At the tail end of a dog of a morning, Dismas Hardy was beginning to fear that he would also be spending the whole stiflingly dull afternoon in municipal court on the second floor of the Hall of Justice in San Francisco.
He was waiting- interminably since nine a.m. – for his client to be admitted into the courtroom. This would not have been his first choice for how to celebrate his forty-eighth birthday.
Now again the clerk called out someone not his client – this time a young man who looked as though he’d been drinking since he’d turned twenty-one and possibly for two or three years before that. Maybe he was still drunk – certainly he looked wasted.
The judge was Peter Li, a former assistant district attorney with whom Hardy was reasonably friendly. The prosecuting attorney was Randy Huang, who sat at his table inside the bar rail as the defendant went shuffling past. The public defender was a ten-year veteran named Donna Wong.
Judge Li’s long-time clerk, another Asian named Manny See, read the charge against the young man as he stood, swaying, eyes opening and closing, at the center podium. The judge addressed him. ‘Mr Reynolds, you’ve been in custody now for two full days, trying to get to sober, and your attorney tells me you’ve gotten there. Is that true?’
‘Yes, your honor,’ Donna Wong declared quickly.
Judge Li nodded patiently, but spoke in a firm tone. ‘I’d like to hear it from Mr Reynolds himself, counsellor. Sir?’
Reynolds looked up, swayed for a beat, let out a long breath, and shook his head.
‘Mr Reynolds,’ Judge Li raised his voice. ‘Look at me, please. Do you know where you are?’
Donna Wong prodded him with her elbow. Reynolds looked down at her, up to the judge and his clerk, across to Huang sitting at the prosecution table. His expression took on a look of stunned surprise as he became aware of his surroundings, of the Asian faces everywhere he turned. ‘I don’t know.’ A pause. ‘China?’
But the courtroom humor, such as it was, mingled uneasily with tragedy and the sometimes cruel impersonality of the law. Twenty-five very long minutes after the drunken Mr Reynolds had been removed from the courtroom, another case had been called, another defendant – not Hardy’s – brought in. He was beginning to think that his own client wouldn’t get his hearing and that another entire day would have been wasted. This was not all that unusual an occurrence. Everyone bitched about it, but no one seemed to be able to make things better.
The new defendant was Joshua Bonder, and from the Penal Code Section read out by the clerk, Hardy knew the charge was dealing amphetamines. But before things got started, Judge Li wanted to make sure that the three material witnesses in the case were in the building and ready to testify.
Hardy was half nodding off, half aware of the jockeying between Judge Li and the attorneys, when suddenly the back door by the judge’s bench opened. At the sound of rattling chains – shades of the Middle Ages – Hardy looked up as a couple of armed bailiffs escorted three children into the courtroom.
The two boys and a girl seemed to range in age from about ten to fourteen. All of them rail-thin, poorly dressed, obviously terrified. But what sent an almost electric buzz through the courtroom was the fact that they were all shackled together in handcuffs and leg chains.
Joshua Bonder, whose own handcuffs had been removed for the hearing, screamed out, ‘You sons of bitches!’ and nearly knocked over the defense table, jumping up, trying to get to the kids. ‘What have you done to my children?’
Hardy had seen many murderers walk into the courtroom on their own, without any hardware. He thought he’d seen most of everything here, but this shocked him to his roots.
And he wasn’t alone. Both of the courtroom bailiffs had leapt to restrain Mr Bonder, and now held him by the defense table. But Judge Li himself was up behind the bench, his normal calm demeanor thrown to the winds at this outrage.
‘What the hell is this?’ he boomed at the guards. ‘Uncuff those children at once!’ His eyes raked the room, stopping at the prosecution table. ‘Mr Vela’ – the assistant DA who’d drawn Joshua Bonder – ‘what is the meaning of this?’
Vela, too, was on his feet, stammering. ‘Your honor, you yourself issued the body attachments for these children as witnesses. We were afraid they would flee. They wouldn’t testify against their father – he’s their only guardian. So we have been holding them in youth guidance.’
‘For how long?’
Vela clearly wished the floor would open up and swallow him. ‘Two weeks, your honor. You must remember…’
Li listened, then went back to shouting. ‘I remember the case, but I didn’t order them shackled, for God’s sake!’
Vela the bureaucrat had an answer for that, too. ‘That’s the mandated procedure, your honor. When we transfer inmates from juvenile hall and we think there’s a flight risk, we shackle them.’
Judge Li was almost stammering in his rage. ‘But look at these people, Mr Vela. They’re children, not even teenage-’
The father’s attorney, a woman named Gina Roake, decided to put in her two cents worth. ‘Your honor, am I to understand that these children have been at the YGC for two weeks?’
Vela mumbled something about how Ms Roake shouldn’t get on her high horse; it was standard procedure. But Roake was by now truly exercised, her voice hoarse with disgust. ‘You locked up these innocent children in the company of serious juvenile offenders? Is that what you’re telling me, Mr Vela?’
‘They are not innocent-’
‘No? What was their crime? Reluctance to testify against their father? That’s all? And for this they’re shackled?’
Vela tried again. ‘The judge ordered-’
But Li wasn’t having any part of that. Exploding, he pointed his whole hand at the prosecutor, now booming at the top of his voice. ‘I ordered the least restrictive setting that would ensure the children’s return to court. Least restrictive, Mr Vela. You know what that means?’
The smallest of the three kids had started crying, and the girl had moved over, putting her arm around him. As the bailiff moved in to separate them, Gina Roake cried out, ‘Don’t you dare touch them. Your honor?’ A plea.
Which Li accepted. ‘Let them alone.’
A moment of relative quiet ensued. Into it, Gina Roake inserted a heartfelt reproach. ‘Your honor, this is the inevitable outcome when children are drawn into the criminal justice system. There has to be a better way. This is a travesty.’
At long last, it was Hardy’s turn.
His client, a 32-year-old recent Dallas transplant named Jason Trent, made his living laying carpet and was now in custody charged with three counts of mayhem and inflicting grievous bodily injury pursuant to a fight in the 3Com Stadium parking lot after a Forty-Niner game.
Trent’s story, and Hardy believed it, was that a trio of local boys had taken exception to his Dallas Cowboys attire and, after the ‘Niners had been soundly thrashed, thought they would work out some of their frustrations by ganging up on the lone cowboy. This, in common with most of the other Niner decisions on the field during the game, turned out to be a bad idea for the home team.
Jason Trent had black belts in both karate and aikido and had also been a Golden Gloves champion in his teens back in Fort Worth. After being sprayed with beer and pushed from two directions at once, and all the while warning his assailants about his various defense skills, Jason had finally lost his temper. In a very short fight, he put all three boys on the ground. Then – his real mistake – he’d gone around with a few more rage-driven punches, in the process breaking two arms, one collarbone, and one nose.
‘You should have stopped when they were down,’ Hardy had told him.
To which Jason had shrugged. ‘They started it.’
Even so, the story probably would have ended there had not one of the three ‘victims’ been the son of Richard Raintree, a San Francisco supervisor and political ally of District Attorney Sharron Pratt. Raintree contended that Jason Trent had overreacted to what amounted only to good-natured hazing and was himself drunk on beer. Sharron Pratt agreed – she’d ordered Jason arrested and charged. Now Hardy addressed Judge Li. ’Your honor,‘ he said, ’this is my client’s first alleged offense. He has no criminal record, not even a parking ticket. He holds a steady job. He’s married and has three young children. He shouldn’t even be here in this courtroom. His alleged victims started this fight and he was forced to defend himself.‘
Li allowed a crack in his stern visage, glancing over at the bandaged and splinted victims at the prosecution table. ‘And did a good job of it, didn’t he?’
Hardy kept at it. ‘The point, your honor, is that Mr Trent was pushed to this extreme by three punks who were ganging up on him. For all he knew, they were planning to kill him.’
This woke up the prosecutor, Frank Fischer, who objected to the use of the word punk. ‘And further, your honor, the victims were on the ground at the time of the attack. They posed no threat to Mr Trent at that time.’
‘They are the reason anything happened at all, your honor.’ The odds were that he was whistling in the wind, but Hardy felt he had to go ahead. This was San Francisco in the Nineties.
The ultimate responsibility for any action only rarely got all the way back to a prime mover – there were always too many victims in the path who could claim stress or that their rights had somehow been violated.
The law said that Jason Trent had gone beyond simple self-defense. Trent himself admitted that he’d been driven to loss of control. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t do it. He’d hurt these slimeballs on purpose because they’d hurt and threatened him first. Whose fault was that? he wanted to know.
So, law or no law, Hardy felt that for his client’s sake he had to make the point. ‘Mr Trent didn’t do anything wrong here, your honor. The law recognizes self-defense as a perfect defense. These young men scared and outnumbered him. He felt he had no option but to immobilize them until he could get away.’
‘Even after they were down on the ground?’ Li asked. Hardy nodded. ‘He wanted to make sure they wouldn’t get up until he could remove himself from any further danger. He didn’t use anything like deadly force, which he very well could have, your honor. He used appropriate force to stop a vicious and unprovoked attack.’
Hardy noted vibration at his belt, his silent beeper going off. He glanced down at it – a message from his office. Well, he was almost done here. Finally. The judge had heard his little speech, and now would set bail and assign a trial date, and then…
But Li, no doubt still simmering in his earlier fury with the DA’s cavalier style, suddenly had a different idea. After he listened to Hardy’s argument, he allowed a short silence to reign in his courtroom. Then he looked over at the prosecutor. ‘Mr Fischer,’ he said, ‘do the People concede that Messrs Raintree et al. assaulted the defendant here, Mr Trent, without provocation of any kind, other than his choice of clothing?’
Fischer was a nondescript functionary in his mid-thirties. By his reaction, this might have been the very first time that a judge had surprised him, or even spoken to him in the course of a proceeding. Now he stood up slowly, looked down at his notebook, and brought his eyes back up to the judge. ‘Your honor, there was an exchange of words and insults. We have witnesses who…’
Li interrupted. ‘Who hit who first?’
Fischer scratched at the table before him. ‘Regardless of whatever instigated the fight that resulted in…’
Li’s face remained placid but his voice hardened. ‘Excuse me, Mr Fischer, I asked you a simple question. Would you like me to repeat it?’
‘No, your honor. That isn’t necessary.’
‘Then would you do me the kindness to answer it?’ Li repeated it anyway. ‘Did Mr Raintree and the others start this fight?’
Fischer looked over at Hardy. Finally, he had to give it up. ‘Yes, your honor.’
Hardy thought he saw a momentary glint in the judge’s eye, and was suddenly certain he knew what the judge was going to do next. He wasn’t supposed to do it, but Li obviously had had enough and didn’t care. A couple more seconds of thought, then he tapped his gavel and stunned the courtroom with the words, ‘Case dismissed.’
Hardy had no time to savor the triumph. He thought he’d just quickly call his office, pick up his message, and then go have a celebratory birthday/freedom lunch with Jason Trent. Enjoy a rare midday Martini. Maybe two.
But the phone message ended all thought of that. It was the call all parents fear. His receptionist, Phyllis, told him that Theresa Wilson from Merryvale needed him to get in touch with her as soon as possible. Merryvale was where his children – Rebecca and Vincent – went to school, and Theresa Wilson was the principal there. It was one thirty, a Thursday afternoon in the middle of October.
‘Are the kids all right?’ He blurted it out. Hardy had lost a son, Michael, twenty-five years before and that wound still hadn’t completely healed – it never would. Now any threat to his children blanked his mind and brought his stomach to his throat.
‘They’re fine.’
He closed his eyes and let out a breath of relief. ‘But no one’s come to pick them up.’
‘Frannie hasn’t called?’ No, of course she hadn’t. That’s why Mrs Wilson was on the phone with him. He flicked a glance down at his watch. ‘How late is she?’
He knew it sounded lame. He wasn’t in charge of taking care of the kids – that was Frannie’s job – so he wasn’t certain what time school got out. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled that they had one early dismissal day every week. It must be Thursday.
‘About an hour.’
An hour without even a call? Frannie liked to say that if a punctual person was a lonely one, then she was one of the loneliest people on earth. ‘Have you heard from Erin? I mean Mrs Cochran? She’s on the call list.’ This was Rebecca’s grandmother, who often picked up the kids at school when Frannie had other errands.
‘That was my first call, Mr Hardy, to Erin. But I just got an answering machine. I thought I’d wait a few more minutes before calling you at work – maybe somebody got caught in traffic.’ She hesitated. ‘Your son’s pretty upset. He wants to talk to you.’
Hardy heard his third grader, Vincent, trying to be brave, but his voice was cracking, frayed. He responded with a hearty confidence. ‘It’s OK, bud, I’ll be down to pick you up in no time. Tell Rebecca it’s all right, too. Everything’s fine.’
‘But where’s Mom?’
‘I don’t know, Vin, but don’t worry. I’m sure it’s just a communication mix-up. That or she’s running late from something.’ He was selling himself as well as his son. Maybe Frannie had arranged for another parent to pick up the kids and that person had forgotten. ‘She’ll probably show up before I get there.’
Although he didn’t really believe that. Frannie would have told the children if someone else other than Erin were going to pick them up. They had strict rules about not going home with anybody other than Mom, Dad or Grandma unless the arrangements had been approved in advance. ‘You be a big guy,’ he said. ‘Everything’s OK, I promise.’
Hardy made a quick call back to his reception desk and questioned Phyllis – was she sure Frannie hadn’t left a message earlier? But Phyllis was an efficiency machine. If his wife had called, she told him icily, she would have told Hardy. As she always did.
He checked his watch again. It had been less than five minutes since he’d talked to Mrs Wilson.
Undoubtedly there was a simple explanation. Even in this day of ubiquitous communication, there were places that didn’t have phones, or access to them. Frannie might be at one of them, stuck, trying to reach him.
He got the answering machine when he tried at his home. Where could she be? If she were not picking up the children, something was wrong.
Perhaps she’d been in an accident? Hardy’s fertile brain played with the possibilities of what might have happened, might be happening, to his wife. He didn’t like any of them.
A few minutes later he was in his car, negotiating the downtown traffic. He tried to remember something about Frannie’s day, her plans. For the life of him, he couldn’t retrieve anything, if in fact she’d told him.
Truth was, lately she probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything about her daily schedule and even if she had, it might not have registered with him. More and more, the two of them were leading separate lives. Both of them knew it and admitted that it was a problem, but it was the toll of day-to-dayness, and neither of them seemed able to break the cycle. Hardy knew about as much of his wife’s routines as he did of his children’s school day, which was precious little.
Though it was cold comfort, he told himself that it was just the way things had evolved. The family dynamic had changed, gotten more traditional. He was overwhelmed with the simple mechanics of making a living. Frannie volunteered for everything, never said no, and was always there to support the other moms, her circle of friends. All of it – Frannie’s very existence, it seemed – revolved around their children. As he supposed it should – that was the job she’d wanted. He made the money and helped with discipline. That was the deal.
Finally, beyond Van Ness the traffic started to move along out toward the Avenues. With luck now he’d be to Merryvale in ten minutes.
By the time he got home with the children and searched the house for some kind of a note, he was really worried. His wife didn’t simply disappear with no explanation.
He sent the kids to the backyard and got on the phone. His first call was to Erin Cochran but he got another answering machine. Next – a flash of insight – he called Moses McGuire, Frannie’s brother, bartending at the Little Shamrock.
‘She probably left you. I would have long ago.’
‘She wouldn’t have left the kids, Mose.’
‘Well, that’s probably true, you’re right.’
‘I don’t know where she is.’
Moses took a minute. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Diz. She’ll turn up.’
‘Well, that’s heartening. Thanks for the input.’ He hung up. Big help from the brother front. While he sat at the kitchen table contemplating his next call, the phone rang and he snatched at it.
‘Are you really worried?’
‘Some.’
‘You really don’t know where she is?’
‘No. I’m kidding you. Actually, she’s right here next to me. We just thought it would be fun to call you and say she was gone – see how you react.’
Moses got serious. ‘When did you last talk to her?’
‘This morning.’
‘You guys fight or anything?’
‘No.’
The line hummed with silence. Then, ‘I’d try Erin.’
‘I already did. She isn’t home.’
‘Maybe they went somewhere together and got hung up.’
‘Maybe,’ Hardy agreed. He didn’t want to alarm her brother any more than he already had. Moses had raised Frannie. He often said that of the ten things he cared most about, Frannie was the first eight. ‘Either Erin or one of her other friends.’
‘But she didn’t call you?’
This, of course, was the nub of it, but Hardy played it down. ‘Phyllis might have lost the message. Happens all the time,’ he lied.
‘I’ll call Susan,’ Moses said, referring to his wife. ‘Maybe she’s heard something.’
‘OK.’ Hardy looked at his watch. Two fifty. ‘I’m sure she’ll be home anytime. I’ll call.’
Forty-five minutes later, the phone had rung twice more, but neither one was Frannie.
First had been Susan, checking to make sure that Moses had not misinterpreted what Hardy was saying. Was Frannie really missing? Hardy didn’t want to say that, not yet. She just wasn’t home yet. He’d call Susan back when he heard from her.
The second call was Erin Cochran, home from a long weekend that she and her husband Ed had spent in the Napa vineyards. No, she hadn’t talked to Frannie in a week. Mrs Wilson’s call on her machine had told her that Frannie hadn’t gone to pick up the children, then she’d gotten Hardy’s message. What was going on? Was Frannie back yet?
She tried to hide it, but the worry in her voice was unmistakable. It was now nearly three hours since Frannie should have picked the kids up at school and Hardy still hadn’t even heard from her? Did he need help at home? Erin could be right over.
Hardy admitted that maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea.
He’d put off making the next call for as long as he could, but now – nearly four thirty, with two red-eyed children at the table listlessly pushing around some Graham crackers and milk – he punched in a number he knew by heart.
‘Glitsky. Homicide.’
Lieutenant Abe Glitsky, the chief of San Francisco’s homicide department, was his best friend. Being in the criminal justice system, Glitsky could circumvent a lot of bureaucracy.
‘Abe, it’s Diz.’
This was so different from their usual obscene or ironic greeting that it raised Glitsky’s red flag. ‘What the matter?’
Hardy told Abe to hold a minute, then stood up with the portable phone, and told Rebecca and Vincent he was talking to Uncle Abe – adult stuff – he was just going into the living room for a little privacy. He’d be right back. They should keep eating their snacks.
‘Frannie’s running about three hours late,’ he whispered from the front of the house. He cast his eyes up and down the street out front. No Frannie.
‘Three hours?’
‘I thought you might check around.’ Hardy’s casual tone didn’t camouflage much for Glitsky. He knew what his friend meant by check around – accidents, hospital admissions, or the worst, recently dead Jane Does -unidentified women.
‘Three hours?’ Glitsky repeated.
Hardy looked at his watch, hating to say it. ‘Maybe a little more.’
Glitsky got the message. ‘I’m on it,’ he said. Hardy hung up just as Vincent let out a cry in the kitchen.
The Cochrans – Big Ed and Erin – were the parents of Frannie’s first husband, Ed, who was the biological father of Rebecca. Their son had been gone a long time now, but Ed and Erin still doted on their granddaughter and her brother Vincent. They loved Frannie and her husband. Hardy and his wife, with no living parents between them, considered them part of the family.
Now, after getting the word about Frannie’s absence, they had come to Hardy’s house. Erin was shepherding the kids through their homework at the kitchen table, trying to keep their minds engaged. Hardy and Ed were making small talk, casting glances at the telephone, waiting.
Hardy was on the phone before the ring ended. It was Abe Glitsky with his professional voice on. ‘She back yet?’
Hardy told him no, and endured a short pause. ‘OK, well. The good news is nobody’s dead, not anywhere. I checked Alameda, Marin, Santa Clara’ – the counties surrounding San Francisco – ‘and it’s a slow day on the prairie. Barely a fender-bender. No reports of anything serious. Nothing in the city at all.’
Hardy let out a long sigh. ‘So what now?’
‘I don’t know. We hang. She’ll…’ He stopped. Glitsky, who’d lost his own wife to cancer a few years before, wasn’t one for stoking false hopes. ‘She driving the Subaru?’
‘I’d guess so. If she’s driving.’
‘Give me the license and I’ll put it out over the dispatch – broaden the net.’
‘All right.’ Hardy hated the sound of that – broaden the net. It was getting official now. Objective. Harder to deny, even to himself.
Where was his wife?
Earlier that morning, Scott Randall was hosting an informal bull session with some law clerks in his tiny cubicle of an office on the third floor of the Hall of Justice. Even his most ardent admirers among these clerks would admit that Scott was the near embodiment of well-dressed, post-Gen-X arrogant disdain. But none of them viewed this as a negative. Indeed, the trait had allowed Scott, though only thirty-three, to rise to homicide prosecutor in the DA’s office, an eminence to which they all aspired.
This morning, Scott had a theme and he was rolling. ‘Listen up,’ he told the acolytes. ‘You are looking at someone who has gotten convictions on his first three murder cases – and I don’t need to tell you how difficult that is in our compassion-driven little burg.’ No false modesty for Scott Randall.
‘But do you know what those three convictions have done for my career? Or what the same kind of cases will do for yours?’ The question was rhetorical and he breezed ahead. ‘Zero, zilch, nada. You know why? Because no one cares about the people in them. Look.’ He held up a finger. ‘One, a motorcycle gang brawl over one of their common-law women; two,’ – another finger – ‘a drug dealer killed by an addict he’d tried to cheat; three, a bum stabbed after he’d stolen another bum’s grocery cart. This is not stuff over which newspaper readers salivate, believe me.’
One of the young men spoke up. ‘So what do you do?’
‘I’ll answer by way of an example. I think you’ll all have heard something about the murder of Bree Beaumont.’ He reached for a manila file that sat atop his desk and from it extracted a couple of eight by ten glossy photographs, holding them up.
‘Exhibit A, on the left,’ he began – Scott spoke a precise legalese even in private – ‘is a picture of the deceased. Bree Beaumont, very pretty, a player in the big-money oil business. Also married, two kids, and,’ he paused for effect, ‘rumored to be dating Damon Kerry.’
This was a trump that had been kept from the media and Scott enjoyed the reaction. ‘Perhaps our next governor, that’s right.’
Scott raised the picture in his right hand. ‘Exhibit B is Bree Beaumont’s body lying in the enclosed patio area underneath her penthouse apartment, where she landed after a long fall. As you’ve read in the papers, there were shards of glass in Bree’s hairline. They didn’t find glass where she landed, none in her apartment. So someone conked her on the head and threw her over. She was six weeks pregnant, too.’
Scott cocked an eyebrow. He had their interest. ‘This is high profile, career-making stuff. You can’t let these cases get away and if they start to slide, you’ve got to go pro-active.’
The first male clerk spoke again. ‘How is it getting away?’
‘It’s been three weeks, and our friends in the police department don’t have a suspect. After that amount of time, the odds say they never will. That’s how.’
One of the female clerks checked in. ‘But they must be looking? Isn’t it just a matter of time?’
Scott conceded that sometimes it was. ‘But in this case, the original inspector, Carl Griffin, was working solo and got himself shot to death – apparently unrelated – just a few days after Bree was killed. The new guys – Batavia and Coleman – haven’t found anything and it doesn’t seem like it’s bothering them. And until they bring us a suspect, we’ve got no job.’
Scott let them absorb the facts for a moment. ‘So if you’re me and you want this case, I mean you really want this case, what do you do?’
This was the kind of information the clerks came here to lap up. They were rapt as he continued. ‘I’ll tell you what I did do. I went to Ms Pratt’ – San Francisco’s District Attorney, Sharron Pratt – ‘and told her, promised her, that if she gave me my own investigator, I would bring the case before the grand jury to get an indictment.’
The second young woman spoke up. ‘How?’
Scott flashed a grin. ‘I’m glad you asked that question, Kimberly. And here’s the answer: the grand jury is your friend. You know how it works – no defense lawyers allowed, no judge in the room. You present your case to twenty average citizens, and do it without worrying too much about legalities. If you’re not brain dead, you get your indictment.’
‘But if the police don’t have a suspect, who do you call as witnesses?’ Kimberly asked.
‘Everybody I can think of, including Kerry, his campaign manager Al Valens; Jim Pierce, this Caloco oil vice president who was Bree’s old mentor. Then I go after the personal connections – and remember that no matter what else might be involved, murder is usually personal.
‘So I subpoena Bree’s husband Ron, Ron’s friends and friends of friends, her professors, colleagues, lab partners. Somewhere I’m betting I’m going to pull a break.’
‘So it’s a fishing expedition,’ the first clerk commented. ‘But we’ve always been told not to-’
Scott was brusque. ‘Forget the garbage they taught you in law school. Here’s Real Life One-A. There’s lawyers who win in front of juries, they’ve got careers. All the others wind up pushing paper or crunching numbers. Your choice. So I’m going to take this murder of Bree Beaumont and get my name on the marquee. The grand jury’s my vehicle. I’m riding it and taking no prisoners.’
