The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  “At that time, Lieutenant Glitsky returned to his duties as chief of homicide. He couldn’t lawfully pursue Dr. Ross without more. I was on my own for the rest of the day. During our talk with Mr. Andreotti, I had conceived the notion that Dr. Ross may also have been at Portola and had a hand in the homicides on what we’d been calling Dr. Kensing’s list—terminal patients who had unexpectedly died there in the past year or so. Another suspect for those homicides was a nurse at Portola named Rajan Bhutan. Mr. Bhutan appeared to have been the only person with opportunities for these multiple deaths, and with a reason to have killed them—euthanasia. His wife died several years ago after a long illness, and inspectors had noted that for a nurse he appeared suspiciously oversensitive to suffering. The police had interviewed Bhutan, but the lieutenant and I agreed that I should do another interview. Perhaps I would be less threatening since I was not a police officer.

  “In any event, I asked Glitsky if I could talk to him and he gave me his permission and Mr. Bhutan’s home address and phone number. I went to Bhutan’s house after work. As I hoped, he finally voiced suspicions about Dr. Ross. He also admitted to a very great fear that the police would try to blame him for the murders. It became clear that Dr. Ross had been at Portola quite frequently, and at least on several other dates when the homicides were suspected to have occurred.

  “At that point, I thought it might be worthwhile to try and force Dr. Ross’s hand. Because of some other information we’d gathered, I suspected he had large amounts of cash on hand at his house. I enlisted Mr. Bhutan’s aid to pretend to blackmail him, to see if we could lure him out and make him come to us.”

  Reliving it, Hardy now hung his head, ran a hand over his brow. “In hindsight, this was probably a mistake. I should have simply tape-recorded Mr. Bhutan’s original phone call, which would probably have been enough for Judge Chomorro to sign a search warrant. But I didn’t do that. Instead, Mr. Bhutan made the call. When it seemed to work, I called Lieutenant Glitsky, who arrived there with Inspectors Bracco and Fisk within about a half hour.

  “I want to add that both Lieutenant Glitsky and the other inspectors were upset with and vehemently opposed to my plan. The lieutenant actually predicted that Dr. Ross, if guilty, would become unpredictable and violent. He was very unwilling to involve a nonprofessional such as Mr. Bhutan in such a situation. Nevertheless, since events had already been set in motion, and since Mr. Bhutan was not only willing but eager to participate, we went ahead. There seemed no way to halt events without ruining whatever chance remained to force Ross’s hand.

  “So Lieutenant Glitsky and I waited in the darkened bedroom, just off the kitchen, while Inspectors Bracco and Fisk were stationed in their car around the corner with instructions to come running when the lights went on and off.”

  He shrugged miserably. “The plan seemed reasonable and not excessively risky. But I did not contemplate that Dr. Ross would act so quickly. In fact, had Mr. Bhutan not found a way to mention the gun out loud without giving away our presence, and had Lieutenant Glitsky not acted so quickly, though at great cost to himself, Mr. Bhutan might have been killed.”

  A week later, after hours, coming out of a client conference in the solarium in Freeman’s office, Hardy was surprised by the appearance of Harlen Fisk, waiting in an awkward stance by Phyllis’s receptionist station. The chubby, fresh-faced inspector looked not much older than twenty. He seemed uncomfortable, nearly starting at the sight of Hardy, then bustling over to shake his hand.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” he said, after they’d gone up to Hardy’s office, “that I’m going to be leaving the department. I’m really not cut out to be a cop, not the way Darrel is anyway, or the lieutenant. I don’t know if you heard, but Darrel’s starting over, in a uniform again, with motorcycles. My aunt’s offered to find me something in her office, but I’m not going to go that way. People seem to resent it somehow.”

  “That’s a good call,” Hardy said.

  “Anyway, I’ve got some friends with venture capital and they think I’d be valuable to them in some way. I’d like to give something like that a go. Be in business for myself. Be myself, in fact. You know what I mean.”

  Hardy, with no idea in the world why Fisk was telling him any of this, answered with a neutral smile. “Always a good idea. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Well, you know,” Fisk sighed, “I had hoped that I’d be able to find something on the car that killed Mr. Markham. I know people always were laughing at me, but I really thought for sure there’d be some connection, and I’d show them. But you were the one person who took me seriously, who listened, took a look at my Dodge Dart list, even asked for a copy. I just wanted to let you know I appreciated it.”

  The kid was going to be a great politician, Hardy thought. Every connection was a chance to make a friend, make an impression, trade a favor. “I thought it might lead somewhere itself, Harlen.”

