The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

  There was a sound.

  His head came up and he listened carefully. There couldn’t be a sound. There was no one in the building and he’d locked the door behind him.

  Or had he?

  Suddenly he couldn’t remember if he’d turned the dead bolt back. It didn’t matter, really, since he was going back down almost immediately, but maybe…

  No, he’d locked it. He was pretty sure. He’d be done here in two minutes anyway.

  And he was.

  He’d heard no other noise, although lost in his reading, hurrying now to finish, scribbling the odd note, he was not likely to have heard one anyway.

  Finally, he finished the brief, closed it back to its cover, put down his pen, and leaned back in his chair. He looked up. A silhouette was outlined in the doorway to his office.

  39

  ‘Mr Hardy?’

  Hardy’s hand was over his heart. ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Did I startle you? I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, that’s all right. As soon as I land I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Your wife said you’d be working late. I thought…’

  ‘It’s all right.’ His breath was coming back. ‘How’d you get in here? Was that you who rang the bell?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took another lungful of air. ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Nobody answered, so I went back to my car. Then – I must have looked away for a minute – I saw the front door closing behind you, then you moving around up here through the window, and I got out to try again, but this time the door was open.’

  ‘Okay,’ Hardy said. ‘Okay. But I’m afraid it’s a little late. I was just finishing up here, going home. I’m sorry. I can walk you back down, and we’ll make an appointment for tomorrow. How’s that?’

  She stepped into the room. Hardy noticed that the strap to her purse was around her neck and that she was holding her purse in front of her with both hands. Or rather, that one hand was in the purse, the other holding it. ‘I’m afraid that won’t do.’

  Hardy started gathering his papers, pushed away from the desk, started to stand up. ‘Well, I’m afraid it’s going to have to-’

  ‘Sit back down, please!’

  Something in her voice. He looked back up.

  She’d moved another step closer and pulled the purse away, down to her side. Her other hand held a small gun, and she trained it levelly on him. ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’

  ‘No, ma’am, but you’ve sure got my attention.’

  ‘My name is Pat. I’m Judge Giotti’s wife. I’m really sorry to be meeting you like this.’

  You’re sorry? Hardy thought. But he said nothing.

  Pat Giotti made some clucking sound. ‘You and Mario had a long talk today. He told me all about it.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, we did. But he hired me as his lawyer, he may have told you, and I can’t repeat anything he said to me. It’s attorney-client privilege.’

  A dry, mirthless chuckle. ‘I know all about that, Mr Hardy. I also know it has no real teeth. I know all the ways it’s been abused.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to abuse it.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you weren’t, not now. But something could happen. Someday. The point is I can’t be positive about it and unfortunately, that’s what I have to be.’

  Hardy’s brain was on fire, trying to find a way out in a last desperate spurt of mental energy before it was silenced forever. But no ideas came – other than to keep her talking if he could. ‘Were you this polite to Sal before you hit him?’

  Her voice was tight with tension. ‘I don’t think rudeness serves any purpose. I didn’t want to hurt Sal. I don’t think I did hurt Sal.’

  No, Hardy thought, only killed him.

  But she was going on. ‘But he would have hurt us. He would have ruined everything. Nobody seems to understand that. Even Mario didn’t, always saying Sal was harmless, Sal was his old friend, a good guy. Well, let me tell you, Mr Hardy, Sal was out of control. He wasn’t going to stop on his own. Somebody had to stop him. And it didn’t matter, that was the amazing thing. He only had a few months anyway. He was dead in a couple of months at the most.’

  ‘I know,’ Hardy said. ‘So what happened that you had to do anything?’

  Keep her talking. Think. Think!

  ‘You really don’t know? Mario didn’t tell you this?’ A bitter laugh. ‘It’s so typical. He’s always doing things like this, leaving it for me to clean up after him.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Hardy said.

  In her calm hysteria she kept the gun trained on Hardy’s chest.

  Her body shifted, its language terrifying. He thought she would pull the trigger now, that it was over. He sucked in a breath.

  ‘There was that bomb scare, that day, Friday. A little before lunchtime. You knew about that, of course.’

  He nodded.

  ‘When they cleared the building, the courthouse, Mario was out in the alley with his staff. Suddenly Sal is there, pulling him aside, all in a panic, telling Mario he’s got to get the money together, the money isn’t in his safe. He’s thinking Mario took it back somehow. He tells him if he doesn’t get it back, he’s going to spread the word about the fire. He won’t keep quiet any longer.’

  She lowered her voice, but not the gun. ‘Don’t you see, Mr Hardy? He would have destroyed Mario’s name. Which is all we have, all we’ve worked for all these years, Mario’s reputation with his peers. And to let that senile bum threaten it? No, he had to be stopped. I couldn’t let him bring Mario down. Sal wasn’t anybody. He was dead anyway.’

  ‘So your husband called you after he went back inside?’

  She nodded. ‘He thought Sal had simply misplaced the money – taken it out of the safe, put it somewhere else and forgotten where. So he went back up to Sal’s room with him, to look for it. Can you believe the risk he took doing that? Anyone might have seen him and remembered. Then, when Mario couldn’t find any money, Sal went off at him. Mario yelled back.’

