The Hearing

by John Lescroart

  He turned back to Logan. If Sharron Pratt thought the last set of questions was irrelevant, she would go ballistic over what he intended to do next. But the judge had just given him free rein and if he was ever going to get it in, now was the time. 'Mr Logan, last year were you yourself involved in a traffic incident at the corner of Fifth and Market?'

  The witness shifted in his seat, nervously cleared his throat. 'Yeah. Somebody cut the brakes in my car. I nearly got killed.'

  'You also nearly hit two pedestrians running a red light, did you not?'

  'I couldn't stop. What would you expect?'

  Hardy didn't reply to that. Instead, he asked, 'When this incident occurred, were you under the influence of drugs or alcohol?'

  Logan sat up self-righteously. 'Absolutely not. And nobody charged me with anything.'

  But Hardy had an answer for that. 'Isn't it true that after you were arrested and booked by the police, all charges related to this accident were dismissed by the District Attorney?'

  'Well, yes, that's-'

  'And you're aware that Mr Torrey personally made that decision?'

  'There weren't any-'

  Hardy raised his voice. 'Yes or no, Mr Logan?' Notching it up again. 'Yes or no?'

  'OK, but-'

  Hardy jumped in again. 'That's a "yes", for the record, is that right?'

  Logan hated it, but was afraid of what Hardy knew or might be able to prove. 'Yes.' He spat it out like a bitter seed.

  'Thank you,' Hardy said. Having now tied Visser to Logan to Torrey on the record, Hardy was at last ready to bring it all back home. He glanced at Hill and thought he imagined an almost conspiratorial nod from the judge -surely, he thought, he must be getting tired. 'Mr Logan, did you know the victim in the case, Elaine Wager?'

  'Yes I did. Professionally, not personally.'

  'In other words, you knew her as another lawyer here in town?'

  'Excuse me. Mr Hardy?' The judge, interrupting. 'I'm gratified to see the beginning of a line of questioning that relates to one of the principals in this case, and this might be a good time, if the people don't object,' he added pointedly, 'to call it a day and resume tomorrow. It's been a long session and I'm sure we could all use the time to reflect on the day's events. Are there any objections?' There were not. 'All right, then. Court's adjourned.'

  37

  Glitsky didn't wait around for Logan's testimony. As soon as Gene Visser was excused, after he heard him say on the stand that Ridley Banks had been to his office on Pier 38 on the night of his disappearance, he hightailed it out into the hallway and up to the homicide detail.

  Half of his troops were in the room and looked up. They greeted him warmly as he entered. It came to him with a sense of satisfaction that his people here weren't really the most respectful of authority group in the known universe. They were a lot like him, in fact, trying to do their very dangerous jobs the right way in spite of the barriers erected by the media, the politicians, the brass. And suddenly he didn't care any longer if he was supposed to be there or not – let them try to fire him, just so long as right now nobody tried to get in his way. There was police work to be done, Elaine's murderer at last to be found. It was a sacred and very private debt, and he was going to pay it off.

  'What are we looking for?' Paul Thieu asked him as he filled out the search warrants on both Visser's and Logan's offices. Hardy, who had delivered Elaine's letter to Judge Thomasino that morning, along with Jeff Elliot's Examiner article and an earful of what he surmised, had told him that he thought the judge might sign off on the warrants. They were trying to discover what had happened to Ridley Banks. If a homicide inspector now needed to take a good look at any of these offices and connect the dots to three murders, he was sure Thomasino would want to cooperate. And since Logan was now a suspect, not an innocent custodian of records, no special master was required.

  'Basically,' Glitsky said, 'everything. Guns, drugs, canceled checks, evidence of struggle. Take the damn places apart. Visser may have shot Ridley where he sat and if he did there's splatter.'

  Thieu looked up in a state of high excitement. From another desk in the detail, Marcel Lanier came over to join them. Glitsky nodded at him. Here was Jorge Batavia, too. Sarah Evans, listening in. Until now the unit hadn't been particularly aware of all the ramifications of Glitsky's clandestine investigation. Now it was beginning to dawn all around that this was a cop killing. Their colleague Ridley was part of this. 'We're talking the full drill here then?'

