The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  Jackman lifted a peanut with his chopsticks and looked at it skeptically. The special today was Kung Pao Moussaka—not one of Chui’s all-time triumphs—and everyone at the table was picking at their food. “Are you sure it’s even worth the time, Abe?”

  Glitsky knew what Jackman meant. He sagged a bit. “No. I don’t.”

  “On the other hand,” Roake said, “if it’s the only thing you have to go on, what do you have to lose?”

  “That’s my feeling.” Glitsky sipped some tea. “Whatever else he is, this guy knows what he’s doing. I don’t believe somebody’s paying him to hit these people, and he’s not picking them at random.”

  “Are you even sure of that?” Jackman asked.

  Glitsky had to shake his head. “At this point, Clarence, I’m not sure it’s Tuesday.”

  “And no hint about Allan, either, I assume.”

  Treya answered for her husband. “Abe sent out Inspector Belou this morning to talk again to Edie.” Boscacci’s widow.

  “Meaning no leads on anything in his professional life?” Jackman asked. “Any of his active cases?”

  “He didn’t really have any, Clarence, as you know better than anybody. There might be something on the home front Edie couldn’t remember with the initial shock. But I’m not holding out much hope there, either.”

  “So you really think Allan might have been shot by this Executioner, too?” Roake asked.

  “No. I can’t say I’m all the way to thinking it, Gina. I’m really just back where we were,” Glitsky said. “It’s the only place I’ve got to look. What I’m really hoping is that this guy last night has got a huge extended family, who’ll tell us that a long time ago he invested in Wong’s produce and dated Edith Montrose and bought a used car from Elizabeth Cary, and they all had the same banker.”

  “Who is a gun collector,” Treya added.

  “Right,” Glitsky said. “That’d be even better.”

  “But you doubt it?” Roake said.

  Glitsky nodded. “Seriously.”

  Everyone stopped and looked up as Marcel Lanier suddenly appeared at Glitsky’s elbow. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt. Abe. I was just up at your office.”

  Lanier’s face was mottled with emotion. His breath came as though he’d been running. “I’m just back up from San Bruno,” he said. “I begged crime scene down there to come back and look again and they found the slug.”

  “Tollman’s?”

  “Yeah. In the roof of a garage a couple of houses down. Given the circumstances, they let us run it up to our lab. . . ,” the San Francisco Crime Lab was halfway down to San Bruno anyway, “where they rushed it. You’ll never guess.”

  Glitsky was already up. “I already did.”

  “Right. Same gun, no question. And Abe? All silenced. Four of the five slugs have a scuff mark. Same place on the bullet. Microscopically identical. A silencer, and the same one. And guess what else? Tollman? His daughter said he was on a murder jury one time.”

  “Where? San Bruno?”

  “She didn’t know. But they lived in the city until she was five.”

  “So it might have been here. What about the ex-wife? She’d know.”

  “She might. Except she’s on a mission in India.”

  “How the gods favor the good.” Glitsky put his hands to his face and pulled them down over it. He looked back at the table. “This is it,” he said to no one and everyone. Then, to Jackman. “I need more people, Clarence. Yesterday.”

  Jackman nodded. “I’ll give you some clerks and every deputy I can spare.”

  “Guys.” The men looked back at Treya. “Forgive me for speaking up, but I’d be careful about that.” She spoke to her husband. “I know you need people, Abe, but you don’t need this to make the news, do you?”

  “What?” he said. “You’re saying the media isn’t my friend?”

  “She’s right,” Lanier said. “It gets out, it tells him we know.”

  “Good,” Jackman said. “Then maybe he stops.”

  “Or maybe he hurries up to finish,” Glitsky said.

  “Call me slow,” Roake said, “but what is it that we know, exactly? What’s he going to hurry to finish?”

  By now they were all out of the booth, standing in a knot. Glitsky leaned in to Roake. “He’s recently gotten out of prison and he’s killing the people that put him away. He’s already killed the prosecutor and I’m guessing four of the jurors. That leaves eight more, and maybe the judge, whoever that was.”