Scott’s eyes were bright. ‘This time next week, mark my words, this case is front burner. And it’s mine.’
Scott had served his witness, a Mrs Frannie Hardy, at her home on the previous Friday. The subpoena had instructed her to call if her time on the witness stand presented a conflict or hardship. If that had been the case, Scott would have rescheduled – he’d done so with several other witnesses. If Mrs Hardy had called, he would have told her how long he expected her to be on the stand and what kinds of questions he was likely to ask.
Scott had no indication that the witness had ever met Bree Beaumont. He got her name from Ron, Bree’s husband, who’d said that he and Mrs Hardy had been having coffee together on the morning of Bree’s death. So she was Ron’s primary alibi and as such Scott wanted to talk to her. But it wasn’t going to be the Inquisition. Frannie Hardy was not a suspect. If she’d called to discuss anything, Scott would have reassured her.
But no call.
So this morning, when Mrs Hardy had arrived late at the grand jury room, ten minutes after it had gone into session at nine thirty, Scott had already begun talking to James Pierce, a senior vice president and Caloco’s community relations officer. He had worked closely with Bree before she’d left the company and had known her since she’d been recruited from Cal. If there were any bones in her closet, Scott thought Pierce would know where they were hidden.
Ironically, Scott’s initial plan had been to take Mrs Hardy before Pierce, thinking that hers was probably going to be a much shorter questioning – Scott hadn’t wanted to hang her up for the whole day. But when she hadn’t been there on time and Pierce had, that was too bad for her – she’d brought it on herself.
So now Scott was going to let Mrs Hardy sweat it out. No, he’d told her during a break in Pierce’s testimony. He didn’t know how long it would be until he got to her. No, she couldn’t come back another day. He trotted out his favorite phrase. This was not a parlor game. This was a murder investigation.
‘I know all about murder investigations,’ she told him. ‘My husband’s an attorney, too.’
‘Then you know how serious this is.’
Mrs Hardy did not seem convinced. ‘I know how important you all think it is,’ she said mildly. ‘Look, Mr Randall, I’m just trying to find out how long this will be. I’ve got to pick up my children at school. If I’m not going to be out of here by one o’clock, I’m going to have to make some phone calls.’
‘I think that’s a good possibility,’ he said with conscious ambiguity.
She didn’t think it was too important, did she? Well, she’d find out.
As it developed, he began with her just before noon. She had just decided to make her phone calls when Scott called her to testify. She thought it couldn’t be too long. She’d have plenty of time. There was no need to call.
After he administered the oath that she tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Scott had her identify herself, and then started right in. ‘Mrs Hardy, were you acquainted with the deceased, Bree Beaumont?’
‘No. I never met her.’
‘But you did know her husband Ron?’
‘That’s correct.’ Mrs Hardy was sitting at a table in the front of the room, facing the twenty jurors. Now she looked up at them and explained. ‘Ron is the full-time parent in their family, so we saw each other mostly at school and other child-related events.’
‘And how long have you known him?’
‘I don’t know exactly. A couple or three years.’ Another explanation to the jury. ‘He’s kind of an honorary mom. We tease him about it.’
‘We?’
‘You know, the other moms at school.’
Scott was just fishing, talking about whatever came up. Here before the grand jury, strict relevancy wasn’t much of an issue. ‘Did he seem to resent this role?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, being Mr Mom? Did he ever talk about resenting that his wife worked and he didn’t?’
Mrs Hardy gave that a minute’s thought. ‘No. I don’t think it bothered him.’
‘Did you find that strange?’
‘What? That he took care of the kids or that he didn’t resent taking care of them?’
‘I don’t know. Both. Either.’
Another beat while she reflected. ‘Not any more than anybody else.’ Mrs Hardy broke a smile to the jurors. ‘I think sometimes our little darlings get hard for anybody.’ Then, back to Scott, more seriously. ‘But with Ron, he seemed fine with it. His wife did her job, he did his. He’s a good father.’
‘She made the money and he didn’t?’
‘That’s right, Mr Randall. It happens here in the Nineties.’
‘And that didn’t bother him? Being the man and not making any money.’
‘I just said that. It didn’t seem to.’ Her voice took on a sharp edge. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.’
‘I’m trying to find out who killed Mrs Beaumont.’
‘Well, it wasn’t Ron. He was with me when she died. We were having coffee at the Starbucks on 28th and Geary, near Merryvale School.’ This seemed to remind of her something and she glanced up at the wall clock, pursed her lips.
Scott Randall pushed ahead. ‘And how did that come about?’
‘What?’
‘Having coffee.’
‘I don’t even understand that question. We just decided to go get a cup of coffee. There wasn’t anything sinister about it.’
‘I didn’t say there was.’
‘Well, it seems to me you implied it. We met at school dropping off the kids, and Ron said he felt like a cup of coffee and I said I thought that sounded good. So we both went.’
Again, she glanced at the wall clock. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but are we almost done here? I’ve got to go pick up my kids pretty soon.’
‘When we’re done,’ Scott replied. ‘After we’re done.’
Scott did not view himself as a cruel person, but a woman’s tears on a witness stand were as unimportant as the temperature in the room, or the lighting. Sometimes you had to deal with them, that was all. But you had no feelings about them one way or the other.
Frannie Hardy, on the stand before him now, crying, did not make his heart go all soft. True enough, she was quite lovely, well dressed, with striking green eyes and bright red hair, and if he’d been anywhere but in a courtroom with her, he might have had other thoughts. But not now. She’d brought her troubles upon herself and now she was paying the price.
She wasn’t sobbing. Scott was sure these were tears of anger. He didn’t care.
‘You have to let me make my phone call.’
‘No, ma’am, I’m sorry. You’re staying here.’
‘You told me we’d be finished by now.’
Scott shrugged. ‘I said we might be. It was possible. I thought we would be, but you’re not answering my questions. That’s slowing things down.’
It was already half an hour past when she was supposed to have left to pick up her children. She’d been on the stand for two hours.
‘Let’s go over this one more time, all right?’
‘I’m not saying anything until you let me use the phone.’
It had devolved into a pitched battle of wills, and Scott held the high ground. He made the rules in this room, and Mrs Hardy was going to play by them.
Scott had long since abandoned the casual approach. He was standing at one end of the front table so he could look now at Mrs Hardy and now at his jurors.
‘Mrs Hardy, you’re putting me in an awkward position. As it stands now, if you don’t answer my questions you’re going to force me to go to a judge in the Superior Court and get a contempt citation issued against you. You might very well get thrown in jail. Do you understand that? If that happens, if it gets to there, then you’ll get your phone call to your attorney. But I’m not letting you off this stand in the middle of your testimony. We can be finished here in ten minutes if you cooperate, but if you don’t, it’s going to be a long afternoon.
‘Now,’ Scott pressed her. ‘Let’s try again one more time. You have testified that you knew – Ron Beaumont had confided in you – that his relationship with his wife was in a difficult stage. Isn’t that true?’
‘Yes, he told me that.’
‘And did he tell you the nature of these difficulties?’
‘A little bit.’
‘Did Mr Beaumont tell you anything that suggested he was unhappy or angry with Mrs Beaumont?’
Frannie shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. But really I have no idea how he felt. We didn’t talk about them.’
‘But he did tell you he was having difficulties?’
‘I would say so.’
Scott Randall turned over a few pages on his yellow legal pad. He looked at the jury, then back to the witness. ‘Mrs Hardy, do you find Mr Beaumont attractive?’
Her lips went tight. ‘I have never thought about it.’
Scott conveyed his disbelief clearly to the jury. ‘Never thought about it? You obviously had a relationship with him, a close relationship – isn’t that true? And you didn’t notice if he was attractive or not?’
‘I may have noticed, but I didn’t think about it. We were friends, that’s all.’
‘And yet he chose you, and you alone, to confide in about his marital problems.’
‘I don’t know that. He might have confided in other people. I don’t know if it was only me.’
‘Were you two having an affair, Mrs Hardy? Is that it?’
Frannie Hardy was biting down hard on her lower lip. She clipped out the words. ‘I’ve already told you, we were friends.’
Scott Randall remained matter-of-fact. ‘That’s right, that’s what you told me. But friends have affairs all the time. Did his wife find out about you – was that it? Was she going to make problems for the two of you?’
‘I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.’
‘Well, you’d better dignify something with an answer, and pretty soon. You’re digging yourself into quite a hole here – don’t you realize that?’
Frannie was shaking her head back and forth wearily. How had it all come to this so quickly? She closed her eyes and forced her voice to remain calm, rational. ‘Look, Mr Randall, what do you want me to say? I’m late picking up my children, that’s what I’m thinking about. I’m not having any affair with Ron Beaumont, and never did. I never met his wife. I don’t think Ron’s problems with his relationship led to his wife’s death.’
‘Let us decide that, Mrs Hardy. You’ve admitted that the problems existed. Just tell us what they were.’
Frannie didn’t know it, but Scott Randall and the grand jury had already heard Ron Beaumont say that Bree and he were getting along fine and there were no problems between them. Scott thought it might be a good time to mention this to Frannie. She sat still, her face a blank now.
‘Mrs Hardy?’
‘I promised him it would remain between us and I wouldn’t tell anybody. I gave him my word.’
Scott sensed an opening. ‘Mrs Hardy, let’s be realistic. No one believes that promises are that sacred anymore. This could be a crucial element in a murder investigation. Are you sure you haven’t mentioned what Mr Beaumont told you to your husband or one of your girlfriends?’
She was staring at him, trying to keep her anger in check. More tears threatened. A drop escaped from her right eye. ‘I promised,’ she repeated. ‘I gave my word.’
Scott looked back out to the jurors. He took a beat and sighed. ‘All right, Mrs Hardy,’ he said, ‘You don’t leave me any choice.’
By four thirty, Superior Court Judge Marian Braun had already had a long day on the bench presiding over an unusually depressing murder trial. Members of a gypsy clan had convinced several wealthy old people that they were their friends. They had persuaded them to sign over their assets, and then poisoned them with ‘magic salt’ – digitalis. The magic salt was a big yuk – the defendants had giggled as they sprinkled it on. Marian Braun was used to bad people committing heinous crimes, but this one got under her skin.
Today had been particularly dispiriting because a dozen or more very tough-looking relatives of the defendants had put on a show of force by appearing in her courtroom just in time to intimidate the state’s main witness, another of the clan who hadn’t been able to live with her conscience and who’d been promised immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony. But the thugs in the courtroom got their message across – the woman suddenly couldn’t remember witnessing any of the defendants sprinkling salt on anything. Now it seemed possible that these heartless killers were going to go free.
When Judge Braun’s bailiff came to her chambers and told her that Scott Randall had a contempt citation for her at the end of her already lousy day, she grabbed her robes, breathing fire, and strode impatiently through the hallways to the grand jury room.
‘No, ma’am. As Mr Randall has explained to you, you don’t have a choice unless you’re claiming a Fifth Amendment right. But you’ve told me that your testimony will not incriminate yourself, which rules out that option. ’You’ve got to tell him what you know.‘
Frannie Hardy shook her head. This had been going on for so long that all her patience was used up. ‘I can’t believe this is the United States.’ She scanned the faces of the jurors, went to Scott Randall and finally rested on Marian Braun. ‘What’s the matter with all you people? You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t you have any real lives? I haven’t done anything wrong.’
This line of discourse turned out to be a tactical error. Judge Braun wasn’t about to have the validity of her life and work called into question by some nobody witness. She snapped out her reply. ‘First, in this room you address me as “your honor”. Next, as to doing something wrong, you are refusing to cooperate in the investigation of a murder case. Like it or not, that’s a crime. Now for the last time, young lady, you answer the question or you go to jail.’
‘I’m not your young lady.’ A pause. ‘Ma’am.’
Braun slapped at the table. ‘All right, then, I’m ordering you held in the county jail until you decide to answer Mr Randall’s questions.’ Judge Braun half turned. ‘Bailiff…’
But Frannie was on her feet now, her Voice raised, color high. ‘You want to talk contempt? I hold you in contempt. God help the system if you cretins are running it.’
Braun’s steely gaze came back to her. ‘You just got yourself four days before this grand jury citation even starts to run. You want more, young lady, just keep talking. Bailiff.’
The guard came forward.
Hardy got Frannie’s call at six twenty and made the half-hour drive downtown to the Hall of Justice in seventeen minutes. On the way, he stopped fuming long enough to think to call Abe Glitsky on his car phone, to see if he could work some magic. The county jail and the Hall of Justice were on the same lot. Maybe Glitsky could get the ball rolling.
But the lieutenant was waiting for him by the back door of the Hall, at the entrance to the jail. He wasn’t wearing his happy face.
Hardy came up at a jog, slacks and shirtsleeves, no coat, knowing before he asked. ‘She still in there? She’s really in there?’ Though he never doubted she was. This wasn’t the kind of funny birthday prank Frannie was likely to pull on him.
‘Yep.’
Barely slowing, Hardy swore and turned in toward the jail’s entrance. Glitsky reached and caught his sleeve, stopping him. ‘Hey!’
‘Let me go, Abe. I’m getting her out of there.’
‘Not without a judge you’re not. I couldn’t.’
When Glitsky let go ofhis arm he stayed put, glaring in the dusk. The night had turned windy and cold. The lawyer in him knew that his friend was right – it wasn’t a matter of summoning some patience. They had to find a judge, the night magistrate, somebody. To facilitate night-time warrants and other late business, the judges rotated magistrate duty so that there would be one judge on call every evening.
Even as Hardy said ‘Where’s Braun?’ he was moving again, toward the Hall, Glitsky on his heels.
But though they had no trouble getting by the night guard and into the building, after they took the stairs to the second floor they couldn’t get into the area of the judge’s chambers, which were behind the courtrooms. Hardy banged on doors all the way down the hallway. No answer.
A clerk, working late in one of the rooms, opened her door and poked a head out. ‘It’s closed up back there. Everybody’s gone home.’
Hardy kicked the door and the sound echoed off the walls. Then, suddenly, just as they turned to head back downstairs, the door opened. ‘What’s all this goddam racket?’
Leo Chomorro wasn’t Hardy’s favorite judge, although he was glad enough to see him now. It didn’t appear to be mutual – Chomorro was scowling. Then, noticing Glitsky, he nodded more genially. ‘Evening, lieutenant. What’s going on here?’
Glitsky laid it out in a few words. They needed a judge to vacate a contempt citation and get Hardy’s wife out of jail.
‘Your wife?’
‘Yes, your honor. There’s been some kind of screw-up.’
Chomorro’s scowl deepened. ‘What was she doing down here? She’s not an attorney, too, is she?’
‘No. She got called before the grand jury and the next thing she knew she was in jail.’
Chomorro looked like he wanted to ask some more questions, but he’d heard the magic word – grand jury – and knew nobody was allowed to discuss anything about its proceedings. They’d already told him the charge was contempt, though – he might pursue that. ‘Who issued the citation?’ he asked warily.
‘Marian Braun,’ Glitsky said.
Making a face and no promises, Chomorro got a few more details, then finally said he’d put in a call to Braun and get some answers if he could. But he told them they shouldn’t expect much – any communication about grand jury proceedings was prohibited. If they wanted to wait…
Glitsky stayed with the judge, but Hardy decided he had to see Frannie.
He’d been to the jail dozens of times and knew the routine, so within minutes he was in the attorneys’ visiting room, waiting for his wife.
He hadn’t really prepared himself. With other clients, he made it a point to pre-visualize their entrance into this room. It was often the first time he would see them in the jail’s orange jumpsuit, and the reality of someone he’d known in civilian life dressed for the slammer was always something of a shock.
In this case, the first sight was more in the order of a physical assault. Frannie, always petite, looked positively gaunt. In the room’s institutional glare, his wife’s cheeks were ghostly – the washed-out, faded yellow-gray of ancient paste. Her beautiful red hair had already lost its luster and now hung flat and drab.
A glance reconnected them and they crossed to each other, nearly falling into an embrace. Frannie clung to him, her face buried in her chest, repeating, ‘Thank God, thank God,’ over and over.
He held her.
Finally, their hands enfolded on the table, they began to get to it, Frannie trying to explain away the subpoena, and the fact that she hadn’t told him about it. ‘I didn’t think it was anything, that’s why.’
Hardy shook his head. This wasn’t tracking right. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you thought it was something, Frannie. If you thought it was nothing, you would have told me about it. You would have said, “I got this subpoena today to go testify in front of the grand jury. I wonder what it’s all about.” Instead, you kept it to yourself.’ She was silent, biting at her lower lip. After a minute, Hardy prompted her. ‘Frannie?’
‘All right,’ she admitted.
‘All right, what?’
Pulling her hands away from his, she crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Now you’re cross-examining me. I think I’ve had enough of that for today.’
Hardy kept his voice in tight control. ‘I’m not doing that.’ He brought it down to a whisper. ‘I don’t know why you’re here. I’m confused. I don’t know what’s going on. You want to help me out with this? I’m on your side.’
Closing her eyes, she let out a breath. ‘OK,’ she said. She reached again for his hand. ‘I know I should have told you. I mean, I know that now. It’s just we’ve had such different lives lately. I didn’t want you to misunderstand, I guess – to have to deal with it at all.’
‘Deal with what?’
She met his eyes, taking a long moment before answering. ‘Ron.’
‘Ron,’ Hardy repeated, his voice hardening in spite of himself. ‘I don’t believe we know a Ron.’
‘Ron Beaumont,’ she said. ‘Max and Cassandra’s dad.’
Hardy knew the children a bit from their visits with his kids, from sleepovers. The older one, Cassandra, had become one of Rebecca’s good friends, maybe even her best friend, although he wasn’t sure of that. Hardy had some vague sense, a dim memory, of a charming, vivacious child, although the ‘kid thing,’ as he called it, had been pushed off – banished from? – the front burner of his life. But he had never met the father. ‘Max and Cassandra’s dad,’ he repeated, his voice flat. ‘Ron.’
Frannie looked at him and he saw desperation, even despair, in her expression. And, behind that, maybe a disturbing hint of defiance. ‘He’s a friend of mine. Like you with the women in your life.’
This was a sore point. Hardy often went to lunch, or sometimes even dinner, with other women, colleagues who he worked with, got along with. Even his ex-wife Jane, too, once in a while. He and Frannie finally had to put a moratorium on questions about who they all were, the various personal and professional relationships. They were all just friends. They’d leave it at that.
But on the other foot, Hardy discovered, the shoe cramped him up.
He suddenly had to get away from what he thought he might be hearing. Walking across the room to its doorway, he stood looking out through the wired glass opening into the hallway of the jail. Finally, he turned. ‘OK, we’ll leave it where you want. But I’ve got to remind you that you brought all this up. I never heard of Ron Beaumont until two minutes ago and you’re in jail because of some subpoena involving you and him. I don’t think a little curiosity is out of the question.’
‘His wife was murdered. He’s a suspect.’
By the door, Hardy stood stock still. ‘And the grand jury decided it had to talk to you about him?’
She shrugged. ‘I was with him – drinking coffee,’ she added quickly, ‘on the morning she died. In public.’
He waited.
‘So they wanted to see if my alibi matched his.’
Hardy was still trying to figure out the logistics. ‘Did you ever talk to the police about this, before today?’
‘No.’
This wasn’t making sense. If Frannie was the alibi of one of the main suspects in a murder case, the police would have interrogated her as a matter of course, if for no other reason than to have her words on the record. He’d have to remember to ask Abe why they hadn’t, if Abe knew. And if it were true.
But first, he was here. ‘OK, so you got the subpoena you didn’t tell me about…’
‘I thought it would be a quick hour in the middle of the morning, Dismas. There was no need to bother you with it.’
Hardy didn’t want to start down that road again. There were lots of facts he wanted to know. When they got home and out of this environment, things would seem different. They’d be able to talk until they got somewhere. Here in the jail, time pressed on them. ‘All right, so I assume you verified Ron’s alibi.’
‘I did.’
‘And after that?’
‘Well, this lawyer, the prosecutor – do you know a Scott Randall?’
Hardy shook his head. ‘I’ve heard the name. He’s the guy who put you here?’
She nodded. ‘He asked if Ron had told me about any problems between him and his wife that might have something to do with what happened to her.’
‘Why would he have told you that? Why did this Scott Randall think to ask that?’
‘I don’t know, but he did.’
Their eyes met across the room again, and this time Hardy left the doorway and came back to the table, sitting on a corner of it. ‘So what did you say?’
‘I said he had.’ She shrugged. ‘So Mr Randall asked me what it was, to tell the grand jury what Ron had told me.’
‘And?’
‘And I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’d promised Ron I wouldn’t.’
‘OK, so what was it, this big secret?’
She looked up at him imploringly. ‘Dismas, come on.’
At this moment, before Hardy could respond, there was a knock at the door and the guard admitted Abe Glitsky, who was a study in controlled rage of his own. Stealing a quick look at Frannie, his eyes narrowed for a millisecond and the scar between his lips went white. Then he focused on Hardy. ‘It’s not happening,’ he said. ‘Braun’s not budging.’
Instinctively, forgetting their disagreements, Hardy reached a hand out on the table and Frannie took it. He looked down at her and her eyes were brimming. He didn’t blame her.
‘I can’t stay here, Dismas. Abe?’
Miserable, the two men looked at each other. They didn’t have to say anything. Jail was a reality in both of their lives. When a judge ordered it, people wound up staying all the time. Finally, Hardy let out a breath. ‘So what’s left, Abe? What are our options?’
The lieutenant was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. I could talk to the desk – maybe get her in Adseg.’
‘What’s that?’ Frannie asked. ‘I’m right here, guys. Don’t third person me.’
‘Administrative segregation,’ Glitsky explained to her. ‘Basically it’s isolation, a nicer cell. Keep you away from the general population, which you want – trust me on this.’
‘This can’t be happening,’ Hardy said.
‘Evidently,’ Abe went on, looking at Frannie, ‘you broke the first rule of the courtroom – you don’t insult the judge.’
‘She’s a pompous ass,’ Frannie retorted. ‘She insulted me first.’
‘She’s allowed to insult you. It’s in her job description. What did you say to her?’
‘I told her I held her in contempt, that this whole thing was contemptible…’
Hardy was shaking his head, believing it all now. When Frannie got her dander up, watch out.
‘It got her four days,’ Glitsky said.
‘Four days?’ Hardy gathered himself for a beat. ‘This isn’t about some secret?’
‘What secret? Not that I heard from Chomorro. It’s about Braun.’ Glitsky changed to a hopeful tone. ‘Maybe she’ll talk to you tomorrow, Diz.’
‘No maybe about it,’ Hardy said. ‘I’ll tackle her in the hallway if I have to.’
Frannie reached across the table. ‘Dismas, you can’t let them keep me here. The kids need me. This is some horrible mistake. It just started with this stupid promise. That’s all they wanted.’
‘So what is it? Tell me – I promise, I won’t tell anybody. You can hire me as your attorney and it’ll be privileged. Nobody will ever know and maybe we can use it as a chip. I’ll go wake up the judge at her house, explain the situation…’
Glitsky butted in. ‘I wouldn’t do that. What secret?’
Frannie ignored Abe. ‘They could just ask Ron. You, Dismas, could ask Ron. Go to his house and wake him up. Call him from here even. If he knew I was in jail, he’d tell them what they want to know. He wouldn’t let this happen to me.’
‘What is this secret?’ Glitsky asked again.
Frannie finally raised her voice. ‘The secret isn’t the issue!’ Her eyes pleaded with her husband, trying to tell him something, but what it was remained shrouded in mystery.
Then she shifted her glance quickly to Abe. ‘I promised Ron. I gave him my word. It’s his secret. Dismas, maybe if you could call him or go to his apartment and tell him what’s going on… I’m sure he’ll tell you. Then you come back and get me out of here.’
Abe was sifting through an armful of files he’d brought in from one of the desks in the homicide detail. He found the file he wanted and pitched it across his desk to Hardy. ‘As you recall from your days as a prosecutor, the address is there on the top right. Broadway.’
Hardy glanced down, then looked up. ‘No phone number? A phone number would be nice.’
‘A lot would be nice in that file, Diz. There’s next to nothing there.’ He sighed. ‘My first inspector got himself killed about a week into the case. You might remember him – Carl Griffin?’
Hardy nodded. ‘Yeah. He got killed how?’ He didn’t want to talk about any dead policemen, especially to his best friend the live one, but this might bear on Frannie and he had to know.
‘Some witness meeting went bad, we think.’
Sergeant Inspector Carl Griffin didn ‘t know it, but when he got up from his desk in the homicide detail on the fourth floor of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice on Monday morning, 5 October, it was for the last time.
He was the lone inspector working the murder of Bree Beaumont, a 36-year-old environmental and, recently, political consultant. He’d been on the case for six days. Griffin had been a homicide inspector for fourteen years and knew the hard truths by now – if you didn’t have a murderer in your sights within four days of the crime, it was likely you never would.