  Another tumbler fell into place: Blue’s testimony, before her nap, the male voice in Sal’s apartment. It had been Giotti after all.

  But his wife was going on, the gun still trained on Hardy’s chest. ‘After he got back to his chambers, he called and told me what had just happened. And still, he tried to tell me it was all right. Sal was just having a bad day. How could he believe that? How could he not see?’

  ‘So what did you decide to do?’

  ‘I didn’t know exactly. Not when I left to go there. Something, though. I was going to stop him. I brought this gun with me, just in case, but then there was the morphine out on the table. So much quieter and cleaner. I knew how to administer injections. One of my children is diabetic – I knew to put it in the vein. There was this heavy whiskey bottle. Sal never felt anything. I just knocked at his door and he let me in and we talked a minute, just like you and me now. And everything was there, laid out for me. As though God wanted me to do it, wanted to help me.’

  With a jolt of terror Hardy realized that he’d led her to her moment. God had provided in this case as well: the building empty except for him. The open door. The cover of darkness for her escape.

  It would be her second perfect crime.

  He thought of a final question. ‘Does your husband know?’

  It wasn’t really a laugh. It was too derisive. ‘Mario? How could I tell him? He’s a good man, a judge. He believes in justice. He doesn’t understand that sometimes you have to act, not pass some abstract judgment.’

  ‘So what does he think happened? That it was just his good luck?’

  ‘He believes it was Graham. I think you convinced him. For which I thank you.’

  This was her closing statement. Hardy could feel it.

  The notion came to him – an instinct, far less than a thought or an idea. There was no time to analyze how good it was. In despair, his last effort, trying not to give it away with his upper body, he moved his foot under the desk and kicked a leg of
it, producing a wooden thud.

  This was going to have to be fast if he was to have a prayer.

  ‘What was that?’ She had to take her eyes off him for an instant. If he could make her do that…

  ‘Maybe you forgot to lock the downstairs door behind you too.’

  Her head began to turn, and only slightly. It was going to have to be enough. Hardy lunged for his banker’s lamp as she fired. He went rolling with it over, then off, the desk. The lamp crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness as the sound of more gunfire exploded in his ears and he knew in the blinding flash of pain, God, he’d been hit. A third shot. Another.

  It was his leg, below the knee. Here came another shot. She wasn’t wasting any time. He felt her steps on the floor, the vibrations through it. She was coming toward him as he lay.

  The only light now with the lamp broken, and it wasn’t much, came from the dimmers in the hallway outside his door. Fighting the shock and pain, he pulled his back up against the wood and the cover the desk barely provided. When he looked up, her form was there above him. Even in the darkness he could see the arm coming down. He was on his side, his back pressed against the side of the desk.

  With no hesitation she fired again. The lick of flame across his belly.

  He didn’t want to die like this.

  Aiming for a last shot to finish him, she finally made a mistake, coming too close. She was now within his reach, and he grabbed for her near foot, catching her at the ankle, bringing his other hand up around her leg.

  He pulled as hard as he could, twisting her foot as he did. She screamed and fell in a heap next to him.

  The gun hit the floor and went off again. He couldn’t risk letting go of her leg, even for a second, but began pulling himself up her struggling body, arm over arm. He could feel a weakness spreading in him, but he couldn’t give in to that. He had to manage to hold on to her.

  She was pounding her fists on his head and shoulders, screaming at him. ‘No! No! No!’ Rolling over onto something hard, he felt the gun and grabbed for it, getting it into his hand, then rolling away.

  ‘I’ve got the gun,’ he said. ‘Don’t move. It’s over.’

  ‘No!’ She kicked out in his direction. It wasn’t over for her. She wasn’t going to let him take her, not alive. The shadow of her came at him with all her strength, hit him full in the chest, knocking him backward again, grabbing for the gun.

  His leg, as he tried to kick her off him, wouldn’t do what he asked it to. When he twisted to get at her, his stomach stabbed at him. He screamed involuntarily at the pain, but she was a wild animal over him, scratching at his face, lunging for the weapon in his left hand.

  He had no other option, his strength and mobility were ebbing away. He snapped the gun up, feeling it connect with flesh and bone – the side of her head. It stunned her briefly and without any reflection he brought the gun up again, connected with flesh and she collapsed to the floor.

  He had to get to a light, a phone, get some distance on her. With all he had left, he pushed her off him.

  Then wasn’t sure he could get up at all. His leg wasn’t responding. His stomach prevented any turning of his torso.

  But he had to.

  Pulling himself up by the corner of the desk, he finally got his dead leg pulled over to his doorway and hit the light switch. Pat Giotti was already moving again, coming to.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t move!’ he gasped at her.

  She was wearing black spandex leggings and a black nylon windbreaker and there was blood – his blood, he realized – all over her. He couldn’t get a breath. Hyperventilating, he kept the gun trained on her as he hobbled his way across to the desk again. Knocking the receiver off, he pushed 911, picked the receiver up again.

  ‘Stay back!’ It was all he could get out.

