The Rule of Law

by John Lescroart

  Was that an excuse?

  Apparently without a thought, though, he’d allowed the police to arrest Phyllis, to put her own life and freedom in jeopardy.

  Her own brother, willing to sacrifice her and anyone else who stood in the way of what he wanted or thought he needed.

  But he seemed so sincere, so honest, so good, even. Trying to help Celia escape. Convincing Phyllis that this is what they had to do. It was the right thing.

  She was such a fool to have believed him. To have played into his hands.

  What was the matter with her?

  She didn’t know. All of this was so far outside of her experience. Was that another flaw in who she was? In her long life, could she have done more to understand how people really were? Capable of evil as well, sometimes, as good?

  What was the matter with her?

  She just didn’t know.

  • • •

  AT THE FREEMAN Building, one flight up from Hardy’s office, a bit of a festive atmosphere prevailed about the “CityTalk” column. Wes Farrell had ordered in Chinese and Glitsky was also around to help Treya get her workstation set up, although he did not file things in the same way that she did and was really much more hindrance than help.

  When the food arrived, it was far too much, and they invited Hardy and Gina both to come up and join them for lunch.

  Wes had for the longest time been well known for his position against the standard office desk. He thought a desk caused a needless separation between people that, besides, fairly screamed inequality of station. So he used an old library table that doubled nicely as a dining surface.

  They were all sitting around it, separating the chopsticks, when Hardy’s phone rang at his belt. Because it was his private investigator, Wyatt Hunt, he picked up with his usual jaunty “Yo.” But as he started to listen, his expression grew more serious right away. “You’re shitting me,” he said. And then he listened some more.

  • • •

  GINA WAS INCREDULOUS. “She fired Devin Juhle?”

  “Administrative leave,” Farrell said.

  Glitsky looked up from where he was working on a sudoku game on the couch. “Same thing,” he said. “Whatever you call it, he’s not coming back to Homicide, I’ll tell you that.”

  “But he was great,” Treya said. “Some say almost as good as the legendary Abe Glitsky.”

  Abe shot her a look. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  “But seriously, why Devin?” Treya asked.

  “That’s what makes the guy so dangerous,” Hardy said. “He’s not dumb.”

  “What guy are you talking about? I thought you said Lapeer did it.”

  “Well,” Wes said to his secretary, “that’s true enough, as far as it goes. She actually pulled the trigger. But it wasn’t her idea, I promise you. This is Jameson going to the mayor and the esteemed Mr. Crawford moving it on down the line. That’s the only thing it could be. Crawford’s not exactly pro-cop in any case, so this also played directly into his hands, where he gets to take a stand against our rampant police state.”

  “But the main thing, Treya,” Hardy added, “is who he’s really sending a message to, which would be Inspectors Tully and McCaffrey, but maybe, most of all, us.”

  “Us?”

  Glitsky put his newspaper down and shook his head in disagreement. “Maybe not us most,” he said. “I think most is Beth Tully. But no doubt we’re in the mix.”

  “I need a scorecard here,” Farrell said. “What’s this about Tully?” he asked.

  “Well,” Hardy said, “she definitely went off the reservation by building the case on Adam McGowan, as we all saw from ‘CityTalk.’ So she brings in the real goods and rubs Jameson’s face in the shit he’s created. And let’s face it, she got the right suspect and he didn’t, so he can’t really come down too hard on her—directly, anyway—although he certainly can send her a message, which would be not to interfere with the way he runs his department. Don’t second-guess him on his decisions and, above all, don’t even for a second forget that he’s got the power to lay her and her partner off anytime he wants. So taking out Devin was a warning. She wants to cross him again, she does so at peril to her own job, and McCaffrey’s while she’s at it.”

  “What a bastard,” Gina said. “How could people have voted for him? That’s what I want to know. And now how can they want to keep him in after the ‘CityTalk’ thing when they see what a clown he is?”

  “That’s one of the enduring mysteries,” Glitsky said, “but I’m afraid—and Diz will back me up on this—this thing actually hits a little closer to home than Beth Tully.” Since everybody was hanging on his every word, he continued. “Never mind the details how, but Diz and I both got connected to her through this McGowan case, first Phyllis and then Adam. So there’s little to no doubt in Jameson’s mind that we are probably Jeff Elliott’s source for the column, and in fact he’s right.”

  “All true,” Hardy put in, “but the real issue is way more serious. All of us here should know this, since I predict it’s going to be part of our lives for a while, maybe a long while.”

  “That sounds ominous enough,” Farrell said.

  “Not to get everybody freaked out,” Hardy replied, “but the real issue is that Tully has another cold case she’s interested in.” He hesitated for a long few seconds, then let out a heavy breath. “She believes more than that Mr. Jameson is corrupt. She’s pretty convinced—no, she’s absolutely sure—that he killed a lawyer named Peter Ash a couple of years ago.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Farrell said, “but that rumor got pretty well squashed during the campaign, didn’t it?”

  “Well, maybe. But not for Beth.”

  “Did she find some new evidence?” Gina asked.

  “More like a new approach,” Hardy said.

