Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  “Okay.” This didn’t make all the sense in the world to Hardy, but he’d sort it out later. “But this conversion was public, right, on some radio show? And had to do with you?”

  A shrug. “I don’t know how much of it had to do with me. But the debate we had seemed to mark a shift. She realized we had the same goals and we’d been set up to be on different sides. Actually, she’d been set up. She got bitter about her employers and I can’t say I blame her.”

  “Jim Pierce?” It was a guess, but from Kerry’s reaction, a good one.

  Kerry nodded. “He was the one who first recognized her for what she could do, I mean politically. He groomed her into a mouthpiece, but as I say she was naive. She bought his line because she bought him. He was big oil, but he cared about the world just like she did. Ha. But he was her father figure at the same time. He loved her when she was still the ugly duckling and that carried a lot of emotional weight.”

  “He loved her? You just said he loved her.”

  “I don’t know about that. What he did do was keep her nose to the grindstone, reward her handsomely for doing what he wanted, pat her on the head when she did good and told her not to worry about other things she might be hearing or thinking. She wanted to please him and she didn’t look up.” He hesitated. “I was really just the catalyst, I think. It would have happened without me eventually. She was ripe for it. She’d grown up.”

  “And started seeing you.”

  This suddenly brought Kerry back to where he was, what he was in fact doing, which was talking to a lawyer about a murder case. His public persona—always open and charming—was especially unnerving to Hardy as it fell like a shroud between them. “Not the way I think you mean, Mr. Hardy. She was married, after all.”

  “But you’re not.”

  Kerry favored him with the candidate smile, went back to his watch, decided that if reinforcements weren’t going to come and rescue him, he’d go to them. “Well, no. Never been married. Never found the right girl.”

  He slapped his knees and stood up. “It’s been very nice talking to you, but I’ve got to get my campaign manager back out on the trail. This water poisoning today.” He scowled. “Terrible, just terrible.” Then the smile was back, the hand outstretched again. “Don’t forget to vote now. Take care.”

  He walked over to his security retinue and Hardy sat back down on the couch, watching the party coalesce around Kerry as it began to drift down into the main lobby.

  When they were good and gone, Hardy reached over and, using the cocktail napkin that the hotel had thoughtfully provided, lifted the water glass Kerry had been using. He poured the remaining water back into the pitcher and slipped the glass into the pocket of his nylon windbreaker. Take care yourself, he thought.

  But, feeling smug about the glass with fingerprints, he suddenly realized he’d forgotten the main question he’d wanted to ask the Kerry camp. He nearly jumped up from the couch, and caught up to the candidate and his entourage as they arrived at where Al Valens had just finished up with a reporter.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Kerry.”

  The security detail moved to keep Hardy at his distance, but Kerry again told them it was okay. He was a candidate, it was election time, you talked to people.

  “I had one last question, this time for Mr. Valens if you don’t mind. It won’t take a minute.”

  Kerry broke a seemingly genuine smile. “Okay, Columbo, sure. We’ve always got a minute. Al. This is Mr. Hardy. He’s Ron Beaumont’s attorney.”

  Valens cast a quick glance between Hardy and Kerry, then thrust his hand out. “Nice to meet you. What’s your question?”

  “I was wondering why you called Ron Beaumont last week, something about Bree’s files?”

  The smile flickered briefly. “I don’t think that was me,” he said. He looked at Kerry. “Did we call Ron?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “You didn’t call Ron Beaumont and leave a message last Wednesday, Thursday, something like that?”

  Valens made a little show of thinking about it for a moment, looked again at Kerry, then shook his head. “I think you must be mistaken. Isn’t he out of town? I heard he was out of town.”

  Hardy was sincerely contrite. “I’m sorry. I must have been misinformed.” A broad smile. “Mr. Kerry, thanks again.”

  Kerry waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Anytime.”

  “Shit.” Valens’s voice was unnaturally shrill in the telephone. “He knows something. This guy Hardy. Who is he? What’s that about?”

