"Where have you been staying, anyway?"
"Rich's."
"They said you weren't there."
"I know."
Michael's frustration with Rich's family forced a breath out of him. "Well, we're moving out of Chuck and Kathy's and into a motel on Wednesday. I think it's time we started trying getting along again as a family. Do you think you could do that?"
Angrily Jon brushed away where his tears had wet his cheeks. "I don't know, Dad. All I know is I want to kill whoever killed her."
"I do, too, Jon. I do, too. And I swear to God, that wasn't me. It wasn't me. I need you to believe me. Do you think you can do that?"
Jon slumped back and crossed his arms, his face set in a mask. After a few long beats, Michael realized that this was the best he was going to get from his son today, and he stood up, laid a hand gently on his shoulder, and walked out the door. Darrel Bracco phrased his questions to Linda Salcedo in such a way that she had no idea he was inquiring as to the alibi of Ro Curtlee on the morning of Janice Durbin's death. He let her believe he was getting general background about daily life in the Curtlee mansion, and she had been unwaveringly certain: Since he'd been released on bail the first time, and except for when he'd been in police custody and on one other morning last week, Ro Curtlee had spent every night in his bedroom, and had never gotten up before nine or nine thirty in the morning. Linda remembered specifically because she herself was up at six thirty, starting her cleaning upstairs before coming down to help with breakfast. She passed directly in front of Ro's room every morning, knocking quietly, then opening the door a crack to look in and see if he'd gotten up so that she could clean up in that room and make the bed. But no, he'd been in there every day. Definitely. And had appeared downstairs either during or after the Curtlees' having their breakfast.
This was not the news Glitsky wanted to hear.
After Bracco left his office, Glitsky sat in a blue funk for nearly a half hour. Finally he got up and went around his desk to the whiteboard where he kept his list of active cases and inspector assignments. In the clean white space that only this morning had held the name Felicia Nunez, he wrote the name Janice Durbin in large block letters, and then across from it in the empty rectangle on the right-GLITSKY. It was going to be a long, slow haul getting a special master appointed by a judge to go through the patient files in Janice Durbin's office and try to find evidence of a carnal relationship between the psychiatrist and someone who was seeing her professionally. It could take weeks, even months, and still in the end yield nothing-for the truth remained that there was a whole universe of men and even women who might have been intimately involved with Janice Durbin, and none of them her patients.
And that was if, in fact, it had not been Michael Durbin who'd been having the affair, contracted chlamydia, and killed his wife-perhaps even by accident-when she'd become infected and fought with him over it. Of course, to believe that Michael Durbin had killed his wife, Glitsky would have to believe that he'd also slashed his own works of art, but this was just the sort of almost unfathomable subterfuge he might in fact expect from a desperate killer.
In any event, he'd already let too much time go by because of his insistence upon the guilt of Ro Curtlee. This was the eleventh day after Janice's death, and to say that the trail had gone cold was a significant understatement.
At 2:40, having spent an hour on his paperwork for a search warrant and special master request, Glitsky found himself in the hallway of the block-long, low-rise stucco professional building about midway between the Stonestown Mall and San Francisco State University where Janice Durbin had had her office. It was a relatively modern building with no apparent frills. Janice had practiced in suite 204, just across from the elevator on the second floor, and Glitsky now stood outside of that suite, in the hallway, peering into it through the half-open gray venetian blinds. Unless he was missing something, and he didn't think he was, he could see the entire office.
There was no reception area, simply a couple of functional couches, one along the right wall and one under the wide, rectangular window-its blinds, too, half open-that made up most of the back wall. On the left, a low dark wood credenza looked like it probably held her files. Facing the two couches was a large red-leather lounge chair, with a telephone table and a floor lamp next to it. A large purple beanbag chair sat in the far corner. Some framed pictures hung on the walls on either side, but the glare from the outside window kept him from seeing what kind of art she'd hung there.
It wouldn't matter too much, he thought. The place was clean, uncluttered, basic.
"Can I help you?"
Glitsky straightened and turned to face an attractive, professionally dressed, heavyset black woman who looked to be somewhere in her late twenties. Introducing himself and proffering his badge, he said, "As you may know, Dr. Durbin was murdered a little over a week ago. I was hoping to talk to some of her neighbors in this building, see if somebody might be able to throw some light on the investigation."
"In what way?"
"In any way, really. We haven't gotten very far yet. Did you know Dr. Durbin?"
"Not exactly. Just, you know, in the ladies', or passing in the hallway. I couldn't believe when we heard what happened. Nobody could. You never think that kind of thing could happen to somebody you know. Or like her."
"How was she, then?"
"Oh, you know. Polite, sweet, classy, down-to-earth. Just a regular person."
"Do you know if she had any particular friends here in this building? People she hung out with?"
"Not really, no. Not saying she didn't, just if she did I didn't know about it. It's not like we're all one big office here, as you probably figured out already. Everybody's got their own, mostly. I'm with Bayview Security, down at the end there at two-oh-seven. Although Dr. Mitchell downstairs, he's a dentist actually. He's got his own big triple suite. But he's about the biggest. Lots of equipment, you know. Probably the main reason the building needs a security service, although we're here for everybody."
"Well, thank you," Glitsky said. "Maybe I'll just knock on a few doors. Would that be all right with you?"
"You go ahead," she said. "Good luck to you." Starting at 201 on the opposite side of the hall, Glitsky worked his way quickly down to 215, then started up Janice Durbin's side, which faced west over the back parking lot. As he'd been warned, there wasn't much in the way of information. Six of the offices housed therapists or counselors of one kind or another, and two of those were in session on his first pass, but none of the other four, nor the people in the insurance office in 203, knew Janice any more than the first woman he'd met in the hallway.
It was the same on Janice's side until he got to 208, a Pilates studio. Glitsky almost gave it a pass, figuring that it would be a room where people just showed up as they would at a gym, willynilly. He didn't even know if a specific tenant ran the place. In the end, though, being thorough, he knocked.
Even with no discernible makeup and a light sheen from sweating, the woman who opened the door nearly tied his tongue in knots. Clad only in a red leotard, she wore her blond hair shoulder length, held back with a red headband. It showed off the broad, fair forehead over eyes of pure jade. Perhaps in her early forties, she had trace lines at the corners of those distinctive eyes, but otherwise her face might have belonged to a twenty-year-old. "Hi," she said, extending her hand. "I'm Holly."
"Hello." Glitsky shook her hand, showed his badge, kept it simple. "I'm Abe Glitsky, with San Francisco homicide. Can you answer a few questions?"
She cast a glance back over her shoulder at the obviously empty studio and shrugged. "Sure. This must be about Janice, right?" And then suddenly her incredible eyes flashed. "That fucker."