John Lescroart (44 page)

The open hallway outside the courtroom. Hardy double-timing to the phones. He had to find out. A young Asian man, vaguely familiar, tapping him on the shoulder. “Paul Thieu,” he said, extending a hand. “Homicide.”

It had been an excruciating fifteen minutes since Hill had adjourned court for the day. Hardy felt the heat in his face and knew that his blood pressure was off the charts, the endless minutiae made unbearable by his haste to get away. But he had had to stay around to give his client encouragement, instruct his troops. Freeman, Jody, Jeff Elliot.

He'd finally closed his briefcase, made excuses. He really had to go. Now.

And now this. He steeled himself to ask. “Have you heard from Glitsky?”

A nod. “I know where he is. They took him back to St. Mary's, even though it was farther away. They wanted him to have the same doctor.”

“Any word beyond that?”

“The hospital couldn't tell me anything. I called the ambulance company—I called all the ambulance companies 'til I got the right one. He was alive when he hit the ER.”

“Thanks.” Hardy was moving again.

“Mr. Hardy!” Thieu closed the gap between them. “I had lunch with Abe today,” he said quietly. “I'd be grateful if you could go with me out to my car in the back.” He read Hardy's reluctance, his impatience. “Abe thought it might be important, and he's not going anywhere, you know.”

The simple truth of it hit him. “You're right.”

“This way.”

They took the inside steps to the back door, walked the long corridor that took them by the jail and Dr. Strout's office, got to a beat-up old orange Datsun in the lot. Thieu looked around—they were the only people back here. He went to the passenger door and opened it up. “Hop in,” he said.

Hardy did as he was told. Thieu was on the driver's side and started the engine. “If your car's around here, I'll take you to it.” In the still-warm gathering dusk, they pulled out of the lot.

Thieu reached into his jacket and pulled out a few pages, folded into thirds. He handed them to Hardy.

“What are these?”

“Glitsky asked for them. It's the lab and crime scene report on the Cullen Alsop overdose. I'm afraid there's no smoking gun, though, at least not one that I see. But he wanted to go through it with a comb.”

“Glitsky wanted these? Turn left up here. What for?”

Thieu hung the turn, glanced across the seat. “I'm not sure. Maybe he thought Visser would have left some trace, maybe a print, I don't know. But no such luck.”

Hardy sat up. The jolt felt almost like electricity. “Visser? Gene Visser?”

“Yeah.”

“What about him?”

Another glance, maybe to see if Hardy was teasing
him. But Paul recognized genuine intensity when he saw it, and he thought maybe Hardy's look at the moment could penetrate steel. “You don't know any of this?”

“I know Gene Visser,” Hardy said, “but I don't know what he's got to do with Cullen Alsop.”

Paul Thieu put his foot on the brake. “We've got to pull over a minute,” he said. “Have a little talk.”

“D
ressler's syndrome,” Abe explained. “It's like a heart attack, only better, in the sense that it's not a heart attack.”

“A lot better,” Treya agreed. “Way, way better.”

It was now just after six-thirty at night, and they were gathered around the kitchen table back at Glitsky's place. Raney and Orel were doing homework in front of the television set in the back room, and the laugh track filtered up to the kitchen.

When Hardy had finished with Thieu, his mind reeling with the possibilities, and finally got back to his car, he made it out to St. Mary's in twenty minutes only to find that Glitsky had been examined by Dr. Campion, given a few tests and then, after a couple of hours, released.

Hardy had called Frannie from the hospital and she told him that she'd heard from Abe and he was all right. He'd gone home. Even though it was Date Night, Hardy drove straight there and found Glitsky sitting up. Dressed. Finishing dinner. Hardy wanted to punch his lights out for all the worry he'd put him through. “I called,” Glitsky said. “I left messages everywhere.”

 

He was fine. His doctor told him that there was probably some inflammation in the membrane near the area of his heart attack, that was all. Dressler's syndrome, which mimicked the symptoms of a heart attack, was not uncommon in patients who'd had a real one. Glitsky was taking some new medication for it now, and the worrisome chest pain should be completely gone in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, the connections in this case had started to
present themselves and a sense of urgency hung in the room. Hardy handed over Thieu's lab reports to Glitsky, saying, “You know those chemists who used to predict that an element should exist because it fit the theory? And then they find it? That's what I'm feeling like around this.”

“With Visser?”

“No. With Dash Logan.”

Abe and Treya exchanged looks. “I give up,” Abe said.

Tightly wound, Hardy had been standing all this time. Now he pulled a chair around and straddled it backwards. “In one way, this ties up the whole package,” he said. “This puts Visser with Torrey with Logan. They're all together.”

