The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

  ‘Now, Art, that’s just simply not going to happen. I am not about to change an opinion without different evidence, and to be honest with you, I’m just a bit offended that you thought I might.’

  But Drysdale had his game face on. Dean Powell – the attorney general – had told him what he wanted in the best of all worlds, and if it were gettable, Drysdale was going to get it. Strout’s feelings would heal. ‘You’ve already called it a homicide, John-’

  Strout was holding a hand up. ‘Well, that’s just plum inaccurate, Art. I did not say it was a homicide. I called it a suicide equivocal/homicide, which is not the same thing. It means I can’t say for sure that Russo didn’t kill himself.’

  ‘Mr Powell thinks that’s splitting hairs.’

  Strout removed his wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘Well, Mr Powell can hire himself another pathologist and get himself another opinion, but he’s already got mine, and it’s stayin’ the way it is.‘

  Glitsky thought he would try to calm the waters. ‘You know Art doesn’t mean to insult you, John. He’s asking if there’s anywhere this can bend, that’s all. Okay, it could have been suicide – we accept that-’

  ‘Well, thank you all to hell, Lieutenant.’

  Glitsky ignored him. ‘But isn’t there anything that militates against it? Makes it a little more likely somebody killed him?’

  ‘The bump, for example.’ Drysdale had studied the autopsy report carefully. He had years of experience, and to him it read like a murder. Someone had whacked Sal to knock him out, then administered the fatal dose of morphine. It was open and shut.

  Unfortunately, other scenarios were possible. Maybe not as probable, but medically feasible. It made him short tempered.

  Strout kept his glasses off, but sat back in his chair, elbows on its arms. ‘The bump was caused, as I mentioned, by a blow to the head, which is not inconsistent with the deceased banging it on the table as he fell down.’

  Drysdale didn’t buy that at all. ‘That would have meant he fell backwards, John. How could he fall backwards unless somebody pushed him? There was no hair on the table. He didn’t hit the table. He got hit by the whiskey bottle.’

  Strout made a gesture at Glitsky, who reluctantly spoke up. ‘The bump didn’t even bleed, Art. It’s not inconsistent that it didn’t take any hair-’

  Betrayed by his ally, Drysdale bit out the words. ‘Not inconsistent, not inconsistent! You fellas got a tape loop going down here?’

  Strout impatiently explained some more. ‘There was sufficient edema – which, as both of you know, is swelling – to allow for the flow of blood for a half hour or more.’ He turned his palms up. ‘He was alive, Art. The blow to the head didn’t kill him. I can’t even say for sure it knocked him out. If it did, it wasn’t for more than a few seconds.’

  ‘Long enough to give him the shot.’

  Strout shrugged. ‘I can’t say. Maybe.’

  Drysdale’s face had gone red, and he sat back in his chair, unbuttoned his shirt, pulled at his tie. In his own office he let off tension by juggling baseballs, but there wasn’t anything to juggle here except hand grenades, and he wasn’t going to go grabbing at them. For all he knew, they were live.

  There was a short silence, broken by the screech of rubber and colliding metal on the freeway outside Strout’s window. All the men got up to gawk. The coroner raised the blinds. They couldn’t see the freeway through the fog, and it was less than fifty yards away.

  They all stayed standing by the window. Nothing had been said, but the anger, somehow, had dissipated.

  ‘Y’all just plain aren’t gonna prove it couldn’t have been suicide,’ Strout began. ‘I’ve heard you say it a hundred times, Abe. You can’t prove a negative. It might be y’all want to concentrate on why it could have been a homicide.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Drysdale said.

  Strout ticked off reasons on his fingers. ‘One, he’d never used the site before, the inside of his wrist. Two, his blood alcohol was point one oh – pretty drunk – hittin’ the vein on the first try was dang good shootin‘. Three, the needle wasn’t in him. It was sitting on the table there. Isn’t that right, Abe?’

  Glitsky nodded in agreement and Drysdale asked what the last fact meant.