  “The good news,” Jackman said, “is if you’re right, it’s a finite list of suspects. Big, but finite. Maybe among your four hundred, Abe.”

  “That’s where I’m starting, for sure,” Glitsky said.

  “If it’s not on that list, though,” Roake said, “what are you looking at?”

  Glitsky thought of the cavernous basement to the Hall of Justice, nearly a city block square, packed to the fifteen-foot ceiling with file boxes of ancient transcripts. “A lot more victims,” he said.

  Jackman and Roake walked together across Bryant Street. They were about to say good-bye when the DA put his hand on Roake’s arm and said, “I’m glad to see you back down here, Gina. I was worried about you. Although, of course, I understood. We all miss David, though never as much as you do, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you, Clarence. That’s nice of you to say.”

  “I mean it. May I ask you, though, did anything specific bring you back today?”

  She offered a slinky grin. “If credit is due, I’d have to give it to my oh-so-subtle partner.”

  “No offense to Mr. Farrell, but that would be Mr. Hardy?”

  She nodded. “You’ve got to love the guy, except when you hate him.”

  Jackman gave his own imitation of a smile. “Yes, I had a little of both experiences just this morning. I wonder if you could give him a message for me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Just tell him that it’s not about scratching backs. It’s about justice and that’s why Jamahl isn’t being charged with murder.”

  “Jamahl isn’t being charged with murder. Got it.”

  “It’s about justice, too. That’s important. That’s why he’s supporting my campaign.”

  “Jamahl and justice.”

  A wide grin. “And Jackman.”

  “Hand in glove,” Roake said. She gave the DA a chaste buss on the cheek. “I’m all over it,” she said. “See you next week.”

  30

  Outside the YGC courtroom after lunch, Hardy said hello to Ken Brolin, Andrew’s anger management psychologist, while he was in the hallway catching up with the Norths. Hal and Linda maintained their chilly demeanor, not saying a word to him as he introduced Brolin to Wu, explaining that she would be conducting Brolin’s interrogation on the second criterion when court was back in session.

  When the younger bailiff—Cottrell—called everyone in from the hallway, Hardy went out to his car, drove to the 280 freeway and headed south. He’d called Mike Mooney’s father during the lunch break. The sad old man had been home, but had no idea how to get in touch either with Terri or Catherine, Mooney’s ex-wives. He hadn’t heard from either of them in years and years. So Hardy had asked him if he was still in possession of his son’s effects. If the dissolution papers were among them, Hardy might be able to track the women down.

  As it happened, the reverend had his son’s papers and files stored in an empty room of the rectory until he could decide what to do with them. Until now, he hadn’t even had the heart to glance at all the stuff, but he said Hardy was welcome to go through it if he’d like, if it would help him identify Mike’s killer.

  Mooney stood and raised a hand in feeble greeting as Hardy came up the walk. He wore his black sports coat today, and had obviously been in his chair on the small front porch waiting.

  If anything, the house was sadder during the day, in the sunshine. Five painful minutes after he’d arrived, after he had assured Reverend Mooney that he would
be welcome to join him if he’d like to take this opportunity to start going through Mike’s possessions, Hardy was alone in one of the unused back bedrooms of the sprawling house. Even with the blinds open and the overhead light on, it was a dim room, with a threadbare light-orange carpet. There was a dresser with a mirror over it, a made-up single bed, an empty pocket-door closet, a small bathroom. Three rows of four packing boxes were tucked into the corner under the windows.

  Hardy went to the nearest one, cut through the tape and lifted the cover. Clothes. Being thorough, he pulled out each item—folded shirts and pants—until he got to the bottom. He then repacked in reverse order. The entire effort look him less than two minutes. The second and third boxes also contained clothing items, although in the bottom of the third box, he found an envelope filled with snapshots—all students, some with Mooney and some alone—none even slightly objectionable or incriminating by themselves. Although Hardy, with his secret knowledge, found himself fighting a rising tide of anger.

