A Plague of Secrets

by John Lescroart

  “Well, not exactly. It means they can’t prove she did it.”

  “So what do they do then?”

  “Who?”

  “The police. The people investigating his murder.”

  Hardy’s grin had a sardonic twist to it. “Again, we’re up against theory versus reality. In theory the police should start looking for more proof, but there isn’t any that I’ve seen. So then, still in theory, they should revisit the investigation and see if they might trip over another suspect somewhere along the way. In reality, since the cops believe that Maya in fact did kill Levon—”

  “That’s insane,” Harlen interrupted. “I know she didn’t do that.”

  This stopped Hardy. “If you do, tell me how.”

  The supervisor, too, hesitated for a second. “What I mean is my sister isn’t hitting somebody on the head with a cleaver, Diz. It just flat couldn’t happen.”

  “I’m not saying I disagree with you. It’s a stretch for me too. But the cops think that’s what happened, even though she avoided all traces of blood, which is a pretty good party trick if she did. Anyway, the bottom line is that in reality, Braun dismisses Levon and nobody’s going to do a damn thing about it. They figure they’ll get her on Dylan anyway. But the good news—and this really is good, Harlen—is if Levon gets dropped, it’s no longer Specials.” By this Hardy meant special circumstances—mandated by multiple murder—and because of which Maya would be facing life in prison without the possibility of parole. Without Levon, life without was going to be off the table.

  But Harlen didn’t take much solace in that. “I don’t want her to go down at all,” he said. “That’s why I turned her on to you in the first place. I never intended for this to happen. You were supposed to stop it from getting to here.”

  Hardy had seen this before, the family becoming adversarial to the defense as the trial progressed. Still, Harlen was a long-standing colleague—just short of being a personal friend—and the accusation stung. “Well”—Hardy’s decent mood by now completely leached away—“I hope you know I’m doing all I can to keep that from happening.”

  “I know that. I didn’t mean—”

  “Yeah, you did. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay, Diz.” Harlen swallowed, took a deep breath. “I tell you, these fuckers are killing all of us. Joel and I almost had it out—I mean actual fists—last time we saw each other. He said I was ratting him out with the grand jury. You ever testify for one of those?”

  “Yeah. But I wasn’t a target.”

  “Well, here’s the good news. Neither am I. Or they tell me that’s good news, but you ask me, make me a target anytime.”

  “So you can take the Fifth, right?”

  “Not that I’ve got anything to hide, really, but it would be a nice option. Instead of letting Glass, last time he got me on the stand, rip me a new one. Then he starts on my tax returns for like ten years ago. And how do I account for this? And how did I really make that? And how do I prove that my sister and I were not actual partners in BBW, and that the dope money isn’t really what got Joel’s real estate stuff started, or at least bailed him out after nine eleven.”

  “And you had to answer?”

  “Every time or I’m in contempt. I mean, that son of a bitch Glass treated me like I was a major criminal, but I’ve got nothing to tell him. Then after all that Joel busts my ass anyway.” The big man blew out heavily. “And you notice Kathy’s lost about ten pounds. Ten pounds on her, that’s like fifty on me. And it isn’t her new exercise routine, believe me.”

  “I hadn’t heard they’d called her yet.”

  “No. That’s what’s so awful. They’re keeping the big ax—testifying with the grand jury—over her head. Glass waiting to see what happens down here in court, maybe. I don’t know, but it’s eating her up too. Like literally. I think that’s what more or less got her to come down here. Put the fucker on notice, show him she’s not afraid.” He leaned in closer. “But let me tell you something, Diz, between me and you. She is.”

