The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  Next, wondering if the Wrights had discovered their daughter’s pregnancy and, because of the rumors about Mooney’s promiscuity, attributed it to him. And what they might have been tempted to do about that. He scratched a note, came back to Jeri. “So how does all this relate to Mr. Mooney?” he asked.

  She scrunched her face puzzling it out. Hesitantly, the words started to come. “I guess, I think Laura needed somebody to notice she was alive. Maybe Andrew needed the same thing. That was kind of the baseline, you see?”

  Hardy didn’t exactly, but wanted to keep her talking, so he nodded.

  “Okay, so you’ve got two needy kids—Andrew and Laura—hanging on to each other, right? Then, all the sudden really, one of them wakes up. Now she doesn’t just need anymore. Suddenly, she’s . . . I don’t know if happy is the word, maybe . . . validated. Mike—Mr. Mooney—makes her feel that way, all on her own, without Andrew. If you ask me, that’s what Andrew freaked about. Laura just had this new confidence and went flying away. Not with Mike, by herself. But Mike had made it happen, and Andrew didn’t know how to handle it.”

  “So how’d they get back together?” Hardy asked.

  “That’s what’s funny. The same thing, I think, happened to Andrew. Mike really thought Andrew was a great actor. I mean, he gave him the lead. And I think Andrew finally just got it. He’d been stupid and he apologized. So next time he and Laura got together, it was . . . I don’t know . . . it seemed like it was on a different plane, if that makes any sense.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t think Andrew was jealous of Mr. Mooney anymore, at least not by the time the shootings happened?”

  “No way. He just wasn’t. I knew them as well as I know anybody. They were tight.”

  “But she didn’t tell him she was pregnant? Did you know that she was?”

  Jeri glanced down to the floor. “Yeah. But she was getting an abortion. She didn’t want to screw things up with Andrew again by getting him involved in all that. It would be better if he just never knew. That’s why she was staying later with Mike those nights, getting all that worked out. He was going to help with the arrangements. She sure couldn’t go to her parents.”

  “All right. But what if Andrew found out about the baby and wanted to keep it? Might they have fought about that?”

  “I doubt it. And so then because he wants the baby to live, he kills it? I don’t think so. And while we’re at it, Andrew didn’t shoot Laura, either. Or Mike. There’s no way. That’s just not who he is.”

  Hardy leaned forward. “Then do you have any idea at all who might have?”

  “This is going to sound weird, I know,” she said, her dark eyes shining now, “but I don’t think it could have been anybody who knew either of them.” A tear track, black with kohl, coursed her cheek. “They were too great,” she said.

  24

  First thing that Monday morning, Glitsky had put out the word with Marcel Lanier that he would like to see the field notes from the weekend work of his task force investigators on the Boscacci investigation. Because of the Twin Peaks killings on Friday night, Lanier himself, as head of homicide, had been otherwise employed and had not been able to participate, but Pat Belou, Lincoln Russell and the General Work inspectors had covered all of the gun shows in the Bay Area that weekend except the one in Fremont. Maybe because these San Francisco cops didn’t have reliable snitches in some of the outlying counties, nobody came back with anything remotely resembling Glitsky’s phone book from Mr. Ewing’s truck.

  Frustrated by the lack of data, Glitsky still believed he was on to the only possible lead, albeit a remote one, to Boscacci’s murder. So before he ran out to his 8:00 A.M. chiefs’ meeting, he called the ATF liaison for San Francisco, got a recorded message and left one of his own. He gave a Xerox copy of Ewing’s phone book to the guys from General Work and told them to get names and addresses for everyone in the book from the phone company’s reverse listings. He wanted them by the time the ATF got back to him so that he’d have something to trade—the names and addresses of known suppressor buyers—in exchange for the ATF’s cooperation in supplying still other, much larger lists of similar buyers. He had the personnel and the budget, for once, and he was looking for the nexus, if any, of suppressor buyers and people who might have had dealings with Allan Boscacci.

