The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  Wu shook her head. “We can’t. I can’t abandon him, and if you drop out, the seven-oh-seven gets continued, plus you’d have to give a reason, which would probably get you fired.”

  Brandt suddenly saw something over Wu’s shoulder, and he swore. Across the street, Ray Nelson was leaning over the roof of his car, lighting a cigarette. Seeing them both now looking at him, he raised a hand in greeting, then opened the car door and got in.

  “He saw us,” Wu said.

  “Yes, he did. But so what? We’re sitting in a car, having a discussion.”

  “Do you think he followed us out?”

  “I don’t know. Why would he?”

  “I don’t know. To have something on us.” Wu looked after Nelson’s car, now driving away. “The guy creeps me out.”

  “Ray? He’s a pussycat after you get to know him,” Brandt said.

  “I don’t want to get to know him.”

  “No, honestly, you probably don’t. But maybe him seeing us out here was a good object lesson, after all.”

  “In what?”

  “The wisdom of being seen together outside the courtroom.”

  25

  Top down on the convertible, with coat and tie off and the top button of his shirt undone, Hardy with his headphones on might have been mistaken for a stressed-out executive zoning out to his relaxation tapes. In fact, he was waiting across the street from the murder scene, listening again to the tape of the other male actor in the play, Steve Randell, to whom he’d talked at Sutro after he’d finished with Alicia North and Jeri Croft.

  When Juan Salarco pulled into his driveway at a little after three o’clock, Hardy sat up, slipped the recorder back in his pocket, put up the car’s hood and got out. Across the street, Salarco exited his truck and immediately went to the small garage and opened it. By the time he turned around, Hardy was standing by his driver’s side fender. He raised a hand with an exaggerated nonchalance that he didn’t come close to feeling.

  He realized that ever since he’d concluded his careful review of the tape he’d made with Juan, he’d begun to imagine that Andrew Bartlett might be innocent. But, he reminded himself now, that belief hinged on what Salarco told him in the next ten or fifteen minutes. If he had in fact heard two gunshots, or even what might be interpreted as two gunshots, Hardy’s hopes and maybes would be out the window. He hadn’t recognized before this moment how invested he’d become. “Hey!” he said, low-key.

  Salarco’s boyish face broke into a ready smile. “Deezmus,” he said, coming forward to shake his hand, crushing it effortlessly. “I try to get you this weekend, after you call, sí?”

  “Sí, but my wife had an accident skiing. She’s okay, but it took up some time. Now I’m wondering if I can take up a little more of yours.”

  Salarco took a minute, perhaps translating the request, then nodded. “Sure.” He pointed. “First, I unload though, the truck, okay?”

  The sun was bright overhead, but a light breeze kept the day cool enough, and Hardy decided to pitch in. It seemed the natural thing to do, lifting the rakes, shovels and wire trimmer from their positions in the wooden slats on either side of the truck while Juan wheeled the mowers and heavier gear down his makeshift wooden ramp and around into the garage. When they finished, Juan locked up the garage and the truck, and then they walked up the indoor stairs together.

  At the door, Salarco called out, “Hola,” got a female response and went straight through the living room, past the television with its American soap opera on the screen, to the cheerful kitchen. Hand-sewn curtains—bright yellow cotton with a red and orange floral print—cast shade over the back counter and the Formica table, but they only covered half the windows, and allowed in bright shafts of sun.

  Anna turned as they entered. Hardy saw her light a smile at her husband, then extinguish it when she saw him. She had a large pot going on the gas burner—olive oil and garlic—and was cutting more vegetables—onions, red and green peppers, tomatoes—on the counter, while Carla, the baby, sat contentedly jailed, spinning the plastic letters on the sides of the playpen.

  Salarco picked up the baby, tucking her in his arm. He then kissed his wife, whispering something to her, and went to the refrigerator for a couple of beers. Hardy took his, pulled at it, tried with a grin to break some ice with the wife. “It smells great in here.” She nodded politely and went back to her vegetables. Still holding Carla like a football under one arm, Salarco walked over to the table and sat in one of the chairs, indicating that Hardy should take another one. Moving forward, he took his tape recorder from his pants pocket and held it up, getting tacit permission.

