Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  So he walked up the stairs and stood by the door and listened. A man’s voice, singing quietly to himself, was barely discernible inside. There was definite movement, footsteps.

  He pushed the doorbell, gave it very little time, then pushed it again. The footsteps had stopped. So had the concert. Whoever was in there was alone. He’d be very surprised if there were children. After another short wait, he knocked desultorily.

  Walking back down a few of the steps, making his footfalls as heavy as he could, he then crept back up to the landing and waited. About two minutes later, the doorknob turned and Hardy hit the door hard, leading with his shoulder. There was a satisfying bit of resistance and then he was inside, hovering over the man he’d knocked to the ground.

  “Hi, Ron. How’ve you been?”

  Struggling to get up. “Mr. Hardy.”

  “Dismas, please. After all we’ve been through together, I think we’re on first names by now.”

  Ron was on his feet again and broke a nervous smile. “All right, Dismas.” He let out a long breath. “You may not believe this, but it’s good to see you.”

  Hardy was brusque. “It’s better to see you. Where are the kids?”

  “They just went to the store for a minute.”

  “With Marie?”

  After a beat, Ron offered a resigned shrug, another attempt at an ingratiating smile. “You’re pretty good,” he conceded.

  “I have my days,” Hardy admitted. Closing the door behind him, when he turned back again to Ron—this time he was glad he had it—he’d taken his gun out from his waistband, held it so Ron could see.

  “You don’t need anything like that.”

  “Maybe not,” Hardy said. “But then again, maybe I do. So I figured I’d be prepared either way.”

  The gun had Ron’s attention, no doubt about it. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Not me, us.” They were in a small foyer. Hardy motioned over to the living room, visible behind them. “Now we’re going to wait for a little while and you’d better hope your kids come back with Marie in a reasonable amount of time. Or else you and I are going to take a ride downtown.”

  “And do what?”

  “And tell a DA named Scott Randall anything he wants to know.”

  Ron took a seat on a low leather couch. Hardy, still pumped up, remained standing. “My understanding,” Ron said, “was that you were going to wait until tomorrow.Then Frannie was free to tell anything, everything. And the children and I would be gone.”

  He clipped out the words. “Yep. That was it.”

  “But?”

  “But now she’s not sure she can do it.”

  “Why not? I’ve . . .”

  Hardy raised his voice. “It’s not you, Goddamn it! It’s not anything you forbid or allow. It’s her.” He shook his head, reining in the emotion, got his voice under control. “The way she sees it, as soon as she tells them your situation, your kids suffer. They’ve got to move and start over.”

  “But that’s not Frannie’s doing.”

  It still galled Hardy to hear this man refer to his wife so familiarly, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He bore some of the responsibility for that himself. “No,” he said, “and as soon as they indict you, which is tomorrow, it’s going to happen anyway.”

  “So what’s her problem with it?”

  Hardy suddenly felt stupid holding the gun. Tucking it back into his belt, now invisible again under his jacket, he stepped across to a wing chair and sat on the edge of it, across from Ron. “She doesn’t see it as a problem,” he said. “She’s willing to trade a few more hours in jail, to give me a few more hours . . .” He stopped.

  “To find who killed Bree?”

  Hardy leaned forward and eyed him coldly. “Yes,” he said. “To find who killed your sister.”

  Ron didn’t give it up right away. He put on a quizzicalexpression, as though he really didn’t understand what Hardy had just said. “You mean my wife. Bree.”

  “I mean Bree all right,” Hardy replied. “But she wasn’t your wife. She was your sister.”

  34

  For the third time since Glitsky and Batavia had arrived at Thorne’s apartment, a cable car rattled by outside on Mason, shaking the floorboards. The shaking increased and for an instant the lieutenant thought it might be a real earthquake. The conductor had a heavy hand with the famous bells, too.

  Ding ding ding ding ding!