  But she’d gotten to her knees now, again, less than five feet from where, shakily, he stood.

  He had the telephone receiver in one hand, the gun in the other. When the operator answered, Hardy started to say his name. Consciousness was fading. He gasped to try to fill his lungs.

  At that moment she leapt at him again, for the gun, over the desk.

  He’d been wounded twice and had lost a deal of blood already, and she had only been stunned and now seemed to have regained all of her strength. With the adrenaline driving her, it was considerable.

  When she hit him full body across the chest, he collapsed again under her. Both of her hands were on the gun now as she struggled to wrest it from him, twisted it back and got hold of it. She swung it around.

  Hardy saw the black hole of the barrel center on his face.

  A last, desperate grip, going to her wrist, bringing his other hand up, trying to slap it away, all the way around.

  The gun fired and she screamed, her body arching back. ‘You’ve shot me! Oh, God, I’m shot.’

  The hand holding the gun went to her shoulder, but she managed to keep hold of it. Falling forward onto Hardy to keep him from moving, she jammed the weapon forward into the flesh under his jaw.

  She pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Again. Click.

  An anguished groan and Pat Giotti’s body, already collapsed on top of him, went limp. Hardy pushed to roll her off him. She’d been hit in the shoulder. She wasn’t going to die from it.

  He struggled. Got himself up. To the telephone.

  He mumbled something, tried to get out his name and address. It sounded funny, though, indistinct. He tried again.

  Shooting.

  Fading fast. Darkness closing in.

  Hurry.

  He blacked out.

  40

  Sarah stood before Glitsky’s desk, the door closed behind them. She was waiting for the boom to be lowered. Since the verdict on Graham, and then with the attack on Hardy and the resulting rumors and revelations about the Giottis, the Russo case continued to enthrall the public.

  The feeding frenzy for the tiniest bits of news surrounding the principals had continued unabated. Over the weekend a television reporter, trying to make the connection between Craig Ising and Graham’s income, had interviewed Ising and stumbled upon the information that Sarah had been with Graham at his softball tournament on the weekend after he’d been indicted. This had made the news last night and her lieutenant had summoned her into his office first thing this morning. The last straw.

  ‘I don’t have any excuse, sir. I did it. I was there.’ Glitsky sat behind his desk, looking up at her. He didn’t want to hear this. Not only was it grounds for dismissal from the force, but harboring a fugitive was a felony. ‘All I can say is that I was sure Graham hadn’t committed any crime. And I didn’t harbor anyone. I had him turn himself in, didn’t I?’

  ‘Turn himself in? You had a man wanted for murder and you decided not to arrest him. That’s not your decision to make, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I realize that. I was wrong.’

  ‘The grand jury had indicted him.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She didn’t have to go on about the political circus surrounding that indictment; Glitsky knew it as well as she did. Now he opened his desk drawer, thought a minute, slammed it closed. ‘The POA’ – Police Officers Association – ‘doesn’t want you fired, of course. They’re telling me they’ll sue the department. First woman in homicide, all that crap. I hope you realize that if you were a man you’d be out of here.’

  Evans stuck out her chin. ‘With all respect, sir, if I were a man, this wouldn’t be news. It would never have come up. It would have gotten buried.’

  Glitsky snorted. ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. No offense. I’ve seen it happen several times.’

  The lieutenant took that in. ‘If you wanted to step down on your own, you could save everybody a lot of trouble.’

  ‘It would make a lot of trouble for me, sir. I’ve worked hard to get here and I deserve to be here.’

  Glitsky looked long and hard at the se
rgeant’s face. She had made a tremendous error in judgment, but she still had the spine, independence, and intelligence that made a great cop. He considered his words with care. ‘You know, Sergeant, this detail – homicide – it’s not heaven. You don’t get here and then stop.’

  ‘I didn’t say-’

  He held up a hand. ‘You said you deserved to be here, you earned it. Well, that’s true, you did. But you don’t just earn it and that’s the end of it. You continue to deserve to be here, every day. Every single day, or you leave. That’s the gig.’

  Sarah took the rebuke stoically. ‘He was found innocent, Lieutenant. He didn’t kill anybody. Nothing like this is ever going to happen to me again. Graham didn’t even get disbarred.’ She paused, considering, then added, ‘We’re going to be married.’

  Glitsky opened the drawer again, looked down at the scratch he’d prepared and signed off on – the formal charges he’d planned to send to the chief. All at once he realized he wasn’t going to do that.

  He pushed the drawer closed and brought his eyes up to hers. ‘I’m happy for you,’ he said.

  There were days in the next few weeks, before he finally found out for sure, when Hardy wondered if it had all been worth it. He had had to know what had happened with Sal Russo, and the knowledge had nearly killed him. The gash that the second bullet had traced across his middle was a constant reminder of how close it had been. Another inch and a half and the slug would have ripped through both lungs and his heart.

  He knew he still wasn’t finished with the nightmares; the last click under his jaw was burned into his psyche. He would jolt awake, as often as not drenched in sweat, and lie there in bed next to Frannie until he finally gathered the strength to rise, to limp through his darkened house. Look in on both children. Rearrange the elephants.