Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  ‘Excuse me,’ Pullios said, ‘there is no issue here.’

  ‘Then I will take the folder and leave.’ It was nine-thirty on Monday morning and Hardy was, for the second time in a week, in District Attorney Christopher Locke’s sanctum sanctorum. With him, in the second chair before the D.A.‘s desk, was Elizabeth Pullios and, standing by the window, his back turned to the proceedings, Art Drysdale.

  Pullios remained calm. ‘I am the homicide prosecutor here. What’s the issue?’

  ‘The issue is Art promised me this case.’ Hardy knew it sounded whiny, but it was the truth and had to be said.

  ‘Art was out of line there, Hardy.’ Locke could smile very nicely for the cameras, but he was not smiling now. He leaned forward, hands clasped before him. ‘Now, you listen. I appreciate your enthusiasm for your work, but we work in a hierarchy and a bureaucracy’ — he held up a hand, stopping Hardy’s reply. ‘I know, we all hate the word. But it’s a precise term and it applies to this office. Ms Pullios here has a fine record trying murder cases, and on Saturday’ — Locke pointed a finger — ‘you seriously jeopardized this investigation. The accused has an absolute right for an attorney to be present. You’re aware of that?’

  ‘I didn’t force her to say a word.’ ‘You shouldn’t have been there at all, is the point. Thank God you taped what you did get.’

  Pullios swiveled on the leather seat of her chair. ‘Freeman could still make a case for procedural error.’

  ‘Shit.’ Hardy said.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ If anyone was going to swear in Locke’s office, it was going to be him.

  Hardy reflected on the better part of valor. ‘I don’t think he can make a case there.’

  ‘Regardless’ — Pullios was calm but firm — ’this should not be up for debate. I am a Homicide D.A., is that right, sir?‘

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Art?’

  ‘Come on, Elizabeth.’

  ‘So I went up to Homicide and picked up a folder from Abe Glitsky, as I have done many times in the past. It happened, randomly, to be this Nash murder. There is a suspect in custody at this very moment, who was arrested while attempting to flee the jurisdiction. This is the kind of case I do.’ She wasn’t yelling. She didn’t even seem particularly excited. She had the cards.

  Hardy gave it a last shot. ‘Elizabeth, look. I have put in some time on this thing. I found the hand. I’ve talked to the daughter, the victim’s lawyer and best friend. Now I’m not on the case. What’s that going to do to their confidence in this office?’

  ‘That’s irrelevant,’ Pullios said.

  ‘More than that,’ Locke, to whom public perception of the district attorney’s office was always the primary issue, spoke up, ‘it’s not for you two to haggle about. Hardy, you’ve made a small but real point there. I can see you think you’ve got a legitimate right to this case, but so does Elizabeth. So here’s what we do — you, Hardy, take second chair. Under Elizabeth’s direction you keep contact with people you’ve already interviewed and you keep her informed at every step. Every single step. When we bring this thing to trial, Elizabeth puts on the show and you get to watch a master perform close up.’ The D.A. crossed his hands on his desk and favored the room with his patented smile. ‘Now let’s cooperate and get this thing done. We’re on the same team here, as we all sometimes forget. Art, Hardy, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ve always got an open door. Thanks very much. Elizabeth, could you stay behind a minute?’

  * * * * *

  ‘Talk about seeing a master perform close up.’

  Drysdale was juggling in his office. ‘My good friend Chris Locke tries to make sure everybody wins.’

  ‘Win, my ass.’

  The baseballs kept flying. ‘Pullios tries the case. You’re on it. My authority in giving you the case is upheld. The office looks good. Everybody wins.’

  ‘Who was it said “Another victory like this and we’re ruined”?’

  ‘Pyrrhus, I think.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’ Hardy shook his head. ‘I can’t believe this. She doesn’t know anything about this case.’

  Drysdale disagreed. ‘No, she knows, and I must say with some justification, that once a perp is arrested for whatever it might be, that perp is one guilty son of a bitch.’