Carl was a plodder with a D in personality. Everybody in homicide, including his lieutenant, Abe Glitsky, considered him the dullest tack in the unit. Loyal and hardworking, true, but also slow, culturally ignorant and hygienically suspect.
Still, on occasion Carl did have his successes. He would often go a week, sometimes ten days, conducting interviews with witnesses and their acquaintances, gathering materials to be fingerprinted and other physical evidence, throwing everything into unlabeled freezer bags in the trunk of his city-issued car. When he was ready, he’d gather all his junk into some semblance of coherence, and sometimes wind up with a convictable suspect.
Not that he often got assigned to cases that needed brains to solve. In San Francisco, nine out of ten homicides were open books. A woman kills a man who’s beating her. A jealous guy kills a wandering girlfriend. Dope deals go bad. Gang bangs. Drunken mistakes.
Low-lifes purifying the gene pool.
In these cases, homicide inspectors collected the evidence that a jury would need to convict the completely obvious suspect and their job was done. Carl was useful here, connecting the dots.
Once in a while, since homicides came in over the transom and got assigned to whoever was on call, Griffin would draw a case that had to be worked. This hadn’t happened in over two years when the call came in about a politically connected white woman on Broadway, so Glitsky really had no choice. It wasn’t apparent at the outset that the case was high profile and if the lieutenant had suspected that it would go ballistic, he would have assigned other inspectors and Carl’s feelings be damned.
But as it was, Griffin got the Beaumont case, and he was in his sixth day, and he hadn’t made an arrest.
After receiving her doctorate from UC Berkeley in the early eighties, Bree had run that institution’s environmental toxicology lab for a couple of years before leaving academia to consult for the Western States Petroleum Association, and later to work for Caloco Oil.
Only a few months before her death, though, she’d abandoned the oil company and changed sides in the volatile wars over the multi-billion-dollar gasoline additive industry. Going public with her opposition to what she had come to believe were cancer-causing additives in California gasoline, Bree had aligned herself with the state assemblyman from San Francisco, Damon Kerry, now running for governor.
The central plank of Kerry’s platform played on the public’s fears that these petroleum-based gasoline additives, particularly a substance called MTBE – methyl tertiary butyl ether – was seeping into California’s groundwater in alarming amounts. It was dangerous and had to be outlawed, but the government wouldn ‘t move on it.
When Bree, the oil industry’s very photogenic baby, had agreed to join his campaign, it had given Kerry a terrific boost. And now, after her death, radio talk shows hummed with theories that the oil companies had killed Bree Beaumont, either in revenge for her defection or to keep her from giving Kerry more and better ammunition to use against them.
With the election four weeks from tomorrow, Kerry trailed his opponent by half-a-dozen points. Bree’s death had become big news. And every time someone mentioned her name, Damon Kerry came up as well.
But Carl Griffin wasn’t troubled. He had a plate full of active homicides and knew the suspects in three of them. He was simply assembling the packages.
On Bree Beaumont, he was confident he was close to asking for a warrant. There was just one piece of information he had to verify and he’d have it tied up. And wouldn’t that just show Glitsky and the rest of them who thought he couldn’t get anything done on this kind of case?
That’s why he never told anybody about his progress or lack of it. He wasn’t good with criticism. It rankled when other inspectors second-guessed him about what they’d do differently, where they ‘d look, why they wouldn’t talk to the people Carl was talking to.
Carl didn ‘t take this as good-natured ribbing, and maybe it wasn’t. He considered that he was an old-fashioned cop, a dog sniffing where his nose led, discarding anything that didn’t smell, following what did. His nose told him he was about a step away on Beaumont.
He stood in Glitsky’s doorway on his way out of the office. He wore his black Raider’s windbreaker over an orange and blue Hawaiian shirt that he tucked into a shiny pair of ancient black slacks. The shirt billowed over his belt. He looked about halfway to term.
Griffin was telling his lieutenant that he was going to be seeing a snitch on a gang-related in the Western Addition first thing this morning. He was late for it now, which didn’t matter because the snitch would be late, too. Then, depending on how things broke with the snitch, if he got time, he planned to try to find the knife in the Sanchez case – the crime scene investigators hadn’t been able to locate it in the house, but he’d bet it was somewhere on the block, so Griffin was going to poke around the shrubs and see what he came up with. His guess was she got out of the house and threw it somewhere and then came back before she dialed 911. Anyway, then…
Glitsky interrupted him. ‘How we doin’ on Beaumont?‘
‘Pretty good’.
Glitsky waited.
‘Couple more days.’
‘You writing it all up?’
Griffin lifted his windbreaker to show Glitsky the notebook tucked into his belt. He patted it. ‘Every word.’
There was no point in pushing. Griffin would tell him when he had something and he’d write it up when he got to it. Meanwhile, it sounded like he was moving steadily on at least two of his other cases. It would have to do for now.
But if Beaumont didn’t close in a couple of days, Glitsky knew he would have to pressure Carl to share his discoveries – he was starting to take heat about it.
‘All right.’ Griffin started to turn and for some reason, Glitsky said, ‘Watch your back, Carl’ A nod.
‘Always!’
‘Griffin wasn’t the brightest light in the detail,’ Abe said. ‘You ever meet him?’
‘Couple of times, yeah.’
‘So you know. Anyhow, we figure he arranged some kind of sting, putting the heat on one of his witnesses. Guy might have been on something and didn’t like the way it was going. Anyway, he didn’t respond well under pressure, felt he was getting double-crossed, and shot Carl, something like that.’ Glitsky made a face. ‘We may never know for sure.’
Hardy clucked in commiseration, then gestured down at the file he was holding. ‘So who’s got the case now?’
Glitsky nodded at the stack of folders he’d just gone through. ‘I got these off Tyler Coleman’s desk. That one doesn’t look much like it’s been worked.’
‘Why not?’
Glitsky shrugged. ‘It’s their sixth active. Time they got it – the thing’s already over a week old. Priorities.’
Hardy knew. Homicide inspectors didn’t want to waste their time – when the kill was no longer fresh, the scent disappeared. Suddenly, Hardy pulled the telephone around and punched for information. A minute later he hung up. ‘Unlisted, of course. If it were listed, I could just call and save myself an hour, but I wouldn’t want to do that now, would I?’ He was on his feet. ‘I’ve got to go. Are you going to be around?’
Glitsky checked his watch – nine o’clock. ‘I was thinking about seeing Orel.’ Glitsky was a widower with a fourteen-year-old son at home. He tried to make some time for him every day. Some. Now he looked across the desk into the worried face of his friend. ‘You get something, call me at home. Fair?’
Hardy pointed a finger – they had a deal – and hit the door running.
As Hardy drove out to the site of Bree Beaumont’s death, he realized that it was going to take some kind of miracle to get Frannie out of jail tonight. Even if he convinced this guy Ron, Frannie’s friend Ron, to divulge his secret, then what?
Glitsky had counseled him against calling on Judge Braun at her home, and he was right. It would only make matters worse, and perhaps get Hardy his own contempt citation. He had to put it out of his mind and take things one step at a time.
But he kept getting distracted. He couldn’t understand it. How could Frannie have let this happen, degree by degree? Now the family truly had a problem that was going to impact both him and their children in a major way. And all because Frannie had simply gotten her back up. At any point, she could have done something differently and avoided this mess.
But she hadn’t and that had something to do with Ron, something personal.
He didn’t want to follow that train of thought, which of course made it irresistible. What about if Frannie was simply a novice at covering her tracks, at making excuses? She’d never had to learn those tricks before because she’d never cheated before. They’d always told each other everything. But now, suddenly, with Ron (whoever the hell he was), with his dead – no, his murdered wife – things had changed.
Frannie hadn’t even mentioned the subpoena?
Hardy couldn’t imagine getting a subpoena to appear before the dogcatcher, to say nothing of the grand jury, and not discussing every detail of it with his wife. What had he done? How was he connected? How should he act? What did it mean?
And yet Frannie had been summoned, days ago, to be a witness in a murder investigation and hadn’t mentioned it to him even in passing? Didn’t want to bother him with it? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think that was it at all.
Something else was in play here.
He missed his left turn on to Broadway, immediately swerved – not in time – and, swearing, slammed his hand on the wheel so hard that he thought he might have broken it. Finally, his insides curdled, he made the next left that presented itself five blocks later.
Why had he left Frannie at the jail? Allowed himself to be conned out to ask Ron Beaumont about his damned secret? He and Frannie had each other’s trust or they had nothing. Something was very, very wrong with the picture, with Frannie’s actions as well as her explanations for them. How could she have done this to all of them?
And, perhaps more fundamentally, what exactly had she done?
He opened his window to breathe in some of the cold, sea-scented air. It wasn’t just anger after all. He brought his hand to his chest and pressed. His heart was beating strongly all right, but he felt as if a piece of it had been nicked away.
When it gets down to North Beach, Broadway is famous for its strip shows and tawdry tourism. But after it moves out of the old Italian neighborhood, through the city’s longest tunnel, then across Van Ness Avenue, it begins to define the ridge of the escarpment that falls steeply down to Cow Hollow and the Marina. At this point, the avenue boasts some of the most impressive residential structures in San Francisco.
The palazzos of power brokers share the street with consulates and private mansions and estates. The mayor lives on Broadway; so do one of the state’s US senators, the best-selling author west of Mississippi, the head of the country’s most profitable fashion house, and the managing partner of the city’s largest law firm. Broadway is the legal address and occasional residence of the heads of three of the ten most wealthy families in California. Overlooking, from a great height, the spectacular panoramic view of the Bay and both of its famous bridges, Broadway – particularly its north side – seems as far removed from the mundane cares of working people as it is possible to get. And yet, Hardy reflected, this is where Bree Beaumont had been murdered.
He had gotten his emotions back in check and was in the grip of what he knew to be a dangerous calm – he was sure it was his body’s natural defense to his tendency to feel things too deeply, to fall prey to his emotions.
He would sometimes get this way at trial, his concentration focused down to a single point. He was going to do what he had to do and do it right. Later he’d reflect on it, curse himself, drink too much, laugh, get sick, whatever. But not now.
Now he’d act.
Double-checking the address, he pulled up and parked at the curb. Aided by his glance at the police report in Glitsky’s office, he was recalling the story he’d followed in the newspaper after it had broken. He’d known that the woman, Bree, had been Max and Cassandra’s mom, so it had been more than ordinarily compelling. But Frannie had – even then – never mentioned Ron.
What Hardy remembered was that the mother of some of his kids’ classmates had been killed. Talk of politics. Big oil. Which meant big money. A beautiful young victim.
And somehow his wife was now in the mix.
The Beaumonts lived on the top floor of this monster, the penthouse – twelve floors up. The brass surrounding the glass double-door entry was polished to a shine. Inside, the expansive marble foyer which opened on to the elevator banks seemed to shimmer under a couple of enormous chandeliers.
But there was no getting in – the doors were locked, as Hardy realized he should have expected at this time of night. There was a night bell to one side of the door, which he pressed, but nothing happened.
He suddenly noticed a light flickering over one of the elevators. Somebody was coming down. Turning away, he walked about halfway back toward his car, then did an about face and waited until the couple came out of the elevator. He got to the door at the same time as they opened it going out and thanked them as he passed inside.
He rang another bell, this one from a bank next to the elevators, marked ‘Beaumont,’ and waited. And waited. It was a school night at half past ten. The family should be home, if this were in fact home anymore after Bree’s death.
The elevator stood open before him and he stepped in, pressing the penthouse button. He didn’t really believe anything would happen – in luxury residences such as this one, the elevator doors on the upper floors would often open directly into a living area. You needed a card or a key to go with the button. Much to his surprise, though, the doors closed and he started up.
He stepped out into a dimly lit lobby, ten feet on a side, with a hardwood floor covered by a Persian throw rug. Through a west-facing window, he could recognize the blinking lights on a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. There was only one door in the lobby, and he was standing in front of it. But no one answered his ring, his knock. In a last gesture of futility, he grabbed at the handle.
And the door opened. ‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘The kid gets a break.’
Behind him he heard the elevator door close, but he couldn’t force himself forward immediately. He wasn’t fooling himself. This wasn’t a deserted residence. Aside from being a recent crime scene (although there wasn’t any police tape), it was somebody’s home, and entering it without invitation was trespassing. If he went in, he was putting himself at great risk. He might get himself confused for a burglar – always bad luck. If he got caught, he could be disciplined by the state bar, and perhaps lose his license to practice law. Unlawful entry was a very serious matter.
But there were times that called for risk and this, he told himself, was one of them. His wife had never been in jail before either. If Ron Beaumont came home – or a building superintendent or security guard for that matter – while Hardy was inside, he would explain the situation. Technically, he wasn’t there to steal, so it wasn’t a burglary. Hardy would say he was worried there might have been another crime. But really, he didn’t care – he needed to find out where Ron might be, and the sooner the better.
In any event, fortified by his rationalizations – it was always good to have some story – he pushed the door all the way open, stepped over the lintel, and switched on the lights.
His first sight of the place stopped him cold. He thought he remembered from the newspapers that Bree Beaumont had been a professor at UC Berkeley who’d gone into industry. That may have once been true, but if the first glimpse of their abode were any indication, the Beaumonts had left academic privation far behind.
He closed the door behind him and was standing in an enormous sunken living room out of Architectural Digest. Wealth seemed to infuse the air around him. Framed modern original art graced the walls, each piece tastefully illuminated by recessed lighting. There were two seating areas – couches in leather and wing chairs in brocaded silk. Elegant end tables, coffee tables, a writing desk, a pair of matching marble pieces on pedestals. Along his right side, floor-to-ceiling windows displayed the glittering city below.
Following his eyes, he stepped up into a formal dining area – a granite table and six tubular chairs under an ultra-modern lighting device. A spacious gourmet kitchen was to his left across a bar of a dark space-age material.
Beyond the table – the wine racks, the little seating area off the formal dining room – Hardy got to the drapes covering the back wall. He pulled them back a foot or two, the dim light from the living room now all but lost behind him.
French doors gave on to a balcony. He opened them and stepped out, noticing the red Spanish tiles, a small, round outdoor dining table and chairs, and several plants. The balcony was neither large nor small, but the view made it magnificent. Facing due north, it was unimpeded for a hundred miles, especially on a night like tonight when a brisk breeze scoured the sky free of fog and haze.
It suddenly hit him – this was where Bree Beaumont had gone down. Walking to the edge of the balcony, he leaned out over the substantial cast-iron railing and looked down into what from this height appeared to be a square of light – the enclosed garden where she had lain undiscovered, apparently, for several hours. Stepping back, he sensed rather than felt a gust of wind out in front of him – it didn’t even rustle the plants on the ledge, though it did raise the hairs on his neck.
But he was wasting time out here, taking in the sights. He had to get something to lead him to Ron and then get out if he was to do Frannie any good, if tonight wasn’t already a wash.
He came back through the drapes into the sitting area off the dining room. In a moment, he’d passed through the kitchen into a hallway he’d ignored on his first pass. It led off the sunken living room to another wing, and on the first step in, he turned on the lights.
The room on his left had a blinking light that caught his attention. On a desk sat the telephone answering machine. It was an office, and as such, it might have what he needed. Crossing the room, planning to check first the messages, then the rolodex, then the computer, he heard a creak.
Frozen, he stood listening. A step back toward the hall. An unmistakable sound now, the front door opening. There was a shift in the light coming out of the living room into the hallway.
He had company.
There was no other option. Hardy cleared his throat loudly and went out to face whoever it was.
‘Hold it right there!’
‘I’m holding it.’
He was standing in the hall’s entrance, his hands wide apart, palms out before him at chest height. He was looking at a man about his size wearing black slacks, tennis shoes, and a green windbreaker. The man was holding a gun as though he knew what to do with it, and this got his complete attention.
‘You’re Hardy?’
‘Guilty.’ He kept his hands in the air. It would be a bad time for a sudden movement to get misunderstood. ‘I generally let the guy with the gun talk first, but maybe I should explain why I’m here. Are you Ron Beaumont?’ The man looked down at the weapon, then put it back into its shoulder holster. ‘No. I’m Phil Canetta, a sergeant out of Central Station.’ He came forward. ‘You’re Glitsky’s pal.’ It wasn’t a question.
Hardy nodded.
‘I was at the station when he called – he said somebody might want to keep on eye on you. You were on your way over here, and might need some help.’ An aggressive look. ‘I didn’t expect you’d be inside.’
‘The door wasn’t locked. I tried it and it opened. I’ve got to find the guy who lives here. Do you know him? Beaumont?’
‘No. I saw him the day of the murder, that’s all. I did meet her a couple times.’ Hardy must have changed expressions, since Canetta went on to explain. ‘I do some moonlight security – convention work, parties. Caloco does a lot of that.’
‘And Bree would be at these things?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’ Then. ‘And when she was around, you noticed.’
‘I saw her picture in the paper. Good-looking woman.’
Canetta almost angrily shook his head. ‘Didn’t come close.’ Hardy wondered a little at the strong response, but Canetta was going on. ‘So where is everybody?’
‘I don’t know. I hope they didn’t run.’
‘Were they close to bringing him in, the husband?’
‘I think it’s crossed their minds. Are you helping out on this murder somehow?’
He’d touched a nerve. ‘Are you kidding? Station cops don’t investigate murders. This is my beat, that’s all. The day it happened, I got the call and showed up here, and secured the scene until Glitsky’s people showed. The professionals.’ He almost sneered the word, but then, maybe remembering that Hardy was Glitsky’s friend, he got back to business. ‘They must be at a movie, out to dinner, or something.’
The wall clock read almost eleven. Hardy shook his head. ‘It’s getting late for kids on a school night. But I don’t want to just assume Beaumont’s on the run, not when there’s so many other alternatives. Maybe this place freaks out his kids. Maybe they’re all with relatives.’
‘Does he have any?’
Hardy wished he’d copied the file that Glitsky had given him. It might contain some of these details. There was one other avenue, but Hardy wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He only knew he hated to leave before exploring it. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there’s an answering machine in the office down that hall.’
‘Eight calls,’ Hardy remarked.
‘Popular guy.’
‘Either that or he hasn’t been here in a while.’
Canetta nodded. ‘I was going to say that next.’ He pointed to the machine. ‘Let’s hit that thing, see what it says.’
Hardy pushed the button.
Whatever else was going on, Ron Beaumont either hadn’t checked or hadn’t erased his messages since one oh seven p.m. on Tuesday, two days ago. It was one of those systems that announced the date and time of the calls, so Hardy and Canetta could place them exactly. The first was a man named Bill Tilton who wanted Ron to call back about insurance and left his number.
Canetta had come up beside Hardy, borrowed a pen from its holder on the desk, and was scribbling into a spiral pad. Hardy thought this was a bit odd, but maybe the sergeant wanted to be an inspector someday, get beyond station work. He also might simply want to solve a murder and rub it in homicide’s nose.
The machine kept talking. A woman with an Asian name – Kogee Sasaka? – called to remind Ron about their appointment, although she neglected to leave her number or the time or place of it, or what it was about.
James Pierce from Caloco. Asking Ron to call him back. There were some questions about Bree’s effects and he’d like to come up sometime and…
Another woman: Marie. Just calling to say hi.
Moving through Tuesday afternoon. Al Valens. Something about Bree’s files, some new data she had been working on.
‘Both sides of the fence.’
Hardy pushed the pause button. ‘What’s that?’
‘The first guy, Pierce, and this new one, Valens. He works with Damon Kerry.’ The candidate for governor. ‘His campaign manager.’
Hardy turned back to Canetta. ‘For a station cop, you’ve got a pretty good handle on this case, don’t you?’
A defensive shrug. ‘I read the papers. Whatever they say downtown, there’s no rule says we’re not allowed to think.’
‘So what do you think about these guys, sergeant – Pierce and Valens?’
A moment of hesitation, seeing if Hardy was playing with him, then deciding he wasn’t. ‘Something with Bree’s work, I’d guess. They’re on opposite sides in these gas additive wars.’
‘So what would they both want with Ron?’
A moment’s consideration. ‘He must know something.’
‘About her work?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. That’s what I read. It was her work.’
‘That got her killed? That means it probably wasn’t Ron.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe not.’ Canetta shrugged with what Hardy thought was an exaggerated nonchalance. ‘Which brings us back. Maybe Ron knows something.’
‘I wonder if he knows what it is.’
Canetta nodded. ‘Or finally figured something out. If it was her work. Maybe that’s why he ran, if he did.’
Hardy knew next to nothing about gas additives or the wars related to them. His concern was limited to his wife at the moment. But if Canetta needed to air his theories, it wouldn’t hurt to listen. He pushed the play button again.
They’d gotten to Wednesday morning now, yesterday. Déjà vu as Hardy heard Theresa Wilson’s voice again, from Merryvale. The Beaumont children hadn’t yet arrived at school and she was calling Ron to find out why, where they might be.
Hardy hit pause. ‘So if we assume the kids were at school and got picked up Tuesday, he left right after that.’
Next up was Marie for the second time.
Then the last voice. ‘Hi Ron. You know I told you about this subpoena I got? I’m worried. I’m sure they’re going to want me to talk about you and Bree. We need to get together to keep our stories straight. But don’t call here after about six thirty. I’ll try to reach you again when I can talk. Are you there? Ron?’ The tape went silent.
‘ “Keep our stories straight,” ’ Canetta said into the vacuum. ‘That doesn’t sound very good, does it?’
Hardy turned to him, his voice flat. ‘That was my wife.’
Canetta fixated on Frannie telling Ron that they had to keep their stories straight. To Hardy, the most telling line had been when she told him not to call after six thirty – not to call, that is, after Hardy might be home. Again the truth jolted him – it had been no simple oversight that had kept her from mentioning the subpoena to him. She wanted to keep her relationship with Ron hidden and this realization, though maybe predictable, hit him like a jab to the solar plexus.
But it wouldn’t be smart to share his reaction with Canetta. The point was that there were no hints about Ron’s disappearance on the answering machine. Hardy wasn’t going to locate him, not tonight, and that meant he wasn’t getting Frannie out of jail.
To Hardy, it was obvious that Canetta was consciously resisting the urge to talk about Frannie’s involvement. The sergeant cursorily rearranged a few items on the desk. When he’d stalled long enough, he straightened up, turned around, and cleared his throat. ‘Well, since we’re here, we might as well make sure nobody’s dead in the other rooms. What do you say?’
They walked down the hallway and turned into the first of the bedrooms, a child’s room with a twin bed made up neatly with a white lace bedspread. There was a collection of dolls on the bed and a decent-sized pile of beanie babies in the corner. On the wall, stenciled roses in half-a-dozen colors bloomed on the powder-blue sponge-painted wall.
Canetta walked directly across the room and opened the top dresser drawer. ‘Look at this.’ Hardy came up behind him. Except for a couple of pairs of socks, there wasn’t anything to see. ‘They’re gone,’ Canetta observed. ‘We’d better be, too.’
On the way out, Hardy made sure the front door was locked behind them. The two men rode down the elevator in an awkward silence, then crossed the lobby and stepped outside.
‘What’s your plan now?’ Canetta asked.
Hardy didn’t know. It was late and nothing had worked. He shrugged. ‘Try to find him. See if his kids are in school. If not, tell Glitsky, I suppose. If he’s on the run…’
A silence fell and Hardy sighed.
‘Your wife?’
A nod. ‘They’ve got her locked up at the county jail. The two of them, Frannie and Ron, he told her some secret…’ Again, he just trailed off. It sounded so lame. ‘She told me he’d never let her stay down there if he knew she was in jail, but it was his secret to tell, not hers. She promised him.’
Canetta had no solace to offer. Hardy could see what he was thinking and, worse, didn’t blame him. ‘Well, good luck.’
He drove around for a while, trying to decide whether to visit the jail again, go home and sleep, or wake up a judge. Everything felt wrong. Finally he wound up on Sutter Street, in front of David Freeman’s building, where he worked.
Upstairs in his office, Hardy called and woke up Glitsky at home. The lieutenant agreed that Ron Beaumont’s disappearance – if that’s what it was – increased his profile as a murder suspect. It didn’t help Frannie either. Finally, Glitsky promised that he would get in early tomorrow and talk to Scott Randall, maybe try to pull a string or two at the jail, but he didn’t hold out much hope.
After he hung up, Hardy thought a moment and seriously considered a night raid on Braun’s house, maybe getting David Freeman to accompany him, to make his case to the judge. But he knew he’d only make things worse with any kind of spontaneous act in the mood he was in.
He had to think, develop a plan, stay rational. But the thought of his wife lying on one of the jail cots, surrounded by scum, terrified and unprotected, made this a tall order.
It took very little imagination to see her there, curled under the thin fabric of the institutional blanket. Smells of disinfectant, sounds of desperation. Wide-eyed and sleepless on the unyielding mattress, wondering what she’d done, how it had happened. What tomorrow would bring.
Four days! Hardy suddenly sat upright with the realization. Braun had given her four days. She couldn’t do four days, even in AdSeg. He knew his wife, or thought he did. Four days in jail would cause a lot of damage that would be a long time healing.
