Fatal

by John Lescroart

  “Twelve fifteen.”

  “No, really. You’ve got to be . . .” Suddenly the reality registered. Throwing off her comforter, Beth was up. “Twelve fifteen? I can’t sleep this late.”

  “Apparently you can. And it’s Sunday, anyway.”

  “I wish you would have woken me up sooner.”

  “Not my fault, Mom. I just now got home from Laurie’s. We’ve been trying to reach you all morning, but your phone’s not answering. I was starting to get worried.”

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  “No. I know. Nothing bad ever happens to inspectors when they’re investigating murders. Silly me. I don’t remember the last time you shut your phone off.”

  “Did I do that? I guess I did. It’s coming back to me.” With an accompanying grimace, she swung her feet to the floor and put some weight on her legs. “Aahh.”

  “Hurts?”

  “It’ll shake itself out. You want to guess what time the coroner’s van showed up at my scene last night?”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “Eight.”

  “Okay, I’m going to say eleven-ish.”

  “Close, but not really. Try two thirty.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I didn’t get home ’til seven.”

  “So. Five hours’ sleep, though, after all. Not bad.”

  “I’ve got to check my calls. Why were you trying to reach me?”

  “Alan—you know, Laurie’s brother?”

  “The name rings a bell.”

  “Yeah, well, he came by Laurie’s early and took us to Yank Sing for dim sum. He asked me if I thought you might want to go with us. I went out on a limb and said you might. Except you were obviously playing hard to get again with that whole don’t-answer-the-phone thing.”

  “Obviously.” Beth snatched up her cane, next to the bed, and stood up. “I’m going to make some coffee. I’ve really got to check my phone. How was Laurie this morning?”

  “Still hungry after all these years, if you can believe it. She told us she feels like a new person. Compared to me and Alan, she ate nothing, but compared to the way she was, she packed it away. Shrimp lo mein, bao, duck, rice. Alan said it was a miracle.”

  “If it was, a lot of it is you. You realize that?”

  “I don’t know about that. I just think she wasn’t ready to give up for good. On life, I mean. She’s actually a very fun person.”

  “And you’re actually a very good person.”

  Ginny shrugged. “It wasn’t charity, Mom. We really just get along. Why don’t I get your coffee while you take your shower?”

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  The weekend magistrate was Nancy Casey Muller, thirty-four years old, the youngest judge in San Francisco. She took her job—signing off on search warrants—very seriously, and now she was looking over her desk at Beth and Ike. The set of her jaw, Beth thought, did not bode well for a positive result on their request.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’ve got a witness whose statement is that your victim told her that he was meeting a close friend of his for a drink and a cigar after he left her.”

  Beth nodded. “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  “Maybe I missed it,” Muller said, “but did your witness mention that they were having this high time together on a boat, to say nothing of the particular boat you are wanting to search?”

  “Not in so many words,” Ike said. “But we know that Geoff Cooke, the owner of the boat in question, considered himself the victim’s best friend.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Ike said. “And we are reasonably certain, Your Honor, that our victim was shot by quote, ‘a close buddy,’ on a boat, then dumped into the water, from which we fished him out two days later. He would have had to be out in the current to get washed ashore where we found him. Which means a boat.”

  “Or offhand,” the judge said, “how about the Aquatic Park breakwater off Ghirardelli Square, for one example. Or Baker Beach at low tide. Or Ocean Beach, for a couple more.”

  “Your Honor,” Beth said, “if Mr. Ash was shot on Mr. Cooke’s sailboat, as we believe he probably was, there will in all likelihood be evidence, blood spatter, maybe even forensics from the gun used to kill him, maybe DNA from the cigars they smoked.”

  “All that may well be the truth, Inspector,” the judge replied. “But I see nothing that remotely rises to the level of probable cause that connects us to this particular boat. Is Mr. Cooke a suspect in this homicide? Do you have any evidence whatsoever tying him to Mr. Ash on Monday night?”

  Beth shook her head. “Not yet, Your Honor.”

  “Well, before I bothered applying for another warrant, I would try to get to there first, as a rock-bottom minimum.” Muller turned her glance toward Beth. “And while we’re on this general topic, Inspector, at your lieutenant’s urging, didn’t I just yesterday sign off on another search warrant for you in this same case?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Looking, I believe, for a gun in the victim’s son’s dorm room over in Berkeley, the theory at that time being, I was told, that the son was a suspect in the murder and that he had admitted to buying a gun, presumably to use to kill his father, and on that admission I thought you had probable cause for a search. Does my memory serve on that?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And did you have any luck on that search? Did you find the son’s gun?”

  “No. But in fairness, as you may recall from the affidavit, Eric—the son—had told us that somebody had stolen it. I was just following up on that. If it had been in his dorm room, that would have been tremendously significant.”

  “But he was clearly . . .” the judge began. “You were considering him a suspect at that time?”

  “A possible suspect.”

  “Along, now, with this Mr. Cooke, I gather. Do you have a favorite between them?” she asked with heavy irony.

  “If we could check the boat, Your Honor . . .”

  But the judge cut her off, emphatically shaking her head. “That ship has sailed, Inspector. Or boat, if you will.”

