, he untied his shoes and slipped out of them, then picked them up and went around the corner to his small living room, where Treya stood up from where she was sitting on the couch and said, "Thank God you're home. If you could spare one, I could use a hug."
She stepped forward into his arms. Held him as tightly as she could. He dropped his shoes onto the floor and she felt something give in him and she reached up behind him and pulled his head down to the crook of her neck. He let his head rest where it was, heavy, and she could feel the thick, strong muscles in his neck letting go of the tension in them. After another moment, his arms came up around her, too, pressing her against him, so hard she almost, for a second, couldn't breathe.
She didn't care. This was all she wanted. If she couldn't catch a breath, she would do without it.
He exhaled completely, nuzzled his head into her neck and kissed it two, three times. Then straightened up. "You've been up all this time?"
"Apparently."
"How's Amanda?"
"As bad as you'd think. Maybe worse. She thinks it's her fault."
"It's not."
"No. I know that. It's going to take her a while, though. You want to sit?"
"I believe I could."
Treya sat back down where she'd been waiting on the couch and pulled the blanket she'd brought out of their bedroom up around her. Glitsky eased himself down sideways at the other end of the couch.
"You get anything?" she asked.
"Do you want to count getting rejected on the search warrant?"
"Even with the chief herself requesting it?'
"Even then. Same rules for the chief. You need probable cause."
"How about Matt Lewis was following him and Ro shot him?"
"How do we know Lewis was following him?"
"That was his assignment."
"How do we know he ever caught up with him?"