Hardy 13 - Plague of Secrets, A

by John Lescroart

  Hardy let Fisk go through the metal detector and then stepped aside out of the line and walked back to the other familiar face he’d noticed in the lobby behind them. Chiurco, in a coat and tie, looked well-rested and clear-eyed as Hardy shook his hand. “Hey, Craig,” he said. “You here with Wyatt?”

  “No. Wyatt told me to come down here and see if I could be of some use.”

  This wasn’t the most impressive offer Hardy had ever heard. The only thing Craig had to talk about was Maya’s presence outside Levon’s flat just before or after he was murdered. Which meant that if Hardy put him on the stand, all he could do was damage the case further.

  But then, suddenly, unexpectedly, an idea surfaced. “Something you could do,” he said. “With all the craziness, you and I never talked about whatever you found out about Levon and Dylan.”

  “Sure, but I’ve got to tell you, beyond the robbery and his address, it wasn’t much.”

  “Wyatt didn’t ask you to follow up on any of that?”

  Craig shook his head. “No. And I don’t really know what it would be. I think you guys know all I know.”

  “Probably,” Hardy said, “but maybe you know something you don’t know you know. Stuff you might have seen with Maya at the door.”

  This brought a frown. “Tamara kind of hinted that maybe I’d want to mess with my story if—”

  But Hardy jumped all over that. “No, no, no. Nothing like that. I’m not talking about making up a story. Just if what actually happened might change an argument or something.”

  “Well, whatever you’d want.”

  “You want to set a time? Give me an hour?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Tonight, tomorrow night? Call Phyllis at my office and she can set us up. You okay with that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. So now if you’ll excuse me”—Hardy indicated the courtroom behind him—“Her Highness awaits.”

  Upstairs, Glitsky let Bracco and Schiff into his office, closed the door behind them, and walked around his desk to his chair. He had hot tea in his SFPD mug and he pulled it in front of him and cupped his hands around it.

  Not that he was cold.

  He felt he needed a prop—something immediate and proximately painful—to take the edge off his main emotion at the moment, which was a fine amalgam of embarrassment, disappointment, and fury. As a further subterfuge—to all appearances this was simply a chat about procedures—he’d bought a couple of Starbucks frou-frou coffees downstairs and had put them on the edge of his desk in front of where his inspectors were sitting.

  Schiff pretty obviously hungover.

  And now, motioning to the coffees, Glitsky said, “I hear those are great. Orange macchiato, or something like that. Treya swears by ’em.”

  Bracco reached forward, took a cup, removed the plastic top. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. Debra?”

  She raised a palm. “Maybe in a minute, thanks.”

  The tension among the three of them taut as a wire.

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  A brisk nod. “Little bit of a rough night is all.”

  Glitsky kept his eyes on her. After a minute he sipped his own tea. “It takes some getting used to, but you can’t let that stuff get to you.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “You have a tough day of testimony,” Glitsky said, “it’s part of the job. Comes with the territory. You shake it off and do better next time. At least that’s my experience. The coffee might really help.”

  Schiff sighed and reached for the cup.

  “Of course,” Glitsky continued, pressing his hands around his mug, focusing on the heat in his palms, “it’s preferable if you make sure your evidence is rock solid before you’re stuck with explaining something that might not make much sense.”

  Schiff, her mouth set tight, let a long, slow breath out through her nose. She left the paper coffee cup where it sat on the desk and straightened back up in her chair. “It made perfect sense, Lieutenant. People have been known to cover their tracks, and she did. It doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “In fact, she was there.”

  “Well, in fact, to be precise, she may have been at the front door.”

  “She was at the front door, Abe. Her fingerprints and DNA say so.”

  “That’s true, sir,” Bracco said.

  Glitsky’s eyes went from one to the other. “All right. Still, the Preslee count isn’t too wonderful, is it? If it wasn’t for Vogler, in fact, you and I both know it wouldn’t have been charged. Why do you think that might be?”

  Schiff wasn’t backing down. “Like I said, she planned it and pulled it off. And let me ask you something. Did you get your take on this from your friend Mr. Hardy?”

  The scar through Glitsky’s lips went a little pale in relief. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Debra. It’s way beneath you, and maybe just a result of how you’re feeling this morning, huh?”

  “I’m feeling fine.”

  “Good. Because I did want to ask you both about something. Never mind your write-ups or your testimony or what Maya Townshend might or might not have done at Levon’s place, how do you, either of you, explain to me the complete absence of blood from any of her clothes or shoes or anything else you looked at? And before you start, let me give you my analysis and you tell me where I’m wrong.”

  For the next few minutes Glitsky outlined it for his inspectors. He wrapped it up by saying, “And this isn’t a question of admissible evidence or lack of sufficient proof to convict. I’m talking here the actual fact of what happened.”

  Schiff didn’t even hesitate. “The actual fact is she killed him. Her husband lied when he corroborated her alibi. Either him or the housekeeper. Happens all the time.”

