Hardy 11 - Suspect, The

by John Lescroart

"Did you hear anything like a threat?"

  "Like what, exactly?"

  "Like, 'I'm going to kill you.' Anything like that?"

  "Well, no. Not specifically that. But swearing, a lot of swearing. It surprised me, coming from a doctor like she was. And such a respected writer. You'd think he'd have a better vocabulary. But it was a lot of 'F-this,' and 'F-that," and 'F-you.' I'm sure you can imagine."

  "Yes, ma'am." Juhle had used a few 'F-thises' in his life and thought there were worse crimes, but he had his witness talking and wanted to keep her in the mood. "Do you know if the argument had ever led to anything else?"

  "Not to my knowledge." Eyes on her television, suddenly Leesa Moore came alive. "Oh my God," she said. "I don't believe it. Do you mind, Inspector, for a minute?" She pointed over to the TV, then reached and turned up the volume. "Look at this. They've got the boys on the show too."

  And it was true. The host was explaining that they'd all been released from jail by now and were in their twenties. The poor woman, to whom this turn of events was evidently a surprise, was stuck to her chair, mouth agape, between tears and hysteria. The television audience was going wild.

  "That's got to be staged," Juhle said.

  "No, no. He does this kind of thing all the time. It's a great show."

  Juhle and his witness followed the action together on the screen. After the woman had finally left her chair, got her language beeped as she swore at the host, and ran off the stage in tears, Leesa Moore turned the volume down again to a conversational level and brought her attention back to the inspector. "I'm sorry. Where were we?"

  "We were talking about if Stuart and Caryn's yelling at one another had ever led to anything else. Something physical, I mean. And you said you didn't know about it if it had."

  "That's right." She squinted in concentration, finally reaching over again and turning the TV sound off entirely. "Except, oh wait, maybe there was one time in the middle of last summer. I don't know if it was because they'd had a fight or something, but I got home from work and there was a police car parked in front of the house."

  "Stuart and Caryn's house? Next door?"

  "Yes. I stopped and stood by it for a minute, wondering if I should knock and see what had happened and if there was anything I could do to help. But in the end I just came home. When I looked out later—not too much later—it was gone."

  "You're sure it had come to their house?"

  "Well, no, I wasn't at first, although it was parked right in front of their place. But after it was gone, I called over there and asked Stuart if everything was all right, that I'd seen the police car and all. And he said everything was fine. That it had just been a misunderstanding."

  "A misunderstanding?"

  "That's what he said."

  "About what? Did you ask him?"

  "No. He didn't seem anxious to talk very much about it."

  "Did you ever notice any kind of marks on Caryn? A black eye? Anything like that?"

  She shook her head. "But I didn't see as much of her anyway."

  "So you never found out why the police car was there?"

  "Well, not from them." The answer seemed to embarrass her. She went on. "Have you talked to the Sutcliffs yet? The neighbors on the other side?"

  "Not yet."

  "Well, Harriet—Mrs. Sutcliff—she was the one who had called the police. She thought somebody was going to get killed over there."

  * * * * *

  Q: Three, two, one. Case number 07-232918. This is Inspector Devin Juhle, badge 1667. The time is quarter after fifteen hundred hours on Monday, September 12th. I am at a residence at 1322 Greenwich Street and speaking with a sixty-four-year-old Caucasian woman who identifies herself as Harriet Sutcliff, the owner of the residence. Mrs. Sutcliff, I appreciate your agreeing to talk with me. How long have you been neighbors with Stuart and Caryn Gorman?

  A: Since they moved in here. That was, I guess, fifteen or so years ago.

  Q: Did you find them to be good neighbors?

  A: Yes. At first. We liked them very much. Especially Art—my husband?—when he found out that Stuart wrote those fly-fishing books. Art's a fisherman himself. So it was really exciting for him getting to know a celebrity like that. But the last couple of years, we haven't seen too much of them.

  Q: And why is that?

  A: It just seemed that they changed. First they seemed to stop doing social things together. And certainly with us. Stuart would still come by sometimes and talk to Art, but we almost never saw them together anymore. And then, by the summer, they seemed to just be fighting all the time.