  Thorne’s work area was a desk in his living room, up against the front window overlooking the street. Glitsky had been going through a stack of computer printouts, and now pushed the ergonomic chair back a couple of inches, ready to bolt for a doorway if things began to fall around him. “It’s hard to believe that people pay real money to live with this experience.”

  On the couch behind him, Jorge Batavia patiently lifted another page of printed matter from a suitcase he’d placed on the coffee table. He scanned it quickly, set it on the pile of rejected paper next to him. “It’s New Age therapy,” he said. “Every fifteen minutes you get to wonder if your building is going to fall down.” The sergeant put aside another page. “You think you’re going to die four times an hour, you squeeze what you can out of every minute. Your life experience is enriched.”

  The shaking had stopped, punctuated by a last burst of clanging. “Good theory.” Glitsky pulled forward again, went back to his stack of paper.

  There was also a computer on the table, but Glitsky didn’t dare even turn the thing on. He thought there was a reasonable likelihood that the thing was booby-trapped, so he had placed a call back to the Hall to have one of the cyber specialists come down and unplug it, then take it downtown for examination.

  It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to look at. Thorne put out a prodigious amount of paper, and Glitsky and Batavia had been at his hard-copy files for almost an hour.

  Batavia and Coleman had been checking in at homicide after Glitsky had returned to the office with his newly signed warrant. He had asked Jorge to accompany him on the search of Thorne’s place while Coleman went to talk to Jim Pierce again about his activities on Saturday night.

  While Glitsky and Hardy thought they might be closing in on Damon Kerry—perhaps through some agent of Baxter Thorne’s—Coleman and Batavia had moved Pierce up a notch or two on their possible suspect list. This was mostly because a review of the business calendar he’d provided for them had revealed another questionable alibi—a two-hour gap after Bree’s funeral, during which he’d had lunch alone at a crowded Chinese counter restaurant. This was when someone had killed Griffin, and made it three out of three for Pierce. That in turn piqued the inspectors’ curiosity.

  But Glitsky had developed a personal hard-on for Thorne. As Hardy had pointed out, even a tenuous connection to the weekend’s water poisoning at Pulgas was going to make life very difficult for Mr. Thorne. If they found any tie-in to Bree Beaumont, it would even be worse.

  Between him and Batavia, they’d already done a thorough job on the kitchen, the wastebaskets and garbage cans. In the bedroom, there was nothing in or taped under any of the drawers of the dresser or night table, nothing tucked between the box spring and the mattress.

  Glitsky went to the computer table while Batavia checked the bedroom closet and found shoes and hanging clothes and the suitcase filled with propaganda. Batavia brought the suitcase into the living room, but thus far they’d found nothing at all—no longhand drafts or fragments of the damning press release, no final or proof copies, no printing or copying bills.

  The rest of his records were similarly disappointing. His bills and check register revealed nothing unusual— phone, electric, rent, credit card payments. If he hired operatives, he kept no records of them here. There weren’t any random keys. Apparently he didn’t own a gun.

  When Glitsky could free up another inspector or two, by Christmas, he intended to do a similar search on the offices of FMC, although he’d bel
ieved that his best hope on Thorne was an unexpected search of his apartment.

  But maybe he was wrong.

  After another few minutes, he heard Batavia move behind him. “Well, that was a slice.” Glitsky turned around and saw the sergeant was returning the large stack of pamphlets, letters, other reading material back into the suitcase. “All of these are older. Weeks, even months. Nothing on Pulgas.”

  He closed the suitcase and stood up. “I’ll keep looking.”

  Glitsky heard a key in the front door. He pushed the chair back and stood up as a short, well-dressed man appeared in the alcove. He wore a hat with a small feather in it, gloves, a tweed overcoat. Behind him stood the building manager who’d let Abe into the apartment and then, apparently, called Thorne at his work.

  The dapper man stared at Glitsky with a dead expression, transferred it to Batavia as he entered the living room from wherever he’d been. His tone was completely uninflected. “What is the meaning of this outrageous intrusion?”

