The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

  Jesus Christ! he thought. Would it never end?

  Struggling for a calm tone, he fell back upon his job, his role. The lawyer. ‘Have you mentioned this to anyone else? The police, for instance?’

  ‘No. I thought it would be better if I told my story to Graham’s side, you know?’

  ‘That was a good thought,’ Hardy conceded. ‘Where are you located?’

  Cutler told him he was a resident at Seton Medical Center in Daly City. He lived in San Bruno, had graduated from UCSF Medical School. He had played baseball for Arizona in college and had been ‘drafted’ by Craig Ising when he showed up in the city, playing haphazardly, but as often as he could get the time. He hit the long ball and it was great money. ‘So Graham and I became friends and he kind of told me about Sal. He was afraid to go to public health because he thought they’d report him because of the AD. He’d lose his driver’s license among other things. They’d put him in a home. You know the drill, the indigent sick? It’s appalling.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ Hardy said, although he was daily getting a new appreciation for how bad it must be. ‘So you… what? With Sal?’

  There wasn’t any answer for a minute, although the connection hadn’t been broken. When Cutler came back, his voice was muted. ‘Look, I’m in the lounge here…’

  ‘And you can’t talk?’

  A false cheer, the voice back to normal. ‘Good. Right. Yeah.’

  ‘So when can we get together?’

  ‘This is always my favorite part.’

  ‘It’s why we’re such a great couple,’ Hardy said. ‘You’re always so eager to share the excitement.’

  Frannie nodded. ‘That must be it.’

  Hardy felt that there hadn’t been any choice, not that this was any consolation to Frannie. Nor had it been to Michelle, either, judging from the Gone home Post-it note on her office door when Hardy had finally stopped by to resume their stress-tolerance discussion. His trained legal mind intuited that she was displeased with him.

  As was his wife now at his decision to meet with a witness at the Little Shamrock on Date Night. Her brother, Moses, having poured a round for a group in the front window, was back into earshot before Hardy was aware of it.

  Hardy was trying to explain. ‘It couldn’t be helped, Frannie. The guy’s got eight hours off tonight and then he’s on call all the rest of the week. What am I supposed to do?’

  His wife, nursing a Chardonnay, feigned pensiveness. ‘Here’s a radical concept, but what about waiting till next week? What do you think, Mose?’

  A thoughtful pout. ‘Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today?’

  Hardy approved of this support. ‘See? Pure wisdom. Your brother has a doctorate, you know. He must be right.’

  Frannie cast a look between them. ‘You know what they call the person who comes in last in the class in med school?’

  ‘I give up,’ Hardy said.

  ‘Doctor.’ Frannie smiled.

  McGuire looked hurt. ‘I’m not that kind of doctor, anyway.’

  Hardy wanted to get back to the topic. ‘Besides, Frannie, anything could happen in a week. What if my witness dies in the interim?’

  Frannie histrionically slapped her palm on her forehead. ‘Silly me,’ she said, ‘I forgot all about that possibility, which is pretty likely, I suppose. The guy’s – what? – twenty-five? Thirty? Death must stalk him like a panther.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was likely. I’m trying to be careful.’

  Hardy was sticking with club soda until he’d had a chance to interview Russell Cutler, who should be here any minute, he hoped. If he didn’t chicken out. He was already fifteen minutes late.

  Frannie suddenly put her hand over his. ‘I’m teasing you. Mostly. But we are going out to a real restaurant later and eat real food that I don’t cook, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We’re in complete agreement?’

  Total.‘

  ‘All right. I’m with you, then.’ She looked over her husband’s shoulder at the doorway. ‘This witness is a doctor?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I think he’s here.’

  Dr Cutler still wore his light green scrubs, maybe as a means of identification. If so, it worked. Hardy left his wife with her brother, and the two men shook hands at the door.