  Q: You heard them fighting?

  A: Yes.

  Q: Just words, or more than that?

  A: More, I'd say.

  Q: Like what?

  A: Well, I definitely heard some things breaking over there. As though they were thrown. It was hard not to hear when that happened. And then one day last summer, I didn't want to but I felt I had to call the police. I thought somebody was going to get hurt.

  Q: And so you did, in fact, call the police?

  A: Yes. And a car came. It stayed a short while, but I don't think anything ever came of that. And since then I haven't talked to either Stuart or Caryn very much. I think they must have figured out that I'd been the one that called and they were mad at me.

  Q: Did there continue to be fights after that one?

  A: A couple, I think. But none so bad.

  Q: Did you hear anything like a fight last night over there?

  A: No. We—Art and I—we went to a movie and got back about ten thirty, and it was all quiet over there. Dark. And we were asleep by the time Stuart got home.

  Q: By the time Stuart got home?

  A: Right.

  Q: And what time was that?

  A: I don't know exactly. I gather pretty late.

  Q: You mean this morning?

  A: No, I don't think so. I believe he got home last night.

  Q: Why do you believe that? If you were asleep and didn't hear him?

  A: Well, I didn't see it myself, but because that's what Bethany said. There was a bunch of us from the block that gathered at the corner this morning. We didn't know what else to do, so we were all standing there waiting for someone to tell us what had happened, although we knew it was probably bad, with all the police and everything.

  Q: I'm sorry, Mrs. Sutcliff. Can we go back to Bethany for a minute. Bethany is who?

  A: Bethany Robley. She lives across the street, that stucco place right there two houses up. She and Kymberly know each other.

  Q: And Bethany told you that Stuart came home last night?

  A: That's what she said. She said it was around eleven thirty.

  Q: Why did she think that?

  A: I got the impression that she saw him. Her bedroom's right in that upstairs front window. You can see it from here, see? I can't believe he actually killed her, though I guess somebody must have. He really seems like such a nice man.

  Q: Well, that's still kind of an open question.

  * * * * *

  The door at the stucco house across the street opened to a heavyset, gray-haired African American woman in a brown jogging outfit. "Yes? Can I help you?"

  Introducing himself, Juhle had his badge out, and held it up in his wallet. "Is this the home of Bethany Robley?"

  It is.”

  "I'd like to ask her a few questions, if you don't mind."

  "Maybe I do. I'm her mother. What's this about? What's she done?"

  "She's done nothing, ma'am. It's about your neighbors across the street there. The Gormans. You may have heard that Mrs. Gorman died this morning."

  "There wasn't any Mrs. Gorman. There was Dr. Dryden, Caryn, married to Stuart, if that's who you mean." Mrs. Robley had her arms crossed, and stepping forward, she completely blocked the door. "And that's got nothing to do with my daughter. She had nothing to do with them."

  "I understand she was a friend of Kymberly's, their daughter."

 
"Okay, that. They know each other, all right, but Kym's gone up to school and she hasn't been over there since ..."

  Behind Mrs. Robley, Juhle heard a younger voice. "It's okay, Mom. I can talk to him."

  "Not unless I say so, you can't." The mother came back at Juhle, holding her daughter back with an extended palm. "Are we going to be wanting a lawyer here, Inspector? You think my little girl had anything at all to do with Caryn's dying?"

  "I've got no reason to think that, ma'am. I'd just like to ask her a couple of questions about what, if anything, she might have seen last night. From her window."

  "And that's all?"

  "That's all. Promise."

  The mother half turned and Juhle caught a glimpse of a young woman of about his own height. She was wearing a Galileo High sweatshirt, a short black skirt, white tennis shoes.

  "I'm gonna be with you the whole time," Mrs. Robley said.

  "Fine with me."

  A few seconds passed, and then the large woman sighed and moved to the side to let her daughter come forward. Bethany stepped up into the doorway—a clear, wide forehead and a solemn expression on her face. A keen intelligence seemed to emanate from a penetrating gaze out of deeply set eyes. To Juhle, she looked far too serious for a young woman of her age; she could easily have passed for twenty-five.

