“Mr. Valens, please.” Glitsky stilled him with a glare. “Mr. Kerry?”
Kerry had by now straightened up to a sitting position. He mopped his brow with the washcloth. “Yes, I said that.”
“And you stand by that now? That you’d never been inside Bree’s place?”
Kerry crossed one leg over the other, and sighed deeply. “I suppose you’ve got somebody who saw me there? Took my picture? Perhaps Mr. Hardy here?”
“Damon, hold it!” Valens again.
But Kerry seemed almost amused. A wry expression crossed his face. “It’s all right, Al. It’s all right. The lieutenant says he’ll keep this low-profile, isn’t that true, Lieutenant? So long as I didn’t kill Bree. We have your word on that, on this tape.”
“If I can,” Glitsky responded.
“Yes, I went there.”
Glitsky and Hardy exchanged glances. “Why did you tell Mr. Hardy you hadn’t?”
“What difference does that make, Lieutenant? Is that a crime? He might have been a reporter, trying to get some dirt on me and Bree. He might have been with my opponent, trying to smear me, make it look like I was having an affair with a married mother of two.” He shrugged. “He said he was Ron’s attorney and it’s my belief that Ron killed her. He was building a case. So I lied to him. The easiest thing was to lie.”
“You believe that Ron killed her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
A shrug. “She was his major source of financial support. She was going to change that arrangement. When he found out, he lost it.”
“How do you know that?”
“She told me the first two. The last I surmise.” By now, Kerry had come forward on the couch. The signs of fatigue had vanished. Hunched over slightly, his elbows on his knees, the washcloth now bunched in his right hand, he struck Hardy as a man engaged in watching the last seconds of an extremely close football game. “Frankly, I’m amazed it’s taken you—the police—this long to get to him. Judging from this interview, you’re still not there, are you?”
“He has an alibi for the time of the murder,” Glitsky replied calmly, his patented non-smile making a minor appearance. “We’re still laboring under the law of physics that you can’t be in two places at once. But while we’re on the topic, where were you on the morning she was killed?”
Kerry actually chuckled. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s a simple question.”
“Yes it is, which doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. You’re implying that I am a suspect in this woman’s murder?”
But Glitsky knew how to interrogate, and the first rule is you don’t answer questions—you ask them. “I’m asking where you were when she was killed. Again, a simple question.”
“All right. Here’s the simple answer. I couldn’t even tell you exactly the day Bree was killed, Lieutenant. I’m in the middle of a thirty-million-dollar campaign for governor of the most populous state in the nation. I’ve had between ten and thirty appearances a day for the past six months or more.”
Glitsky nodded. “You’re on the record saying you were home, here, that morning. Alone. Do you remember that?”
“I said it,” Valens put in. “I told your inspectors. Hell, I’ve told them half a dozen times. Damon needs to sleep once in a while. He’d been out late the night before. We’d been shooting commercials that had to air the next week. The day she died he had to fly to San Diego at noon, so he slept in.”
“Look.” Kerry’s color had come up now. “It was a horrible tragedy that Bree was killed, and it is my most fervent wish that it hadn’t happened. Beyond that, I hope you find her killer. But I do wish that this city had a more competent police force, so that I would not have to be bothered with this grasping-at-straws stupidity on the penultimate day of my campaign.”
Valens took his cue and stood up. “That’s it. I’m calling the mayor. He’ll put a stop to this.” He faced Glitsky directly. “You won’t have to wait for the election, Lieutenant. You can lose your badge tonight.”
Hardy reached over to the tape recorder, snapped it off, and spoke before Glitsky could reply. “Good idea, Valens. You go ahead. Then I’ll call Jeff Elliot and we can see where that goes.”
“You know Jeff?” This was Kerry, all attention.
“We’re buds,” Hardy said. “He was here last night and you weren’t. How about that?”
