A Plague of Secrets

by John Lescroart

  “Dr. Strout,” he said. “To begin with Dylan Vogler, the gunshot victim. Were you able to determine the time of death?”

  “No.” He looked over to the jury box, speaking to them in an avuncular tone. “When the medical technicians arrived, he was warm to the touch. That suggests, for example, that he hadn’t been in the alley overnight, but I can’t say more than that.”

  “What killed Mr. Vogler?”

  “A gunshot wound to the chest.”

  “Please describe the injury.”

  Strout did so—the entrance, the exit, the track through the body—and Stier took it from there. “How quickly would an injury like this be likely to incapacitate the victim?”

  “The bullet went in his chest and then right through his heart. Most people would collapse immediately from the injury and die shortly thereafter.”

  “Doctor, would you tell the jury what defense wounds are?”

  “Defense wounds are injuries typically sustained when the deceased tries to ward off blows or an attack. Injuries to the hands, for example, or forearms, usually. Sometimes to the legs.”

  “Did you find any defense wounds on Mr. Vogler?”

  “No.”

  “Any abrasions, scrapes, cuts, or bruises to suggest he had been in a fight or struggle?”

  “No. I can’t say there were.”

  “In fact, did Mr. Vogler have any sign of injury of any kind except the gunshot wound that killed him?”

  “No.” In other words, Hardy thought, Vogler either knew his attacker or was shot without any warning, or both. But Strout had one last word. “It was a pretty efficient killing.”

  Hardy could have objected to this gratuitous comment—it wasn’t in answer to one of Stier’s questions—but it wouldn’t have accomplished anything, and he decided to let the prosecutor go on.

  “Dr. Strout, moving on to the other victim, then, Levon Preslee. Again, can you tell the jury about the cause of death of this victim?”

  “Surely. The victim died from injuries sustained by blows to the top of the head from some sort of a bladed object that cracked his skull, causing massive brain trauma and hemorrhage.”

  “And were you able to determine, Doctor, what time it was when death occurred?”

  “No.”

  Hardy knew that this was a made-for-television question. The public had become so inundated with the pseudoscience of prime-time TV that they expected all sorts of forensic miracles. Stier simply wanted to dispel the popular notion that you could tell when someone was killed and that therefore the prosecution had been negligent in not presenting that evidence.

  But Strout amplified anyway. “The body had achieved ambient temperature.”

  “And again, same question as with Mr. Vogler, Doctor. Were there any signs of defense wounds on Mr. Preslee’s body?”

  “No.”

  “And how quickly did this injury kill Mr. Preslee?”

  “Just about immediately. He would have been stunned and probably rendered unconscious by the force of the first blow and died soon after. Maybe not as immediate as the bullet through the heart, but pretty quick. Within a minute outside.”

  Stier checked the jury to make sure they understood the violent, gruesome, bloody nature of this attack, which, if it had been perpetrated by Maya, painted her as a monster. But he wasn’t quite finished yet. “A couple of clarifications, Doctor. You said blows. How many times was the victim hit?”

  “Twice. Although either one would have been plenty.”

  Hardy saw the effect this small sentence had on the jury, as a couple of the members actually flinched, imagining the moment.

  “And again,” Stier went on, “you said the blows were struck by a bladed object. Can you explain what you mean by that?”

  Over the next ten minutes Stier and Strout nailed down all the details of the attack on Levon Preslee—the damage done and use of the dull edge of the cleaver, the attack from directly behind the unsuspecting and probably stoned victim. No surprise, Preslee’s blood tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Overall, Hardy thought, the effect of the testimony painted a coherent scenario of two apparent friends sharing a doob and then one of them going behind the other and launching a premeditated, grisly, and murderous attack.

  That is in fact what had happened, and Hardy couldn’t think of a spin in the world that would do any good for his client. He also knew that there was no way he could control Strout, or stop him from delivering those little asides that had such a visceral impact on the jury. So he passed the witness.

  Glitsky sat on the corner of Bracco’s desk in the large room that the homicide detail worked out of. Darrel himself was in his normal chair at his desk, while his partner, Debra Schiff, was three flights downstairs delivering her testimony in the trial of Maya Townshend.

  “It’ll bite you,” Glitsky said.

  “I don’t care. I’m doing it.”

  “I don’t see what it’ll get you.”

  “Peace of mind. Very important for job satisfaction.”

  Glitsky sighed. “What’s the exact wording you’re going with?”

  Bracco looked down at the TR-26.5, the department form that cops were supposed to fill out to explain away their parking tickets. Under Alternative Parking Considered but Not Utilized, he read aloud what he’d written: “Leave car on mayor’s lawn with siren on and lights flashing. Walk three miles to crime scene.”

  “They’ll flay you.”

  “Oh, well.” Bracco sat back. “No guts, no glory. Maybe they’ll realize the absurdity of all of this.”

  “Sure,” Glitsky said. “That’ll probably happen. But meanwhile, why are you even here?”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Downstairs. I thought you guys were testifying on Townshend today.”