  From his own experiences with Joel—arguing with him over billing, cash flows, trial strategy, his treatment of Maya—Hardy had known that Glass’s campaign against the families was taking a serious psychic toll. Now, though, Harlen’s totally uncharacteristic outburst—the man was a professional politician, after all, he never lost his temper—had made Hardy realize how deep the knife cut, how threatening the grand jury must be, how very real loomed the possibility of ruined careers and even prison time. Now Hardy took his own deep breath. “Well, Harlen,” he said with a mustered calm he didn’t come close to feeling, “we’re still a long way from done here. That’s all I can tell you. We’ve got to let it play out.”

  Hardy let Fisk go through the metal detector and then stepped aside out of the line and walked back to the other familiar face he’d noticed in the lobby behind them. Chiurco, in a coat and tie, looked well-rested and clear-eyed as Hardy shook his hand. “Hey, Craig,” he said. “You here with Wyatt?”

  “No. Wyatt told me to come down here and see if I could be of some use.”

  This wasn’t the most impressive offer Hardy had ever heard. The only thing Craig had to talk about was Maya’s presence outside Levon’s flat just before or after he was murdered. Which meant that if Hardy put him on the stand, all he could do was damage the case further.

  But then, suddenly, unexpectedly, an idea surfaced. “Something you could do,” he said. “With all the craziness, you and I never talked about whatever you found out about Levon and Dylan.”

  “Sure, but I’ve got to tell you, beyond the robbery and his address, it wasn’t much.”

  “Wyatt didn’t ask you to follow up on any of that?”

  Craig shook his head. “No. And I don’t really know what it would be. I think you guys know all I know.”

  “Probably,” Hardy said, “but maybe you know something you don’t know you know. Stuff you might have seen with Maya at the door.”

  This brought a frown. “Tamara kind of hinted that maybe I’d want to mess with my story if—”

  But Hardy jumped all over that. “No, no, no. Nothing like that. I’m not talking about making up a story. Just if what actually happened might change an argument or something.”

  “Well, whatever you’d want.”

  “You want to set a time? Give me an hour?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Tonight, tomorrow night? Call Phyllis at my office and she can set us up. You okay with that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. So now if you’ll excuse me”—Hardy indicated the courtroom behind him—“Her Highness awaits.”

  Upstairs, Glitsky let Bracco and Schiff into his office, closed the door behind them, and walked around his desk to his chair. He had hot tea in his SFPD mug and he pulled it in front of him and cupped his hands around it.

  Not that he was cold.

  He felt he needed a prop—something immediate and proximately painful—to take the edge off his main emotion at the moment, which was a fine amalgam of embarrassment, disappointment, and fury. As a further subterfuge—to all appearances this was simply a chat about procedures—he’d bought a couple of Starbucks frou-frou coffees downstairs and had put them on the edge of his desk in front of where his inspectors were sitting.

  Schiff pretty obviously hungover.

  And now, motioning to the coffees, Glitsky said, “I hear those are great. Orange macchiato, or something like that. Treya swears by ’em.”

  Bracco reached forward, took a cup, removed the plastic top. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re welcome. Debra?”

  She raised a palm. “Maybe in a minute, thanks.”

  The tension among the three of them taut as a wire.

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  A brisk nod. “Little bit of a rough night is all.”

  Glitsky kept his eyes on her. After a minute he sipped his own tea. “It takes some getting used to, but you can’t let that stuf
f get to you.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “You have a tough day of testimony,” Glitsky said, “it’s part of the job. Comes with the territory. You shake it off and do better next time. At least that’s my experience. The coffee might really help.”

  Schiff sighed and reached for the cup.

  “Of course,” Glitsky continued, pressing his hands around his mug, focusing on the heat in his palms, “it’s preferable if you make sure your evidence is rock solid before you’re stuck with explaining something that might not make much sense.”

  Schiff, her mouth set tight, let a long, slow breath out through her nose. She left the paper coffee cup where it sat on the desk and straightened back up in her chair. “It made perfect sense, Lieutenant. People have been known to cover their tracks, and she did. It doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “In fact, she was there.”

  “Well, in fact, to be precise, she may have been at the front door.”