  The Little Shamrock was San Francisco’s oldest bar, established in 1893. Twenty feet wide from side to side, it extended back three times that distance. Antique bicycles, fishing rods, knapsacks and other turn-of-the-century artifacts hung from the ceiling, and there was a clock that had stopped ticking during the Great Earthquake of 1906. Tonight, Wednesday, at seven twenty-two, there were two dozen patrons, half of them at the bar. The rest were shooting darts or sitting at tiny tables in the front. The Beach Boys were singing ‘Don’t Worry, Baby’ on the jukebox.

  Hardy took Cutler to the back of the place. Here three couches were arranged sitting-room style. Tiffany lamps shed a feeble light. The bathrooms were behind some stained-glass screens, and people with a highly developed olfactory sense tended to avoid the area, at least until the place got rockin‘ and the beer smell overlaid anything else.

  But Cutler didn’t seem to mind or even notice. ‘I have trouble believing I’ve let it go this long,’ he began before he’d sat down. ‘With all the articles, the media…’

  ‘It’s all right, you’re here now. That’s what matters.’ ‘You know why I told your secretary it was an emergency? I thought if I didn’t get it out today, I never would.’

  Frannie had been right. Cutler was between twenty-five and thirty. At this moment there were black circles under his eyes and the outline of stubble on his cheeks, but Hardy guessed that when he was rested and shaved he would be fresh-faced, even boyish. He was neither as tall nor as broad in the shoulders as Graham, but possessed that same athletic grace of movement, although his cropped black hair made him appear more a Marine than a jock. ‘I’m a wreck about this. I don’t think I’ve slept since Graham was first arrested.’

  The first job would be to reassure him. ‘Why don’t you just tell me the level of your involvement with Sal? I’m not the police, you know. What you tell me doesn’t necessarily have to go any farther.’

  Cutler sighed. He kept opening and closing his hands. Finally, he linked them and leaned forward. ‘Graham was kind of being Sal’s caretaker toward the end, kind of waiting and watching. They had made some deal about the AD, and I think were both okay with it. Graham was going to help him die before he got… before he went to a home, I guess. But then Sal started getting these headaches.’

  ‘The cancer?’

  Cutler nodded. ‘But we didn’t know that at first. So I ran the CAT scan. We got a second opinion, then a third. There wasn’t any hope. We couldn’t operate. We were convinced the size and location of the tumor was increasing his intracranial pressure. That appeared to be what was causing the headaches.’

  As the story came out, Hardy realized that it had been as he’d begun to surmise. Sal was actively fighting the pain, not obsessing about the progress of the Alzheimer’s. ‘So I wrote up a scrip for the morphine. We tried oral painkillers first, of course, but they became less and less effective.’

  Over his head, Hardy faked a layman’s understanding. ‘Of course.’ Added, ‘But you finally got to the morphine so Sal could use it to kill himself?’

  Cutler nodded. ‘Eventually. Down the line.’

  ‘But you wrote the prescription? So there’s a record of it, anyway?’

  This made Cutler’s hands clench, but his voice was under control. ‘Yeah, but… well, I wrote the prescription to Graham, in Graham’s name. He picked it up at the pharmacy at Seton. I guess he thought it was out of the city, it wouldn’t be as easy to trace.’

  ‘Okay, but why the secrecy? You have a sick man. You’re his doctor and you prescribe drugs. What’s the problem?’

  ‘There wasn’t one, not by itself He shook his head. ’It’s all so stupid, I sho
uldn’t have done it the way I did, that’s all.‘

  ‘What way was that?’

  ‘I wanted to refer Sal to a pain management center, but he refused. They have more sophisticated techniques and medications that could have kept him from having to give himself so many injections.’

  ‘But in the end you stayed with the morphine. Why was that?’

  ‘Basically it was because the old man was a pain in the ass. We started with morphine a couple of times and it worked, and he wasn’t going to take anything else.’ Cutler looked imploringly at Hardy, as though he hoped for absolution. ‘Look. I’m in the last year of my residency. I’m really not supposed to follow my own patients independently. I mean, it’s not illegal, but it’s frowned on in real life. Strongly frowned on. I’d be screwed. And after this many years it’s kind of important I get to the end.

  ‘See, Graham didn’t want his dad in the system in any way either. Sal was just terrified that somehow somebody would decide he had to be institutionalized. So I did all this on my own.’

