John Lescroart - The Hearing

N ext to Lieutenant Abraham Glitskys bed, the telephone rang with a muted insistence.

A widower, Glitsky lived in an upper duplex unit with his youngest son Orel and a housekeeper/nanny named Rita. During his wifes illness, hed deadened the phones ringer so that it wouldnt wake anyone else in the house when, as often occurred, it rang in the middle of the night.

He located the source of the noise in the dark and picked up the receiver, whispering hoarsely. Glitsky. What?

Surfacing slowly into consciousness, he didnt really have to ask. He was the head of San Franciscos homicide detail. When he got calls in the dead dark, they did not tend to be salespeople inquiring about his satisfaction with his long-distance service provider. It was nearly two hours past midnight on Monday, the first day of February, and the city had produced only two homicides thus far this yeara slow month. In spite of that, Glitsky spent no time, ever, wondering if his job was going to dry up.

The caller wasnt the police dispatcher but one of his inspectors, Ridley Banks, on his cell phone directly from the crime scene. It wasnt standard procedure to call the lieutenant from the streetso this homicide must have an unusual element. Though Ridley spoke concisely with little inflection, even in his groggy state Glitsky detected urgency.

A downtown patrol car had seen some suspicious movement in Maiden Lane, a walking street just off Union Square. When the officers had hit their spotlight, they flushed a man squatting over what looked like, and turned out to be, a body.

The suspect ran and the officers gave chase. Apparently drunk, the man staggered into a fire hydrant, fell in a heap and was apprehended. Cuffed now, in the backseat of the squad car, he had passed out awaiting his eventual trip to the jail.

Guy appears to be one of our residentially challenged citizens, Ridley said drily. John Doe as we speak.

No ID of course. Glitsky was almost awake. The digital clock on the bed stand read 1:45.

Not his own. But he did have the wallet.

The victim had a wallet? To this point, Glitsky had been imagining that this homicide was probably another incident in the continuing tragedy of San Franciscos homeless wars, where an increasingly violent population of bums had taken to beating and even killing each other over prime downtown begging turf. Certainly, the Union Square location fit that profile.

But if the current victim had a wallet worth stealing, it lowered the odds that the person was a destitute vagrant.

Taken from her purse, yeah.

It was a woman?

Yeah. A pause. We know her. Elaine Wager.

What about her?

Shes the stiff.

Glitsky felt his head go light. Unaware of the action, he moved his free hand over his heart and clutched at his breast.

The voice in the telephone might have continued for a moment, but he didnt hear it. Abe? You there?

Yeah. What?

I was just saying maybe you want to be down here. Its going to be crawling with media jackals by dawn or the first leak, whichever comes first.

Im there, Glitsky said. Give me fifteen.

But after the connection was broken, he didnt move. His one hand dug absently into the flesh over his heart. The other gripped the telephones receiver. He simply lay there, staring sightlessly into the darkness around him.

When the phone started beeping loudly in his hand, reminding him that it was still off the hook, it brought him to. Abruptly now, he hung up, threw the covers to one side and swung himself up to a sitting position.

And stopped again.

Elaine Wager.

Oh God, please no. He didnt know hed said it aloud, didnt hear his own voice break.

Elaine Wager was the only daughter of Loretta Wager, the charismatic African-American senator from California whod died a few years before. Elainetonights victimhad worked for a couple of years as an assistant district attorney in the Hall of Justice.

No one was supposed to know it, but she was also Glitskys daughter.

Somehow hed gotten dressed, made it to his car. He was driving, the streets dark, nearly deserted.

No one knew. As far as Glitsky was aware, not even Elaine herself. She believed that her biological father was her mothers much-older husband, Dana Wagerwhite, rich, crooked and connected. In fact, when Loretta had found out she was pregnant by Glitsky, she kept that fact to herself and pressed him to marry her. He didnt understand the sudden rush, and when he said he needed time to decidehe was still in college, after all, with no job and no moneyLoretta dumped him without a backward glance and made her move with Wager, the other man courting her, with whom shed not yet slept.