The Motive (29 page)

“Okay.” Then, as sleep approached, “I love you, you know.”

“I know,” she said. “Me, too.” And kissed his cheek again.

Within two minutes, Hardy’s breathing was deep and even.

Frannie, it took longer.

Hardy was dressed in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and red and blue rep tie. It was 6:42 by the clock on his stove. He had poured his coffee first thing as always, taken a drink, then realized that if Treya hadn’t gone into labor during the night, Glitsky would be awake and at home.

He answered on the second ring with a cheerful, “This better be important.”

Hardy didn’t waste time with chitchat, either. “Where’s Missy’s car?”

“I don’t know. Bolivia?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Are we a little wound up this morning? Oh, that’s right. The trial…”

Hardy cut him off. “Do you know that? Is the car really in Bolivia?”

“Do I have any idea? I’d be surprised. Bolivia just seemed like a good answer at the time. What’s this about?”

“Last night I had a dream and realized I didn’t know anything about her car.”

“So what?”

“So I don’t know what that means. Why did I dream about it if it doesn’t mean anything?”

“I give up,” Glitsky said. “Because dreams are random?”

“Not as often as you’d think. I realized it’s something I’ve never looked at. I wondered if you had.”

“No.”

“You know anything about it? She owned her own car, right?”

“Right.” Glitsky’s ongoing frustration with finding another suspect and his futile investigation to this point made him Hardy’s go-to guy for all facts related to the Hanover case. “She drove a black Mercedes,” he said, “like Catherine Hanover’s.”

“Okay, so where is it?”

“Real guess this time? It’s parked in a garage somewhere. Where are you going here?”

Hardy took in another slug of coffee. “She comes home from wherever she’s been. Where’s she been? She doesn’t work.”

“Is this twenty questions? She was shopping, or hanging out with a friend of hers.”

“Anyway,” Hardy running with it, “that doesn’t matter. What matters is she gets home and parks…”

“Maybe she took a cab. Or even the Muni.”

“I doubt it, but either way her car had to be somewhere around Alamo Square. The Willises both talked about her car.”

“Okay. So she had a car parked around Alamo Square.”

“Then she’s killed in the house. Paul’s car is in the garage. There’s no second car. So where did it go?”

“If it was on the street, it’s towed or stolen,” Glitsky said. “Mystery solved. Nice talking to you.” Glitsky’s voice changed, softened. “I’ve got a pretty little thing pulling on my leg that needs her breakfast, don’t you, baby?”

“You don’t think it’s anything?” Hardy asked.

“Yeah, I do. I think it’s first-day-of-trial jitters.”

“You’d have the jitters, too, if your client was innocent and you knew it.”

A lengthy pause. “Well, Diz,” he said, “that’s why they have trials. You can prove it there.”

“I don’t have to prove anything! That’s the thing.
They’ve
got to prove she did it. The burden of proof is always on the prosecution.”

Glitsky’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot for a minute there.”

Jacked up for the day and realizing he’d overstepped, Hardy started to apologize. “Sorry, Abe, it’s just…”

“Hey.” Still low-key. “Shut up. I’ll find the car for you. Now say, ‘Thanks, Abe’ and hang up.”

“Thanks, Abe.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Treya had been off work for the week since her due date. In theory she could sleep in every day, but that didn’t seem to be in her nature. Hardy’s phone call this morning hadn’t helped, either.

Glitsky was sharing ketchup with some scrambled eggs, as opposed to scrambled eggs with a little ketchup, with Rachel—“one big spoonful for Daddy, one biggest spoonful for Rachel”—when his wife appeared in the door to the kitchen. “Who was that, this early?”

“Diz. He’s having a breakdown.”

“Catherine Hanover?”

A nod. “He says she’s innocent.”

“So do you.”

“Yes, but only in the privacy of my own home. I actually think it might be tougher on Diz.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s got to be easier if he thinks his client’s guilty, wouldn’t you think? That way, they get convicted, on some level you’ve got to know they deserve it, so how bad can you feel? They don’t convict, you win, so you feel good about that. But if you think they’re really not guilty…I think it’s eating him up.”

“Just like with you.”

“Well, maybe not eating me up exactly. But somebody’s walking around free who shouldn’t be.”

“You really want him, don’t you?”

“Or her. Whoever. Yeah, I want ’em.”