  “And she somehow thinks she’s going to be able to do this, re-kick-start this investigation . . . how?” Farrell asked.

  “Maybe not at all now.” Hardy shook his head either in admiration or frustration, or both. “That’s why laying off Devin was such a good strategic move. Tully and McCaffrey were going to try to work the Peter Ash case under the radar, the way they had handled McGowan. And they had at least Devin’s tacit approval if not complete support. Then they spring it on Jameson when it was a done deal, maybe through the state attorney or the FBI or other jurisdiction.” He shrugged. “But now . . .”

  Glitsky picked up the narrative. “But now with a new lieutenant handpicked by Lapeer and under the mayor’s thumb, good luck with that. Now both of these inspectors might find themselves on administrative leave as well. Or worse: just let go. At anytime and for any one of a number of fabricated excuses, none of them having anything to do with Ron Jameson.”

  “You got to admire him,” Farrell said. “He is one slick son of a bitch.”

  “That he is.” Gina nodded in agreement. “And I’m starting to think I should be taking him a lot more seriously.”

  “That’s not totally inappropriate, Gina,” Hardy said. “And, at the risk of sounding paranoid, I don’t think this thing today with Devin is the end of anything. I don’t think Jameson’s done being proactive.”

  “Which means what?” Gina asked.

  “I hope I’m wrong and I don’t exactly see how,” Hardy said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow we’re up next.”

  27

  RON JAMESON CLEARED his schedule on this Monday for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was that he didn’t want to spend time out in public where he would have to listen to all the questions about the Celia Montoya–Adam McGowan situation. Andrea was not forwarding calls on the subject, either. That situation had resolved itself, Adam McGowan was being arraigned, so the thing was over, a done deal now, and he had nothing more to say about it. If he had to let a couple of days go by while he hung out in his office, then that’s what he’d do. It would all blow over when it did, and he was simply going to let that happen. If he fell out o
f the news cycle for a while, so what?

  After the abuse he’d taken from his own children, and even from Kate, at home yesterday, he had come down to the office in the afternoon and called the mayor and put into motion what he thought was an excellent solution—having Lapeer fire Juhle—to address the underlying issue, which was Beth Tully, who didn’t know it yet but who was facing the end of her police career before too long. Jameson would just have to give that a little more time so it didn’t seem so intimately connected to the Valdez murder, but before she could make any progress at all if she had any thoughts about revisiting the Peter Ash matter.

  Basically, he thought, fuck her and the horse she rode in on.

  Meanwhile he’d passed a very pleasant morning dictating seven different letters to victims of violent crimes in the city. Of course, he could have pulled up similar letters from the past on his computer and updated them, or he could simply have spoken into any one of his recording devices, but instead, he thought, why not take the opportunity to spend quality time with the lovely Andrea, who had been outraged at the unfairness of the “CityTalk” column, instead of with the harping and unwashed public?

  Andrea understood that Ron had only been trying to act decisively and satisfy his constituency that he took his job seriously—that it wasn’t really an anti-immigrant issue but rather that the scourge of the illegals was the crimes they committed, and that he, Ron, was right to have gone so quickly after Celia, who so clearly was guilty of something, even if it wasn’t killing Mr. Valdez. Just look at the people she hung out with. And, by the way, she was pretty obviously working as a prostitute, wasn’t she? Which in itself was a crime. And then killing herself, the coward’s way out. Andrea had no understanding at all of all the sympathy this girl seemed to have generated in the city at large. If she’d have just stayed home in Mexico or wherever it was she came from, none of this would have happened. And to say it was Ron’s fault was simply absurd.

  The shoulder massage finally got his tight muscles to relax. He took her advice that he should lie down on the couch and take a nap. She’d continue to hold his calls. Oh, and he should remember to turn off his own cell phone, too. After all he’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, he deserved a little downtime.

  • • •

  CHET GREENE HAD come into the office ramrod straight like a soldier reporting for duty, salute and all, but Ron told him to make himself comfortable, and now the DA investigator sat all but slumped on one of the leather chairs across from the couch on which his boss was sitting back, one leg crossed over the other.

  “So no real luck?” Ron asked.

  “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about, sir. I feel like there’s got to be something there. I talked a bit to Sheila Marrenas, who writes a column called ‘Our Town’ for the Courier . . .”

  “Sure, I know it.”

  “Well, she knows everything.”

  “More than Jeff Elliott?”

  “At least as much. I get the feeling that they’re kind of at war with each other on a permanent basis.”

  “So what about her?”

  “She’s who popped up when I googled the Dockside Massacre, so I went out to where she worked and asked her what she knew about it. Back in the day, this was going to be the big story of her career.”

  “But that didn’t happen.”

  “No. The story as she had it just never came together.”

  “Dang,” Ron said.

  “Well, not entirely.” Greene straightened up a bit and put an ankle on the opposite knee. “When I actually sat down with Marrenas, she got out her old files. It turns out that one of the Dockside Massacre victims, a guy named John Holiday, was a client of Dismas Hardy’s.”

  “And that didn’t make the papers? How could that be?”