  “Well, that’s the last thing. I wanted you to know that it didn’t. I checked out every one of the twenty-three cars in the city. There were really only twenty. Three were nowhere to be found. I just thought you’d want to know how it ended.”

  “I appreciate it,” Hardy said. “Your new company needs a lawyer, look me up.”

  “You do business law, too?”

  “Sometimes. I’m not proud.”

  “Okay, well…” Fisk stuck out his hand. “Nice to have worked with you.” At the door, he turned back one more time. “Nobody blames you, you know. In case you thought they did.”

  The trail led Hardy to one of the housing projects, apartment house boxes in the Western Addition—three-story blocks of concrete and stucco, once bright and now the color of piss where the graffiti didn’t cover it. As he expected, nobody knew nothin’.

  But he knew that 1921 Elsi Court, apartment 2D, was the last known address for Luz Lopez, who had been the registered owner of one of Fisk’s missing three Dodge Darts. Finally, he convinced one of the neighbor women that he wasn’t a cop, that he was in fact with the insurance company and was trying to locate Luz so that he could send her some money. About her child.

  She had moved away, the neighbor didn’t know where. One morning, maybe three weeks ago, she had just left early and never come back. Though the neighbor thought she had worked at the Osaka Hotel for years. Maybe they had a forwarding address for her.

  The car? Yes, it was green. The bumper sticker said, “FINATA.”

  Hardy did some research on the Net. FINATA had been an agricultural reform movement in El Salvador, where ten percent of the population owned ninety percent of the land. About ten years before, FINATA had been a radical government plan for redistributing the wealth in that country, but its supporters had mostly been killed or driven out.

  She’d come here with her son, he reasoned. And then Parnassus had killed him. Markham, as the spokesman for the company, had taken the public responsibility for the boy’s death, though Hardy knew it had been Ross.

  But to Luz Lopez, Markham had killed her boy.

  Powerless, poverty-stricken, and alien, she probably felt she had no recourse to the law. The law would never touch such a powerful man. But she could avenge her baby’s death herself. She could run over the greedy, unfeeling, uncaring, smiling bastard.

  It was four o’clock, a Saturday afternoon, the second day of June. Outside, the sun shone brightly and a cold north wind blew, but it was warm inside the Shamrock, where Hardy was hosting a private party. The bar was packed to capacity with city workers, cops, lawyers, judges, reporters, assorted well-wishers and their children.

  They’d pulled in sawhorses from the back and laid plywood across them to make a long table down the center of the room. There were going to be a few minutes of presents and testimonials, then no agenda except to enjoy. The two guys in wheelchairs were at the head of the table, back by the sofas. Jeff Elliot’s was the first gift and he banged on his glass to get the place quieted down. McGuire turned off the jukebox right i
n the middle of the song Hardy had bought for the occasion—it was the only disco song on the box, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

  “I think this is only appropriate,” Elliot said, handing the flat package across the table.

  “What is this?” Glitsky asked.

  “It’s the page proof of the ‘CityTalk’ column I was in the middle of writing when it looked good that you were going to die. It’s a pack of lies.”

  “I wasn’t ever going to die. I was just resting. It was a fatiguing case.”

  “Well, you had a lot of us fooled then.”

  At the shouted requests, Glitsky held the framed page up for the amusement of the crowd and everyone broke into applause.

  Hardy, Frannie, and Treya sat around the far end of the table. “The wheelchair is a bit much, don’t you think?” Hardy asked. “He was walking fine yesterday at your place.”

  “He’s not supposed to exert himself for another few weeks,” Frannie said.

  “Doctor’s orders,” Treya added, then whispered, leaning over, “The fool was trying sit-ups last week and ripped open one of the scabs. Sit-ups!”

  “How many’d he do?” Hardy asked.

  “Dismas!” Frannie, on his case.

  “Eight, the fool!”

  Hardy shook his head in disgust. “Only eight and he busts his gut.” He looked down the table, glad as hell to see his best friend sitting there in whatever condition he might be. “What a wimp.”

  The trip took Luz thirteen days. It amazed her that after so much time, she could still find the house she’d grown up in. That was because things made sense here, not like in San Francisco. She had turned from the highway and come up through the town. One of the first things she saw gave her some hope. They had rebuilt the building where the newspaper had been, from which they had dragged her father. The last time she’d seen it, it had been a burnt-out shell, but no one seeing it now would ever suspect that.

  Then her brother’s clinic, Alberto’s old clinic. It was still there, in the same place, looking well cared for with the bright flowers planted all around. She didn’t remember those, if they had been there when she’d gone. There were a few cars in the lot out in front, people going in to see a doctor they knew. One they could trust.

