"Forever," Glitsky said.
Trueblood nodded. "Possibly, yes. But remember, they've found these VSDs in autopsies of ninety-year-olds."
"So you're saying Zachary could have a normal life?" Treya asked, barely daring to hope.
"He could. You'll have to be aware of his situation, of course. He'll have to be premedicated for any dental work or surgery, but other than that it's possible that it may never affect him at all. Maybe he'll be able to run, play sports, do anything. Maybe he'll need heart work in the short term, or in five years. We just don't know yet at this stage." Reading the agony in their faces, Trueblood broke out of his professional voice. "I realize that it's difficult not knowing," he said, "but please try to remember that it's better than almost any alternative we had just a day ago. It's entirely possible that Zachary's going to grow up to be a fine, normal, healthy child."
Treya squeezed Glitsky's hand, forced a smile of sorts. He knew her, knew that she didn't want to hear any false or possibly false cheer. She wanted to know what to do so that they could be prepared for it and do it right. "So I guess we'd better set up an appointment for next week, then. That's the next step?"
They got home by three o'clock, and Treya said she didn't want the two of them moping around together until it got dark, so Glitsky called his driver, Paganucci, thinking he would go check in at work for a few hours, maybe catch up on his mail, answer some of the more legitimate urgent calls, perhaps even talk to Batiste or Kathy West about the conspiracy and the various issues it raised.
But the normally taciturn driver hadn't taken him a block when he said, "Excuse me, sir."
He'd been looking at the slow continuous rain, his mind on his wife and new son, wondering how long it would take for this oppressive weight to lift, for life to begin to feel real again. In the backseat, arms crossed, he cleared his throat. "What is it, Tom?"
"Well, sir, it's the Hall. You know they're having the Hanover trial there, and the place is a circus, way worse than usual. Even going through the jail door, you're going to have to break through a line of 'em to get in. And then upstairs, there's probably a dozen in the hall just outside your office. They've been there all day since the morning, waiting for you to show up." Paganucci, depleted after the lengthy string of words, glanced into the rearview. "Knowing what you've been going through at home, I didn't know if you were really feeling up for that."
Glitsky was silent for a beat. "That bad, huh?"
"A zoo. Plus, look at the time, the trial's going to be getting out about when we get there or a little later, and then we're talking maybe three times as many of the vultures. I wouldn't normally say anything, you know, sir, but I just thought you ought to get a heads-up."
"I appreciate it, Tom. Thanks." They were moving east on Geary. "Why don't we take a detour and think about it?"
"You got it." Paganucci hung a right onto Fillmore Street. "Anyplace in particular?"
"I don't know. My wife doesn't want me home. Says I'm too morose. You think I'm morose, Tom?"
"No, sir."
"Me, neither. It's just most people don't have my sense of humor. Not that I've had a lot to laugh about lately."
"No, sir."
"We're close enough. Why don't we swing by the Painted Ladies? See how they're doing." "The Painted Ladies, sir." "Let's kick it up, Tom. Lights and sirens."
"Sir?" "Joke."
"Ah." Then, "Good one."
"There you go."
Hanover's old place was now a gaping hole, still shocking even after most of a year. Especially since its sisters-cousins? daughters?-had been resuscitated and now preened with all or more of their former glory on the 700 block of Steiner. Paganucci, back to his habitual silence, drove the long way around Alamo Square and pulled over to the curb in front of the empty lot.
Hat on, in full uniform, Glitsky opened the door and let himself out into the steady drizzle. Walking up the steps to the front landing, he stepped over onto the earth in the footprint of the old building. Though soaked with the constant rain, the site still crackled with broken glass and the remnants of cinders. Glitsky thought he could still detect a slight burned odor. Walking through the vacant space, he got to the back of the lot and turned around due west to face the park across the street-a grassy knoll topped by windswept cypresses-deserted now in the awful weather. Crunching back the way he'd come, he made it back to Steiner, turned and looked at the row of lovely houses one more time.
He had no idea why he had come here. Could it have been as random as Paganucci's suggestion that he might want to avoid his office downtown today? He didn't think that was it.
Something nagged at him.
The house next door had a small sign in the front window that read: another quality remodel by leymar construction. The health issues with his son had buried any other thoughts for the better part of the past few hours, but now suddenly he found that the loam had heaved as an idea mushrooming to the surface of his consciousness. No, not one idea exactly. More an accumulation of related inconsistencies.
What did it mean that Jim Leymar of Leymar Construction said he hadn't charged Hanover anything near a million dollars?
Why did Missy D'Amiens, apparently, lie to her landlady about where she worked?
For that matter, what had happened to her car? or to the ring?
At the outset, Glitsky had of course considered from several angles the possibility that Missy D'Amiens, and not Paul Hanover, might have been the primary intended victim. But she had never assumed a prominence. Always cast into semiobscurity by Paul's huge shadow, and then lost in the swirling maelstrom of events and media insanity that had seen Catherine charged and arrested, Missy's death came to feel to Glitsky like a kind of unfortunate footnote in an unsung and unknowable life. In some ways, she had become to him just another one of San Francisco's homeless, albeit a wealthy one, who one day merely disappeared, never to be mourned or missed.
But even the homeless, he knew, were sometimes-in fact, depressingly often-killed for their meager possessions, for their shopping carts, for their prime begging turf, for half a bottle of Thunderbird. As a more or less random human being walking around in San Francisco, Glitsky suddenly began to appreciate how tempting a target she might have been on her own, without reference to the Hanovers and their politics or money.
She wore a very visible diamond worth a hundred thousand dollars or more, and drove a Mercedes with a hefty price tag as well. Anyone could have seen her, an apparently defenseless woman alone, followed her home and broken in (or simply knocked at the door on some pretense). Many people who kept guns for their personal protection kept them in the headboard of their beds, and this might simply have been a bonus for the burglar and thief. After he'd killed them both, he removed the ring from her finger, probably rifled the house for other valuables. There might have been gasoline in a container in the garage, and he'd used that to torch the place, then driven off in D'Amiens's car.
on its own terms, it wasn't impossible. But it didn't explain the other discrepancies in Missy's story-the construction business, the false employment.
Back in his car, Glitsky sat with his arms folded over his chest. Paganucci saw him reflected in the rearview mirror and decided not to ask him where he wanted to go. Glitsky's natural authority was forbidding enough. When he scowled as he did now, his jaw muscle working and the scar through his lips pronounced, he was truly fearsome.
After a few moments, he shifted in his seat, searched in his wallet, then in the little book he kept. "There's a Bank of America branch at Twelfth and Clement, Tom. Let's go see if they're still open."