  Glitsky’s mug was tepid by now; it was failing to serve as a calming device. “You’re saying she got home, when, before she picked up the kids?”

  “She might have. We don’t know.”

  “But we do know, don’t we,” Glitsky replied, “what time she got the call from Preslee? Couple of minutes either side of two, right? And we know she picked up the kids at three sharp. So you’re telling me she gets this call at her house on Broadway, decides on the spot to kill Preslee, drives out to Potrero? And by the way, I did it this morning coming in. No traffic, city streets, twenty-two minutes one way. So anyway, she sits down and drinks some water and maybe smokes a joint with Levon, whacks him with the cleaver, then cleans up with a lot of care, and she’s got time to dump her blood-spattered clothes before she gets the kids?”

  “She could have done it anytime that night.”

  “So the husband knew about it?”

  “Had to.”

  Glitsky looked over at Bracco. “Darrel?”

  No hesitation. “If she did it, and she did, Abe, then that’s what happened.”

  While a part of him admired the loyalty of his troops to one another, Glitsky felt his stomach roil at this absurd display of professional obstinacy. He was all but certain from his earlier discussions that Bracco thought that they could’ve tightened up the case before the arrest, and that Schiff had acted precipitously, but Darrel wasn’t going to contradict his partner in front of his lieutenant, and that was all there was to it.

  Never mind that their convictions flew in the face of the first law of criminal investigation—facts must flow from demonstrable evidence, and not the other way round, where the evidence is massaged or explained to fit a set of predetermined perceptions.

  Now, knowing he was defeated in his primary objective—to get his inspectors to admit that they might be wrong, and might want to spend some of their time looking for who had really killed Levon Preslee—Glitsky let out a breath, gave up on his tea, and leaned back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “But I think you’ll have to admit it’s possible that the jury’s going to have a hard time with Levon. Can we go with that?”


  “You know as well as me, Abe,” Schiff replied. “San Francisco juries have a hard time with guilt, period.”

  “All too true,” Glitsky said. “And all the more reason to make sure we give the DA everything he needs every single time.”

  “He’s got plenty here, Abe,” Schiff said. “She’s going down for Vogler. Even in San Francisco.”

  “All right, fine, I believe you, and I hope you’re right. And you’re both confident you’ve built the strongest case you could on Vogler?”

  Darrel was the first to pipe up. “Yes, sir.”

  “Debra?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, then.” Glitsky pulled a small stapled stack—five or six pages—of computerized printouts over in front of him and flipped it open to the middle. “Then I’ve just got one last quick question for both of you. Who is Lee or Lori Buford or Bradford?”

  The two inspectors traded glances with one another.

  “Nobody,” Schiff said.

  “Nobody,” Glitsky repeated. “But I see here a Post-it in the file with our case number on it and that name or one like it.”

  Schiff, her own blood high by now, wasn’t hiding her anger. “You’re riding this one a little hard, wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m in charge of this detail, Sergeant, and in my opinion, this case we gave the DA is about halfway down the tubes because we just didn’t quite have enough evidence when we made the arrest—correction, when you made the arrest. And you want my opinion, we’re still a damn sight light on Vogler. And if this nobody happens in fact to be somebody you guys in your zeal to arrest just plain forgot to include in your write-ups or reports and who might actually help the DA get a conviction on this Townshend woman, then it’s my job to point that out to you. Either of you got a problem with that? ’Cause if you do, we can take it upstairs and have a discussion with the chief. How’s that sound?”

  Bracco, jaw set, a flush in his face, said, “Lori Bradford. An old woman out in the Haight.”

  “A senile old woman out in the Haight,” Schiff corrected him.

  “You didn’t take notes when you talked to her?”

  After a minute Bracco said, “No. We decided she wasn’t credible, Abe. There was nothing worth putting in the file.”

  Glitsky knew that though strictly against regulations, this was not an uncommon practice. Although inspectors were supposed to memorialize every interaction with witnesses or potential witnesses, either by tape or notes, in practice it often became the call of individual inspectors to include or exclude testimony, for whatever reason or for no real reason, from their reports. It was clear to Glitsky—if only because he was certain that Bracco knew better, but also because of the look of pain on Bracco’s face—that Schiff had drawn the short straw to write up the report on Lori Bradford’s interview and had decided for reasons of her own to leave it out.

  Keeping his voice under control, Glitsky finished the last of his tea. “Nevertheless,” he said, “if either of you two remember, I’d be interested in hearing what she might have told you.”

  29

  Before the decision really had a chance to sink in, a smiling and confident Big Ugly Stier, never looking bigger nor uglier to Hardy, rose at his table and—no doubt seeking to undo some of the damage Hardy had done with Schiff yesterday—called Cheryl Biehl to the stand.

