Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  But the audit had turned up something else that was very disturbing. The electronic superhighway created its own version of a paper trail, and Bree Beaumont’s card was linked going forward as the security instrument to another, Mellon Bank, Visa account. That account, with a credit limit of $150,000, did show a regular history of purchases in San Francisco, all of them paid every month. The monthly accounts were sent to a Ronald Brewster at a post office box. And nobody at Caloco had ever heard of Ron Brewster.

  Hardy got to here and his stomach went hollow. He looked up. “Didn’t Caloco try to close the second account, the Brewster account?”

  Glitsky had been sitting quietly, arms crossed, waiting for this. He shook his head. “That’s page three. The Mellon account had only used the Caloco account for security to open it. Far as Mellon was concerned, Ron Brewster was a great client with a five-year history of regular payments. No way are they closing the account. Plus the Mellon account, it’s not using any of Caloco’s money. So Ron’s got himself a hundred and fifty thousand dollar line of credit.” Glitsky leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You’ll also notice that the Mellon account doesn’t include Bree as a signatory, only Ron. And guess what? Ron Brewster’s signature looks a whole lot like Ron Beaumont’s writing. We’re dealing with a white-collar whiz kid here, Diz, on the run with a phony I.D.”

  Even for Hardy, familiar with the purported excuse for Ron’s duplicity, it was difficult to remain neutral in the face of this. And he figured it would be impossible for Glitsky.

  Which proved to be true. “I’m going to throw Coleman and Batavia onto him first thing in the morning.”

  “They working Sunday?”

  “They are now.” A look. “Are you telling me this doesn’t make you sit up around Ron?”

  “No,” Hardy agreed, “I’ll admit it makes him look a little weak.”

  If Glitsky had a smile, he was wearing it now. “A little weak, that’s good. Weaker than a signed murder confession at any rate, but not by much. And that’s not all. Check out page five.”

  Hardy turned the pages quickly, glanced over the information, and as he scanned, Glitsky kept up the color commentary. “The electronic linkage that Caloco can access also finds four other accounts connected to the MellonVisa.” Hardy read the names. Ron Black. Ron Blake. Ron Burns. Ron Blanda. “Guy’s got a million dollars in credit. Five phony identities. You gotta believe he’s got passports for all five.”

  No argument there. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all. And you know how I hate to say this, but—”

  Now Glitsky was smiling. “But that doesn’t make him a murderer. But I’ll tell you something. It doesn’t make him a Boy Scout either.”

  Hardy had to agree. “No. But why would any of this make him want to kill his wife? You got a theory on that?”

  Clearly, this was still unsettled water for Glitsky. The scar through his lips went white as he thought about it. “She must have been ignorant of the accounts. When she found out he was using them on her collateral from Caloco, she busted him for it, they fought, it got out of hand.”

  “So it was just a fight?” Hardy wasn’t grinding any ax, but he did have a point to make. “That’s not murder one. It’s not usually murder anything. At the most it’s manslaughter, maybe even self-defense, which is no crime at all.”

  “I don’t care what the lawyers call it. It gets me the guy who killed Bree.”

  “Maybe.” In the longish silence Hardy was aware of Abe’s father’s regular breathing in the living room. “Maybe,” he repeated. “But what about the guy who killed Carl Griffin?”

  This brought Glitsky up short. “What guy is that?”

  “You’re homicide. You tell me.”

  “Are you telling me they’re related, Bree and Carl?”

  Low-key, Hardy shrugged. “Are you telling me they’re not? Seems likely they could be, unless you’ve got a suspect with Carl.” It was a question.

  Glitsky took a moment before answering. “We’ve got nothing on Carl. I’ve told you this. He was going out to the Western Addition to talk to one of his snitches, who apparently got some kind of drop on him.”

  “And what?” Hardy ladled on the sarcasm. “He asked the snitch to hold his gun a minute while they talked, and it went off accidentally? Is that what happened?”

  “Must have been,” Glitsky replied sardonically. But Hardy had something and Glitsky, perhaps for the first time, was seeing it. “He was sitting in his car, Diz. Even Carl wasn’t that dumb.”

