The Motive

by John Lescroart

  Braun didn’t have to think about it. “Are you guessing, Counselor? I believe you’ve made a point about this topic yourself in your opening statement. Objection overruled.”

  The gallery behind Hardy stirred at the promise of more fireworks. Rosen smiled up at Braun. “Thank you, Your Honor.” He went back to Cuneo, all business. “Now, Inspector . . .”

  But Hardy whispered quickly to his client and was again out of his seat, cutting off the question. “Your Honor!”

  Making no effort to hide her exasperation, Braun pulled her glasses down and peered over them. “Yes, Mr. Hardy?”

  “Defendant would like to request a short recess at this time.”

  “Request denied. Mr. Rosen, go ahead.”

  But Hardy wouldn’t be denied. “Your Honor, may I approach?”

  Her endurance all but used up, Braun rolled her eyes, then folded her palm upward, beckoning Hardy forward with a warning look. He left the desk, came to the base of the podium, spoke in a low voice. “I’m sorry, but my client urgently needs to use the restroom, Your Honor.”

  “Urgently. That’s a nice touch,” she whispered. Furious, the judge paused for several more seconds. “This is beneath you, Counselor.” Finally she lifted her gavel and brought it down with a snap. “Court will recess for fifteen minutes.”

  “I can’t believe he’s just lying like that.”

  “Actually, it’s worse than that. He’s not saying anything you can deny.”

  “But I didn’t . . .”

  “You did. You told him Will was gone. You asked him if he liked homemade pasta. You’ve told me this.”

  “Then I’ll lie and say I didn’t.”

  Hardy moved his hands up beside his ears. “Don’t even privately say that to me, please. We have got to stick with the truth here. It’s all we have.”

  They were in the holding cell, five minutes to go in the recess.

  “But they’re going to think I wanted to get him close to me so he wouldn’t keep investigating around me.”

  “That’s right. That’s what they’re going to think.”

  “So how are we going to fight that?”

  “I don’t know that yet, Catherine. I don’t know. But the most important thing right now, the only thing right now, is that you can’t react in front of the jury. Don’t let them see you do more than look disgusted.”

  In the end, Hardy couldn’t keep it from the jury. Cuneo’s testimony was that Catherine had offered him at least dinner and maybe more. He’d certainly gotten that impression, anyway. He’d had to rebuff her, reminding her that she was a suspect in a murder investigation. She did not take the rejection well and, scorned, had refused to answer any more of his questions. After a while, he’d decided to leave. For the first time, he began to regard her as a possible suspect.

  And then, the damage done on that front, Rosen brought it back to Glitsky. “I’m curious, Inspector, did Deputy Chief Glitsky give you any explanation of why he, too, would be investigating the death of Paul Hanover?”

  Hardy stood up. “Objection. Hearsay and irrelevant.”

  “Mr. Rosen?”

  “Your Honor, this goes to Deputy Chief Glitsky’s bias and motive to skew testimony in this case. If he perceives he’s under political pressure to obtain a certain result in this case, his recollection, conduct and testimony are all highly suspect.”

  “Your Honor,” Hardy countered, “the deputy chief hasn’t testified—he’s not a witness so far, so there is nothing to impeach. This testimony, if relevant at all, only comes in after the witness says something that makes it relevant. If that happens later, then it happens, but it’s premature right now.” Hardy knew he was going to have to face this sooner or later, but he wanted Abe to bring it up first. Have him explain his status in the case in his own terms first, and not take the stand already burdened with the jury’s preconception that he was somehow suspect. Hardy knew he was right—that Braun should have waited until there was a foundation to admit the testimony. But she wasn’t having any.

  The judge took a breath. “Counsel, given what I’ve heard so far, I’m going to let this in now, subject to a motion to strike. But you’re on a short leash here, Mr. Rosen. Keep this very focused.”

  Hardy didn’t like it, but the order of testimony was something within the court’s discretion. Rosen had the recorder read the question back to Cuneo—the gist of which was whether or not Glitsky had tried to explain why he would be investigating Hanover’s death.

