The Rule of Law

by John Lescroart

  “ ‘Redound’?”

  “Redound.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know ‘redound.’ Is it a lawyer word?”

  “It might be, at that. But it’s also open to use by the general public, I believe.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It means to lead to something. Like, if I tell you why I want to go up against Jameson, my motive might not lead you to think I’m the paragon of virtue and goodness that I try to project. It might not redound to my credit.”

  “Okay. So what is it? Your motive?”

  “I want him stopped. I want to end his political career before it goes any further because I firmly believe that he is one dangerous motherfucker. I don’t want me and the rest of the legal community in this city to have to live the next four years playing by his rules, which—trust me—are not the rule of law. And now that I’ve fallen into them, I think these two cases—Phyllis and Celia—might give me a platform to get the man’s character out there in front of God and everybody, where it will not thrive. And neither will he.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “But still, why you? How’d you get that job?”

  “I didn’t,” Hardy said. “It came out of nowhere and got me.”

  11

  WHEN PHYLLIS HAD gotten home on Sunday, she had been exhausted and, after calling the office to apologize for her absence and to tell Mr. Hardy that she’d be in the next day, she’d gone to bed and slept right through until Monday morning. She noted that they had made a mess of the place in the wake of the service of the search warrant, which had apparently taken place the previous week while she was holed up in Ukiah with Celia, but she hadn’t had the energy to do anything about it.

  Then, on Monday, they’d arrested her and she’d spent that night in jail.

  Finally home again today, it took her over four hours to get the apartment back to the way it had been before the search.

  The most disturbing element from her perspective was the absence of the gun that she had left in the drawer next to her bed but which was gone when she’d gotten back. According to Adam, it was the murder weapon used by Celia, and no doubt—if Adam hadn’t in fact stolen it—the inspectors had taken it for testing and then kept it locked up as evidence.

  The big problem was that the gun would, she knew, have her fingerprints on it, not that anyone was accusing her of actually being the murderer. But that, she believed, might change, although how remained a mystery.

  She was also worried about Celia. Over the years, she’d taken perhaps three hundred immigrants in transit into her apartment—some in more desperate straits than others, but all of them trying to get to the next station, whether it was the one in Santa Rosa or Vallejo or Ukiah—on their way to Canada.

  Because of the murder, Celia had been among the most desperate, so she hadn’t even stayed a night in Phyllis’s apartment. Instead, on that Tuesday afternoon when Hector Valdez had been killed, Phyllis had driven them both up Highway 1; but when they’d arrived and she had called her connection Muriel Windsor on the throwaway cell phone she used, Muriel had told her to lie low at the local Motel 6 and hold off dropping Celia for a while—that there was some question about whether their security and secrecy had been breached.

  Apparently, three other migrantes, all wanted on criminal charges in various jurisdictions down south, had been picked up by ICE in Ukiah in the previous six weeks. Somebody, Muriel believed, was turning these people in. Maybe one of their neighbors. She just didn’t know, but didn’t want to risk it with someone as high-profile as Celia.

  Muriel was in contact with another family—unbelievably, a superior court judge named Jared Rosen and his lawyer wife, Stephanie—who’d confided to her that they could take people in and get them on the road to Red Bluff or Redding or even Ashland, Oregon. So Phyllis and Celia had stayed in Ukiah’s Motel 6 for four days, until early Sunday morning, when finally the Rosens thought it would be safe and Phyllis had dropped Celia at their front door.

  Usually, passing off the runaway was the last time that Phyllis would hear about the person she’d helped. And she knew that this was probably the case with Celia. The judge and his wife weren’t going to call her back and report on the success of the next leg, on how it had gone. No news was good news.

  Now it was closing on ten o’clock and she took the burrito she’d bought down at the corner from the refrigerator and put it in the microwave. She’d just sat down to wait for it when her cell phone rang. Seeing that it was her brother, she sighed and picked it up. “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Up at Mel’s, but you know fish and guests stink after three days, and now it’s been a week. I think he and Rita are getting tired of me.”

