by The Hearing
“Yeah, that’s what Banks said.”
Hardy shrugged. “You’d told me you hung out here. I thought there was a chance you might have known him.”
Logan couldn’t believe it. “Dismas, turn around, would you?”
Hardy did.
“How many people you see here?”
Hardy did a quick count. “Thirty-five, forty.”
“That’s about right.” Logan popped another pretzel. “At four o’clock. You know how many people are jammed in here come nine or ten? You can’t take a deep breath ’cause there’s no room to put it. So the odds of me knowing one guy . . .” He let the sentence drop, shook his head at Hardy’s optimism. “Forget it.”
“Well, I thought I’d ask,” he said. “Couldn’t hurt. Thanks for your time.” He started to get up.
Logan stopped him. “But the McNeil thing. You’re really going ahead on that? My guy still might settle, but who knows for how long? I think you’re missing a bet.”
“That could be.” Hardy conveyed that clearly he believed it was the least of his worries. And in spite of all his talk about Cole and Cullen, carrying that message to Logan was the primary reason for his visit here. Maybe the news that McNeil wasn’t going to settle would flush something. He smiled politely. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Driving up from Jupiter to his office, he stopped on Seventh Street and this time got lucky with Strout. The coroner, lanky and laconic, knew Hardy from several trials as well as his days as an assistant district attorney. It didn’t matter that he was doing defense now. Generally, Strout had no ax to grind over which side of the courtroom you called home. He was a scientist who dealt in medical facts, equally useful—or not—to both the prosecution and defense.
It was near the end of the workday and he came out himself to the lobby to let Hardy back into his office, a large room filled with medical books and a famous collection of murder weapons from antiquity to the present. Many were under glass, but an equal number—including a reputedly live hand grenade on a candlestick pedestal on his desk—were out there for anybody to grab, wield and use. Hardy could read the upside-down title of the book that was open on Strout’s desk: The Golden Age of Torture: Germany in the 15th Century.
“There’s a sweet-looking little tome,” Hardy remarked. “Keeping up on the old research, are you? Are they teaching that in med school now?”
Strout lifted the book, ran a finger fondly over the open page, put the volume back where it had been. “If you ever wonder why cruel an’ unusual punishment made it to the Bill of Rights,” he drawled, “you don’t need to look any further’n this. The stuff people was doin’ to one another back then, just as a matter of course.”
“Slightly cruel, was it?”
The coroner chuckled. “I tell you, Diz, the least of ’em is more’n most people would believe anybody without serious mental problems ever did to one another. And here we got our judges splittin’ hairs over what’s cruel and unusual, what the Foundin’ Fathers meant. They all ought to read this book, settle their minds on the matter. I mean, this tongue clamp here, for example . . .”
“John.” Hardy held up a hand. “Maybe another time, huh?”
“Not your area of interest today?” Strout settled into the chair behind his desk, chuckling contentedly. He reached for the hand grenade and threw it gently from one hand to the other. “No. Lemme remember. Cullen Alsop.”
“Ten points.”
Strout nodded and came forward. His hands hovered an inch above the desk and he bounced the grenade nonchalantly on the blotter. “Well, it was pretty much what I thought it might be. Heroin overdose all right, as expected. I asked the police lab to do a quick analysis of the heroin left at the scene, and it’s really their report I’m drawin’ on more’n anything in the blood itself. But let’s just say in laymen’s terms that if he used one syringe, which needle marks indicate—he’s only got the one fresh one, relatively speaking—then it was very pure stuff.”
“And there’s no doubt that was the cause of death?”
“No.” He was bouncing the grenade again, thinking. “There was some trace alcohol and if we ran down to the C-scan level, odds are we’d find other drugs. But this was heroin.”
“And higher-quality than what’s on the street?”
