The Fall

by John Lescroart

  “It’s Max, Mama.”

  The inner door opened, then the metal outer one. Her eyes betrayed drink or lack of sleep or both, but she clearly was surprised and moved by his appearance here on her stoop. “Oh, my baby.” Stepping forward, Sharla brought her arms up around him. He hugged her back and they stood, holding each other. After a moment, she started to cry and he patted her back until she pulled away enough to focus and see him. She brought a hand up to his face. “How we gonna get through this now?”

  15

  DISMAS HARDY STOOD in his daughter’s office and said, “I feel guilty about this, to tell you the truth. I shouldn’t have meddled and stuck in my two cents. And just possibly, I shouldn’t have been so pushy about him getting in touch with the police.”

  “Of course you should have,” Rebecca said. “Since he didn’t believe anybody could ever think he killed her, he never thought he’d be a suspect. But your call, Dad, was absolutely the right thing to do. If Greg hadn’t agreed, or you hadn’t called Juhle, when they eventually tracked him down, that would have really rung bells, wouldn’t it? And there’s no way he wasn’t completely stunned when he saw her picture on the tube. You were there, you saw him. He was in pure shock. He had no idea she was dead, much less murdered.”

  “I thought so, too. And so why, again, did he feel like he had to lie to Waverly?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “I know. So stupid. People who haven’t ever dealt with the cops don’t get how serious it gets, and how fast, do they? And Greg could be the poster child for that. Everything he lied about was three hours before Anlya was killed, and he was in bed sleeping when that happened, so why did the details of their dinner matter? And he’s right. They don’t matter.”

  “But what does matter is lying,” Hardy said. “Now they think he’s a liar, and therefore, no matter what he says, it’s suspect. ‘What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.’ Nietzsche said that.”

  “Of course he did,” The Beck replied. “Everybody knows that. I was going to say it next, and you beat me to it.”

  Hardy grinned at her. “I can’t help it if I remember things.”

  “I know. It’s cute. But the fact remains, they don’t believe him anymore.”

  “Being his brilliant lawyer, you didn’t let him put any lies on the record, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So you did the right thing, too.”

  “Then why do I feel so terrible?”

  Hardy knew that answer. “Because you let him down. You made a rookie mistake. Right at the beginning, last night before Waverly even got there, you should have, if nothing else, impressed on him that he shouldn’t lie to the cops.”

  “It never occurred to me that he would.”

  “No. I know. But you were assuming that he was innocent.”

  “I still am.”

  “Fine. Even so, as a lawyer, you’ve got to give him the advice he needs that will protect him if he’s not. That’s the job.”

  “So what should I do now? What’s the strategy? Just keep stonewalling the inspectors?”

  Hardy almost broke a grin. He loved his daughter, and loved this legal give-and-take with her. She was going to be a monster talent one day. “I know what I’d do, but it’s going to be your decision. But before we go there, can I tell you a little story?”

  “As long as it’s billable?” Obviously teasing him. “Sure.”

  “It’s about Graham.” This was Graham Russo, one of the firm’s shareholders, whom Rebecca knew very well. “I know you’ve heard the story about how we met, Graham and I. He was charged with killing his father, Sal.”

  “Mercy killing, right? His father had Alzheimer’s.”

  “Right, but still completely illegal if he’d done it, which of course he hadn’t. But nobody knew that when they arrested him. So while he’s becoming the big-time suspect, what does he do but get involved with Sarah Evans, the female inspector working the case, who is now his wife of many years.

  “And the whole time I’m telling him what you’ve been telling Greg, which is shut up around the cops. Don’t answer any questions. Don’t give them any ideas. Let your lawyer do all the talking or you can get yourself in some deep and unnecessary shit. Of course, he completely ignored my every word and got himself into the aforementioned deep and unnecessary shit.

  “My point is that his talking to Sarah against my expert advice is not only what saved his ass at the trial but also what hooked him up with the love of his life. Like your friend Greg, he didn’t get that somebody really thought he could have killed anybody. That was just off his radar. And that’s probably the main reason why I decided to stick with him after he got arrested. He simply didn’t do it. It was obvious to me. He was already a lawyer himself and knew the rules, but he decided that he needed to break them.”

  “So he talked to Sarah, okay. But did he lie to her?”

  “Only about a hundred times. In fact, the greatest moment in the trial was when Sarah got called for the prosecution, and they ran down a litany of all the lies Graham had told during the investigation. Then David Freeman—God bless his soul—took her on cross and asked only one question: Did she think Graham was trustworthy? Without any hesitation, she said yes. The courtroom went berserk. It was beautiful.”

  “The judge let that in?”

  “It happened so fast, it was over before anybody thought to object. They objected afterward, of course, and even got sustained, but by then it didn’t matter. The jury had heard it. It turned the whole trial.”

  “So the moral is lie to the cops and ignore your lawyer’s instructions?”

  “No. The moral is that truly innocent people get caught up in this stuff before they understand what’s going on, and until they get their feet a little wet, they’re going to make strategic mistakes, which it probably behooves you to forgive or ignore or both. We’re not talking moral turpitude here. We’re talking a white lie to save everybody some needless grief and confusion.”