  And Juhle immediately recognized a key truth: If Bethany was going to be one of his witnesses—and he thought that was a reasonable likelihood at this stage—he couldn't have asked for a better one. "I won't take up much of your time," he began. He looked behind Bethany to her mother, held up his tiny tape recorder. "I'd like to record what we say here." He shrugged apologetically. "It's just that I don't take really good notes, and I want to make sure I've got it exactly right. Is that all right with you, Mrs. Robley?"

  "Ask my daughter."

  Bethany shrugged with a slight awkwardness. "That's okay, I guess."

  "Thank you." Juhle quickly dictated his standard intro into the device, then came back to his subject. "Well, Bethany, I was just over at Mrs. Sutcliff's house talking to her, and she told me that you were one of the people with her standing on the corner this morning when I pulled up. Do you remember that?" Sure.

  "Well, she—Mrs. Sutcliff, I mean—she told me that you said you saw Mr. Gorman get home last night. Is that true?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you happen to remember roughly what time that was?"

  "Actually, I remember exactly. He got home at eleven thirty. That's my lights-out time on a school night, and I was just finishing at my desk when I saw him turn into the driveway."

  "And where's your desk?"

  "Just under the window there that looks down on the street."

  Juhle paused to consider his next question. "And you're sure it was Mr. Gorman? Did you see him get out of the car?"

  "No. But it must have been him. He opened the garage automatically and went inside. Then closed it behind him. So I never saw him. But it was his car."

  "You know his car on sight?"

  Her lip curled downward, the question apparently striking her as insulting. "Sure. I've gone skiing in it with Kym maybe ten times. So yes, I know the car."

  "I didn't mean any offense," Juhle said. "I guess I'm just asking how sure you are."

  "What? That it was Stuart? I don't know. I told you I didn't see him. But if he was driving his car, it was him. Because that was his car."

  "And how did you know that?"

  "I don't know. I just knew."

  Mrs. Robley decided to put in her two cents. "She knows what she knows, Inspector. She's not lying to you."

  "Of course not. There's no question of that." Juhle spoke matter-of-factly to Bethany. "I'm sorry if I sound critical. That's not my intention. I'm just trying to make sure of what you're saying. So now, getting back to Stuart, you watched him pull his car into his garage across the street and then close the garage door behind him?"

  "No." Again, the question seemed to frustrate her. "Look, I'm sure. No. I just saw him pull up and I'm like, 'Oh, Stuart's getting home,' and then went over and got in bed. I didn't think anything about it, except that I noticed it. The end. And I didn't sit at the window and watch until he closed the garage door behind him. Why would I do that? It wasn't all that interesting, dull though the rest of my life might be."

  Juhle hesitated, a fragment of a barely remembered something nagging at him. "But I believe you said . . . can you give me just a second?"

  "Sure. More, if you need."

  He thanked her, then walked a few steps down to the sidewalk and rewound the tape recorder. In a minute, he was back up at the door with Bethany. "Here," he said, "listen to this."

  When he pushed the recorder’s play button, they heard her voice saying, "No. He opened the garage automatically and went inside. Then closed it behind him. So I never saw him. But it was his car."

  "See?" he said. "You hear it?"

  "What?"

  "You say, 'Then closed it behind him.' Which you just said you didn't see him do."

  "I didn't. See him close it, I mean."

  "Well, which is it?"

  "It was closed."

  "Okay." Juhle rubbed away the crease in his forehead. He killed another few seconds fast-forwarding his tape recorder to the end again, and turned it back to record. Then he said, "Excuse me, Bethany, for being so dumb. But then how did you know it was closed behind him if you didn't see him close it?"

  For a brief moment, the question seemed to stump her. Her normally grave expression turned to a look of near-despair before she suddenly broke into a surprisingly quite lovely smile. "Because I saw him open it later," she said. "So it had to be closed."

  "You saw him open it? When was this?"