  “You haven’t been back here?”

  “Not since,” he said.

  “What are you wearing, then?”

  “Dirty clothes. Mel’s about my size anyway. And they got a washer.”

  “So you didn’t take the gun?”

  “No. What? It’s gone?”

  “They must have gotten it in the search.”

  “They searched the place, huh? I thought they might.”

  “You thought they might? Adam, you sent them here.”

  “Not on purpose. And I knew that you’d be gone by the time . . . I had to give them something or they might have taken me in again. Hey, and you were gone, weren’t . . .” He trailed off. “Anyway, I tried you last night, too. No answer. Where have you been? I thought it was just gonna be a night or two you were gone.”

  “Well, it wasn’t, as it turned out. I had to hide out in Ukiah for four days before I could drop Celia. Then I got back and got arrested and last night I was in jail.”

  “Get out of here. Jail where?”

  “Downtown. Here. You really have screwed things up for me, Adam. Do you realize that? They’ve charged me with helping Celia escape. That’s a felony. I’m out on bail right now. I could go to jail myself.”

  “Hey, I never meant for that.”

  “No. I’m sure you didn’t. But sometimes you do something and that makes something else happen. That’s called having consequences.”

  “Yeah, well . . . but the thing is . . . I’m sorry and all about that. But it’s not like if it was me. I mean, if it had been me they arrested, then we’re talking real time.”

  “It felt real enough to me. One night.”

  “Okay, yeah, but . . . anyway, the thing is, if you don’t mind, they’re kind of kicking me out . . .”

  “And you want to come back here?”

  “And get some clothes at least. Maybe a shower. I’m starting to put something together with Mel, but nothing steady yet, no guarantees. You know how people are if you been in jail.”

  “No. But maybe I’m about to start finding out.”

  Adam let the silence build. Finally he said, “So . . . what do you think? It wouldn’t have to be too long.”

  Phyllis sighed heavily. Her brother, she thought, was unbelievable. He seemed to have no feelings at all for what he’d put her through, and clearly expected her to simply step up and offer her home to him again until he could get himself settled somewhere else.

  She sighed again, astounded anew by his near-bottomless selfishness.

  On the other hand, he was after all her only blood relative in the world. He’d grown up without a father and with an overburdened mother. And in spite of all his weaknesses, in spite of what he’d done to her, she thought he was really trying to turn his life around. How could she abandon him at this point? Where was the goodness in that? She sighed a last time. “And where are you now, Adam? Where’s Mel’s place?”

  “Just off Dolores,” he said. “At Twenty-Second Street.” Then, hopefully: “I could be down there in, like, an hour. I still got my key.”

  “You won’t need it,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be awake.”

  • • •

  BETH TULLY KNEW Abe Glitsky by sight and by rep
utation, but she had never before met the former deputy chief of inspectors personally. When he stood up to greet her from his booth at Gaspare’s Pizzeria, she was unprepared for the sheer presence of the man close up, which from her perspective was intimidation incarnate. And yet he shook her hand with a gentle touch, then gestured her into the seat across from him.

  “Thanks for coming down to meet me so late,” she began. “When I called to ask you if we could get together, I didn’t necessarily mean in the next fifteen minutes, but I really do appreciate it.”

  Glitsky shrugged. “You say you’re in Homicide, you can generally get my attention pretty quick. From my days in the detail, I don’t remember paying much attention to the clock. By the way, I ordered iced tea and a pepperoni and mushroom pizza, if you’d like a slice or two, or even half. My cardiologist would kill me if he found out, so we need to keep it between us.”

  “Sounds great. I’ll never tell.”

  “Deal,” Glitsky said, then leaned back as the waitress came by and poured, leaving the pitcher. After a sip, he put down his glass. “So, how can I help you? You said this was the Valdez case? I can’t say I’ve really been following it.”