  Salarco nodded. “So, how can I help you?”

  Hardy had been waiting so long to ask that he pushed the record button and was talking before he’d sat down. “Something we really didn’t get clear last time that might be important.”

  Salarco moved the baby to his knee and began bouncing her up and down. “Okay.”

  “The noise of the gunshot.”

  “What about it?”

  “The last time we talked, and I listened to the tape of our conversation a lot, you were talking about the noises downstairs when the fighting was going on. This is after you’d gone down the first time to ask them to be more quiet. Do you remember?”

  “Sí.”

  “All right. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over those few minutes again with you. From the first noise that woke up Carla again. Do you think you can put yourself back there and try to remember exactly what things sounded like? What you thought at the time?”

  “All right.”

  “We can take a minute,” Hardy said. “We’re in no hurry. I want you to think back to that night if you can. Carla had a high fever and she’d been crying all night, and then finally you got her to sleep. You and Anna went out to the living room and turned on the television, quietly. Do you remember all that?”

  Salarco was concentrating, the perfect witness who wanted to recall the exact truth. And with no one to object if Hardy led him back to the scene, to his state of mind. “Sí,” he said. “I am there.”

  “Okay.” Hardy had memorized the sections. “Last time we talked, you said you heard a scream, the girl scream.”

  “Sí.”

  “And then the first noise you heard—a bump, you called it—where you said you could feel it in the floor, as though something heavy had dropped downstairs.”

  Salarco was paying careful attention. He had stopped bouncing Carla, put one of his fingers into her mouth, a pacifier. His face took on a faraway look.

  “Is that about right?” Hardy asked. “The first noises, then, were a scream, then a bump?”

  A nod.

  “Now the next noise, the second one. You said it sounded like something crashing with glass breaking.” Anna, Hardy noticed, had stopped cutting her vegetables, although she didn’t turn around.

  “Yes. I hear that,” Salarco said. “The glass breaking. Okay.”

  Hardy threw another quick glance at Anna. She hadn’t moved a muscle. “Finally,” he said, “the last one was a boom again. You didn’t say it sounded like somebody slamming the front door under you. You said it was the door slamming.”

  “Sí. Okay.”

  “You mean yes? That’s what it was?”

  “Right. Yes.”

  “So would you now describe any of those sounds—try to remember exactly if you can—would you say any of those sounds could have been a gunshot?”

  A spark of surprise, or perhaps it was something else—recognition of a mistake? pure fear?—shot through Salarco’s eyes. He licked his lips. The youthful face suddenly aged.

  “It’s all right,” Hardy said. “You’ve never testified that they were. You’ve said what you’ve said, and people assumed. Now I’m asking you. Were they gunshots?” He was sure for a moment that he’d spooked him by springing an unseen trap. And he couldn’t afford to lose Salarco’s cooperation. If that happened, Andrew would be tried as an
adult and probably convicted. Hardy, himself, might never know the truth of what happened downstairs that night.

  He had been subliminally aware of the television in the next room—in English—throughout the entire course of his questions so far with Juan. And now, needing to somehow redirect the energy and keep these witnesses talking, he had to take a chance. “Mrs. Salarco?”

  Her shoulders tightened; then she sighed and she turned around. “Sí?”

  “Wouldn’t you say that’s about right? The way your husband described the noises? Did any of them sound like gunshots to you?”

  She didn’t even have to think about it. “No. I never thought about that before, but there was no sound of any shots. Just the other sounds.” She turned to her husband. “Cariño? Sí? Es verdad?”

  He nodded and seemed to take some strength from her. Taking a breath, he came back to Hardy. “When I sit back and listen, I cannot say any of the noises sounded like shots.”

  The relief almost made Hardy dizzy. Not only had he gotten the critical admission, but they’d both put it on tape. Now, instead of being the prosecution’s star witnesses, the Salarcos’ testimony would work if not to exonerate Andrew, then at least in his favor.