  “Okay, so what do I do now?”

  “As I say, anything you’re comfortable with. Drop Greg as a client. Bail out of the whole situation. Find him another lawyer. I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d get the inspectors back on the line ASAP and tell them your client is through talking to them, but if there’s any information they want, you’ll pass the question on to Mr. Treadway and get back to them.”

  “Then what I tell them will be hearsay, and they can’t use it.”

  “Good about the hearsay part. But not quite correct about if they can use it.”

  “No judge would—”

  Hardy stopped her. “I’m not talking about what might happen at trial. I’m talking about their theory of the case. They can simply wind up believing what you tell them. It wouldn’t be admissible in court, but there’s nothing stopping you—that’s you, Rebecca, not Greg—from going back to them and answering their questions in full, including the reason for the inconsistencies with last night’s story.”

  “Admit that he lied?”

  “Right. You know why? Because they won’t care if he lied. They’re looking for the person who killed Anlya, for real evidence. Anything else, so what? Greg’s reasons for not telling the whole truth are plausible. If the inspectors believe you, he falls off the list as a person of interest, which frees them up to move ahead with a better suspect.”

  “You think that could really happen?”

  “Short answer, yes, although that means nothing, since the variety of things that could really happen on any case is just about infinite. But my gut says go for it. Oh, and by the way . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Your motion? I got it filed by four on the dot, and Amy said it was superb. Best she’s ever read.”

  “The best. I’m sure.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re her boss, and she is such a kiss-ass.”

  •  •  •

  NELL
IE GRANGE INVITED Max in and poured him a tall glass of iced tea while he sat in a rigid posture at the big round table in the circular living room. He drank off most of it in one long pull, then put the glass down precisely over the condensation ring that it had left on the wood.

  Nellie pulled out a chair a couple of spaces away. “Anything I can do to help you out, all you got to do is ask.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know why I’m here.” He spun the glass on the table. “I’ve just come from visiting our mama.”

  “How’s she holding up?”

  He shrugged. “She’s somehow the victim here. Again. She knows Anlya’s gone, all right. It’s broken her heart, she says, and I’m sure it has. But it’s still all about her. How’s she going to go on? Maybe I could move back in with her and help her?”

  “Maybe you could—”

  He held up a hand, stopping her. “That’s not going to happen, because she’s not ever going to change. Sorry. Not to burden you with it.”

  “Hey. I asked.”

  He raised his eyes, met her gaze. “There is one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My mama told me Anlya talked to her about some problems here. Maybe something to do with a girl named Honor? Do you know anything about that?”

  Though Nellie’s reaction—he’d clearly hit on some tender point—was immediate and obvious, she forced an apologetic smile. “I don’t like to get in the girls’ faces when they’re mixin’ it up with themselves. They never got to no actual fighting, so I just stayed out.”

  “So you don’t know about anything that might have been going on between them?”

  “They used to be better friends. I know that. Hang out all the time together. But Honor, lately, she . . . Well, she’s eighteen in June and movin’ out, making some changes.”

  “Bringing some of the other girls with her?”

  Nellie sighed. “Five or six. But all of ’em, they go out the house any day, they free to do what they want. We’re not a jail here. Girls come and go.”

  “And those five or six. They’re tricking?”

  “Not my place to ask. But they’re all grown up now, out in the world. Honor says she’ll take care of ’em, her man take care of ’em, everybody makes some money, gets protected. I don’t blame nobody.”

  “Honor and Anlya, they argued about this?”

  Nellie let out a long breath. “The two of ’em were the smart ones. Honor, she does all right, sportin’ her fine clothes, her hair, the jewels and doodads. The other girls, they see that and want it, too. Hook up with Honor, maybe, her man’s got his friends, some of that good stuff rub off on them.”

  “Anlya tried to talk them out of it?”

  Nellie hesitated, then nodded. “She don’t like to see her little sisters go into the life. She kept trying to get ’em to see what else there is.”

  “And Honor didn’t like that?”

  “Honor say Anlya tryin’ to be stealin’ from her.”

  “Do you think Honor would want to punish her for that?”

  Nellie shook her head. “I can’t see—”

  Max interrupted her. “Or her man. Do you know his name?”

  “No. He don’t never come in. I never seen him.”

  16

  UP IN JUHLE’S office, end of the day, his two inspectors had no objection to the addition of Glitsky to the investigative team. In fact, they welcomed him back to Homicide almost as though he were the prodigal son. Wes Farrell had laid out the situation clearly to Juhle, and the lieutenant had welcomed the idea, because to a large extent it took the heat off both him and his inspectors.

  Surely, the fact that he was willing to accept an African-American (well, half African-American) DA investigator underscored Juhle’s own sensitivity to the reservations and concerns of the black community. Because of Glitsky’s reputation and—Juhle couldn’t deny it—his skin color, they had at least one card to counter the argument that the police and the DA’s office weren’t committed to finding and convicting the person who’d murdered Anlya Paulson.

  It wouldn’t stop Liam Goodman, but it certainly didn’t help him.

