'Your eyes were open. You were just staring straight ahead.'
'Well…' An embarrassed shrug. She sat back down, tried to smile, although it came out a little crooked.
Raney moved up next to her and put her arm around her shoulders. Keeping it there, she pulled a chair up close and sat in it, then laid her head against her mother's. 'Are you sad about Elaine?'
Treya didn't know if she trusted herself to talk. She cleared her throat, forced a matter-of-fact tone. 'People die, girl. The living have to carry on.'
For an answer, she felt her daughter's arm tighten around her shoulders. She felt her lips kiss her temple. 'I love you, you know.'
She let out a deep and labored breath. 'There was a policeman at the service this morning,' she said. 'Lieutenant Glitsky.'
'About Elaine?'
She nodded, waited, whispered, 'He was her father.'
Raney straightened up. 'I thought her father was dead.'
'No,' she replied. Another sigh. 'It's a long story, but her mother – the senator, Loretta Wager? Well, she and Lieutenant Glitsky were lovers when she was young, before she got married.' She paused. 'Just before. Anyway, Loretta was pregnant when she got married, and she made her husband believe that Elaine was his.'
'Did she tell Lieutenant Glitsky?'
'No. Not till much later, just before she died.'
'You mean all that time he didn't know his own daughter?'
'Right.'
That's horrible. I'd be so mad if that happened to me.'
Treya wasn't much in the mood, but she had to smile. 'Well, that's yet another great thing about being female, girl. You generally know it when you have a baby.'
'But Elaine didn't know it either? Didn't know her own dad?'
'No, not until after her mother died. She'd left her a letter.'
'A letter? About something like that?' There was a lengthy silence. 'So then what did she do? Elaine. Did she go and see him?'
'No. She didn't think it was her place. She thought he should come to her. Which he never did.'
'Never?'
She shook her head. 'It never happened. He's just a cold man. He didn't care.'
'Was that why?'
'Why what?'
'Why didn't he tell her? Didn't he care?'
'I would think so.' Treya reached for her water glass and took a drink. 'Why else wouldn't he?'
She shrugged. 'Maybe the same reason she didn't tell him. He might have thought it wasn't his place. He didn't want to butt in.'
The simple truth of it rocked Treya and she shook her head. 'No. You'd have to meet him. He's just hard as nails.'
'Maybe he just doesn't show things. I know somebody like that.' The arm tightened again, and Treya leaned into it. 'So he was there this morning? What happened?'
She was back to the thought that wouldn't go away. 'I think I might have killed him.'
At Jupiter, things were hopping.
At ear-splitting volume with the bass boosted to rattle the bones, Shania Twain was telling her honey she was home and wanted a cold one, and the way the bartender was hopping behind the bar, she wasn't the only one.
It was a rectangular room, sixteen feet wide and a good bit more than twice that long. The stools at the bar itself were all taken – fifteen men and six women, all of them between twenty-nine and thirty-five, none of them destined to go home alone tonight. Another three or four dozen people stood behind them on the thin stretch of floor between the bar and the booths or in the bullpen opening just behind them. Shoulder to shoulder and hip to crotch, the young professionals drinking here were mostly in law enforcement – police and attorneys, law students and clerks. A smattering of excitement groupies who loved the scene.
Jupiter was their place. They could let it out here among friends and colleagues. Most of the people here felt that outside, they lived in a constricted powder keg of frustration, tension, even danger. Some of the married ones existed in a constant state of schizophrenia – their daily life in the cop world and their home in suburbia. Jupiter was the decompression chamber that allowed them to survive the passage from the soul-eating, mind-numbing pressure of the one to the soul-eating, mind-numbing boredom of the other.
Tiny windows, high up in the bare yellow walls, dripped with condensation and gave a subterranean feel to the place. Even in the daytime, with its long and narrow shape, the bar felt like the inside of a submarine, but by night this feeling was especially pronounced. It is illegal to smoke cigarettes in eating or drinking establishments in San Francisco, yet the air was blue and acrid, thick with tobacco smoke. A few complaints had actually been filed from random walk-in do-gooders, but somehow they'd all mysteriously gotten lost.
Whatever it was that rose from the vats of French fry oil and the hamburger grills back in the kitchen added their own weight and odor to the air. Tonight at eleven fifty-one, the temperature outside was 44 degrees.
It was 86 degrees – hot – in the furthest of the six booths from the front door.
In that booth, Dash Logan had removed his coat and draped it over the Naugahyde behind him. The top two buttons on his dress shirt were undone, his tie was loose. Clean-shaven, with a boyish face and perennial smile, he passed in the dim light for mid-thirties. The gold post in his left ear didn't hurt, either. He fancied that the neat, short ponytail and the subtle dye job drew attention away from the fact that the reddish hair was thinning, and he might not have been all wrong.
Certainly, tonight he was doing all right with Connie, and she couldn't have been thirty yet. He'd had his eye on her since she came in with some secretaries he knew from the Federal courthouse. She was a first timer here. At least he hadn't seen her before, and he would have noticed. And in this showroom, you didn't waste time if some quality merchandise moved itself out onto the floor. He knew one of the girls with whom Connie – he loved that name even – had come in, and before they knew what had hit them, he got himself introduced and bought a round for the bunch of them.
Connie had undone some of the top buttons on her purple silk blouse, too. She was turned on the seat toward him, and the light material fell tantalizingly away from her breasts. He could just make out the black lace at the top of her bra. She'd had four whiskey sours since she'd come in.
Just across the table at the same booth, one of Connie's friends had hooked up with another guy – Dash knew him, a young lawyer with the Public Defender's office, married. They had been talking, yelling over the music, about some case for most of the past hour, and it looked to him as though that's where they would stay – her pretending to be interested in his work, him trying to find the guts either to finish what he'd started or to call it a night. Dash thought he probably wasn't up to either.
The problem with youth these days, he thought. In spite of ads exhorting Just Do It! everywhere you turned, they couldn't seem to just fuckin' do anything.
This waffling right across the table with one of Connie's own friends could ruin the whole vibe. He'd seen it happen – the girlfriend hits her boredom quotient, looks at her watch and goes, 'Oh, Connie, look what time it is. And we've got work tomorrow.' And then they both split.
But Dash was going pretty good here, telling funny stories, keeping Connie laughing, keeping her drink filled. He had a good feeling about tonight, but he had to act before this dweeb across the table ruined everything. He wanted to yell at the kid: 'Get a clue. She's half in your lap with four drinks in her and her tits falling out of her blouse. What do you think she wants?'
It was time to make some magic. 'Connie.' He had to lean in closer to be heard. He kissed the side of her cheek, pulled back. 'Sorry,' he said, 'I couldn't stand it anymore.'
'It's OK.' She was smiling at him. Perfect teeth. Great skin. One of those terrific northern Italian noses. 'That was cute.'
Cute was good, he thought. He'd take cute. 'So are you a little warm? You want to go outside and cool off?'