  * * *

  As soon as they were back in the hallway, Ike gave Beth a sheepish look and said, “Well, I thought that went swimmingly.”

  “She didn’t like two different prime suspects in two days.”

  “I don’t either, but that’s not to say it doesn’t happen. How are we supposed to narrow down the field if they don’t let us look around? I’ll bet you anything he was killed on that boat.”

  “I’d say that’s a good bet but, as Her Honor so astutely pointed out, it really could have been any boat. Or no boat at all.”

  “No,” Ike said. “Two good buddies with boats? Does that seem possible?”

  “Maybe,” Beth said. “They’re lawyers. Lawyers have money. Money equals boats. Peter might have had five good buddies with five boats.”

  “If that’s true, then we’ll never find him.”

  “Well, we certainly won’t get search warrants to look at all of them, that’s for sure.” She stopped in her tracks. “But wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Geoff Cooke.”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, if you remember when he came by . . .”

  “I don’t. I wasn’t there, if you recall.”

  “Okay, but the reason he stopped in the office was to offer his help in any way he could.”

  “Staying close.”

  “Maybe that,” Beth said, “but maybe that’s our cynical natures messing with our heads. How about if Mr. Cooke really just wanted to help us find whoever killed his buddy Peter?”

  “That would be great if it were true.”

  “Well, there’s one way to find out. Ask him.”

  “Ask him what?”

  “If he’d mind if we had Crime Scene come out and search his goddamn boat. We get his permission, we don’t need no stinkin’ warrant.�
��

  “But how about if he did do it?” Ike asked. “We’ve waved a big red flag saying we’re on to him. And suddenly there’s a mysterious fire or a goddamn act of piracy, and all of our potential evidence goes away.”

  “Absolutely correct, sir,” Beth replied. “But having been refused a search warrant, if we don’t want to ask Mr. Cooke’s permission, I breathlessly await your alternative. And anyway, if he refuses us, that kind of tells us what we want to know, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, my dear,” Ike said. “Now that you mention it, I believe it would.”

  * * *

  The Cookes’ living room was spacious and now in midafternoon well lit with natural light. The four of them—Beth, Ike, Geoff, and Bina—sat in leather chairs around a large coffee table. The Cookes were having gin and tonics; the cops tonic and ice, hold the gin.

  As soon as they’d taken their seats, Beth outlined the reason for their visit, and Geoff drew a frown and said, “You’re saying you think Peter was killed on my boat? Why on God’s earth would you think that?”

  Beth’s explanation for this—since it essentially cast Geoff in the role of Peter’s murderer—created an awkward silence.

  Bina, in sudden and perhaps justified high dudgeon, put down her drink and looked around their seating in disbelief. “You’re saying that Peter Ash told your witness he was meeting up with a good buddy on Monday night and then, because Geoff owns a boat, there’s some connection there? Do you realize what you’re saying? It’s absurd and insulting.”

  “We’re sorry you take it that way, but—” Ike began.

  But Bina, in a cold fury, cut him off. “How else can a reasonable person take it? You’re essentially saying that because Geoff was a close friend of Peter and Geoff also owns a boat, there’s probably some connection between the two. But that makes no sense. Don’t you see the logical inconsistency here?”

  “We do, yes,” Beth said. “We know how it looks, which is like fishing in the dark. But your husband told me he wanted to help if we needed anything.”

  “And that’s true,” Geoff said.

  “So we knew this didn’t sound good, wouldn’t sound reasonable to either of you. But he made the offer to help. We wouldn’t be here now chasing down marginal scenarios if we had more solid leads.”

  “I told him he shouldn’t get involved,” Bina said. “That you’d take it wrong and that something like this could happen.”

  “Like what?” Beth asked.

  “Like you accusing him of being part of . . . a suspect even . . .”

  “I’m sorry it upsets you, but we have very little to go on. We know Peter wound up in the water, and we believe he met with someone he described as his good buddy on the night he was shot . . .”

  Geoff finally broke in. “Excuse me, and you believe that was Monday night?”

  “Probably. Almost certainly. Nobody saw Peter alive after about nine o’clock that night.”

  “Well,” Geoff turned to his wife, “I don’t think we need to be upset about this, dear, for a couple of reasons.” He came back to Beth. “First, you have to know that Peter called everybody his good buddy. We’d be out having a drink and see somebody he knew and next thing you know he’s introducing his good buddy Al or his good buddy Bob. And I was of course his good buddy Geoff.”

  Ike came forward in his chair. “You said there were two things.”

  “Yes. Well, the other one is that Monday night I was at my office with a deposition that went on nonstop until around one o’clock Tuesday morning. I was in the conference room with Don Watrous—Watrous Properties, maybe you know him?—and three of his attorneys. Six of us all together. Talk to any of them or all of them. I promise you I didn’t kill Peter. As I told you last time we talked, Inspector Tully, he was majorly flawed, but I loved the guy. Whoever killed him, I want to help you find him.”

  “Or her,” Bina said.

  “Of course,” Beth said, “or her.”