  “Yes, he did. He said that Mayor West asked him to become involved.”

  Mention of San Francisco’s mayor brought a pronounced buzz to the gallery, but it died quickly. No one wanted to miss the next question. “Did he tell you why?”

  “No, sir. He was my superior. It was a fait accompli. I just assumed it was something political and didn’t worry too much about it.”

  Hardy objected—speculation—and Braun sustained him. But it was a small and insignificant victory amid a string of setbacks. And more to come. “Sergeant, how did Deputy Chief Glitsky’s involvement affect your investigation?”

  “Well, the most immediate effect was that he warned me off talking to the defendant.”

  “Warned you off?” Rosen displayed his shock and amazement to the jury. “What do you mean, warned you off?”

  “He said that she was threatening to file a sexual harassmentlawsuit against me and if I knew what was good for me, I should leave her alone.”

  “And how did Deputy Chief Glitsky tell you he found out about this?”

  “She called him.”

  “Did he say why she called him?”

  Hardy was up again, this time citing speculation and hearsay. He was sustained again, and he took a breath of relief and sat down.

  But Rosen never skipped a beat. “Inspector Cuneo, did the defendant in fact file a sexual harassment complaint against you?”

  This, of course, had been something Catherine and Hardy had discussed from the beginning. In the end, they’d decided that to bring the complaint after she’d been charged with the murders would only be seen as frankly cynical and duplicitous. So they’d opted against it. Now, of course, it looked like that might have been the wrong decision.

  Cuneo actually broke a tolerant smile. He shook his head. “Of course not,” he said.

  “She did not?”

  “No, sir. She did not.”

  Treya and Zachary still slept.

  Glitsky had no luck running down the car. It had not been reported stolen, and it was not listed among the city’s towed vehicles. He had called around to nearby public garages, where she might have leased a parking space. Nothing. This, in itself, Glitsky thought, was provocative. Where was the darn thing? He placed a call to traffic and ran a check on the booted vehicles, and struck out there, too. Odd. Although he knew it was entirely possible that someone had boosted the car one fine day and then decided—hey, a Mercedes—to keep it. D’Amiens, being dead and all, wouldn’t be likely to report it stolen.

  But what Glitsky did get was an address where D’Amiens had lived at one time, when she registered her car. Embarrassed for not having discovered it earlier, when it had always been as close as a computer check with the DMV, he reminded himself that the French woman had never really assumed any prominence in his investigations. She was the invisible victim, an adjunct to Paul Hanover, nobody in her own right.

  That’s probably what she still was, he thought, but at least here was a trail he hadn’t been down. It might take him somewhere. Or maybe it would lead him to 235 Eleventh Avenue and stop there. With something of a start, he realized that the place wasn’t four blocks from where he sat at his kitchen table. In five minutes, he’d written a note to Treya, should she wake up. He was just taking a walk around the block. He’d be back in twenty minutes.

  Outside, the day hadn’t gotten any nicer. A thick cloud cover hung low over the city, and the fine drizzle of an hour before held visibility to a quarter mile or so. Glitsky wore h
is favorite weathered, brown-leather flight jacket with the faux-fur collar. He walked with his hands in his pockets, taking long strides, his shoulders hunched against the cold.

  Like most of the other buildings in the neighborhood— indeed, like Glitsky’s own—the place was an upper-lower duplex, with D’Amiens’s address as the street-level unit. He went to the small covered entryway and rang the doorbell, its gong reverberating. After no one answered, he peered through one of the small glass panes in the door, and could make out some furniture, a rug and a bookshelf in a home that seemed to be very much like his own.

  “Hello?” An old woman’s tremulous voice with a Brooklyn accent echoed down from above and behind him. “They’re not home. They’re working. Can I help you?”

  Looking up into the stairway that led to the upper unit, he stayed below on the bottom step. As a large black man, Glitsky knew that the welcome mat wasn’t automatically out for him. He got out his wallet, opened it to his badge, and said, “I’m with the police department. Do you mind if I come up?”