  Baxter Thorne spoke to Valens in his calmest tones. “Al, it’s always better to tell the truth. Especially in front of Damon. Tell him you forgot. You’ve been consumed with these terrorist accusations against him today. Your head was spinning and you couldn’t recall for a minute. In fact, you remember now that you did call Ron—here, this is good—to see about some memorial words he wanted to include about Bree if, no when, Damon gets elected. In his acceptance speech, that is if Ron wouldn’t object, if it wouldn’t be too painful. That’s why you called.”

  “But how did this guy Hardy know . . . ?”

  Thorne was sweet reason. “You left a message. He must have heard the message.”

  “But how?”

  “Well, he must have been there then, mustn’t he? At Bree’s place?”

  “Looking for the report?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Certainly looking for something. But you said he was Ron’s attorney, right? It might not have had anything to do with our problem. Don’t worry. I’ll look into it. You’ve got a campaign to run.”

  “All right, all right. But it worries me.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Al. It’s nothing. And if it’s not nothing, I’ll take care of it.”

  18

  The evening remained clear and warm with no fog and Hardy felt he’d picked up a scent. People were evading and lying, and this juiced him up.

  He wished he had a set of Al Valens’s fingerprints as well as Damon Kerry’s. He had no explanation for why Valens would lie about calling Ron. Still, he did have Damon Kerry’s cleverly purloined water glass and he dropped it off on Abe Glitsky’s desk with a cryptic note that it contained crucial evidence in the Bree Beaumont case and should be dusted and checked against prints that had been found in the penthouse.

  Hardy added that if Glitsky didn’t do this he’d be sorry, a statement Abe would enjoy. The note also mentioned that Kerry had denied ever having been there and this was a new development.

  It was still early—Hardy had time before his scheduled seven o’clock meeting with Canetta at his office. He could zip down to see Ron and his well-behaved children, deliver his update, make everybody feel better.

  He’d also filled a page of a legal pad with questions that Ron would be able to answer for him, mostly to do with the names Canetta had copied from Ron’s answering machine.

  Who was Marie? Kogee Sasaka? Tilton? What did all these people want? What about Valens and Kerry and Pierce? How well had Ron known them? Or had Bree known them?

  Then, the harder questions: Did Ron think or know that Bree was having an affair? If so, with whom? What about the baby she’d been carrying? Had she and Ron planned it? What had her last morning been like? What, if anything, had she been worried about? How involved, if at all, had Ron been with her professional life? Did he know what she was working on now?

  And, most important, what was Ron’s explanation for the fact that of all the men Hardy had talked to—Pierce, Kerry, even Canetta—her own husband seemed the least affected by her death?

  Driving south on the freeway, heading for the hotel where Ron and his children had holed up, Hardy almost let himself believe he was beginning to make some progress. He would get answers from Ron, maybe learn more about MTBE and ethanol and today’s reservoir poisoning, which, he reasoned, had to be related to Bree’s murder. He was really getting somewhere.

  “Mr. Brewster has checked out.”

  “Checked o
ut?” Hardy repeated it as though it were a foreign phrase he didn’t understand.

  The concierge was a pleasant-looking young woman with a brisk and efficient manner. “Yes, sir.” She punched a few keys at her computer. “Early this morning.”

  “You’re sure?” An apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought we had an appointment and I’m a little surprised.”

  She punched a few more keyboard buttons and, noticing his obvious concern, softened visibly. “Maybe you got the day wrong?”

  Hardy nodded. “Must have,” he said.

  So it was still early and he had no place to be for a couple of hours.

  Ron Beaumont was beginning to remind him of several clients he’d had in the past—they tended to lie and, when not held in custody, to disappear. It made him crazy, but at the same time this behavior was predictable enough among suspects that it didn’t necessarily force him to believe they were guilty of anything. They were just scared, confused, misguided. Except for those who were, in fact, guilty and on the run.

  As he drove by Candlestick Point, Hardy was trying his hardest to stick with the rationalization that Ron had his children to protect. There was the further point that if Hardy had been able to locate him at his hotel, others with less benign intents—the DA’s investigators, for example—might be just as successful. And Ron hadn’t promised Hardy that he’d stick around for continued consultation.