  'Everybody you can round up,' Glitsky said, bringing them all in. 'And as soon as you can. The two of them will be moving as soon as court's out. Bet on it.'

  'Are you coming along, Abe?' Jorge asked.

  If Vincent Hardy had been there, his father definitely would have had to let him shave his head. 'I'm not here at all,' Glitsky said. 'This isn't happening.'

  What was happening was that Glitsky was going to go on an errand of his own, armed with the picture of Elaine that he'd kept in his desk.

  The musketeers had already accumulated notes on sixty-seven eating or resting establishments around Maiden Lane, and Glitsky either had to assume that his theory was mistaken or that they had been asking the wrong questions.

  He chose the latter.

  Elaine had left Treya at Rand and Jackman at five thirty to meet someone she knew for an appointment. She was walking back to her place of business when she got shot. And she wasn't walking alone. Maiden Lane was a walking street, and she was far enough down it for Glitsky, even without the condition of the body, to preclude the possibility that someone had dumped her out of a car. He stood by the side of his desk and studied the city map that he had put up as wallpaper when he first made lieutenant. The red-tipped pin was still stuck in the wall at the site of Elaine's death.

  He felt like an idiot, as though he'd wasted a lot of unnecessary time sending the kids out with his clever ideas about the area surrounding where she'd been shot. Because now, reading the map, it was obvious that it hadn't been a circle at all. She hadn't been out taking a leisurely stroll. It was after midnight, and she had been coming back by the most direct route from a specific location that probably, he now realized, was more or less in a straight line defined by two coordinates: Rand and Jackman's offices on Montgomery and Bush, and the corner of Maiden Lane and Grant Avenue.

  Further, if he traced what he thought were the logical streets – the ones he would have taken – he thought he could eliminate any route north of his imaginary line, and east of Grant. If Elaine had begun walking on any of the streets in those areas, it would have meant backtracking to get to Maiden and Grant, and she knew the city well. She wouldn't have done that.

  It was by now well past six on a Thursday night. The lights were on dim out his door in the detail. Every inspector on duty had gone out with Thieu for the two searches. Glitsky had studied his coordinates. He knew, generally, where he was going. Now he turned out his own lights, closed his door, and sat. He'd said it before to Treya, about how weird it sounded. But he was going to give Elaine a few more minutes, see if his daughter wanted to talk to him, to tell him something.

  Sitting at his desk in the dark, unaware of any conscious thought, his mind went to a story he'd heard or read somewhere about a woman who'd been adopted at birth and had never known her mother. Over the course of her life, if something made her so emotionally upset that she couldn't sleep, she'd developed the habit of getting up, boiling water, and cooking up a plate of plain pasta. After she ate it, she could go back to sleep.

  When she was thirty-five, she decided to try and locate her birth mother, and after a difficult search, was eventually successful. She wrote to the woman, introducing herself, and asking if they could meet. Her mother had agreed – she could come to her house for a weekend, and they could get to know one another.

  The meeting went well, but when it was time for bed, the emotional upheaval of it all kept the daughter awake well into the night. After tossing and turning for half the night
in her mother's guest bedroom, she finally gave up and went downstairs to the kitchen.

  Where her mother was fixing a bowl of plain spaghetti for herself! She said she always did that to help her get back to sleep. Would her daughter like some too?

  Glitsky snapped back to where he was. Why had he thought of that?

  His damn heart was beating a strong tattoo against his rib cage, but there was no pain as he stood up and turned on the light in his room again. He thought he knew exactly where he was going now, but he wanted to check to make sure.

  Yes, there it was. Dead smack in the middle of the parameters he'd just established, and probably half a block outside the circle he'd drawn for the musketeers.

  Hardy ate at home, but was back downtown by eight, in his office. At the Solarium table, all the attorneys – Freeman, Roake, Wu, Ingalls, and Rhodin – had gathered and were sharing their information and opinions.