Glitsky’s face wore a sober expression, and with some reason. After Cuneo and Chris Rosen had ramrodded the grand jury into returning an indictment against Catherine Hanover late last spring, the two of them got wind of the onetime personal connection between Hardy and his client. To the homicide inspector and the assistant DA, this relationship was anything but innocent—not that they cared about sexual involvement (which in the tabloid environment of the San Francisco political scene they both assumed
without discussion). Working together on the case, Cuneo and Rosen both immediately took Hardy and Catherine’s involvement as another level in their conspiracy theory. Now it wasn’t just Glitsky and Hardy and Kathy West. All of those three were now neatly connected to the defendant in a sensational and highly political double-murder trial. They had to be colluding in some kind of cover-up.

Meanwhile, Glitsky had been continuing on his own semi-parallel investigations into Tow/Hold and Paul Hanover’s other business and political endeavors when, early one evening in his office, he got an unannounced visit from an FBI field agent named Bill Schuyler.

Field officers with the FBI didn’t drop in at the office of the deputy chief of inspectors every day, or even every month, so clearly Schuyler had come with a specific purpose. The fact that he’d come after normal business hours was interesting, too. Though they’d always had an easy and collegial acquaintance, neither man wasted any time with pleasantries before getting to it. “I thought you’d want to know,” Schuyler began, “that I got a call from Chris Rosen—one of your DAs here—a couple of days ago. He was asking questions about you.”

Glitsky, at his desk in the amber twilight, sat deeply back in his chair, fingers templed at his lips. He’d been in a tense state of waiting for the appearance of this discussion for the better part of two years, and now that it was here, it was almost a relief. But he feigned complete ignorance. “What did he want to know?”

“He was following up on a report filed by Lieutenant Lanier, who interviewed you on the day that Barry Gerson got shot,” Schuyler said. “You remember that?”

“Pretty well. What did you have to do with that?”

“Nothing directly. But you mentioned me to Lanier, said you’d called me earlier in the day.”

“That’s because I did, Bill.”

“I know. I remember. You wanted me to round up some of my troops and help you with an arrest. Your friend Hardy’s client, if memory serves. But there wasn’t enough time.”

“That’s right. That’s what happened. So what’s the problem?” Glitsky asked.

“I’m not sure, Abe.” Schuyler was a broad-shouldered, always well-dressed athlete with a bullet head covered with a blond fuzz. Now he leaned forward in his chair. “Rosen wouldn’t say, of course. But he asked me if I’d followed up with you. With what you’d done that day. If I knew whether you’d gone ahead, anyway, without my guys.”

“That would have been stupid and indefensible.”

Schuyler nodded. “That’s what I told him. But the real answer was no, I hadn’t followed up afterward with you. I didn’t know what you’d done.”

In the darkening room, Glitsky blew on his templed hands.

Schuyler continued. “Your alibi was that…”

Glitsky sat bolt upright. “Whoa! Alibi? He said the word ‘alibi’?”

“Your alibi is that you spent the day with Gina Roake, Hardy’s law partner, at her apartment.”

“That’s because I did. Her fiancée had just died. We’re friends, Bill, Gina and I. She needed the company. I was with her.” This was strictly true, although he hadn’t been with Roake at her apartment, but out on Pier 70, where both of them had taken part in the gunfight that had killed Gerson and five others. So what he was telling Schuyler was the truth, but it was also a lie. “What do you want me to say, Bill?”

Schuyler held his palms out in front of him. “Nothing, Abe. You’ve got nothing to prove to me. But I thought you’d want to know they’re asking around.”

“They? Who’s they, besides Rosen?”

“He mentioned this homicide cop, I don’t know him, Cuneo. This case you’re on now, evidently Hardy’s in it and you’ve been working with him again and the mayor, too, to undercut him—Cuneo, I mean—since their suspect is Hardy’s girlfriend…”

“So we’re somehow in this grand conspiracy?”

“He seemed to be thinking that way, yeah.”

Glitsky kept his voice low, under tight control. “And what exactly are we or were we conspiring to do? Did he say?”

Schuyler shrugged. “All I’m saying is, he’s building a
case. I don’t know what it’s about, but the smart bet is somebody wants to tie you to Gerson.”

“I had nothing to do with Gerson. Although I heard he was dirty.”