  “Okay. So what do you think happened? You remember where the car was found?”

  A nod. “A little cul-de-sac called Raycliff Terrace, just off Divisadero.”

  Well, Hardy was thinking, strike that idea. Divisadero ran right through the heart of the Western Addition, so Griffin was where he was supposed to have been. But, being thorough, he asked his next question anyway. “What’s the cross street?”

  Glitsky didn’t know offhand and in a minute they had a map spread out on the table between them. A loud silence ensued. Raycliff Terrace was off Divisadero all right, and on the map it looked close enough to the ghetto, but to anyone who knew the city at all, it was so far economically from the low-income housing units of the Western Addition that it may as well have been in Beverly Hills.

  The cross street was Pacific, the eponymous artery of Pacific Heights, one of San Francisco’s most aristocratic neighborhoods. And, more tellingly, one block from Broadway.

  Hardy spent an instant leaning over, making sure. With a kind of pang about his own incompetence, he realized that this had been David Freeman’s idea—his comment that Griffin had been the first horse at the trough. Was the old fart ever wrong?

  Hardy straightened up and walked over to the refrigerator, where he pulled a magnetized pen off the door. Back at the map, he marked an “x.” Then another one. After a moment’s reflection, a final thought struck him, and he scratched out a third one. “Bree Beaumont,” he said, putting the tip of the pen on the first mark, two blocks from Raycliff Terrace. “Broadway and Steiner. Damon Kerry, Broadway and Baker.” Four blocks west of Bree, one block from Raycliff. He put the pen on the third “x.” “Jim Pierce. Divisadero and North Point.” Ten blocks north.

  Frowning, Glitsky was silent. Finally he put a finger on Hardy’s first mark. “Ron Beaumont, too.”

  Hardy had to admit this unwelcome fact. But it wasn’t his point and in a minute he was fairly sure it wouldn’t be Glitsky’s. “Can you see Griffin coming up here with his snitch, Abe? I can’t. You see the snitch letting himself get driven this far out of the ’hood?”

  Glitsky shook his head. “You’re right. It didn’t happen. Not up here.”

  Hardy ran with it. “It was somebody Griffin wasn’t afraid of, maybe even trusted.”

  “Enough to let him hold his piece? It’s hard to imagine. ” He had his fist balled over Hardy’s marks and he lifted it an inch, then brought it down slowly with great restraint. “Damn,” he said. “Goddamn it, Carl.”

  From Glitsky, this was a violent explosion. He raised his eyes, the whites shot now with red. “Anybody else, I’d say no chance. Carl? I’ve got to say maybe.” He ran his palm over the entire top of his head. “Lord, Diz, how is it nobody saw this?”

  But that wasn’t what Glitsky really wanted to know, so Hardy thought he’d spare him. Hardy had his own problems with this new information—there was another “x,” Hardy knew, that he hadn’t put on the map.

  Phil Canetta had his own weapon. Griffin wouldn’t have had to voluntarily pass over his gun—the situation that Glitsky had found so untenable. Canetta could have simply hopped into the passenger seat of Griffin’s car, pulled his own piece, and moved things along right smartly from there. Relieved Carl of his gun, had him drive to a secluded and quiet dead-end street. Made him dead.

  But then, the more he thought about it, if any of his other suspects owned a weapon, they could just as easily have done the same thing.

  The good new
s was that he had gotten Glitsky thinking, and not exclusively about Ron. It wasn’t a certainty, of course, and nowhere near proven, but suddenly now to Hardy the overwhelming probability was that Griffin’s murder was in fact linked to Bree’s.

  “When was he killed?” Hardy asked. “Carl.”

  Glitsky was still getting used to it, and Hardy couldn’t blame him. If this was what had happened, it was an egregious oversight for homicide to have missed. Glitsky was back sitting down at the table. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew on them. “It was a Monday. Somebody reported the body midafternoon, say two-thirty. Forensics had him dead an hour, an hour and a half.”

  “So. Lunchtime.”

  Glitsky made a face. “He hadn’t eaten. Except some chocolate.”

