That still didn’t make it a good argument for Drysdale. ‘Let’s tick it off,’ he said. ‘She had a sexual relationship with the guy. Okay, already we’re in most-likely-to-succeed territory. Two, what did Glitsky tell you this morning? She maybe benefits to the tune of a couple million dollars if the guy dies. This is a big number two. This is not insignificant.’
‘It may not even be true. And Elizabeth doesn’t know about it in any event.’
Drysdale kissed the air, a little clicking sound. ‘She will. Anyway, next, it’s her gun and a witness puts her at the crime scene and she doesn’t have an alibi for the day in question. Finally, she attempts to leave the country ten minutes after being warned to stay. It is not what I’d call farfetched to think she did it.’
‘I didn’t say she didn’t do it. I’m saying there’s no real evidence that she did, not yet.’
‘Fortunately, that’s the jury’s job.’
‘And Betsy’s.’
‘And yours.’ Drysdale raised a finger. ‘And I wouldn’t call her Betsy.’
‘Am I glad to be back working here?’
‘Is that a question? You’ve got your murder case, quicker than most.’
Hardy straightened up in the doorway. His name was being called over the hall loudspeaker. He had a telephone call. ‘Pyrrhus, right?’ he said, before turning into the hall.
The snitch was named Devon Latrice Wortherington, and he certainly seemed to be enjoying the moments of relative freedom away from his cell. Devon had been picked up carrying an unlicensed firearm and a half pound of rock cocaine the previous Thursday night, outside a bar near Hunter’s Point, and he had been in jail about twelve hours when suddenly he recalled his civic duty to assist the police if he knew anything that might help them in apprehending persons who had committed a crime. In this case a drive-by shooting that had left three people dead – including a small boy who reminded Glitsky of his son – and seven wounded.
He seemed to like Glitsky. Maybe he was just in a good mood. In any event, he couldn’t seem to shut up. ‘What kind of name is Glitsky?’ he asked while they were setting up the videotape for the interview. ‘I never knew no Glitsky.’
‘It’s Jewish,’ Abe said.
‘What you mean, Jewish?’
‘I mean it’s a Jewish name, Devon.’
‘Well, how you get a Jewish name?’
‘How’d you get the name Wortherington?’
‘From my father, man.’
‘Well…’
‘You telling me you got Glitsky from your father? How’d he get Glitsky?’
Abe was used to room-temp IQs. Still, he thought Devon might be close to the range where he wouldn’t be competent to stand trial. But he could be patient when it suited him, and now there wasn’t much else to do. ‘My father,’ he said, ‘got Glitsky from being Jewish.’
‘No shit? You shittin’ me?‘ Glitsky felt Devon eyeing him for some sign of duplicity. He kept a straight face.
‘We’re just about ready, Sergeant.’ The technician was a middle-aged woman of no looks and no humor. Maybe she dated the jail warden who’d accompanied Devon down and who now stood inside by the interview room’s door.
‘My father isn’t black,’ Abe said.
He saw Devon take it in, chew it around, get it down. ‘Hey, I get it. Your father is Jewish. I mean he is a righteous Hebe.’
Abe wondered about how his father Nat would feel about being called a righteous Hebe and decided he’d ask him the next time they were together. He sat down across the table from Devon and asked the first questions -name, age, place of birth.
‘Okay, Devon, let’s get to it. At about seven o’clock on the night of Sunday, June twenty-first, you were standing at the corner of Dedman Court’ – Glitsky loved the name – ‘and Cashmere Lane in Hunter’s Point, is that correct?’
Devon nodded, and Glitsky continued, running down his mental list of questions – establishing that Devon had been standing in a group of neighborhood people when a green Camaro drove up with two men in front and two in back. At the first sight of the car, someone at the corner yelled and a few people dropped to the ground. Devon had stayed up to see the barrels of guns poking out of the front and back windows. Another man appeared to be sitting in the backseat window, leveling a rifle or a shotgun over the roof of the car. ‘You have identified the shooter as Tremaine Wilson?’
‘Yeah, it was Wilson.’
Glitsky was wondering how Devon could have identified Wilson, since two other witnesses had said that the shooters had worn ski masks. ‘And he was firing from the passenger-side front window?’
‘Right.’
‘Did anything obstruct your view of him?’
‘No. He was only like twenty feet away. I seen him clear as I see you.’
‘I hear he was wearing something over his face.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, a ski-mask, a bandanna, something over his face?’
Devon stopped, his easy rhythm cut off. ‘It was Wilson,’ he said.
‘I’m not saying it wasn’t, Devon. I’m asking was there something covering his face.’
‘What difference that make?’
Glitsky nodded to the technician, and she stopped the videotape. Glitsky knew the tape recorder under the table was still going. ‘Okay, we’re off the machine, Devon. Was he wearing a mask or not?’
‘Hey, look. I’m telling you it was Wilson. I know it was Wilson. So I give him up and you let me go, that’s the deal.’
Glitsky shook his head. ‘The deal is, you give us some evidence we can use in court. He was wearing a mask, wasn’t he?’
Devon thought about it, figuring his chances, then shook his head, no. ‘No way, man. No mask.’
Glitsky sighed, then asked the technician to turn on the machine again. ‘Okay, Devon, for the record, was the shooter you’ve identified as Tremaine Wilson wearing anything over his face?’
‘I just told you no.’
‘Tell me again. Was the shooter wearing anything over his face?’
‘No.’
It was, at this point, no surprise. Still, Devon seemed to be telling the truth about knowing the shooter was Wilson, but if he couldn’t testify that he actually saw him pulling the trigger, it wasn’t going to do anybody any good.
‘Are you related to Wilson?’
Devon’s face was a question mark.
‘Cousin, half brother, like that?’
‘No.’
‘Is he related to anyone you know?’ Again Devon paused, but this time Glitsky didn’t wait. He turned to the technician. ‘Shut that down,’ he said. ‘Okay, Devon, how do you know Wilson?’
It took about a minute, but it came out that Tremaine Wilson had recently moved in with the woman Devon had lived with for the past two years, the mother of Devon’s child.
‘So Devon figured he could cut himself a deal and put Wilson away at the same time, get his old lady back. Slick, right?’
‘Très.’ Hardy had been sitting at Glitsky’s desk, cooling off after the altercation with Locke and Pullios. ‘But it came up Wilson did it?’
‘Yeah, sure. Devon thinks he was the target himself. That’s why he bought the gun we found him with on Thursday. Wilson wanted to take him out, but as they always do, they miss who they’re actually shooting at and kill a few folks standing around.’
‘So Devon’s back upstairs.’
‘No evidence, no deal. Devon’s sure Wilson was the shooter – he probably was. So big deal, we know one of the shooters. You want to try and sell Devon’s ID to a jury?’
‘Why don’t you cut Devon a deal, let him back on the street, give him back his gun? He goes and shoots Wilson, then we pick him up again.’