Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  Valens drew a deep breath and spoke very carefully, still clearly unnerved by Hardy’s entrance, his continued presence. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m in a little bit of a bad mood about it myself.”

  Valens sat against the back of the chair. He stole a glance at his watch, at the door.

  “Are you expecting somebody?”

  A nervous shrug. “Damon’s got a breakfast meeting in an hour. I’m scheduled to pick him up.”

  But Hardy shook his head. “Not until we clear up a few things between us. Bree Beaumont, the fire, like that.”

  Valens straightened up, put on a face. “But I really don’t understand. What do those things have to do with me?”

  Suddenly, Hardy’s adrenaline seemed to kick itself up another notch. He pulled the gun from his belt, took a step toward Valens and pointed it at him. “What do they have to do with you? I’ll tell you. I’m investigating Bree Beaumont and you lied to me yesterday. I’m getting close. The fire was somebody warning me to stay away and the only person I can think of who’s got any reason is you. How about that? Is that clearer?”

  Valens spread his hands. Patent terror. “I didn’t set your house on fire, Mr. Hardy. I’m in the last days of a political campaign that I’ve been waging for nearly a year. Bree Beaumont is not in my life. Damon Kerry is. I didn’t lie to you.” Another empty gesture. “Please, you don’t need that gun. What you’re calling a lie was a simple mistake. I forgot something, that was all.”

  But Hardy’s blood was way up, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Oh yes, you forgot. You called the husband of a murdered woman who’d worked on your campaign, and it clean slipped your mind.” He snapped at him, raised the gun for show. “You forgot that? I don’t believe you.”

  “It was only for an instant. By the time I realized I’d made a mistake, you were gone. So I called you last night.”

  “You called me last night? Although your focus, as you say, isn’t on Bree Beaumont, you’re telling me that in the final hours of this campaign, you called me at home, at night, to correct this insignificant detail?”

  Valens swallowed.

  “Which, in any event, you know you can’t prove becausemy answering machine is a pile of ashes. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Valens shrugged. “No, but I—”

  “And while we’re at it here, Mr. Valens, maybe you can tell me how you got my home number, which is unlisted. ” And here Hardy realized that one of the round-houses he was throwing had finally scored. Valens cast his eyes around the room as though hoping to find an answer. None was forthcoming, and Hardy pressed at him. “Was it one of your campaign workers, maybe? The same guys who came by my house?”

  “No!”

  “No? What? Was it different guys?”

  “No. You’re twisting what I’m saying. I don’t have any guys. I didn’t do any of this.”

  “You didn’t call me? That’s your new story.”

  “No, I did do that. I admitted that.”

  He had moved up to within a foot of Valens. Sweat had broken on the man’s face. It was all Hardy could do to not push him backward over the chair and physically beat the truth out of him.

  Hardy was in a genuine rage. He actually trembled with anger. “If you don’t say something I want to hear in the next five seconds, I’m going to shoot you in the face.” He cocked the gun. “Give me one reason. Right now.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want why you called Ron and why you didn’t tell me.”

  Valens didn’t waste any time making something up. Backing away, he blurted it out. “Bree’s got some files that could hurt Damon’s campaign. Some reports, changing her position again.”

  “Back to MTBE?”

  “No, still against that.”

  “Then what was the change?”

  “She got religion. She’d decided that all additives were unnecessary. Ethanol, too.”

  “And that hurts Damon Kerry?”

  “It could if it got out, if Damon went that way.” Valens held up a hand. “Look, I can’t . . . that gun . . .”

  “It won’t go off by itself.” But Hardy uncocked it. “Bree hurting Damon Kerry,” he said, getting back to where they were.

  Valens drew a shaky breath. “Damon gets a lot of lift from talk radio because his message is so clear. Bree didn’t understand that most people aren’t scientists.”

  “So you’re saying Bree didn’t tell him this earlier?” Hardy towered the gun slightly. “Why not? I thought she was his consultant on this stuff.”