  Abe’s son Orel was just getting back from trick-or-treating, if that’s what he’d been doing, as Hardy was at the door on his way out. Glitsky had been on the phone for the past twenty minutes leaving messages with his inspectors to make it to the Hall the next day, with the crime scene unit to make sure that Griffin’s car got another careful going-over in light of what might be these new developments. If Hardy knew Abe, and he did, all of this was going to go on awhile, with the coroner, the various labs and so on. He didn’t feel any great need to hang around. It was after ten by now and he was exhausted.

  But he couldn’t go home yet—he really had to go by Erin’s and at least kiss the kids good night. So now he was in the Cochrans’ living room and his own son Vincent was asleep with his head on Hardy’s lap. Rebecca was curled up on his other side, still awake—Hardy was going to do an experiment someday and see how many days his daughter could go without any sleep, but for now he was contented enough with her quiet form snuggled next to him. At least she’d know he’d come by on Halloween after all.

  Both the kids had gone out in Erin’s sheets as ghosts. The elaborate costumes Frannie had made for both of them—Cinderella for the Beck and Piglet for Vincent— were lost to the insanity of the past couple of days.

  But at least they’d had their holiday night. Their respective caches of candy were already sorted in piles on the rug. The wonderful Erin had made it all work, and for this Hardy was more than grateful.

  She’d also mixed a shaker of manhattans—it had been a long day for everybody, and they’d spent the last twenty minutes having a nightcap and catching up on Hardy’s progress, ending with the potentially blockbusting discovery about Carl Griffin’s death.

  But Erin had a clear focus on her priorities—this might be a fascinating turn of events, but if it wasn’t about Frannie and getting everyone’s life back to normal, she wasn’t interested. “This policeman was before anything happened that involved Frannie, wasn’t it, Dismas?”

  “By a couple of weeks.”

  “Well, then, how can they keep her—” A glance at the Beck, who was hanging on every word. “How can they keep her where she is?”

  Hardy saw her point, but it wasn’t any help. “She’s in for fighting with a judge, Erin. That’s all it comes down to. My guess is, whatever happens with the investigation, they’ll let her go Tuesday morning.” He said it easily but harbored an uneasy fear that it might turn out not to be true. With Ron’s disappearance, all bets might be off.

  “She’s okay, though, isn’t she, Daddy?” See? The Beck might be quiet, but she never sleeps.

  Arm around her, he patted his girl. “She’s fine, Beck. In fact, maybe I can see . . . do you want to talk to her?”

  “Oh, Daddy, so much!”

  Gently, he moved Vincent’s head off him onto the couch. The long shot had just occurred to him, but the idea might work. “Let’s give it a try.”

  He got the jail’s number and called the desk, gently reminding the deputy about the deli lunch he’d provided for them that day—sure, the guy had heard about it. What could he do for Mr. Hardy?

  He could let his wife in AdSeg use the phone and call out to talk for a minute to her kids. And after a brief hesitation, the deputy said he’d see what he could do.

  Five minutes later, the phone rang at the Cochrans’. Hardy was nervous as he picked it up. “Frannie?”

  Hearing her voice, he realized he should have gone to see her again tonight when he’d passed right by on the way to Jeff Elliot’s. Twenty times a day wouldn’t be too much. He should forget all this faux police work. Glitsky was on it now and it would move along on its own. “How are you holding up?”

  He heard her take in a breath, knew she was summoning her strength to answer. “Pretty good,” she said with a cheer so false, it made him sick.

  The Beck was unable to restrain herself, in her excitement pulling at his leg, the cord, whatever was nearby. He figured it wouldn’t be a good time to reprimand her for it. “Listen, I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay, but come back, please.”

  Hardy handed the phone to the Beck and stood there listening to the details of the past two days, the questions she’d had to endure at school, when was Mom coming home, what were they doing to her down at the jail—all his precious daughter’s thoughts and worries that Hardy hadn’t been able to take time for.

  Vincent woke up and was groggily leaning against him, sucking his thumb although he’d stopped doing that six months before. “Is that Mommy? I need to talk to Mommy.” Too sleepy to cry, but leaning in that direction.