Strout lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. It might be what’s on the street now, although with each passin’ hour, that becomes less likely.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if stuff this pure is out there, we’d have seen at least a few more overdose deaths. You may ’member late last summer, one weekend one of the dealers brought up a new load of brown tar that hadn’t been cut? No? Well, it killed seven kids in four days.” Strout clucked in dismay. “But now, we got Mr. Alsop so far and that’s all.”
“And that means . . . what?”
“By itself, nothing definite. But it could mean a few things. One”—he let the grenade fall to the blotter and held up a finger—“the boy was dealing himself, checking out the product, guessed wrong on its potency. Two”—another finger—“he knew what it was and decided it would be a painless way to kill himself. And three, somebody else knew what it was and gave it to him.”
“Which would have made it a murder.”
A shrug. “Out of my domain, Diz. Absent any sign of struggle or motive or anything else, I’m listin’ cause of death as accident/suicide. Have you talked to Banks?”
“Ridley?” Hardy shook his head. “Not since Wednesday night, and not for lack of trying. He hasn’t returned my calls. But even Wednesday,” he added, exaggerating slightly, “I know he didn’t like the timing of Cullen’s death. The day he gets out, he’s dead, he can’t testify. So what’s the deal, do you think? Somebody set Cullen up to sink Cole, then somebody killed him before he could. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, but so little does anymore, Diz.” Strout picked up the grenade again, hefted it casually. “Maybe Banks’ll come in with something,” he said. “I’m sure he’s looking.”
Hardy sat with it a minute, then got to his feet. “Well, thanks, John, you’ve been a help.”
29
Glitsky eventually persuaded his sons that he could probably take a shower, get dressed in his jeans and a light sweater, and make it to his favorite chair in the living room without stressing out too much about it. They didn’t have to watch him continually—he gave his word he wouldn’t go outside or do the long version of his tap-dancing routine around the duplex.
But both of them wanted to stay near him, and Abe couldn’t say it bothered him. More, their obvious concern for him touched him deeply. It was good to have his family back together. Who could say when it might happen again? They gave Rita the afternoon off, then called Nat and asked him what he was doing. He came over with Chinese food—chicken chow mein and Happy Garden—and after lunch the three generations played hearts at the kitchen table for three hours. For the first time in years, the small kitchen echoed with actual laughter. Everybody caught up with each other, their lives in the last couple of years, swearing genially at bad play or bad luck, reconnecting.
When Orel got home from school, Nat left for the synagogue and the boys decided they’d get outside and shoot some hoops at the park down the street until it got dark. Glitsky had taken out his book and sat in his Barcalounger in the living room. In five minutes he had transported himself to the Mediterranean, where he prowled the shipping lanes off the Costa Brava looking for prize ships and booty.
The duplex had a west-facing front, and on clear days there was a short window of time just before dusk when the sun sprayed the room with light before it sank into the buildings across the street. The sudden glare made Abe look up from his book. He closed it.
Motes of dust hung in the room’s air.
Elaine was walking with someone she knew. It was very late, nearly one o’clock in the morning. She’d left Treya that Sunday at Rand & Jackman in the late afternoon and, if Jonas w
as to be believed, hadn’t come home to Tiburon. So she had stayed in the city—the two of them had probably met for dinner downtown.
Six hours? A very long dinner. Much to discuss, or one topic that consumed them? Perhaps cocktails afterwards.
She was leaving Jonas. It may not have been a dinner after all, but a romantic tryst at a hotel, or even the new man’s place. That would at least account for the hours.
But at some point, they left together. Why? They could have stayed the night either at a hotel or the man’s place. He assumed that some other nights she would stay in the city after a late meeting—Jonas would not need to suspect anything.
But she was going home this night, which again seemed to make a restaurant more likely. Her car was parked under the building in the Rand & Jackman lot, so she had walked to wherever it was, meeting him there. She must have thought they had settled whatever it was. He was accompanying her as she walked back to get her car . . .
Had any policeman looked in her car?
Probably not. There would have been no reason to. From the first minutes, they’d had a suspect. No one was looking for a killer.