  “You’re Mr. Thorne I presume.” Glitsky had his search warrant in his pocket. He extracted it and held it out to the man, who glanced at it contemptuously, making no move to examine it. Glitsky shrugged and in a few words introduced himself and explained the basic situation. “I’m afraid,” he concluded, “that I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises while we continue here.”

  Thorne didn’t even blink. “No, sir. I refuse to do that. I’ve called my attorney and he’ll be here shortly and put an end to this.” He was taking off his overcoat, hanging it on a peg in the alcove, planning to stay.

  “He won’t be able to do that, sir.” Glitsky held all the cards here, and he knew it. “This is a legal search conducted pursuant to a murder investigation—”

  “Baxter?” The manager interrupted, shifting from foot to foot in the still-open doorway. “If everything’s all right here, I’ve . . .”

  “Sure, Daniel.” Thorne thanked him courteously and he backed out of the alcove, closing the door behind him. But the suspect hadn’t lost the thread. He came back to Glitsky, asking quietly, “Whose murder?”

  “James Allen Espinosa of Pescadero.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He was the victim of the Clean Earth Alliance attack on the Pulgas Water Temple the other day.”

  “That again.” This time he allowed a tone of suppressed anger. He rolled his eyes.

  “Again?” Glitsky asked.

  Thorne ignored the question. “And you think I had something to do with that? On what grounds?”

  “Justifiable grounds, Mr. Thorne,” Glitsky replied. “A judge signed the warrant. That’s all you need to know. Now I’m not letting you into this apartment until we’re finished here. As a courtesy, we’ll bring a chair over and I’ll let you remain in that alcove. With your lawyer when he shows up. But nobody’s touching anything here until we’re done. Do you understand?”

  The men were standing two feet apart. Thorne huffed, replying, “Perfectly.”

  Glitsky crossed the room, said a few words to Batavia, and went back to the desk. The cable car went by again as Batavia brought two chairs from around the kitchen table through the living room and into the alcove. Then he lifted Thorne’s overcoat from its peg, as Glitsky had instructed him.

  “Hey! What do you think . . . ?” For the first time, Thorne’s voice rose.

  Glitsky was up as if shot out of his chair, his own voice harsh with authority. “You stay right where you are. Jorge, make sure he does. While you’re at it, have him give you his wallet and check his identification.”

  “I won’t . . .”

  “You damn well will,” Batavia said.

  Glitsky took the overcoat from his sergeant and now held it up to his face. He’d smelled a strong odor as Thorne had removed the coat and hung it up. It hadn’t been there when Glitsky and Jorge had entered the apartment and then, suddenly, with Thorne’s arrival, there it was—gasoline.

  Reaching into the pockets one by one, his hand closed around what felt like some kind of charm. Extracting it carefully, he instantly placed the piece. It was at least an exact replica, but Glitsky would bet it was an original, of one of the handblown Venetian glass elephants that he’d last seen dancing across the mantel over Hardy’s living room fireplace.

  Sergeant Coleman was having trouble getting through to Jim Pierce, whose patience had all but run out. Coleman’s had as well. He’d been kept waiting for nearly a half hour, and now, as he’d finally been admitted into the vice-president’s office, had been told by Pierce’s secretary that the next meeting started in ten minutes.

  Pierce was behind his desk. Distracted. No handshake. Papers to be signed, decisions to make. He looked up at Coleman. The inspector, he said, could talk but he’d better talk fast. These continual interruptions had gone far beyond reasonable, near to the point of official harrassment. If they continued, there were likely to be consequences.

  The power play had its effect on the young inspector. The corner office was vast, ornate, intimidating. Windows and views, high enough to be over the fog. Coleman squirmed in the ultramodern wooden chair—really more a stool with sides than anything a body would choose to sit in or on.