He sat trying to come up with something, anything. But it was the middle of the night, and the world was asleep. At a little after one o’clock, he accepted that he’d failed. He wasn’t getting his wife out of jail today. If he didn’t get at least a little rest, he wouldn’t be any good for her tomorrow either.
There was nothing to do but go home.
But his night wasn’t over yet.
His house was a railroad-style Victorian – a long hallway down one side with rooms coming off to the right – about fifteen blocks from the beach, well within San Francisco’s belt of nearly perennial fog. He’d run into the wall of it, and by the time he’d reached his street, his windshield wipers were beating a steady rhythm. Of course there was no available street parking, but tonight he decided to take the risk and left his car in a no-parking zone right around the corner on Clement. He figured he’d be up and out before dawn anyway – most days the parking enforcers didn’t get rolling until well after that.
The house sat between a brace of four-story apartment buildings and was set back maybe forty feet from the curb. Hardy couldn’t see it until he was right in front. As he opened the gate through the white picket fence, he couldn’t see Moses, either, sitting on the darkened porch with his back against the front door. ‘Where is she?’
The surprise of the voice out of the dead night fog almost knocked him backwards. When he got moving again, he didn’t waste any words. ‘Still locked up. Let’s go inside.’
Erin sat in her bathrobe, her feet up under her in the window seat, the blinds closed against the night and the fog. Moses paced in front of the fire’s embers. Ed Cochran snored gently in Hardy’s favorite recliner, so Hardy had pulled in one of the dining-room chairs and now straddled it backwards. After twenty minutes of regaling them with the highlights of his frustrating night, he’d just asked if either one of them had heard Frannie talk about Ron Beaumont, his kids, Bree’s death, or anything that might relate.
Moses stopped walking, folded his arms, and scowled. He loved his sister, but between his work as owner of the Little Shamrock bar and his family, they didn’t spend a lot of time sharing special moments.
Hardy’s eyes went to Erin. She shifted where she sat and looked somewhere off into the middle distance. ‘Erin?’ he prompted her. ‘What?’
She came back to him. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s anything really. She never mentioned anybody by name.’ She hesitated and Hardy forced himself to wait until she figured out how she was going to say it. ‘From the way she talked, I assumed it was another woman, one of the mothers from Merryvale, but it could have been part of this.’
‘What?’
Erin sighed, hating to betray her own confidences, if that’s what this turned out to be. ‘This is all nebulous, but one of her friends – it might not have been this Ron or Bree – evidently had had a marriage go bad a long time ago, years. Now they had a new life here and suddenly this person was afraid the old spouse was going to show up and start causing problems.’
‘What kind of problems?’
Erin shifted again, and picked at some thread on her bathrobe for a few seconds. ‘Custody problems, I think.’
‘But how could that be? Divorces don’t get final until all the custody issues are settled. How did this come up, anyway? If this is her giant secret, I don’t know why-’
‘I didn’t say it was, Dismas. I don’t know if it had anything to do with this. That’s about as far as it went anyway, then suddenly she didn’t want to talk about it, maybe as though she remembered she couldn’t.’
‘That could be it,’ Moses said.
Hardy wasn’t so sure, but at this point he’d take anything.
‘How did the whole thing come up in the first place?’
Erin shook her head, as though she were unsure herself. ‘We were just sitting watching Rebecca and Vincent in the backyard here – it couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks ago. They were having one of their great afternoons, just playing and laughing and being wonderful.
‘Anyway, suddenly, really out of the blue, Frannie said she couldn’t imagine maintaining any kind of normal life if she thought someone were going to try to take away her kids. I told her she didn’t have to worry – why was she thinking about that? So she started to say something about this friend of hers, just what I’ve told you, not anything really. She didn’t mention a name, but now tonight when you asked, it occurred to me it could be this Ron.’
Moses piped in. ‘It might explain why he ran.’
Hardy was desperate for answers, but he didn’t think this was one of them. ‘We don’t know that he did run, Mose. He might be staying at Grandma’s house for all we know.’
‘Well, how can we find that out?’
Hardy was done in. ‘I’m working on that,’ he said.
On his best day, David Freeman would never qualify as debonair and charming, and this wasn’t close to his best day. He sat now in the pre-dawn at his ancient kitchen table which was laden with yellow legal pads, pencils, wads of Kleenex, open and closed lawbooks, and a dozen or more unwashed (perhaps from the look of them never washed) coffee mugs. He wore the frayed remains of a maroon bathrobe that had been new during the Nixon years. Gray chest hairs peeked out the top of a similarly graying T-shirt. Of course he hadn’t shaved – Hardy had buzzed him awake only five minutes before. His jowls hung, his hair rioted, and for good measure he was chewing the stub of last night’s cigar.
‘You know, David, if the law business ever fades out on you, I think you could go into the movies, become a leading man, maybe marry Julia Roberts-’
‘Who?’
Hardy shook his head. ‘Never mind.’ If it didn’t have to do with the law, Freeman probably didn’t know about it and certainly wasn’t interested.
And Hardy wasn’t much in the mood for witty banter himself. He’d slept less than three hours before rolling out of his bed, which last night had been his front-room couch. He’d given his bed to Ed and Erin – and God bless Erin. She was taking care of the kids, getting them to school, covering all those essential bases. This was a great relief even though the situation filled him with guilt.
But Hardy couldn’t waste energy thinking about the time he wasn’t spending with his children. Frannie was still in jail. ‘So I thought you’d talk to Braun.’
Freeman’s lugubrious face didn’t offer any solace. ‘It’s always a pleasure to chew the fat with Marian, Diz, but if you think she’s going to let anybody out of jail on my personal say-so, you’ve got our relationship wrong. How did your sweet wife get herself in so deep?’
Hardy outlined it briefly. David shifted the cigar butt to the other side of his mouth. Hardy started to say something, ready to stand up for Frannie’s integrity, to explain away her insult to Marian Braun, but the old man held up his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter what she did, Diz, or why. You ought to know that by now. Just wait. Let me think a minute.’
Freeman was justly famous in San Francisco as much for his courtroom theatrics as for his knowledge of the law. The point was that he got results in an extraordinary number of cases and he didn’t care how. As a defense attorney, his legal mandate was to provide the best defense the law allowed, and whether that included arguing some arcane legal point or standing on his head and spitting wooden nickels, that’s what he’d do. He was damn proud of the fact that he had no pride.
And now he was thinking strategy. Frannie might not be his client, yet, but he’d gotten lots of folks out from behind bars in his time, and at base that’s really what Hardy was asking him to help with.
‘It seems to me that we’ve got two separate contempt charges – the secret, then getting smart with the judge. Am I right?’
Hardy nodded.
‘OK.’ Freeman pondered. ‘I don’t think we’ve got a habeas on the secret. Randall’s got every right to throw her in jail if she won’t spill it. Talk to Susan McDougal.’ Hardy thought it was typical of Freeman to show no interest in Ron Beaumont’s secret. ‘But if she’d apologize to Marian, say maybe they were both having a bad day – would she go there?’
Hardy wasn’t sure – a lot of things involving Frannie were in doubt lately – and he said so.
‘Well, if she would that might get us to first base. Then maybe we hit Randall, or Pratt, but that’ll be a tough nut, too.’
‘Glitsky’s already working on that.’
Freeman shook his head. ‘You think a police lieutenant is going to persuade Randall to let somebody out of jail? A lieutenant, I might add, who somehow got himself out of the loop on this particular homicide, and didn’t even know the grand jury had convened over it? I think you’re whistlin’ Dixie. Obviously something’s going on here between the DA and the police. Glitsky’s not the way. Randall will stonewall him.‘
‘How do you know? You know Randall?’
‘I caught a couple of his closing arguments for fun. He’s a hell of a trial lawyer, but I don’t know what he’s made of inside. I can’t imagine jailing an otherwise good citizen over this unless he knows it’s the key to a murder conviction. It wouldn’t be trivial. It would help to know if he’s got political ambitions.’
‘Why’s that?’
Freeman regarded Hardy as though he were a slow five-year-old. ‘If he is, we use the media. Call a press conference and make him look like an unreasonable, detestable, miserable son of a bitch keeping a good mother from her loving family. But there’s a flaw with that, too.’
‘Which is?’
‘Your typical prosecutor, it makes his day to keep mothers from their families. As you know.’
Hardy used to be a prosecutor and he remembered. It wasn’t exactly that he had wanted to separate mothers and children, but he’d never shed a tear over sending someone he’d convicted off to jail, even if a relative or lover was sobbing horribly behind him in the courtroom, which happened quite frequently. So Freeman was right – Hardy shouldn’t put any hope in a media campaign with Scott Randall. ‘But Pratt might be different,’ the old man said. ‘She’s got to care about public reaction, about votes, right? We’ve got an election here in a couple of weeks.’
‘Unfortunately, not Pratt’s. She’s got two more years no matter what we do now. Still, we can try it,’ Freeman conceded, though it was plain he considered it a long shot. ‘Of course, after her night in jail, Frannie might have decided that this precious secret of hers isn’t the hill she wants to die on. Especially when she learns her friend may have left town.’
Hardy was at the jail at six forty-five, and they let him inside at seven sharp. Freeman was going to talk to Marian Braun, and try to make some apology with which Frannie would go along. He hoped. He also knew that Glitsky would light a fire under the homicide inspectors working the Beaumont case to find Ron.
But first there was Frannie. He had to see her again, get some sense of what was happening, and to that end he was here.
The door to the visitors’ room opened and she stood still, as though afraid to move forward, perhaps afraid of him. The guard shot a questioning look at Hardy. ‘This OK? You ready?’
And as the door closed behind her, Frannie took one step into the room.
‘He wasn’t home.’ Hardy was using his ‘I’ve got bad news’ lawyer voice, uninflected and neutral. Reciting facts. ’Ron wasn’t there. He’s moved out.‘
She didn’t look any better than she had the night before, but she didn’t look worse, either. Maybe she’d slept a little. The worst thing was this tension that seemed to keep her from moving forward. Hardy had spent so much time punishing himself for his inability to get her sprung out of jail that it had never occurred to him that she might be harboring similar self-loathing feelings for what she’d put him and the kids through.
Something in her look – and that thought struck him now. He would take the first literal step, reaching for her. With a heart-rending sob, she fell into his arms.
‘I couldn’t tell you last night, Dismas. Abe was there, remember. He came in just as we got to it, or started to.’
‘So tell Abe, too.’
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do that. I told Ron that I couldn’t promise not to tell you, that I told you everything, but Abe wouldn’t be the same thing at all.’
‘Couldn’t you have just asked him to leave last night, step outside for a minute?’
‘No, not in front of you. Then he would have known I’d told you something, wouldn’t he? And what could that be except Ron’s secret? He wouldn’t have let it go. You know Abe. It’s not a matter of trust, but he’s a cop. He’s always a cop first, even with you.’
Hardy knew she was right. A couple of years before, he’d had a case where he’d gotten confused on that point, and Abe hadn’t talked to him for several months. If Abe knew that Hardy was holding a secret that related to one of Abe’s cases and didn’t tell him about it, it would be tricky at best. Frannie had saved him from having to deal with that.
She sat next to him, her hands holding his on her lap. She was still in jail, but at least they were talking now, man and wife again. What he really wanted to know about was the relationship between her and Ron, but he wouldn’t ask that specifically. It shouldn’t matter. She was his wife and she needed his help. That was today’s issue; when she was out of this situation, he’d deal with the rest of it.
Also, he told himself that if it did matter, if something threatening to their marriage was going on, then she should tell him – she would tell him, wouldn’t she? He knew that the betrayal of failing to tell would be worse than anything she might have done. She would tell him.
But he couldn’t ask directly. He’d go general and see how she went with it. He put on his lawyer face, and asked in his least aggressive tone, ‘So what’s this all about?’
Frannie was using his hands as a pair of worry beads. He noticed she was shaking and took off his nylon jacket. He put it over her shoulders.
The guard knocked and said she was going to miss breakfast if this meeting didn’t end, but Hardy with his vast legal expertise finagled a couple of cups of coffee and this morning’s food unit, biscuits and gravy, for which they waited a few minutes in an uncomfortable silence.
Why doesn’t he ask me? she was thinking. Can he really care so little that he doesn’t even ask? If it were me, that’s the only question I’d have, about me and Ron.
He’s been in this business too long, that’s it. It’s changed him so fundamentally. Now he sits there so cold and clinical and he’s got another case, another problem to solve. Never mind if his wife’s been unfaithful. He just wants to know what happened. Just the facts, ma’am – but it wasn’t a Joe Friday joke with him. It was his essence.
Please, Dismas, would you just care enough about us to ask?
She tried to will him to talk, but he only sat at the table, patient and understanding, waiting for her breakfast to be delivered. Occasionally he would squeeze her hand, the way he might comfort any female client.
She wanted to punch him.
When the tray arrived, Frannie took a few quick bites. She was famished. She had been so upset last night that she’d been unable to get down any of her evening meal. Finally, she put the plastic spoon down and sipped at her coffee. ‘OK.’ She spoke to herself in a near whisper, as though afraid that even in this private room, someone would hear. ‘But this has to stay between us.’
‘This secret that can get you out of jail? You want me to know and not use it?’
‘That’s the only way I can tell you, Dismas. That’s what I promised Ron. I can’t tell you as my lawyer, especially not as my lawyer. Only as my husband. You’ll understand when you hear what it is.’
Hardy wasn’t sure this would prove to be true – he wasn’t understanding much of this as it developed – but he knew he had to know, and to know he had to promise not to tell.
He wasn’t comfortable with any part of the idea. And beyond his own personal reservation, there were two other basic, professional reasons for his reluctance to make this promise. As a licensed attorney, he was an officer of the court, obliged to cooperate with law enforcement in a whole slew of public matters.
The second reason was even more fundamental – if Frannie told her secret to him as her lawyer, it would be protected under the attorney-client privilege. No court could make him reveal it – it was a shield. What Frannie was asking was fraught with danger. As a private citizen, he could very easily find himself called before the grand jury and in the same position as his wife, unable to testify, tossed into the clink. Beyond that, if he got into any investigation about Ron Beaumont, and he couldn’t claim privilege, then he could very easily picture himself having to lie about what he did or didn’t know to the very people – Glitsky, Canetta – who might be helping him. It was ugly in all respects, and he tried to explain it all calmly to Frannie.
But she wasn’t budging. ‘No,’ she still spoke in a near-whisper, but her voice was firm. ‘What will happen is that you’ll trust the privilege.’
‘And? What’s your point? That’s how it works.’
‘But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the system doesn’t work.’
‘Uh oh,’ Hardy said.
‘What?’
‘The system doesn’t work. That oldie but goodie greatest hit of the sixties. Except I get nervous when I hear it. Because I’ll tell you what – sometimes the system does work.’
‘It didn’t in Ron’s case. It betrayed him.’ Her eyes had some of that old spark back in them, although Hardy wasn’t especially delighted to see it. She reached out toward him and her voice softened. ‘Dismas, you have to believe me on this. Ron had a reason not to trust lawyers, you’ll see.’
‘I don’t doubt that,’ Hardy said. ‘I don’t trust too many of them myself. But this is me.’
‘You the person, not you the lawyer.’
He hung his head and shook it from side to side. His wife had her hand on his knee. He drained the last gulp from the plastic cup of tepid coffee. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I promise. It’s between you and me-the-person, me-the-son, and me-the-Holy-Ghost. Let’s hear it.’
Frannie took a last look back toward the door to the room, making sure no guard lurked to overhear. Then she came back to Hardy, took a breath, and began. ‘Ron and Bree had been fighting a lot over this change in her jobs.’
Hardy didn’t like this opening. ‘I really hope that after all this preamble you’re not going to tell me, “Oh, yeah, I remember. He did kill her after all.” ’
The concept wasn’t all that funny, but she forced a smile. ‘He didn’t kill her. He was with me when she died.’
Whether or not this was good news remained a question, but he wasn’t saying anything about it right now. ‘All right. I’m listening. What were they fighting about?’
‘Well, her old job with the oil company was evidently pretty great. Anonymous but big money. She did her research and wrote her papers and nobody paid too much attention out in the real world. She was kind of a star in-house. I mean, she played a big role paving the legislative way for this three-billion-dollar industry, but she wasn’t really a public figure.’
‘But when she signed on with Kerry, that changed?’
‘Right. She started getting a lot of press right away about all the problems with these oil additives.’
‘So why was this an issue with Ron? I mean, if she was the one working, why did he have any say in it?’
‘Same reason I have some kind of input on what you do, the clients you take. At least I think I do, don’t I?’
This was true. Frannie wouldn’t want him to defend, say, the tobacco companies, or a mass murderer, and if he decided he had to/wanted to/needed to, they would certainly have words on the topic. But this whole area didn’t need to be aired, not this morning on top of everything else. Hardy glossed over it. ‘You’re right. But we’re not talking about me and you. We’re talking about Ron and Bree, and they were arguing, right?’
‘Right.’ She was tightening up, as clipped as he was. But he had to keep pushing her. He had to know.
‘OK, and what were they arguing about? Politics? Money?’
But Frannie surprised him. ‘No, nothing like that. It was the kids. Ron’s kids. Max and Cassandra.’
‘They weren’t her kids?’
‘No. Ron was already divorced once. They’re his from that time.’
‘OK. And?’
‘And what?’
‘How was this new job going to affect the kids?’ Suddenly Hardy remembered the discussion he’d had with Erin and Moses last night. ‘Is this the custody thing you mentioned to Erin?’
A look of chagrin, her own carelessness coming back to hurt her. ‘How did Erin connect that with Ron? I never mentioned him.’
She didn’t even mention him to Erin? This news – more secrets – didn’t make his heart sing. But Hardy had a craggy smile he could trot out for juries, and he employed it now, a deflection when something really bothered him and he didn’t dare show it. ‘I think some crafty lawyer might have helped her. But I’m missing the connection here. Job and fights, OK, but how does that relate to custody?’
Frannie wasn’t ready to say exactly, not just yet. ‘Ron thought she was sacrificing the safety of his children for some vague notion of all future children.’ At Hardy’s uncomprehending gaze, she pressed on. ‘She had come to believe that these gas additives were ruining the water supply. She was all worried about cancer clusters and deformed babies.’
‘And St Ron didn’t want her to expose all of this? Why not?’
She frowned. They were getting to the crux of it. ‘Because the more Bree became a public figure, the better the odds that Ron’s ex-wife found out where he was.’
‘And why would that be a problem? For the children, I mean? Was she a stalker, something like that?’
‘Not exactly.’
He waited, then had to prompt her. ‘Frannie.’
It sounded to Hardy as though she were trying the words out for the first time, to see how they flew. ‘She was abusive.’
‘Who? The ex-wife?’
A nod. ‘Dawn. Her name was Dawn. She was’ – Frannie seemed to be stumbling over the words - ’uh, she was starting to try to make money off the kids. Ron found some pictures.‘
‘Are we talking kiddie porn here?’
Frannie nodded.
Hardy blew out a long breath. ‘Jesus.’
‘So he filed for divorce, but even before it got to court, she started accusing him, saying he took the pictures. And the judge believed her and she got custody.’
‘But he’s got them now.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘He had to take them back.’
‘What do you mean take them back?’ It took a beat for the meaning of it to sink in. ‘Are you saying he kidnapped his own children?’
Frannie didn’t like that terminology. ‘Maybe technically, but that wasn’t what it was. He was saving them. And then, after he’d gone through all that, Bree was going to threaten the whole-’
He held up a hand. ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute! Forget about Bree. You’re telling me Ron lost the custody battle in court and then he took the kids? When was this?’
‘About eight years ago.’
Hardy sat riveted to his chair, barely hearing her.
She continued. ‘He managed to get set up out here, change his name, get together with Bree. And everything was going along fine until she got involved with this Kerry…’ She stopped.
Hardy couldn’t hold back the sarcasm. ‘Everything was going along fine except that he was wanted for kidnapping?’
‘But that wasn’t a real problem-’
‘Yes it was, Frannie. I don’t care what he told you.’
But she was shaking her head. ‘No. That was over. Nobody was looking for him anymore. There wasn’t a problem until he and Bree started fighting, and he thought even that would blow over until-’
Hardy cut her off again. His earlier, patient, and understanding persona was taking a beating. ‘Until she had the bad grace to get herself killed.’ He dragged his palm across his forehead. ‘So where is he now?’
‘I don’t know.’
He tried to keep his voice modulated, but wasn’t entirely successful. ‘You realize of course that if the police get anywhere on this, they’re going to come to the conclusion that he killed her. The truth is, I think he killed her.’
‘He didn’t kill her, Dismas. He’s desperate. He’s trying to save his children.’
‘He kidnapped his children to save them. Maybe he killed his wife to save her. Or here’s a thought – maybe he killed his wife to save the kids again. Maybe he’ll kill you next.’
‘He didn’t kill anybody. He’s not going to kill anybody.’
Hardy would have said that he was at the end of his tether when he’d arrived at the jail. Now there was no doubt about it – he was completely wrung out. Frannie’s hollow denial gonged in his ears, but he knew he was powerless to convince her of anything but what she already thought. Not today in any case, not now.
He consciously reined himself in, sought a different path. ‘So Ron’s gone and you’re here. Telling the grand jury what you know can’t make any difference now to him.’
‘Of course it can. If they search for him and find him, they’ll take his kids. But they’re not even trying to locate him yet – you told me that.’
‘They will be, Frannie. He’s going to be their prime suspect as soon as he’s officially missing, which is going to happen like two minutes after Abe starts looking for him. By Tuesday morning when it meets again, the grand jury’s going to indict him for Bree’s murder, you wait and see.’
This hard fact – and Hardy believed it was the whole truth – finally seemed to get through to her. She slumped back in her chair, hugging his jacket around her. When she looked up at him, the fight had gone out of her. Still, she wasn’t backing down. She said it flatly. ‘He didn’t kill her, Dismas.’
He sighed. ‘All right, let’s go with that. Either way, what do you want me to do now?’
Lou the Greek’s was a dark bar/restaurant in the basement of a bail bondsman’s building across the street from the Hall of Justice. When Hardy was at court, he’d often stop into the place for some kind of lunch or a drink at the end of the day. Lou the Greek had married a Chinese woman and every day she would put together her own version of California-Asian cuisine.
All over the city, celebrity chefs were making their reputations and fortunes by marrying the finest ingredients from the Pacific Rim and creating stunning masterpieces – lobster ravioli in a lemon-grass-infused beurre blanc, tuna sashimi over tuscan white beans with thyme and wasabi mustard. Here at Lou’s you’d get stuffed grape leaves with sweet-and-sour sauce, fried squid floating in a bowl of dip made from garlic, cucumbers, and yoghurt. Surprisingly, most of Lou’s wife’s stuff tasted pretty good even if the architecture of the plate, as they called it, left a little something to be desired.
But it was still hours from lunchtime, and Hardy wasn’t there to eat anyway. He was tucked into a corner booth around a mug of coffee, waiting for David Freeman.
After leaving Frannie, he’d gone by Glitsky’s empty office, leaving a note about Ron’s disappearance, then went down to the third floor to confront Scott Randall personally – physically wasn’t even out of the question.
Even though it was well past eight o’clock, there wasn’t a soul in the entire DA’s wing. And they wondered why their conviction rates were in the toilet. Convictions, hell – they didn’t even charge crimes in San Francisco at the same rate as in other counties.
So Hardy went to Lou’s to wait, perhaps to try and think. He’d all but forgotten about the existence of the drinking breakfast crowd – guys and girls who were here when the door opened at six a.m. and had a couple of beers or a Bloody Mary. He recognized half-a-dozen fringe players from around the Hall and wondered how many of them recognized their need for a morning pick-me-up as any kind of danger sign.
But being a supercilious bastard was an easy game to play. At the moment, he didn’t feel he had much of a leg up on any of them. His wife was still in jail and all of his training, discipline, sobriety, and connections weren’t doing her any good at all.
For half a second he considered downing a couple of shots of something, put himself into creative mode, and out of his linear head until some great idea presented itself. Except that those great wet ideas, and he’d had plenty, never seemed to make the cut after the hangover.
Lou was silent with a surly edge this morning, and that suited Hardy to his toes. He pushed his mug toward the side of the table and got it topped up just as David Freeman slid into the booth across from him. ‘Hey Lou, give me one of those fast, would you? Three sugars, black. Christ, it’s dark in here. You ever notice that, Diz?’
‘The food looks better that way. What did Braun say?’
Freeman wasn’t in any hurry to get to it. He fiddled with his jacket for a minute, and squirmed down into the leatherette seat. ‘Marian. You know I took her out a couple of times when we were both starting out. Everybody called her Marian the librarian of course. Great legs.’ Freeman sighed, remembering, then clucked sympathetically. ‘She used to be a lot more fun.’
‘We all did, David.’
‘Not true. Take me, for example. I’m in my prime. Have been for a while, actually.’