  So the kids both got to talk. Then Erin—was there anything Frannie needed her to do tomorrow, for school on Monday? She shouldn’t worry: Grandma was on the job.

  There wasn’t any criticism of Hardy stated or implied, but he knew. He knew. He was good at some things, and at others hopeless. And now he felt keenly that the father role, the one that perplexed and frustrated him so often if not always lately, had become a victim to his need to figure things out, to keep busy, to win.

  The priority was wrong—he felt it in every bone.

  But what else could he do? He could give lip service to David Freeman’s input, to Glitsky’s machine, but he knew and cared more about this investigation than Freeman and Glitsky combined. Like it or not, he was the prime mover. Lives—and not just his family’s—now depended on him and what he did next.

  Finally, his turn came again as Erin corralled both of the kids back to bedrooms, to bedtime.

  He told Frannie that he loved her, but he couldn’t leave it at that. He might hate himself for it, but he had to find out more. “I’ve got to ask you, have you heard from Ron today?”

  “No. How could I? They don’t let anybody call me here.”

  “No, I know that.”

  “Well, then.”

  Hardy told her. Ron had disappeared from his hotel.

  He listened to her breathing for a minute. “Why would he do that? I thought—didn’t you say?—he asked you to help him. What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”

  “No, unless he just got scared for the kids again.”

  “But why wouldn’t he have left some message with me?”

  “I don’t know that either. Maybe he will.”

  “Maybe,” Hardy said flatly. “I hope so.”

  A silence hummed on the line. “Dismas?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know. Really. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing.”

  If he didn’t completely believe it, he felt at least he had to accept it. “Okay.”

  Another silence preceded the tremulous voice. “Tell me you believe me, Dismas. Please. I need you to believe me.”

  “Of course,” he said with deliberate ambiguity. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Bright and early.”

  “That would be good,” she said. Then, “Dismas?”

  “Yes.”

  He waited.

  “I love you,” she said.

  His knuckles were white on the phone. He knew he was being imprecise. “Me too.”

  He finished two solid manhat
tans with Erin and Ed and they talked about the water poisoning and the poor middle-aged hiker from the water temple who had finally died from his injuries. Erin got Hardy a blanket and a pillow and told him he should stay here on the couch and have breakfast with his children in the morning. They were missing him, if he couldn’t tell.

  He was asleep in ten seconds.

  21

  Valens had left Damon Kerry up at his mansion an hour ago and back at his hotel he paced as though he were caged. His suite at the Clift was bigger than some apartments he’d lived in and the wraparound view of San Francisco was expansive, but none of that mattered.

  It was now near midnight of what had been the longest and one of the most difficult days of his life. The only thing that made it even remotely worthwhile was today’s latest poll that put Damon essentially dead even for Tuesday’s election. Technically he was still two points back, but with the pollster’s margin for error, the campaign was neck and neck.

  Finally, the buzz came and he walked over, looked through the peephole, and pulled open the door.

  Thorne cast a last quick look behind him at the hallway, then stepped into the room. “This is just not smart, Al,” he said in his softest tone as he pushed the door closed, twisted the deadbolt, connected the chain. Turning, he faced Valens, his expression betraying nothing—a bland smile, rheumy eyes. “This isn’t a good idea. We must not be seen together.”

  Valens barely noticed the rebuke. He was too wound up. “It’s midnight, Baxter. Nobody’s looking, trust me. It’s just this . . .” He spread his arms, the enormity of it. “. . . today.”

  Thorne nodded understandingly. “The election’s in three days. This always happens. It’s nothing unusual. It might even get worse.”

  “I’m not talking about the election. Christ, the election is the good news. I’m talking about a dead man at the bottom of the Pulgas Water Temple and this attorney Hardy going to Bree’s place and—”

  “Wait, wait.” Thorne held up a palm. “Why don’t we sit down? Do you have anything to drink? You could use a cocktail. In fact, a cocktail might be just the thing.” He crossed the room to the bar, motioned for Valens to sit on one of the suite’s brocaded sofas. “This is really a remarkable room.” He admired the view for a moment, then turned, asking as if it were an afterthought, “What does the dead man at the water temple have to do with us?”