  ‘It means Sal Russo shot himself up and remained conscious long enough to withdraw the needle. Except you got eight or more milligrams of morphine goin’ IV, on top of a point one oh alcohol, most people, time they got the plunger all the way down, they’re at least in shock. The needle might fall out when consciousness went, but it don’t get itself put neatly back on the table. The cap doesn’t get itself put back on the syringe, that’s for damn sure.‘

  Drysdale chewed on it for a moment. ‘If I’m on a jury, those three taken together, that’s beyond reasonable doubt.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Strout replied, true to form. ‘It might be, but it don’t have to be, which is what I said all along.’

  11

  The photographer had left to develop his film. Fearing they’d be interrupted if they stayed on Edgewood, Graham and Michael Cerrone had spent the afternoon and evening at Modena, an upscale Italian deli on Clement Street, sharing two bottles of ten-year-old Gold Label Ruffino Chianti. Now they were no longer strangers. In seven hours Cerrone felt he’d captured the soul of his subject on tape.

  Cerrone had come out to California with high expectations – a cover, after all, was not a daily occurrence, even for a senior editor. But the interview had exceeded his hopes by far, both in scope and in human drama.

  The story had everything: Russo’s background as a bonus athlete cut down in his prime by injury, a brilliant law student, a clerkship with a federal judge. Then chucking it all to give his dream one last try, only to fail again; and only, in turn, to have that noble effort ostracize him from the legal community. And now there was the fallout from the murder charge that had been summarily dropped: even his part-time employer wouldn’t keep Graham on.

  But Cerrone thought the personal side was even more compelling. Although it was nowhere on the public record, he learned that privately Gil Soma wanted Graham’s head on a platter. The state prosecutor had been Graham’s office mate at the federal courthouse. Graham had told him that in Soma’s eyes he was far worse than a mere murderer – he was a traitor, to be hunted and brought down.

  On the other side was the picture of a talented and sensitive hero, reconciling, after years, with his father, who then became terminally ill. Graham had confided to Cerrone that over the past two difficult years, his father had been the only person who’d accepted him, who loved him. The only person keeping Graham from being utterly alone.

  Of course he’d taken care of him. Though he didn’t admit to knowing the source of the morphine, he had often given him his shots.

  Cerrone fell short of getting the coup, the confession, but what he had was almost better – it played into his ‘hook’ perfectly. The issue of the week was going to be assisted suicide – the agony of the decisions confronting everyone stepping through this emotional minefield. Cerrone would write his story so that the conclusion was obvious.

  Graham had done the right thing. His father wanted to end his life, but he needed support, someone to hold his hand; at the last moment he was afraid of being alone. He would choose his own time, but Graham, his dutiful, perhaps prodigal, son, would help him if need be.

  This, Cerrone was sure, was what had happened. And the beauty and pathos of it was that there was no way that Graham could own up to what he’d done, not if he ever wanted to work again.

  After her morning meeting with Glitsky, Sarah’s turmoil increased by the hour. By sunset, when she parked down the street from Graham’s place, she was a wreck. Twice during the day Marcel had wanted to come up here to Edgewood, find Graham, push a few of his buttons, see what popped up. Sarah told him they ought to wait, get more on him, bide their time. In reality she wanted to keep Marcel out of it, to go see Graham again by herself. This was dangerous on many
levels, she knew, and unprofessional on all of them, but she was going to do it anyway.

  For the first time in her career she wasn’t sure she was after the right person. Suddenly, after last night’s really meaningless discussion at the ballpark, she’d lost her cop’s simple take on Graham Russo. He’d become mostly a human being, not mostly a suspect.

  And worse, he was a human being she could be attracted to, was already attracted to. It was wise to acknowledge that, keep it in front of her.

  She knew it was a bad situation, untenable really. She ought to take herself off the case. Her objectivity was shot.