Glitsky raised his voice. “That’s enough!” He lifted the tape recorder and turned it on again, then whispered into the resulting silence. “This is my interrogation. I will ask the questions. Mr. Kerry, I need five more minutes of your time, and then I will walk out the door with Mr. Hardy. You’ve admitted you were at Bree Beaumont’s penthouse. What were you doing there?”
A disgusted shake of the head. “Visiting her. She was one of my consultants and beyond that, we were friends.”
“Were you alone with her there?”
“Yes. Is that sinister?”
Glitsky abruptly changed his tack. “What did you do after midnight last night?”
Kerry collapsed back onto the couch. He mopped his brow again with the washcloth. “Last night? What does last night have to do with anything?”
“A policeman was killed about five blocks from here last night.”
Kerry cast a glance over at Valens. “They’ll stop at nothing,” he said. Then, back to Glitsky. “And I killed him, too, I suppose. I’m not busy enough running for governor. I’ve got to premeditate several murders as well, among them a cop. I must have a low tolerance for boredom.” He sighed. “Last night, I took a walk.”
“You took a walk?”
“That’s right. Al left at around—when Al, eleven-thirty? —and I was wound up. The MTBE poisoning. Bree. Even Mr. Hardy here. I decided to walk off some of the tension.”
“Do you own a gun, Mr. Kerry?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ve got a basement full of Uzis and semiautomatics. AK-47s are my favorites. When I’m not killing women and policemen, I like to dress up like a postal employee and spray up some McDonald’s someplace. ” He forced himself to his feet. “This was a voluntary interview, as you noted. I would appreciate a copy of the transcript of that tape in my headquarters by tomorrow. And I assure you that I am going to speak to the mayor, and you can do any goddamn thing you want about it, both of you.”
He was halfway across the room when Glitsky, a dog with a bone, spoke up after him. “Do you own a gun, Mr. Kerry? You didn’t answer me.”
The candidate stopped and turned slowly. In measured tones, he answered. “I have a Glock nine-millimeter in my bedroom for protection. I did not shoot your colleague with it. You have my word.”
Glitsky smiled and pounced softly. “How did you know he was shot?”
Kerry stood stock-still. His eyes, for an instant stained with fear, darted to Valens. Then, recovering, he came back to Glitsky. “From your questions about guns, that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption. Now good night, Lieutenant.”
Driving back downtown, for the first several blocks neither man said a word. At a red light on Geary, they stopped and Hardy half turned in the passenger’s seat. “Offhand,” he said, “I wouldn’t say that went too well.”
Glitsky looked over at him. “I don’t know. He has no alibi. He owns a gun. You notice he said ‘several murders’?”
“When?”
“Wait.” Glitsky fiddled with his tape recorder, rewound a minute, got to the spot. And here was Kerry’s voice again: “I’m not busy enough running for governor. I’ve got to premeditate several murders as well, among them a cop.” He flicked it off. “Several,” he said, “is not two. Two is a couple—Bree and Canetta. No one knows about Griffin being part of this.”
“But he didn’t say ‘among them some cops,’ or ‘a couple of cops.’ ”
“No, he didn’t,” Abe admitted. “I know he was being sarcastic. But still . . . it’ll be instructive if he does call the mayor.” A pause. “He’s a lot quicker o
n his feet than I’d given him credit for. I might even vote for him.”
“Assuming he didn’t kill anybody.”
“Even then.” Glitsky seemed amused. “You never want to underestimate the value of brains in your elected officials.”
“I don’t know,” Hardy said. “Our president’s got brains.”
“Yeah, but they’re all south of his head.” The light changed and they moved.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Hardy commented. “Kerry’s got brass balls if he did any of this.”
“I think we just got a glimpse of them,” Abe said. “The guy is no pansy. You get the impression he hasn’t talked to any cops before, that it’s all been Valens up to now?”
“A hundred percent.”
“And here’s a last bit of five-cent psychology. To my mind, Kerry’s exactly the kind of guy that Griffin could have wound up handing his gun to. I could see him asking Carl for a ride in the cruiser. Wow, this is what it’s like being a cop. You mind if I just hold your gun for a minute? And it’s all loaded and everything?”
