The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

‘Do you know who?’

  Another pause, longer this time. Graham sighed heavily and lowered his head, shaking it like a tired dog. ‘You want to go off the record?’

  She considered, then shook her head. ‘I can’t do that. I’m investigating your father’s death, Graham. If you know something about it, you can tell me. Do you know the doctor your father consulted or not?’

  Graham’s eyes moved to the tape recorder. ‘On the record I don’t know. He went alone. I didn’t live with him, you know. He had a life.’

  ‘Did he tell you how he paid for this doctor? Didn’t you talk about money?’

  Graham shrugged. ‘He told me about the cancer, that they couldn’t operate, it was going to kill him. Then the whole question of putting him in a home kind of became moot. He wasn’t going to get old as some shell in a wheelchair. He wasn’t going to get old at all.’

  The simple truth of this fact struck them all dumb. The CD even chose this moment to pause between cuts. Finally, Graham shrugged. ‘Anyway, as I said, the last couple of weeks it got worse.’

  But Sarah, now, wasn’t quite ready to move on. Something else was eating at her. ‘The last time we talked on the record,’ she said, ‘you didn’t know what was causing your father all this pain. Now you did know. Do I have that right?’

  ‘Yeah. I knew. It was the cancer, the tumor.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell me then?’

  Bad though it sounded, the rationale was obvious enough to Graham. ‘I also told you we didn’t see much of each other.’ He broke a grin. ‘Come on, Sarah, I was trying to be consistent and you caught me anyway.’

  ‘And you still say you don’t know where the morphine came from?’

  ‘That’s right.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘Hey, can we stop this already? I’m going to open some more wine. You want a little wine? A glass of beer? Mike?’

  Sarah declined, and Mike said he had to go. He had a plane at an obscene hour the next morning. The three of them walked to the door, and Graham opened it, shook Mike’s hand, told him good luck. Sarah hung back as Mike crossed the street and started walking downhill toward his car.

  Sarah stood crammed next to Graham in the doorway. It seemed to her that every cell in her body was attuned to his proximity. Yet it also felt as though he was daring her not to move. He put an arm on the doorsill just over her shoulder, then put some weight on the arm – all but leaning on her. ‘Are you really leaving?’ he asked her.

  She told herself that he wasn’t completely sober. His inhibitions were lowered and, okay, he found her attractive. For the moment he’d forgotten that she was a cop. That was all it was. And she would be damned if she was going to duck away. Raising her head, she was looking up into his eyes.

  Bad idea. Whether or not it betrayed her true feelings, she’d better blink. Otherwise, their superficially professional relationship was about to develop an overt new element. And if she thought she had troubles up to now…

  She swung under his arm, outside onto the driveway. ‘All right, Graham,’ she said, ‘if you’ll just answer three quick questions, I promise I won’t bother you anymore.’ She broke a conciliatory smile. ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Then afterward you’ll have a glass of wine with me?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’m on duty.’

  ‘So go off duty,’ he said. ‘Ask your three questions, then declare your workday over.’ His eyes never left her face.

  This time she met his gaze. ‘First, I want to be clear. You did, in fact, give your father morphine shots from time to time?’

  He nodded. ‘I said that.’

  Actually, he hadn’t said that, Sarah knew, but he’d been speaking so freely and he’d had enough to drink that she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t remember exactly what he had admitted. But he was telling the truth now. ‘How often?’

  ‘Is that the second question?’

  She thought about it, and decided it could be. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Couple of times a week, if I was there. He didn’t like to shoot himself up. Okay, what’s the third question?’

  ‘After the two calls on Friday morning, when your dad called you in great pain, why didn’t you go over there to help him?’

  This last hurdle didn’t slow Graham at all. He brought his arm down off the door, took a step toward her. ‘Well, tell you the truth, that’s what I did.’ Spreading his hands, he grinned sheepishly. ‘And guess what?’ he asked. ‘The old fart had gone out. He wasn’t even there.’