  After chiefs’, he met with the mayor’s representative, Celia Bonham, at City Hall, to discuss some jurisdictional issues between the SFPD and the officers and administrators of Homeland Security. After that, Paganucci drove him halfway home, out to Fillmore, to talk to the new executive director of the African-American Art & Culture Complex about some mutual impact issues, such as the use of the city’s finest as private security for the complex at the city’s expense. Back at the Hall of Justice, he fielded questions from reporters on all three of the major events currently transpiring in his domain—the handling of the LeShawn Brodie matter, Allan Boscacci’s murder (which some reporter had now called an assassination) and the double homicides of the Executioner on Friday night. Since he had nothing good or even mildly productive to say about any of these, it was a dispiriting news conference. Glitsky couldn’t seem to get much of a spin going about the fact that between the chiefs, the homicide detail and his own special event number task force, he had nothing to show, and very little to say, about crime in the city within the past six days.

  He finally checked into his office. The General Work guys had done a good job while he’d been going to meetings, and they’d compiled a neatly typed name and address list from the Ewing phone numbers, which now lay under a stapler on his desk. For lunch, he washed two rice cakes down with a Diet Coke. When his receptionist buzzed to tell him that two ATF agents were here, he felt reasonably prepared.

  But that didn’t last long.

  The two of them—Aitkin and Drew—struck Glitksy as having come straight not from their offices but from the street, perhaps a bust. Both still wore their black field jackets with the oversized initials “ATF” across the back; both were packing in obvious, bulging shoulder holsters. Drew made the introductions for both of them, and they sat without any fanfare in the chairs in front of Glitsky’s desk.

  Glitsky had planned to open the discussion by expressing his appreciation that they’d come down on such short notice and so on, but Drew barely gave him the chance before he interrupted. “We just wondered, sir,” he began in a terse tone, “if you’re familiar with the joint task force we’ve had working with local officers in each county and through which we’re all supposed to coordinate our activities?”

  “Sure,” Glitsky said. “I called Sergeant Trona last Friday and he told me he could get me hooked up with one of your agents by early next week, which is now. I’m heading up an event number force on this Allan Boscacci homicide. I didn’t have that kind of time.” He reached for his list. “But I think you’ll be pleased with my results.”

  Aitkin, who so far hadn’t said a word, came forward and took the sheet of paper. Drew glanced over at it without much show of interest. “And these are what?” he asked.

  “Names and addresses of people who’ve bought suppressors illegally from a man named James Martin Ewing out of the Cow Palace. Or at least that’s where he was working out of last Friday.”

  “How did you get to him?” Drew asked. “Ewing?”

  “I had a snitch. It was easier than I thought it should be.”

  Finally Aitkin spoke, turning to Drew. “Imagine that.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Glitsky didn’t much appreciate the tone. “Do you gentlemen have some kind of a problem?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m afraid we do.” Drew sat back, linked his hands over his belt.

  Aitkin had carried in with him a flat leather briefcase and now he opened it on his lap and withdrew a photograph, which he handed over to his partner. Drew, in turn, handed it to Glitsky. “I’d like to ask you, sir, if this looks familiar to you.”

  The picture was of him. The photo was taken last Frida
y, no doubt from the camera Ewing had concealed somewhere inside his van. “Ewing is your snitch,” he said.

  Drew nodded. “Didn’t you wonder why it was so easy getting connected with him? You got a guy looking at twenty years if he gets caught at this stuff and you drop one name to a more or less random dealer at a gun show and you’re talking to him in fifteen minutes? Any warning bells go off for you?”

  “I thought I was having a lucky day.”

  The two agents’ heads turned, briefly, to each other. Drew came back at Glitsky. “So what are you looking for?”

  “Background. I need to know if any of these guys are connected to Boscacci.” He pointed to his list. “It’s long odds, but we’re not working with much.”