  “She thought it might adversely affect the campaign, as I just told you.” Lowered or not, Valens couldn’t take his eyes off the weapon. “Then when she died . . .”

  “Was killed.”

  “Okay, was killed. Well, frankly, after that I wanted to get my hands on that report so I could get rid of it.”

  “So Kerry wouldn’t ever see it?”

  Valens hesitated. “That’s right.”

  “Because you didn’t want Kerry to know what Bree thought?”

  A nod. “She was turning into a zealot. She was dangerous.”

  “And had to be eliminated?”

  Valens didn’t approve of the word. “She had to be managed.”

  “And you did that? How?”

  “By convincing her to wait until after the election before she told Damon. He wouldn’t do anybody any good if he didn’t first get elected, and I made her understand that. She agreed to wait. It was only after she . . . was killed, that I realized Ron might inadvertently let the report leak, not knowing what it was, not seeing its importance. So I called him to ask if he’d give it to me.” He pointed at the gun. “You know, you don’t need that thing. I’m telling the truth. The call to Ron was straightforward, really.”

  Hardy’s shoulders sagged. The rush of adrenaline had worn him out and he realized that Valens was right. He stuffed the gun into his belt and backed up to the desk, sitting on the corner of it. “It couldn’t have been that straightforward,” he said. “You lied to me about it.”

  “If you remember, Kerry was there with us. I wanted to keep it from him until after the election.”

  Hardy shook his head. “You weren’t ever going to show it to him, were you?”

  “Maybe not,” Valens replied. “Maybe someday. But Bree’s conclusions weren’t really the issue—it was that she was the source of them and she had such an influence on Damon. I mean, everybody in the industry knows you can formulate gas with low emissions. You don’t need additives. So what? Except if Bree gets messianic and Kerry makes it his new war cry . . .”

  “Then he looks like a fool, or a pawn, for having supported ethanol for so long.”

  Valens nodded. “That’s the simple answer, but it’s close enough. If he sees the report and knows it’s from Bree, he moves on it now, he makes it a campaign issue. That’s who Damon is. So he confuses his voters, he looks like he’s waffling, all of the above. I couldn’t let it happen.”

  “How about if I say that sounds like a reason to kill her? How about if she changed her mind and was going to tell him and you had to stop her?”

  Valens had a good answer to that. “Then I wouldn’t have had to call Ron to get my hands on the report last week, would I? I would have searched the house and just taken it after I killed her.” He glanced furtively at his watch, spoke now as if asking permission. “Look, I do have this breakfast with Damon. And I really did leave a message last night that I’d made a mistake—it wasn’t a lie—I did call Ron.

  “As to why I remembered to call you, it was what you said. I knew it wasn’t insignificant at all, a call to a murdered woman’s husband. You were an attorney. It wasn’t brain surgery figuring you wouldn’t go away if you thought I was lying.”

  Hardy hated that it had gotten to here, to some sort of belief in the basic truth of what Valens was telling him. But there was one last question. “So how’d you get my phone number?”

>   A nervous smile. “I called the office and asked if somebody could find it. When I got back here, I had a message.”

  “Just like that?”

  Valens shrugged. “I say I want something, somebody usually finds out a way to make sure I get it. I don’t ask how. That’s how politics works.”

  “Or doesn’t,” Hardy said.

  23

  “She’s checked out to . . .” The jail’s uniformed desk sergeant squinted at the log. “Glitsky, homicide, next door.”

  Hardy wondered about this new development as he walked in the bitter fog around the corner to the main entrance of the Hall. Frannie was signed out to Glitsky? How did that happen and what did it mean?

  He’d stowed the gun in the trunk of his car so he wouldn’t have to confront the Hall’s metal detector. It remained a miserable morning. Hardy checked the time, surprised at how early it still was for all that had gone on. He wasn’t entirely certain he’d done the right thing by letting Valens go about his campaign business, but he couldn’t imagine that the man was going to disappear, at least not until the election. If some real evidence of wrongdoing by Valens turned up before then, Hardy would bring it to Abe’s attention, but in the meanwhile, he had more important things on his mind.