  “She was at the front door, Abe. Her fingerprints and DNA say so.”

  “That’s true, sir,” Bracco said.

  Glitsky’s eyes went from one to the other. “All right. Still, the Preslee count isn’t too wonderful, is it? If it wasn’t for Vogler, in fact, you and I both know it wouldn’t have been charged. Why do you think that might be?”

  Schiff wasn’t backing down. “Like I said, she planned it and pulled it off. And let me ask you something. Did you get your take on this from your friend Mr. Hardy?”

  The scar through Glitsky’s lips went a little pale in relief. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Debra. It’s way beneath you, and maybe just a result of how you’re feeling this morning, huh?”

  “I’m feeling fine.”

  “Good. Because I did want to ask you both about something. Never mind your write-ups or your testimony or what Maya Townshend might or might not have done at Levon’s place, how do you, either of you, explain to me the complete absence of blood from any of her clothes or shoes or anything else you looked at? And before you start, let me give you my analysis and you tell me where I’m wrong.”

  For the next few minutes Glitsky outlined it for his inspectors. He wrapped it up by saying, “And this isn’t a question of admissible evidence or lack of sufficient proof to convict. I’m talking here the actual fact of what happened.”

  Schiff didn’t even hesitate. “The actual fact is she killed him. Her husband lied when he corroborated her alibi. Either him or the housekeeper. Happens all the time.”

  Glitsky’s mug was tepid by now; it was failing to serve as a calming device. “You’re saying she got home, when, before she picked up the kids?”

  “She might have. We don’t know.”

  “But we do know, don’t we,” Glitsky replied, “what time she got the call from Preslee? Couple of minutes either side of two, right? And we know she picked up the kids at three sharp. So you’re telling me she gets this call at her house on Broadway, decides on the spot to kill Preslee, drives out to Potrero? And by the way, I did it this morning coming in. No traffic, city streets, twenty-two minutes one way. So anyway, she sits down and drinks some water and maybe smokes a joint with Levon, whacks him with the cleaver, then cleans up with a lot of care, and she’s got time to dump her blood-spattered clothes before she gets the kids?”

  “She could have done it anytime that night.”

  “So the husband knew about it?”

  “Had to.”

  Glitsky looked over at Bracco. “Darrel?”

  No hesitation. “If she did it, and she did, Abe, then that’s what happened.”

  While a part of him admired the loyalty of his troops to one another, Glitsky felt his stomach roil at this absurd display of professional obstinacy. He was all but certain from his earlier discussions that Bracco thought that they could’ve tightened up the case before the arrest, and that Schiff had acted precipitously, but Darrel wasn’t going to contradict his partner in front of his lieutenant, and that was all there was to it.

  Never mind that their convictions flew in the face of the first law of criminal investigation—facts must flow from demonstrable evidence, and not the other way round, where the evidence is massaged or explained to fit a set of predetermined perceptions.

  Now, knowing he was defeated in his primary objective—to get his inspectors to admit that they might be wrong, and might want to spend some of their time looking for who had really killed Levon Preslee—Glitsky let out a breath, gave up on his tea, and leaned back in his chair. “All right,” he said. “But I think you’ll have to admit it’s possible that the jury’s going to have a hard time with Levon. Can we go with that?”

  “You know as well as me, Abe,” Schiff replied. “San Francisco juries have a hard time with guilt, period.”

  “All too true,” Glitsky said. “And all the more reason to make sure we give the DA everything he needs every single time.”

  “He’s got plenty here, Abe,” Schiff said. “She’s going down for Vogler. Even in San Francisco.”

  “All right, fine, I believe you, and I hope you’re right. And you’re both confident you’ve built the strongest case you could on Vogler?”

  Darrel was the first to pipe up. “Yes, sir.”

  “Debra?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay, then.” Glitsky pulled a small stapled stack—five or six pages—of computerized printouts over in front of him and flipped it open to the middle. “Then I’ve just got one last quick question for both of you. Who is Lee or Lori Buford or Bradford?”