  “There’s not much to follow. Valdez got shot a week ago today by one of the girls he was running. We have three witnesses . . .” She ran down the particulars of the case and her role in the investigation, concluding with the information that she and her partner had been effectively cut out of the investigation by the DA’s decision to go forward with the grand jury proceeding but not have them testify.

  When she finished, Glitsky said, “I’m not sure I see the problem. Sometimes inspectors don’t have to testify in front of grand juries, especially if it’s a particularly strong case.”

  “Well, maybe that’s the point,” Beth said. “It was one of those cases that looks strong until you stare at it a little more closely. If my partner and I would have testified, we might in fact have introduced some doubt, but the DA didn’t want any doubt, so we got called off, or never got called on.”

  They took a small hiatus as the pizza got delivered and they took their slices, their bites.

  Glitsky swallowed, then drank some tea. “I’m afraid I still don’t see the problem,” he said. “If it’s a loser, they’ll lose at trial, your suspect walks, and that’s the end of it. I don’t see how it would wind up being a reflection on you or your partner. Especially if you didn’t testify for the grand jury. It’s the DA’s problem. Am I missing something?”

  Beth took an extra moment chewing, swallowed carefully. “Here’s the thing, sir. A couple of years ago, you might remember a lawyer named Peter Ash got himself killed.”

  Glitsky, to whom all things bearing on homicides in the city seemingly became part of his DNA, nodded. “Geoff Cooke,” he said. “Another lawyer. That’s who shot him, right? One of Ash’s friends. Then when you guys were closing in, he killed himself, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Impressed by this instant retrieval, Beth sat back. “You’ve got a good memory,” she said. “That’s pretty much the story.”

  “Okay. What about it?”

  “Well, it leaves out something of some importance that never made the record. It was my case, so I know.”

  “What was that?”

  “Peter Ash had had an affair with Ron Jameson’s wife, Kate.”

  It was Glitsky’s turn to sit back. He picked up his iced tea and took a long drink. “How did that not make the record? Didn’t anybody interview her on tape or video or get some kind of statement?”

  “She was my best friend. I found out about the affair on my own—or more like put it together at the time—by stuff she’d told me before he was killed, before there was any investigation. And then, afterwards—I mean after Ash washed up dead on the beach and I drew the case—when I called her on it, she acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about. She told me she’d never had any kind of thing with Mr. Ash. I had misinterpreted what she’d said. She’d barely known him. She couldn’t even remember what it might have been or what could have made me think it. I was just flat-out wrong.”

  Glitsky chewed some ice. “You’re saying that Ron Jameson had a motive to kill Ash.”

  “Yes.”

  “But so what, if Cooke actually did kill him? Which I thought was pretty well established.”

  “Not that well established. Which is my point. I don’t believe Cooke killed him at all. I don’t believe Cooke killed himself, either.”

  “Although his death was ruled a suicide?”

  She shrugged. “Suicide/homicide equivocal. You know how that goes.”

  Glitsky did. He nodded. “So you think what? That Jameson killed Cooke?”

  “No. Ron had an airtight alibi for Cooke’s death. He was at some business meeting with a dozen colleagues from early till late.” She sucked in a deep breath, let it out heavily. “But Kate, Ron’s wife, didn’t have any alibi.”

  Glitsky cocked his head to one side, his brows drawn together. “Okay. No alibi. Not the strangest thing in the world. Certainly not unheard of. How about motive?”

  “If we close the case, which we did, nobody’s looking at her husband for Peter Ash anymore.”

  “So then,” Glitsky asked, “you’re saying your friend Kate killed both Ash and Cooke?”

  “Not exactly. I’d bet a million dollars she killed Cooke, yes.” She paused, took a beat, then went on. “I believe that Ron himself killed Ash.”

  Glitsky’s eyes went wide for an instant, then squinted down. “Ron Jameson. Our DA, you mean? That’s quite an accusation.”

