Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  “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. “Okay, 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.”

  “Okay, 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 four 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, okay. 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, and 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, 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.

  11

  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 he’d had kids. 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 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 his 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, 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 9:16. The sound of a television came from behind the door. Canned laughter.

  He felt for the gun in his waistband, felt its reassuring presence, 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 op
ened, 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, goddammit, 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.