Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  Starting college at Berkeley, glad to be rid of them, letting the family fall away. Running out of money in the first semester, taking a job selling shoes to gaijin with their huge feet; marrying Sam Hoshida, ten years older than she, because his landscape work got her out of the shoe store.

  Another semester in college then, with Sam supporting her. Another year with a man who grew quiet and bitter as he came to know she was using him. Wearing better clothes, becoming conscious of her beauty, other men making her aware of it.

  There was a teaching assistant, then, a half-Japanese, Phil Oshida, for whom she left Sam, for love. They married and she miscarried three times in two years; she could never have children. He hated her for that, felt pity and hate, trying to disguise them as love. She thought that was where the big fall had begun — when the only person she’d ever let herself care for gave up on her.

  She got her meaningless degree in political science and her second divorce. She was a shell, empty and used up at twenty-four.

  The first time it happened, she hadn’t planned it. She had gone to Hawaii for a one-week vacation, her first vacation from her meaningless job at the Bank of America. Of course, as always, she was on a budget — the package was a round-trip ticket, hotel and one meal a day. She let a student on Christmas break from USC buy her an ice cream near the beach. He was big and built and blond and all-American and told her he liked her bathing suit. Could he buy her dinner? He had lots of money. His parents lived on Hilo. Next day he asked her if she’d like to go with him over to his parents’ house. He was straightforward. He was going back to school in a week, he had a girlfriend, so no commitments, but they could have a good time.

  No actual money changed hands, although he did pay for her rebooked return flight. But the experience gave her the idea of what could be done. She quit her job at the Bank of America, shortened her name to Shinn, and started to make a good living, alone, discreetly.

  But there she was at Nissho’s, still a shell, carrying her father’s victim-load around with her. Men had been doing what they wanted with her for ten years. She couldn’t be further debased or devalued. She was still in demand, but there was no May Shintaka anymore, not even, she thought, much of a May Shinn, and she didn’t really care. Her usefulness, if she’d ever had any, was at an end.

  Then Owen Nash had walked to her table. He sat down, uninvited. She raised her eyes to look at him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you as alone as you look?’

  Of the many men she had known, she recognized something in Owen Nash that she thought she had given up on.

  In her business — it was inevitable — you got to thinking all men were the same, or similar enough that the small differences didn’t matter.

  Here was a man, though, who on first meeting caught you in an aura, swept you up in it. He stood over her, looking down, giving off a sense of power, with a massive, muscular torso, a square face and eyes that vibrated with life and, half-hidden, suffering…

  She stared at him, not wanting to acknowledge what she intuitively felt — that this man already knew her, knew what she was feeling. ‘Are you as lonely as you look?’ An old pickup line. But this, she felt, wasn’t just that. He was telling her that they were connected, somehow. Suddenly, with nothing else holding her to her meaningless life, she wanted to know how the connection worked and what it might mean.

  He had reserved the private room in the back, but had been watching her from the kitchen, where he was helping prepare the side dishes to accompany his main course of fugu, a blowfish delicacy in Japan that killed you if you prepared it wrong.

  After sharing the meal, they both waited for the slight numbness on the tongue. Owen had brought a bottle of aged Suntory whisky and they sipped it neat out of the sake cups.

  During the meal, he had gotten back some of what she would come to know as his usual garrulous persona. Now he ran with it, laughing, loud in the tiny room, emptying his sake cup.

  ‘I think you’re unhappy,’ she said. ‘If the fish had been wrong, it could have poisoned you.’

  He drank his whiskey. ‘There’s risk in everything. You do what you need to —’

  ‘And you need to risk death? Why? Someone like you?’

  They were alone in the room, sitting on the floor. The table had been cleared — only the Suntory bottle and the two cups were left on the polished teak.

  ‘It’s a game,’ he said, not smiling. ‘It’s something I do, that’s all.’

  She shook her head. This wasn’t any game for him. ‘I think that’s why you came over and talked to me. You recognized me. I am like you.’