  She nodded. “Well, you wonder why he wants to keep me marginalized, like for example away from a grand jury.”

  “Do you have proof of any of this? Both the Ash case and the Cooke case are closed, aren’t they? If there had still been questions, shouldn’t they . . . ?”

  “That’s the point. There weren’t any unresolved questions. They got a ballistics match on some shell casings. Nobody seemed to have any doubt about the cover story: Cooke killed Ash and then in remorse or guilt killed himself.”

  “And why again did Cooke kill Ash in the first place?”

  “I didn’t mention that? Ash had hit on Cooke’s wife, too. So we’ve got the same motive, jealousy. It all worked for everybody.”

  “Except, apparently, you.”

  “Apparently. Yeah.” She dipped a finger into her glass and gave it a little stir, then brought her finger to her lips. “I’m sorry that this is all so nebulous,” she said.

  Glitsky waved that off. “I don’t care about that. But I’m afraid I’m still up in the air about why we’re here. You and me, now, I mean. Not that it’s not great pizza and good company, but I thought you wanted to talk about something a little more specific, where I could help you somehow. You know that I’m completely retired, right?”

  “Yes. My lieutenant—you know Devin Juhle—told me that.”

  “So, then . . . ?”

  After a last moment’s hesitation, she said, “So I understand that you’re on pretty good terms with a defense attorney named Dismas Hardy.”

  Glitsky broke what might have passed for a smile that faded as quickly as it appeared. “You could say that. Is he involved in this?”

  “Not specifically. Not the cases we’ve been talking about, anyway. But Hardy passed the word along through Devin that he wanted to talk to me about why me and my partner got passed over with the grand jury on the Valdez case we started with here.”

  “Back to that? How does he . . . ?” Glitsky shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I get the connection, if there is one.”

  “I’m not sure there is, sir. At this point, I admit it’s obscure. Mr. Hardy’s got a client who’s been arraigned as an accessory after the fact in the Valdez case. Evidently, Jameson at the very least condoned if not ordered her being mistreated at her arrest. Of course, this could also be just the typical defense attorney moaning and groaning about how his clients are disrespe
cted and abused by law enforcement, but Devin knows Hardy a little bit and says that he seems to have a legitimate complaint, to the extent that he’s filed some legal papers on Jameson.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Okay. So Hardy apparently wanted to talk to us to see if something happened in our investigation of the Valdez case that might connect to his client: why we got bypassed for the grand jury, and if there might be something he can point at with Jameson to show some kind of pattern of abuse or misconduct that might help his case. And, not incidentally, land a good hit on Jameson’s reputation. And if it also helps to take Jameson down, he’s all over it.”

  Glitsky nodded. “Sounds about right. It also sounds to me like you might want to talk to Hardy.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m talking to you first.”

  Glitsky made a face. “You just lost me.”

  “Well, the sad truth is that my experience with defense attorneys in general hasn’t been a big bowl of cherries. I wasn’t about to go talk to Mr. Hardy cold and essentially ally myself with him against the district attorney. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like nothing more than to see Jameson shut down, if not in a perfect world arrested for murder. But these are some pretty serious stakes: Jameson knows what I think he did and that isn’t going away, so he wants to keep me at arm’s length or more. So I’d be a fool if I took step one without a pretty darn strong recommendation from a reliable source on our side assuring me I could trust this guy.”

  “That sounds about right. And I’m that source?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’m flattered, I think. And no doubt you’re smart to check. As to Diz—Mr. Hardy—I don’t know if you know, but he actually used to be a cop himself: he and I walked a beat together when we were both just starting out, and we’ve been friends ever since. Which is not to say he can’t be a pure pain in the rear, but you can trust him and he doesn’t lie, which are not the same thing.”

  “I don’t mean to sound paranoid, sir. It’s just if Jameson gets any idea . . .”

  “I hear you. Especially if you’re right about him and Peter Ash.”