  Paul Stier had discovered Biehl, née Zolotny, in much the same way that Wyatt Hunt had, by chasing down Maya’s college connections in the hope that someone who knew her both then and in the present could shed some light on the blackmail question, and hence on Maya’s purported motive for the killings. Now the former cheerleader, conservatively dressed in a tan business suit, clearly uncomfortable in the role of prosecution witness, shifted as she sat waiting for Stier to begin.

  “Mrs. Biehl, how long have you known the defendant?”

  “About fourteen years now.”

  “And where did you meet?”

  “At USF, freshman year. We were both cheerleaders.”

  “And have you kept up on your friendship?”

  “Yes. Until she got arrested, we usually had lunch together every couple of months or so.”

  “Mrs. Biehl, did you also know the victims in this case, Dylan Vogler and Levon Preslee?”

  “Yes.”

  “And to your personal knowledge, did Defendant also know both of these victims when you were all in college?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever witness Defendant using marijuana with either or both of these men?”

  Biehl cast an apologetic glance across to Maya and nodded to Stier. “Yes, I did.”

  “And did you ever witness Defendant, either alone or with one or both of the victims, selling or distributing marijuana?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Would you characterize this as a more or less common occurrence?”

  “For a while, when we were in school, yes. They were the main connection if you wanted to buy pot among our friends.”

  “All three of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, Mrs. Biehl. Moving ahead several years, in the lunches that you and Defendant had together, did she ever mention either Mr. Vogler or Mr. Preslee?”

  “Yes. She mentioned both of them, Dylan quite frequently, since she still worked with him.”

  “But she mentioned Levon Preslee too?”

  “Right. But not really recently.”

  “Do you remember the last time she mentioned Mr. Preslee?”

  “About eight years ago, just after he got out of jail.”

  “And by jail, Mrs. Biehl, don’t you really mean state prison?”

  “Yes. Right. I thought prison and jail were the same, I guess. But, yes, it was just after he got out of prison.”

  “And what were Defendant’s comments on Mr. Preslee at that time?”

  “Just that he’d gotten in touch with her through Dylan. He wanted her to fix him up with a job or something.”

  “What was her reaction to this request?”

  “It really frustrated her.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Because she said so. She said she was never going to get out from under these guys.”

  “She was never going to get out from under these guys. Did she offer any explanation of what she meant by get out from under?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Biehl. Now, turning to Dylan Vogler, he was her manager at Bay Beans West, was he not?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And in these conversations you had with her, how did she characterize her relationship with Mr. Vogler?”

  Biehl hesitated for a long moment before replying, “Unpleasant.”

  “Was she more specific?”

  “Well, a couple of times she told me she just wanted him out of her life and she’d offered to buy him out, but he refused.”

  Stier, eyebrows raised, flagged the significance of this testimony to the jury. “She used the phrase, to buy him out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find that strange?”

  “A little bit, yes.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Well, because he worked for her, I wondered why she just didn’t fire him.”

  “Did you ask her about that, why she didn’t simply terminate him?”

  “Yes. We talked about it a couple of times.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said she couldn’t. Couldn’t fire him, I mean.”

  “And why was that?”

  “She wouldn’t say specifically.”

  “Did she tell you in a general way?”

  Another look over at Maya, then Biehl let out a wistful sigh. “She said she could never fire him because he owned her.”

  “He owned her. Those were her exact words?”

  “Yes. She said them more than once.”

  Stier, to all appearances sobered by the
enormity and surprise of this testimony—although he’d guided her directly to it—nodded to the witness, then over to the jury. “Mrs. Biehl, in the few months prior to Defendant’s arrest, did you two have lunch together again?”

  “Yes, at the end of last summer.”

  “And did Mr. Vogler come up again in your conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I brought him up. I told her I’d been worrying about her situation with him. I’d heard somewhere that he was selling marijuana out of the store, and I told her that whatever it was she was hiding, it would be better just to get him out of there and get it behind her. Otherwise, it was just going to go from bad to worse.”

  “And what did she say to that?”

  “She just kind of shrugged it off and said I shouldn’t worry about it. I was right. It wasn’t a good situation, but she was going to take care of it pretty soon.”

  A final repetitious riff to the jury. “She was going to take care of it pretty soon.” And then Stier was turning to Hardy. “Your witness.”

  30

  Biehl’s direct testimony got them to lunchtime, so there wouldn’t be any cross-examination until the afternoon session, and this suited Hardy fine. He didn’t have much of an idea of what, if anything, he was going to ask her. Her testimony had been true and probably accurate. Vogler had no doubt been blackmailing Maya. He and Preslee probably both had had their claws into her, so that she wanted to get out from under their control. The strategy he’d decided to adopt called for a steady drumbeat about the lack of physical evidence tying Maya to either of the crimes, but Biehl hadn’t offered anything he felt he could refute.

  He had a voice mail from Wyatt Hunt on his cell phone, telling him that he’d be having lunch at Lou the Greek’s if Hardy wanted a report on what he’d been doing out at BBW, and suddenly—if for no other reason than he was perpetually somewhat morbidly curious about the Special—that seemed like a good idea.