Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  “You’re lucky the grand jury indicted,” Batiste said. “It takes the heat off.”

  “I’ll probably still get sued.” Glitsky found a spot for his cup on Batiste’s cluttered desk. “Let’s see, false arrest, sex discrimination, race discrimination . . . I might as well give you my badge now.” It wasn’t funny, but they both were smiling. Cop humor. “Maybe Locke won’t drop it.”

  Batiste looked hard at him. “Maybe it’ll snow tomorrow.”

  “The kids could be mistaken.”

  “There could be peace in our time.”

  “You know, Frank, you are solace to a troubled soul.”

  “I try to be.” Batiste had his feet up on his desk, a legal pad on his lap. He started doodling. “So what do you think we’ve got here, the perfect crime? I hope not, because I’ve got a feeling this one isn’t going to go away. Anybody else could have done it?”

  “Maybe. Nobody looks near as good as Shinn did.” Glitsky told his lieutenant that he’d take another look at the business side, Mr. Silicon Valley, somebody else who might benefit, but the evidence was slim and none if it wasn’t Shinn. He flicked ice into his mouth and chewed. “You know, this one time I thought I might have a case with, you know, witnesses who weren’t already in jail, maybe a motive aside from lack of imagination.”

  “Maybe next year,” Batiste said. “And in the meantime we still have a very important dead person.”

  Hardy called Celine after he returned from Drysdale’s office—he told himself that she at least deserved to be among the first to know that her father’s killer was still on the streets.

  He reached her at Hardbodies!, where she’d been working out again. After he told her, he listened to the background noise in the phone—the throbbing music, the torture machines. Finally she asked him what he meant.

  “I mean May’s alibi checks out. She wasn’t out on the Eloise with your father.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “It means she didn’t kill him, Celine.” He waited, not pushing, for another minute. “Celine?”

  Okay, he thought, you’ve done your duty. Now tell her you’ll keep her informed of developments and hang up. Just hang up, go home and have a date night with Frannie.

  “So what do we do now?” Celine asked him quietly, shock in her voice. “Can I see you?”

  No. I’m busy. How about coming by the office tomorrow? “All right,” he said.

  He met her at Perry’s on Union, a meat market in the classic sense—fine food, big drinks, good vibes.

  Though her hair was still damp, pulled back by a turquoise band, she’d found time to make herself up. But somehow Hardy found her physical presence not quite so overpowering as before. It was the first time he’d seen her since their original meeting that the contours of her body—under the baggy purple sweater, the black and blousy pants—weren’t immediately evident. He was grateful for that.

  It was early dusk but the place was already jammed. She was standing near the entrance, which was on the side down an alley, an orange juice in her hand, talking to another man who was about Hardy’s age, though taller, broader and better dressed. When Hardy came in, her face lit up and she moved to him, kissing him briefly on the lips. She took his hand and turned; the man had already started for the bar.

  “I told him my boyfriend was on his way,” she said, “but you know this place. A woman alone is fair game.” She didn’t let go of his hand. “Come, let’s see if we can get a table.”

  “I can’t eat, Celine. I’m just on my way home.”

  She stopped pulling him along, still didn’t let go of his hand. “You mean you’re going to leave me here alone? I won’t last five minutes.”

  “Oh, you will if you decide to.”

  Another side of her, a little more humanity, a trace of humor. She did have a real life he knew nothing about.

  A couple vacated their table two feet from them and Hardy let go of Celine’s hand and guided her to it. A waitress appeared and he ordered a club soda. He could feel the heat of her thigh where it pressed against his.

  “Are you always alone?” Hardy asked her. “Every time I see you, you’re alone.”

  “Wrong. Every time you see me, I’m with you.” She leaned away from him. “Why do you want to know? You’re married.”

  “Yes, I am,” he said. “I just wonder.”

  She accepted that. “Not right now. Does this have to do with my father?”