  Anna came over, picked up the baby and stood holding it, leaning against her husband.

  “Your English is very good, Mrs. Salarco,” Hardy said.

  She wasn’t happy or, at the moment, proud of it. “Three years,” she said. “Juan and I—me?—we try at home.”

  “And pick up a little here and there on TV?”

  She flashed a glare into the living room, went and placed the baby gently back into her playpen.

  Hardy let them get used to the change in the dynamic. He took a sip of his beer, then spoke to both of them. “As I said before, I’m not with the INS. I will do nothing to involve you with them, no matter what you say or do. If they come to me with any questions about you at all, I won’t answer them. The only person I’m interested in is Andrew. I’m starting to believe he may not be a killer.”

  “But I . . .” Juan stammered. “It was him. I saw him with these eyes.”

  “Yes, you did,” Hardy said. “In fact, you saw him twice. Once when you went downstairs the first time to complain, the second time when he came back after you’d called nine one one. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. But there was also the other time.”

  Hardy clucked, folded his arms, sat back a moment. He picked up his beer as a prop. He didn’t want to risk alienating Salarco for good, but he had another point to drive home, perhaps more critical than the first. And to get to it, he had to expose something much worse than Salarco’s gunshot misperception, or lack of precision.

  “That other time is what I wanted to talk about,” he began. “The time after the door slammed downstairs, when you and Anna jumped up from the couch and looked out the window and saw somebody turn around on the walkway out by the street.”

  “It wasn’t ‘somebody,’ ” Juan said. He pushed back a little from the table, straightened himself in his chair, his back stiff now, and crossed one leg over the other. He’d picked up on Hardy’s direction, and didn’t like it. “It was the boy. Andrew. I saw him.”

  Afraid of losing him, Hardy twirled his bottle, took a beat. “I’m not saying you didn’t, Juan. If you saw him, you saw him, and that’s the end of it.”

  Salarco nodded, an abrupt bounce of the head. Suddenly impaciente with all this, and equally afraid of where it might go. When he picked up his bottle and drank, Hardy seized the opportunity. “It’s just that when we talked the other night . . . I’ve got a copy of the tape right here if you’d like to hear it . . . but I also wrote down exactly what you said.” He took the folded sheet of yellow paper from his shirt pocket, opened it, and spread it out in front of them. “Here. Listen: ‘Anna goes to this window, here, and I am behind her, and there is the boy running away. Hestops under the light there, and turns, and Anna starts to put the window up to . . . to scream at him I think, but then Carla starts again with crying.’ ” That’s what you said, Juan. Isn’t that how you remember it?”

  Salarco put his bottle down and stared out through the curtains.

  Hardy pressed him. “The reason it’s so important, Juan . . . the reason that this particular identification is so important . . . ,” he brought Anna into it with his eyes, “is that there’s little doubt that the person that both of you saw out the window was the person who had killed Mr. Mooney and the girl. Very little doubt.”

  Salarco pouted, his visage frankly dark now. “It was Andrew,” he said.

  “I’m not arguing with you. It may have been Andrew. Certainly it looked like Andrew, with the same cowled sweatshirt he was wearing that night. But listen to what you said in your own words. You said Anna went to the window, and you were behind her.”

  “Sí.”

  “So you weren’t at the window exactly, were you? Could you have been maybe a couple of feet behind it?”

  No answer.

  “Then the boy runs down the walkway,” Hardy kept up his pace, measured yet urgent. “He stops for a second under the light, and turns. This is the moment that you see him. He’s under the light, he turns, the cowl over his head . . .”

  Hardy looked to Anna, who stood transfixed.

  “This is when Anna goes to put the window up, to yell at him. She’s angry, you’re angry, and just at this second, your baby starts crying again. You’re behind your wife, who is standing at the window, trying to pry it open, and suddenly your baby screams, and you turn, cursing and swearing, and go back to her.”

  “Yes,” Salarco said softly. “Yes. That’s how it was.”

