On Soma’s left Drysdale cleared his throat. He wanted in.
‘Art?’ Powell asked.
‘I agree with everything Gil’s said here, but if we’re talking specials…’
‘We are.’ Powell was solid with this decision.
‘Okay, then the options we’ve got are LWOP’ – this was life in prison without the possibility of parole – ‘or death. Gil, you’re telling me you’re comfortable asking the state to put your old office mate to death?’
This, finally, stopped the posturing. Some of Soma’s spark went away. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, taking in both of his superiors. ‘To be honest, I don’t think so. I don’t think we should ask for death.’
Powell nodded. This was the right answer. Soma was passionate, but not blinded by hatred, a critical distinction.
‘I wouldn’t either,’ Drysdale said, ‘but we might wave it around early on, see if something shakes loose.’
Soma shrugged. ‘I can do that.’
‘And no other suspects? Real? Imagined? Implied?’ Powell wasn’t getting into this without having it locked up. He hadn’t gotten where he was by going high profile and losing. Drysdale passed the question over to Soma with a look. ‘We’re still checking some of his fisherman contacts. He poached for a living, but the volumes are tiny. A hundred, two hundred bucks. I don’t see anyone killing him for it.’
‘The family,’ Drysdale prompted.
‘Oh, yeah. Sal – the victim – he broke into the family house three times in the past few months. Nobody seemed to get too upset, though. They didn’t file criminal charges. Just wanted to help him get some assistance.’
Okay, Powell was thinking. The loopholes are closing up. ‘And it was definitely not a suicide? I don’t want to have that come back and bite us.’
Drydale took this one. ‘I don’t think they’ll even make the argument, but Strout’s got some pretty good stuff for us. Nobody thinks Sal killed himself. That didn’t happen.’
A silence descended for a moment. Powell raised his eyes, ‘Dismas Hardy’s doing the defense?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Soma knew the story as well as he knew his name. Three years before, in the last major case Powell had prosecuted before moving to the state capital, Dismas Hardy had pulled a rabbit from a hat and beaten him after a jury had both convicted his suspect and sentenced her to death. It was no secret that the AG longed for payback.
‘All right,’ Powell said at last. ‘Let’s go get him.’
Drysdale tapped the table with a fingertip, getting their attention one last time. ‘I suggest, with all respect, Dean, it might be wiser to wait another couple of days. Graham’s not going anywhere. Make it fat.’
This was jargon from Powell’s earliest days with the DA – FAT was the acronym they’d all used back then for making a watertight case. Frog’s-ass tight – FAT.
Powell gave it another second’s thought, then nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s probably smart. But let’s tie this sucker down by Thursday, Friday at the latest.’
He was looking directly at Soma, and the young attorney simply nodded. ‘Done,’ he said.
He’d been the head of homicide now for nearly two years, and Glitsky felt he was growing into the job, taking bold steps to improve conditions and performance. This morning, for example, after he’d trotted down to vice again with Lanier and Evans so they could enjoy the privacy of an office with a door, he’d come back to homicide and pulled a tape measure from one of the drawers in his desk.
After carefully measuring the size of the hole in his wall where the door should have been – in fact, used to be until it was removed one day for painting and never returned – he called a local hardware store and found that doors were not some kind of embargoed item. The salesperson to whom he’d spoken had seemed somewhat amused that Glitksy didn’t realize that doors were available on a regular basis almost anywhere.
Upon reflection the lieutenant realized that he should have known this from his own life, but he also knew that when you worked in a bureaucracy, simple tasks had a way of becoming herculean, difficult tasks impossible. He’d filled out four requisition forms from building maintenance requesting a new door, and in two years hadn’t yet gotten even one answer.
Eventually, he’d come to accept that a new door wasn’t ever going to appear. And then, suddenly, the bolt of inspiration had struck him this morning: he could just order his own door! Take up a collection among his inspectors. The salesperson assured him he could have the door installed by Friday – painted, fitted, hung.
Miraculous!
Now it was midafternoon and Lanier and Evans were back. It was Glitsky’s second meeting with them today. The first one, down behind the closed door in vice, had been to bring the lieutenant up to date with a recap of their weekend’s activities. At this confab he’d learned of the apparent fight in Sal’s apartment. He was also pleased with Evans’s discoveries about Graham Russo – the morphine, the visit to Sal’s on the day of the murder. He wasn’t so thrilled about her technical blunder with the tape recorder, but what could he do?
That first meeting had been to prepare Glitsky for his nine o’clock with Drysdale, who’d be passing along all of his information to Dean Powell. Evidently that meeting had gone fairly well, because after lunch Drysdale had called again.
Powell had been disposed to proceed immediately with the arrest of Graham Russo, Drysdale said, but he had convinced the attorney general that a few more days might be productive, might lock the case up FAT. He gave Glitsky some marching orders.
And now – the second meeting – the lieutenant planned to pass these along to the troops. Gil Soma had been sent along – Drysdale probably trying to make the new kid feel part of a team.
They were all crammed in Glitsky’s office, the lieutenant at his desk, Soma in the doorway. Evans stood at ease behind one of the chairs facing his desk. Lanier was more relaxed, propped on the corner of the desk, cracking and eating peanuts, dropping the shells in the wastebasket. Mostly.
But first Glitsky was killing a couple of minutes, loosening up the audience, crowing in his low-key way about his proactive move regarding the door.
He had just finished outlining his bureaucracy theory and it rang a bell with Lanier. ‘Reminds me of one time back when I walked a beat, they were having this trade show. At the Holiday Inn, I think. One of those hotels. Anyway, guys in one of the booths were just freaking out. Couldn’t get all these logos and lights and stuff to go on. So they called us cops over, right? I take a look and there’s this plug on the ground and I ask ’em, “This the plug?” and they say, “Yeah, but the union rep came by and told us not to touch it.” So I give ‘em the look, plug the sucker in, the place lights up like a Christmas tree. I give ’em my badge number, tell them if anybody asks, they didn’t touch it, have a nice day.‘
‘That’s perfect,’ Glitsky said. ‘Exactly what I mean. You think the door might really be in here by Friday? I don’t know what this office will feel like, it’s been so long…’
Against the back wall Evans coughed politely. ‘Are we going back down to vice?’ she asked.
Glitsky caught her drift. ‘Okay, you’re right, it’s probably not as fascinating to you all as it is to me.’ He straightened up in his chair. ‘No, I think we’ll stay here.’ He included the young attorney. This okay with you, Gil? There’s nothing to hide about this.‘
The two inspectors glanced at each other. ‘About what?’ Lanier asked.
‘About what, Gil?’ Glitsky repeated.
Soma was pumped up from his personal meeting with the attorney general. His tailored dark suit seemed to hang like a tent on a thin frame. Glitsky had sat down because he didn’t want to tower over Soma.