  But what if that apparent objectivity led her and Marcel to the wrong conclusion? They might, for the second time, arrest the wrong man – a black mark on each of their careers, a possible false-arrest lawsuit, to say nothing of the grief to Graham. This is what she wanted to avoid, why she wanted to see Graham without her partner hovering.

  She’d talk to Graham and get it clear to her own satisfaction, lay this ambivalence to rest. He was either a murder suspect or not. She had to know for herself. Then she could do her job.

  That was all it was. She was just making sure, taking that extra step, being a good cop. That’s what she told herself.

  But there was one other problem: she found she couldn’t shake a kind of simmering anger at Graham for having put her in this position. Was he manipulating her, or trying to? Who was this guy? He shouldn’t have come up to her at the ballpark. They were enemies, on opposite sides. What was that all about? Arrogance, as Marcel contended? Or was Graham simply, as he’d appeared, a sweet guy who held nothing against the woman who’d arrested him, had wanted no more than to tell her that he knew she was only doing her job? No hard feelings.

  She just didn’t know. It was personal somehow, and it shouldn’t have ever gotten to there. It made her mad.

  She was going to find out who he was.

  Graham and another man stood talking out in the street in front of his place. It was full dusk and the fog had thinned up here on the hill, though the wind still gusted fitfully, shaking fistfuls of blossoms, snowlike, from the trees around them.

  Sarah walked up, dressed for business in a blue suit as she’d been all day. ‘Hello, Graham.’

  He turned to look at her. She thought she saw something welcoming in his face, though it disappeared instantly.

  She kept moving toward him. ‘Your father called you twice on Friday morning. What did you two talk about?’

  It tore at her heart to see something go out of Graham’s shoulders, but he recovered quickly, bringing his companion into it. ‘This is my favorite cop, Sergeant Evans. Sarah, Mike Cerrone. He’s a reporter.’

  The reporter put out his hand, and she took it. ‘You’re not with the Chronicle.’ Sarah knew the locals, and this guy wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Time,’ he answered.

  ‘My, how the word do get around.’

  In truth, she’d been expecting something like this. The shop talk at the Hall was about how big this had gotten in a hurry. And now Time.

  ‘You boys been drinking?’ she asked. To Cerrone: ‘I could call you a cab. Here in the Wild West it’s considered bad form to drink and drive.’

  Graham had his grin back. ‘What did I tell you? She is some pistol. Don’t let her sweet looks fool you.’

  ‘I don’t think they were going to,’ Cerrone said. He never took his eyes from her. In fact, Graham had mentioned her, but only in passing. Now it seemed to Cerrone – an instinct – that there was something more here, or might be. More story. An attractive female investigator coming up alone to interview him at night? ‘How ’bout coffee instead? Go inside, kill an hour, get sober.‘

  ‘Coffee just makes you wide-awake drunk.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m drunk.’

  ‘Nobody thinks they’re drunk. That’s kind of the problem.’

  ‘Hey!’ Graham said, getting their attention. ‘What’s with you guys? I think I’m drunk, how about that? I’ll make coffee.’

  Evans looked at him levelly. ‘If you invite me in without a warrant…’

  But Graham had already turned, heading for his door. ‘What a hardass,’ he said. ‘I’m going in, I’m freezing. You can come or don’t, I don’t care.’

  Cerrone, in a mock gallant gesture, indicated Evans should precede him. She did.

  Nobody was in a hurry to get down to business. Graham had put on the coffee, then some music – Celine Dion’s French Album. Cerrone hated it. Didn’t Graham have any Alanis Morissette? Evans was somehow relieved that Graham didn’t. She didn’t want to think he had that much affinity for rage. In the end he put on Chris Isaak’s Baja Sessions, came back to the table. Sarah finally asked him again about his father’s phone calls on the morning of his death.

  Graham sighed wearily. ‘Okay, we talked twice on Friday.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  Graham drank some of his coffee, then seemed to remember something. ‘Are you recording this? Not that it matters. With Mike here I’ve been recording all day. How many tapes we go through today, Mike?’

  ‘Five.’