  He tried and failed to find some connection. “No, I don’t suppose so.”

  She reached for her orange juice, took a sip and cradled the glass in both hands in her lap. “I was married one time. I was twenty-one, going through one of my rebellious phases. He was a musician, a good player. He finally made a couple of albums. Heavy metal, which now I truly hate. I think I despised it then, and I know Daddy did.”

  “Did your father and he get along?”

  She started to laugh, then stopped herself. “No. Daddy hated everything about him.”

  “Is that why you broke up?”

  “No, not really. He was a jerk, which I suppose I knew all along, but Daddy had him followed when he was on the road and he didn’t act like he was married. So,” she continued shrugging, “we had it annulled. It’s ancient history now, but it kind of soured me on men for a long while. Plus, there’s being rich. You know, it’s hard to find people you believe. Guys try to pick you up, first it’s your looks, then if they find out you’ve got money . . .”

  Hardy’s club soda arrived. He held it, staring out the window. It seemed to not be getting any darker outside.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. That there’s more than the pickup scene. I mean, didn’t you meet anybody in your regular life?”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes, once in a while. But my regular life always had Daddy in it.”

  “I think this is where our problem started last time.”

  She reached over and took his hand again. “We’re not going to do that again. I can’t explain to people about me and Daddy. It was all right, we did everything together.”

  “But he seemed to have a personal life. I mean women friends, and you apparently weren’t allowed to. How can that have been fair? How was it living with that?”

  “I don’t know how to say it or explain it, but it was okay. You did things with Daddy, you felt a certain way. Ask Ken.”

  “But it couldn’t be the same with him. He’s married, he’s got a life.”

  She tightened her hold on his hand. “I’ve got a life, Dismas, don’t worry about me.”

  “I guess I do,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I do.”

  “I know.” She let him go and moved her palm up and down over his thigh. “You are a very good man, Mr. Hardy. I wish . . .”

  She didn’t finish what she was saying. She didn’t have to.

  They never got around to mentioning the name of May Shinn.

  Hardy got home just at seven. Rebecca was in bed asleep, one of their regular babysitters was in the living room talking to Frannie, and Frannie was dressed up, ready to go out.

  He was in the house for less than five minutes. He wanted to peek in on the Beck, to feed the fish. Pit stop.

  They walked out to the car, parked two blocks away on Clement, holding hands. “Are we still fighting?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t fighting with you.”

  “Neither were you singing my praises.”

  “I didn’t agree with you. I don’t agree with you. I think your job is taking too much of your time and is threatening you and me and our family and I don’t like you not telling me what you’re doing and where you’re going.”

  “You’ve got to learn to speak out, Frannie. Express yourself a little more clearly.”

  “Not funny.”

  They walked on another half block without talking. “So if you can’t make a joke out of it you’re not going to say anything?” she asked.

 
; “I’m going to say something.”

  The last of the chivalrous men, Hardy held the door for her, then went around to his side. The sun had at last gone down. He put the sides up on the Samurai; it was warm with the breeze off the ocean.

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are you going to say something?”

  Hardy turned in his seat. Confidentiality obviously meant little to Andy Fowler. Since Jane knew, then certainly by now Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck was in on it. And Hardy had never promised Andy he would keep it private—he’d only promised himself.

  He’d only promised himself. He liked that.

  This was how it started, he thought. This was the kind of rationalizing that people everywhere seemed to be so good at. And once it was okay to break a promise to yourself, then it wasn’t all that big a step to break one to anyone else. Just so you could end a fight.

  Or maybe tell a little white lie to keep from getting into a fight into the first place.

  All he had to do was give in, tell Frannie about Andy and they would have a pleasant and well-deserved date. And Hardy’s supposed private integrity would only be slightly diminished—he could make it up on the weekend, do some good works.

  “Did you hear about the May Shinn thing today?” he asked her. She hadn’t yet, and he filled her in on it.