  "Twelve forty-five. Pretty much exactly again." She brought her shoulders up in a shrug. "I had insomnia. I always have insomnia. I hate it. But then I had to get up and go to the bathroom and I noticed it had been an hour and fifteen minutes already that I'd been awake, which made me start freaking out about how tired I'd be for school today." She let out a heavy sigh. "And which I am. Was. God."

  "So what happened? You looked out the window and . . ."

  "And Stuart was backing out again . . ."

  "Backing out? At quarter to one in the morning?"

  "I know. I thought that was a little weird too. But really, I wasn't thinking too much about him or anything else except getting some sleep." Stifling a sudden yawn, she smiled again. "Sorry. Just talking about it, sometimes, you know . . ."

  "I hear you. But I noticed you called Mr. Gorman Stuart. Do you know him well?"

  "Not well, no. But he's Kym's dad. I know him okay. He doesn't like to be called Mr. Gorman."

  "And you and Kym are friends?"

  "Well, kind of. She's a little up and down, you know. Hyper up and then kind of a drag down. And lately not so much. Actual friends, I mean, except we ski together sometimes. Anyway, we've known each other since fourth grade." She brought a finger to her mouth and chewed the end of it. "This is going to kill her."

  "Were she and her mom close?"

  "No. I mean her dad."

  "What about her dad?"

  "Well, you just said. What you were investigating. I mean, if he killed her."

  "I didn't say that, Bethany. We don't have any one suspect right now. But you're saying Kymberly and her mom didn't get along?"

  The girl shrugged. "Her mom was pretty busy most of the time." Reaching back, she touched her own mother's hand briefly, then came back to Juhle. "Caryn wasn't really that bad."

  "Did people say she was?"

  Bethany shrugged. "Sometimes the two of them—Stuart and Kym—they'd be a little sarcastic. But they both loved her, I think.

  You don't think Stuart killed her, do you? I can't believe he'd do anything like that."

  Juhle kept it matter-of-fact. "I'm just talking to people, Bethany. Trying to get to what happened. I might have to talk to you again. Would that be all right?"

  "Sur
e. I guess."

  Juhle peeked around behind her. "Mrs. Robley?"

  "If it's okay with her."

  "All right, then. Thank you both for your time."

  8

  Stuart was standing by the couch, stretching. He and Gina had been going over issues for the past couple of hours when suddenly he'd become aware of the time and jumped up. "Well," he was saying, "whether or not we hit most of it, I've got to get going if I want to be on time for Kym, and I do. If Juhle calls you, maybe you can just set up a time we can all talk. But not tonight, okay, please. My girl's going to need me. That's the most important thing right now."

  "Sure. Of course." Gina had pulled her heavy satchel over in front of her and dropped her well-used legal pad into one of its sections. "We'll just stay in wait-and-see mode until we hear from Juhle. If he calls me tonight, I'll tell him you need time with your daughter and ask if we can set up a time tomorrow or the next day."

  "You think he will? Call you tonight?"

  "Maybe not, unless there's been some break in the case we don't know about. Either way, I'll try to check in with him again, get some sense of things." She looked up at him. "Are you sure you're all right?"

  He shook his head, weariness now all over him. "Just thinking about Kym." Staring into empty space across the room, he blinked rapidly a few times. "And Caryn. She's really gone, isn't she?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  Squeezing at his temples, he sighed deeply, then looked across at her. "Jesus, what a waste. What an unbelievable, colossal fucking waste."

  The Travelodge was barely a mile from Gina's condominium. Most of it was uphill, true, but to Gina's mind, that just made it a better exercise opportunity. So after she told Stuart that he should go on ahead, that she'd let herself out and get the door, she waited until he'd gone, then took off her black pumps, dropped them into the satchel and replaced them with the pair of tennis shoes that she always carried in her bag.

  Outside, the evening was still warm, although the ocean breeze had increased enough to stir up the occasional wisp of dust or debris in the gutters. Gina walked with an athletic ease, her satchel converted to a backpack. Ahead of her, across Van Ness Avenue, the street began its steep climb that summitted at the oft-photographed view of Lombard as the "crookedest street in the world."