  In the fourth box, he ran across his first paperwork, mostly scripts and what appeared to be students’ papers. He went through these with a little more care, hoping to find perhaps some correspondence that he’d be able to use. But Mooney had evidently been a careful and very private man, and there was no indication that he had any private life at all, much less, as Wu had called it, a “secret” one.

  By the time he’d found the marriage dissolution papers filed among some old tax filings and ancient bank statements in the seventh box, Hardy was tempted to keep looking through the rest, just to see if anything of import to his investigation would come to light. But he’d already thumbed through a thousand or more sheets of paper, including many, many letters (mostly to and from current and former students), and again, there had been no overt signs of impropriety. He decided that he’d gotten what he had come for. If it turned into a dead end and he needed more, he could always come back.

  For now, he had to keep moving forward. The way the 707 was going, they could be crucial to the fifth criterion—circumstances and gravity of the offense, the one he’d been planning to argue—by tomorrow. Judge Johnson had made it abundantly clear that neither alternative theories nor hearsay evidence were going to make the cut. Hardy would need demonstrable facts, both from Anna Salarco and from what, if anything, he might discover from talking with Mooney’s wives, and even then Johnson might not admit them.

  Reverend Mooney lent Hardy the telephone in his office—another room of sepia tones—and he called information to get the number of the law firm Blalock, Hewitt and Chance, and/or the attorney, Michelle Ossley, who had evidently handled both sides of Mike’s uncontested divorce from his first wife, Terri. Neither were listed in San Mateo, Santa Clara or San Francisco counties, so Hardy placed another call to his office and asked Phyllis to please check Martindale-Hubbell—a directory of attorneys—and have either Blalock, Hewitt, Chance or Ossley call him on his cellphone, if she could find them.

  He had better luck with Catherine’s attorney, from the second divorce—the spouses had used different lawyers this time. His name was Everett Washburn, a sole practitioner who practiced out of Redwood City, another fifteen miles south. His secretary informed Hardy that Mr. Washburn was expected to be in court until four or four-thirty, after which he would probably go out to the Broadway Tobacconists for drinks and a cigar, his invariable ritual after a court date, if he wasn’t going out with the client. Could she take his name and have Mr. Washburn get back to him tomorrow?

  “I’m in a bit more of a hurry than that, I’m afraid. I’m trying to find a witness for a murder hearing that’s in progress right now and I think she may have once been one of Mr. Washburn’s clients. Does he have a pager number?”

  “Yes, but he turns it off in court, and then leaves it off if it’s after five or if he’s out with clients. He thinks it’s rude to let cellphones interrupt important conversations. Also, he had a heart attack a year ago and won’t work anymore except during business hours.”

  Hardy was happy for him, but this wasn’t any help. “Maybe I could try it anyway?”

  “Certainly.” She also took his name and all of his phone numbers and would tell Mr. Washburn if he called, which was doubtful, that it was rather urgent. Hardy thanked her and sat at Reverend Mooney’s desk, staring at the motes flickering in the thin shafts of sunlight that penetrated the window slats. After a moment, and before he forgot to do it, he punched in the numbers for Washburn’s pager, left his own cell number as a callback.

  His watch said 3:40 as he swung onto 101 South, heading for the courthouse in Redwood City. Traffic was heavy, but the time passed quickly enough as he took phone calls from both Messrs. Blalock and Chance. Ten years ago, their firm had broken up after Hewitt had died, and though both remembered Michelle Ossley, neither of them had kept up with her. Chance thought he’d heard she left the law biz and moved to Florida to work with her new husband in a travel agency, but he wasn’t sure. Neither of them had ever heard of Ossley’s divorce clients, Mike and Terri Mooney.

  Hardy paid five dollars to park in the Redwood City Courthouse lot, only to discover that here at four-thirty, all the courtrooms were deserted and locked up. On the front steps, he saw two middle-aged black men in business suits talking together. Both of them had thick briefcases at their feet; both projected an air of solidity.