“Or,” Hardy countered, “he packed along his Glock and forced him.”
“Or that, too.”
“Griffin just drops by his house? Knocks at the door?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to see that.”
“Do we know where he was when Griffin got it?”
“It was the day of Bree’s funeral. He was in town. Valens says he was sick over Bree’s death. Canceled his appointments, but made the funeral.”
Another silence descended. After a few blocks, Hardy looked over at Glitsky again. “Lord,” he said.
“It’s interesting,” the lieutenant admitted.
The two cars were parked next to one another in the cavernous city garage under the Hall of Justice. There was a guard trying to keep warm in a small booth by the back doorway, which was the main entrance. But otherwise, except for Glitsky and Hardy, the place was empty, which was not surprising after eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. Glitsky asked the guard to bring up the lights and in a moment the dark and grimy garage was lit up like a showroom.
Yellow crime scene tape hung from traffic cones and this segregated the immediate area where Griffin’s and Canetta’s cars had been parked from the contiguous body shop and parking spaces for the city-issue vehicles.
All doors and the trunks of both cars were open. Under the car on the right, a dark blue Lumina, someone in the crime scene unit had written block letters in chalk: CANETTA. The car over GRIFFIN was a gray, mid-sized Chevrolet with minor body damage and a lot of years on it.
But for the moment, their steps echoing as they navigated the garage, they were still on Kerry. “So you think your badge is really in trouble?”
“For interrogating a righteous suspect?”
“They’re going to claim it’s political.”
Glitsky snorted. “They don’t support much of what I do, but I’ve got to believe they won’t step on me for this. There’s probable cause here in spades. In fact, I’m going to put somebody on a warrant for the Glock tomorrow. See if it’s where he said it was, what it might tell us”—he indicated the cars before them—“maybe that Glock has spent some time in one of these, picked up something for its troubles.”
They’d come up to Canetta’s car, on their left. Glitsky pulled some latex gloves from his jacket pocket, handed a couple to Hardy, pulled his on, and stood over the yawning trunk.
“What are we looking for?” Hardy came up beside him.
“There shouldn’t be anything,” Glitsky responded. “The theory is, it’s all bagged, and labeled at the lab, or if they’re done boxed up in the locker.” And in fact, the trunk looked pretty well cleaned out. Still, they checked the wheel wells, under the rug, under the speakers—everywhere.
Hardy went up to the passenger side, Glitsky the driver’s. The front seat had been removed, although there was still fresh evidence of the blood Canetta had spilled on the rug. The visors had nothing stuck under or in them. The glove compartment was empty. In the back, it was the same story.
Glitsky wasn’t saying a word and though Hardy still wasn’t sure why they were doing this, he was along for the duration. Over at Griffin’s car, as with Canetta’s, they started at the trunk. There was a little more evidence that Carl had lived and worked in his vehicle—beverage stains, tobacco burns—but it had evidently been sanitized by a team of professionals.
At least, until they came to the back doors. The backseat and the rug in front of it contained the usual, by now, stains and odors, and Hardy was about to stand up when Glitsky made a sign. “Last one,” he said. And they lifted the backseat up.
Hardy whistled.
Glitsky looked for a moment, his expression fixed. “Don’t touch,” he said. “Let’s go.”
They crossed back to the guard’s booth and Glitsky picked up the telephone, punched in some numbers. “Get me Operations,” he told the dispatcher. “Is Leon Timms on call? Good. Page him. Yes, ma’am, right now. Have him call me.”
Glitsky gave his number and they waited two minutes or less. The phone rang.
“Leon, Abe. I’m down here at the garage and just had occasion to lift the backseat of Carl Griffin’s car. Yeah. Uh huh. Well, they missed this. Uh huh. I know. I am, too.”