Glitsky was half reading excerpts of the lab stuff, and now he abandoned them and sat back in his chair. “All together in what?”

Hardy, eyes alight with his enthusiasm, ran down the list of his suspicions. Torrey, Logan and Visser constituted a triumvirate that were working together to settle cases by coercion. Certainly, they had all figured overtly in Hardy's dealings with Rich McNeil. Hardy wouldn't be at all surprised to learn, and he intended to put one of the musketeers on it tomorrow, that the private investigator who'd dug up the alleged dirt on Gina Roake's client Abby Oberlin had been Visser as well. That case was Logan's, too—he was acting on behalf of Abby's brother on the will contest. And then Torrey comes up with a settlement offer on that. “Now finally we get Visser with Cullen Alsop.”

“Okay, that's Visser, but I'm missing something,” Treya said. “How is Logan with Cullen, then?”

A smile of triumph. “He was at Jupiter, drinking with Visser, when Cullen picked up his payment.”

“The bag of heroin?” Glitsky said.

“Exactly. This all fits, Abe. They're together in this. They've got to be.”

Glitsky the cop clucked, unconvinced. “That old ‘got
to be.' You'd be surprised how often it doesn't. Are you saying you think one of these clowns killed Cullen?”

“Visser supplied him with uncut smack. He used it. He died. I'd call that killing him.”

“But why would they do that?” Treya asked.

“Because Torrey had fed him a false story about Elaine's murder weapon. My own belief is that Cullen never even had possession of the gun, much less gave it to Cole. But Torrey needed that fact. Then Cullen got greedy, or stupid, or they suddenly realized that as a witness, the kid was going to suck. He'd crack under any kind of vigorous cross. Maybe he'd sell them out as easily as he sold out Cole. Or maybe Torrey set up Cullen as a witness without telling Visser. And Visser vetoed the plan by helping Cullen OD. So, totally unreliable junkie, completely expendable, adios.”

Glitsky remained skeptical, to say the least. “You're saying the chief assistant district attorney of the city and county of San Francisco had him killed?”

“Somebody did.”

“Lord. Creativity thrives here in the new millennium.” Glitsky's arms were crossed, the scar tight through his lips. “And the proof of any of this is . . . ?”

Hardy acknowledged the problem with a nod. “It's out there somewhere. We just haven't found it.”

Abe flicked the lab report. “Well, it's not here. Not that I see. No sign that Visser was even there.”

“Except for what Falk saw.”

“Which was nothing. I asked. Falk saw Cullen go to the bathroom at Jupiter and then Visser go into the same bathroom, which, last time I checked, was legal.”

“But,” Treya interjected, “then why were you going to see Visser this afternoon, Abe? You must have thought something similar.”

Glitsky answered gently. “I wanted to ask him about Ridley, that's all.”

But Hardy couldn't let it go. “This would be the same Ridley who told me that wherever he was going on that
last night, it was on this? Those were his words, ‘on this.' On Cullen and, therefore, on Elaine.”

“And it might have been, that last visit. But we don't know
that
was Visser either, do we?”

Hardy's face was set. “It's got to be.”

“That's where we started here, Diz. Got to be, got to be. When the fact is it doesn't have to be at all. Listen,” he continued, “it's not like I don't think it's well argued and provocative, but I haven't even caught a whiff of one piece of evidence.”

A long silence settled, everyone in their thoughts. Finally, Treya broke it. “I've got a question, Diz.”

Hardy looked into her face. “Six one, one eighty-three.”

“A silly little grin coursing the features of his copper-lined face,” Glitsky added. He covered her hand on the table with his own. “Never tell this guy you got a question. He always does that.”

“Not always,” Hardy argued. “Sometimes I say, ‘I've got an answer,' and then you go, ‘What is it?' and I say, ‘Babe Ruth, 1927,' or ‘The circumference divided by the diameter.' Something like that.”

“It's really fun,” Abe said in a monotone. “You'd be surprised.”

“I bet I would,” Treya replied. “That, for example, just now, was more fun than I've had all day.”

“See what I mean?” Glitsky asked. “It's always like that. It never ends.”

“Okay,” Hardy relented. “What's the real question?”

Treya hesitated, but she had to ask. “Are you saying you think maybe one of these three people killed Elaine?”

And for this—finally, the crux of it—Hardy had to stop and think. “I think while she was doing her special master work, she found something incriminating at Logan's office. Logan, drunk or coked up or both, just turned her loose on his files. Both of you told me that, remember? Anyway, I think what she found was the kind of evidence we've been talking about here, the proof that Abe says we don't have about what these guys have been doing.” He paused. “I don't know what happened then. Maybe
she threatened Torrey with exposure, or asked Logan what was going on. Or they just realized she must have seen something.”

