The Hearing

'Well, there you go. Anyway, my colleagues and superiors were of a like mind. There was plenty to arrest Burgess, still is. He gave us more when we talked to him. Now he goes to trial. It's not our job anymore. End of story.'

It was Hardy's turn to sigh. 'But it's not, Abe. You know it's not.'

'Don't give me that, Diz. It might be. And don't confuse bad evidence with not guilty. Your boy killed Elaine all right. It's all about how we prove it. I want a clean case, that's all.'

'I think you want more than that.'

Glitsky cracked a peanut shell. 'I'm trying to figure out how to conduct an investigation and get more evidence when we've got a suspect already in jail and presumably going to trial.'

'Carefuully.' Pointing a finger, Hardy stopped his friend's response. 'See? I can be brief. Pithy, even.'

Glitsky was about to reply again, and again was interrupted, this time by a knock at the door. 'It's open.'

Hardy clucked disapprovingly. 'You keep saying that.'

But in an instant it was true. Standing in the doorway was Chief of Police Dan Rigby himself, accompanied by Sharron Pratt and Gabriel Torrey. An uncomfortable Frank Batiste. Behind them was an amorphous assemblage of humanity – workers from the DA's office, uniformed cops, a couple of reporters, perhaps the random passer-by. Hardy could see the homicide inspectors from the detail gathered around at the outer fringes.

'Well, well, well,' Torrey said over Rigby's shoulders. 'Isn't this cozy?'

There wasn't room for a private party in Glitsky's office, so at Rigby's command the players trooped across the homicide main room and poured themselves into one of the interrogation areas – in fact, the very one in which Cole Burgess had spent his sweat time.

Airless and without windows, with a small table now pushed against one wall and three chairs, the interrogation room probably wasn't a brilliant choice for a meeting either, but the mood was somehow, suddenly, urgent.

Torrey, in a kind of triumphant rage, kept repeating, 'I knew this. I knew it,' to whomever would listen. Rigby, torn between the urge to protect one of his men and the need to contain any possible scandal on the force, wanted a door he could close with all the principals behind it, and he wanted it now.

'We don't need Mr Hardy sitting in on this, Chief,' said Pratt.

Rigby ignored her. He wasted no time on preamble, but turned to his homicide lieutenant and let fly. 'Mr Torrey tells me that this morning, Mr Hardy here referred to a videotape at the arraignment on Burgess. How'd he get to see it?'

'We're nowhere near releasing discovery yet,' Pratt butted in pointlessly. 'He didn't get it from our office.'

Everyone already knew that. Rigby kept his eyes on Glitsky. 'Abe?'

But Hardy, whose slip in the courtroom had put Glitsky on this hot seat, wasn't going to let his friend burn. 'I never said I saw a tape,' he said. 'Cole told me they'd videotaped him.'

'How did he know?' Banks interjected.

'Come on. He assumed,' Hardy shot back. 'It's not like this is some secret procedure. Everybody gets taped.'

But Torrey was ready for this denial. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, directed his gaze to Rigby. 'Here's what Mr Hardy said exactly. I took the liberty of having the court reporter type it up for me.' He read. '"He was drunk and barely coherent, your honor! The tape of his interrogation shows it clearly." Sounds to me like he saw it.'

Hardy wasn't backing down. 'Doesn't prove a damn-'

But Glitsky put a hand on his arm. 'It's OK, Diz.' He turned to Rigby. 'I played it for him.'

After a shocked moment of silence, Banks blew out heavily. 'Jesus.'

Torrey pumped a fist. 'Fuckin' A,' he whispered.

Pratt cleared her throat. 'Well, Chief, in light of this admission, you can't-'

'Sharron! Please.' Rigby stopped her with his palm, turned to his chief of homicide. 'Lieutenant Glitsky, are you telling me you gave evidence in a murder trial to a defense attorney? Am I hearing this right?'

Glitsky inclined his head an inch. 'Yes, sir.'

The Chief sighed heavily. 'All right.' His mouth worked. He might have been grinding his teeth. 'All right,' he repeated. 'We've got to look into this. Meanwhile-'

Torrey: 'What's to look into? He's admitted-'

'MEANWHILE,' Rigby bellowed to shut him up. He turned to Batiste. 'Meanwhile, Frank, I'd like you and Abe to meet me up in my office in' – he checked his watch – 'thirty minutes. Lieutenant, if you'd like to bring a grievance officer along with you, that might be prudent. Everybody else,' his voice hardened, 'I'd appreciate it if anything mentioned behind these doors stays here until I can prepare a statement after we get to the bottom of what went on.' He glared at Pratt and Torrey. 'And if there is a statement to make, we'll make it together. Is that clear?'

'We can agree to that,' Pratt stated.

'Though it should be sooner rather than later,' Torrey added.

'As soon as the facts are in,' Rigby replied crisply. He cast a last slow look around the room, finally rested on Glitsky, shook his head. 'Jesus Christ, Abe,' he said under his breath, 'what were you thinking?'

Then he turned the knob and was out the door, leaving it open behind him.

Gene Visser's law enforcement career began in a promising fashion. He spent three years working the streets in a squad car, then got moved up and he earned a stripe and an inspector's job in burglary. After three years in that department, he put two more in vice, took the sergeant's exam, and applied for the next opening as inspector of homicide, which was pretty much the top rung in the ladder for working cops. When he got that promotion at thirty, he was one of the youngest inspectors ever to attain that rank and position.

But Visser had a couple of character flaws that were going to negatively impact on his aspirations in the force. The first one was a tendency to theorize before all the evidence was in. He'd get a feeling about who among the various suspects in a case was the most likely culprit, and he'd focus his energies trying to prove his point. The first couple of cases he'd handled, this approach had even worked – quite often, the guy who looks like he did it actually did.

But not always.

And the law of averages – along with the complexity of motives and situations in real-life homicides – finally caught up with him in a high-profile case.

This was where his second major failing – a lack of focus regarding loyalty – came into play. Visser thought it only made sense to have friends in the press and the DA's office as well as with the police. It couldn't hurt to give a reporter a little advance heads up on what might be coming down the pipeline, sometimes before it was supposed to be public. These people – the DAs and reporters – after all, were the end users of his product. They ought to be entitled to an early look.

And in their zeal for convictions (pre-Pratt), the occasional prosecutor would sometimes use Visser to funnel something to the press that they couldn't say themselves. If you were nice to reporters, they were nice to you in print. It was you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Visser may even have thought that everybody did it, although in this belief he was mistaken.

Until one day, stunned, he found himself transferred out of homicide. Soon he found it prudent to resign and get another job as Investigator for the District Attorney's office, where he was pretty much like a police inspector, but not really.

That new position lasted only eighteen months. He could have stayed on, of course – he hadn't really done anything wrong – but he felt frozen out. He became the prosecutor's last choice if they needed a real investigator. Finally, deeply embittered by the system that had rejected him, he quit and, encouraged by several defense attorneys with whom he'd become friendly and who promised him steady work, he hung up a shingle as a private investigator.