  Shaken with the import of what she’d heard – not only had Graham been at Sal’s on Friday, he had often administered morphine to his father – she was nearly back to her car when she stopped herself up short and swore.

  Her tape recorder was still on Graham’s table!

  She’d gotten up with the two guys to make sure Michael Cerrone of Time was good and gone before she attempted to ask her half-drunk suspect her last three questions. Then she’d ducked outside to escape the awful chemistry, asked her questions, and all but run away.

  What a fool she was.

  It had been less than five minutes, but the window slits high on the side wall had already gone dark. Knocking on the door, she heard no sound from within. Maybe he’d gone to sleep already, passed out. Or, more likely, she thought, he’d had it with reporters and the police. Whoever it was, he didn’t want any. She knocked again, softly. ‘Graham,’ she whispered, ‘it’s me. Sarah.’

  Sergeant! she reminded herself. She was here not as Sarah, but as Sergeant Evans.

  After a minute she heard movement. The light over her head came on. When the door opened, Graham seemed somehow diminished. His expression, she felt, made every attempt to welcome her, but she couldn’t miss the labor behind it. His eyes were exhausted, suddenly heavy lidded. ‘I thought you were having another glass of wine,’ she said.

  All of Graham’s glibness was gone. It was as though he’d fallen into a deep sleep and been rudely awakened. ‘I think I’m about done for today. You gone off duty?’ But the question wasn’t inviting.

  She pointed ambiguously behind him. ‘I left my recorder on your table.’

  He nodded and hit the light switch next to the door, stepping back to let her pass. The recorder was where she had left it, still spinning. She flicked it off and walked back to the door, where Graham had remained, waiting for her.

  Outside again, she hesitated one last moment, looking up at him. ‘Well, thanks for opening for me.’

  ‘Sure, anytime,’ he said. The door closed on her before she could turn away, and she wasn’t three steps down the street when the overhead light went out.

  For herself, she had her answer. This man had loved his father. There were still outstanding questions about the wrapped bills, the baseball cards. Graham had all but admitted he knew more and would tell her if she would go off the record, but she couldn’t do that. Whatever else might be true, he hadn’t killed Sal for his money.

  Coming up here alone had served a purpose: she now believed that Graham had revealed who he really was, to her, to Sarah. But Sergeant Evans, homicide inspector, realized with a pang of anguish that the cost had been dear. She’d helped him dig himself further into an ever-deepening hole.

  12

  Hardy was in his backyard, a long and relatively narrow strip of grass bordered by Frannie’s rose gardens. On either side apartment buildings rose to four stories. But directly behind to the east there was a clear view all the way to downtown. Also, beginning in about mid-April, when the sun contrived to shine, the path of it cut between the apartments, making a warm and cozy enclosure.

  Now, tending to the barbecue, scraping the grill down, waiting for the coals to turn, Hardy was nearly recharged for the new week. Glitsky and his young son were coming over for dinner. So was Frannie’s brother, Moses McGuire, and his wife, Susan, and their baby, Jason.

  It was late afternoon on Sunday and both the weather and the mood around the house had warmed a little from the deep-freeze late in the
week. And here in the backyard the house shielded most of the breeze off the ocean.

  The other center of chill – Frannie – came down the back stairs with a large covered Tupperware container. Hardy watched her as she put it on the picnic table that was up against the house. She stood still a moment, then set her shoulders and deliberately walked the half-dozen steps over to her husband, leaning into him and putting one arm around his waist.

  ‘Whatever you decide is all right, you know. It doesn’t matter to me as long as we’re in it together.’

  He brought her in to him. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that,’ he said. ‘I thought you were pretty clear about no more murder cases.’

  ‘That’s what you told me you wanted, remember, so I got used to the idea, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a dog catcher if that’s what you want to be, if that’s what makes you happy.’ She moved away a step so she could look at him. ‘You’re the one with all the angst, Dismas. I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘It burns you out,’ he said. ‘The kids all the time.’ ‘No, it doesn’t. Well, a little. But so what? That’s not your problem. It’s what I’m doing. If my husband were happier, life would be perfect. If you were happier with the kids…’ Hardy let out a breath. ‘I love the kids, Fran, but-’

  ‘There’s always a but, Dismas. There shouldn’t be a but. It’s not the kids. It’s not me or your job. It’s your attitude.’ She walked up and placed a quick kiss on his lips. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Be happy. Sing the song. Check it out.’