  She and Ike exchanged a glance. “So, Mr. Cooke, you wouldn’t mind if we got our Crime Scene Unit to come down and take a look at your boat?”

  He took a long sip of his drink, then put it down in front of him. “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, Inspector, but you and your team are welcome to tear the thing apart if you need to.”

  * * *

  “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.” Bina was on the phone, telling Kate about the inspectors’ visit. “Can you imagine?”

  “They must be getting truly desperate to find a suspect. Beth was by here the other night, you know, too.”

  “Beth?”

  “Sorry. I mean Inspector Tully.”

  “You know her? Personally?”

  “Very well. We went to school together and have been friends forever.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but she’s not my favorite person by a long shot.”

  “For what it’s worth, she made me a little angry the other night, too. I think she’s under a lot of pressure to solve this one. She’s usually great. But I’ve never really seen her doing her job with the police.”

  “So she came and talked to you? Did you even know Peter?”

  “Just from your house. That one dinner party, remember?”

  “Sure. But how did she find out about that?”

  “I must have mentioned it in passing, I guess. In any event, she jumped on it.”

  “On what, though?”

  “I know. Ridiculous. Were we good friends of Peter’s? How well did we know each other? When was the last time we’d seen him? And you’ll love this: essentially, it came down to her wanting to know what Ron and I had been doing last Monday night, too. Although she didn’t come right out and ask.”

  “With friends like that . . .” Bina said.

  “Really. Though in her favor, she did call me back and apologize.”

  “I wouldn’t forgive her.”

  “Well.” Kate hesitated. “To tell you the truth, besides the long history, we’ve got kind of a special bond. We were in the Ferry Building, sitting together. She threw herself in front of me and took two bullets. She’d have to do something pretty awful for me not to forgive her.”

  Bina had no reply to that.

  “Anyway,” Kate went on. “If you want, I could talk to her. It might help.”

  “And say what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe call her off from searching the boat. It seems like that’s really just hassling you for no real reason.”

  “No no no. I don’t really care about that. I am ninety-nine percent positive that the odds of them finding anything on the boat are slim to none. I’m just so furious that Geoff came down to see her and offer his help out of the goodness of his heart, and the next thing you know, they’re treating us like potential murderers. Because regardless of what they say, they obviously think Geoff had something to do with it. Which is just patently absurd. I can’t even really imagine what your friend is thinking.”

  “She’s just shaking trees, Bina. I think that must be all it is.”

  “Well, she’s shaking the wrong one.”

  30

  BETH DIDN’T FEEL EVEN CLOSE to caught up on sleep. And Ike was possibly worse.

  After they left the Cookes’ home, with written permission to search Geoff’s boat burning a hole in their pockets, out at the curb they put in a call to Len Faro who, after the most demanding night he and his crime scene team had faced since the terrorist attack, was not at his desk. Beth left a message for him, outlining the urgency of her request, but the plain fact remained—and they should have realized it—that the backlog of processing work on the Crime Scene Unit was enormous. Faro, with not one but four homicides yesterday, had undoubtedly put in more hours over the weekend than Beth had. She didn’t hold out much hope that she would hear from him before Monday morning at the earliest. And the priority he would assign to the search of a boat that was not even a definite crime scene . . .

  Getting him by Monday, she knew,
was optimistic. And that was a full week after Peter Ash had been killed.

  She hated the fact that this would give Geoff time to clean up any obvious evidence. But on the other hand, he’d already had plenty of time to do that. The trace evidence that the Crime Scene Unit might locate wasn’t so easy to get rid of.

  Statistically, with so much time having passed, she and Ike were now in the neighborhood of the murder that would never be solved.

  After leaving her message for Faro, still parked out in front of the Cookes’ home, Beth put in a call to the Ashes, hoping to persuade Jill to agree to another brief interrogation with the boys. Beth wanted some closure on Eric’s missing gun. Jill could call her lawyer and have legal representation while they talked.

  In reply, Beth got an earful of bitter abuse from Jill’s sister Julie. Didn’t Beth realize that they were still in mourning? Peter may have deserted the family, but the bare fact, the trauma of his murder, still hung over the house. The family was also trying to deal with the myriad details and emotions surrounding the funeral, which by the way (unstated but understood, “you assholes!”) was tomorrow morning.

  Julie then gave Beth their lawyer’s name, Ben Patchett, and recommended that she call him and make an appointment if she wanted to do any more interrogations with the family.

  When she hung up, Ike, having checked his messages while Beth was getting chewed out, said, “That was a call from Michelle Griffin with the Chronicle. She was following up on Theresa’s suicide and wants to know what personal relationship, if any, she had with her boss, the homicide victim Peter Ash. Was she in any way a person of interest in our investigation?”

  “Shit.”

  “Right. So we’re going to have to go check out Theresa’s place, too.”

  “In our free time.”

  “Or sooner.”

  Beth leaned back in the car seat, her head back, and closed her eyes. “I hate to say it, Ike, but I’m running out of gas. How about you?”

  “I could probably keep going, but the warning light’s definitely on.” Ike hit the ignition and pulled out into the street. “Really, though,” he said. “Who killed that son of a bitch?”