Damage

"What is it? Abe?"

He lowered his hand with an exaggerated calm. "Ro Curtlee."

"No." This was a name she didn't want to hear, since it was so thoroughly continuing to roil the waters at the DA's office. "What's she got to do with him?"

"She was a witness against him at his first trial and was going to be one of the central witnesses at the next one. But now obviously she isn't going to play much of a role, being dead and all."

Treya finally said, "This is just going to cream Wes."

"I've got to call him."

"Maybe Ro didn't have anything to do with this Felicia Nunez," Treya said.

Glitsky, already punching numbers into his cell phone, rolled his eyes. In the middle of a speech he was giving at the Immigrant Resource Fair on Valencia in the Mission District, Wes Farrell felt his cell phone buzz at his belt and silently cursed himself for bringing the damn thing with him at all. He didn't need distractions from the work at hand, and he didn't think of himself as one of the great natural orators of history, in any event. Nevertheless, this speech, he thought, was a pretty good one about something he truly cared about-protecting crime victims in San Francisco's immigrant community.

"What we've got to avoid," he was saying, "is the appearance and, even more important, the reality, that immigrant crime victims do not fall under the protection of law enforcement. If you're the victim of a crime in San Francisco, the status of your immigration is not, repeat, not going to be a factor. A visit by this city's police enforcement arm is not a visit from the U.S. government's immigration agencies."

In the meeting hall of the Centro del Pueblo, the crowd broke into applause. Farrell, pumped up by the response, hazarded a glance over at his girlfriend, heartened to see that she was taking part in the ovation. He and Sam hadn't yet figured out how his new job was going to fly within their relationship, and he'd take any sign he could that it could still work out. The past few weeks-from the day of Ro Curtlee's bail hearing forward-had been chilly between them, and maybe this applause marked the beginning of a thaw.

Glancing down at his notes, he picked up where he'd left off. "We take very seriously our status as a City of Sanctuary for immigrants, and nowhere should that commitment to immigrant rights be more forcefully implemented than when immigrants are victims of crimes. And it is the policy of my administration that the immigration status of crime victims will never-never ever-be questioned in the course of a criminal investigation. That is simply not going to be on the table. If you're the victim of a crime, you must feel free to call the police and report the crime, and rest secure knowing that nothing bad is going to happen to you because of your immigration status."

Another wave of applause broke over the room. But Farrell really had no time to enjoy the brief flutter of popularity because he took the moment to sneak a look at his phone. Glitsky's name there creased his face with a sudden concern. If Glitsky was calling his private number after nine o'clock, something was up. And if it could have waited until morning, then Glitsky would have waited.

Which meant it couldn't wait.

So, accepting the congratulations of the multitude, he thanked his way off the podium and walked out into the hall, where he could hear himself think. He touched the cell phone screen to connect him to the head of homicide.

Without preamble, Glitsky said, "Do you know where Ro Curtlee is?"

"How would I know that?"

"So you don't? You don't have a secret tail on him? Anything like that?"

"No, of course not. What's happened?"

"Felicia Nunez got herself killed tonight. Maybe raped first, then set on fire. You know who Felicia Nunez is, right?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"We've got to get this guy off the streets. Like yesterday."

"Oh. Okay. Let's do that." Sarcasm dripped into the connection. "You got an idea how that gets accomplished? You got anything implicating him at the scene?"

"No. Everything was burned up. Ro never occurred to me until I placed the woman's name. I'm going to go rattle his cage."

"Don't do that, Abe. Really. Anything remotely smacking of harassment-and that would-and we're sued from here to Denmark. If you arrest him, even if you get him back downtown just to talk, he's back out in a day or two anyway."

"That's two days he can't kill anybody else."

Glitsky was just venting and Farrell knew it, but he still felt he had to make his point. "No, listen. It's going to be hard enough to get his new trial on the docket, even without muddying the waters with harassment and a false arrest." Farrell drew a breath. "So. Has the press got ahold of this yet? The connection?"

"There were TV vans at the fire. I don't know if anybody's put this Nunez woman together with Ro yet. But that's only a matter of time, and probably not too much of that. I've got to go talk to him."

"And then what? You think he won't have an alibi? You think he'll invite you in to have a nice talk? You think you can get a warrant to search his place? I can tell you right now, the answer's no to all of the above."

"Wes, the guy's got to be back in jail."

"I hear you, but I don't know how to make that happen."

"Rescind his bail."

"I can't do that. You need to find some evidence on this new one."

"At a fire scene? The place is gutted."

"Maybe there'll be his DNA on the victim."

"I thought of that, too, but not a chance. You didn't see her. There's no place to get swabs from. I didn't even know for sure that she was a woman. Arnie Becker says we'll be lucky to get a positive ID from dental records."

Farrell took a moment. "You're saying you're not even sure it was Nunez?"

"It was her apartment, Wes. She was the only one in it."

"But if it's not, in fact, her, then there's no connection to Ro."

"Give me a break, Wes. You and I both know it's her, which means it's Ro. It's got to be Ro."

"I know, I know. I'm just thinking about containment."

"It's not a containment issue."

"Well, at least part of it is. Anyway, it could give us both some breathing room."

"And meanwhile, he kills his last remaining witness."

"Maybe not. Hopefully not. Who is she?"

"Another former Curtlee domestic servant, smack in the middle of the profile. Gloria Gonzalvez."

"Do we know where she is?"

"Not yet, but I intend to find out. Meanwhile, speaking of that, what's the problem with getting his new trial on the docket? Get him back behind bars that way."

"I'm working on that, Abe. Believe me. But his lawyer-you know Denardi?-needs to get up to speed on the facts of the case. He told Baretto it's going to take him six months at least, and over my strenuous objections he thought that seemed reasonable and continued the goddamn thing until August, and that's just to set a trial date."

"Lord," Glitsky said. "The man's a menace in his own right." A beat. "So, what happens next? We can't just let this go on."

Farrell scratched his jaw with his cell phone. "Somebody around the fire might still have seen or heard something. Tell Arnie Becker what this might be about, and he can go back and recanvass the neighborhood. Talk to your crime scene people. Locate some DNA somewhere. You get anything real, Abe, bring Ro in and I'll take the flak and hold him. But get ready, and make sure it's real, 'cause there will be beaucoup flak."

6

The Curtlee mansion and its grounds took up the last third of Vallejo Street on the uphill side in the last block before it abutted into the abundant greenery of the tamed forest that was the Presidio.

Glitsky sat in his city-issued Taurus, driver's side window down, and stared across the street at the imposing structure. Set back about sixty feet from the curb, but otherwise surprisingly open to the street, the vast white block of stucco rose three stories up into the trees on the escarpment behind it. The driveway and its landscaping blocked an unimpeded view of the ground floor, but on the two upper floors, lights shone in six of the sixteen windows. From where he sat, Glitsky could only just make out some flickering light and occasional movement behind the enormous bay window through the well-tended shrubbery on the house's right side.