  Sarah processed that, then got out her own recorder. ‘The electronic age, you gotta love it.’ Her face dimpled prettily. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ She gave her introduction, and asked again.

  ‘We talked about his pain mostly.’ He paused and stared out at the blackness. ‘Actually’ – his voice took on a husky edge – ‘Sal and me, we had the same discussion twice. The first one kind of went away. Maybe the second one, too, I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘It was one of his bad days.’

  Sarah found that she had to blink. This response – ‘It was one of his bad days’ – was Graham’s first real reference to the day-to-day fact of Sal’s condition. In her concentration on the son she’d nearly forgotten the father.

  With difficulty she found the thread and picked it up again. ‘Your father called you seventeen times in the past month, Graham.’

  He nodded. ‘Something like that, I guess.’

  ‘So what did he want you to do?’

  The huskiness remained in his voice. He’d obviously been drinking. His defenses were down. She was sure this was honest and raw emotion, an open wound. ‘I don’t know what he wanted that day. It wasn’t one thing – it varied. He was dying, you understand? He’d wake up and not know where he was. He was scared. He needed his hand held. He just wanted to talk to somebody. Take your pick, Sergeant. He counted on me.’

  At the opposite end of the table Cerrone was an irritant. God only knew what impression this interrogation was making on him. But Sarah had a tipsy and emotional Graham talking voluntarily. The opportunity had to be taken if she was to get what she needed.

  Cerrone stared at her disapprovingly, but she ignored him. ‘All right, he counted on you. And what did you do, that day, after the second call?’

  Graham sipped at his coffee. He put the cup down and brought his hand to his face, rubbing at his jawline as though it had gone numb. When he spoke, his voice was flat. ‘It wasn’t just a bad day. It had been a terrible couple of weeks, just terrible. Everything was going downhill – the pain, the forgetting, all the sudden, way worse than it had been. I don’t know what happened, if the tumor affected the Alzheimer’s somehow. I don’t know what it was. But something had changed. Something was going to have to be done.’

  ‘Did you know what?’

  Graham shook his head. ‘When we first got back together, we’d talked a little about having to put him in a home someday. Back then he’d gotten lost a few times, but the disease wasn’t very advanced. He was functioning pretty well. I think he went to see somebody, some doctor, to get diagnosed, but chickened out before they could run all the tests. He didn’t want to know for sure, didn’t want to face that he had it. But he knew.’

  ‘And what did he think about being in a home?’

  ‘There was no way. He wasn’t going to end his life as a vegetable. He made me promise I�
�d kill him first.’

  ‘And did you do that? Promise that?’

  Cerrone leaned forward. ‘Graham?’

  The trance was broken. Momentarily. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sure the sergeant meant to inform you that you don’t have to answer any of this. That you can have your lawyer here.’

  The alcohol was a definite if subtle presence. Graham reached over and patted the reporter on the arm. ‘Hey, it’s cool, Mike. It’s cool. Sarah’s not here to bust me’ – he turned to her – ‘are you?’

  Their eyes met, held. Finally Sarah broke it off. ‘I’m just trying to get to the truth, Graham. I’m trying to find out what happened. You just told me you promised your dad you would kill him…?’

  ‘If.’ Graham held up a finger. ‘There was a big if.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘If the Alzheimer’s snuck up on him, and suddenly his brain wasn’t there. That was when I was going to do it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t figured that yet. Or even if I was really going to. We hadn’t got there. He was still functioning. But then he started getting the headaches and we found out about the tumor…’

  ‘How did you find out about that?’

  Graham’s eyes went to Cerrone for a moment, then to Sarah. ‘This is starting to sound like an interrogation, you know that?’

  Sarah tried to bluff it. ‘We’re just talking, Graham.’

  He motioned to the tape recorder. ‘With that thing running? You’re telling me you won’t use anything on there?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘So this is an official visit after all?’

  Again, the eyes. ‘What else would it be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘A guy can hope.’ He paused for a longish moment. ‘Sure, Sal went to a doctor, I guess.’