  She told him she wanted him to follow her — she would show him what wanting to die was really like. They walked twenty blocks in the deep fog to her apartment. He followed her up the stairs. In the foyer, she stepped out of her shoes and went into the bathroom, where she turned on the bath. She went to the refrigerator and got out the wine, opened it. It was as though he weren’t there.

  She went to her dresser and took off her earrings, her necklace. Unbuttoning the black silk blouse, she felt him moving up close behind her, but he didn’t touch her, didn’t speak. That was the understanding. She continued to disrobe — her brassiere, her slacks, the rest.

  She finished the first glass of wine in a gulp and poured herself a second, which she brought to the bathroom. The bath was ready, the mirror steamed. He sat on the toilet seat, watching her lather, occasionally sipping from the Suntory bottle he’d carried with him.

  She stood and rinsed under a hot shower, then stepped out and over to the medicine cabinet, where she took down the prescription bottle and poured the pills, at least twenty of them, into her hand. She lifted her glass of wine, threw back her head and emptied her hand into her mouth.

  Which is when Owen moved, knocking the glass out of her hand, smashing it to the tiles, grabbing her, his fingers in her mouth, forcing the pills out into the sink, the toilet, onto the floor.

  That had been the beginning.

  The shrine was gone in the clang of the bars, the door opening. ‘Shinn. D.A.’s here to see you. Move it.‘

  Remember who you are, she told herself. You are not what they think you are.

  It wasn’t quite eleven in the morning. Out the windows, through the bars, she saw the sun high in the sky.

  The interview room was like a cell without toilet or bars. It was furnished with an old, pitted gray desk and three chairs. She sat down across from the man, casual in jeans and a rugby shirt. He introduced himself, Mr Hardy, and some woman he called a D.A. investigator. He would be taping this interview. He asked how they were treating her.

  ‘I need more phone calls,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be in here.’

  She was not stupid. She was a citizen, and she wasn’t going to fall into the trap that had ensnared her father. She had to believe that there was another reason she was arrested — it was not because she was Japanese. She told Hardy about her attempted call to Ken Farris.

  ‘I could call Farris for you. He tried to call you several times last week, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Owen Nash,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say anything you didn’t want to hear repeated.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘I thought you might want to tell me what happened. Maybe we could both get lucky.’

  ‘What happened when?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Last night. The arrest. The last time you saw Owen Nash.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I have a lawyer?’

  ‘Absolutely. You have the right to one. You don’t have to say one word to me.’

  But she found she wanted to explain, to talk. ‘I’m not sure I even understand why I’m here.’

  ‘I think trying to leave the country was a bad idea.’

  ‘But I knew —’ She stopped herself. ‘Don’t you see?’

  ‘See what?’

  She picked her words carefully, slowly. ‘When I saw my name in the paper, I knew I’d
be suspected.’

  ‘Were you out on the boat with him?’

  ‘No! I told the officer that, the one who arrested me.’

  ‘Then why would we suspect you?’

  ‘I’m Japanese.’ No, she told herself. That was her father’s answer. But it was too late to retract it now. ‘And it’s true,’ she said. ‘You do suspect me, with no reason. Who I am, what I have done for a living.’ She knew she should be quiet, wait for an attorney, but she couldn’t. The gun, too.‘

  ‘Your gun?’

  She nodded. ‘I knew it was on the boat. That’s where I left it. I didn’t want it in my apartment. I couldn’t even bring myself to load it. Owen thought I was silly.’

  ‘So you kept it on the Eloise?’

  ‘In the desk, by the bed.’

  The man frowned, something bothering him. ‘You knew it was there when you went out on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘So you did go out on Saturday.’

  ‘No! I didn’t mean that, I meant when Owen went out. I knew it was there all the time. That’s where I kept it.’

  ‘Did anyone else know it was there?’

  ‘Well, Owen, of course.’ There was something else. She paused, not quite saying it. ‘Anyone could have.’

