The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  He was referring to the three baggies the inspectors had brought in with them—their winning streak growing to truly absurd proportions. In Holiday's bathroom, one of the drawers under the sink didn't appear to be as deep as the counter over it. Upon pulling it out, Russell discovered a battered, old dull red leather pouch stuffed to near bursting with over $3,700 in mixed bills, each one marked with a red dot in the upper right-hand corner. As if that weren't enough, at almost the same instant, Cuneo—in the bedroom—let out a yelp when he opened a cigar box on a shelf in the back corner of the closet. It rattled when he picked it up, and he found that it contained seven rings, five of them women's engagement rings with large diamonds, two of them for men. One of the men's rings was truly distinctive, inset with what looked to the inspectors to be a huge and brilliant star sapphire. Two of the rings, including the sapphire, still had the tiny price tag attached with a small length of thin white string. The price tags also had red dots on them—Silverman's.

  Cuneo nodded. "We talked about it on the way in," he said. "If I were more cynical, I wouldn't believe this could have fallen together so perfectly all by itself."

  "You are more cynical, Dan," his partner said. He turned to Gerson. "It wasn't just lying out, sir. Holiday had it hidden. Just not well enough."

  "Don't get me wrong," Cuneo said. "I'm not complaining. I'll take it. Makes up for all the times nothing works.

  It's just so weird. I'm tempted to go buy a lottery ticket."

  Gerson nodded. "And Thomasino signed off on the search?"

  "Yes, sir," Russell said.

  "Okay, so what I suggest you do is go back to him right away ..."

  "He's at trial," Cuneo said.

  "Interrupt his honor," Gerson replied. "He won't mind, I promise. Print yourselves out an arrest warrant and show him what his wisdom allowed you to discover. You'll make his day. You have any idea where Mr. Holiday is at the present time?"

  "Dan called the Ark, sir, from the phone at his place as soon as we found this stuff. When a male voice answered, we hung up. We figure he can't have a clue we've made this kind of progress. Enough to arrest him. And it's got to be him working there now. His other bartender's dead."

  "Good point. All right. So after the judge signs your warrant, you're going down to pick him up? You want some backup?"

  Cuneo answered. "We can handle it, sir. He won't give us any trouble."

  Gerson considered for a beat. "Okay, but by the book."

  "Every time, sir," Russell said, nodding in agreement.

  "Every time."

  "Glitsky. Payroll."

  It rankled every time.

  "Lieutenant? Barry Gerson again."

  "Yes, sir." No emphasis. "What can I do for you?"

  "Well, first I wanted to apologize for going so territorial on you the other day. I can't blame you for being interested in Silverman. Your father knew him. Of course you're interested. I was out of line."

  "Thank you. What's second?"

  The brusqueness of the reply slowed Gerson for a second, but then he recovered. "Second is I thought you'd want to know that Cuneo and Russell have been doing some incredible work these last couple of days. I believe they've gotten to the bottom of this thing with Silverman.

  At least they've got plenty that you can pass on to your father."

  Suddenly the flat tone left Glitsky's voice. "I'm listening."

  Gerson gave him the rundown on the evidence that so unambiguously pointed to Terry, Wills and Holiday—the gun in Terry's drawer, so clearly and demonstrably both the Silverman and Creed murder weapon. But also the red-dotted bills from both the Jones Street apartment and from Holiday's duplex in the marina. Although the lab hadn't finished its analysis of the gunk yet, Gerson threw in for good measure the shoes found in Terry's apartment and their probable relation to the Creed killing. The pawnshop jewelry articles in Holiday's closet. The case was solved, soup to nuts.

  When Gerson finished, Glitsky exhaled heavily. "So that's it?"

  "That's it."

  "And Holiday killed the other two. Last night, was it?"

  "Looks like. There's really no other option. Thomasino gave Cuneo and Russell a warrant in about five seconds.

  They've gone on down now to pick him up."