  ‘What about the other opinions? How’d you get them?’

  A shrug. ‘That was easy. I got a tech buddy helps me with the scan itself, then a specialist gives me a curbside consult and verifies it’s terminal and inoperable. There’s nothing that can be done anyway, so what are we supposed to do? See?’

  Hardy saw. ‘So you knew, or thought, Sal was going to kill himself?’

  ‘Let’s just say we wanted to keep that option open.’

  ‘And so Graham scratched your name off the vials? You’re doing him a favor and in return he agrees to keep your name out of it so you don’t get screwed at work?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. I figure it’s bad enough if I follow a patient independently. If I even appear to assist at a suicide on top of it, then best case I’d be looking for another residency. Worst case they’d take my license.’

  Hardy had to appreciate the similarities in the problems of the two young men. No wonder they became friends; their professional concerns were nearly identical.

  ‘But you didn’t help Sal kill himself?’

  ‘No. I did prescribe the drug, though.’ He shrugged. ‘We should have just been up front with it, I suppose. Now I see Graham in jail charged with murder and he’s still protecting me. I figure I’ve got to say something. Maybe it’ll help him.’

  And having said it, suddenly he appeared to grow calm. Sitting all the way back on the couch, he let out a deep breath. ‘I bet they serve beer here. I could go for a beer.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Hardy got up, went behind the bar; and pulled at the Bass tap. When he got back, Cutler thanked him for the beer. ‘So what do we do now?’

  Hardy sat across from him. ‘When is your residency over?’

  ‘Mid-July. Why?’

  ‘Because the trial starts in September. As soon as I put you on my witness list, people are going to want to talk to you. But we ought to be able to keep it between us until then. You didn’t break any law, did you?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Okay, then. And the police haven’t asked the mystery doctor – that’s you – to come forward, have they? No? So put it on hold, don’t worry about it. My main concern, to tell you the truth, is that these are more lies Graham told.’

  ‘But he was just protecting me.’

  ‘I understand that.’ Hardy wasn’t going to go into it. Graham’s penchant for benevolent falsehoods might well wind up hanging him. ‘But back to you. I won’t have to list you as a witness until just before the trial, so by the time any of this comes out, you’ll be clear with your residency.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ Cutler repeated.

  ‘I don’t know about that. You did the right thing. The morphine helped Sal while he was alive, didn’t it?’

  Hardy could see he wanted to accept this, but still had doubts. He leaned forward and patted the young man’s knee. ‘This legal stuff, forget it. Nobody’s going to bust you for what you did. You tried to ease someone’s suffering. That’s what doctors ought to do, don’t you think?’

  A sip of beer, a lopsided grin. ‘I don’t remember anymore. I used to think so when I had a life.’

  Hardy patted his knee again. ‘Believe it,’ he said. ‘Now enjoy your beer, then go get some sleep. And thanks.’

  Hardy and Frannie stayed in the Avenues at the Purple Yet Wah, a Chinese restaurant not fifteen blocks from their house. Eating their way through the appetizers – pot sticker, calamari, egg rolls, paper-wrap chicken, barbecue pork rib, deep-fry shrimp, and half a dozen more dishes – they were back home by ten-fifteen.

  Hardy had five messages waiting. Glitsky left his name.

  Michelle was really sorry she’d snapped at him and left so abruptly. They had a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow. Maybe he could set aside a little Tryptech time?

  Graham Russo had understood that Hardy would come by every day. What was going on? Why hadn’t he come in? Was everything all right? His only visitor that whole day had been his mother. He’d been thinking, and maybe Hardy’s decision not to mention Joan Singleterry – the phantom woman from Sal’s past – was a mistake. Graham wasn’t making her up. Sal had really wanted to give her the money. Please call. Jail is hell.

  Graham again. Same thing. Going nuts.

  The last call was from Sarah Evans. Ten minutes ago. She had talked to Graham again and gotten an idea and thought maybe she was on to something.

