But missing were Hardy, the "CityTalk" columnist Jeff Elliot, both city supervisors- Harlan Fisk and Kathy West- and, of course, Allan Boscacci. So instead of the big round table in the back that they usually filled, they had a booth for four under one of the alley-level windows.
Instead of the usual- convivial gossip, personalities and politics- they talked about the Executioner, who had apparently claimed another victim last night, although the shooting hadn't taken place in the city, and nobody investigating down in San Bruno had put together a possible connection until early this morning, when the police chief in that town had put in a call to Lanier and wondered if somebody from the city would like to come down and have a look.
Lanier had driven down himself, accompanied by Sarah Evans, and they'd learned that Morris Tollman, an engineer with Amtrak, divorced, living alone in a small house by the Tanforan Park Shopping Center, had taken one shot to the head, point-blank, on his driveway as he was getting out of his car last night sometime between six and eight-thirty. Near sunset, a woman walking her dog had seen the body and called police. The local crime scene people had found a.9mm casing in the weeds beside the driveway, but no slug so far.
On Glitsky's prevailing theory, wild shot though it might be, Lanier, Evans and two of the local cops had gone door to door. The neighbors on both sides of Tollman had been home all evening, and nobody in either house- four adults and five children- had heard anything resembling a gunshot.
That had been good enough to juice up Lanier, and he'd called Glitsky, who, grasping at straws, asked Lanier and Evans to try and talk to Tollman's next of kin, if any, and see if he had a murder trial in his past. After that, he had called the ATF to try to light a fire under them. Then he had come back downtown, where, in response to the request he'd fired off after talking last night with Hardy, he'd already received by fax a long list of names from the California Department of Corrections, convicts who'd been released from California's various jails and prisons in the three weeks or so since just before Elizabeth Cary's murder.
Since these people were in the computer, Glitsky assigned his General Work officers to look up the original case numbers that had been assigned to them, and then begin checking them against the hard files downstairs in the basement to see which of them, if any, Boscacci might have prosecuted. By the time Glitsky left for lunch at Lou's, the two inspectors had identified thirty-one of the four hundred plus case numbers.
"Which is why I'd like to get my hands on more bodies," he was saying to Jackman.
"He doesn't mean dead bodies, either," Treya said. "He means people to check the files."
Glitsky nodded. "I can't ask homicide inspectors to do that, even my event number people. They'd mutiny, and I wouldn't blame them. Even the GW guys are grumbling."
"I'd imagine so," Jackman said.
"I've got a call in to the mayor now," Glitsky said. "If he sees 'serial killer' here, which I'm starting to, he'll give me some more staff, but even so, it's a monster of a job. I don't think the FBI could do it in a month. But maybe hizzoner can also persuade the ATF to get off their duffs. Although that's just one more list to check out."
Jackman lifted a peanut with his chopsticks and looked at it skeptically. The special today was Kung Pao Moussaka- not one of Chui's all-time triumphs- and everyone at the table was picking at their food. "Are you sure it's even worth the time, Abe?"
Glitsky knew what Jackman meant. He sagged a bit. "No. I don't."
"On the other hand," Roake said, "if it's the only thing you have to go on, what do you have to lose?"
"That's my feeling." Glitsky sipped some tea. "Whatever else he is, this guy knows what he's doing. I don't believe somebody's paying him to hit these people, and he's not picking them at random."
"Are you even sure of that?" Jackman asked.
Glitsky had to shake his head. "At this point, Clarence, I'm not sure it's Tuesday."
"And no hint about Allan, either, I assume."
Treya answered for her husband. "Abe sent out Inspector Belou this morning to talk again to Edie." Boscacci's widow.
"Meaning no leads on anything in his professional life?" Jackman asked. "Any of his active cases?"
"He didn't really have any, Clarence, as you know better than anybody. There might be something on the home front Edie couldn't remember with the initial shock. But I'm not holding out much hope there, either."
"So you really think Allan might have been shot by this Executioner, too?" Roake asked.
"No. I can't say I'm all the way to thinking it, Gina. I'm really just back where we were," Glitsky said. "It's the only place I've got to look. What I'm really hoping is that this guy last night has got a huge extended family, who'll tell us that a long time ago he invested in Wong's produce and dated Edith Montrose and bought a used car from Elizabeth Cary, and they all had the same banker."
"Who is a gun collector," Treya added.
"Right," Glitsky said. "That'd be even better."
"But you doubt it?" Roake said.
Glitsky nodded. "Seriously."
Everyone stopped and looked up as Marcel Lanier suddenly appeared at Glitsky's elbow. "Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt. Abe. I was just up at your office."
Lanier's face was mottled with emotion. His breath came as though he'd been running. "I'm just back up from San Bruno," he said. "I begged crime scene down there to come back and look again and they found the slug."
"Tollman's?"
"Yeah. In the roof of a garage a couple of houses down. Given the circumstances, they let us run it up to our lab…," the San Francisco Crime Lab was halfway down to San Bruno anyway, "where they rushed it. You'll never guess."
Glitsky was already up. "I already did."
"Right. Same gun, no question. And Abe? All silenced. Four of the five slugs have a scuff mark. Same place on the bullet. Microscopically identical. A silencer, and the same one. And guess what else? Tollman? His daughter said he was on a murder jury one time."
"Where? San Bruno?"
"She didn't know. But they lived in the city until she was five."
"So it might have been here. What about the ex-wife? She'd know."
"She might. Except she's on a mission in India."
"How the gods favor the good." Glitsky put his hands to his face and pulled them down over it. He looked back at the table. "This is it," he said to no one and everyone. Then, to Jackman. "I need more people, Clarence. Yesterday."
Jackman nodded. "I'll give you some clerks and every deputy I can spare."
"Guys." The men looked back at Treya. "Forgive me for speaking up, but I'd be careful about that." She spoke to her husband. "I know you need people, Abe, but you don't need this to make the news, do you?"
"What?" he said. "You're saying the media isn't my friend?"
"She's right," Lanier said. "It gets out, it tells him we know."
"Good," Jackman said. "Then maybe he stops."
"Or maybe he hurries up to finish," Glitsky said.
"Call me slow," Roake said, "but what is it that we know, exactly? What's he going to hurry to finish?"
By now they were all out of the booth, standing in a knot. Glitsky leaned in to Roake. "He's recently gotten out of prison and he's killing the people that put him away. He's already killed the prosecutor and I'm guessing four of the jurors. That leaves eight more, and maybe the judge, whoever that was."
"The good news," Jackman said, "is if you're right, it's a finite list of suspects. Big, but finite. Maybe among your four hundred, Abe."