  Glitsky spent a second or two adjusting to this new reality. The fundamental rule of his thirty years of life as a cop was that evidence talked, and in this case it positively screamed. He had been completely wrong, and his meddling had possibly even inconvenienced the good inspectors working the case. Maybe, he thought bitterly, payroll was where he belonged after all. He'd obviously lost his edge.

  He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. "Then I'm the one who should be apologizing, Lieutenant. If Wade Panos put your guys on the trail that led here, I must have pegged him wrong."

  "That's not an issue for me, Abe." Glitsky noted the first name, a far cry from the "lieutenant" he'd started with.

  "You thought you were doing me a favor."

  "I really did."

  "I believe you. Some of these rent-a-cops ... well, you know. They're not all righteous, we can go that far. But Panos had something real this time. We're lucky he felt cooperative. Anyway, if you've got something I need to hear in the future, my door's open. You put in a lot of years at this desk. I'd be an idiot if I didn't take advantage of that."

  "Thanks, Barry. I appreciate it. But it's your gig now.

  I'm out of it."

  "Maybe. But I'm reserving the right to come to you if something stumps me. Deal?"

  "Deal."

  When they hung up, Glitsky sat unmoving, turned away from his desk, staring out the window into the bright afternoon. He heard the wind whistling around his corner of the building. A deep sigh escaped. In spite of the kissy-face words, the hard truth settled over him like a shroud—in the real world, Glitsky would probably never set foot in homicide again. No one was even going to have to try to keep him out. The thing was done, a fait accompli.

  It was the termination of all those years.

  After a minute, he swiveled his chair, stood up and went over to the printing room to see how the paychecks were coming along. They were due out tomorrow morning. That was the priority now, the sum total of his professional importance—making sure those checks got out on time.

  15

  Holiday got Michelle's frantic call to the Ark during the afternoon lull. He had one customer, a fifty-something dot-com bankrupt named Wayne, and he shooed him out pleading illness. He was going to have to close up. After he'd locked the door behind Wayne, he took all the money from the cash register, walked to the back room, and unlocked the bottom left drawer of his desk. The drawer contained a Walther PPK .380 automatic wrapped in a greasy old T-shirt and a quarter box of ammunition that was at least six years old, and possibly more than that. Holiday had bought the gun when he'd first opened his pharmacy fifteen years ago—he had no memory of when he'd last taken it to the range, or bought any ammunition. In all his years in business, he'd never had occasion to take it out, even to brandish.

  But he believed with all his heart that he had a reason now. He cranked a round into the chamber and snapped the safety off. He tucked the gun into his belt and the bullets into the pocket of his three-quarter-length leather coat. Letting himself out the back door of the Ark, he double-locked it up and started walking. He arrived at Michelle's an hour later.

  Now they had been holed up inside for about another hour. It turned out, when Michelle accidentally saw the gun, that she wasn't much a fan of firearms. There had never been a gun in her parents' house when she was growing up. She wasn't going to tolerate one now. She had wanted to warn John about the police, but had never considered what it might really mean, who this man she'd been seeing really was.

  When he showed up with a loaded gun, it more than worried her. It made her feel as though he'd duped her somehow.

  So she'd told him no gun, he didn't need it here, she wouldn't have it in her apartment. If he
was intent on keeping the gun, he had to leave. In the end, she reluctantly agreed to a wimpy compromise—he would unload it and put the gun and the ammunition out of sight in one of the bedroom drawers. She agreed not because she wanted to, she realized, but because suddenly some part of her was afraid of him.

  She'd been attracted to him at the beginning—and consistently since—because she'd chosen to ignore all the outward signs that he might finally, at heart, not be the man he pretended to be. Now she was forced to consider that he might, in fact, be a true criminal. The seedy bar, the nomadic lifestyle, ex-convict associates, heavy drinking, even his own drug arrest. He had explained away all of those dark and telling realities with a lighthearted and eloquent insouciance, and she'd wanted to believe him in large part because of the powerful chemistry between them.

  Clearly he had a sensitive side. He'd apparently endured great pain and loneliness after the loss of his wife and child.