  Abe Glitsky sat straddling the picnic bench at the table by the house. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, his hands around a glass of iced tea. Hardy was lifting the lid from the kettle cooker, checking the chicken.

  ‘You’re not supposed to keep lifting the lid. It won’t cook right. There’s nothing worse than uncooked chicken.’

  Hardy threw him a withering look, took a pull at his beer. ‘Global warming is way worse,’ he said. ‘Acid rain. Hemorrhoid commercials. I can think of a hundred things.’ He leveled the tongs at the grill. ‘You don’t lift the lid, how do you turn the chicken?’

  ‘Once,’ Glitsky said. ‘You lift it once, turn the chicken, put the lid back on, come back in a half hour, it’s done. That’s why they invented this kind of barbecue, as a matter of fact. Brilliant scientists working around the clock to save you from the necessity of having to watch your chicken every minute.’

  ‘That’s my personality,’ Hardy said. ‘I need to watch things, stay in control. And a good thing I do too.’

  Glitsky stood up and walked over. ‘You could turn them now, for example. They look about done on the bottom. Then you could sit down and enjoy your beer without interruption.’

  Hardy took a minute, poking and jabbing, then started turning the pieces. ‘I’m not doing this because you said so. Independently, they look done to me too.’

  ‘Half done,’ Glitsky corrected.

  Hardy took his beer back over to the bench, and sat down.

  ‘Okay, now I’m enjoying my beer without interruption. By the way, what do you hear about Graham Russo?’

  ‘By the way, huh?’

  A nod. ‘At your very own suggestion I sit myself down to take a moment of leisure, and what should pop into my brain unaided but the thought of my client.’

  Glitsky took a seat at the other end of the bench, straddling it again. ‘And here I allowed myself to hope that your wife had invited me over again because she enjoyed my company so much last time.’

  ‘Maybe that too,’ Hardy said, ‘mysterious as that may be to the rest of us. But while you’re here…’

  ‘While I’m here, seriously, I’m not talking about it.’ Hardy had heard this kind of denial before in a dozen different guises, and usually it went away of its own accord. He wouldn’t have to push. His friend would get around to telling him, off the record, or he wouldn’t.

  Hardy brought his bottle to his mouth, started to get up to check the chicken again, caught himself, and sat back down. ‘So, how about them Giants?’

  But the lieutenant was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think I can tell you anything this time, Diz. There is some serious juice around this one.’

  ‘Powell?’

  Glitsky shrugged. Hardy didn’t even have to ask. He knew Powell had decided to prosecute the case. The question was when.

  But he wasn’t going to get that by asking directly. ‘Did you know about the wife?’ Hardy asked. ‘Or did you read about it in the paper?’

  In this morning’s paper a reporter had discovered from reading recent police incident reports that Leland and Helen Taylor had summoned the authorities to the Seacliff palace known as the Manor three times in the past six weeks.

  The first two times, it seems, Sal Russo had come by and knocked on the door. When Helen had opened it, he’d simply walked in, making himself at home – Helen’s home was his home, wasn’t it? wasn’t she his wife? – helping himself to whiskey, becoming verbally abusive, refusing to leave.

  The third time, Sal had let himself in through an open servants’ entrance in the back, helped himself again to a couple of drinks, gone upstairs to where Helen was napping, and lain down next to and begun fondling her, demanding his conjugal rights.

  In each case police had taken Sal to a local mental-health facility and booked him as a ‘danger to himself and others.’ The third time he was held for two hours and released. The first two times he hadn’t stayed that long.

  Glitsky nodded. ‘Yeah, we heard about that on Saturday.’

  ‘And you were looking into it as a possible motive for Sal’s murder? Get another suspect in the loop?’