‘I’m happy for you,’ Hardy replied. ‘What’s the opposite of prime? That’s where I am. What did Marian say about my wife?’ Freeman had his hands folded on the table between them. Lou was back with his coffee and Freeman pulled it over in front of him, blowing on it, stalling. ‘David?’
A glance over the mug. ‘Truth is, and she didn’t make any bones about it, she’s not too happy with her.’
‘Truth is, I’m not so much either.’
A pause. ‘So I gather she didn’t tell you the big secret?’
Hardy shrugged that off – he didn’t even want to start trying to explain this mess to David Freeman. If he got even a taste of the bone he’d gnaw it to dust. ‘She says it’s a matter of honor. She gave her word and she can’t tell.’ He made a face. ‘But that wasn’t the issue with Braun anyway.’
‘No,’ Freeman agreed. ‘Though that might have been better. If it was only a matter of law…’ He let it hang there.
‘She’s pissed?’
‘Very.’
Hardy swore. ‘Would it help if I talked to her? Got Frannie to apologize? Did you tell her there are young children involved here?’
‘I brought out the heavy artillery, Diz. She doesn’t – how can I put this? – give a shit. She said Frannie’s done it to herself. Braun’s never in her career had anybody show such disrespect for the bench.’
‘That’s got to be an exaggeration.’
‘It doesn’t matter if it is if that’s how the judge feels.’ Freeman shrugged. ‘The two of ’em got into a cat fight, Diz, that’s what happened.‘
‘But Frannie didn’t do anything, David. She’s going along living her life, our life. She’s not a criminal, not even a suspect for anything-’
‘Material witness.’
‘Not even that, not really.’
Again, Freeman’s maddening nonchalant shrug. The law was the law. You could rant about it all you want, as people complained about the weather, and to about as much effect. ‘It’s the grand jury, Diz. You know as well as I do. Hell, you’ve even used it.’
Hardy couldn’t deny it. Grand juries had awesome power. When he’d been a prosecutor, going before the grand jury had been one of his favorite pastimes. He would take a recalcitrant witness, put him in front of the panel without his attorney present, no judge to keep things on point, and keep that poor sucker up there for hours, often without a food or water or bathroom break, asking leading questions, doing whatever it took to get his evidence on to the record, because that’s what the grand jury was for.
And though Scott Randall was certainly abusing it now, Hardy had to remember that the grand jury had come into existence, and still functioned, as a vehicle to protect civil rights. Because of its secrecy provisions and the teeth with which infractions against them were enforced, the grand jury was the only place where prosecutors could get answers from scared or recalcitrant witnesses, where the truth could come out. Nobody could ever know you were even there or what you might have said. You were safe – from your enemies, from corrupt officials, from the prying media.
In theory, anyway.
But now Frannie. He would not have dreamed this could ever happen to someone in his personal life. And never to his wife. Frannie wasn’t living on the edge of the law. She wasn’t like the others. Except that now, to Marian Braun and Scott Randall, it appeared that she was.
Even after all of his experience with the law, this perspective hit him with almost a concussive force. The law could happen to anybody. Again, Freeman’s analogy with the weather. A hurricane had just swept Frannie up, and now she was in it.
But Freeman was resolutely moving ahead, as he did. Problem-solving. ‘Have you talked to anybody yet who’s found the husband, what’s his name?’
‘Beaumont. Ron Beaumont. No, Glitsky wasn’t around. I left him a note. I’m going back up after we’re done here. But let’s not leave Frannie.’
‘I’m not leaving her. I think we ought to go to the newspapers with this after all. Even if Randall and Pratt don’t fold, Marian might be responsive to that kind of pressure. At least it’s worth a shot.’ He drank some coffee. ‘But I think we need to consider cutting our losses.’
‘Which are?’
‘The four days. Unless they locate Mr Beaumont and can get him to talk, she’s got herself a bigger problem than four days.’
Scott Randall was sitting in a folding chair, his legs crossed comfortably. With him in the large but spartan expanse of Sharron Pratt’s office were homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, homicide sergeants Tyler Coleman and Jorge Batavia, and Randall’s own DA’s investigator Peter Struler. Randall was having himself a fine morning. At last, things were moving along on Beaumont, and all because of this Frannie Hardy woman.
Sometimes, he reflected, you just had to take prisoners.
And if it got to that, as it had here, then invariably you alienated some people. In this case, it was Glitsky and his sergeants. Well, Randall thought, maybe next time they got a hot homicide they would try to keep their investigation alive even if there happened to be a crisis in the department. For now, they just had their noses out of joint because Randall and Struler had actually made progress on a case they considered all but closed. Turf wars. Too bad for them.
But Glitsky, as head of the homicide detail, naturally had to put a different face on it. Now he was barking at Pratt. ‘I know this woman, Sharron. She is a close personal friend. She watched my kids for a month after my wife died. She should not be in jail.’
‘Evidently Judge Braun doesn’t agree with you, lieutenant. I’m not sure I do, either.’
Pratt didn’t like Glitsky. She thought the police were out to undermine her authority, and make her look bad whenever and wherever they could. For her part, the DA took every opportunity to criticize the force. She’d run for office on a platform of stomping out police brutality – nowhere near the greatest of the city’s many problems. The Police Department union had supported her opponent and she wasn’t likely to forget it.
She would often choose not to have her office prosecute a suspect that the police had already arrested because she didn’t believe in so-called victimless crimes. So at least every week or two she’d simply set free suspected prostitutes, druggies, and other assorted misunderstood persons.
But she wasn’t going to release Frannie Hardy. No siree. There were legal principles involved here. She was standing her ground. ‘Isn’t this woman,’ she asked, ‘isn’t her husband the attorney? He used to work at this office, didn’t he?’
Randall spoke up. ‘Until he got fired.’
Glitsky shot him a look. ‘He quit.’
Randall didn’t rise to it. ‘Check the record,’ he retorted mildly. Back to Pratt. ‘Dismas Hardy, and he was fired.’
Pratt’s mouth turned up a millimeter, a beaming smile for her. ‘Ah, yes. I’ve tried to work with him before.’
Glitsky noted the emphasis on the word ‘tried’ and Pratt’s use of it didn’t bode well for the Hardy camp. But he wasn’t through fighting for Frannie, not by a long shot. ‘Look.’ He summoned up a conciliatory tone. ‘Sharron. We don’t have any evidence at all that connects Ron Beaumont to this murder. We’re looking at him, sure, but by all accounts he was in fact out having coffee with Mrs Hardy when his wife was killed. Even Mr Randall doesn’t dispute that.’
But Scott wasn’t going to let Glitsky put words in his mouth. He piped right up. ‘It’s a big window of time. Actually, there’s a lot of room for doubt.’
But this wasn’t where Glitsky wanted to pick his fight, so he resisted the urge to snap back. Instead, he rolled his eyes and pressed on. ‘And if we find that Mr Beaumont fits into that window of time, we’ll probably get closer to a warrant. But that’s my point. Right now the investigation is nowhere and-’
‘Precisely why I took it over and gave it to Senior Investigator Struler here.’
Glitsky tried to ignore Randall, to direct himself to Pratt. ‘The original investigating officer died, Sharron. There wasn’t any intentional foot-dragging.’
‘I haven’t heard anyone make that accusation, lieutenant.’ Pratt smiled again, thinly. ‘But the point, my point, is that Mr Randall was conducting his own investigation due to the… unfortunate lack of progress that yours was making.’ Glitsky started to open his mouth, but she stopped him, holding up a hand. ‘And in the course of his investigation, Mr Beaumont became a suspect for the murder, and so his associates became relevant targets for interrogation.’
‘OK,’ Glitsky conceded, ‘and Frannie Hardy didn’t answer a question.’ He turned to Randall. ‘Do you have any idea how often our witnesses don’t answer questions, Scott? If we locked any percentage of them up, any percentage, one two per cent, we’d have to rent the whole city of San Bruno just for the warehouse space to hold ’em.‘
Randall wasn’t hearing it. ‘But this a murder case, Abe. We’re not looking for some shoplifter here.’
Glitsky all but exploded. ‘What do you think I’m talking about? I’m in homicide. All I see are murder cases, and I don’t get a witness in a hundred who’ll tell me what time it is if there’s not something in it for him and his dog.’ He modulated his voice again, feigning a calm rationality that fooled no one in the room. ‘What I’m getting at, Sharron, is that this may have been an over-reaction on all sides. Frannie should have been given a day or two to go home and think about what she would be comfortable-’
‘Comfortable!’ Randall’s turn to let go. ‘I don’t care if she’s comfortable. I don’t want her to be comfortable. She knows something critical to a murder case-’
‘You don’t know that!’
‘- and until she tells what that is, we’ve got a murderer walking around on the streets-’
This time it was Batavia who interrupted. ‘You’re out of your mind, Randall. You got nothing. You’re nowhere here. She’s probably just fucking the guy and doesn’t want her husband to find out. The lieutenant’s right. You got nothing on Beaumont. No motive, no means, opportunity. Forget it. Let the lady go, would you? Jesus. I got to go to the bathroom.’ And with that, he was out the door.
‘Charming gentleman,’ Pratt said.
‘Good cop,’ Glitsky responded.
Randall came forward in his folding chair. ‘I don’t care if he’s the king of England. He’s not giving me any suspects, so I develop my own and build my case. And from where I’m sitting, Frannie Hardy’s right in the middle of it.’
Glitsky caught the eye of Batavia’s partner, Tyler Coleman, gave the secret sign, and they both stood up. ‘I wish you’d think about it some more, Sharron. This is really wrong.’
She looked him right in the eye. ‘I will, Abe. I promise.’
While Glitsky and Coleman were waiting for the elevator, Batavia emerged from the hallway behind them. ‘If assholes could fly,’ he said, ‘that place would be an airport.’
Glitsky himself tried to limit his profanity to a word or two a year, but he appreciated a well-turned phrase. The scar between his lips tightened in amusement. But Coleman was still seething – implicit in everything that had just transpired in Pratt’s office was the accusation that he and his partner had booted one. ‘If there’s such a fire under this one, Abe, why didn’t we hear about it?’
The elevator door opened and they squeezed in amid the rest of the clerks, cops, lawyers, and citizens. Glitsky had at one time decided that it could be an instructive display of authority to talk in a crowded elevator, and he answered Coleman as if they were alone in his office. He also thought it wouldn’t be all bad if some spy from the airport – he hoped that Batavia’s new nickname for the DA’s office would have a long life – heard him taking Mr Scott Randall to task for his misguided enthusiasm. Maybe he’d also drop a little rumor about Scott’s ambitions that his boss wouldn’t appreciate all that much.
‘Randall wants a high-profile case, that’s all, Vince. He wants out of this low-rent office, into the big private money. This building’s not big enough for him, so due process takes a powder.’
Batavia was also immune to elevator squelch. His voice boomed in the enclosed space. ‘But he doesn’t have a goddam thing, Abe. Like I said in there.’ The doors opened and they stepped out. ‘What’s this window of time shit, anyway? Everything we’ve read or heard, the guy was dropping the kids at school, going for coffee.’
But here, though he hated it, Glitsky had to admit that technically, Randall wasn’t all wrong. He had to give Coleman and Batavia his reading that even if Frannie’s alibi was righteous, Ron Beaumont still could have killed his wife. Bree’s body hadn’t been discovered in the patio for several hours, and the coroner hadn’t been able to fix a precise time of death. ‘It could have been three hours plus or minus,’ he concluded. ‘We’re going on around eight thirty on the theory that Ron left the house a little before that and says she was still alive.’
‘The kids say it, too. How about that?’ Batavia wasn’t ready to give anything to Scott Randall.
But Glitsky knew that the homicide cop’s worst enemy was imprecision. Well, maybe second worst after jumping to conclusions, but certainly way up there. He corrected Batavia. ‘I hate to say it, Jorge, but the kids were a little vague.’
Coleman popped in. ‘Hey, it’s two days after their mom died, for Christ’s sake, and they didn’t remember what she had for breakfast. I don’t blame ’em. Hell, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast today. I don’t even know if I ate breakfast.‘
‘Donuts,’ Batavia said. ‘Remember, Lanier brought up-’
‘Guys!’ Glitsky stopped at the door to the homicide detail. ‘The point is, Ron’s not eliminated, OK?’
Batavia wasn’t letting it go. ‘The kids said the mom was there, Abe.’
Glitsky shook his head. ‘Ron prompted them. Read the one transcript Griffin got around to getting typed. Carl didn’t get the kids to talk to him with their father out of the room, and not to speak ill of the dead, but I do so wish he had. And let’s not forget that Ron has left his home and gone to parts unknown.’
‘All right. Shit.’ Batavia had a habit of dismissing himself. He was turning now on his heel, on his way to his desk.
‘Jorge!’
It was his lieutenant. He had to stop.
‘We’re not done here. This is still our case. Randall hasn’t charged anybody.’
He took a step back. ‘I thought you just said-’
Glitsky cut him off. ‘I didn’t say it was Ron. I said he wasn’t impossible. But one thing’s for sure – he’s Randall’s guy, isn’t he? I mean, the DA’s committed to Ron Beaumont now. Nobody else. You hear what I’m saying?’
Coleman did. He looked at his partner. ‘Anybody else would be, like, a teeny tiny embarrassment, don’t you think?’
Glitsky watched his inspectors, making sure they both got it. As Batavia’s face broke into a smile of comprehension, he pointed a finger. ‘Go,’ he said.
‘But I’ve got to find Ron,’ Hardy said. ‘How about your guys find Ron first, then they start on everybody else?’
It was a long-standing tradition in homicide that the lieutenant’s desk held a stash of peanuts. Glitsky was taking advantage of this naturally occurring phenomenon, eating a hearty breakfast of donuts, peanuts, and tea. He broke a shell thoughtfully. ‘You got any ideas where we look to find Ron?’
‘No. But he’s got to have some family. Maybe somebody at the school, who he’d want them to notify in case of emergency…’
A reluctant sigh. ‘OK, that’s not bad. We can try that. I’ll send a squad car back to his place, too. Couldn’t hurt. But I wouldn’t hold my breath, Diz. If he took his car and he’s gone - what did you say, three days already? – then he could be in Chicago by now. If he flew, it could be anywhere.’
‘OK, but if he flew, especially with the two kids, there’s a record of it.’
Glitsky was shaking his head slowly, sadly. His friend hadn’t gotten much sleep and it was showing. ‘Diz, you know I’m feeling for Frannie. I just went a few rounds with Pratt over it. But we can’t go large on Ron. We don’t have the personnel and if we did they’d have better things to do.’
‘Abe, the guy’s a murder suspect-’
‘Maybe, maybe. But he came in and talked to the grand jury when they asked him, and answered all their questions. They were done with him. Nobody gave him a thought as a suspect until Frannie mentioned their little secret.’ He threw a peanut into his mouth and grabbed for his tea. ‘Randall didn’t even tell him not to leave town. Maybe they went camping, or to Disneyland. Who knows? The mom just died, Diz. They feel squirrely where she lived. It’s weird there. This stuff happens. What’s up with Frannie?’
Hardy shook his head. ‘She’s not talking.’
Glitsky did his still-life imitation. After a few seconds, he cracked another peanut. ‘Braun cut her any slack?’
‘Nope.’
Another long moment of nothing. Finally Glitsky spread his hands. ‘Well…’
Hardy stood up. ‘This can’t be happening,’ he said.
Glitsky had lost his own wife to cancer a few years before. That couldn’t be happening either. He nodded. There wasn’t anything left to say.
Hardy finally got finished at the Hall and the jail – his latest frustrating and unproductive visit with Frannie. After that, he had stopped by his office to check on Freeman’s progress, if any, and then, waiting for Freeman to return from court, had nodded off. When he awoke from the two-hour nap on the couch in his office, nothing had changed.
He couldn’t sit still any longer. He had to make something happen.
Glitsky had promised him that he’d send a squad car over to Merryvale to try to get an indication of Ron Beaumont’s whereabouts, but that wasn’t going to be good enough. It would fall under the category of ordinary business – Hardy doubted whether Glitsky would even send homicide inspectors. Some uniforms could take the information and pass it along upstairs. Well, Hardy decided, why should he wait when he could do the same thing himself?
Merryvale’s principal, Theresa Wilson, was a no-nonsense, handsome woman in her mid-forties. She was standing as Hardy was shown into her office. Her handshake would have been impressive in a linebacker and her smile under a close-cropped henna mop appeared at the same time to be both genuine and professional, also impressive. She didn’t hide behind her desk, either, but met him by the door, leading him to a small corner grouping of upholstered chairs. ‘Mr Hardy. I hope your being here doesn’t mean bad news for your wife? Please, sit down.’
The bare-bones explanation took less than a minute. It was a misunderstanding about some point of Ron Beaumont’s alibi on the morning of his wife’s death, and somehow Frannie had gotten in the middle of it.
‘But that’s terrible! She’s not under any kind of suspicion herself I hope?’
‘There’s no sign of that so far.’
Mrs Wilson read between the lines of that. ‘So how long might this continue? Until they let Frannie out of jail?’
A shrug, downplaying the drama of it. ‘Best case, it might only be a couple of days. She thinks Ron Beaumont’s gone camping or something with his kids and when he gets back and finds out what’s going on with her, he’ll come in and straighten out the whole mess.’
‘But you don’t think that?’
‘No.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know if Ron killed his wife, but my guess is he started to feel some heat from the police investigation and decided to take his kids and run.’
‘But I thought…’ She paused.
Hardy read her mind. ‘The alibi with Frannie was solid, but evidently the time of death opened another door. He thought he was going to be arrested. At least that’s my opinion.’ He leaned back into the chair’s cushion. ‘And it’s why I’ve come here to you.’
She looked him a question.
‘I realize you’re probably not allowed to give out any information about your students, but I was hoping you might be able to tell me if you know I’m wrong.’
‘How would I?’
‘Well, say, if the Beaumont kids have been in school the last couple of days, if Ron’s given some kind of excuse…’ Hardy gave her a weary smile. ‘It looks like he’s moved out of his home, probably Tuesday afternoon. I’d like to know if you’ve heard anything from him since then.’
As he expected, she was torn between his dilemma and her duties as principal. ‘Ron Beaumont is a wonderful man, Mr Hardy. He volunteered here all the time. Really. I don’t believe he’s any part of this either.’
But that wasn’t Hardy’s dilemma. He had to give it more urgency. ‘Please, Mrs Wilson. I want to be clear that I’m not asking you to tell me where he is, if you know. Also, if you’re protecting the children, OK, I understand. They must be having a rough go of it no matter what’s happening. But if you’ve heard nothing, then I think that increases the chances that Ron is on the run, either that or’ – a sudden, new possibility – ‘or something’s happened to him.’ He stopped, elbows on knees, hands spread. ‘Please,’ he repeated. ‘If I don’t find him, Frannie stays in jail.’
After an excruciating minute, Mrs Wilson stood up and crossed to her desk, where she reached over, grabbed at a folder, opened it, and withdrew a sheet of paper. Another beat of hesitation. She turned around, crossed back to Hardy, and handed him the paper.
‘I’m really not allowed to discuss any details of the children’s lives without the parents’ consent, as I know you understand.’
It was a list of about twenty names under the heading ‘Absentees’ and the day’s date. There were asterisks next to four of the names, and two of them were Beaumont. There was also the number three in parentheses, which Hardy took to mean number of days running. At the bottom of the page, an asterisk indicated that the absence was unexcused.
Mrs Wilson hadn’t heard a thing. The children were gone without a trace.
‘You don’t think something’s happened to Mr Beaumont and his children, too, do you? Maybe the person who murdered his wife…?’ A startled expression at the unthinkable that had just surfaced. ‘You don’t think it could have been him after all, do you?’
‘I sure hope not, Mrs Wilson. Let’s not think that, OK?’
Hardy was waiting by the curb outside Merryvale when the bell rang to end the school day. Vincent was in the car almost before Hardy saw him. Ginger-haired after his mother and freckly, he was the all-American ten-year-old boy. ‘Where’s Mom now? Why are you here?’
He was sure that his son didn’t mean it to sound so accusatory, so unwelcoming, but there it was. He’d better deal with it, since he had a feeling it was going to get worse after his daughter arrived. Rebecca had developed an impressive knack of late, pushing his buttons, not letting anything go.
Driving down on his way to the school, he’d decided how he’d break the news, on his precise phrasing. ‘Your mother’s down at the jail.’ This had a decidedly familiar ring in the family – since Hardy himself was often visiting clients who were behind bars, his children were accustomed to hearing the words. They wouldn’t, by themselves, produce trauma. He hoped.
And when he tried them on Vincent, they seemed to go down well enough. ‘What for?’ he asked, still calm.
Hardy went for the noble spin. ‘They wanted her to tell a secret that she’d promised not to, and now-’
‘Where’s Mom?’ Rebecca had the back door open, throwing backpack and lunch pail into the car in front of her. ‘She promised she’d be helping paint our class’s Hallowe’en booth – she promised - and it was today and-’
‘Beck, hold it! Hold it.’
‘She’s at the jail,’ Vincent piped into the silence. He appeared to be delighted with the news, and definitely happy to be the one to break it. Finally he got to tell his sister something she didn’t know.
Although for a moment it didn’t register. ‘Well, she promised me first. There were two other moms waiting and waiting and she didn’t even call and so here I am with my friends and their moms showed up, and I’m all embarrassed-’
Hardy snapped his fingers and pointed directly at her. ‘Stop it! Right now!’ His daughter glared sullenly back at him. ‘Did you hear what your brother just said?’
She turned to Vincent, easier pickings. ‘What?’ she snapped.
‘Never mind anyway.’ Power play of the fourth graders.
Hardy thought he’d better get driving so he wasn’t tempted to thrash his children right there in front of the school where everybody would see.
The Beck’s teasing, na-na-na voice. ‘I don’t care. I heard you anyway.’
‘Oh yeah? So what did I say, braceface?’
‘Vincent!’
‘You said she was in jail, stupid.’
This brought the wail. ‘Da-ad! You heard that. The Beck just called me stupid.’
‘He called me braceface first.’
‘Tin grin!’
In the back seat, something was thrown, something connected. Vincent was screaming and swinging.
‘Hey, hey, hey!’ Hardy knew his face had gone crimson. Somehow he’d pulled over to the curb again and turned around in his seat, at the top of his voice. ‘Stop this stupid, stupid bickering and fighting. Stop it right now!’ Another finger pointed, this time at Vincent. ‘And don’t tell me I’m not supposed to say “stupid.” This is stupid! Don’t you two ever think about anything but yourselves? I said your mother’s in jail, and you’re screaming at each other about nothing, just to hear yourselves scream.’
‘You’re the one screaming.’ The Beck had self-righteous indignation down to a fine art. She was right and that was just too bad for the rest of humanity.
‘You didn’t say “in jail,” ’ Vincent wailed as hysteria mounted. More tears broke. ‘You said she was down at the jail, not in jail.’
So much for Plan A.
At last, Rebecca seemed to hear. ‘Mom’s in jail? What do you mean, in jail? How could Mom be in jail?’
Vincent: ‘When does she get out? What did she do? Are we ever going to see her again?’
Now they were both crying.
‘Daddy,’ Beck asked, anguish through her tears. ‘How could you let this happen?’
Finally, finally, after they got home, he and Erin and Ed succeeded in convincing the kids that Frannie was going to be OK. This was a funny glitch in the legal system, which they were always hearing Dad talk about anyway, right? This time it had just happened to their family.
Mom was sticking up for a friend of hers and Uncle Abe was there, working right across the way, taking care of her. And sure, she might be gone for a few days, but she was all right, in a really nice cell – ‘a country club,’ in fact. It was kind of like a vacation for Mom, and the Beck and Vincent got to stay with Grandma and Papa Ed for the weekend. It would be fun, an adventure. There wasn’t anything to worry about.
Hardy, alone on Friday evening, pacing his home front to back, was trying to come to some – any – conclusions and develop a plan. All he knew for sure was that he would go back and see Frannie again tonight, freshly armed with the news that Ron hadn’t simply gone fishing or something. If that had been the case, he would have told Mrs Wilson and there would have been no asterisk.
But he knew that this information wasn’t going to sway his wife. She would tell Hardy that of course Ron had had to disappear. Because of his children, he couldn’t let the law get involved with him. He would have had no choice.
And, fool that he was, Hardy had promised Frannie that he wouldn’t reveal what she had told him, whether or not he believed a word of it. Never mind that he’d lost his claim to attorney-client privilege; he realized that he’d done something that was potentially far more debilitating. He couldn’t talk to anybody about this – not Glitsky, Freeman, Moses, Erin, nobody. He shouldn’t ever have promised Frannie, but now that he had, if he wanted to keep faith with her, he was stuck.
The telephone jarred him from these thoughts. Sometime before he must have stopped pacing because he was sitting at his kitchen table, a cup of coffee untouched and cold in front of him. The light had changed as another afternoon’s load of fog had settled outside. He stood and picked up on the second ring.
