The Rule of Law

by John Lescroart

  “It’s just so hard to accept. How could he and I start at the same place and turn out so different? It’s so hard to wrap my head around it. That he could have just . . .” She trailed off again.

  “Okay,” Hardy said, “I’ve got a confession I’ve got to make to you, if you want to hear it.”

  “About this?”

  He nodded. “You’re going to be mad at me, but I knew that the inspectors were going to go by and talk to him again. In fact, I probably played a role.”

  Her face clouded. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because of the story you told me last night about what happened before and after the shot was fired at El Sol. What Adam told you isn’t what he told the police, either originally or again today. Which means he either lied to you or lied to them, and neither of those scenarios is particularly pretty.”

  “So you’re saying you think he did it? Killed Mr. Valdez?”

  “I’m saying there is some question about what happened, and that is one very real possibility. And then setting it up so that Celia comes to you and you help her run away—it turns all eyes on her and away from him as the killer.”

  Sitting all the way back in her chair, Phyllis closed her eyes for a moment and took a few breaths. A tear escaped and trickled down her cheek.

  Hardy went on. “I told Inspector Tully your version, what you told me last night. So it’s not that she thinks Adam’s a liar because he’s an ex-convict. He’s a liar because that’s what he seems to do whenever he gets the chance. It’s who he is. Now he’s got himself set up at El Sol with a great new job and a couple of partners who don’t really seem that sad about losing Hector Valdez, even though they’d been working with him for years.”

  She opened her eyes and wiped at them with an index finger.

  “So what he told me wasn’t true? What part was different?”

  “He didn’t go into the office after he heard the shot. In all probability, he went in and was the actual shooter. Celia wasn’t ever locked in any back room. She didn’t struggle with Hector, and it wasn’t Hector’s gun but Adam’s. Take your pick.”

  Again she closed her eyes and shook her head. “God,” she said, “how stupid can I be? What am I going to do now?”

  “Well, the first thing is what you’re not going to do, which is get into any kind of a discussion with Adam about what he told you versus what he told the police.”

  “Why not? Maybe I could—”

  “No.” Hardy cut her off abruptly. “I need you to hear me very clearly on this. You won’t mention any of this to Adam because then he’ll see you as a potential threat, the only person with an alternative version of events that can get him in trouble. That’s why you’re not going to talk to the police, either. As things stand right now, you’ve told me your version, but I’m your lawyer and so our conversations are privileged. Even if I’ve told the inspectors what you told me, it wouldn’t be admissible in court—not unless you tell it directly to them. So as long as Adam doesn’t believe that your version of Hector’s death is the source of the police’s interest in him, you’re okay.”

  “So you’re saying I should be afraid of my brother?”

  “Maybe we could just go with ‘wary’ or ‘cautious.’ ”

  “You’re saying you believe he’d hurt me?”

  “I’m saying it’s not impossible,” Hardy said. “Maybe he wouldn’t, and maybe being your brother matters. But still, you’d be wise not to give him a reason.”

  Phyllis sat there looking drawn and devastated. “I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered at last, “but I’m afraid I don’t really know what to do about all of this. I’m so much at a loss, even just to understand exactly what’s going on. Adam’s my brother and of course I care about what happens to him, but I don’t really want to defend him or hide him or anything if he killed Mr. Valdez and then placed the blame on poor Celia. And that sad, sad girl . . .” Her shoulders sagged as the memory deflated her. “Do you think I’m safe going home?”

  “I’d hate to guess and be wrong, Phyllis. But as long as nothing changes—as long as you don’t become some kind of threat, as I talked about earlier—I’d say you ought to be all right.”

  Hardy must have made a face, because Phyllis leaned over toward him and said, “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But you thought something. Your eyes just lit up.”

  “No,” he said. “It was nothing. Nothing reasonable, anyway.”

  “At this point, sir,” she said, “I’m willing to listen to unreasonable. As far as I can tell, my other alternative is living in fear in my own home, worrying about if my own brother is going to murder me. So let’s hear unreasonable and then decide.”

  Hardy pushed himself back an inch or two in his chair. “Well, the other thing you can do is talk to the homicide inspectors and give them your version of events, told to you by Adam, which might go a long way—maybe all the way—toward getting him back into custody for the murder of Mr. Valdez. Or—and this is really getting out there, at least in terms of what you could live with . . .”

  “What?”

  Hardy hesitated, then went on. “Well, the inspectors might also want you to wear a wire—a recording device—to get Adam to contradict himself in his own words. And if they did get to arresting him again, there might be some other ramifications—this is just occurring to me now—such as the charge you’re facing.”

  “What about that?”

  “What about that is that if Adam gets charged with the murder, it’s going to be that much more difficult for Mr. Jameson to make the charge against you stick. If Celia didn’t kill Mr. Valdez, and now it sure as hell looks to me like she didn’t, then you can’t very well be an accessory after that fact, now, can you? And let me just add while we’re being hypothetical here: rubbing it in Jameson’s face if we could get Adam charged as a legitimate suspect wouldn’t exactly break my heart, either. Maybe it would teach him a lesson about how to proceed on these matters. Which is not how he treated you.”