  Of the musketeers, the most successful during the day had been Amy Wu. She'd been working on the Abby Oberlin matter, and had discovered that Gene Visser had interviewed several staff members at the Pacific Gardens Senior Health Center in Visitation Valley, where Abby's mother had been in residence. Though he'd been more subtle than he had with Rich McNeil, he had still managed to intimidate two part-time nurses, as well as the owner of the facility, into believing that their license was in jeopardy if they did not disassociate themselves immediately from the first sign of this particular patient mistreatment lawsuit.

  Wu had done well, Hardy told her, but he didn't think they needed what she'd found anymore. 'We've got enough tying Visser to Logan at this stage,' he said. 'The Cadaver has gotten the message – I'm sure of that. What we need now, it seems to me, is some strong connection to Elaine that will bring Torrey into the picture. Lieutenant Glitsky and Treya might have found a little something for us this morning, but before we discuss that, I'd be happy to entertain any other suggestions anyone might have.'

  Wrapped in cigar smoke, huddled down behind his glass of red wine, David Freeman was a contemplative gnome, alone at the far end of the large table. He'd been uncharacteristically quiet during the initial discussions, and now he cleared his throat and sat forward. 'We ought not to forget that we are deep, deep in the trees here, people. They're pretty trees, I admit. They form nice patterns on the forest floor and their leaves are a wonder to behold.'

  The younger attorneys caught each others' eyes, glad that they didn't sully their evening minds with alcohol. Hardy and Gina Roake shared their own look, but they knew David better, and their expressions didn't convey the same message. Here came a profound, and probably unwelcome, insight.

  His forest-for-the-trees metaphor, subsumed by the legal issue, was forgotten. Freeman took in the faces around the table, focused on Hardy, and continued gravely, 'You can tie your three boys into the neatest knot you've ever seen and drop the whole package at Hill's bench and you still don't have nearly enough.'

  Ingalls and Rhodin both started to respond, but didn't get far as Freeman shook his head, summoning silence again to the table. 'Ask yourselves this simple question. From the evidence presented in this hearing, disregarding all the hoopla about Torrey, Visser, and Logan, did Cole Burgess happen upon a lone woman walking in an alley and kill her for her money and jewelry? Yes or no.' More silence. 'Let's take a straw vote. Gina?'

  She considered for a beat, not liking her answer. 'Probably.'

  'Amy?'

  'I don't want to admit this, but yes, I do think so.'

  It went around the table, ending with Hardy, who made it unanimous.

  'But why, then,' Ingalls demanded, 'is the judge letting all this in? He's got to see it as connected to the crime, right?'

  Hardy, converted, took the answer. 'Maybe not even, Jon. He's giving us rope, that's all. This is a death penalty case. All the issues have to be on the record. Hill's going to hold Cole to answer and he's willing to let us thrash around for a while before he does it. He might also enjoy watching Pratt and Torrey sweat.'

  'It's more than that, I'm afraid, Diz,' Freeman said. 'He's letting you develop an alternative explanation of events so completely that there won't be any room left for appeal if you lose. He's letting us lock ourselves in and throw away the key.'

  'But these guys,' Rhodin began. 'I mean, this whole thing with Cullen's death. It's got to mean something.'

  Freeman nodded, acknowledging the point. 'Sure it means something. It means that these three guys are all slightly-to-very dishonest allies and may have tried to cheat to win this case, which in turn is politically important to Torrey's boss. OK, so they overstepped their bounds. Does that mean that they purposely gave Cullen pure heroin so that he could inadvertently kill himself? What happened to Ridley Banks? I mean, what are we trying to get at here? And, most importantly, does any of it mean that Cole didn't probably kill Elaine? I don't think so. The judge is going to want to let a jury decide and a trial court won't allow hearsay, which means we've got nothing at all.'

  And to this simple truth, there was no rebuttal. Hardy rose to his feet and began pacing. 'So what are you saying, David? Are you suggesting we stop trying to make the connections?'

  'No. We still need those.'

  Gina Roake asked, Then what?'

  Freeman removed his dead cigar long enough to take an appreciative sip of his wine. 'We must be crystal clear in our minds that this is not some clever and ultimately empty legal strategy. Let's clearly acknowledge what we're doing here, and make no mistake about the gravity of it.'