  She listened, and when he’d finished, she told him that it was interesting but that it wasn’t what their fight had been about. Did he want to tell her where he’d been last night or not?

  “I went out to meet a guy who’s got a legal problem, which I can’t discuss. Period. If you want to be mad at me about that, it’s up to you.”

  She was biting her lip, not so much angry, he thought, as worried. “What about the other stuff?” she said. “These hours at work, getting home when it’s dark, leaving in the middle of the night. What’s that doing to us?”

  The two front seats in the Samurai were separated by a well, and he reached for her and put his arms around her. She leaned into him. “We’re not being threatened,” he said. “The job is not threatening us. I love you, Frannie, okay?”

  She nodded against him, her arms around his neck. Her reserve broke. She started to cry.

  When they got home there were calls from Ken Farris, Jane apologizing, and Abe Glitsky wondering about the direction the D.A. was going with this thing.

  Hardy went into his office while Frannie drove the babysitter home and began rereading the file on the now-dead case. At least it was dead so far as May Shinn was concerned.

  He didn’t know what the D.A. was going to do, but he thought he personally was going to go back to doing his prelims, earn his stripes, win a lot of cases and eventually move up the ladder to where he might get a couple of righteous homicides.

  There was nothing else he could do. He wasn’t an investigator. He knew Glitsky, after the false arrest, would be super-cautious. He wasn’t inclined to stir things up with Pullios anymore. Frannie had been right . . . he was putting in too many hours, not having enough fun. He was becoming a lawyer, and if he wanted to do that he could get some corporate work and bill sixty hours a week for five or six years and make some money while he did it.

  He’d left Celine at Perry’s, thinking what a good man am I. He thought she might be a little in love with him. Although he knew he was infatuated with her on some level, he wasn’t going to pursue it. He’d made his choice, and not only was he going to live with it, he was going to be happy with it.

  That settled, he decided to close up the binder and file it away in the cabinets next to his desk. He arranged the yellow sheets from his own private notes at the beginning of the investigation—his initial talks with Ken Farris, impressions from Strout and so on—and laid them on top of the copies he’d made of the official file.

  His office was quiet. From the bedroom the bubbling of the fish tank registered subliminally. Not really looking for anything, waiting for Frannie’s arrival back home, he reread the early notes. All of this seemed so long ago, so distant in time and experience.

  He flipped pages, the police reports, Glitsky’s interviews, killing time. Elliot’s articles.

  And then the bubbling fish tank was gone. There was nothing in his world but a nagging, half-recognized contradiction. He flipped back to one of Jeff Elliot’s first articles.

  Ken Farris had told him that he’d last seen Owen Nash on Friday around lunchtime, after lunch. The article, quoting Farris as the source, said Nash had last been seen by his household staff on Thursday night.

  He looked back at his notes—Friday around lunchtime, after lunch. Elliot’s article—Thursday night. Thursday night was not Friday near lunchtime.

  He shook his head, rubbing his eyes. What was he thinking of? Farris wasn’t any kind of suspect in this. He had been Owen Nash’s best friend. All right, so he effectively inherited the business when Owen died, that wasn’t—

  Or was it?

  But all he had done was tell Hardy one day and Jeff Elliot another. The stress of those first days after Nash’s death had undoubtedly played some havoc with his short-term memory.

  But Farris was a detail man.

  Ridiculous.

  He shook his head again . . .

  Frannie was in the doorway to the office. He hadn’t heard her come in or close the front door or walk down the long hallway. She had turned on the light in the bedroom and it hadn’t registered.

  “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  He came out of his trance, shook himself. “More of this madness,” he said.

  “I thought you were done with it.”

  It was as tantalizing as that last cognac, where you knew if you had it you were going to hurt tomorrow. He would, perhaps, mention it to Glitsky. It wasn’t his job.

  “I am,” he said, closing the file. “I was just waiting for you to get home.”