  Hardy strolled over and excused then introduced himself. “Would either of you gentlemen know where I would find an Everett Washburn?” he said.

  Washburn was a different suit of clothes than Hardy’s friend and mentor David Freeman, but he was cut from the same cloth. No doubt pushing seventy, Washburn wore suspenders and seersucker rather than Freeman’s rack brown suit, but neither believed in shining their shoes, neither shaved with particular care (and Washburn sported an impressive gray walrus mustache), and both seemed to believe that the smoking of daily cigars with some kind of strong alcohol was the key to longevity, to say nothing of sex appeal.

  When Hardy found Washburn in the backroom of the Broadway Tobacconists—private humidified cigar vaults, bottles of single malts and rare cognacs on the low tables—he was holding court with a few well-dressed younger people of either sex. Next to him, an elegant and statuesque middle-aged black woman in a bright red dress smoked a cheroot and kept her free hand protectively on Washburn’s forearm.

  Reluctant to interrupt, Hardy watched and listened to him for a while through the thick, blue, fragrant smoke. Finally, and again Freeman-like, Washburn called the shot himself. Smiling around at the gathered group, whispering something to his attractive companion, he rose and walked directly up to Hardy. “If you’re looking for Everett Washburn, son, and by the way you’re standing here I gather you are, then you’ve found him.” He had a large watch on a fob chain that he consulted. “There’s barely five minutes left in the business day, and even if I didn’t have a beautiful woman waiting for me when I get free, I don’t work after that, so you’d better talk fast.”

  “I’m trying to locate Catherine Mooney. You represented her sixteen years ago in a divorce proceeding against her husband, Mike, who was killed a few months ago in San Francisco. I’m representing the suspect in that homicide, and Catherine may have some crucial information that could free my client.” This was a stretch, but Hardy didn’t care. “I have to talk to her as soon as I can.”

  Washburn’s expression showed nothing. He brought his cigar to his lips, squinted his eyes against the smoke. “You got a card with your cell number? You got your phone on you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s have ’em both.”

  Hardy dug out his wallet, extracted his business card, gave the man his cellphone.

  “Let’s go find ourselves a little more light.” He led the way out of the room, out of the store, stopped on the sidewalk outside and turned around to face Hardy. “You wait here.” He walked off ten or fifteen steps and Hardy watched as he first punched some numbers, then talked into the phone, the
n read from Hardy’s card, and finally closed the phone up. When he came back, he handed the phone back to him, pocketed the card in his shirt. “I like the dart on the card,” he said. “Nice touch.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If she wants to talk to you, she’ll call you. That’s how I left it.”

  Hardy knew that that was all he was going to get, and damned lucky at that. If Catherine Mooney had remarried and changed her name, which was not unlikely, Washburn wasn’t about to give it to him. Without the call, Hardy might never find her. “I appreciate it,” he said.

  Washburn waved the thanks away with his cigar. “Professional courtesy, Mr. Hardy. I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”

  “Could I ask you one more question?”

  A quick smile washed away the merest flash of impatience. “Certainly.”

  “In case I need to see her in person, would you recommend that I stay in the area, or go back up to the city?”

  “And which city would that be? Pace,” he said. “A joke. I’d stay nearby.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  Washburn checked his pocket watch again, nodded with satisfaction. “And with twenty seconds to spare, too. If I would have gone over, it would have cost you.”

  Now it was after six o’clock and Hardy brought his cup of espresso to the pay phone by the kitchen at Vino Santo Restaurant on Broadway, across the street from the tobacconists, about five blocks from the courthouse. He had his cellphone with him, of course, but he didn’t want to use it and risk missing Catherine if she called.

  “Hello,” Frannie said.

  “I’m assuming the kids must have put the phone in your bed, right? Which is how you’re able to answer it.”

  “Dismas, I’m fine.”