  “They’re not in trouble, are they? They seem like such nice people.” Then, with another thought. “Or dead, are they? Oy, tell me they’re not dead. God, not again.”

  Glitsky stopped on the fifth step. “Again?”

  “My last tenant, Missy. Such a nice girl. An officer comes . . .” She made a hopeless gesture. “And just like that, he tells me she’s gone. Lost in a fire.”

  Until this moment, Glitsky had been under the impression that Hanover’s fiancée had been residing at the house on Alamo Square. But apparently she had kept this address as well. Still, he wanted to be sure. “Missy D’Amiens, you’re talking about?”

  “God rest her soul.”

  “Yes.” He touched the mezuzah on the doorpost. “You’re Jewish, I see. So am I.”

  She squinted at him, not at all sure she believed him.

  “Abraham Glitsky.” He extended his hand, which she gingerly took.

  “Ruth Guthrie.”

  “And actually, I was hoping to talk to somebody about Missy D’Amiens.”

  She was squinting at him. “You’re really Jewish?”

  “Baruch atah Adonai . . .” he said. Glitsky had had his bar mitzvah many years before, and he attended synagogue with his father several times a year, the High Holy Days. He could still spout liturgical Hebrew when the occasion demanded. His scarred and weathered face worked its way to a smile.

  “Well, come in then out of this soup,” Mrs. Guthrie said. “Can I get you something warm? Some coffee, maybe, tea?”

  “Tea sounds good, thank you.”

  “Go in. Sit, sit. I’m right behind you.”

  Taking a seat in one of the slipcovered chairs in the living room, he heard her running water in the kitchen, then the “click click click” of the gas starter on the stove. In less than a minute she appeared with empty cups and saucers, sugar and cream, and some cookies on a tray. “When the kettle whistles, you’ll excuse me.” She sat down.

  “So you own this place?” he asked.

  “Since 1970, if you can believe. My Nat bought it as an investment.”

  “Nat,” Glitsky said. “My father’s name is Nat, too.”

  She pointed at him. “Now you are teasing me.”

  He held up his right hand. “I swear to you.”

  After a second or two, she decided to believe him. She sat back on the couch. “All right, Abraham son of Nathaniel, how can I help you?”

  It didn’t take him three minutes to acquaint her with where he was. This wasn’t really official. She might have even seen something about the case in the newspapers over the past months, but there were some other issues about Paul Hanover’s estate that related to Missy D’Amiens. Unfortunately, all efforts to contact her next of kin had been in vain.

  “I know. Some of your police colleagues came and asked me about that right after it happened. But I didn’t know anybody else who knew her.”

  “When she moved in here, did she fill out any paperwork?”

  “Sure. Nat always said trust everybody, but make sure they sign the papers.”

  “So she had references?”

  Mrs. Guthrie gave a sad little laugh. “For all the good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they were all in French. She read them to me in English, translated, but you know, she could just as well have made them all up. What am I going to do, call and check references? Anyway, Nat was gone and she seemed nice and she had the money. Ahh, there’s the whistle.”

  She went again to the kitchen. Glitsky got up and followed her. “So she had a job?”

  “Yes. Where was it now?” She poured the water into a kettle. “Lipton okay?”

  “Fine,” he said. “Her job?”

  “Just a minute. It’s coming.” She turned and led him back to the living room. “Ah ha! Here it is,” she exclaimed. “What’s the name of that place? Arrgh. Ah. Beds and Linens and Things, something like that. You know the one. Almost downtown.”

  Glitsky did know it. It was a huge warehouse store for household goods, with perhaps hundreds of employees. Glitsky, thinking that this would be the next step in this trail, found himself asking if she paid her rent with checks.

  Mrs. Guthrie thought, sipped tea, and said yes.

  “You wouldn’t have kept any of the stubs, would you? She might have had something left in the bank when she died.”