  His house, his wife, his life.

  The Hall’s familiar lobby—on weekdays a perennial throbbing and vulgar mass of disgruntled humanity—was empty this early, and his footfalls echoed. Knowing he’d have no patience with the elevator, he took the inside stairway to the fourth floor, then walked down the long hall to the homicide detail—an open room with fifteen back-to-back desks and several square columns poking about, floor to ceiling, seemingly at random.

  There wasn’t a body to be seen in homicide itself, although through the grimy, wired-glass windows, he could look across through the fog to the jail, where spectral shapes moved in the outer corridors.

  The door to the lieutenant’s office was open. No one was inside, but Hardy noticed that Kerry’s water glass he’d picked up yesterday was gone—a good sign. He knocked anyway. “Anybody here?”

  “Yo!” Glitsky appeared in the doorway of one of the interrogation rooms.

  Before he could say anything, Frannie appeared behind him. They met in an embrace in the middle of the room.

  “I had to tell her,” he heard Abe say. “I didn’t know how long you’d be hung up back there and she had to know.”

  The words barely registered. He was lost in holding her.

  But Glitsky was still talking, explaining. “I’m on my way driving down here, I realize we bring witnesses over from the jail every day to talk to them. So I just went and signed her out into my custody. It’s Sunday, nobody’s here to question why I got her. It seemed like a good idea.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Frannie said. “Plus Erin’s bringing the kids down.”

  “And I’m going out for some food,” Glitsky said. He was already putting on his jacket. “It’ll be a party.” He pointed a finger at Hardy. “While I’m gone, I’m leaving you in charge. Don’t let her escape.”

  They were alone together in the homicide detail’s interrogation room, kitty-corner at the table. The fog was pressing tight up against the windows, the wind gusting audibly.

  It wasn’t exactly warm inside either.

  First was the house, Hardy’s assessment of how bad it was, what they were going to have to do about living in the next weeks, the somber details. It hit Frannie especially hard that, even after her expected release from jail on Tuesday morning, she wouldn’t be able to go back to her old life. “This is all because of me, isn’t it?”

  It was difficult for Hardy to tell her it wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine that anything relating to Bree Beaumont’s death would have had any effect on their lives if Frannie had not become involved with Ron, hadn’t promised to keep his secrets.

  “You did what you had to do,” he told her equivocally. “But at least I’ve got somebody scared and that’s always instructive.”

  “It’s more than just that.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted.

  “Do you think something else could happen? To you?”

  In truth, Hardy thought that if he kept pushing, which he fully intended to do, something else surely would happen. That’s even what he wanted—without an act there couldn’t be a mistake upon which he could capitalize.

  And this, of course, was not without risk, even serious risk. But, answering her, he simply shook his head. “If I get any closer, I’ll give it to Abe. Let the pros run with it.”

  Frannie tightened her grip on his arm. “You can do that now, Dismas.”

  “No,” he said pointedly. “Not if I want to protect Saint Ron’s kids . . .”

  “I wish you’d stop calling him that.”

  Hardy figured he’d earned the right to call Ron Beaumont anything he wanted. He waved the objection off. “The point is, if I want to protect his kids, that’s why I’m doing all this, isn’t it? That’s what I’m supposed to believe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘supposed to believe’?”

  He tried to control it, but he heard his voice take on a harder edge. “I find who killed Bree by Tuesday and everybody’s life goes back to normal, right? Except ours. Now ours is a mess.” He’d gotten her to tears and he didn’t care. “And you want to know the real laugh riot here, Frannie? I’m not even sure Ron didn’t do this to us.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said. “He would have had no reason to do that.”

  He firmly grabbed his wife by the shoulders and turned her to him. “Listen to me. How about if he thought I was there alone, sleeping? The house burns down with me in it. Then he’s got you. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “No! That’s not it.”