  “Well, then,” Hardy said. “If you were behind your wife, a few feet back from the window, and she was standing in front of it, trying to get it open, and the boy with the cowl sweatshirt over his head was thirty feet away, in only the dim light from one of the street lamps, please tell me how you could possibly have seen his face?”

  Salarco stared at a spot in the middle of the table, not meeting Hardy’s eyes. Finally, he looked up. “I’m sorry, señor, but it was Andrew,” he said.

  26

  Monday afternoon, Lanier told Glitsky that this would be a good time to come down and talk to the troops. With the rash of killings lately, Lanier felt overwhelmed. It was bad enough when it was the usual gangbanger mayhem and carnage, but when regular citizens got killed, it felt to him like another matter entirely. And regular citizens were taking an especially serious hit over these past two or three weeks, first with Elizabeth Cary, then Boscacci, and now this Executioner and his two victims last Friday.

  Hanging up with Glitsky, Lanier stood, stretched and walked out into the inspectors’ area. The desks of his twelve people were placed back to back, in team pairs, and over the years a line of metal filing cabinets had slowly grown like a vine out from one of the walls so that it now nearly bisected the space, isolating the inspectors area from the lieutenant’s office. Even so, over the past half hour, Lanier had been aware of inspectors drifting back in for their paperwork, or simply to get the decks clear for tomorrow.

  Now, he got himself a cup of coffee in the main room. He hadn’t yet taken his first sip when Glitsky showed up. In another minute, eight homicide cops stood or sat casually around the partnered desks of Dan Cuneo and Glen Taylor.

  Lanier wasted no time. “I know all of you are busy with your own cases, and a couple of you are on the Boscacci force, but in light of these Executioner killings, Deputy Chief Glitsky thought it might be helpful to do some brainstorming. Abe?”

  Glitsky looked over the inspectors’ faces, realizing with some surprise that most of them had never worked personally under him. Of the assembled group, only Sarah Evans and Darrel Bracco had been homicide inspectors while he’d run the detail. Of the other four—Belou, Russell, Glen Taylor and Dan Cuneo—two were almost complete unknowns. The other two, Cuneo and Russell, had actually investigated Glitsky in the weeks before last yea
r’s shoot-out. It was common knowledge that they still weren’t among his fans. So it was not as congenial a group as Glitsky might have hoped.

  Still, he needed their cooperation. “First, I’m only here because Marcel asked me to come down. I’ve been working with a small team on the Boscacci killing, and frankly, we haven’t made much progress. Marcel tells me it’s basically the same situation with these Executioner hits, although we’ve got the ballistics match, that connection between the victims. My question is whether there’s another one.”

  Sarah Evans spoke up. “Nothing’s leaping out at us, sir. The elderly woman, Edith Montrose, lived alone, and has no local survivors, although a son and a daughter have both flown in from out of state for the burial. Neither of them had ever heard of the other victim, Philip Wong. And Mr. Wong’s wife, Mai Li, didn’t know Montrose.”

  Evans’s partner, Darrel Bracco, added his voice. “We’re close to eliminating robbery, too. We wouldn’t know for sure with the Montrose woman, but Mai Li hasn’t found anything missing. Both of them look like, pardon the phrase, executions.”

  “Am I missing something?” This was Dan Cuneo, sitting at his desk, playing some imaginary bongo drums between his legs.

  “What’s that, Dan?” Lanier asked.

  The inspector stopped drumming. “Well, you’ve got this Boscacci thing on the one hand, and the two executions on the other.” He turned to Glitsky. “Aside from the fact that we’ve got very little on any of them, I don’t see any connection at all.”

  “I don’t either,” Glitsky said. “But along with no connection, I see total evidence of two slugs. No witnesses, no prints, no forensics, no motives, no nothing. Am I wrong?”

  “No, sir,” Evans admitted, speaking for the rest of them.

  “This spark any ideas for anybody?” Glitsky asked.

  “Does what spark any ideas?” Cuneo asked. “Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’.”

  “Wait a minute,” Belou stepped out from behind her partner, Russell. “We do have another open case with that profile.”