  36

  JUDGE GUARANTEES BOND IN

  NASH MURDER CASE

  But Defense Attorney Verifies May Shinn’s Alibi;

  D.A. to Drop Charges

  by Jeffrey Elliot

  Chronicle Staff Writer

  In a startling series of developments surrounding the murder trial of financier Owen Nash yesterday, Superior Court Judge Andrew B. Fowler resigned just hours before it was discovered that an apartment he owns had collateralized the half-million-dollar bail for defendant May Shinn.

  According to sources in the district attorney’s office, investigators may subpoena a defendant’s financial records if there is probable cause that the money used for bail, or for paying a defense attorney, is the result of criminal activity, such as drug dealing or, in this case, prostitution. Ms. Shinn has admitted that she has been a highly paid call girl.

  In a related story, however, Ms. Shinn’s attorney, David Freeman, produced two young boys as witnesses who have testified that, using a telescope, they saw Ms. Shinn in her home during the time the district attorney had contended she was aboard Owen Nash’s sailboat, the Eloise.

  District Attorney Christopher Locke last night personally interviewed the two boys and announced that all charges against Ms. Shinn related to the murder would be dropped.

  “Two eyewitnesses confirm her alibi,” Locke said, “so there is no case. But remember, her gun was the murder weapon, we believed we had a solid motive. But we are dealing with a very clearly defined window of time in this case, and if Ms. Shinn was in her apartment on Saturday afternoon, she could not have killed Owen Nash.

  “This office is, of course, distressed by implications of racism used against Ms. Shinn, and we intend to investigate those charges and take disciplinary action if appropriate.”

  The relationship between Judge Fowler and Ms. Shinn remains unclear. The judge has reportedly left the city, but California Supreme Court Justice Marshall Brinkman, who serves on the state’s Committee on Judicial Ethics, stated that he is “deeply concerned” over reports of Judge Fowler’s purported involvement with the defendan
t. “Where there is any relationship, however tangential, between a judge and a defendant, the judge must immediately recuse himself from the case,” Brinkman said. “Any failure in this area is gross judicial misconduct. At the very least it’s a disbarment issue.”

  David Freeman refused to comment on Judge Fowler, although he certainly knew the details of the bail arrangement. Citing the attorney-client privilege, he also defended Ms. Shinn’s right to her privacy. “My client has been through enough,” he said. “She did not commit this murder. She is an innocent woman, falsely accused, wrongly charged.”

  “Wow!” Frannie said.

  “Yeah.” Hardy was on his third cup of coffee. He had read the article twice. He was astounded that Andy had essentially put up bail for May Shinn and hadn’t felt compelled to mention that fact to him during his soul-baring two nights ago.

  The sun was coming through the skylight over the stove, shining off the pots and pans hanging from the opposite wall. Rebecca was breast-feeding.

  “I’m sure this has nothing to do with a friend of yours who is in legal trouble that you can’t say anything about.”

  The shifting sands of the moral high ground. Hardy smiled at it, had some more coffee.

  “Where do you think he is?” she asked.

  “I think he’s probably home, holed up, not answering the phone.”

  “How much more do you know about this?”

  “A little. Not much.”

  “I don’t know how you can keep this in. How long have you known about it?”

  He pulled the paper back in front of him. “This stuff, about fifteen minutes. The relationship a little longer.”

  “So what was the relationship?”

  “What do you think, Frannie?”

  Frannie was still in her bathrobe. She had a diaper over her shoulder, the baby against it, patting her gently. Rebecca let out a long, satisfied burp. “That’s a girl,” she said.

  “Let me hold her.”

  Hardy took Frannie’s daughter—his daughter—into his arms and made a face that was rewarded with a delighted gurgle. “Are you my big girl? Am I not spending enough time with you?” He put his face down by hers, breathing in her scent, rubbing his cheek against hers. Frannie came around the table and pressed herself against him, looking over his shoulder. “We’re the lucky ones,” she said.