The Hearing

'No. We had breakfast in Sausalito and then she went into work and I took a long bike ride over Tamalpais, back through Lucas Valley. It's the only exercise I get.'

'Did you go with anybody?'

Walsh hated the question and seemed tempted to reply angrily, but in the end he just shook his head with resignation. 'No. I went alone.'

'So you got back home – Tiburon, right? – and there was a message? What time was that? When you got back?'

'Five thirty or six. Just dusk.'

'And the message was that she wouldn't be home until after three in the morning?'

The question slowed him down. 'Well, no, not specifically. Just that she had an appointment and she'd be a little late. Where does three o'clock come into this?'

'That was when we got around to notifying you.' Glitsky made an effort in the direction of a smile. 'She said she'd be a little late, though?'

The doctor sat back again, took a measured pause. 'Where are we going with this, Lieutenant?'

Glitsky thought it was a fair question. 'Well, if you thought she was only going to be a little late and she didn't get in by, say, three…' Surely Walsh understood what he was driving at.

'I would have called the police by then. I would have been worried.'

'The question came up, that's all.'

Walsh took another minute deciding whether or not he was going to answer any more stupid, leading questions posed by the police. When he did, the frustration was back in his voice. 'First, I went to bed at nine thirty. I'd ridden many, many steep miles that day. I was tired and had to work in the morning. Second, Elaine's meetings often ran late, sometimes very late. So no, I wasn't worried.'

'And she didn't say who she was meeting?'

'Not then. But I knew who she was meeting earlier in the day.' Suddenly, something else struck him. 'You know, it seems like this is an awfully long time after the fact to start asking these kinds of questions.'

'You're right. If we didn't have a suspect, we'd have moved on it faster. Now we're not really looking for anybody. As I said, we're filling in blanks. We might not need any of it, it's just gravy. Still, we'd like the case to be as tight as it can be. Does that make sense?'

'Obviously.'

'Good.' They were making progress. Glitsky brought his hands together, a kind of clap of approval. 'So the meeting earlier in the day, who was that with?'

'You really don't know?'

'How would I know?'

'Because it was you guys.' Glitsky showed his surprise. 'The police.' Walsh explained about Elaine's special master duties on the Russian insurance fraud case. She had gone in with a team of police officers to serve a warrant on the law offices of Dash Logan.

'On Sunday?'

A shrug. 'Evidently the first time they'd all come by, Logan had really been a pain. He didn't want anybody looking at his files, wouldn't tell Elaine where anything was, if he even knew.'

'Why wouldn't he know?'

'Because – this according to Elaine – there wasn't any order to it. Elaine said she'd never seen another law office like it ever. She thinks… she thought… he must be on drugs or something. Logan.'

Glitsky shrugged. A lot of people did drugs. If they didn't kill people because of it, it wasn't homicide, and wasn't his job.

'Anyway,' Walsh continued, 'then they found another couple of these Russian guys, cases Logan was handling. They figured this time it would be easier to do the search while nobody was there but him. So they woke him at his house, brought him to the office and served the warrant.'

'They actually went to his office? That Sunday?'

'I don't know, Lieutenant. I assume so. That was the plan. You could probably find out easier than me.'

This was the truth, and Glitsky accepted it ruefully. 'And you didn't hear from her again?'

Walsh bit down on his lower lip. Suddenly Glitsky got some sense of emotion. 'No. Just the last message. You know, it's funny, I haven't been able to bring myself to erase it.'

Which was all well and good and perhaps sad, Glitsky reflected as he walked away from the table, but all in all not as interesting as the fact that Walsh had lied about the current state of his relationship with Elaine. He also had no alibi for the time of her murder. On the other side of the cafeteria, Glitsky's father and the two older boys were at their own table, reading different sections of the newspaper. Glitsky got to them and pulled a chair around, straddling it backward.

Nat looked up. 'Not to nag, Abraham, but maybe you want to sit like a normal person? Maybe now you go home and get in bed and rest. Enough already with talking to people on this thing.'

Glitsky looked at his kids. 'Not to nag, he says.' Back to Nat. 'It's my job, Dad.'

'Except last I heard, they put you on leave. Am I wrong here? Tell me I'm wrong. Also tell me I'm wrong you had a heart attack three days ago, maybe you noticed.'

'I noticed. But Ms Ghent told me that he-' he pointed across at Walsh, '-that he worked here Thursdays. I was right here. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Besides, they wouldn't let me out of here if I wasn't OK.'

'Famous last words, Abraham. Don't worry, this parachute opens every time.'

Glitsky threw a half-amused glance at his two boys, both of whom had stopped reading to follow the exchange.

'And enough with that look!' Nat shook a finger at him. 'That same look your mother had that she was OK, too. So she goes home and does a load of laundry and dies. God forbid she dies with dirty clothes in the hamper.'

Abe held up a hand. 'OK, Dad, OK. We go home.'

Nat nodded his head violently, included the boys. 'Finally, your father says a smart thing.' He pointed a finger at his son. 'And rest.'

A nod. 'Rest is good,' Glitsky admitted. Although he had no inclination to get any.

Acting on the information Treya had given him last night about the doctor, Glitsky had called Walsh's office first thing and learned that he had a break in his surgery schedule. It turned out that it coincided with the arrival of his father and sons with his clean clothes, here to take him home. Glitsky had put on the clothes, but didn't take the time to shave.

Hospital rules mandated that they use a wheelchair to take him outside, so they had wheeled him out the front door where he'd stood up and turned around and walked back in to corner Dr Walsh, his family in tow, Nat kvetching all the way.

Now they were finally in the car, Isaac driving, his father next to him in the passenger seat. 'So how did that interview go?' he asked.

Nat started to mutter an objection from the back seat, but Abe spoke through it. 'Pretty good. He only told one little fib.'

Jacob, interested, leaned over from the back seat. 'Is that normal?'

'What? That he told a lie, or that he only told one?'

Nat, still unhappy, interjected again. 'Your father's line of work, nobody tells the truth. I don't know how he stands it.'

Glitsky spoke over his shoulder. 'Are you kidding? That's the best part.'

'But he really lied? Knowing you were a cop? I mean, he's not some criminal,' Isaac said. 'He's a doctor.'

Glitsky got a kick out of that. 'They've done experiments,' he said. 'You can be both.'

Jacob piped in. 'So did you call him on it?'

'Not yet. Maybe never.'

'Why not?' Isaac asked. 'If you tell a lie, you're hiding something, right?'

A nod. 'That would be the general rule.'

Jacob again. 'Well?'

'Well, you can call someone on a lie, or you can catch someone in a lie. And the second one's way more fun.'

'Fun?' In the back seat, Nat sounded disgusted. 'What do you know from fun, Abraham?'

Hardy had had enough of waiting for Ridley Banks to get back to him. He was reasonably friendly with a fair number of homicide inspectors and not a one of them -Glitsky included – had as his first priority a callback to a defense attorney. But that didn't mean he couldn't pursue an investigation of his own. He killed time at his office for an hour while he waited for the phone to ring, then finally decided to walk the half mile or so down to the jail and the Hall of Justice.