  ‘Anyone could have,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes!’ She was starting to panic, to lose herself, and hoped it didn’t show in her voice. She forced herself to breathe calmly. ‘If it were me, why would I leave the gun on the boat after I shot him? Why wouldn’t I have thrown it overboard?’

  ‘I don’t know, May. Maybe you were in shock that you’d actually done it and reverted to habit, not thinking, putting the gun where it belonged. Why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘I loved Owen. I told that to the sergeant.’

  ‘You loved him.’ Flat, monotone. ‘Nobody else seems to think he was very lovable.’

  ‘Nobody else knew him.’

  ‘A lot of people knew him,’ he said.

  * * * * *

  The door to the room opened with a whoosh. ‘Just what the hell is going on in here?’

  Hardy looked, then stood up. ‘Can I help you?’

  The man wasn’t six feet tall. He had curly brown hair and sallow loose skin. His shabby dark suit was badly tailored and poorly pressed. There were tiny bloodstains on his white collar from shaving cuts.

  Nevertheless, what he lacked in style he made up for in substance. His brown eyes were clear and carried authority. The anger seemed to spark off him. ‘Yeah, you can help me. You can tell me what this is all about!’

  Hardy didn’t respond ideally on this onslaught. ‘Maybe you can tell me what it is to you!’

  The two men glared at each other. The guard who had admitted the second man was still standing at the door; the woman investigator Hardy had brought along as a witness checked her fingernails. The guard asked, ‘You gentlemen have a problem with each other?’

  The shorter man turned. ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Hardy said.

  He was ignored. ‘I am representing this woman and she is being harassed by the district attorney —’

  ‘There is no harassment going on here —’

  ‘Save it for your appeal, which you’re going to need. To say nothing of the lawsuit.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m David Freeman, Ms Shintaka’s attorney, and you don’t belong here.’

  Like everyone else in the business of practicing law from either side of the courtroom, Hardy knew of David Freeman, and his presence stopped him momentarily.

  Freeman was a legend in the city, a world-class defense attorney in countless cases — and here was Dismas Hardy, novice prosecutor in a place he technically shouldn’t be. He didn’t know how there came to be a connection between May Shinn and David Freeman, but it was clear there was one now and it was hardly promising for Hardy’s chances.

  ‘How did you —’

  Freeman cut him off. ‘Because fortunately for justice’s sake, some judges are available on weekends. Now you get the hell out of here, Counselor, or I swear to God I’ll move to have you disbarred.’

  May spoke up. ‘But he wasn’t —’

  Freeman held up an imperious hand. ‘Don’t say another word!’

  * * * * *

  Judge Andy Fowler watched his drive sail down the middle of the fairway, starting low and getting wings up into the clear blue, carrying in the warm, dry air. The ball finally dropped down, he estimated, at about two hundred and ten yards, bouncing and rolling another forty, leaving himself a short seven-iron to the pin.

  Fowler picked up his tee with a swipe and walked to his cart, grinning. ‘The man is on his game.’ Gary Smythe was Fowler’s broker and, today, his match partner. They were playing best ball at $20 per hole and now, on the fourteenth, were up $80. Gary wasn’t yet thirty-five, a second-generation member of the Olympic Club.

  The other two guys, both members of course, were father and son, Ben and Joe Wyeth from the real estate company of the same name. Ben Wyeth was close to Fowler’s age and looked ten years older. He teed up. ‘I think the judge here ought to rethink his twelve handicap.’ He swung and hit a decent drive out about two hundred yards with the roll, on the right side of the fairway. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is a proper drive for guys our age, Andy.’

  They got in their carts and headed down the fairway. ‘You are playing some golf today,’ Gary said.

  Andy was sucking on his tee. He wore a white baseball hat with a marlin on the crest, maroon slacks, a polo shirt. He followed the flight of a flock of swallows into one of the eucalyptus groves bordering the fairway. ‘I think golf must be God’s game,’ he said. ‘You get a day like this.’