  ‘How about innocent until proven guilty?’ Hardy felt silly even saying it out loud. He wasn’t sure he believed it anymore, after the tide of humanity that had washed across his desk in the past months, all of them — every one — guilty of something, even if it wasn’t what they were accused of. The temptation to get whoever it was for whatever they could, regardless of whether it was something they did, was something all the D.A.s faced. The best of them rose above it. Some didn’t find the exercise worthwhile.

  That still didn’t make it a good argument for Drysdale. ‘Let’s tick it off,’ he said. ‘She had a sexual relationship with the guy. Okay, already we’re in most-likely-to-succeed territory. Two, what did Glitsky tell you this morning? She maybe benefits to the tune of a couple million dollars if the guy dies. This is a big number two. This is not insignificant.’

  ‘It may not even be true. And Elizabeth doesn’t know about it in any event.’

  Drysdale kissed the air, a little clicking sound. ‘She will. Anyway, next, it’s her gun and a witness puts her at the crime scene and she doesn’t have an alibi for the day in question. Finally, she attempts to leave the country ten minutes after being warned to stay. It is not what I’d call farfetched to think she did it.’

  ‘I didn’t say she didn’t do it. I’m saying there’s no real evidence that she did, not yet.’

  ‘Fortunately, that’s the jury’s job.’

  ‘And Betsy’s.’

  ‘And yours.’ Drysdale raised a finger. ‘And I wouldn’t call her Betsy.’

  ‘Am I glad to be back working here?’

  ‘Is that a question? You’ve got your murder case, quicker than most.’

  Hardy straightened up in the doorway. His name was being called over the hall loudspeaker. He had a telephone call. ‘Pyrrhus, right?’ he said, before turning into the hall.

  * * * * *

  The snitch was named Devon Latrice Wortherington, and he certainly seemed to be enjoying the moments of relative freedom away from his cell. Devon had been picked up carrying an unlicensed firearm and a half pound of rock cocaine the previous Thursday night, outside a bar near Hunter’s Point, and he had been in jail about twelve hours when suddenly he recalled his civic duty to assist the police if he knew anything that might help them in apprehending persons who had committed a crime. In this case a drive-by shooting that had left three people dead — including a small boy who reminded Glitsky of his son — and seven wounded.

  He seemed to like Glitsky. Maybe he was just in a good mood. In any event, he couldn’t seem to shut up. ‘What kind of name is Glitsky?’ he asked while they were setting up the videotape for the interview. ‘I never knew no Glitsky.’

  ‘It’s Jewish,’ Abe said.

  ‘What you mean, Jewish?’

  ‘I mean it’s a Jewish name, Devon.’

  ‘Well, how you get a Jewish name?’

  ‘How’d you get the name Wortherington?’

  ‘From my father, man.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘You telling me you got Glitsky from your father? How’d he get Glitsky?’

  Abe was used to room-temp IQs. Still, he thought Devon might be close to the range where he wouldn’t be competent to stand trial. But he could be patient when it suited him, and now there wasn’t much else to do. ‘My father,’ he said, ‘got Glitsky from being Jewish.’

  ‘No shit? You shittin’ me?‘ Glitsky felt Devon eyeing him for some sign of duplicity. He kept a straight face.

  ‘We’re just about ready, Sergeant.’ The technician was a middle-aged woman of no looks and no humor. Maybe she dated the jail warden who’d accompanied Devon down and who now stood inside by the interview roo
m’s door.

  ‘My father isn’t black,’ Abe said.

  He saw Devon take it in, chew it around, get it down. ‘Hey, I get it. Your father is Jewish. I mean he is a righteous Hebe.’

  Abe wondered about how his father Nat would feel about being called a righteous Hebe and decided he’d ask him the next time they were together. He sat down across the table from Devon and asked the first questions —name, age, place of birth.

  ‘Okay, Devon, let’s get to it. At about seven o’clock on the night of Sunday, June twenty-first, you were standing at the corner of Dedman Court’ — Glitsky loved the name — ‘and Cashmere Lane in Hunter’s Point, is that correct?’