  The problems of any local police department were of no concern to the ATF. “We’ve busted two-thirds of Ewing’s people already,” Drew said. “The others we’re watching to see who they hang with, how they hook up. You know the drill, which is why we’re asking you not to pursue . . . this any further.”

  Glitsky passed the photo back to Drew. His stomach was doing a mariachi dance and he put a hand over it. “I’d still be interested in getting some background on anyone who has bought suppressors, see if we can get a match.”

  Drew and Aitkin exchanged a glance and nodded. “We can provide that,” Drew said. “Probably be a couple of days.”

  “Sooner would be better.”

  “Always. Of course.”

  As the two men were standing up, Aitkin spoke for the second time. “It’s always our intention to work with local agencies, sir. That’s why we set up the joint task forces, for mutual communication and cooperation. So in future, if you plan to freelance out of your jurisdiction, you might check in with local authorities to find out what you might be getting into.”

  “I get it,” Glitsky said.

  When they had gone through the door and out of the office, he heard one of them say, “Fucking locals.”

  “I need to talk to you.” Wu hadn’t changed since the hospital. She still wore her blue jogging suit, tennis shoes, the Giants warm-up jacket. She stood in the doorway to Brandt’s mini-cubicle at the YGC. Her mouth was dry and her palms wet. Even after the ride they’d shared to downtown, which had seemed to break the ice a little, she didn’t know how he would receive her. But she felt that coming here to him could be read as an apology of sorts. She was playing straight with him now, keeping her opposite number up on developments in the case. She knew she was here with the best of intentions. “You’re not going to like it.”

  Brandt had his hand on the telephone receiver, halfway to his ear, but he replaced it. He wore a neutral expression. “I already heard,” he said. “Did he make it?”

  “He’s going to.”

  “I’m glad. I really am.”

  “Which leaves us some business.” She leaned against the doorjamb. “I’m requesting a continuance on the hearing tomorrow. I wanted to tell you about it beforehand.”

  “I figured you would,” Brandt said, “when I heard about the suicide attempt. You ought to know, since we’re being up front with one another, that I heard Warvid this morning talking to his clerk about that very thing. I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “He said he wouldn’t continue?”

  “That’s what I hear from the clerk. If Andrew’s bipedal, we go.”

  “Maybe he won’t be.”

  “That remains to be seen then. But let me ask you something. If Warvid continues on these grounds, what’s to stop everyone from feeling suicidal the day before their hearing?” Brandt leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, his feet up on the desktop. “Let’s be straight here, okay? This hearing is a formality. You know it, I know it, Warvid knows it.”

  “My client went sideways, Jason. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?”

  “Of course. All the time. But right now, the only thing Warvid wants is to restore order to the cosmos, and to do that, he’s got to get Bartlett back upstairs. Which he’ll do. Tomorrow.”

  Wu went from one doorpost to the other, arms crossed. “I’m calling witnesses, you know. I’ve filed a list.”

  Brandt’s feet came off the desk. He straightened in his chair. “You’re not fighting the criteria?”

  “Every one.”

  “All I need is one, you realize that?”

  “Sure.”

  Brandt sighed. “I’ve got to assume you’ve read his short story.”

  “I have,” she said. “I can mitigate it.”

  “All right, mitigate. But you can’t believe that a double homicide won’t strike the court as of sufficient gravity?”

  “It isn’t if he didn’t do it.”

  Brandt’s mouth stood half-open. When he finally spoke, his voice hummed with concern. “Amy, listen. Last time we were in court, you were admitting the petition. Now you’ve got one of the world’s fairest judges seriously upset with you. And what are you going to argue, that the homicides didn’t happen? ’Cause that’s all I’ve got to show—that they did. There’s no burden of proof. You know this. I make a prima facie case and I’ve got gravity and circumstances. You even get a step into arguing the basic facts and Warvid’s going to shut you down.”

  She smiled. “Good. You’re worried.”

  “I’m not worried,” he said. “Or rather, I’m worried for you. There’s no argument to be made here. Warvid’s going to walk in with his mind made up, as it should be.”