  She felt a sharp stab of regret, but she didn’t want to let herself start thinking this way again. She had struggled for months to see that the bitterness was for the most part behind her now, purged in the tears and finally in the taking of that pig’s life who had cost her son his. Now, although the loss of Ramiro would never cease to ache in her chest, she could imagine someday coming to a kind of peace with it all.

  It all might have been to teach her something she might not have seen on her own. There was only this life and she had squandered a decade of it trying to fit into that foreign place, ignoring her own happiness and trying to make something that would be better for her boy. But what had come of that? Demeaning work, a life she did not enjoy for one day and never would, a boy who never knew the joy of a family, of the love of his father. A pain with no sides.

  She was thirty-two years old and a graduate of the university. There was, she knew, work to do here in El Salvador—not only family work, starting over with Jose

  ´ perhaps—but work with the people, to make this land theirs. This was where she would make her stand.

  Her mother’s house had grown young. The banana trees now grew nearly wild over the porch, hiding it in blessed shade. The paint was fresh, the screens fixed tightly to the doors and windows.

  She had not called here since she’d left. They would be worried sick. She had just been driving, surviving to get here, through California, Mexico, Guatemala. The borders and guardia and men. But she had made it to here now and she stopped the car. After all the breakdowns in San Francisco whenever she really needed it, the car had finally been fuerte when it mattered. She pulled to the side of the road. Getting out, stretching, she was aware that she stunk.

  She did not care. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t in the U.S. anymore.

  There was a motor going somewhere in the back and she walked around the house to the sound of it. Jose´—strong, silent, ugly Jose´—had his shirt off working over the generator they still used most of the time for their electricity. After all these years, she still knew his body.

  Standing ten feet from him now in the saw grass, she waited in a kind of hysterical suspense. How badly did the scars show on her? Had she changed beyond his recognition, and if he did know who she was, would he still love her? Would she love him?

  Suddenly the noise stopped. He straightened up, wiped his forehead with a bandanna, then saw her.

  For a long moment, nothing in the world moved. Then his face broke into the smile of his youth. He held out his arms, took a step toward her, and she ran to his embrace.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  PART TWO

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  PART THREE

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  EPILOGUE

  32

  33

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The First Law

  A Signet Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2003 by The Lescroart Corporation

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0985-1

  A SIGNET BOOK®

  Signet Books first published by The Signet Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  SIGNET and the “S” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: March, 2006

  ALSO BY JOHN LESCROART

  The Oath

  The Hearing

  Nothing but the Truth

  The Mercy Rule

  Guilt

  A Certain Justice

  The 13th Juror

  Hard Evidence

  The Vig

  Dead Irish

  Rasputin’s Revenge

  Son of Holmes

  Sunburn

  To Lisa

  Nunc et Semper

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my publisher and editor, Carole Baron, not only for her encouragement and support over so much of my career, but for her truly extraordinary interest and efforts from the earliest outlining stages of this book, which is in some ways so different in structure from my other novels. Mitch Hoffman’s intelligence and insights likewise contributed importantly to the finished product; beyond that, his good humor and accessibility are as much appreciated as they are rare.

  My friend and agent, Barney Karpfinger, remains an incredible source that I turn to whenever I need an injection of c
alm, wisdom, or good taste. His receptivity to the idea for this book and his early enthusiasm for it contributed mightily to its creation.

  In San Francisco, the peerless Al Giannini was a great help, as always, from the original concept through the eventual execution. His knowledge of the law world within San Francisco has been a cornerstone of the entire Hardy/Glitsky series of books, and this one is no exception. In the police department, Shawn Ryan shared with me his considerable expertise with a variety of firearms; much more importantly, his description of what it’s like to be under fire provided a crucial perspective. Assistant District Attorney Jerry Norman provided some choice nuggets as well.

  Peter J. Diedrich provided much of the background for the very real San Francisco Diamond Center scandals of the late nineties. Peter S. Dietrich, M.D., M.P.H., still makes the best martini in the universe.

  Closer to home, my assistant, Anita Boone, aside from being a creative genius in her own right, is simply terrific. Combining a wonderful personality with superhuman efficiency, she is truly one of a kind. I couldn’t do what I do without her. The excellent novelist Max Byrd is a great friend and careful reader who was a help many times and at many stages during the writing of this book. Barbara Vohryzek’s “good karma” plays a big role in my daily writing environment, and I want to thank her for thinking to include me in such a positive work space.

  My children, Jack and Justine, continue to inspire and hopefully to inform these books, and this one particularly, with a welcome nonadult perspective. Rebecca and Vincent they are not, but Dismas Hardy’s children could not exist as fully formed characters without them.