  The decision was both political and cynical; it pandered to the lowest common denominator of the populace and all in all was not very pretty, but it gave the police and the DA’s office a little breathing room.

  Not that they all hadn’t felt that they were hot on the scent of Greg Treadway. Or were, at least until Waverly started telling them about the call he’d taken fifteen minutes ago from Mr. Treadway’s attorney, admitting that her client had been less than truthful and forthcoming during his statement last night, and purporting to explain why. And in all, it was a perfectly plausible explanation, not that any of the inspectors were remotely tempted to believe it.

  “But this wasn’t Treadway telling you himself that he lied?” Yamashiro asked.

  “No. Specifically not. It was his attorney. She pointed out that since we’d seen them at Everett, Mr. Treadway had told her the whole truth and now, out of her love for justice and the goodness of her heart, she was telling us the real story. That makes it hearsay, which she also took pains to point out. But our knowing the real truth will help keep us from error, and we won’t have to waste any more of our time suspecting or investigating her client.”

  “That is so thoughtful of her,” Juhle said.

  “I know,” Waverly said. “I was profuse in my thanks.”

  “The bottom line,” Glitsky said, “is we’re not getting anything more from him.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “How do you want us to handle this, Dev?” Glitsky asked. Then, to the two inspectors, “Do we have anything else that resembles a lead?”

  Yamashiro spoke up. “Something may have been going on in the foster home she lived in. Eric and I talked to some of the girls there, and evidently, Anlya had some kind of falling-out with one of them. Her best friend, Honor.”

  “Honor?” Glitsky asked.

  “Her name, the friend’s name,” Yamashiro said. “Honor Wilson. The two of them left the house together that night, the same night Treadway picked her up. Then they split up.”

  “Basically,” Waverly added, “Honor didn’t want to talk about any of it. Nothing had happened. They just said goodbye, and that was the last time she saw Anlya. But in the absence of Mr. Treadway, we’re going to want to talk to her again.”

  “Which leaves the witnesses from the original scene,” Juhle said.

  “How many?” Glitsky asked.

  Juhle looked to his inspectors. “Guys?”

  “Five,” Waverly said, “but maybe only four we can contact again, since one of them was a homeless guy who walked away before anybody thought to get his name. But the patrolman who talked to him said he might recognize him if he saw him again. Not that he’d necessarily be able to provide much in the way of reliable evidence, but you never know. The other four didn’t have too much to say beyond the basics—somebody was arguing, a girl screamed—but they’d probably talk to us some more.”

  “That’s heartening,” Glitsky said. “Anything else?”

  Juhle shrugged. “In theory, the tunnel’s got surveillance video twenty-four/seven. I don’t know that anybody’s taken a look at that yet, or if it was even working.”

  “It was,” Waverly said. “I called in first thing yesterday and got them to hold it for us. I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The camera is down in the inside stairway, so it couldn’t pick up anything on the streets above or below, or we would have been all over it.”

  “Still,” Glitsky said, “someplace to look.”

  “Absolutely,” Juhle said. “Let’s not lose sight of what still seems to me like the best bet. Lawyered up or not, I’m reluctant to let go of Mr. Treadway.”

  “Yeah, but he won’t be talking to us anymore,” Waverly said. “Ms. Hardy was clear about that.”

  Glitsky straightened up in his chair. “Ms. Hardy? Rebecca Hardy? I
s that his lawyer?”

  “That’s her. Why? You know her?”

  Glitsky nodded grimly. “Only since she was born. She calls me Uncle Abe. Her dad’s one of my pals, Dismas Hardy.”

  After a moment of silence, Yamashiro said, “So I guess we don’t want to have her killed.”

  “Probably not,” Glitsky said. “It would be awkward over Sunday dinner and at family gatherings.”

  “Is her involvement a problem for you, Abe?” Juhle asked.

  “Shouldn’t be,” Glitsky said. “Her dad and I have managed being on opposite sides about a hundred times and only rarely came to blows. I didn’t know The Beck was taking clients of her own, but I guess it’s got to start sometime.”

  “The Beck?” Yamashiro asked.

  “Her nickname,” Glitsky said.

  The Homicide inspectors shared a skeptical glance.

  “It won’t be a problem,” Glitsky said. “I promise.”

  “I ask,” Juhle said, “because I had a thought about how to keep Mr. Treadway on his toes, which, if it works, might lead him to make a mistake. And I’m predicting Ms. Hardy isn’t going to be too happy if I go ahead.”

  “And do what?” Glitsky asked.

  “Out him as a person of interest. I don’t care what his lawyer says, the bottom line is he lied giving his statement. Most people will admit that lying raises questions about a person’s basic innocence. Even if Ms. Hardy tries to explain the lies away, lying is something guilty people do. So yeah, evidence or not, he’s a person of interest. He gets his defenses up, who knows what he might do. Or her, if she’s inexperienced. And it also, perhaps, gets Liam Goodman off our ass, at least for the weekend. No objection, Abe?”

  Glitsky shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me. The goal’s still to get the bad guy, right? If The Beck is going into defense work, she has to get used to defending guilty people, and now’s as good a time as any. So”—he clapped his hands—“how are we going to divide this thing up?”