  ‘If this is God’s game, he’s a sadist.’ Gary stopped the cart and got out to pick up his ball. As had been the case most of the afternoon, Andy’s ball was best.

  Andy put his shot pin high, four feet to its left. Gary’s shot landed on the front fringe, bounced and almost hit the flagstick, then rolled twelve feet past. ‘Your ball again,’ Gary said.

  As they waited on the green for Ben and Joe, Gary told Andy he was happy to see him feeling better. ‘Some of us were worried the last few months,’ he said. ‘You didn’t seem your old self.’

  ‘Ah, old man’s worries, that’s all.’ Andy lined up an imaginary putt. ‘You get lazy. You get a few problems, no worse than everybody else has, and you forget you can just take some action and make them go away. It’s just like golf, you sit too long and stare at that ball, pretty soon it’s making faces at you, and before you know it, hitting that ball becomes clean impossible. The thing to do is just take your shot. Let the chips fall. Pardon the mixed metaphor. At least then the game’s not playing you. Which is what I let creep up on me.’

  ‘Maybe you could let it creep back just a little, give us young guys a chance.’

  Andy lined up another imaginary putt and put the ball in the hole. He looked up, grinning. ‘No quarter,’ he said. To the victor goes the spoils.‘

  19

  Hardy had had better weekends.

  Historical Martinez turned out to be a bit of a dud. Since Moses and Hardy had practically lived at the Little Shamrock bar on 9th and Lincoln in San Francisco’s cool and breezy Sunset district for many years, an hour-and-a-half road trip to check out some small bars in another windy town was, at best, they decided, dumb.

  They snagged a few not-so-elusive martinis — the gin first nagging at Hardy, then washing out the memory of the morning’s disaster with May Shinn and lawyer David Freeman — then Frannie had driven them all home just in time to find out Rebecca had developed roseola and a fever of 106 degrees, which was worth a trip to the emergency room.

  When they got back at midnight Hardy had been too exhausted to return the calls of Art Drysdale or Abe Glitsky.

  But on Sunday he wasn’t. He got an earful of rebuke from Art and was intrigued to learn from Glitsky, who’d worked yeste
rday, that Tom Waddell, the night guard at the Marina, had seen May leaving the place on Thursday night.

  ‘Probably coming back, realizing she’d left the gun.’

  ‘Did she have a key?’

  ‘That’s just it. It appeared she couldn’t get into the boat. Waddell was going to go help her when he finished whatever he was doing, but she had gone. Maybe that’s when she decided to buy the ticket to Japan. The timing fits.’

  Hardy remembered that when he’d first gone to the Eloise, the boat had been left unlocked. May, knowing that, would have thought she could have just slipped aboard, taken the gun and disappeared with nothing left to link her to the murder.

  ‘And there’s another thing, maybe nothing, maybe a joke, but it could be the whole ballgame.’

  Hardy waited.

  ‘I got a warrant for her suitcases and we found what looks like a handwritten will of Owen Nash’s, leaving her two million dollars.’

  ‘Is it real?’

  ‘We don’t know, we’re getting a sample of Nash’s handwriting. We haven’t even mentioned it to her yet, but let’s assume Nash just disappears and his body doesn’t show up on a beach. After he’s declared dead, May appears with a valid will.’

  ‘Nice retirement.’

  ‘The same thought occurred to me.’ A good cop following up leads, building a case that Hardy hoped he hadn’t already lost on a technicality.

  Hardy spent most of the day inside worrying about Rebecca, giving her tepid baths every two or three hours. Frannie, as she did, hung tough, but he could tell it was a strain on her, to say nothing of his own feelings, memories of another life and another baby —one who hadn’t made it — chilling the warmth out of the evening.

  A dinner of leftovers — cold spaghetti, soggy salad, stale bread. They were all in bed for the night before nine o’clock.

  Family life with sick child.

  * * * * *