He rolled his eyes at Hardy. “Well, listen, the point is that we’re behind the curve on this investigation, you might have noticed. Right. Leon, listen up. Just so we’re clear, I expect all that waste paper, Kleenex, french fries, sugar cones, condoms, coins, bullets, shoelaces, boxtops, coupons, lottery tickets—everything—checked out, bagged and catalogued and up at the lab by the morning. Starting now. Uh huh. That’s right, it is. I know. I don’t care.”
Hardy had no confidence that he’d be able to stay awake on the ride across town to Erin’s. Freeman’s building was closer, and there were still things to do there.
Now, on his couch back in his office, he fought to keep his eyes open. He had his legal pad beside him and had drafted the motion he’d submit to the court—to Marian Braun in fact—on vacating Frannie’s contempt citation. He checked his watch—nearly one o’clock.
He read another line, nearly dozed and started awake.
There on the low table in front of him, weighted down by his gun, was every scrap of paper he’d accumulated over the past four days. He was going to read them thoroughly when he finished his motion. He started to fade again.
The gun. He’d berated himself recently for allowing himself to fall asleep with the gun in plain view next to him, and this time he wasn’t going to do that.
His legs didn’t want to answer him, his shoulder throbbed and his mouth was dust, but he made himself walk to his desk, open the drawer, put the gun in and lock it.
It seemed a long uphill mile all the way over to the light switch by the door and then back to the couch, but he finally made it, pulled his jacket over him, and fell to the side, asleep before he knew what had hit him.
29
It was nominally a breakfast meeting in the mayor’s private suite at City Hall, but none of the participants, except one, seemed to have much of an appetite. The plate of sweet rolls sat unmolested in the center of the long rectagular table.
By ten minutes past seven the mayor himself—Richard Washington—hadn’t made his appearance. But everyone else had assembled and gotten their coffee poured by seven a.m., the hour his honor had appointed for this emergency session.
It was the first time Scott Randall had ever been inside the mayor’s offices and typically, although by a wide margin the youngest person in the room, he was unimpressed. Someday, he thought, it was entirely possible he might wind up here himself. He’d do the walls a different color—something that said power a little more distinctly, though still subtly. Maroon, perhaps.
He stood off by himself beside the vast sideboard under an ornately framed mirror at the far end of the room. He was on his second bear claw—he’d wolfed the first—and now sipped at his c
offee as he surveyed the other guests. Sharron Pratt, his boss, was in an intense discussion with Dan Rigby, the chief of police, and Peter Struler—Randall’s own DA investigator.
The attendance of Marian Braun was a surprise to Randall—Superior Court judges often liked to pretend they were above the political fray. But she had obviously come at the mayor’s bidding, although she was fastidiously ignoring everyone, and clearly unhappy. Pencil in hand, ostentatiously making notes on some thick document in a three-ring black binder, she’d already been sitting at the table when Randall arrived.
The mayor’s majordomo was named Richard, too. Scott Randall suppressed a smile recalling that the common name led to the inevitable sobriquets of “Big Dick” and “Little Dick” for the mayor and his assistant. Little Dick was chatting with a couple of staff members that Randall recognized, although their names escaped him.
Finally—Randall checked his watch: 7:13—Mayor Washington burst into the room. Purposeful, overworked, impatient, he was talking at high volume to a middle-aged woman who trailed behind him scribbling nonstop on a steno pad. Washington wore a camel’s hair coat over his suit. He was reasonably tall and nearly burly. Broken nose, veins in his face, a lot of unkempt gray hair. Walking fast as he came through the door, he kept cominguntil he got to his seat at the head of the table, when he stopped almost as though surprised at where he’d come to rest.
“All right.” He nearly bellowed, eyes all over the room. “Everybody here? Let’s get going.”
Little Dick had appeared behind him and helped him shuck the overcoat, an automatic operation the mayor did not acknowledge in any way. By the time Washington was down in his chair, the woman had poured and flavored his coffee—three sugars and cream, Randall noticed—and had disappeared.
The mayor slurped from the cup, swallowed, waited an instant for one of the staffers to stop fidgeting in her seat. After another moment, Marian Braun looked up, put her pencil down, closed her binder.
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