“And what, then? Visser killed her?” Abe had his arms crossed again. He was at full length in the chrome-and-weave kitchen chair, his legs outstretched. A muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched.

“I don't know,” Hardy said. Then added somberly, “Maybe he killed Ridley, too.”

“We don't know that Ridley's dead yet,” Treya said hopefully.

Hardy looked at her levelly. “Yes we do,” he said softly. “Abe?”

Glitsky nodded. “Probably.”

“Well, then . . .” She looked from one to the other. “We should . . .”

“Same problem,” Glitsky said. “We need evidence. And Visser used to be a homicide inspector. He knows the tricks. He isn't going to leave much.”

Hardy stood, went over to the refrigerator and opened it up, then stopped and turned. “I've got one for you, Treya. Are any of the musketeers on the special master list?”

She rubbed her eyes. “All of them, I think. We were talking about it. Why?”

“Because the case Elaine was working on in Logan's office is still open. I checked with Thomasino. It might be worth taking a look.”

“Do it!” Glitsky came forward excitedly, up on his feet.

Hardy gave him a baleful look. “I've got to check for sure, but I think I've got other commitments over the next day or two.” Then, to Treya: “But I'm thinking one of the kids . . .”

 

Hardy was gone at last and Rita kicked Abe and Treya out of the kitchen so she could do the dinner dishes. Together in the cramped living room with barely room to turn around without touching one another, they cast
about for the better part of five minutes, looking for ways to ignore the sexual tension that hummed like a guy wire between them. Since the first night, they hadn't even kissed, and in those first moments, that is all they had done.

Treya found her purse and pulled out the two sheets of folded paper she'd torn from the yellow legal pad she'd been using at lunch. “You were talking to Diz about evidence, Abe, and you really haven't even looked at the box that Curtis brought back from Tiburon. There might be something there.”

“I already looked in it.”

“He said defensively.”

“I'm not being defensive.”

She gave him an expression he'd already come to think of as the thousand-year-old look, as though she'd known him that long.

“I did go through it, Trey,” he insisted.

“And got to Loretta's picture and stopped, didn't you?”

In fact, he had taken it entirely out of the box in Hardy's building and laid it facedown on the Solarium table. He didn't want to see Loretta's face, to be reminded of Elaine's mother, especially now that he was beginning to be involved with Treya. For the truth was, Loretta had been in his life more recently than a quarter century before. Only four years ago, she had waltzed back in and from his perspective tried to restake her ancient claim to his heart. And, starving for contact after Flo's death, he'd almost let her have it. It shamed him still—he didn't need the reminder of how close he'd come, how weak he'd been.

How for Loretta it had all been a calculated lie.

Treya was altogether different, he told himself. Nothing about her was the same. And she was right—he was being foolishly defensive. He held out his hand, the corners of his mouth up fractionally. “Okay, let me see the darn list.” He opened the pages and stopped immediately. “What's this first thing? Empty drawer?”

Their legs happened to be close enough to touch when she sat on the couch. “I didn't want to forget that, so I just wrote it first.” She told him about the discussion when Curtis had first mentioned it.

“But what does it mean?” Abe asked.

“We couldn't figure it out, but all new theories are welcome.”

Giving it a minute, he finally shrugged and went back to her list. She got up then, saying she was going in to check on the kids, maybe help Rita with the dishes. Treya wasn't comfortable with somebody else waiting on her. So she was in the kitchen, an apron around her, speaking reasonable Spanish to Glitsky's housekeeper and drying a serving platter, when Glitsky appeared back in the kitchen doorway. “At the bottom of the first page,” he said. “What's this unknown key?” He crossed the kitchen and showed her what she'd written.

“Oh, I've got that,” she said. “It's in my purse.”

With apologies to Rita, she put down her towel and reappeared a minute later. “It was in the glove compartment of Elaine's car, which was parked down under R&J in the garage. Jon found it, I think, and threw it in the box. Do you know what it is?”

“Yeah,” Glitsky said. “I think I do.”

 

“We shouldn't be doing this anymore, Abe. It's almost eleven-thirty. You need to get some rest.”

“I doubt it. I'm not going to get any rest anyway. Not until we find where this key goes.”

“Are you sure it's a locker?”

A brisk nod. “Yep.” Then he looked over at her, reached a hand across the seat to touch her thigh. “I'm sorry,” he said, and added in a reasonable tone, “I can take you home and come back and do this myself.”

She gave him the thousand-year look again, the long smile. “In your dreams, Lieutenant.”

“That's not what I dream.” He looked at her. “Besides, we can blame Rita. She kicked us out. It's her fault.”