  “It didn’t seem to have to do with anything. Hardy wasn’t connected to Pier 70, the shooting site. He’d been at his office all day, with about a dozen witnesses. One of whom—you’ll love this—was Phyllis McGowan.”

  “So if he wasn’t a suspect, why did they even interview him?”

  “Because of this Holiday guy. But that’s the way this whole story seemed to go. Somebody would show up connected to somebody else, but nothing tied them to the shooting.”

  “What about Glitsky?”

  “Same thing.”

  “In what way, exactly?”

  “Well, because he wound up taking over as the lieutenant of the Homicide Detail when Gerson got himself killed, he’s the one who most clearly benefited from the shoot-out. So naturally some cops—me, for example—had our suspicions. But he was alibied up the ying-yang. With Roake, by the way, in case you’re keeping score.”

  “Roake and Glitsky?” Jameson came forward on the couch. “And this never made the papers, either?”

  “Nope. Neither of them were at the pier.”

  “So where were they?”

  “At her boyfriend’s apartment. David Freeman. He got himself beaten and died the day before the shoot-out. So Roake’s story is that she was with Glitsky at Freeman’s apartment all afternoon, picking out his clothes for the funeral.”

  “Except if they weren’t,” Jameson said. “They ever find who killed Freeman?”

  Greene shook his head. “Nope. Random mugging while he walked home from work.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lots of stuff happening all at once.”

  “Seems so.”

  “Hard to believe it isn’t all somehow related.”

  “That’s what Sheila thinks, too. But she’s just never been able to get any traction on proving it.”

  Jameson broke a small, tight smile. “Sheila now, is she?”

  Greene smiled back. “What are you gonna do? Anyway”—the smile disappeared—“I went and paid a visit to Roake and she basically threw me out of her office. Oh, I forgot to say, there’s one other player in all of this madness: Dismas Hardy’s brother-in-law, Moses McGuire, now deceased. But he stood trial a couple of years ago for killing the guy who’d raped his daughter.”

  “And how’s he part of this?”

  “Well, it’s not apparent he was any part of the Dockside thing, but he got acquitted at his trial because—you’ll never guess—he was alibied by Gina Roake, who’d spent the day of the murder in bed with him.”

  Jameson sat all the way back on the couch. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. It’s a lot of coincidence.”

  “But no real evidence.”

  “A couple of hundred rounds of casings from various ammunition, but other than that, nothing.”

  “I think it’s interesting that all these people—with the possible exception of McGuire, who we don’t know—make a living around the criminal justice system, so they’re all experts at evidence and how to make it disappear.”

  “That is interesting. But we can’t do much with that, can we?”

  “I don’t see how. But I’ll tell you something: I’d give my left nut to get these people in front of a grand jury and watch them try to wriggle their way out. I mean, even forgetting all those other victims, this shoot-out killed a cop. Somebody should have given it an event number at the very least and beat the bushes until they had some real answers. Instead, we get the Russian mafia? Are you kidding me? Who believed that nonsense?”

  “Pretty much everybody, it seems, sir.”

  “I want you to keep looking.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go to your other skeptical cop friends. Find out who interrogated Glitsky and Hardy and especially Roake. I’m giving you my own special, personal event number. Take your Sheila friend out and let’s see if there’s something she forgot to tell you. These people think they can sue me, even maybe get me recused? Let’s give them something a little more personal to think about. You know what happens if you’re indicted for a felony, Chet? You lose your civil rights. You can’t vote. Forget being a lawyer. I mean it, screw these people. I’m going to take them down.
All of them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chet said. “Sounds like a good plan.”

  28

  TULLY AND MCCAFFREY were sitting in the courtroom, waiting for the arraignment of Adam McGowan, whose line number had yet to be called even though it had turned into early afternoon, when Tully felt the vibration on her belt. God help her if her cell phone made a noise in the gallery; she’d turned it to silent mode before they even entered the courtroom. She knew that she couldn’t be too careful on that score. Superior court judges had been known to have bailiffs impound a miscreant ringing cell phone and then to leave the bench, take the phone, and go out the courtroom doors, where they would send it skittering down a tenth of a mile of echoing hallway.

  The text from Devin Juhle read: Call me. Urgent.

  She poked her partner gently in the thigh and showed him the message, and the two of them got up and went out into the hallway.

  Ten minutes later Tully knocked on a heavy steel door painted bright maroon a few blocks from the Hall on Brannan Street. Juhle opened it right away and let them in. It was a large open space with high windows for light and an assortment of sports, music, and computer equipment scattered around haphazardly, although by far its most distinguishing characteristic was a full-sized half basketball court that took up most of the room.

  McCaffrey whistled with appreciation. “Where are we? What is this place?”

  “My buddy Wyatt Hunt lives here, through that wall there. I’ve got a key.”

  “Lucky you,” Ike said.

  “Well, as it turns out, maybe not so much.” Although Juhle clearly was striving for a light tone, the events of his day so far had just as clearly beaten him up.

  The three of them were still standing by the back entrance through which they’d come.

  “Anyway,” Juhle said. “Thanks for coming down. I hope nobody followed you.”

  “Unlikely,” Beth said. Then: “So what the hell, Dev?”