‘It’s going to be on the five o’clock news.’ Freeman wasn’t much of a preamble kind of guy. He heard Hardy’s voice and he was talking. ‘I called a press conference and it must be a slow news day. Everybody came. You should have been here. This is where the action is. What are you doing home anyway?’
‘I’m picking out new curtains for the bedroom,’ he said. ‘What’s going to be on the news? Frannie?’
‘And Braun. And Randall. They loved it, they ate it up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit the national wires. If I were you, I’d expect some calls myself pretty soon. Play up the wife and mother torn from her family part.’
‘What other part is there?’
Freeman hesitated. ‘Well, there’s probably going to be some reporters with dirty minds, too. You might take this as a heads up, not blow off on them.’ Then, back to strategy. ‘I really think this might get to Pratt, persuade her to pull the rug out from Randall, and get him to reconsider. What do you hear about Bree’s husband?’
‘He left town.’ Hardy told him about checking at Merryvale. The kids being gone.
‘Do the cops know this?’
Hardy realized with a shock that they probably didn’t. He hadn’t thought to call Glitsky because the lieutenant had told him he wasn’t really interested in Ron Beaumont as a suspect. But Freeman was right. His running changed that. ‘I’ll call as soon as I get off with you.’
‘You ought to get to Frannie, too. She discovers that he’s really run, he looks like a murder suspect, she might want to change her mind about protecting him.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ he said, biting his tongue. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘Check the news first,’ Freeman said. ‘Starts in about five minutes, channel four.’
‘I’m on it. And David, thanks.’
Freeman laughed. ‘Are you kidding? This is what I live for.’
He thought the idea of calling Glitsky was a good one. Although his inspectors would be happy if they found a suspect other than Ron for the murder of Bree, the fact that Ron had apparently fled the jurisdiction would have an impact on Abe. He’d have to do something.
‘Why is that?’ the lieutenant asked, exasperation starting to leak out. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Find him, Abe. He looks a lot better for the murder now. You’ve got to admit that.’
‘Maybe a little better, but Scott Randall’s already out beating the bushes trying to find him. The feeling here is that it might be fun to watch him for a while.’
‘And meanwhile Frannie’s rotting.’
Hardy could hear the patient exhale over the telephone line. Another beat. ‘Have you made any progress with Judge Braun? Did Freeman?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then it looks like Frannie’s in for four days no matter what, doesn’t it?’
Hardy had no ready answer for this. It was the truth.
Glitsky went on, logical and detached. ‘Ron could walk in here tonight with a signed confession including everything Randall wanted from Frannie, and my understanding is that it wouldn’t make a hill of beans difference. Am I wrong?’
Hardy knew he wasn’t. Frannie was in jail on two, separate contempt charges. Even if she talked now, she would still have to complete paying her personal four-day debt to Marian Braun. And on the other hand, even if Braun rescinded that citation, Frannie would remain in jail on the secret until Scott Randall said she could go.
Hardy knew all this, although it wasn’t any solace. ‘Look, Abe, maybe I can still get Braun-’
‘ “Maybe” is the key word here. Look, Diz, I’ve pleaded with Pratt, I’ve tried to bully Randall, I’ve been over to see Frannie twice and make sure they’re taking care of her, which it seems like they are. I don’t like this any more than you do.’
‘I know, Abe. I’m not saying you’re not-’
‘But anything to do with Ron Beaumont isn’t the issue for the next three days. Your immediate problem is with Braun.’
‘But if you found Ron, put out a warrant, got other agencies looking…’
‘Then what? That’s going to happen when the grand jury reconvenes on Tuesday anyway. They’re going to indict him unless my guys find somebody else and then the whole world will be looking for him. So they’ll probably find him. But even then, if he’s a killer he’s not going to say anything. Then what’s Frannie going to do?’
‘I don’t know, Abe, I just don’t know.’
‘Lord.’ The cop voice softened. Abe clearly felt for him, was even trying to help on several fronts, but there just wasn’t anything he could do. ‘What do you think, Diz? She give you a hint what this is this all about? You got any ideas at all?’
He had to force the words. ‘Not a clue, Abe,’ he lied. ‘Not a damn clue.’
Fifteen minutes after the news ended, he had his coat on and was walking out the door when the telephone rang again. He was sure it was the beginning of the onslaught of the reporters, and was going to let his answering machine get it while he drove downtown. But then he remembered that it might be Erin or the kids, so he decided to monitor the call and stood listening at the hallway extension.
‘Hello?’ An unfamiliar voice, probably a reporter, and one who was good enough to have scored Hardy’s unlisted number. He sounded obviously disappointed that it hadn’t connected with his interview. Well, Hardy didn’t want to talk to reporters. He got to the front door, on his way out. The voice continued. ‘I’m trying to reach Dismas Hardy. My name is Ron Beaumont and I just saw the news report on-’
Hardy grabbed at the phone and said hello.
‘Mr Hardy, how are you?’
‘Well, not so good, to tell you the truth. You know they’ve got Frannie in jail?’
‘That’s why I called you. It was on the news and I thought I might be able to help.’
‘You could. Where are you now?’
A pause. ‘Uh, I’d rather not say. Not too far away. I thought it would be smarter to get away before the police decided I was their suspect.’
‘The police haven’t decided that. It’s the DA.’
A dry laugh. ‘Same thing to me. I can’t afford to get in their sights. Did your wife tell you about… about the situation here? With me?’
‘Yeah. We talked.’ Hardy knew he sounded furious, impatient. He was. He didn’t feel compelled to dissemble for poor Ron the prime mover. ‘The thing is, Frannie’s in a pretty damn bleak way right now. She’s already done a night in the can.’
‘I know. I feel terrible about that. That’s why I’m calling, to find out if there’s anything I can do.’
‘You want my recommendation?’
‘Yes.’
Hardy gave it to him straight. ‘You come see me now, give me a note to take to Frannie at the jail and tell her she’s got your permission to talk to the grand jury. She takes this word-of-honor stuff pretty seriously.’
‘Obviously you do, too.’
Hardy didn’t answer that. He wasn’t sure how far his nobility would go if Frannie stayed locked up much longer. But for the moment, let Ron think whatever would help Frannie. ‘The point is, she needs to tell the grand jury. Or you do.’
A long silence. Then, ‘You must know I can’t do that.’
‘Sure you can. You give Frannie permission to talk, then go back to wherever you are now. You said you’re still local. You can just-’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Hardy wasn’t going to get into semantics with him. He’d said he wasn’t far away, and that was good enough for now. ‘OK, you’re not local. But wherever you are, you want to help Frannie, right? Isn’t that why you called here?’
‘But I can’t-’
‘Look, you can. I’m a lawyer. I can broker this thing through the courts-’
‘No, you don’t understand, that’s not happening. Last time I tried to play by the rules and do things through the courts. I had a good lawyer, then, too. You know what happened? The courts gave my kids to their mother. You hear what I’m saying? The rules don’t give the kids to the father. I can’t have that again. I can’t take the risk.’
‘There doesn’t have to be a risk. It doesn’t have to come up at all. All they care about is if you killed your wife. If you didn’t, you go back to your normal life.’
‘No, I don’t think so. That’s what I’d like, but I don’t see normal life in this picture anymore.’
Hardy took a beat, lowered his voice. He was sweating in the cool house, his hands white around the receiver. He let out a breath, spoke softly. ‘Then I really don’t understand why you called. I don’t know what else you can do to help Frannie.’
After another pause, Ron Beaumont finally said, ‘I’ll try to think of something. I’m sorry.’
‘No, wait! Maybe we-’ The line went dead.
‘He wouldn’t even write you a damn note, Frannie. How about that?’
His wife didn’t let it faze her. ‘I know he wants to help.’
‘Oh yes,’ Hardy dripped with sarcasm. ‘He’s all for helping. He just doesn’t want to do anything.’
Arms crossed, her body language swearing at him, she spoke through tight lips. ‘What could he do? What can he do that wouldn’t threaten his kids?’
‘How does it threaten his kids to let you talk? He stays hiding. Besides, tell me why they’re not threatened right now.’
‘You’ve said it yourself. Because he’s not a suspect. Even Abe said it on TV. The police aren’t looking for him.’
That had been, Hardy had to admit, one of very few sweet moments in an otherwise disastrous day. Glitsky would undoubtedly wind up paying hell for saying that there wasn’t any evidence to arrest Ron Beaumont for murder. The DA would complain to the chief. They’d foot drag even more than they already did on his cases. Even so, to Glitsky it was probably worth it.
But that wasn’t why Hardy was here. ‘How about our children? Don’t you see that they’re a little threatened here? How can you not see that?’
‘Don’t you dare patronize me,’ she snapped. ‘Of course I see that. Don’t you think this is…’ Her eyes flashed with fire and tears of rage. ‘This is impossible! Don’t you think I see that, I feel that?’ She whirled in the small space behind the table in the attorneys’ visiting room. Nowhere to run. ‘But what do you want me to do?’
‘That’s an easy one. I want you to give him up.’
‘And his kids?’
‘It’s either his or ours, Frannie. Doesn’t seem like that tough a call to me.’
‘Just give him up?’
He thought that maybe, at last, she’d heard him. With an effort, he reined in his temper. ‘He’s gone anyway, Frannie. He’s on the run. It’s going to look like he killed Bree as soon as that gets out. Then he’s really in the news and the whole story – kids and all – comes out anyway. Then what’s all this been for?’
Her face remained set. ‘It’s not there yet.’
‘What isn’t where?’
‘Nobody’s going to look into Ron’s life. Not unless he gets charged. Ron isn’t anybody’s focus.’
‘Yes he is,’ Hardy said. ‘He’s mine. He’s Scott Randall’s.’
‘Oh, that’s real nice. That’s swell, Dismas.’ Frannie spit the words out at him. ‘Side yourself with my pal Scott Randall.’
‘I’m not siding with Scott Randall. Jesus Christ. I’m trying to get you out of here! I’m trying to put our family together again and all I get from you is poor Ron fucking Beaumont. Because I’ll tell you something, Frannie. He and his kids, they’re gone.’
She looked up at him defiantly. ‘You always think you know everything. You’ve got everything figured out. Well, I’ll tell you something. No they’re not gone. He called you an hour ago. He doesn’t want to run. He wants to go back to his normal life. Don’t you see that?’
Deflated, Hardy rested a haunch on the corner of the table. ‘Don’t you see that that’s not going to happen?’ he asked wearily. ‘It’s not going to happen no matter what.’
‘It will if they find who killed Bree.’
Hardy shook his head. ‘Not true, Frannie. That’s just not true.’ He forced a persuasive tone. ‘Listen, on Tuesday, the grand jury is going to reconvene and by then Scott Randall - even without Glitsky’s help – is going to discover that Ron has cut out. That’s going to be enough to get him indicted. After that he’s high profile. Then it all comes out.’
‘OK, that’s Tuesday,’ she said. ‘If somebody, maybe Abe, can find Bree’s killer before that, some real evidence-’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s already been three weeks. The case is dead. You’re talking three days? It’s not going to happen.’
‘What if Ron helps? What if he tells everybody what he knows about Bree?’
‘Tells who? Like Abe?’
But, infuriatingly, she shook her head. ‘He can’t get involved with the police.’
‘Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot. And while we’re at it, are you saying he didn’t tell the police all he knew when they asked last time?’
‘No, I’m not saying that. And you don’t have to be such a bully. He answered their questions-’
‘But just sort of forgot to volunteer anything interesting he might have known about his own wife’s murder? Give me a break, Frannie. This is ridiculous.’
She slammed her fist on the table pathetically. ‘It’s not ridiculous. Don’t you see the tragedy of all this? Don’t you care about anybody else? Don’t you have any feelings anymore?’
‘Oh, please…’ He was up now, spun around on her. ‘I’ve got more feelings than you can imagine right at this moment. I feel like killing the son of a bitch, for example. I feel like what’s going to happen to our kids without their mother, what’s going on with our marriage for that matter.’
He glared at her, but she said nothing. No denial, just a cold stare back at him.
‘Shit,’ he said, and walked as far away as he could, up against the glass block wall, and stood there.
Her chair scraped. A second later he felt her behind him, although their bodies didn’t touch. ‘Help him,’ she whispered. He couldn’t think of a thing to say and she spoke into the vacuum. ‘You’ve told me I’m in here for another three days anyway, no matter what, isn’t that right? That’s got nothing to do with the secret.’
Glitsky’s distinction, but what was Frannie’s point? ‘So?’
‘So if you’re right, they won’t indict Ron until Tuesday. Which means that the kids – that whole thing – it won’t have to come out until after that, and never if he doesn’t get indicted. That means you have three days.’
He turned. ‘I have three days.’
‘Yes.’
‘For what?’
‘To save some lives, Dismas.’ ‘And how do I do that?’
‘You find Bree’s killer.’
He hung his head. His wife had no idea what she was talking about. ‘Oh, OK. I’ll just run out and do that. Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s so simple.’ He turned. ‘Any bright idea of where I might begin?’
‘With Ron,’ she said. ‘I told you he wants to help.’
‘Well,’ Hardy responded. ‘Old Ron didn’t get around to telling me where I could find him. Maybe next time he calls-’
‘I might know,’ she said.
There was a hole in the floor, a so-called ‘Turkish toilet,’ against the back wall, a block of concrete with a mattress on it, and on the mattress a sheet and two gray woolen blankets. There was no sink. The walls were padded because the administrative segregation unit was where they put the bona-fide crazies before they got medicated.
The door closed behind her – she hardly realized and certainly wasn’t grateful that it wasn’t bars but a true door with a peephole and a place to slide food in on the bottom.
She stood, numb and mute, without moving for a minute or more.
At some level, she was aware of the cold coming up through the paper slippers she wore. Everything was cold.
Overhead, there was a light, recessed behind wired glass. The light would go off sometime soon and plunge the cell into darkness.
There was no control anywhere.
She alternated between not letting herself feel anything, or reacting to everything. Last night, when the light had gone off, she’d cried for nearly an hour. Tonight, the darkness itself would no longer matter. She could tell that already.
She was trying to feel her children, to imagine them with Erin, at least warm and safe. But the connection was gone for now. In its place was only the physical stuff here – the bed and the padded walls and the smell of disinfectant.
Maybe, she told herself, her emotions had played themselves out. But an aura of panic seemed to shimmer around that thought, as if maybe her emotions had been cauterized so deeply that now they had been completely burned away, and she’d never let herself feel anything again, not at a certain level anyway.
And then her husband. Every time he came, all she felt she could do was fight and argue and explain. When all she wanted was the understanding they used to…
But she wouldn’t be weak. Weakness would leave her helpless, unable to make decisions for the kids if it came to that.
What was it going to come to?
No, she would just put feelings away for now. Dismas was on her side – she would believe that. He was working for her interests, as well as his own and the children’s. Though their intimacy was lost, perhaps irretrievably. It certainly felt that way. She knew she bore some of the blame for that.
For all of this.
She had never planned to do anything wrong and now all she had done had gotten her to here. Why did she still feel as though she should defend herself, that it was all defensible? Everything felt wrong. Every decision and act had cost her and her family dearly.
Would anyone ever forgive her? And why should they?
Abruptly, the cell went dark.
An undetermined period of time passed during which she remained motionless. Finally, she reached for the bed, found it, and pulled the blankets to her chin, holding them fisted against her chest.
She couldn’t imagine her babies – where they were, if they were sleeping. And this, finally, brought the blessed tears.
In another lifetime, when Hardy had been a prosecutor with the very district attorney’s office that he now despised, he sent people to jail all the time. Because his first wife, Jane, had been worried that some of his convicted and dangerous felons might get back to freedom with a chip on their shoulders, Hardy had applied for a CCW – carry a concealed weapon – permit. In the normal course of events, this would have been denied, but Jane’s father was a Superior Court judge, and it got approved and, through some combination of politics and inertia, got renewed every year.
Over the years, Hardy had had occasion to take one of his guns out with him twice. Neither time did he have to fire at anyone, although once he had enjoyed letting off a round for the immediate and gratifying effect.
Yet tonight, in a kind of cold fury, grabbing for a weapon didn’t feel strange at all. It was a little past dusk, and he was taking his Colt.38 Special out of the safe where he kept it since the Beck had been born. He hadn’t even held the damn thing in a couple of years, but when he’d last taken it to the range, he’d cleaned, oiled, and wrapped it carefully in its cloth before putting it away.
Now he lifted it out and unwrapped it. A wipe with the rag and the finish shone. He checked to make sure that it was unloaded, then spun the cylinder and worked the action several times.
On the way back from his visit with Frannie, he had decided – if that was the word; the impulse had been more spontaneous than cerebral – to carry the piece. He probably couldn’t have said why – surely not to shoot the man who might be sleeping with his wife. If he had a thought about it at all, he would have said that the gun might be persuasive in moving Ron to do what Hardy asked, whatever that might turn out to be.
So he wasn’t going to be home for long. Frannie had told him where Ron had once told her – she remembered after she found out he’d fled – where Ron’s first stop might be if he needed to run.
Hardy hadn’t told Frannie that he was going to confront Ron. No more impetuous promises. And his wife, perhaps having erroneously concluded that Hardy had been converted all the way to Ron’s side, hadn’t demanded any.
Wearing jeans, a blue shirt over a rugby jersey, and a pair of running shoes, he stood in the dim light in the back room behind the kitchen and slid the bullets where they belonged. He stuck the gun into his belt, pulling the blue shirt out over it. He put the rest of the box of bullets back into the safe, carefully closed the door, and spun the lock.
On the way out, he grabbed a jacket from the peg near the front door.
It hadn’t taken five minutes and he was back at his car. Ready.
Ron Brewster.
Now he was Ron Brewster. Frannie had explained it all to Hardy, thinking she was making points for Ron, showing her husband the lengths to which this great guy was willing to go to protect his children.
But the excuses and lies that he ran into every day in his criminal practice had honed Hardy’s natural cynicism into a sharp-edged and profound skepticism that cut a swath through normal human feelings, at least whenever the law was involved. Although he fought it in his home life and with his few close friends, he found that he didn’t take much at face value anymore. He tended not to believe interesting stories – there was always something else that didn’t get said.
Frannie’s explanations of Ron’s behavior – his easy skill with name change, for example; his successful kidnapping of his own children – only convinced Hardy that he was dealing with a very intelligent and resourceful criminal. One who had at the very least conned Frannie, and at the worst much more than that.
As if he needed more fuel to fire his rage.
They were at the Airport Hilton. Hardy had seen it before in people who were fleeing – the first instinct was to go to ground. Stay close. See which direction your pursuers took and then light out the other way.
Fifth floor, room 523. A ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign was affixed to the doorknob.
Hardy checked his watch. It was precisely nine sixteen. The sound of a television came from behind the door. Canned laughter.
He felt for the gun in his waistband, felt its reassuring presence, and left it where it was. He knocked.
Within a second, the television was turned off. And now behind the door there was only silence. He knocked again, almost tempted to call out, ‘Candygram.’ Instead, he waited, giving Ron every chance to do it in his own time.
Ron Beaumont held a finger over his lips, telling his children to make no sound. He crossed to the door of the hotel room. He, too, had a gun with him, but it was packed now in the false bottom of a suitcase.
He had to pray it wasn’t the police, or, if it was, that it was only one man. Then he might be able to talk himself a couple of minutes, enough time to get to his suitcase, do what he might have to do.
Hardy gave it another knock, harder. ‘Ron! Open the door!’ Another couple of seconds. Then, from behind the door, a firm voice, ‘We’re trying to sleep.’
Hardy leaned in closer, spoke with controlled urgency. ‘This is Dismas Hardy.’
Finally the door opened, but just a crack. Ron had turned off the lights inside the room and left the chain on. Hardy had to fight the impulse to slam his shoulder into the door and break the chain free.
Hardy spread his hands wide. No threat. Just open the door and let’s talk.
Ron Beaumont was a handsome man, though Hardy hated to admit it. Strong, angular features and clear, brown eyes set in cheekbones so chiseled that now, with his evening stubble, they looked like you could strike a match on them. An aquiline nose with a high bridge was perfectly centered over what Hardy supposed would be called a generous mouth. The full head of dark hair had a streak or two of gray at the temples, although the unlined face made that seem premature, or even dyed. Almost exactly the same height as Hardy’s six feet, he weighed at least ten pounds less, and none of it was soft.
The door was open and he moved to the side to let Hardy in.
All the way down from the Avenues to the airport, Hardy had indulged in fantasy, savoring the moment of confrontation when he, goddamit, made Ron ‘fess up to his responsibility to Frannie, to the damage he’d done. The other stuff, too, whatever it might have been – the true nature of their relationship, the alibi, whatever story they’d had to ’get straight.‘
Max and Cassandra skewed the dynamic immediately.
Ron’s kids as human beings in the center of this drama hadn’t made center stage before the lights went on in the hotel room. Before that, he was aware of their existence, of course, but they had been mere pawns in the chess game Hardy had been playing. The fact that they were here, now, taking up the same physical space as Ron whatever-his-last-name, changed everything.
Cassandra lit up when she saw him. ‘Mr Hardy. Hi.’ Natural as can be. Surprised and delighted at his appearance. Suddenly the name clicked with the face for Hardy, too. Cassandra was no longer a half-remembered presence in his daughter’s life, but one of the really good ones – polite, funny, able to speak in whole sentences.
He glanced at the boy, Max, now placing him as well. They’d both been to the house several times to play with his children, although Hardy hadn’t engaged either of them in meaningful dialogue.
It threw him to see it, but even now in this stressful environment, both remained obviously well-cared-for children, newly bathed and wearing pajamas.
‘Are you here to help us?’ Cassandra asked. She turned to her father, explaining. ‘Rebecca says that’s what her dad does. He helps people. He’s a lawyer.’
Ron didn’t seem as impressed with it as his daughter was, but the statement seemed to play into his plan and he didn’t miss the opportunity. ‘That’s right,’ he responded easily. ‘He’s here to see if he can help us out.’ A sideways glance, tacitly asking Hardy’s complicity at the outset, which Hardy couldn’t think fast enough to deny.
‘He’s trying to get us back home. It’s time you guys turned in, OK?’
A couple of minutes of small talk finally dwindled down before Hardy got strong handshakes from both of them as they were heading off to bed. And – the acid test – they both looked him in the eye.
It was a bit disorienting for Hardy to realize that these were well-adjusted children who appeared to love their father. If they were a bit reserved, Hardy had to remember that it was near their bedtime, they were in strange surroundings, and their stepmother had been murdered only three weeks before. He wouldn’t have expected giggling high spirits.
But he didn’t pick up any scent of people-fear, either of him or of their father, and that was always the inevitable companion to abuse.
It threw him off his stride. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this cozy domestic scene with father and loving children.
The gun rode heavily inside his belt, a stupid, clumsy, macho pretense. What had he been thinking? Shifting uncomfortably, pulling at his jacket to cover the gun, he felt a wave of disgust for himself.
Who was he kidding? He wasn’t some kind of gunslinger. It had been two decades since he’d been a cop. Now he was a lawyer, a paper pusher, a persuader. Words and strategy, the tools of old men like David Freeman.
And now Dismas Hardy.
All this was the thought of an instant, though. Ron was keeping things moving. ‘OK, you’ve told Mr Hardy goodnight enough times. Now march!’ Firm, good-natured, in control.
Amazingly, there was no argument. Chez Hardy, bedtimes were often the most difficult time of the day. Impatient, depleted parents struggling to get their exhausted children to admit that they were even remotely tired. The exercise would wind up turning into a war of wills that left all sides defeated.
But Max and Cassandra were up and moving. Another polite goodnight, stalling for that last precious second, both of them telling Hardy they were so glad he was here.
For the first time, Hardy noticed that they were in a suite, with a separate room for the kids, and Ron said he’d be back in five minutes, after he’d tucked them in and gotten them settled. But Hardy hadn’t come all the way down here only to have Ron and the kids slip out another door. So, feeling foolish, he nevertheless went and stood in the doorway to the bedroom, where he could watch in case the good father decided to bolt and run with his children.
But the bedtime rituals made it immediately obvious that this wasn’t on the night’s agenda. Apparently Ron had decided to accept Hardy’s unexpected presence and work within these new parameters.
Hardy finally went back to the other room, sat in the chair at the desk, and half listened to the familiar goodnight noises.
The gun remained an uneasy presence, the unyielding pressure in his side. His stomach roiled with the unspent rage, the tension and hunger. A rogue wave of fatigue washed over him so powerfully that for a moment, snapping out of it, he was disoriented.
Out over the Bay, the huge planes on their airport approach floated down out of the darkling, cloud-scudded sky.
‘So what do you intend to do?’ Ron had closed the door to the kids’ room and pulled over a wing chair. ‘You want some coffee? A beer? Anything? The room’s got everything.’
‘I don’t want anything except my wife out of jail.’
‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Ron sat. ‘Look, I don’t blame you for being mad. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but nobody could have seen this coming.’
‘You saw it enough three days ago that you left your apartment and took your kids out of school.’