“Cuneo didn’t think he was.”

“Yeah, and he thinks he’s got the right suspect here, too.”

“You don’t think he does?”

“That’s why I’m still looking.”

Schuyler digested that for a minute. “Well, you want some free advice?”

“Always. Not that I always take it, but I’ll listen.”

“Bail on this case, the one you’re still working on. Cuneo’s got a suspect in custody, Rosen’s got an indictment, so what the hell are you still looking for? What message are you sending out about these two clowns? They’re jerk-offs, that’s what. You don’t believe they made their case?”

“I don’t think they did.”

Schuyler shook his head with impatience. “Doesn’t matter, Abe. If their suspect didn’t do it, odds are she’ll walk, right? Your man Hardy’s pretty good.”

“He’s not my man, Bill. He’s a friend of mine, that’s all.”

“Whatever. Doesn’t change the fact. The girl’s not guilty, she’s off. If not…” He shrugged again. If not, Glitsky was wrong looking for another suspect in the first place and he’d be well advised to be rid of the case sooner rather than later. “The point is you take the heat off yourself right now. If Cuneo wants this collar so bad, maybe he fucked up the investigation.
Not your problem, Abe.
The trial goes south, maybe you get involved again later, low-key, point out where they fucked it up. But this guy’s got a hard-on for you, both of them do. They don’t think you’re looking for an alternate suspect, they think the real story is that you and Hardy and Kathy West are covering something up, maybe going all the way back to Gerson. That’s what I read.”

Glitsky simmered for a long moment. By now the room was frankly dark. “Let them look,” he said. “There’s nothing to find.”

“Don’t kid yourself.” Schuyler lowered his voice.
“There’s always something to find, Abe. Maybe not what they started looking for, but if you let them get a foothold, start talking to the whole world, get the accountants involved, they’ll find a time card you filled in wrong, or a company car you went to the beach in, or some secretary says you felt her up, something. And if it gets to the politicos sniping at West, once they got the climate established and you’re all in some conspiracy together, then the pro liars will just use what Rosen’s got and make up other shit. Unless you got a righteous somebody else for the murders…?”

“No. Nobody. Not a hint.”

“Then drop it.”

But he hadn’t dropped it.

He couldn’t do that, not while he was a cop and not while he believed that Cuneo had arrested the wrong suspect. Which meant that the real killer was still on the streets, and now—if not for Glitsky—with no one in pursuit. On top of that, Glitsky wasn’t about to be chased off by the fear that Cuneo would expose him in some way. Once he let that happen, he might as well resign. He would be useless. No, the most effective way to neutralize Cuneo would be to discover what he’d missed—to be more thorough, more organized, a better cop.

He realized that in fact it would not hurt at all if Cuneo and Rosen believed that he was dropping out of the case. He could use the power of his office as a cover to pursue his own leads under their noses—if he played it right, and he would, he might actually be aided in his interrogations by his witnesses’ perception that the police already had a suspect in custody, so Glitsky couldn’t possibly be focusing on them.

He did not want this to become a political liability for Kathy West, however. There was no point in that, so he went to her and convinced her that he had to drop the case. He had nothing going anyway, no real leads. Then he told her a little about Schuyler’s theories, Cuneo and Rosen, which she’d considered ridiculous and infuriating, but in the end didn’t want to pursue. Obviously, the men lived in an alternate universe, but a witch hunt with her as the central
figure in an undefined conspiracy theory was something she’d prefer to avoid.

Finally, Glitsky went to Lanier and gave him the news, too, that he was off the case. It was all Cuneo’s from here on out. The homicide inspector had done a good job of identifying the defendant, and Catherine Hanover’s arrest took Glitsky out of the loop.

So whatever conspiracy he’d been involved in around this case became moot to both Cuneo and Rosen, and he hadn’t heard another word about it since.

It was still there, though.

Now, holding Treya’s hand, he scratched at the kitchen table. “Maybe I should just call back and tell Diz no.”

“I don’t think so, hon. This thing has been sticking in your rather well-developed craw for months. If you want to help Diz, just acknowledge what you’re doing so you’re ready when the shit hits the fan, which it will, I promise.” She smiled in her teasing way. “For the record, I apologize for the use of profanity in front of our daughter, too.” She looked down at Rachel and said, “We don’t say ‘shit’ in this house, little girl.”