  “Maybe not, after he’s seen my motions.”

  “But Amy . . . Bartlett isn’t a juvenile!”

  “He’s seventeen, Jason. He’s a boy.”

  Brandt threw his head back, brought his hands to his face, finally looked at her over them. “I don’t believe you’re doing this.”

  Wu took a step, about the limit she could trespass without coming behind Brandt’s desk. “Jason, listen to me. You know when Andrew said in court that he didn’t do it? He might have been telling the truth.”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “But what if he was?”

  “So go to trial downtown and get him off. But for God’s sake, do yourself a favor and get it out of Warvid’s courtroom first.”

  But she shook her head. Intense now, she leaned in to him. “He’s already suicidal, Jason. As it is now, he thinks he’s going to be in prison the rest of his life.”

  “That’s where he should be. He killed two people, Amy.”

  “Maybe, but he’s innocent until—”

  Brandt barked a laugh of pure disdain. “Oh, give me a fucking break.”

  “You read his stuff, Jason, you know—”

  “I know he’s dangerous; that’s what his writing shows me. He’s a sophisticated criminal mind who thinks he can use you, and is on his way to proving it.”

  “He tried to kill himself to manipulate me? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Brandt shrugged. “I heard the shirt he used ripped. Maybe he tore it a little first.”

  Wu reacted in a blaze of rage. “Bullshit, Jason! That’s just such bullshit!”

  Suddenly, behind them in the hallway loomed the imposing and, to Wu, increasingly sinister form of bailiff Nelson, knocking on the door behind her. “Is everything going along okay with you people?” He moved in closer, lowered his voice. “The sound’s traveling pretty good in the hallway here.”

  Brandt spoke over Wu’s shoulder, the voice relaxed and friendly. “We’re fine, Ray. Just a friendly little pretrial conference between two country lawyers.”

  Wu’s eyes were flashing, her color high. She whirled and brushed by Nelson. “Excuse me, please.” Jogging, in her tennis shoes, she disappeared around the corner of the hallway.

  Brandt found her car, the last in a long line of them parked at the curb downhill from the front entrance to the YGC.

  She was in the driver’s seat, sitting with both hands on the wheel, head down. From the sidewalk, Brandt hesitated, then touched the passenger window with a knuckle, leaned over so she could se
e who it was. She reached over and unlocked the door. When he’d closed it again behind him, they both sat in silence for the first seconds. Finally, Brandt, eyes sideways, let out a long sigh. “I shouldn’t have said that in there. I don’t think your boy faked it.”

  She kept her own eyes forward, her hands back on the wheel. “I came down here as a courtesy to you, Jason. I wasn’t playing any more games.” She paused. “With this case or with you. The other night . . .” The words stopped. She looked over at him.

  “We don’t have to talk about that.”

  “Yes, we do, I think.” Then. “You were right. There’s something wrong with me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She moved her hand from the steering wheel as though she were going to touch him, but stopped, dropped it into her lap. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “That night, at the Balboa . . . I didn’t go into that thinking about Allan or Andrew or the deal I thought I’d made. That was just us. That was real.”

  “All right.”

  “That’s all I want to say.”

  “Okay, then, I’ve got one. If it was so real, why’d you kick me out?”

  “I didn’t kick you out. You left.”

  “After you said, and this is a direct quote, ‘You’d better be out of here by morning or we’re in trouble.’ You don’t remember saying that?”

  Wu shook her head slowly from side to side. “I didn’t mean legal trouble. I meant . . . I meant if this was supposed to be a one-nighter and neither of us wanted to get serious, you had to leave before we went any further.”

  “But we already—”

  She turned on him. “I didn’t mean the sex.”

  Brandt blew out heavily. “No. I know. I know what you meant.” A long silence. Then. “You figured I was playing you.” He chuckled. “I love this.”

  “Me, too. It’s perfect.”

  “A microcosm of life itself,” Brandt said. “Makes me think, though, that maybe we want to go in and get out of Bartlett now.”