  Amy Wu spoke up. 'We had better be accusing somebody else of murdering Elaine, is that what you're saying?'

  Freeman nodded. 'Otherwise it's just what Pratt called it. A smokescreen.'

  Hardy stopped walking and fixed his gaze on the old man. Gina was bobbing her head in agreement. Jon Ingalls flashed a look around the table, then said what he obviously believed they all were thinking. 'Visser.'

  'We don't know that. Not yet.' Freeman corrected him gently. 'It might just as well have been Logan. Or even Torrey.'

  'No offense, Mr Freeman, but I can't see that,' Curtis Rhodin offered. 'Either one of them would have used Visser if they had wet work, don't you think?'

  He shrugged. 'If Logan was coked up, if Torrey was cornered. Who knows? And again, it might have been none of them.' They were waiting to hear more. The point is that even if Dismas succeeds brilliantly in tying up our connections between these three men – and I have no doubt he'll do just that – all it gives us, at best, is a possible motive.'

  'It gives us means, too, David, doesn't it?' Gina put in. 'Any of them could have gotten their hands on the gun, couldn't they? After all, they're all in the criminal business one way or another. They're going to have access to guns.'

  'OK,' Freeman conceded, 'maybe. But if they were playing cards together – or if they say they were – until two o'clock on that night, we lose. If they see where Dismas is going with this and talk together tonight, for example…' He let his voice trail off.

  Jon Ingalls pushed his chair back from the table. 'You're saying we need to know if they had alibis.'

  'I'm saying,' Freeman amplified, 'that we'd be damn negligent if we got this far and lost sight of what we're really trying to do, which is provide an alternative to our client as Elaine's killer. Not a theory, a person. Nothing less is going to do it.'

  'How are we going to do that,' Curtis Rhodin checked his watch, 'in three or four hours?'

  'I don't know,' Freeman conceded. 'I admit there's precious little time and it's really police work that they probably haven't done. But if we don't have that information, we're looking at ugly surprises just about when we think we've won.'

  After a moment, Amy Wu shook herself and sat up straight, smiling. 'OK,' she said. 'How do we do this? Where do we go?'

  After the musketeers had broken off and left on their various assignments, Freeman, Gina Roake and Hardy had stayed on for over an hour to discuss the possible meaning of the blank entries in Logan
's check register. Hardy thought it completely in keeping with Logan's character that his office still seemed to use a low-tech, one-write system approach to its check-writing and bookkeeping. Before computers had come into his life, Hardy had used the same kind of system himself, so he was familiar with it. You wrote your check and tore it off. Under it, a light-blue NCR-paper copy of the check was your receipt. And finally, under the copy, the check was automatically entered in the ledger. The blank lines could have been anything really – voided checks, a ditzy secretary inserting a piece of paper between the ledger and the checks, a purposeful hiding of records. The last was Hardy's favorite notion, but there was simply no way to tell.

  The musketeer assignments were desperate and dangerous, but necessary. The very cute Amy Wu was going with Jon Ingalls as her invisible chaperon to spend some time at Jupiter where, according to the bartender when they'd phoned, Dash Logan was currently having a few drinks. He looked to be in for the long haul tonight.

  From the Solarium, Curtis Rhodin had called the home of his friend at the AG's office – they'd been unsuccessful getting a judge to issue any kind of warrant on Logan's office that morning, and both had been frustrated, aching for another chance. This was it. They would take an investigator – three of them together would ensure their safety, they hoped – and call on Visser first at his office and then at his home address. When they found him, they would ask him what he had to say about his movements on the night of Elaine's murder.

  The same drill would not work on Torrey, not that Freeman, Roake, or Hardy really considered that the Chief ADA could have pulled the trigger on Elaine. They all agreed that he would have used Visser. But why would Torrey even see them? Certainly, he would blow off Curtis, his friend, and their investigator. And even if they did get in and pushed him for his alibi, he'd tell them to get lost -he wouldn't miss the message. His guard would be raised even higher.