  25

  There was a muted tone even in the public areas of Baywest Bank. This would have been noticeable even if the building weren’t located on such a blighted and vulgar thoroughfare. Since it was on Market Street, though, with its bums and garbage, its debris and stench, its fumes and pornography, the contrast was especially striking.

  The other day when he’d come to lunch here with the Taylors, Hardy had passed right through the lobby to the elevators and had scarcely looked at the surroundings. Now his business was here and he took them in: polished floors, burnished dark wood, tinted windows to the outside.

  There was nothing so obviously crass as a waiting line in the lobby here at Baywest. When you entered through the revolving front doors, you were greeted by a young man in a business suit and asked your business. If you needed to see a teller, of which there were only three, you were given a number and asked to have a seat in one of the upholstered chairs tastefully arranged around the lobby.

  Hardy identified himself as Graham Russo’s lawyer and said he would appreciate a few minutes with George, although he didn’t have an appointment. It was nine-fifteen A.M. Mr Russo was at a meeting. Hardy said he would wait and was directed to another armchair in the back of the lobby.

  The bank’s officers lived in cages, as they do almost everywhere. The burnished-wood motif from the public area was carried over here in the back, creating half-high walls around each unit. The upper half was glass, and Hardy, getting to his wingback chair, looked into George’s office for a quick glimpse.

  Without the nameplate he could have picked him out from a hundred people. Dressed in a different style than Graham, sitting in a posture behind his desk that Hardy had never seen in Graham, George still bore a remarkable resemblance to his older brother.

  As he waited, Hardy made a few notations on the yellow legal pad he’d begun carrying with him everywhere he went. There was so much to remember, so much to organize, and he only had three months before the trial – an absurdly short lead time that he’d argued bitterly against at the Calendar hearing. But his old colleague Tim Manion – the judge – though inclined to sympathy on the bail issue, had proved intractable in scheduling the trial.

  After Hardy had argued for a couple of minutes, Manion had summoned him up to the bench and given him a little lecture. ‘I understand you turned down a very reasonable settlement offer, Mr Hardy’ – no ‘Diz’ on this topic – ‘so I assumed your client would be anxious to tell his story and clear his name.’

  ‘But, Your Honor, three months-’


  The gavel. A tight smile. ‘Unless you’d like to start in sixty days as the law provides.’

  So Hardy had until September. He knew he had to explain this to Michelle pretty soon too. He moved her to the top of his list. He owed her that much. He’d worked for bosses who didn’t tell him what they expected or what he could expect in terms of their support, and he had thought them cruel. He didn’t wish to leave Michelle with that impression of himself.

  But he didn’t dwell on Tryptech. The grand jury indictment notwithstanding, he was actually going to file a nine-nine-five motion for dismissal that he would lose, but he felt he had to get on the boards with the fact that there was not enough evidence to justify holding Graham at all. There were signs that Sal had been murdered, perhaps, but no reasonable attempt to connect that murder to Graham by physical evidence.

  So he’d try, make the point, get laughed at.

  He made another note. Today he must remember to place ads to run for a month or more in the local newspapers, in the L.A. Times, the San Jose Mercury, and also – being thorough – in the various regional editions of The Wall Street Journal, maybe in The New York Times Book Review, asking anyone with information on a Joan Singleterry to come forward. He wouldn’t risk introducing her before a jury. Graham’s story about her, even if true in all respects, smelled bogus. But Graham was right: they would be unwise to abandon the search for her if she could shed some light on Sal, or on the money. If any part of Graham’s story was true and Hardy could verify it, it could destroy the prosecution case, as least insofar as the special circumstances.

  Then there was Sarah Evans and her pursuit of the gamblers and fishmongers. He had to coordinate that more closely. It wasn’t merely a matter of his SODDIT defense. He didn’t need Sarah’s information so much for the jury as he might to get to the truth.

  Which was why he was here now…

  He raised his eyes. The door had opened and George was saying his name, a concerned look on his face. Hardy threw his legal pad into his open briefcase and stood up, tried a smile. ‘Mr Russo, how are you? I’m representing your brother-’