  “Schiff. Stier wanted her first.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. DA strategy. Maybe she’s a better witness.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know, Abe. More passionate, maybe.”

  The corner of Glitsky’s mouth turned up. “With Jerry Glass, you mean?”

  “Maybe a little of that.” Bracco stood up and stretched, now closer to eye-to-eye with his lieutenant. “She’s probably more convincing than I’d be anyway. I don’t blame Stier putting her on. I would too.”

  “And not you?”

  “As I said, maybe later. But maybe not at all.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. She’ll do fine. She’s a true believer.”

  “I hope you’re not telling me at this stage, after the trial’s started, that you don’t believe in the case you guys have built.”

  “It’s not so much that . . .”

  “That sounds like it’s still some part of it.”

  Bracco’s eyes scanned the large room, over Glitsky’s shoulder, around behind them. Nobody else was around. It was safe to talk. “I don’t have any real doubt she did it, Abe. Maya, I mean. But from the time Debra went out and talked to Glass . . .” Hesitating, Bracco made a face.

  “What?”

  “You ever notice there’s this mind-set among certain law enforcement people—I mean we’ve all seen it a hundred times—I just haven’t had it run into one of my cases before. Where anybody who has money and knows a criminal, then that person’s a criminal too.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen that. In fact, I’ve thought it. You know why?”

  “Because it’s true?”

  “Maybe more than you’d think, Darrel.”

  Bracco rolled his shoulders. “But not always, huh?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying what I started with. That Debra’s probably a better witness. Hardy might be able to eat me up on cross, whereas he won’t touch Debra, who buys everything Jerry Glass is selling. So does Stier.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Another pause. Then, in a more quiet register, “I don’t want to rat my partner, Abe. She got
the collar.”

  “I thought you both got the collar.”

  “If you get technical, okay.”

  “I don’t care about technical. Was there something wrong with the arrest?”

  “No. I was there. It was righteous enough. I just . . . if it was me, I think I would have waited a little, that’s all. Maybe go to a DA and see if he’d fly it for the grand jury. But Debra just got the news about the fingerprint ID on the doorknob and stepped in.”

  Glitsky had seen this before too. A relatively inexperienced cop would sometimes arrest a suspect before he or she had built a solid case based on the evidence. Occasionally, this was warranted, as when the suspect was a danger to witnesses or an immediate flight risk and had to be detained until someone could check more facts. Or when someone flat out confessed.

  But more often, the best case protocol was as Bracco suggested—build the case and present it to the district attorney, who then—if the evidence was compelling—would get a warrant or get it in front of the grand jury. The alternative was that an inspector could simply go and make the arrest. And only then would the DA’s office review the case to see if it would be charged.

  “So what happened on this one?” Glitsky asked.

  “I didn’t think it was enough at the time,” Darrel said, “and Debra and I had words about it, but what could we do? It was a done deal. And then, hey, of course Maya gets held to answer at the prelim, right? So we got it. It was going to trial. We had other cases. I stopped thinking about it.”

  “But you’ve still got questions?”

  “Not really questions, no.” Bracco shook his head. “And not really about whether Maya’s guilty. I mean, who else? And with her motive and connections to both these guys? Just that she knew both of them, they were squeezing her. She’s a liar. It just totally works.”

  “But?”

  “But I think we could have built Stier a better case. Now it’s all this other stuff with the forfeitures and political heat. So Maya’s a rich person who knows criminals, therefore she’s a criminal, and if she’s a criminal, then she probably did these guys. I just don’t want to have to hold all that together on the stand, that’s all, when I don’t think we’ve got the evidence to back it up. Debra’ll be way better at it.”

  That same morning in Chinatown the mood was strained at The Hunt Club.

  Tamara Dade sat red-eyed at her computer, unspeaking, unsmiling. Wyatt Hunt had stopped by one of the local bakeries on the way in and had brought a bag of hot, fresh-from-the-oven cha sui bao, the delicious pork-filled buns that were a rare treat and Tamara’s favorite food on earth, and she told him she wasn’t hungry.

  After twenty minutes back in his office Hunt stood and opened the door back to the reception area. “Tam,” he said gently, “have you heard from Craig?”

  She half turned to face him. “He called in sick.”

  “Sick?” This was decidedly unusual. Sickness wasn’t really an acceptable part of the culture of Hunt’s business. “What’s he got? Tam? Hey. Are you okay?”

  Clearly, she wasn’t. After the merest glance at her boss, and again without a word or a look back, she rose from her chair and walked out the main door. This led both down to Grant Street outside and to the bathroom, and Hunt wasn’t at all sure whether she’d be back until he realized she hadn’t taken her purse.

  So leaving the door between reception and his office open in case she wanted to come in and talk to him, he went back to his desk, picked up his telephone, and punched some numbers.

  “Hey, Wes.”

  “Hey yourself.”

  “You talk to Diz this morning?”

  “No. He’s at trial. He’s been going straight in.”

  “I know. But he stopped by my place last night.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “He wants me to put a press on who killed his victims.”