‘That was when I learned they were going to talk to Frannie.’ Hearing his wife’s name used with such familiarity rekindled some of the flame of anger. Hardy fought it – it wasn’t going to get him what he needed, not now. But Ron was going on, explaining, rationalizing how none of this was entirely his fault. ‘That’s when I realized the investigation was coming back to me. I couldn’t hang around and let that happen.’
‘No. It was better to let them come after Frannie.’
‘I didn’t foresee that.’
‘You just said you knew they were talking to her. What did you think was going to happen?’
‘I had no idea. I told them I had been drinking coffee with her. I thought they’d probably want to make sure.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘I don’t know if you realize it, but the grand jury had already questioned me. I answered everything they asked me.’
‘But obviously lied about fighting with your wife.’
Suddenly the floor seemed to hold a fascination for Ron. Finally, he raised his eyes. ‘What was I supposed to do, put myself on their A-list?’
‘The theory is you tell them nothing but the truth. That’s the one Frannie went with. You might have told her she could tell your little secret.’
‘I thought all they wanted was corroboration on the alibi. You’ve got to believe that. The other stuff, I never thought it would come up.’
‘Well, it did.’ But this was old news and Hardy was sick of it. ‘So why didn’t you just take off when you knew they’d started looking? You had three days. You could be in Australia by now.’
‘The kids uprooted again. No insurance income from Bree’s death. The police after me.’
‘They’re after you now.’
‘That’s not what I hear. Not yet.’
Macho or no, Hardy almost reached for the gun, to put an end to this stupidity. Take the man in and let the chips fall.
But then he remembered the three innocent, shackled children from Judge Li’s courtroom. An example of what could happen – something similarly terrible almost inevitably would happen – to Cassandra and Max. Furious as he was, he couldn’t be responsible for putting them into the criminal justice system. Not yet, anyway. Not if there were any other way.
Ron was leaning forward, tight-lipped and earnest. His elbows were on his knees and his hands were gripped, white-knuckled, together in front of him. ‘Look, I know this is bad for you. Horrible. But my first responsibility has to be to my guys in there. I know you understand that.’
Hardy couldn’t say anything. It galled him, but the fact was that it was true – he understood it completely.
Ron was going on. ‘And we’re not absolutely committed to running away either, not yet anyway. If this passes, the kids are back in school next week with a little unscheduled vacation and no one thinks a thing about it. The original plan was we’d take a few days off and see which way the wind was blowing.’ He let out a deep breath. ‘Maybe we wouldn’t have to go after all.’
‘Go where?’
‘Wherever. Anywhere.’
‘And do what?’
Ron hung his head again for an instant and brought it back up. ‘Start over. Again.’
If this was a not-so-subtle play for sympathy, it was misdirected. Hardy snapped out. ‘And meanwhile what happens to Frannie?’
‘I release her. She gets out.’
Hardy didn’t like the sound of that, either. ‘You release her?’
A nod. ‘From the promise.’
‘I got an idea, Ron. Why don’t you do it now? Like right now, this minute?’ Hardy’s voice had picked up some heat. He snatched up the pen and telephone pad from on the desk, held it out to him, once again considering the gun.
Ron was shaking his head no. ‘The minute she talks, we have to run, we have to relocate. Don’t you see that?’
Hardy looked around the suite. ‘What do you call this? This isn’t running?’
The pen was still out there in the air between them. Ron stood up slowly, took it, sat at the desk, and wrote for a minute.
When Hardy had read what he’d written, though, it didn’t strike him as nearly enough. The note was brief and specific, telling Frannie that the next time she went before the grand jury, she should feel free to reveal his secret if she felt she needed to. But Hardy’s problem was that the grand jury wasn’t meeting until next Tuesday morning, which left Frannie exactly where she was right now. In a cold fury, Hardy raised his eyes and spoke. ‘What the hell kind of good does this do?’
Ron sat on the edge of the bed and spoke with a desperate calm. ‘My understanding from the television – am I right? – is that poor Frannie’s in jail down there for four days no matter what happens with me.’
Hardy nodded. ‘That’s how it looks, but-’
Palm out, Ron stopped him. ‘Please. May I? So my hope is that I won’t have to do all this again – move my family, start over. I’ve already done it once, as you know. But the idea of doing it again…’ He drew in a breath. ‘I’d rather avoid that, and maybe I can.’
‘How’s that?’
‘If they find who did it.’
This was what Frannie had suggested only a few hours earlier, but Hardy was damned if he was going to make the same argument he’d made to her. He could be a lot more straightforward here. He heard his volume going up. ‘And what if they don’t, Ron? How about that?’
‘Then on Tuesday, the kids and I, we go. And Frannie can talk.’
‘She can tell the grand jury you’ve kidnapped your kids?’
‘I don’t see it that way, but yes.’
‘Put the FBI on your ass?’
A weak smile. ‘They’ve been there before. They won’t find me.’
‘And Frannie gets out of jail? She tells them everything?’
‘Yes. You have my word. Meanwhile, if Bree’s killer is found’ – he indicated the kids’ bedroom – ‘those guys maybe get to go back to a normal life. That’s all I want, really.’
And here was Frannie’s impetus in deciding to ask her husband to help her maybe-lover. Save some lives, she’d said, and he’d let himself be persuaded that she was talking about their own family.
But no.
Again, it was Ron. His kids.
Hardy knew nothing of the truth about Ron and Frannie, about Ron and his earlier marriage, the custody battle, Bree or her life or any of the political issues surrounding it. Three days wasn’t enough time, even if he had an entire police department working with him, even if he was motivated to do it.
Which he wasn’t.
He couldn’t use his cop friends, his lawyer connections, or any of his personal channels because he’d sworn himself to secrecy. Finding a likely suspect for Bree’s murder was a ridiculous notion. And why would he want to anyway? Ron Beaumont might not be anything he appeared right now. It might all be an act.
Help the man? Hardy still didn’t feel as if he’d completely ruled out killing him.
Hardy glanced at the note a last time, folded it over, and jammed it into his pocket.
Ron, seeing this, picked a bad moment to comment. ‘We can do this,’ he said, all sincerity.
And Hardy suddenly lost all his patience, slapping a palm loudly on the table in front of him, raising his voice in a rage. ‘What is this “we” shit? There’s no “we” here. There’s me and what I need to do for my family. Then there’s you. And don’t kid yourself – they’re nothing like the same thing!’
Not trusting himself to keep his anger checked any further – he might pull that gun out after all – he got up and abruptly strode across to the door.
‘You’re not leaving?’
This wasn’t Ron’s voice and Hardy’s surprise at the sound of it whirled him around. It was Cassandra, standing in the doorway to the suite. It was obvious that she had been crying, though now she had gotten herself back under control. ‘Please, Mr Hardy, you can’t leave.’ At her father. ‘We do need help, Daddy. He can help us. Rebecca says that’s really what he does. That’s why he can almost never be home, because he’s helping other people.’
The innocent, unintended stab slashed deeply across Hardy’s insides. But Ron kept to the point, not the subtext, answering his daughter calmly. ‘I think he can, too, honey, but it’s not my decision.’
There was a tentative knock from the children’s door and now Max stuck his head through the crack. ‘I’m sorry. I covered my head with the pillow, but I still couldn’t help hearing you yelling.’ He looked from Hardy to Ron. ‘Are you all mad at each other?’
Cassandra reached back and put her arm around her brother. ‘We’re scared, Daddy. What’s going to happen?’
‘It’s all right, hon, there’s nothing to be scared of. Daddy’s right here.’
Ron cast a glance at Hardy and went to stand up, but his daughter had advanced a step into the room, trailed by Max who now held on to her hand. The little girl’s face was set with determination. Another step and she spoke right to Hardy. ‘Mr Hardy, didn’t you come here to try to help us? Is that true?’
Hardy stammered. ‘Well, I…’
‘Because we can’t go back to Dawn. They can’t make us do that. Even Max remembers…’ The tears had begun again. ‘We just want to stay with Daddy and have everything be like it was again.’
Max piped in through his own tears. ‘And Bree back, too, please. I want Bree back.’
‘Oh, guys…’ Ron went to stand up. But Cassandra didn’t move toward him. She had her eyes on Hardy. ‘Do you have to be our lawyer to help us? Is that how it works? How do you become our lawyer?’
Hardy crossed over near her, went down to one knee, and tried a tired smile. ‘It’s not that. It’s that I don’t know what I can do, Cassandra. It’s complicated. Rebecca’s mother’s in a lot of trouble, too, and I’ve got to help her. She’s got to be my first priority. You can understand that.’
But the girl was persistent. ‘Maybe you could do both, though? And Daddy isn’t sure what to do right now.’
Ron reached out to her. ‘Oh, sweetie, come here. Both of you guys.’ Ron was holding out his hands and the kids went to him. He enveloped them both in his arms, in a strong and soothing fatherhood. ‘Come on, now, come on. There’s nothing to be scared of. Let’s say goodnight to Mr Hardy and go back to bed. It’ll all look better in the morning.’
But Cassandra turned. ‘Please, Mr Hardy, if you can.’
It was Monday, October 5, less than a week after Bree Beaumont’s death. In fact, it was the day she was to be buried. Baxter Thorne, a portly man with a gray goatee, a soft-spoken manner, and a gentle disposition, nervously paced the floor behind his computer banks in his office on the thirtieth floor of Embarcadero Two. Outside his inoperable windows, it was a gloriously clear day, with boats on the Bay and Treasure Island a nine-iron pitch across a mile and half of blue water. But Thorne had no use for the view. He’d told the cop – Griffin – he’d be here first thing in the morning. He had no idea what the man might have found, but the fact that he knew of Baxter Thorne’s existence at all was a very bad sign.
The sign on Thorne’s door announced that these were the offices of the Fuels Management Consortium – FMC. In fact, the organization was the center for the lobbying efforts of one of the country’s two multinational farming conglomerates. Spader Krutch Ohio, SKO, along with its chief competitor Archer Daniels Midland, ADM, was one of the country’s leading producers of ethanol. But while ADM was colloquially known by the benign nickname of ‘Supermarket to the World,’ SKO’s reputation was somewhat less savory.
SKO had been having a rough time in the last several years, and Thorne had been assigned to California to direct a campaign on behalf of its interests – he’d proven himself as a creative media consultant.
SKO might be Thorne’s biggest client, but the quiet, well-mannered gentleman with the goatee worked to please himself. He had a persuasive way with words, true, and could sway opinion with his pen. If his clients believed that his silver tongue and lucid prose alone were converting the multitudes, Thorne was happy to let them. But in reality, he knew better.
Sometimes, to be effective, you simply had to shake things up.
And this was his real love – operations, wet work. It had lots of names. Thorne got his own personal jollies by pursuing an extra-legal agenda all his own. And it was far more extensive and dangerous than anything any of his clients would ever order or even, if they became aware of it, tolerate.
For example, two years before, SKO had been getting a lot of bad press. The company’s CEO, Ellis Jackson, was fighting off charges of illegal campaign funding, gift-giving, and influence peddling. Because of this, the Senator from Kansas got cold feet and – reluctant to be identified with SKO – threatened to renege on his support of ethanol subsidies. This support was finally guaranteed by a donation of a million dollars to the Senator’s campaign fund, but without Thorne it is doubtful that the Senator would have found a way to accept the gift.
On his own, Thorne had discovered the man’s weakness for other young men. Then, Thorne had seen to it that one of these men had been on the corporate jet on the junket to Hilton Head. Finally, Thorne had decided precisely where to position the cameras.
But while Thorne loved his own covert operations more than anything else on earth, he didn’t shrink from his nuts and bolts work – information management and spin control. In fact, the Fuels Management Consortium produced reams of paper every month for dissemination to radio shows, newspapers, think tanks, consultant firms and lobbyists.
In addition, Thorne’s company produced campaign leaflets for political candidates who supported ethanol, or opposed MTBE, which amounted to the same thing. The most prominent of these was Damon Kerry, running for governor of California. Unfortunately, in Thorne’s view, Damon Kerry was a man who did not appreciate the big picture. Like the Senator from Kansas, he didn’t want to be publicly associated with SKO, with its questionable lobbying history. Damon Kerry was pure – he wasn’t proposing the use of ethanol. He wasn’t being bought by any special interests, no sir. He was merely opposed to the cancer-causing alternative, MTBE.
So Damon Kerry’s campaign was in the thick of the gasoline additive wars. Except one of the generals was ignorant of where he got his army.
Baxter Thorne came to California to bolster Kerry’s campaign, but Kerry had rejected his advances. Fortuitously, Kerry’s campaign manager was a young man named Al Valens. Greedy, unscrupulous, devious, and skilled, Valens was more than happy to accept Thorne’s help as well as a little personal financial support. In the role of Kerry’s best friend, consigliére, and strategist, Valens in fact was a double agent. His role was to keep his candidate focused on the evils of Big Oil.
All things considered, and up until last night, when the cop called, Thorne had believed that things were going pretty well. Kerry had come from nowhere to get within spitting distance of his opponent, and with a couple of good spins and perhaps a trick or two, Thorne was confident he could eliminate that gap and bring his boy home.
But suddenly, there was a problem. The damned Beaumont woman, and some homicide cop with an alleged connection to the Fuels Management Consortium that he wanted to talk about.
Thorne looked at his watch for the fiftieth time. He was on time. Where was Griffin? What the hell did he think he knew?
From long experience in the political arena, Thorne had learned to distrust first impressions. There were a host of fat, slovenly, boorish elected officials in this country who were powerful, decisive, and dangerous. He wasn’t sure where he was going to place Griffin just yet. From all appearances, the inspector was unimpressive, but the fact that he was sitting here at FMC meant that he’d made some unsettling connections. Something might be going on between the man’s ears.
So Thorne was playing it close, as was his inclination in any event. He smiled in his benign fashion, and spoke in kindly and professorial tones. ‘I’m afraid I don’t see anything sinister in Bree Beaumont having some of our literature at her apartment. She was in the combustion business, wasn’t she?’
Griffin had stuffed himself into one of the secretary s rolling chairs and now was hunched forward, one leg awkwardly crossed over the other, rocking as though maybe he thought the chair was a rocker. But Thorne didn’t think this was nerves. Under the working-class nonchalance, Griffin was intense as a surgeon. He didn’t bother with returning any smiles. ‘Yeah, we got your letterhead at the scene,’ he said. ‘I got that. But then I got Valens!
‘Al Valens?’
This did bring a smile. ‘Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Mr Thorne. Al Valens. Your guy with Damon Kerry.’
This was truly alarming, and Thorne had to struggle to retain his equanimity. There was no way anybody official – much less this oafish flatfoot – should know about Thorne’s relationship with Al Valens. If that became public, if Damon Kerry discovered that he was being deceived by his campaign manager, it would be the end of months of work, of a program that was on the verge of success.
So, his brain now on full alert, Thorne smiled again and leaned back in his chair, bringing his fingertips together over the tweedy vest that buttoned over his stomach. ‘How do you conclude that this Mr Valens is my guy, as you put it?’
‘I got a better one,’ Griffin replied. ‘How about if I ask the questions since that’s what I’m here for? In exchange I don’t bring you downtown.’
Thorne tried a little humor, to soften things here. ‘I’ve always considered that these offices were downtown.’
Griffin ‘s face was a slab of meat. ’What do you know about Valens’ relationship with Bree Beaumont?‘
There was nothing to do but stonewall until Thorne discovered a little more about what Griffin knew as well as the source of it. ‘I don’t know anything about his relationship with Bree Beaumont.’
‘But you admit that you do know him? Valens?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ He certainly wasn’t ready to admit it, and Griffin had just cued him that he was fishing. Thorne reminded himself – the flip side of first impressions – that sometimes people looked and acted stupid because they were. ‘But you’ve obviously heard that I do.’ He ventured an educated guess. ‘Jim Pierce?’
Pierce was an executive vice president of Caloco and, Thome had heard, ex-lover of Bree Beaumont. When she’d left the oil company to join Kerry, there’d been hard feelings all around. Pierce had the money and the motivation to discredit Kerry, and to make Bree see the error of her new ways and come back to him and Caloco.
Griffin looked at his notepad, and this verified Thorne’s suspicion. Poker wouldn’t be this inspectors game. ‘Because if it was Pierce, you’ve got to seriously consider the source.’ He held up a hand. ‘Now I’m not telling you what to think, but Jim Pierce? Jesus!’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s Big Oil, is what.’ Thorne sighed. ‘Look, sergeant, I’m a consultant in this business. I know the players. And Pierce is a very big player. So here’s what happens. If Kerry gets elected, which isn’t looking too bad right now, Pierce s people, the petroleum folks, they’re going to take the big hit on… you know about MTBE?’
Griffin nodded. ‘Lately, yeah, I’ve heard of it.’
‘Well, take my word on it, that’s what this is about. Three billion a year goes down the drain if Kerry wins, so Pierce is trying to disrupt the campaign!’
Griffin seemed to remember what his original position had been. ‘So you’re saying you’re not involved with Valens? That’s your story?’
Another avuncular shake of the head. ‘I don’t have a story, sergeant. All I know about Bree Beaumont’s death is what I’ve read in the paper. I’m especially saddened because, frankly, she was starting to make a real difference in the public’s perception of the dangers of MTBE, which are substantial. Also, quite honestly, several of my clients stood to benefit from her recent work. As did Kerry and probably Valens. Not only is there no motive there, there’s a positive disincentive!’
Thorne was fairly certain he’d deflected Griffin again from pursuing his own relationship with Valens. But he thought he could push things even further. ‘Look, sergeant, I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but let me guess what Mr Pierce told you – he said that Al Valens hated Bree, didn’t he? That Al was jealous of all the attention Kerry was giving to Bree. Something like that, am I right?’
An ambiguous shrug.
‘And who’s the guy who tells you all this? Only the guy whose business is in the crapper if Bree succeeds, who by the way just got dumped by her personally!’
Griffin finally showed a spark. ‘You know that?’
‘Word on the street!’ Thorne returned Griffin’s open look – he’d answered his questions, been straight with the police. If there was anything more, he’d continue to cooperate. But his message was clear – Griffin was barking up the wrong tree here.
Finally, the sergeant straightened his body and grunted his way up out of his chair. ‘I know where to find you,’ he said.
A last smile. ‘I’m not going anyplace! Thorne extended a hand and after a beat Griffin took it.
‘Listen to me, Al. The man was here. I don’t know for sure what Pierce told him, but it wasn’t news to him that you hated the woman!’
Al Valens swore. Then. ‘Did he mention the report? Did he know anything about that?’
‘No. I don’t think he’d know what it was if it bit him. But he’d obviously been to her place and gone through her papers, some with my letterhead!’
‘How’d she get those?’
Thorne’s voice took on a mild tone of reproach. ‘Well, Al, I was going to ask you the same thing.’
Valens took it in silence. ‘So where’d you leave it?’
‘I sent him back to Pierce.’
Valens was silent for a long moment. ‘How close was he to us?’
‘Way too. But now he’s looking at Pierce, who had every reason. More than every reason.’ Thorne smiled thinly. ‘I think Sergeant Griffin will come to the conclusion that Mr Pierce must have done it. And with no physical evidence, he’ll have to go to the strongest motive.’
But Valens didn’t sound convinced. ‘What if he comes back to us, though? After all we’ve-’
Thorne cut him off. ‘Al, he wants to catch a killer. Our arrangement is not his area of interest. He won’t be looking this way.’
Valens’ voice betrayed the panic Thorne knew he must be feeling. ‘But what if he does, Baxter? What if he does?’
Thorne spoke in his most soothing tones. ‘Then he’ll have to be managed, that’s all.’
The limousine bearing the Democratic candidate for governor pulled up to where a crowd of perhaps a hundred citizens waited in the chill by the Union Square entrance to the Saint Francis Hotel.
In the back seat, Damon Kerry nodded appreciatively at the man next to him. ‘Good job, Al. Nice turnout.’
Valens wore a distracted air. There was no doubt that the crowd here would be satisfactory. You tell semi-indigents that you’ll pay them twenty bucks to go someplace and stand around for fifteen minutes, and you can generally get some good percentage of them to show up and do it. And since both sides did it, neither could snitch off the other to the media.
Five months ago, Damon Kerry had unexpectedly taken the primary after the two other Democratic contenders had vilified each other to death in a series of TV debates. Since that time, Valens found himself more and more coming around to the opinion that the system could be improved by simply eliminating the middle men and paying people directly to vote.
In a cynical moment – and there had been hundreds lately – he’d amused himself doing the math. He’d concluded that for about the same amount of money they’d already blown through on this campaign, they could have paid every registered voter in the state twenty bucks to go into the booth and mark the ‘X’ next to Kerry.
If he took the number of citizens who actually voted – somewhere near thirty per cent of California’s adults – and only wanted to ensure a simple majority of fifty-one per cent, he could up the ante to nearly a hundred dollars per vote. With that kind of incentive, people would take the whole day off with pay to ‘vote.’ That was the way to do it. Hell, they’d even make money on the deal.
‘What are you thinking about, Al? You’re not here.’
The limo had stopped at the entrance. He couldn’t very well answer honestly, but since that wasn’t an issue with him at any time, it didn’t slow him down now. A quick shift of the mental gears and he was back to strategy, the campaign, life, or his anyway. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said distractedly. ‘Bree, I suppose. This new angle with Bree. The woman in jail.’
The television news had broken the story about Frannie Hardy only hours before, and it was already clear it was going to become large. Anything to do with damn Bree Beaumont was going to continue to have an effect on the campaign. Valens couldn’t get away from it. It had surprised Al to see how Bree had come from out of nowhere to be such a focal point in the campaign. Certainly it had never been Valens’ intention to get Bree and Damon together. She had been with the enemy. But then, after a radio program they had both appeared to defend their respective positions, things changed.
Bree had always viewed herself as a pioneer against pollution. She took pride in the fact that her MTBE was really doing a great job of cleaning up California’s air. It wasn’t just science to her. She cared that she was doing good. She was, it appeared, altruistic. She wanted a better world. In this way, she was very much like Damon Kerry, more so than Valens could have ever imagined.
Valens didn’t understand principled people at all, but these two – the candidate and the scientist – connected to each other in a big way. Damon Kerry, passionate and personally charming, hadn’t attacked Bree on the program. He’d been either smart or lucky enough to zero in on their common concern – keeping poisons out of the environment.
And what he’d made Bree do, which even Valens at the time had thought was brilliant, was direct her attention down, into the ground.
Before this one radio show, Bree’s entire scientific life had been directed into the atmosphere. She had been cleaning up the air, defending how she did it. And that had kept her busy enough that she hadn’t looked too carefully at the ground. She assumed, and the corporate culture in which she’d been immersed had aided the assumption, that her stuff – MTBE – in the ground would act like regular gasoline. Eventually it would dissolve or evaporate out. Reports – even scientific reports – to the contrary were paid for by the ethanol industry, by SKO. Bree considered the source, and discarded the facts.
So in her mind she had always been on the side of the angels, doing good work.
And then, suddenly, Damon Kerry had made her see it all differently. And in the immediate aftermath of that conversion, she’d been the greatest thing for the campaign since the battle of the front-running mudslingers.
But soon afterward, from Al Valens’ perspective she became a substantial liability. Something personal started going on with Damon Kerry. Before Valens knew it, Bree was showing up everywhere with his candidate. Late dinners, early lunches, fundraising breakfasts.
By the time of her murder, Bree had mutated from occasional irritant to constant influence. Kerry was paying more attention to her than to Valens – giving more credence to Bree’s idealistic, stupid advice than to his own campaign manager.
As the relationship evolved, Valens saw that it was only going to be a matter of time before the opponent’s camp – to say nothing of the media – got wind of the story and used it to ruin everything he’d done. Valens had had nightmares about the headline: ‘Candidate in Affair With Married Mother of Two.’
No, it wouldn’t do. Bree Beaumont’s death was not at all a bad thing for Damon Kerry, although it would probably be a while before he would see it.
Now, in the darkened back seat of the limousine, Kerry’s face grew grave.
In the immediate aftermath of Bree’s death, he’d gone into hibernation for three days. Valens had had to cancel all of his appearances, pleading a virus, the flu, something. For one terrifying moment, it had even looked as though Kerry was going to stop campaigning altogether, to give it up.
Valens had had to employ all of his wiles to get his client back on track, invoking Bree’s sacred name. Bree would never have wanted him to quit. He had to hold on, and win the governorship for Bree if for nothing else. Fight the oil companies who had used Bree for their own evil purposes. If he didn’t go on, Bree would have died in vain. All that nonsense.
But ultimately, it worked.
Now Valens leaned forward, rolled the connecting window down, and spoke to the driver. ‘Peter, take it around the block one time, will you? We’re a little early.’
This wasn’t true, but Kerry wouldn’t know that, and now that he’d mentioned Bree, it wouldn’t hurt to solidify the spin. No doubt someone would question Kerry about it at the Almond Growers’ Association cocktail party tonight, and it would be bad luck to give an answer upon which they hadn’t already agreed.
Valens laid a protective hand on his knee. The message bore repeating. ‘She and Ron were happy, Damon. The marriage was a good one. He had no reason to kill her. You have to remember that.’