  Devon nodded, and Glitsky continued, running down his mental list of questions — establishing that Devon had been standing in a group of neighborhood people when a green Camaro drove up with two men in front and two in back. At the first sight of the car, someone at the corner yelled and a few people dropped to the ground. Devon had stayed up to see the barrels of guns poking out of the front and back windows. Another man appeared to be sitting in the backseat window, leveling a rifle or a shotgun over the roof of the car. ‘You have identified the shooter as Tremaine Wilson?’

  ‘Yeah, it was Wilson.’

  Glitsky was wondering how Devon could have identified Wilson, since two other witnesses had said that the shooters had worn ski masks. ‘And he was firing from the passenger-side front window?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Did anything obstruct your view of him?’

  ‘No. He was only like twenty feet away. I seen him clear as I see you.’

  ‘I hear he was wearing something over his face.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, a ski-mask, a bandanna, something over his face?’

  Devon stopped, his easy rhythm cut off. ‘It was Wilson,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not saying it wasn’t, Devon. I’m asking was there something covering his face.’

  ‘What difference that make?’

  Glitsky nodded to the technician, and she stopped the videotape. Glitsky knew the tape recorder under the table was still going. ‘Okay, we’re off the machine, Devon. Was he wearing a mask or not?’

  ‘Hey, look. I’m telling you it was Wilson. I know it was Wilson. So I give him up and you let me go, that’s the deal.’

  Glitsky shook his head. ‘The deal is, you give us some evidence we can use in court. He was wearing a mask, wasn’t he?’

  Devon thought about it, figuring his chances, then shook his head, no. ‘No way, man. No mask.’

  Glitsky sighed, then asked the technician to turn on the machine again. ‘Okay, Devon, for the record, was the shooter you’ve identified as Tremaine Wilson wearing anything over his face?’

  ‘I just told you no.’

  ‘Tell me again. Was the shooter wearing anything over his face?’

  ‘No.’

  It was, at this point, no surprise. Still, Devon seemed to be telling the truth about knowing the shooter was Wilson, but if he couldn’t testify that he actually saw him pulling the trigger, it wasn’t going to do anybody any good.

  ‘Are you related to Wilson?’

  Devon’s face was a question mark.

  ‘Cousin, half brother, like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he related to anyone you know?’ Again Devon paused, but this time Glitsky didn’t wait. He turned to the technician. ‘Shut that down,’ he said. ‘Okay, Devon, how do you know Wilson?’

  It took about a minute, but it came out that Tremaine Wilson had recently moved in with the woman Devon had lived with for the past two years, the mother of Devon’s child.

  * * * * *

  ‘So Devon figured he could cut himself a deal and put Wilson away at the same time, get his old lady back. Slick, right?’

  ‘Très.’ Hardy had been sitting at Glitsky’s desk, cooling off after the altercation with Locke and Pullios. ‘But it came up Wilson did it?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Devon thinks he was the target himself. That’s why he bought the gun we found him with on Thursday. Wilson wanted to take him out, but as they always do, they miss who they’re actually shooting at and kill a few folks standing around.’

  ‘So Devon’s back upstairs.’

  ‘No evidence, no deal. Devon’s sure Wilson was the shooter — he probably was. So big deal, we know one of the shooters. You want to try and sell Devon’s ID to a jury?’

  ‘Why don’t you cut Devon a deal, let him back on the street, give him back his gun? He goes and shoots Wilson, then we pick him up again.’

  Glitsky smiled, his scar white through his lips. ‘It’s a beautiful thought.’ He gave it a moment’s appreciation. ‘Now how about you give me my chair?’

  Hardy rose. He took the folder he’d been holding and dropped it in the center of Glitsky’s desk. ‘While we’re giving things back,’ Hardy said.

  Glitsky spun the folder around, facing him, ‘How’d you get this?’

  ‘I got a better one — how did Pullios get it?’

  ‘I gave it to her.’

  ‘You gave it to her.’

  ‘Sure. Happens all the time. She comes in, says “Hi, Abe, what you got?” and I give her a homicide.’

  ‘Did it occur to you this might be my case?’

  ‘I told her you’d been working on it, and she said she knew that and she’d take care of it.’

  ‘Well, she did that. She’s got the case.’

  ‘You got the folder, though, I notice.’