  This brought a pause. Farrell was the firm’s resident adviser on never believing that your client was innocent. This was because the celebrated case that had made his bones in the city’s legal community was one involving his best friend, another attorney named Mark Dooher, who’d been charged with murdering his wife. Farrell had gotten him off, cleanly acquitted. That turned out to have been a bad mistake that almost cost Farrell his own life a while later. “You mean Maya Townshend’s victims?”

  “Diz doesn’t think so. Or at least he isn’t sure anymore.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since yesterday afternoon when he talked to her.”

  “Denied it, did she?”

  “Ambiguously, at least. Enough to make him think he might be neglecting or ignoring something important.”

  “He always thinks that. That’s why we made him managing partner. Nothing gets through.” Hunt heard a breath in the phone. “Anyway, you’re calling me about this because . . . ?”

  “Because you knew Vogler.”

  Another hesitation. “If Diz told you that, I’m going to have to have a talk with him.”

  “It wasn’t Diz. I did some Net searching back when I first heard about this list of Vogler’s customers.”

  “How’d you even hear about that?”

  “You know Craig, who works here?”

  “Sure.”

  “He’s on it too. Told me about it right up-front in case it was a problem for me. I told him it was nothing I couldn’t handle, but he’d be smarter if he didn’t do anything overtly against the law while he was trying to get his license. Anyway, I got curious after that, found it in a blog somewhere. Nothing’s sacred anymore, in case you hadn’t heard. Good news for the PI trade; not so much for everybody else.”

  “Tell me about it. So, okay, I knew Vogler. So did your Craig. Ask him.”

  “I would, but he’s out sick today. I thought I’d start with you.”

  “I have no idea, Wyatt, what I could tell you. That’s the honest truth.”

  “I believe you, and that makes us about even. I don’t know what I want to know. Not exactly, anyway. I just figured the weed side of the equation’s been left out, I mean if somebody on that side killed him. So nobody’s talked about how that whole thing worked. How often, for example, did you buy from him?”

  “About once a month. I hope you realize this makes me damned uncomfortable, Wyatt. I’ve been trying to put that all behind me as just another dumb mistake. Sam and I almost broke up over it, too, among other things. What does it matter how often I scored with Dylan?”

  “Again, Wes, I don’t know. I’m trying to get a sense of how much marijuana he moved, or anything else. If he had seventy regular customers, give or take. What did a bag go for?”

  “Mine were a hundred.”

  “So call it ten grand a month?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I’ve got to think that’s serious enough money to get shot over, in spite of everybody seeming to believe it wasn’t about the dope. How’d it get delivered?”

  Once again, Hunt heard a frustrated exhale. “You asked for the manager’s special, whoever was on the register would call Dylan. He’d go in the back, come out with a sealed Ziploc in the bottom of a regular coffee bag, grind some beans in over it, close it up.”

  “And how long had this been going on?”

  “I don’t know. I made the connection maybe six years ago, so at least that long. And I don’t really believe I was his first customer.”

  “And you’re telling me that in all that time, none of the employees picked up on it?”

  “No. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have figured it out.”

  “But according to Diz that’s been no part of the police investigation.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Yeah, but I bet I know where some of that ten grand went every month. And I know why the guy had such loyal employees.”

  “You think one of them . . . ?”

  “I have no idea, Wes. Just like when I called you. But at least now I’ve got someplace fresh to start looking.
”

  Tamara stood in the open doorway, her face blotched, her eyes red. “I’m sorry.”

  Hunt waved off the apology. He’d known his secretary since the time when, as a Child Protective Services worker, he’d been called to the home of the two Dade children, brother and sister, who’d missed several days of school without an excuse. At the time Tamara had been Tammy, a starving twelve-year-old trying to feed and care for her emaciated younger brother, Mickey, and waiting for her mother—a heroin addict who’d died in her bedroom of an overdose—to wake up. Hunt, a former foster child himself, had followed the lives of both of the kids into young adulthood and, when he’d opened his agency, had brought Tamara along full-time, and began using Mickey as a runner and occasional driver.

  Now she said to him, “Craig and I had a fight. I think we might have broken up.”

  “Is that why he’s not in here?”

  “I’d guess so. There was just the message when I got in, that he was sick. But he wasn’t sick last night.”

  Hunt leaned back in his ergonomic chair, rocked in it once or twice. “You want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know.” But she came inside his door and let herself down onto one of the chairs in front of him. “It’s just so stupid, is all.”

  “Stupid happens.” He gave the silence another beat. “Do you want to go home? I’ve got some fieldwork I need to do. We can close up.”

  “No. I can stay.” She raised her eyes and met his. “I hate all dope,” she said, “you know that?”

  Since her mother had died from an overdose, this shouldn’t have been so surprising; but Hunt knew or guessed that she and Craig were occasional pot users. “I’m not too wild about it myself, to tell you the truth. Is that what the fight was about? Stop me if I’m prying.”

  She gave him a weak smile. “You’ve earned pry rights.” Crossing her arms, she stared into the space between them. “I mean, everybody says a little weed’ll never hurt you, you know? It’s not addictive, safer than alcohol, blah blah blah. And maybe a little won’t, but a lot . . .”