Glitsky had a city map out on the coffee table and was hunched over it. The sun was down behind the buildings now. He had switched on a couple of floor lamps and drawn a circle with Rand & Jackman in its center. There were a finite number of restaurants—and perhaps bars afterwards—in the circle from which to choose.
The fact that it had been a Sunday night would eliminate those few that closed on that day. More important, the others would have been far less crowded than on the other weekend nights. Ten days had passed since the shooting, it was true, but a waiter, a maître d’, someone would remember.
This was police work. It was way past time for him to get proactive here. If Cole hadn’t killed Elaine, then someone else had, and there would be some positive trace of it. He would supply Hardy’s Three Musketeers with a photograph of Elaine, and between them they should have no trouble covering every restaurant within the circle over the weekend. It would be a start.
Folding up his map, he walked into the kitchen to call Ridley Banks. When the young inspector had called Abe in the hospital on Wednesday, he’d sounded as though he’d begun to suspect that he’d made some kind of mistake with Cole Burgess. He still hadn’t admitted any wrongdoing in his interrogation, but the door was open. Clearly, Banks understood that Cullen was tied to Cole in some way. Evidence at the scene of Cullen’s death might bear upon Elaine’s, and if that were the case, Banks would be a critical source.
It was no surprise that he wasn’t in, but Abe was sure he’d check his messages and get back to him in a matter of hours.
They stopped where the dark alley met the dark street. Did Elaine think she was about to be kissed? Certainly the killer was close beside her, one hand at the nape of her neck. He checked the street in either direction, the alley off to his left. The shot rang into Union Square on the cold night. Someone—a bellman at one of the hotels?—would have heard it.
Then he’d caught her. Brutally, cold-bloodedly taken her life, knowing he was going to do it at least since they’d left dinner, but walking along with her, perhaps chatting easily, ostensibly satisfied with whatever conclusion they’d reached. And then gently broken her fall.
Suddenly, another terrible conjecture, but so compelling it immediately felt like fact. He’d apologized as he let her down! Glitsky could hear it, could hear the son of a bitch. “I’m sorry, Elaine, but you made me do this.”
Outside, it was now dark. Glitsky was standing, leaning over, resting his weight on his hands on either side of the kitchen sink. His face, reflected in the window in front of him, had broken a light sheen of sweat. His jaw trembled, and the scar between his lips stood out fresh as a new wound.
“Dad? Dad?”
He hadn’t heard them come up the steps or open the door. Turning on the water quickly, he filled his hands and threw it into his face. When they got to the kitchen, he was drying himself with a dish towel. “Hey, guys,” he said easily. “How’d it go?”
“All right, all right,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get the number.”
Hardy and Rita both showed up independently in the half hour after the boys arrived, and now the two men sat at the kitchen table while Rita put together a tuna fish casserole on the counter behind them. The boys were down in their “wing,” taking showers and watching television. And Abe finally conceded that he ought to try Ridley Banks at his home.
Sergeant Paul Thieu was manning the homicide detail and gave Glitsky the number he needed off the top of his head.
“Scary,” Glitsky said to Hardy. “The guy knows everything.” He was punching at the phone, listening, leaving another message. “Rid, it’s Abe again. Still trying to reach you. Sorry to nag, but whenever you get any of these . . .” He left his own number, hung up, looked at Hardy. “He’s a bachelor. It’s Friday night.”
“Swell,” Hardy said. “I’m married. It’s Friday night. Speaking of which, did you ever talk to Treya?”
“How’s that connected to you being married and it being Friday night? But yeah, she called this morning, wanted to make sure I avoided the near occasion of stress.”
“Which, I notice, you’re not.”
“Close enough.” End of subject. “So what did you have her doing?”
“Directing the kids, mostly, but I also wanted to see if she had run into any files Elaine might have kept on Dash Logan.”
To Glitsky, this was clearly an unexpected direction. “Dash Logan? What about him?”
