Trang's office didn't look much better in the daytime, and to Thieu it felt worse. The crime-scene tape was still across the door. Inside, the way it had been left by the Forensics and Homicide teams on Friday night created a sense of abandonment that, to Thieu, was overwhelming.
He noticed that none of whatever weak sunlight there had been outside made it into this cavern. Ever.
Glitsky had zipped up his flight jacket. His breath showed in the chill. He crossed to the one window – the black hole of the other night – and opened it into the brick of the building next door, about four inches away. He stuck his head out and looked up, down, sideways. 'If the perp came through here,' he said, 'he is one skinny dude.'
It was the first even remote touch of levity Thieu had heard from the Sergeant. Emboldened by it, he dared ask another question. 'What are we looking for?'
Glitsky had moved back to the desk, was sitting in the library chair. He motioned to four cardboard boxes lurking in the corner with manila file folders visible in them. 'Anything. Why don't you start by looking through those boxes?' Thieu shrugged – the well of Glitsky's humor was proving to be relatively shallow – and went to work.
The files weren't alphabetically arranged, and he'd gone through the first three of them – notes from law school! – when he heard a click and a hum behind him, and turned to see Glitsky at the computer, legs stretched out, arms crossed, scowling at the monitor. After a minute, the Sergeant sat forward and began clicking the mouse.
Thieu left his boxes, straightened up and came around behind him, resolving to ask no questions, though it wasn't his style not to ask. He liked people and believed that the truth emerged from a full and free discussion of ideas and theories. Also, it had been his experience at UCLA that asking professors what they wanted was how you found out what to give them. It wasn't any mystery, just simple communication. And then at the Academy it got drilled into them that you should just ask questions and senior officers would always be happy to help you.
He didn't think anybody had briefed the Inspector here on that part.
The monitor was scrolling the pages of a document that was evidently some kind of an organizer. Glitsky got to the day of Trang's death, a week ago yesterday now, and leaned forward. 'Look at this,' he said.
Thieu already was. There were four entries:
10:22 – called MD, told him need answer by COB today or filing tomorrow. $3.00 million.
1:40 – MD message. I called back. He was at lunch. WCB.
4:50 – MD callback. F. out till 6. Extension till midnight tonight okay.
7:25 – MD from F's. Settlement possible. Offer $$ still unresolved. Midnight firm.
Thieu couldn't stop himself. That last one, that's when he called his mother. Who's "F"?'
Glitsky was scrolling backward now, eyes on the screen. 'The Archbishop,' he said. 'Flaherty.'
As expected, it didn't appear that Victor Trang had had a lot of business. The screens reflected few clients, appointments or telephone numbers. At the screen for a couple of weeks earlier, Glitsky stopped on another screen: MD, $600KH! Declined.
'That's something,' Thieu said.
Glitsky nodded. 'Youbetcha.'
'He turned it down?'
'Looks like. I guess he thought he could get more.'
There was an answering machine with calls from Trang's girlfriend, Lily Martin, and Mrs Trang and Mark Dooher and Felicia Diep, all wondering if Victor were there, why he'd not called back, would he please call when he got the message.
They also found the folder on the lawsuit, including the amended complaint, pre-dated for Tuesday, the day after Trang's murder. There was a yellow legal pad with pages of notes that were mostly unintelligible to Glitsky, but on the first page Thieu had been able to read enough to learn that Trang had felt 'threatened' in his first visit to McCabe & Roth.
'Dooher?' Thieu asked. They were heading back downtown where Glitsky was to talk to Lily Martin, who'd volunteered to come to the Hall of Justice for an interview. 'I'd just bring him in and grill him.'
'About what?'
'About what? About all this is what!'
'This isn't anything, Paul. This is squat. We are nowhere yet on this.' He didn't really want to bite off Thieu's head. After all, what the man was saying could be correct. But there was, as yet, no evidence that it had been Dooher, not even enough to insult him by asking him pointed questions. And Glitsky was still smarting from his fiasco with the undoubtedly guilty Levon Copes, where he had just known what had happened. He wasn't going to make the same mistake here. But he was really being an unnecessary hardass. He didn't want to burn the kid out before he even got lit.
Although he knew he wouldn't require any translator with Lily Martin, Glitsky decided on the spur of the moment to invite Thieu to remain for the interview with her. Besides, Glitsky knew there was a chance he might need him again. 'Let's talk to the girlfriend first, Paul. See what she's got to say.'
'One million six hundred thousand dollars was the settlement figure. Which was… would have been… five hundred and thirty-three thousand for Victor.'
Lily Martin was absolutely certain.
She was conservatively and, Glitsky thought, inexpensively well dressed, and she spoke English perfectly, having been in this country since she was four. Her father, Ed Martin, had fought in Vietnam, married her mother over there and brought them all back here. Now she was twenty-five. Working, as she did, as a junior accountant doing her internship with a Big 8 firm, the money angle was no mystery to her.
'Victor's mother said he told her he wasn't going to call anybody to tell them,' Abe said gently. 'He didn't want to jinx the deal.'
'He didn't call me -I called him. Like a minute after he got the call.' She broke a brittle smile, which cracked almost immediately. 'This was going to be the start of our life, of everything. Of course I called him.'
'That night? Last Monday?'
'Yes.'
'And what did he say?'
'He said that Mr Dooher had just called from the Archbishop's office, and he wanted… before he presented a final number to the Archbishop… he wanted to run it by Victor to see if they were going to be in the ballpark.'
'And that number was…?'
'What I just told you, Sergeant, a million six.'
'I just want to get this straight, ma'am. Dooher told him they were going to be talking in that range?'
That's right.'
'And if they – Dooher and Flaherty – if they didn't come through?'
'Then Victor was going to file, but he didn't think… no.' She folded her arms, too quickly, over her chest. Glitsky recognized the classic body language – she'd decided to clam up about something.
'No, what?'
'Nothing. I'm sorry. Go ahead.'
The interrogation room was small and windowless. There was no art on the walls. The furnishings consisted of three folding chairs around a pitted wooden table. This setting could play on the nerves of even the most cooperative witness. The air got stale. People froze, imagined things, got weirded out in any number of ways.
Suddenly Glitsky leaned back, straightened, shook his shoulders, getting loose. He lifted the corners of his mouth, scratched his face. Finally, there was the trick he did with the eyes, letting them go out of focus. He fancied this made people think there was something soft in there. He turned his head to include Paul Thieu. 'How about if we all take a break, get a cup of tea or something?'