  The two inspectors traded glances with one another.

  “Nobody,” Schiff said.

  “Nobody,” Glitsky repeated. “But I see here a Post-it in the file with our case number on it and that name or one like it.”

  Schiff, her own blood high by now, wasn’t hiding her anger. “You’re riding this one a little hard, wouldn’t you say, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m in charge of this detail, Sergeant, and in my opinion, this case we gave the DA is about halfway down the tubes because we just didn’t quite have enough evidence when we made the arrest—correction, when you made the arrest. And you want my opinion, we’re still a damn sight light on Vogler. And if this nobody happens in fact to be somebody you guys in your zeal to arrest just plain forgot to include in your write-ups or reports and who might actually help the DA get a conviction on this Townshend woman, then it’s my job to point that out to you. Either of you got a problem with that? ’Cause if you do, we can take it upstairs and have a discussion with the chief. How’s that sound?”

  Bracco, jaw set, a flush in his face, said, “Lori Bradford. An old woman out in the Haight.”

  “A senile old woman out in the Haight,” Schiff corrected him.

  “You didn’t take notes when you talked to her?”

  After a minute Bracco said, “No. We decided she wasn’t credible, Abe. There was nothing worth putting in the file.”

  Glitsky knew that though strictly against regulations, this was not an uncommon practice. Although inspectors were supposed to memorialize every interaction with witnesses or potential witnesses, either by tape or notes, in practice it often became the call of individual inspectors to include or exclude testimony, for whatever reason or for no real reason, from their reports. It was clear to Glitsky—if only because he was certain that Bracco knew better, but also because of the look of pain on Bracco’s face—that Schiff had drawn the short straw to write up the report on Lori Bradford’s interview and had decided for reasons of her own to leave it out.

  Keeping his voice under control, Glitsky finished the last of his tea. “Nevertheless,” he said, “if either of you two remember, I’d be interested in hearing what she might have told you.”

  29

  Before the decision really had a chance to sink in, a smiling and confident Big Ugly Stier, never looking bigger nor uglier to Hardy, rose at his table and—no doubt seeking to undo
some of the damage Hardy had done with Schiff yesterday—called Cheryl Biehl to the stand.

  Paul Stier had discovered Biehl, née Zolotny, in much the same way that Wyatt Hunt had, by chasing down Maya’s college connections in the hope that someone who knew her both then and in the present could shed some light on the blackmail question, and hence on Maya’s purported motive for the killings. Now the former cheerleader, conservatively dressed in a tan business suit, clearly uncomfortable in the role of prosecution witness, shifted as she sat waiting for Stier to begin.

  “Mrs. Biehl, how long have you known the defendant?”

  “About fourteen years now.”

  “And where did you meet?”

  “At USF, freshman year. We were both cheerleaders.”

  “And have you kept up on your friendship?”

  “Yes. Until she got arrested, we usually had lunch together every couple of months or so.”

  “Mrs. Biehl, did you also know the victims in this case, Dylan Vogler and Levon Preslee?”

  “Yes.”

  “And to your personal knowledge, did Defendant also know both of these victims when you were all in college?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever witness Defendant using marijuana with either or both of these men?”

  Biehl cast an apologetic glance across to Maya and nodded to Stier. “Yes, I did.”

  “And did you ever witness Defendant, either alone or with one or both of the victims, selling or distributing marijuana?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Would you characterize this as a more or less common occurrence?”

  “For a while, when we were in school, yes. They were the main connection if you wanted to buy pot among our friends.”

  “All three of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, Mrs. Biehl. Moving ahead several years, in the lunches that you and Defendant had together, did she ever mention either Mr. Vogler or Mr. Preslee?”

  “Yes. She mentioned both of them, Dylan quite frequently, since she still worked with him.”

  “But she mentioned Levon Preslee too?”