  Nothing had changed, he kept telling himself. He had until Tuesday to find who had killed Bree. And Frannie would remain locked up until then anyway.

  By the time he took the Seventh Street off-ramp by the Hall of Justice downtown, though, his pique had progressed into a fine fury. Ron Beaumont, the son of a bitch, had a million answers at his fingertips, and now Hardy was going to have to find them on his own, if he could. And meanwhile the clock kept ticking. He didn’t have the heart anymore for this cat and mouse nonsense. And especially not from someone who’d put Frannie where she was.

  Force of habit almost led him to park across from the jail where he would visit Frannie and check back in with Abe’s office. At this time, late on a Saturday afternoon, there was actually a spot at the curb.

  But he kept driving. He wasn’t going to leave any messages now with Glitsky to accompany his note on Damon Kerry’s fingerprints. The way he felt about Ron would spill over somehow and muddy the waters. He didn’t want Glitsky even glancing in Ron’s direction as a viable suspect if he could help it.

  And Frannie? She was the reason he was doing any of this in the first place. And sure, he could go hold her hand again, but it would use up two more precious hours. Frannie wanted him to save Ron and his kids and the price of that—for her—was going to be that her husband couldn’t come and console her every time he was in the neighborhood.

  Truth be told, Ron’s disappearance had kicked up a renewed dust storm of anger at Frannie, too. And a smaller zephyr at his own gullibility, his continuing efforts in a cause in which he had at best a manufactured faith. He was doing all this for his wife, at her urging. He’d let her deal with the consequences. See how she liked them apples.

  But he had to admit that there were developments in this case that didn’t depend on Ron Beaumont, that had piqued his interest on their own. The three men— Canetta, Pierce, and Kerry—who were in mourning over her death. Today’s MTBE poisoning. Al Valens lying. And always—three billion dollars.

  Hardy was on automatic, some nonrational process having determined that he should go to his office. He still had two hours until Canetta was due to show up to trade information. The odds were in favor of David Freeman’s being around, working on Saturday. Hardy could bounce his discoveries and hunches off his landlord, a practice that was nearly always instructive.

  If Freeman wasn’t there, he’d pore over the copies of Griffin’s notes that Glitsky had given him and see if some new detail caught his attention. It was a backup plan, but at least it was some plan.

  And then suddenly the open curb at Fifth near Mission called to him. One legal parking space downtown on a weekday qualified as a miracle, but seeing an entire side of Fifth Street nearly empty was nearly the beatific vision. Fresh snow or a morning beach without footprints—you just ached to walk on it. He pulled over and came to a stop directly across from the Chronicle building.

  It was a sign.

  Jeff Elliot was the Chronicle columnist who wrote the “Citytalk” column on the political life of the city.

  When Hardy had first met him, he’d been a young, personable, fresh-faced kid from the Midwest who walked with the aid of crutches due to his ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis. Now, although still technically young—Hardy doubted if Jeff had yet turned thirty-five—the baby-faced boy sported a graying, well-trimmed beard. His chest had thickened and his eyes had grown perennially tired. Here in his office just off the city room, the old crutches rested by the door, almost never used anymore. Now, Jeff got around in a wheelchair.

  But he was still personable, at least to Hardy, who over the years had been the conduit to a lot of good information and the subject of one or two columns. He and his wife had even been to parties at Hardy’s house.

  Jeff had undoubtedly come downtown today after the water poisoning. Barring an assassination of the President or an eight-point earthquake, this was going to be tomorrow’s headline and there were political elements all over it.

  But now that Hardy had stuck his head in his door, first things first. Jeff swung away from his computer and motioned him in. “Big D,” he said. “¿Qué pasa?” Then he remembered and grew suddenly serious. “How’s Frannie holding up?”

  Hardy made a face. What could he say?

  Jeff shook his head in disgust. “I’d sue Braun, Pratt, Randall, the whole lot of ’em. Or kill them. Maybe both.”

