They'd hit all the high notes, and the media had gone into its fandango. All the local stations were carrying it by the noon broadcasts, radio talk-shows picked it up. The office had gotten calls from Newsweek and Time and USA Today. Clearly, it was going to turn into a circus.
He opened the conference-room door and all noise ceased. He went to the chair at the head of the table and stood a moment, meeting the eyes of his people one by one. He came to Christina and gave her an almost imperceptible extra nod. Finally, he cleared his throat.
At his earlier request, Janey had placed a copy of the Sunday Chronicle in a folder at his place. Dooher picked up the folder, opened it, and withdrew the paper, holding it up so that the headline fairly screamed. He, by contrast, spoke with great control, quietly. 'I did not do any of this,' he said. 'I will fight these charges until the day I die.'
No one said a word.
He scanned the room again, the sea of faces staring back at him, rapt. The current of tension was palpable, underscored by the barely audible sibilance of heavy breathing. Janey and three of the other women in the room were crying.
He continued: 'I wanted to meet with all of you, face to face, and tell you this. I want to sit here and answer any questions you might have. We're a room full of lawyers and you'll notice I don't have my lawyer present in here – he's sitting in my office, waiting until we're finished. I don't have anything to hide.' He glanced a last time at the newspaper, then put it back in its folder. Sitting down, he clasped his hands in front of him on the table. 'I am at your complete disposal.'
Glitsky and Thieu, armed with their warrant, stood in the empty reception area for a couple of seconds, wondering where everyone was. That odd, red evening light seemed to shimmer in the moted air and the place appeared absolutely deserted.
'This is spooky,' Thieu whispered.
'Dooher's office,' Glitsky said. 'I know where it is.'
They walked the long hallway through the center of the building, offices to either side, all of them empty, the light blessedly shaded in the interstices between them.
The area opened up again in front of Dooher's office – Janey's area, the view again, the light. Glitsky knocked on Dooher's door and sensed the movement inside. He put his hand on his gun and the door opened on Wes Farrell.
'We've been expecting you,' he said.
Still with his staff in the conference room, Dooher looked over and stood when the door opened. 'Excuse me,' he said to the silent table in front of him. He came outside to meet them, closing the door behind him. 'You're making a terrible mistake, Sergeant,' he said.
'You have the right to remain silent,' Glitsky began, while Thieu – more or less gently – took Dooher's arm and placed a handcuff over one wrist, turning it behind his back.
'Is that necessary?'
The door opened again and Thieu put out a hand against it. 'Just a minute, please. Police.'
But the door got pushed open anyway. Roughly.
'Sergeant Glitsky!'
Glitsky stopped his recital. He remembered her now, no problem. Stunning in the sepia light, her color high, eyes flashing. 'Ms Carerra,' he said. 'I'm sorry, can I ask you to please wait back inside?'
'No, you can't! This is outrageous!'
Farrell stepped forward. 'Christina…'
She jerked her arm away, faced off on them all. 'What's the matter with you, Sergeant? Can't you see what you're putting this good man through? Look at him. He didn't do anything. Goddamnit, look at him, would you?'
But Glitsky was looking at her.
'Christina, it's all right,' Dooher said.
Thieu had snicked the other cuff on Dooher and now he was advancing on Christina. 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to get back in there, ma' am. Right now.'
Glitsky said, 'Paul, it's okay.'
'It's not okay!' Christina's hands were clenched. Tears of anger were beginning to gleam in her eyes.'This isn't right. Why are you doing this?'
'Christina,' Dooher repeated. Softly, almost like a lover. 'They can't prove it. It's all right.' Then, to Wes, gently, 'Take care of her, would you?'
Christina looked pleadingly at Dooher. He met her eyes. She started to reach a hand up, but Wes Farrell took it. Some profound energy, unmistakable, flowed between them.
Glitsky saw it, and suddenly knew that the very slim chance that he might in fact be wrong had disappeared. They had inadvertently given him the last piece, the elusive key to the whole puzzle – a motive.
Part Four
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Dooher case had enthralled much of the public and captivated the media, not only because of the bizarre set of facts in the case itself, but because it had so deeply polarized the already Balkan-like factions that made up San Francisco.
Wes Farrell had carefully manipulated the coverage, accusing Glitsky of using Dooher as a pawn in his own campaign for advancement within the police department. There was simply no case against Dooher. It was all political.
Glitsky, abetted by activist feminist prosecutor Amanda Jenkins, was simply trying to make his bones by pushing a high-profile case in front of Police Chief Dan Rigby, who was a rubber stamp for the liberal Mayor Conrad Aiken. At the same time, Glitsky was counting on the support of District Attorney Chris Locke, a black liberal supported by two gay supervisors.
On Dooher's side, he had the Archbishop of San Francisco, most of the city's legal community, a host of independent angry white males, including some very vocal radio personalities.
Dooher was white and male. Stories appeared in which people who had known him (and whom he'd fired) recounted his insensitive remarks about his own lesbian daughter. There were no gay attorneys in the firm he ran. He must be homophobic. No women had made partner in his firm, either. He was on record as being anti-abortion.
In short, Mark Dooher's public defense was that he was a modern-day Dreyfuss – exactly the kind of scapegoat an ambitious liberal zealot like Glitsky would need to bolster his reputation and advance his career. The Sergeant had taken the Lieutenant's exam and, in what was widely viewed (and roundly criticized in certain circles) as another liberal end run to enhance his prestige as a prosecution witness, he had been promoted to Head of Homicide.
Outside Judge Oscar Thomasino's courtroom on the 3rd floor of the Hall of Justice, things were heating up.
Building security had erected a makeshift sawhorse chute through which spectators at the trial would have to pass before they entered the courtroom. At the double doors, a metal detector further slowed ingress. (The metal detector at the front entrance to the Hall had been known to miss the occasional weapon, and Thomasino didn't want to take chances in his courtroom.)
So on this cold and clear Monday morning, the ninth day of December, the hallway outside Department 26 was a microcosm of the city, and it was all but unbridled bedlam.
There had already been a mini-riot between the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who supported Dooher, and the Vietnam Veterans of America, who believed Chas Brown. Seven people had to be restrained by the building cops, and two were removed from the hallway and arrested.
But that hadn't ended it. Their blood up, a couple of hippies from the VVA group waded into a contingent of Vietnamese activists who were there protesting the fact that Dooher wasn't being charged with the Trang or Nguyen murders, both of which had received enormous media attention.
It didn't help that the chute was funneling everyone into the same place.