Guilt

It was nearly one o'clock and the party was basically over. The staff was folding up tables behind him. The band was breaking down. Wes was alone at the bar just enjoying the living hell out of his sixth or seventh drink, thinking that maybe it had all been worth it, after all.

Christina and Mark had taken the limo home, and he'd need to get a cab later, but that was all right. He wasn't quite ready to call it quits yet.

Mark – his old pal – had been right about coming down for this party. Mark and Christina might have opened a few eyes when they walked in, but it was he, Wes Farrell, who'd been the sensation. Everybody had read the paper today, watched the news over the past nights. Front page, thank you. Yes, it appeared he was winning, winning, winning. Kicking ass, taking names.

Jocko, behind the bar, had become his close personal friend. Imagine, Wes Farrell the working-class guy here all buddy buddy with the bartender at the St Francis Yacht Club. In his wallet, Farrell had at least half a dozen business cards of people he should call, who might know some people who'd need his services. Where had he been hiding, they all wanted to know.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and the Archbishop of San Francisco was asking Wes if they could have a nightcap together. Wes was finally, after a lifetime of mediocrity, moving into Dooher's circle. God, it was intoxicating!

And certainly one more drink, with Jim Flaherty, wouldn't hurt – a little more of that Oban single malt. They touched their glasses together. 'Great party, Your Excellency. I hope you raised a million dollars.'

'Three hundred and ten thousand in pledges,' he said. 'A new record. This is such a generous city.' Flaherty savored his drink. 'It looks like you had a pretty fair night yourself. I saw you holding court in here most of the evening. You're going to get Mark off, aren't you?'

'It looks like it. I don't want to jinx it, but we've certainly got them on the run.'

The Archbishop sighed. 'How did it even get to this?'

Farrell looked sideways at him. 'It's bad luck to make enemies in the police department. Glitsky's a bad cop.'

'Who just got promoted.'

Again, a sidelong glance. What was Flaherty getting at? He couldn't figure it exactly, so he shrugged. 'He's black. It's his turn.' Then, on a hunch, the new Farrell blurted it right out. 'You having doubts?'

'About Mark? Never. It's just the accusations. You can't help but have them affect your view a little, can you?'

'No, I don't think so. I've had a few myself – doubts – tell the truth. You wonder how many other cases, witnesses show up out of the woodwork who say they saw something, or heard it, or smelled it. What is it, power of suggestion?'

'I think it must be.' The Archbishop sipped his drink.

'Your Excellency,' Farrell said quietly. 'You're not getting cold feet about testifying for us, are you?'

'No, of course not.'

'Good, because I don't know if we're going to need you, but if we do, I wouldn't like to open the door and then have it close on us.'

'No, I understand.'

They both stared out through the rain-pocked glass. Faintly, they heard the wind as it pushed the cypresses nearly to the ground.

'Lousy night out there, isn't it?' Flaherty said. Then, 'You know, when this is over and Mark is found Not Guilty, we ought to try to make this up to him somehow. First he loses his wife, which is horrible enough, then the burden of this trial. He's been through the wringer. I don't know how he's surviving.'

'Well, Mark's a survivor.'

'Plus, he's in love again, I think.'

Farrell sipped his drink and nodded. 'You noticed,' he said laconically. 'Though I suppose if you've got to be in love with somebody, she'd do.'

'Although the timing could be better, couldn't it?'

Farrell agreed that it could. Sitting together at the bar, each harboring his thoughts, the two men sipped at their drinks. The ship's bell behind the bar chimed once, and Jocko said it was last call.

'No, I'm good,' Farrell said, and asked the bartender to call him a taxi.

Bill Carrera wasn't sleeping. His daughter's visit the previous weekend had brought to a head the fear that he had been living with since finding out she'd joined up with Dooher's defense team.

So now, downstairs, looking out over the few remaining lights that remained on at this hour in Ojai, he sat in his deep wingchair, the one he called his Thinking Chair. In spite of the fact that Bill was the kind of man who named things – his Bronco was Trigger, for example; his tennis racket was Slam – he was not without intelligence or insight.

And he was worried sick about Christina.

The light came on in the hallway and after a minute he felt a hand on his shoulder, Irene saying, 'You should have just got me up. How long have you been down here?' She came around and sat on the arm of the chair.

'Forty-five minutes, an hour.'

He was suddenly aware of the ticking of the grandfather clock, and then his wife said, 'She wouldn't be with him if she thought he did it, Bill.'

'I'm not worried about whether she thinks he did it. I'm worried about if he did it.'

'I think we have to trust her judgment on this.'

'Like with Brian? With Joe Avery?'

'Come on, Bill, don't start that. They were different.'

'But not so very different, were they? I wonder if we've failed her somehow, that she can't-' He stopped.

'It's not her. She hasn't met the right man.'

'And Mark Dooher's the right man? God help us.'

'Bill! We haven't even met him…'

'But he's on trial for killing his wife, hon! I'm sorry, they don't usually get to there unless…'

'Usually.'

He took a breath and let it out. 'Jesus. So what are we supposed to do?'

Irene draped her arm over his head. 'Stand by her, I think, don't you? Hope she finally gets happy. Hope he's found Not Guilty.'

'But that's just the law. How do you ever really believe it after all this?'

'I don't know if you do. But if he's found Not Guilty, we've got to support them. Don't you think that?'

'I don't know. I don't understand why her life changed, how it got so complicated and sad. It just breaks my heart.'

'Mine, too.' She sighed. 'Which is why we've got to be with her, Bill. If it's right, if finally this Mark Dooher can make her happy.'

But he was shaking his head. 'People don't make other people happy. People make themselves happy. That's what I'm worried about.'

She tugged at his hair gently. 'You make me happy.'

'No, you were happy when I met you, and we get along. We're lucky. Christina's got to decide that it's up to her. She's still thinking it's all centered, one way or another, around some man. And it's not.'

'It is for me,' Irene said. 'It really is. Maybe I'm not a highly evolved life form, but I believe choice of mate is relatively important in the scheme of things. And that's why I'm going to embrace them if it all works out, and do everything I can to see that it does. And you should, too.'

CHAPTER FOURTY

On Wednesday afternoon, Amanda Jenkins rested for the prosecution, having never really recovered – or established – her momentum. She had called all of her witnesses.

The maintenance man at the San Francisco Golf Club had shown the jury the cyclone fence by the end of the parking lot. It had a large hole in it.

Jenkins had trotted out Paul Thieu and the Taraval cops and the next-door neighbor, Frances Matsun, who (it turned out) had never gotten along with Mark Dooher very well, and who hadn't actually seen him screw the lightbulb from on to off at all.

On cross-examination, Farrell clarified it – Dooher had reached up, fooled with it, done something. It looked like he might have unscrewed it.

Jenkins tried not to show it, but it was clear to Glitsky that she'd been beaten down by the relentless barrages that Farrell had launched against her witnesses. She was still trying to believe that the blood alone would be enough to convict and, further, that Emil Balian had convincingly put Dooher near the scene. It was a brave front: Jenkins pretending that the jury would come back with a Guilty verdict, especially if they got to call Diane Price on rebuttal, if they could get her to paint the picture of a very different Mark Dooher. Glitsky admired her for not crumbling in public, but she was getting killed and everybody knew it.