  Phyllis crossed her arms and after a moment let out a long sigh. “This may be horrible, but given what has already gone on, all of that doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me.”

  “When I say it out loud, it doesn’t to me, either. But I don’t want to kid you: this stuff is no joke. And even if it all goes exactly right, that probably means your brother winds up in prison again, maybe for the rest of his life. Do you think you’ll be able to live with that?”

  She hung her head.

  Hardy let her live with the idea for a long minute. Finally: “Phyllis.”

  She raised her eyes to meet his. “You really think he killed Mr. Valdez, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “And he might kill other people if they get in his way?”

  Hardy nodded. “I don’t think we can rule that out.”

  “Oh, Adam,” she said. “How could you have come to be like this?”

  Another long moment.

  “If he’s really done all this bad stuff”—Phyllis paused and swallowed—

  “you’re saying he probably needs to be in jail again, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’m so sorry, but I think that’s what needs to happen.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Now,” Hardy said, “I think we might want to do the polar opposite of what I had in mind when we started this conversation.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We call the police.”

  Phyllis visibly wilted, head down, shaking it from side to side.

  “This is horrible,” she said.

  • • •

  LATE AFTERNOON NOW, and Adam, Mel, and Rita had postponed opening the bar for the time being while they sat at the round table near the front and talked out their story, making sure the inconsistencies got ironed out. “The main thing, Rita,” Adam was saying, as patiently as he could muster, “isn’t whether I was down behind the bar, bu
t that you were looking directly at me when the shot got fired. You saw me clearly, no question, outside here. The whole point is that none of us were in the office. The only people in the office were Hector and Celia. We, the three of us, we were all out here, you cutting limes, me setting up the cash register, and Mel wiping down tables; it doesn’t matter which table, but let’s say this one we’re at now to make it easy if there’s a next time.”

  “So where?” Rita asked.

  “Right here,” Adam said. “This table.”

  “But how do we—”

  Suddenly Adam’s anger flared and he slammed his palm down. “God-damn, Rita! We’ve been over this. Why’d you have to go and say that Mel called out to see if we were all right? Why’d you make that shit up?”

  “Because I thought it’s what he would have done if there was a shot he didn’t know was coming.”

  “But how am I supposed to know that’s what he does?”

  “Hey, sorry, Adam. I’m sorry. But it’s no big deal. You just say you were excited on hearing the shot; maybe a little deaf, too. It makes sense.”

  “Sense. Fuck.” Shaking his head, Adam looked over at Mel. “Talk to her,” he said.

  “She gets it,” Mel said. “The question is: Did I yell? Rita says I did, so we say the same thing, and you didn’t hear because you were closest to the shot and it must have fucked up your ears for a minute or two. This is not a crisis. We stick with what we said and we’re fine.”

  “You better be right, both of you,” Adam said.

  19

  CHET GREENE HAD a lifetime of investigative experience. He didn’t believe you always had to struggle to get your hands on information. Sometimes it was right in front of you; more often than not, in fact, if you knew where to look.

  While Ron Jameson was giving his well-received speech with the Knights of Columbus—a speech that ended with a standing ovation and then all kinds of compliments from the crowd—Greene was checking out “San Francisco Dockside Massacre” on his cell phone. It took him about ten minutes to identify Sheila “Heinous” Marrenas, the columnist who wrote “Our Town” for the city’s second newspaper, the Courier, as his most likely source of background material on the misdeeds of Hardy, Farrell, Glitsky, and the rest.

  As soon as he dropped off the DA back at the Hall of Justice, he beelined it for the outer Mission and the Courier’s main offices on Dolores Street. Parking in front of a fire hydrant and leaving his business card visibly displayed on the dashboard, he locked up and walked the half block in a freshening wind to the front door. Inside the lobby, although two young women handled the reception duties behind an enormous counter, the place had a deserted feel, and Greene suddenly remembered that the newspaper had recently announced its new publication schedule, cutting back to four days a week. Tough times everywhere, it seemed.

  Still, from Jameson’s Knights of Columbus venue, he’d called Marrenas and made an appointment and in theory she was waiting for him. The receptionists pointed him in the right direction and he walked down a long, deserted hallway until he came to the last door on his left, slightly ajar, and knocked.

  “It’s open. Come on in.”

  Pushing at the door, he entered and crossed to where Marrenas sat behind an all-purpose table. Half rising, she reached over, shaking his hand with a firm grip. “It is such a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I must say that it does my heart good to see an official person deciding to take a look at some of the things you said you wanted to talk about. After all this time, I keep hoping something someday is going to make a difference.” She pointed to a chrome and leather chair. “You want to grab that seat? You can take off your jacket. We’re pretty casual around here.”

  As a divorced man, Greene liked her right away. Short and compact, she had a bright and ready smile and intelligent green eyes. Her face was attractive without being distractingly pretty. With a riot of frizzy black hair lightly streaked with gray, she’d probably been called cute a lot when she was younger, and maybe more recently than that. No wedding ring, he noticed.

  His jacket hung over the back of the chair, he got himself situated, his legs crossed. “Well,” he began, “thanks again for seeing me on such short notice. I really do appreciate it.”