  ‘Nice try. No comment.’

  Sal Russo waited patiently on one of the plastic yellow chairs in the sunlight that streamed through the lobby door of the social welfare detention center. He had Graham coming down in a couple of minutes to take him back home. He’d surprised this social worker here – Don. Not only did the old man know who he was, he knew his son’s telephone number.

  ‘Hey, Sal,’ Don called to him.

  He opened his eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘You want to tell me why you keep breaking into your old house?’ Don thought he could trick Sal into giving an answer that would incriminate himself, so they could maybe send him to jail. But Sal knew his game. Don wasn’t fooling him.

  ‘Sometimes I miss my wife. That a crime?’

  ‘Except she s not your wife anymore.’

  ‘We said till death do us part. I remember that clear enough, sonny. I’m trying to get her back.’

  ‘Still, maybe it upsets her family now, don’t you think? You do it again, they might try to lock you up.’

  ‘Helen wouldn’t lock me up. Don’t you worry about it. What I got on her, she wouldn’t dare! He closed his eyes and faced the sun for another minute, a peaceful look settling over his features. ’She wasn’t always Little Miss Proper, you know. We had ourselves some times. I reminded her today. Got her upset, I think. She doesn’t want anybody to know.‘

  Sal suddenly brought his hand up and squeezed at his temples.

  ‘You all right?’ Don asked.

  ‘Damn headache. I’m fine. We used to smoke a little dope, you know. A few lines of cocaine once or twice. You think her Leland wants to hear about that? I don’t think so. You think Leland knows she got arrested for shoplifting that time? You think that might bother him? Her Leland’s a little too uptight to handle that news, isn’t he?’

  Don chuckled. ‘And your wife had me thinking she didn’t file a complaint because she didn’t want to cause troubles for a harmless old man. You were blackmailing her, weren’t you? You’re not harmless at all, are you?’

  Sal smiled. ‘Not even a little,’ he said.

  Hardy got a better idea of the way the wind was blowing during dinner. It was still light outside, and the five adults were eating in the dining room while the kids ate their drumsticks in front of the video.

&
nbsp; Susan Weiss was McGuire’s wife. A cellist with the symphony, although she’d been on strike for a while now, she had an artistic temperament and spoke her mind freely. She knew all about the troubles with Glitsky’s wife, Flo – that she had died a couple of years before after a prolonged battle with cancer. She couldn’t understand how a man – ‘even a cop’ – who’d been through that experience could be opposed to ending the suffering of someone else who was in the same place.

  ‘I’m not.’ Glitsky put the evil eye on Hardy, as though his friend had somehow prompted Susan, then did his best to answer her, his voice under tight control. ‘Even if I’m a cop, I’m not opposed to the idea of assisted suicide. But I think it ought to be more private, much more private than – than what we are seeing sometimes.’

  ‘What do you mean, private?’

  ‘I mean between the involved parties and no one else. Private.’

  ‘How about doctor-assisted suicide? Kevorkian, all these guys. I hear half the doctors in the city do it all the time.’

  ‘And this means?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going after Sal Russo’s kid, shouldn’t you also be going after these doctors? Isn’t it the same thing?’

  Glitsky appeared to be having trouble swallowing. He was the only adult at the table drinking water and now he took his glass and drank from it. ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘How’s it different?’

  Cornered, Glitsky let out a quick breath. ‘It’s different because somebody killed Sal Russo. Murdered him, and not out of mercy…’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Hardy said.

  Seated between his wife and his sister, Moses McGuire had been relatively quiet throughout the meal. An Irish brawler, a doctor of philosophy turned bartender, Moses usually tended to be a presence. But he’d sat without comment on this discussion up to now, drinking steadily from his glass of Scotch.

  McGuire knew that Glitsky and Hardy were friends. Moses also considered himself Hardy’s best friend. This did not mean that Glitsky and McGuire were especially close. Now McGuire laid a proprietary hand on his wife’s arm. ‘Didn’t the dead guy, Sal, didn’t he have cancer?’