Hardy ran it down for him, including suitable disclaimers about how far-fetched it all was, how coincidental. “But,” he ended hopefully, “as Saul Westbrook told me just this morning, coincidences do happen.”
“It’s not whether they happen,” Glitsky said. “It’s whether they mean anything. Who’s Saul Westbrook?”
“Cullen Alsop’s public defender, who knew nothing about Cullen’s deal.”
Glitsky was still trying to find some thread. “And he’s somehow with Logan, too?”
“No,” Hardy admitted.
“Then I’m officially confused.” Abe touched his head. “Must be the drugs.”
Hardy tried to explain it again. When he finished, Glitsky was nodding as though it made sense. “And you spent your whole day billing some client for this?”
“Most of it, yeah.”
Abe’s voice was filled with admiration. “I’m in the wrong field,” he said. Rita interrupted things, shooing them away so she could set the table for dinner, but as the two men went to the living room, Glitsky kept talking. “So you’re working on one case against Logan, who is, after all, a lawyer like yourself. And another lawyer, your friend David Freeman, completely apart from you, has got another one. Right so far?” They sat on either end of the couch. Glitsky threw his map and notepad onto the coffee table and continued. “And Elaine, another lawyer, went to Logan’s office on a completely different group of cases? And finally, the clincher—Cullen Alsop had a matchbox from Jupiter, a bar where Logan hangs out.”
“Right,” Hardy agreed. “What does it clinch, though?”
Glitsky fixed him with an amused look. “Remember last night when I said I was a horse’s ass? I was wrong. That wasn’t me. It was you.”
Hardy took the criticism in stride. He lifted his shoulders. “Still, I felt like I had to follow it up. Shake his tree a little. But nothing fell out. Not today anyway.”
No surprise there, Glitsky was thinking. But he’d gone galloping off after wisps of nothing himself. There was no point in tormenting his friend over it any further. “Well, listen, tomorrow maybe we go a different direction. We might get luckier.” He picked up the map and his notes and went over some of his reasoning about Elaine’s last evening. He was in the middle of it when Isaac came in and sat down.
Glitsky stopped and looked up at him. “This is not strenuous,” he said. “I’m allowed to think and talk.”
&
nbsp; “Stressful.” Isaac wasn’t budging. “The doctor said stressful, not strenuous.”
“He’s right,” Hardy said, standing up. “Sorry, Ike. We just get to talking.”
Glitsky looked from one to the other. “Two more minutes.”
“I’m timing it,” Isaac said, checking his watch.
Glitsky shook his head. “Then I’d better hurry. So, Diz, we get our three helpers out canvassing the area, checking out the restaurants and bars. Then if Ridley ever calls back, we have him check the lab reports again for whatever they found in Maiden Lane that we didn’t look for last time. Also, Rid can follow up on Cullen’s scene—he said he had something on this, didn’t he? You were assuming he meant Elaine and Cole, right?”
“That’s the impression I got.”
“One minute,” Isaac said.
“All right, then somebody ought to look at her car. And her house . . .”
“We already did that today. Curtis went up there.”
Abe nodded in satisfaction. “Already? Good. And Walsh let him in?”
“Treya called him first, greased the wheels. She’s good.”
“Did he find anything interesting?”
Hardy shook his head. “Not at first sight. He brought a box back, but I only got a glance at it. I’ll give it a closer look over the weekend. And while we’re on it, Amy found that guy at Hastings, too. Not an Elaine fan anymore, though once upon a time he was a big one. According to her, definitely a possible.”
“Did she ask him where he was that night?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, then maybe Rid can go talk to him . . .”
“Time!” Isaac called out, standing up. “That’s it, gentlemen. Time is called.”
“Dinner!” Rita yelled from the kitchen.
“Okay.” Hardy was on his feet. He had the map and notebook in his hands. “Never let it be said I can’t take a subtle hint.” He started moving to the doorway.
Glitsky sidled along with him. “One more time,” he said, “for the record. As far as you’ve been able to find out, Logan isn’t any part of this.”