  “Are you kidding me? Anybody wants to talk to me about this stuff, I’m all over it. I can tell you honestly, when this first all started to come down a hundred years ago, I thought this was my Pulitzer. I still think there’s something major there. But I’ve got to give it to these guys, they covered their tracks. So I don’t know what I can give you in the line of evidence that you might be able to use—at least, that you haven’t seen yet.”

  “I haven’t seen anything yet. Mostly I’m going on the article you wrote a few months ago about the major unsolved crimes in the city. The Dockside Massacre. So now I’m just starting out whacking the bushes, hoping there might be some low-hanging fruit.”

  Disappointment painted her face. “If there is any,” she said, “I’m afraid it’s going to be high up and out of sight. Frankly, I thought you might be coming to me because you had come across something new on your own.”

  “No such luck, sad to say. I think my boss, Mr. Jameson, basically sent me out to go fishing. I think he’s worried about Wes Farrell in the next election. And yes, he knows it’s a little early.”

  “Never too early,” she said.

  “Yeah, well. Especially when the first time the DA puts his foot in a courtroom, one of Farrell’s partners is talking having his office recused for misconduct and suing him personally for damages.”

  “Dismas Hardy,” she said.

  “You know him?”

  “I know everybody,” she said. “It’s my job. Also”—she broke another smile—“don’t forget that this is the smallest town on the face of the earth. But that said, if your boss is trying to open this can of worms again and bring these guys down, that very fact is column-worthy. The war between the DAs.”

  “There’s no love lost, that’s true.” Greene crossed his legs the other way. He suddenly realized that if the task Jameson had given him was to fire a warning shot across the bow of Dismas Hardy’s ship, he didn’t really need any new evidence related to the Dockside Massacre. He mentioned that the very idea that Jameson might be reopening those investigations—given that there was no statute of limitations on murder . . .

  But Marrenas derailed that train of thought. “Before I run with that idea,” she said, “I mean Jameson really going after these guys, which—believe me—is appealing on every level, it would be helpful if you had something new to bring to the party. Because I must tell you, I’ve looked and looked to try to find something to crack the thing. And then I looked some more. You’d think with that much firepower going on, something’s going to have to pop up. There were, like, nearly two hundred shell casings out on that pier. Do you believe that? And five—five!—bodies. Beyond that, David Freeman died of internal trauma that same day after somebody beat him up, and Hardy’s client, a guy named John Holiday, was one of the victims out at the pier. I mean, where was the evidence—any evidence—tying all this together? But Hardy was at his office all day: lots of witnesses, no doubt about it.”

  “Let me guess,” Greene said. “One of those witnesses was Phyllis McGowan.”

  Marrenas raised both hands. “Holy shit. I bet she was. It never ends.”

  They shared a pregnant look and held it a moment.

  “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “All those alibis,” he said. “And they all worked?”

  Marrenas nodded. “Every last one. Every fucking one of them.”

  “And no squish in any of them?”

  She shook her head. “I doubt it. McGuire—I know all these guys like the back of my hand—McGuire, now deceased, was Hardy’s brother-in-law. He was with his wife on a friend’s boat out on the bay. Hardy, as I said, was at his office. Glitsky was with . . .” Suddenly she went silent, her brow furrowing.


  “What?” Greene asked. “Who was Glitsky with?”

  She rubbed both hands over her forehead. “Holy shit,” she said again. “Can it be I’m just seeing this now?” She met Greene’s eyes. “He was with Roake, picking out clothes for David Freeman to wear for his funeral.”

  “But maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe neither of them were there.”

  Killing time while she pondered, she scanned the upper corners of her office. Finally she came back to Greene. “Maybe this isn’t anything relevant, but at least it’s a fairly large coincidence. Can it only be hitting me now?”

  “What, exactly?” Greene asked. “I’m listening.”

  “Okay. Did you follow it a couple of years ago when McGuire, Moses McGuire, Hardy’s same old brother-in-law, had his own murder trial for killing the guy who raped his daughter?”

  “This sounds like a laugh riot of a family to hang with.”

  “Doesn’t it, though?”

  “That trial does kind of ring a bell.”

  “It should. It was a huge deal while it ran. I covered it every day. It didn’t look good for McGuire—they had a bunch of eyewitnesses—but the jury acquitted. You know why?”

  “He was with Glitsky out on the bay on his friend’s boat?”

  Marrenas broke a wide grin. “I see you’re paying attention. Even though that’s the wrong answer. Actually, though, it’s pretty darn close to the right one. McGuire was with Roake, the same Roake who was with Glitsky for the Dockside thing.”

  “What was he doing with her?”

  “They were, apparently, ahem, intimate.”

  “All day?”

  “Enough of it that the jury bought it.” Her eyes squinted down as she went silent.

  “What are you thinking?” Greene asked.

  “Just remembering. During Roake’s testimony, McGuire’s wife rushed out of the courtroom in tears, her husband having just been described as having betrayed her and all. I was there, as I said, and it was an amazingly convincing display.”

  “Or a hell of an act?”

  “Well, I never thought so until now. Until just this minute. But . . .”