  She nodded. “Another thing Nat said. You don’t throw it away. You store it. God bless him, he was right. Those tax bastards. But wait, it was just last year, right? Her folder would still be right here, in my files.”

  In the courtroom, Cuneo was still on the stand as Rosen’s witness. The fireworks from his earlier testimony were mere prologue. They hadn’t even gotten to any of the evidence. But after another recess, that was about to change.

  “Inspector Cuneo, were you specifically looking for something when you made your search of the defendant’s home?”

  “Of course. You can’t get a warrant without a list of specific items you’re looking for.” Cuneo and the jury were already on familiar terms. Now, the helpful instructor, he turned to face the panel. “The list of items you’re looking for, it’s part of the search warrant.”

  “Okay,” Rosen said, “and what did you list on the warrant for your first search?”

  “The clothes she’d been wearing on the night of the fire.”

  “And you found such clothing?”

  “Yes. In the closet and also the hamper in the master bedroom. The tennis shoes she’d been wearing, along with the pants and the blue shirt.”

  Rosen had the clothing in the courtroom, separated into three plastic bags. After Cuneo had identified each of them, Rosen had them entered as the next People’s Exhibits after the gun, the casings, one of the bullet slugs they’d recovered—they’d now gotten to numbers 5, 6 and 7. Then he came back to his witness. “And what did you do with these items?”

  “Delivered them to the police lab to look for gunshot residue, bloodstains or gasoline.”

  “And was the lab successful in this search?”

  “Partially,” Cuneo said. “There were traces of gasoline on the pants and the shoes.”

  “Gasoline. Thank you.” Rosen didn’t pause, but walked back to his table, picked up a small book and crossed back to the witness box.

  Hardy knew what was coming next—the diary. He really hated anew Catherine’s insistence that Heather be excused from testifying. It might have caused her some temporary pain, true, but on the other hand, Hardy could have made Rosen look especially heartless and perhaps even nasty, forcing the poor girl to testify against her own mother. Jury sympathy for Catherine and her daughter would have flowed.

  But there was nothing for all that now. It was going to play out. “Sergeant,” Rosen continued in a neutral tone. “Do you recognize this item?”

  Cuneo examined it briefly, flipped it open, closed it back up. “I do.”

  “And wou
ld you please tell the jury what it is?”

  “Sure. This is Heather Hanover’s diary. Heather is the defendant’s youngest daughter.”

  While Rosen had the diary marked as People’s 8, the gallery came sharply alive with the realization that this was the defendant’s own daughter’s diary. Part of the people’s case?

  “Inspector,” Rosen asked, “when did you first see this diary?”

  “The Monday after the fire. I was by now considering the defendant my chief suspect, and I obtained a second search warrant for documents in her house.”

  “What kind of documents?”

  “I wanted to look at her financial records especially, but also downloads on the computers, telephone bills, credit card receipts, even Post-its with shopping lists. Anything written, which of course included diaries like this one, that could verify or refute her alibi for the day of the murders. The defendant had said her children were away. We wanted to check records to substantiate that.”

  “And what did you learn from this diary? Heather’s diary?”

  Cuneo turned his head slightly and brought his testimony directly to the jury. “Heather unexpectedly decided to come home after school and was home all that afternoon and night.”

  “And what had the defendant told you?”

  “She told me that she came home after her afternoon talk with Paul Hanover and had stayed there all night until she’d seen the news of the fire on television.”

  “Inspector,” Rosen said, “would you please read from the relevant portion of Heather Hanover’s diary on the day that her grandfather was killed?”

  Hardy stole a rapid glance at the jury. Every person on it seemed to be sitting forward in anticipation. As he’d known it would be, this was a damning moment for his defense; and doubly so now that he had just ascertained to his own satisfaction that Will Hanover had in fact been having an affair with his secretary. If he could at least demonstrate the truth of that assertion, it might lend credence to Catherine’s actions on the night of the fire, even if she had originally lied about them. As it was, though, he only had Catherine’s lie, no corroboration of the affair, and her own daughter’s handwritten refutation.