  He was smart as a whip. He could be very funny. He was a great lover. She had convinced herself that most of the time he simply chose to hide his essential goodness from the world because people would take advantage of it. The same way she handled her physical beauty. This was something she could relate to, a defensive coloration.

  But now, here he was in her private and special place with a loaded gun. The homicide police had been searching his duplex. How blind was she?

  And now she'd not only helped him escape, she was harboring him.

  When he had stowed the gun, he came over to where she stood looking, holding a crack in the blinds open with her finger, out the window over the city. When he put his arms around her from behind, he felt her stiffen. "What's the matter?"

  She let go of the blinds, shrugged out of his embrace, took a step away, turned to face him. "Oh, nothing, John.

  Whatever could be the matter?"

  He smoothed the side of his mustache. "I just put the gun away, Michelle. That's what you asked me to do."

  She crossed her arms. "Where did you go Friday night?"

  He cocked his head. "What was Friday night?"

  "The night after Thursday, a week ago today, when you walked out on me. I know you remember. Chinatown.

  Where were you?"

  "I don't know. Home, I guess." He strove to sound casual. "I can't believe how many people are interested in where I was every night this past week. Maybe I should make up a calendar and pass it around."

  "Or maybe you could answer me."

  "I just did, didn't I? I was home."

  "On Friday night?"

  He gave every indication of counting back the days, making sure. "Yep. I worked the day, handed it off to Clint, ate at Little Joe's, went home, watched TV, went to sleep."

  "That's funny," she said.

  "What is?"

  "When I went by there today, when the police were there, I picked up your papers down at the bottom of the stairs, and there were three of them—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday."

  "Michelle ..."

  She held up a hand. "Never mind. Don't even start. I'm going out for a walk. You and your gun don't have to be here when I get back."

  Roake had been a defense attorney for twenty-one of her forty-eight years. After graduating from King Law School at UC Davis, she passed the bar and, at twenty-five, took her first job with the San Francisco District Attorney's office. Two years later, genetically predisposed to favoring the underdog and the dispossessed, the unfortunate and the unlucky, she switched to the defense trade. There she was often unsuccessful, although typically defense attorneys would under the normal definition be considered to fail most of the time. (A ripping success is often an accepted plea to a slightly lesser offense, or eight years in the slammer for the client instead of twelve.) After thirteen years working mostly with and for other lawyers, she finally hung out her own shingle and had done exceedingly well exclusively handling criminal cases.

  Unlike Lennard Faro, who believed he had seen it all, Gina Roake had seen it all. She had defended clients—and come to know them as people, as far as this was possible—from the netherworld of the gene pool all the way up to educated professionals and wealthy business people: suburban housewives turned murderers, children who'd killed their parents, addicts of every drug known to mankind, sexual criminals from simple misfits to the truly perverted, thieves, rapists, con men, pickpockets, shoplifters (lots of shoplifters!), lowlifes, gangbangers and muggers. A million drunk drivers. Nothing surprised her. Humans were flawed, but worth defending.

  And so, she felt, was the system. Her job, her lifework—keeping some balance between the two—meant providing the best defense the law allowed to those who had fallen.

  Everyone had a demon; most people had several, from grinding poverty to sexual abuse, from unseen psychic trauma to pampered irresponsibility, and these demons would be served, forcing their victims to commit crimes against themselves and against the society that had maimed and scarred them. She'd always believed that the crimes should be justly punished, but that the criminals themselves—the human beings who did these things—ought to be viewed with an eye to mercy, with an understanding of what had led them to their acts.

  This was why now she felt so adrift, so foreign to herself.

  Along with the grief to which she had not even begun yet to grow accustomed, her desire for vengeance against the people who had done this to David— to David! —was making her feel, quite literally, insane. "If I knew who they were, Dismas. I swear to God, if they were here in front of me, I would personally beat them to death. Gladly."

  Unable to concentrate, Hardy had left work early again.