Kerry turned his face to the tinted windows. Valens continued. ‘If Ron and Bree were unhappy, she never mentioned it to you, OK? Right?’
For an answer, Kerry blew out a long breath. ‘Look,’ Valens pressed on, ‘let’s concentrate on the good news from this front. Look what’s happening on the talk radio shows.’
Kerry snorted. ‘I hate those people.’
‘I know. I agree with you. But they don’t hate you. And Bree in the news is good for you.’
Throughout the campaign, the talk radio campaign against MTBE had been one of his strongest weapons. Never mind that it was funded by Baxter Thorne’s client, SKO, or that several callers linked themselves to groups that had targeted oil refineries and corporate offices with bombings and other vandalisms. Valens didn’t mind terrorists, so long as they were his terrorists.
Valens patted Kerry on the leg. ‘But like these folks or not, Damon, they are doing you a lot of good right now. They’re getting your message out.’
‘My message isn’t just about gasoline additives, Al. It’s about the public trust, public safety.’
Valens bit back his reply. There were worse things than a sincere candidate, he supposed. He tried to recall the great line – was it George Burns? – ‘The politician’s best friend is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it licked.’ Instead, he said, ‘Yes, of course. I agree with you. Public safety, public trust. But the public has a handle on MTBE. They’re nervous around it…’
‘They should be.’
‘Granted. But my point is that these people are keeping the issue hot, and it’s your issue. You’re against this bad stuff.’
‘Damn straight.’
‘And the oil companies are making it.’
‘To the tune of a three-billion-dollar-a-year industry, Al. When only five years ago-’
‘Agreed, agreed.’ Valens had to stop him or he’d go into his whole speech right there in the limo…
… about how the oil companies had gotten together and decided that hey, maybe it was dirty -burning gasoline that was causing air pollution after all. They should do a study and if that radical theory turned out to be true, they should – out of the goodness of their corporate hearts – do something about it.
And sure enough, that’s what the study – draft written by Bree Beaumont, Ph.D. – had found. Gasoline wasn’t burning cleanly enough. It needed an ‘additive’ to burn more completely away the hydrocarbons that contributed to smog. The California legislature and the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency fell all over themselves passing laws that mandated the use of this magical additive, if a good one could only be found.
Valens had to admit Kerry was good at this next part. He’d heard it from dozens of podiums up and down the state and it always played beautifully, the great American public hating rich corporations as it did.
‘So guess what these noble oil companies did? They spent lots and lots of their own money developing the very additive that their own gasoline needed to become clean and efficient – our old friend MTBE.’ Here, Valens was pleased to note, there was often if not always a chorus of well-orchestrated ‘boos.’
After which Kerry would continue: ‘And then, as it turned out – just a coincidence, my friends, I assure you – it turned out that the oil companies found that their production of MTBE, made of a by-product of gasoline refining that they had earlier been throwing away – well, would you look at that? Here’s a surprise! MTBE started to bring in a yearly income of three billion dollars!’
More boos.
‘Oh, and darn, they forgot to tell us one last little detail.’ A moment of suspense. ‘Wouldn’t you just know it? The dang stuff causes cancer and respiratory degeneration. Actually, the oil companies didn’t really forget to tell us that. What they did was tell us the opposite – that MTBE was nearly medicinal in its impact on human health. The air so much cleaner we’d have a new Eden. Why, read the initial reports’ – again, drafts by Bree – ’and you’d almost come away believing it’s so safe you could drink the stuff.
‘Except for one other problem.’ And here Kerry would turn his most serious. ‘Except it makes water taste like turpentine. It leaks out of holding tanks and jet ski engines and everywhere else liquids leak out of. And once it gets into the groundwater, the wells and waterways of our great state, it never comes out. Never. Ever. It doesn’t evaporate. It doesn’t break down chemically. Ask the city of Santa Monica, which had to shut down five of its wells – that’s half of its water supply – because of MTBE contamination from local corner gas stations.
‘And even now, ladies and gentleman, even today as I’m talking to you, this stuff is added to every gallon of gasoline sold in California at a rate of up to fifteen per cent per gallon. That’s fourteen point two million gallons of MTBE every single day.’
This statistic usually stunned the crowd into silence.
The candidate would wait as long as it he could, then hang his head a moment. His timing was excellent. He’d look up, sometimes even able to summon a tear. ‘It can’t go on. For our children and our future, it’s got to be stopped. My name is Damon Kerry and I’m here to stop it.’
‘So, bottom-line, we can’t comment about Ron and Bree. We have to stick to the issues. We’ve been through this all before, Damon. It’s only a couple more days.’
‘I know, but…’
But Valens knew there couldn’t be any ‘buts.’ ‘Listen,’ he said with intensity. ‘Every day in every major city in this state, the callers to these shows are spreading the word that the oil companies killed Bree to punish her for betraying them – changing her mind and campaigning against MTBE because she changed camps and came over to your side.’ Valens stopped any reply, a hand up. ‘Look, Damon, here’s what I’m saying. You know it as well as I do – people love conspiracies, they love to hate these oil guys. This helps you.’
‘But I’m not accusing the oil companies of-’
‘And that what’s makes it so brilliant!’ Valens knew that his candidate could see this clearly, so why did he have to keep explaining it? ‘Damon, you’re Mr Clean. But your worthy opponent, who favors pumping MTBE until more research can be done? Guess what? He looks like he’s with the oil interests-’
‘Which he is.’
Lord! Valens couldn’t get over Kerry’s fascination with the literal truth. ‘Yes, of course he is, but what matters for you is that we couldn’t buy the radio time they’re giving us. If we get them thinking about Ron Beaumont as a villain, it all gets diluted.’
‘I don’t know, Al. I wish they would come up with some villain, some suspect. Somebody to take the heat off.’
‘Take the heat off who?’
‘Who do you think, Al? Me.’
‘What about you?’
‘And Bree.’
‘You had a professional relationship. What’s to talk?’
Kerry gave him a look. ‘This would be a bad time for somebody to find out, though, wouldn’t it? She’s back in the news, the story’s no longer dead, reporters start digging.’
‘And find nothing. Do you hear me? You have to relax. They find nothing.’
The limo had pulled to a stop. Kerry hated to keep his crowd waiting. He needed to get out and press the flesh, keep connected to his voters. He reached for the door handle. ‘All right, Al, I hear you. I hear you.’
Abe Glitsky lay awake, trying to ignore the television noise in the next room. His housekeeper/nanny Rita loved the TV as much as Glitsky hated it. She’d been living with them now for almost five years and was a treasure, especially with Orel. Abe needed her so badly he knew he would tolerate much worse in her than an unfortunate taste for popular dreck.
Still, tonight, with Frannie Hardy in jail and an unsolved high-profile murder starting to get renewed media attention, the inanities soothed like a buzz saw. Finally, he pulled off the covers and sat up.
Five minutes later, fully dressed, he was out of the house, walking down Lake Street on his way to where he’d parked his city-issue car about six blocks away – the closest parking space he could find.
He was telling himself that maybe it wasn’t the television after all. What had gotten him up and moving was the sudden bolt that Frannie and his unsolved, high-profile murder were one and the same case. Not that he hadn’t known it before, but he’d been viewing them as more or less separate problems, and suddenly it struck him that maybe they weren’t.
One other thing was certain – he hadn’t woken her up. From the looks of her eyes, she hadn’t slept yet in her cell.
‘Abe. Hi…?’ A quick look around the walls of the interview room although there was no place anybody could hide. Glass block and light-green stucco. The question was all over her face – where was her husband? What was Abe doing here by himself in the middle of the night?
The door closed behind her and she took a little half-step hop, jumping out of the way of something, the sound. Then a pitiful smile, embarrassed. ‘I’m not good at this.’
Abe was standing close. ‘Who is?’ He came up and put his arms around her for a second. She felt almost dangerously insubstantial, all tiny bones. He pulled back and looked at her, swimming in the orange jail jumpsuit. ‘Are you eating?’
She shrugged, no answer. ‘Is Dismas coming in? Is he out there?’
‘No, it’s just me, checking on how you’re holding up.’
Frannie crossed her arms, the ghost of her old self trying to appear, a dance in her eyes. ‘No, checking on how I’m holding up was last time, before you went home. This is something else.’
The scar stretched between Glitsky’s lips. His own beaming smile. His head bobbed appreciatively. ‘You should be the lawyer.’
‘I’ll pass, thanks.’ Boosting herself on to the table, she looked up at him. ‘So what is it? The deal?’
Glitsky’s brow furrowed. ‘What deal?’
‘It’s not that? I thought they must have come and asked you-’
‘I don’t know any deal. What deal? Who offered you a deal?’
‘Scott Randall, that bastard. He wasn’t here an hour ago. Doesn’t understand why I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about him, like he really didn’t get it.’ She was watching Glitsky’s face. ‘You really haven’t heard about this?’
‘Nothing. What did he want?’
‘He wants Ron.’
‘And how was he going to get that from you?’
‘He said he’d drop the contempt charge and stop worrying about the secret. I wouldn’t have to tell that to the grand jury.’
‘In return for what?’
‘For where Ron was. He thought I’d know where he was.’
‘But you don’t, right?’
Frannie was studying the wall over his shoulder.
‘Right?’ Abe repeated, but he already knew. ‘Damn it,’ – the rare profanity came out with slow deliberation – ‘what are you doing, Frannie? I’ve been on your side up to now, trying to get you out of here, because I have known and loved you for years, and I know you’re not involved in any murder. Am I at least right on that?’
She nodded, met his eyes. ‘I swear to you, Abe.’
He sighed heavily, perhaps reassured. ‘All right, then. What else did Mr Randall want?’
‘Just that. He wanted to get his hands on Ron and question him. He said he knew that’s where the answer was. With Ron.’
‘And where is that?’
Sitting on the edge of the table, Frannie hung her head and swung her feet back and forth like a child. Finally, she looked back up. ‘Abe, he left the house and she was alive. When he came back she was dead. Somebody killed her.’
Glitsky started to respond, but she put her hand on his arm, stopping him. ‘I know, I know. You told me, remember? The time of death. Technically, he could have done it before he left to take the kids to school.’
‘I like that eye-roll thing you do.’
‘Come on, can you picture it? Ron takes the kids down to the car, then says to himself, “Hey, here’s an opportune moment. I think I’ll just nip back upstairs, kill my wife, throw her off the balcony to make it look like a suicide, clean up the glass from whatever convenient murder weapon I find up there…” ’
She was shaking her head. ‘Please. I was with him that morning, and he was fine. He was normal. We just had a cup of coffee and kvetched about life, about children. You know how you do. You’ve had kids.’
‘Still do.’
‘You know what I mean. School age. Little guys.’
Glitsky nodded. ‘OK, but he told you a secret so important that you’re here in jail?’
‘No, he didn’t, Abe.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean not that morning. That morning was nothing.’
‘But Scott Randall gave me the impression-’
‘I know. And now everybody assumes Ron told me something that morning. I’m telling you that’s not what happened. I don’t even remember if we mentioned Bree at all, not on that day.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Because I wouldn’t tell what Ron told me.’
‘Which had nothing to do with Bree’s murder, so far as you know?’
‘That’s what I said on the stand.’ Frannie had been admonished that revealing anything about what happened inside the grand jury room was a separate contempt of court. At this point, she couldn’t have cared less. ‘I said I didn’t know. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure.’ Finally, she pushed off the table and got back to her feet. ‘But I’m telling you, Abe, listen to me.’ She had grabbed at his arms, the sleeves of his leather jacket. ‘It doesn’t matter even if he did have an incredible, compelling reason to kill her, which he didn’t. And forget that he’s just not the kind of person who would ever, ever kill anybody. Forget that. The point is that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t have done it. He wasn ’t there. Why is this so hard for everybody to understand?‘
Glitsky the cop almost found himself believing her, for the practical reason that what she said, particularly about the timing of the murder, made sense. If Ron Beaumont had killed his wife in the morning before taking the kids to school, while they were still hanging around or even waiting in the car, and managed to hide it from them, he had to admit that had been one hell of a party trick. Not that he couldn’t have done it – and Abe had only recently argued that it was in fact possible – except that in the real world, possible didn’t mean likely.
But there were still questions. There were always questions. ‘So why is he on the run?’
‘How do you know he is, that he hasn’t just gone fishing or something to get away for a day or two?’
This was the wrong answer and Glitsky clucked in frustration. ‘Your husband told me. He went by the school.’ A meaningful glance. ‘I know that Diz also told you that, which brings up the question of why are you pretending you didn’t know. It also brings us back to why he ran.’
‘Maybe because he was scared, Abe. People get scared, even when they haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘That’s true,’ Glitsky conceded. ‘They also get scared when they think they’re going to get caught for what they did. I’ve seen it happen. Also, I notice you didn’t answer the first part, why you’re pretending you didn’t know.’
Suddenly her eyes really flashed. ‘Because there’s things I don’t have to tell anybody, that’s why. Even you, even Dismas. I’ve got a right to a little privacy, Abe, just like you do. How about that?’ She took a few steps away, then stopped abruptly and turned back. ‘And while we’re on questions, I’ve got one for you – what did you come down here for? It wasn’t to check on me and you said it was. Why did you lie to me?’
Glitsky held out his hands. She was right. She was Hardy’s wife, one of his closest friends in her own right, and being in jail didn’t make her a criminal, a suspect, or anyone he had to deal with professionally. She was still the woman who’d cared for his boys for a month after his wife had died. ‘I’m really sorry.’
She relented. A little. Arms still crossed, though. ‘Sorry’s good. Sorry’s a start.’ But she wasn’t giving up on her questions, either. ‘So why did you come down here?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe you could tell me something I didn’t know about Bree. It occurred to me that with everything else going on, nobody’s thought to ask you.’
‘But I don’t know anything about Bree.’
‘You don’t have any ideas about who killed her? Ron didn’t have any?’
‘I’m sure nothing he didn’t already tell the grand jury.’
Glitsky tried to smile. ‘I’m on your side, Frannie. Always. How about if I ask you some questions, to see if they point me toward anybody else?’
Her shoulders slumped, the fatigue showing everywhere. ‘How about if we sit down?’
They’d been at it maybe twenty minutes, Glitsky feeling that he’d barely begun when the guard knocked and the door opened, and Dismas Hardy appeared. ‘Party in Room A,’ he said. But he didn’t look like he was partying, Glitsky thought. More like he’d been through some kind of sleep torture.
Frannie got up and walked to him. Glitsky stood, realizing that his interview was over for tonight. He came around the table. ‘OK you lovebirds. I can take a hint.’
‘Abe, that’s OK, we’re just-’
But he was at the door. ‘I know what you’re doing. Diz, I’ll be in my office for awhile.’ He turned to go, then remembered something. ‘Oh, and Frannie?’
‘Yes?’
He pointed a finger at her. ‘Eat.’
Then they were alone, holding each other. Hardy had come straight from the Airport Hilton, wanting to fill her in. He gave her Ron’s note, which seemed to make almost no impression. And really, he reasoned, why should it? It would have no effect, if any, for days. More than that, though, Frannie was far more concerned with another issue. ‘Before anything else,’ she said, ‘this thing about me and Ron.’
‘OK.’ His breathing had stopped and that was all he could get out.
‘We liked each other, like each other.’ A pause. ‘Maybe a little more than that.’
Hardy tried to keep any hurt or recrimination out of his voice. ‘How much more?’
His wife sighed. ‘I think for a while I was infatuated with him. He seemed to feel the same way about me.’ She read something in his face and let go of his hands. ‘Now you’re going to hate me, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to make me hate you. I love you.’
She stared at him for another beat. ‘We didn’t…’ She stopped. ‘But he was there, Dismas. He was a friend. He listened. I just want you to understand.’
‘I don’t listen?’
‘Yes. I mean no, you know you don’t. Not about some things. You glaze over – the kids, school life, all those what you call mindless suburban activities. And I don’t even blame you, not really. I know it’s not the most exciting stuff in the world, but it’s my life, and sometimes it’s just horribly lonely and mind-numbing, and then suddenly there was this nice man who didn’t think all of this was tedious to listen to.’
‘So he’d listen, did he, old Ron?’
She nodded, going on. ‘Ron and I, we were just having so many of the same issues with the kids…’
He couldn’t hold it any longer. ‘Wait a minute, Frannie. What about us? I seem to remember we’re doing some of the same things, too – live in the same house, do the kid thing, have friends over, like that. That stuff doesn’t count?’
‘I know, I know, you’re right.’ There was pain in her voice, too, perhaps some faint overtones of the desperation she must have been feeling. ‘But you know how things have changed with us. We’re different. I hope you’re still committed-’
‘Of course I’m still committed. You think I’d be sitting here listening to all this if I wasn’t pretty damn committed?’
‘OK, I know that. But the romance…’ She stopped. They both knew what she was getting at. The romance, and there used to be plenty, had been all but swallowed by the maw of the mundane.
And Hardy knew why. ‘We’re both working now. We work all the time.’
‘Well, whatever the reason, we both know we’re not the way we used to be. There’s whole areas of each other’s lives that we don’t have the time or energy for anymore.’
Hardy brought his hand up to his eyes, all the fatigue of the past hours suddenly weighing in. Everything Frannie was saying was true. Nobody’s lives were the way they used to be. But the accommodation he’d reached was to put it out of his mind. He had his job, making the money. She had hers, the house and the children’s day-to-day activities. They shared the children’s discipline and some organized playtime. They weren’t actually fighting; they were both competent, so there wasn’t much to fight about. This was adulthood and it was often not much fun. So what?
But she evidently had reached another conclusion – she needed something he wasn’t giving her and she’d gone out and found it. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked. ‘Talk to me.’
‘I’m thinking everybody…’ He started over. ‘I mean, married people… I don’t know.’ He rubbed at his burning eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
‘We all get further apart?’
He shook his head. ‘Maybe. But I’ve been trying to support us all here for the last few years. It takes a little bit of my time. Hell, it takes all my time. You think I’m OK with no leisure in my life? You think I don’t miss it, too, the fun? But what’s the option? Live poor, let the kids starve…?’
‘Nobody’s going to starve, Dismas. It’s not that. You know that.’
‘Actually, I’m not sure that I do know that. It feels like if I stop working, somebody might. The world might end.’
‘But you never talked to me about that, did you? That fear?’ He shrugged and she pressed him. ‘Because you don’t talk about those kinds of things, not anymore.’
He shrugged that off. ‘I never did, Frannie. Nobody wants to hear about that, all those nebulous fears.’
‘Yes they do. And nebulous hopes, too, and little insignificant worries that just need to get aired out, and the occasional dream that’s just a dream, like we used to have all the time. What we were going to do when we got older, when the kids have moved out?’
‘Frannie, you’re talking a decade, minimum. We don’t even know if we’ll be alive in a decade. Why talk about it?’
She folded her arms. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. We don’t know something for sure and therefore it’s not on the Top Forty list of acceptable topics.’
‘But Ron does, is that it? You’ve got hopes and fears you can share with Ron, but not with me?’ He was hurt and mad and starting to swing pretty freely, maybe rock her with a roundhouse. ‘So what kind of dreams did you and Ron share and talk about?’
‘I didn’t have any dreams with Ron, Dismas. I only have dreams with you.’
That stopped him. Her eyes were beginning to well up. He reached over, pulling her to him. ‘I don’t want to yell at you,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand this right now. I’m trying.’ He pulled back so he could look at her. ‘I’ve been trying with our whole lives, too, you know. I do try to be there for you and the kids. I haven’t been distant on purpose.’
‘I know. I shouldn’t have let Ron even be friends, not that way. That’s all it was, really, but I… it seemed innocent, really, starting out. You know, connecting finally to somebody.’
Hardy knew. Just before Vincent had been born, he’d had the same experience – connection, infatuation. Fire that he had ducked away from before it had burned him and Frannie. He knew.
‘I shouldn’t have let him get important,’ she said. ‘I should have seen it and stopped, but we were just talking. It didn’t seem it would hurt anything.’
‘Except it’s put you here.’
That brought them back to where they were, although of course they hadn’t gone anywhere. It was almost midnight and the next morning their own children would be waking up at Grandma’s with neither of their parents around.
Frannie, shivering now, looked down at her orange jumpsuit. This time the tears did well over.
‘I’m so sorry, Dismas. I’m so sorry.’
He pulled her back to him, and moved his hand up and down over her back, feeling pretty damn sorry himself.
Glitsky was at his desk, sipping from a mug of tepid tea, trying to get a take on what Frannie had told him, which wasn’t much that he hadn’t already known. Bree and the oil wars. But so what? He’d been a homicide inspector for a long time and the idea that this was some sort of business-related slaying was, for him, almost too far-fetched to consider.
When he got back to basics and asked himself who stood to benefit from Bree’s death, he came up with Ron. So regardless of how much he’d prefer Sharron Pratt and Scott Randall to be wrong, he was thinking he’d be wise not to forget entirely about him. It might be nice to find an alternative suspect, but if homicide took the road less travelled and found no one on it after the DA had shown them the way, he had a hunch he’d be hearing about it for a decade or two.
He was vaguely aware of two inspectors writing reports out in the open homicide detail. Suddenly there was a shadow in his doorway and he looked up.
‘I was half expecting you not to show.’
‘Which half?’ Hardy asked. He stepped into the office and crab-walked around the desk, which barely fit into the room, to one of the wooden chairs wedged into the tiny space that was left. ‘Frannie told me you two had a nice talk.’
The lieutenant was twirling his mug around and around, wrestling with something. ‘I’m not too happy about what I heard, Diz. I’m thinking it may be Ron after all.’
Hardy was poker-faced, keeping it casual. ‘How could he have done it? I mean like when and where?’
‘I know. There are problems with it.’
‘Like he wasn’t there? Would that be one of them?’ Low-key. But the last thing he needed now was to get homicide on Ron. Because they would have a good shot at finding him, which would put him and his kids back in the system. It would eliminate Hardy’s own private agenda – the only one, he believed, that could produce a satisfactory conclusion to this mess. So he asked, ‘What do you have on Bree? What did Griffin get?’
The mug stopped halfway to Glitsky’s mouth, then came back down. Glitsky’s normal expression was something between a frown and a scowl, and now it moved a few degrees south. ‘Carl might have had the case closed in two hours if he hadn’t died. Or he might have been nowhere. Either way, he didn’t get to writing up his reports. Paperwork wasn’t his strong point.’
‘What was?’
Glitsky narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Well, he must have done something. Just because there’s not much in the file doesn’t mean there’s nothing.’ He had Glitsky’s interest now and he kept going. ‘Was Griffin married? Did he talk to his wife? Anybody in the office here? Who supervised at the crime scene? They must have gotten some kind of physical evidence at Bree’s place. I mean, Griffin was in this, right? He had to have something.’
Hardy found it a lot easier getting into the penthouse with the key that Ron had given him.
Once inside, he turned and locked the door behind him, then switched on the lights. Nothing obvious had changed since he and Canetta had walked out together last night, but Hardy felt a dim charge as he started for the office with the answering machine.
What was it?
Stopping completely, telling himself that it was probably the difference between being merely tired, which was last night, and semi-comatose, now, he still took a minute getting his bearings, casting his eyes around the periphery of the rooms.
While he’d been visiting downtown with Frannie and then Glitsky, he’d left his gun stowed in his trunk. When he got back to his car he’d tucked it back into his belt. Now, feeling stupid about it for the second time in five hours didn’t stop him from pulling it out again.
The paintings, the view, the dining area, all the same. It was nothing, he concluded. He was the walking dead at the moment, seeing ghosts, maybe playing with them.
But suddenly there it was.
He’d gone out to the balcony last night, and to do that he’d pulled the drapes aside a foot or two. He remembered it specifically because from the inside of the house, where he stood now, he hadn’t been able to see the French doors leading out to the balcony from which Bree had been thrown. He hadn’t known that the doors were there.
And now they were covered again, the drapes pulled closed.
He crossed the living room again, the dining area with its seating nook, trying to remember, growing more sure of it. Neither he nor Canetta had come anywhere near this area last night. And as Hardy was leaving, he’d glanced back at the room one last time – the French doors stuck in his mind, and that meant the drapes hadn’t been pulled closed.
Moving them aside again, he pushed open one of the doors and stepped back out on to the balcony, over to its edge. It still was a long way down. Fighting vertigo, he backed up a step. Nothing had been moved, nothing had changed.
So somebody had pulled the drapes against the unlikely event that he would be seen moving around twelve floors up at the scene of a murder.
A last glance and Hardy was inside, this time pulling the drapes behind him. He still had the gun in his hand. ‘Hello,’ he called out. ‘Anybody here?’
Silence.
Flicking the hall and room lights on before him, he took a tour of the back rooms, as he and Canetta had done last night. Nothing looked disturbed. Even the office, presumably the location of Bree’s important files, was as he’d last seen it.
Except for one thing. The counter on the answering machine, which last night had read ‘8,’ now was a zero.
All the messages had been erased.