  “No options are out of the question.”

  “So you got my call at home?”

  “No. I’ve been out all day.”

  This surprised Jeff. “Well, the message was that I was going to give this Frannie thing a couple of graphs on Monday, maybe get somebody’s attention. I thought you could give me a good quote.”

  Hardy smiled thinly. “Nothing you could print in a family newspaper.”

  Jeff looked a question. “So you didn’t get the message and yet you’re here?”

  “I saw a free parking place at the curb. Hell, the whole street. What could I do? I said to myself, ‘Self,’ I said, ‘why don’t you have a little off-the-record chat with your good friend Jeff Elliot?’ ”

  This brought a smile. Long ago, Hardy had neglected to preface some remarks to Jeff that they were off the record. It hadn’t worked out too well, and since then Hardy had made it a point to include the words “off the record” in every discussion he ever had with Jeff, even purely social ones.

  Jeff smiled. “I was waiting for that.”

  “Plus,” Hardy continued, “I thought it was possible you might know something I don’t.”

  “Probably. I’m good on the Middle Ages and Victorian England.”

  “Dang.” Hardy snapped his fingers. “Neither of those. I was thinking more about Frannie, Bree or Ron Beaumont, this MTBE business.” Hardy thought a minute. “Damon Kerry. Al Valens.”

  Jeff cracked a grin. “You done? I think you left out my wife and a couple of senators.”

  Hardy spread his palms in a frustrated gesture. “I can’t seem to get much of it to hang together.”

  The columnist swung his wheelchair around to face Hardy. “In return for which I get the exclusive of the big secret Frannie’s gone to jail about?”

  “Nope, but you might get Bree’s killer before anybody else.”

  “Are you close to that? Everybody’s saying it’s the husband. Ron, is it?”

  A shake of the head. “Abe Glitsky, whom you may remember is head of homicide, is definitely not saying it. And Abe be the man on this stuff.”

  “He’s not on Ron?”

  Pause. “It’s not Ron.”


  He’d almost said that Glitsky was affirmatively saying it wasn’t Ron, which wasn’t true. But if that’s what Jeff Elliot heard, he wouldn’t correct the impression.

  “So who’s your guess? You got one?”

  In his chair, Hardy drew a deep breath. He’d gathered a lot of information. But in spite of feeling as though he’d gotten somewhere in his investigation, he realized that he couldn’t precisely define where that was. When he asked Elliot to tell him about Damon Kerry, it surprised him almost as much as it did Jeff. Where had that question come from?

  Jeff was shaking his head. “That’s got to be a big negatory, Diz.”

  “Maybe. But I’d sure like to know more than I do about the two of them, Bree and the good candidate.”

  For a response, Jeff sat all the way back in his wheelchair behind his desk. He pulled at his mustache, scratched his beard, brushed at the front of his shirt.

  “No hurry,” Hardy prodded, shooting Jeff a hopeful grin. “It’s only Frannie doing hard time for keeping a promise.”

  Finally, the reporter sighed. “You know, the connections, ” he said. “You don’t put them together.” But Jeff wasn’t quite ready to spill anything, not yet. The impish smile from his youth flittingly appeared as he came forward, his hands together on the desk. “You know that off-the-record thing we do? This is one of those, private and personal.”

  “Done. Understood.” Hardy was beginning to feel a little like a Catholic priest in a confessional. A couple more days like the last few and he’d know every secret in the world and wouldn’t be able to tell any of them. But if that was the price for knowledge, he had to pay it.

  Eve’s bad trade. He could only hope it wouldn’t turn out as badly for him as it had for her.

  Jeff underscored it. “So this is personal, your ears only. If it doesn’t directly help Frannie, it stays here.”

  “Deal.” Hardy got up and they shook hands over the desk. “So what connections?” he asked.

  “What you just said. Frannie in jail. Kerry in another file in the brainpan—the election, the water poisoning today, all that. I didn’t put them together.” His eyes shone with interest. “But they are together, aren’t they? They’re all Bree.”