  He had a Band-Aid of a splint around the pinkie and ring fingers on his left hand, but the others were intertwined on the table between them in the hospital's tiny coffee shop.

  Cups sat untouched in front of them. "I'd say that's natural, Gina."

  "It's not for me; that's my point. It's the polar opposite of everything I've ever believed. I would literally kill the sons of bitches."

  "I doubt that."

  "Try me." She brought her hands up to her face and wiped a palm down each side of it. "Oh, God, what am I saying? I'm losing it here, Dismas; I really am. What am I going to do with this?"

  "Have you slept yet? At all?"

  A brittle laugh collapsed into a pitiable cough. "I'm sorry," she said when she'd caught her breath. "No. Sleep has not happened. Not to you either, I'd say."

  He didn't want to burden her with his own problems, his own fury and fears. He forced a smile. "I had a little bit of a tough night last night, that's all. Car problems. Have you seen him?"

  She nodded. "They let me in whenever they can now.

  An hour or two. I try to tell myself he's squeezing my hand back or something, but ..." She shook her head in misery, bit her lip. Then, as though if she said it aloud it would be more true, she whispered, "His kidney function seems to be slowing down."

  "Is that bad?"

  "It's one of the things they measure. Of course if it stops entirely, it would be bad." Closing her eyes, she sighed deeply. "I'm trying to prepare myself. I just feel so ... so helpless and then so goddamned furious. I'm in there pleading with him, talking out loud like he can hear me, like I'm ..." The words stopped. She looked across at Hardy.

  "You don't need to hear this. You know."

  He reached across the table and put his hand over hers.

  "You're a big girl so I don't have to tell you, but if you could sleep, it would help. Especially if you can't do anything here."

  "I keep thinking maybe he'll wake up and if he does I won't be there."

  "He'd get over it. He might not even notice. No, never mind. It's David. He'd notice." He shrugged. "Still ..."

  "Still, you're probably right. Oh, and Sergeant Blanca came by here for a few minutes. He said he'd talked to you. He didn't have much."

  "He still doesn't, not as of about a half hour ago."

  A silence. Then Gina said, "They're not going to find anything,
are they? I wonder if it's somebody I got off. If some scumbag was back on the street because I was such a goddamned whiz of a lawyer. Wouldn't that be special?"

  Hardy squeezed her hand. "Don't go there."

  "I don't know where I'm going."

  Hardy hesitated for an instant, then decided that he'd known her for a long time. He could push a little. "Gina.

  Sorry to be a broken record, but how about going home, then to bed? Give the nurses your number. They'll call you if there's any change. This isn't doing anybody any good."

  "I'll still want to kill them," she said. Somehow the comment didn't seem off the subject. It was as though they'd been talking about it all along.

  "I hear you," Hardy said gently. "If it's any help, so do I."

  When she saw Holiday wasn't gone, Michelle stood just inside her doorway, uncertain about whether she should simply turn and give him more time, or walk out and call the police herself. But she hesitated long enough for him to start explaining.

  The television droned near him. He stood in front of it, his coat back on. She assumed he had rearmed himself.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't expect you back so soon." He took a tentative step toward her, then stopped. "Look, I'm sorry about everything. I didn't mean to lie to you. I've got a bad habit of ... never mind, it doesn't matter anymore.

  I'm going now in a minute. I just wanted to catch the news.

  Maybe see if they'll show what I'm up against."

  Still in her camo gear, including hat and boots, she came up next to him as the program began, then backed up and sat on the corner of the bed.

  Since it was both local and lurid, they didn't have to wait long. The handsome and serious anchor hadn't gotten twenty words into the lead story when Holiday nearly jumped forward to turn up the volume. "... these grisly Tenderloin murders. The victims have been identified as Clint Terry and Randy Wills. Terry, a bartender at a downtown watering hole, was a former football star with the ..."

  "Oh my God." Holiday folded himself down to the floor, cross-legged. As the anchor continued with the details, his head fell forward. After a minute, he reached up to support it with his hands, rocking his whole body from side to side.