  “So where is the son of a bitch?”

  “I don’t know, Dismas, I don’t know.” She took his hands and held them in front of her. “But Ron and I . . . there’s nothing like that.”

  Hardy hesitated. Although he was well into it, mention of Ron Beaumont was still personally fraught with peril for him. Still, he had to go ahead. “You know, Fran, I’ve really been trying to keep Abe from looking at him officially. But it’s beginning to look as if whoever killed Bree also killed Abe’s inspector half a mile from Ron’s house.”

  “That doesn’t mean . . .”

  He squeezed her hand. “And just so you know, Ron apparently had a few different identities.”

  “What do you mean, identities?”

  Hardy outlined Glitsky’s discovery of the previous night, which now seemed about a year and half ago.

  When he was through, Frannie took a while to answer.“He must have thought he might have to run again someday to save the kids.”

  “I’m sure that’s what he’d like everybody to believe, and maybe it’s true, but he’s getting a hell of a lot of play out of saving his kids.”

  “That’s because that’s what he’s doing, Dismas! I believe that. You did, too, when you met him, remember that? He didn’t start any of this any more than I did.”

  Hardy clucked. “I know. He’s just a poor victim.”

  “God, you can be mean,” she snapped.

  “Sometimes it’s useful,” he replied. “I’d just like you to consider the possibility that this guy is the great pretender.”

  “No.”

  “For two or three different reasons—insurance, credit cards, you name it—he kills Bree and sets you up as his alibi. When the cops start to get close to him, he cons me into muddying the waters digging up other suspects, gives himself a few more days to disappear. I don’t see much wrong with that picture.”

  But she was shaking her head. “It’s not him. Listen to yourself, Dismas. He didn’t give himself more time to disappear and also stick around to burn down our house so he could have me. You can’t have it both ways. You think he had something going on with me, don’t you? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? The real one you don’t believe is me.”

 
; “You’ve never denied it, goddamit! How about that?”

  “You never asked!”

  Hardy spun around and walked to the window, the fog. An eternity passed before he sensed any movement. He was afraid to turn. She came up and hugged him from behind. “He’s just a dad from the kids’ school, we got to be friends, this happened. That’s all.”

  She continued talking quietly into his back. “I know you hate the whole victim mentality, Dismas. I don’t like it either. But sometimes people are in situations they didn’t create. Like us, now, too. We’ve just got to keep trying to do what’s right, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what right is anymore.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “All I know is, I want to hurt whoever did this.”

  “No, you want to hurt anybody right now. It doesn’t have to be who did all this. Maybe you’re so hurt . . .”

  “And what if it’s Ron after all? If we’ve both been conned.”

  “Is that the worst that can happen? That somebody took advantage of your good heart?”

  “I don’t have a good heart.”

  “Yes, you do. And you’re risking it here and afraid somebody’s going to smash it and make you look like a fool in the bargain. But either way it’s over on Tuesday, isn’t it? If you don’t find whoever really did it.”

  Hardy turned around to her. “And I’ve helped him escape.”

  “Except if he’s run away, then he didn’t burn our house, and vice versa. Think about it, Dismas. It’s not him.” She brought a hand up to his face, rubbed it against his cheek. “More than anything, I just don’t want you to be hurt. Or us to be hurt.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Do you think you could stand to kiss me please?”

  Frannie, Erin, Ed, and the kids were finishing their lunch—Chinese take-out was all Glitsky had been able to forage on a Sunday morning.

  The opening minutes had been brutal, the kids’ emotions over finally seeing their mother again, then the double whammy as they heard the news of the fire. By the time they were an hour into it, though, Hardy realized that it was as normal a family meal as you could have in a homicide interrogation room. Vincent was sitting on Frannie’s lap, Rebecca was nonstop chatter about school stuff. They were all making plans about logistics, moving ahead, solving problems.