  ‘Yeah, I get to be her gofer. I follow up.’

  Glitsky leaned back, his feet on his desk. He dug a LifeSaver from his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  Hardy could continue bitching about internal strife in the D.A.‘s office, but it would be wasted breath and he knew it. The best thing would be to do his job and wait for another chance. He settled against the corner of Abe’s desk. ’There’s no problem,‘ he said, ’but I was going over the file and you say you found the gun in the rolltop desk.‘

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Top right drawer? Maps and stuff like that?’

  That’s it, so?‘

  ‘So I looked in that drawer on Wednesday, and there wasn’t any gun there.’

  Glitsky took a breath, chewed up his LifeSaver, then brought his feet down off his desk. ‘What?’

  Hardy told him about his own search of the Eloise.

  ‘But Waddell, the guard, he was with you, right? Hurrying you up?’

  ‘A little, yeah, but I checked that drawer.’

  ‘How close?’

  ‘I opened it, I looked in. What do you want?’

  ‘The gun was back a ways, Diz. How far in did you look?’

  Hardy remembered back, remembered feeling pressure from Tom, the guard, to stop going through things. He’d pulled that drawer out, had seen the maps. He was sure —almost certain — he would have seen a gun. But to be honest — he hadn’t looked or felt around anywhere near the back of the drawer.

  ‘So you missed it,’ Glitsky said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It happens. That’s why we have a team go and look.’

  The phone rang on the desk. Hardy got up, grabbed his file and walked to the back window, which overlooked the hole for the new jail and the freeway, on about the same level four stories up as Homicide. Traffic was stopped southbound. The sun was still out in a pure sky — day four of the hot spell.

  Glitsky came up beside him. ‘That was Ken Farris,’ he said. This morning when I got in I faxed him a copy of the will, the alleged will — two million dollars, remember? I figured he’d be the quickest way to verify the handwriting.‘

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he says it looks like Nash’s writing, all right, but it can’t be real. Nash wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He just says he wouldn’t have. He let Farris handle all his legal stuff.’

  ‘But it’s his writing?’


  ‘Looks like. Could be forged, of course. No telling at this point. It’s also, if it is his, a legal form for a will. Blank paper, dated, nothing else on it. But legal or not, I’ll tell you something.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m glad I brought the Shinn woman in. She almost pulled it off.’

  Hardy kept looking at the stalled traffic on the freeway, the glare of the reflected sun. He felt a stabbing pain behind his left eye and brought his hand up to rub it away. ‘Almost,’ he said, ‘almost.’

  20

  Hardy marveled at how busy Abe must have been. No wonder he’d been working through the weekend; smaller wonder still that he’d been so reluctant to arrest May without a warrant or indictment. On a no-warrant arrest, as May’s had been, the arresting officer has forty-eight hours to bring all the paperwork on a case to the district attorney’s office. Forty-eight hours was by Sunday night — last night. By then he had to have a complaint, any relevant incident reports, witness interviews, forensics, ballistics if available — enough evidence so the D.A. wouldn’t throw it out.

  This morning a typist had worked like a dog to type up the complaint and transcripts, then two copies of the folder were prepared — the original stayed with the D.A., one copy went to the clerk for putting it on a docket and one copy was saved for the defense attorney.

  Pullios not only had gotten to the folder first, she had evidently convinced the clerk to get it on a docket for that day, in the early afternoon.

  * * * * *

  Rebecca’s fever had broken at noon; spots were showing all over her skin. Otherwise, everything at home was fine. Frannie was planning on taking a nap, catching up if she could on the sleep she’d missed the night before.

  Hardy was back from lunch — ribs at Lou’s. Club soda. He threw three games of Twenty Down at his dart board and by the third game was nailing two numbers a round, sometimes all three. For the tenth time he considered registering for the City Championship Tournament. Someday he really would.

  He got a black three-ring binder and started filling in some tab labels. Police Report. Inspector’s Chronological. Inspector’s Notes. Coroner. Autopsy. Witnesses. The drill, except for Coroner and Autopsy, wasn’t all that different from his prelims — proof was proof. A trial was a trial.