  It crossed Coleman’s mind that this might, in fact, be a special chair positioned in front of Pierce’s desk for unwelcome visitors, to keep them from getting too comfortable. To make sure they wanted to leave soon.

  Homicide inspectors are not a particularly reverent bunch. Most of them had seen everything at least twice, and Coleman was no exception. But sitting in Pierce’s office, he found it next to impossible to imagine that the man who presided here would ever need to have recourse to murder. Coleman didn’t really believe it, but he did at least want to nail down the facts, if for no other reason than that he wouldn’t have to be in this position again.

  “I realize you have cooperated up to now, sir, and we’re grateful for that cooperation . . .”

  “Well, this is a fine way to show it. What more could you possibly have to ask me that you haven’t asked already?”

  “We tried to reach you yesterday, sir, about Saturday night.”

  “I know.” He reached for a fountain pen, signed something, put the pen back, blew on the signature, and moved the paper to one side. Then, immediately, he started reading the next one. He didn’t look up. “My wife told me you had come by. Again. About a police officer this time?”

  “Sergeant Canetta, yes sir.”

  “I do know that name. Where do I know . . . ?”

  “He had worked security for Caloco at several events.”

  Finally, Pierce stopped fidgeting. “That’s it. He was the man who was killed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  This seemed to affect Pierce somewhat. He sighed deeply and his mouth grew compressed, his brow furrowed.“I’m sorry, Inspector. I’m sorry for my rudeness earlier. I’m under some pressure here but that’s every day and it’s no excuse. I can understand how you feel when your colleagues are . . .” He straightened in his chair. “All right. Go on. What do you need to know?”

  “I’d like to know where you were on Saturday night.”

  In spite of the apology, impatience thrummed under the surface. “May I ask why that would be important? What did my wife tell you?”

  Coleman said nothing.

  And Pierce got the message, although it didn’t make him any happier. He sighed again. “I was home until early morning, perhaps dawn. Then I went down to my boat in the Marina.”

  “But you were home during the night?”

  “I just said that, yes.”

  “Alone?”

  Pierce nodded. “Is that so strange, Inspector? My wife had gone out to a party that I didn’t want to attend.”

  “Did your wife see you when she got home?”

  A short laugh. “What did she tell you?” Then, ruefully. “I doubt it. I spent the night in my study.” He met Pierce’s eyes. “We fought about the party, that I wasn’t going. W
hen it was over, I heard her come home, but wanted to see if she’d come to me and apologize. When she didn’t . . . well, I got my back up.”

  “So you slept in your study?”

  “Not much. I was pretty mad and couldn’t sleep most of the night. I watched some television.”

  “Do you remember what?”

  “I don’t know, really. Some pay-per-view sports I guess. Mindless junk. Whatever was on. I dozed on and off.”

  “Do you know offhand the company that provides your television service?” Coleman asked.

  “No,” Pierce said. “No idea, sorry. Do you know yours?”

  “Do you mind if I check?”

  “I don’t know, I . . .” But then Pierce brightened slightly, although the smile didn’t exactly light up the room. “Oh, I see. Sure, of course. Whatever you need to do.”

  Coleman, with relief, pushed himself out of the chair from hell. “Thank you for your time, sir. I hope we won’t have to bother you again.”

  Pierce sat still for a long beat, then shook his head in disbelief. “Before you go, Inspector, maybe you can answer me one question?”

  “If I can.”

  “All right. Is there any reason on God’s earth why I might have wanted to kill Sergeant Canetta? Since that’s what I presume this has been all about. He did some security work for Caloco, okay. Where? What type of security work? And then what? I didn’t even know the man. I doubt if I could pick him out of a crowd.” He paused, spread his hands, appealed to reason. “I just don’t understand. Is he related to me in some other way?”

  Coleman heard him out. He really couldn’t blame him for being angry and frustrated, but he wasn’t going to give away anything that his boss had told him to withhold. “It’s a routine investigation,” he said. “That’s all it is. Thanks for your time.”