Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  "If Darrel finds something that leads back to Charlie, Diz, and he starts to look like a homicide, I'll jump all over it."

  "That'd be good. I'd appreciate it." Hardy fell into a silence again.

  "What are you thinking?" Glitsky asked after a minute.

  "Nothing."

  "Yeah, but it's a loud nothing."

  Hardy took a breath. "I was just wondering if it was possible that the FBI knew who killed the Khalils and didn't say anything about it because it was part of a bigger case."

  Glitsky looked over at him. "I missed a segue here. I thought we were talking about the Bowens."

  "Now we're talking about the FBI. But it's still Scholler."

  "Guy gets around."

  Hardy shrugged. "It's a complicated case. But part of it is how much the FBI didn't tell the DA. Or even if they had another suspect they forgot to mention."

  "Whatever it is," Glitsky said, "you'll never know."

  "But you think it's possible they'd deliberately withhold that kind of evidence?"

  "As my father would say, 'Anything's possible.' If it's the FBI, I'd go a little further. Nothing is impossible."

  "They'd screw up a murder case on purpose?"

  "Not every day, certainly. Not usually. But for the right reason…"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Say maybe the guy's a valuable snitch. Or he's a mole in a terrorist group." Glitsky snapped his fingers. "There you go. He's giving the Feebs good information on a terrorist cell, I bet they wouldn't blink if he killed his girlfriend on the side. Say 'national security' to these guys and anything goes."

  "You think?"

  Glitsky chewed his cheek. "Would I bet on it in this case? Maybe not. Do I think it's ever happened? Definitely, and more than once."

  And if it happened here with the Khalils, Hardy thought, perhaps Charlie Bowen hadn't figured it out in time as he was preparing his appeal. Maybe the Khalils had seen him-justifiably-as a threat, a loose cannon who wouldn't hesitate to accuse them of murder if it would help get his client off. And if they had, or if one of them had, in fact, murdered Ron Nolan…

  "Okay, then here's another angle you might want to put in your pipe and smoke," Hardy said. "Moses is of the opinion-again, based on nothing, but still, he's not dumb-he thinks that Nolan killed the Khalils because it was his job. They were Iraqi, and he worked for this company that does a lot of business in Iraq. Allstrong Security, which is evidently-"

  But Glitsky put a hand on his arm, stopping him. "Allstrong Security?"

  "Yeah, headquartered here and in-"

  "I know where they are, Diz. I know who they are." Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on Hardy's arm. "Nolan worked for Allstrong? How could I not have heard about that?"

  "Maybe because it's a small detail about a trial in another county three years ago. Could that be it? And why would it have mattered, anyway?"

  But Glitsky, a muscle working in his jaw, was inside himself, putting something together. He let go of Hardy's arm, staring ahead of himself into the darkness.

  "Abe? Talk to me."

  Slowly, he began to spin it out, as though to himself. "I'd bet my life it's close to the same time frame, something like three years ago, right? But I'll check that."

  "What?"

  Still, Glitsky hesitated. "We had a homicide here in the city of a guy who'd been over in Iraq working for Allstrong. His name, if memory serves, was Arnold Zwick. Somebody snapped his neck in an alley down in the Mish. Left his wallet on him."

  "All right. And this means…"

  "No, wait. The same weekend, a day or two later I think, three more guys, all together, all muggers with sheets, turn up dead on the street in the Tenderloin. Two of 'em with their necks broken."

  "Three broken necks?"

  "That's what we said. Batiste thought it might be a serial killer starting out, but nothing else happened. No clues, no suspects. Eventually it all just went away."

  "So what was the deal with Allstrong?"

  "Nothing, really." Glitsky still trying to process his memory. "We never found anything, anyway. The investigation never went anywhere."

  "But?"

  "But witnesses told us Zwick seemed to be rolling in cash before he got killed. But we never found any of it, except a couple of hundred in his wallet. Debra Schiff thought he'd embezzled it from Allstrong in Iraq, then split. They were getting paid mostly in cash back then. Her theory was that Allstrong sent somebody back over here to find Zwick, make an example of him, get the money back. But as I say, we never got a lick of proof."

  "And now you're thinking…"

  "I'm not thinking anything yet. Except maybe Moses might not be all wrong about Nolan."

  Hardy sat, elbows on his knees, mulling over this new information. "Let me ask you this, Abe. You've got friends in the FBI, right?"

  Glitsky hit a one-note chuckle. "Local cops like myself don't have what you call bosom buddies in the FBI, Diz. But I know a few guys, yeah."

  "Maybe you could ask them a couple of discreet questions?"

  "About this Khalil case?"

  Hardy shrugged.

  "And what," Glitsky asked, "makes you think they'd tell me anything at all about that? Especially if they've kept something about it hidden all this time?"

  "Well," Hardy said, "I know the two agents who were involved in my case. Maybe you could just put in a good word and see if they'd talk to me."

  "I could do that, sure. Which doesn't guarantee they will."

  "No, I know that. But it might help."

  Glitsky shrugged. "Couldn't hurt, unless it does. And we'll never know either way, anyway. But I'll put in the word."

  At that moment, the back door opened behind them. Frannie was standing there holding Zachary, with Treya in the hallway behind her.

  "What are you guys plotting out here?" Frannie asked.

  "Violent overthrow of the government," Hardy replied. "It's time we took control and fixed everything."

  "Good idea," Treya said. "Maybe Abe could start the revolution with that squeak in our refrigerator door. It's been driving me crazy for weeks."

  When they got home, while Frannie was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, Hardy moseyed on downstairs and picked up the telephone in the kitchen. After three rings, he got the answering machine for the Hunt Club, Wyatt's private investigation agency.

  "Wyatt." His voice a whisper. "I just wanted to give you a heads-up about the Khalils. You might want to keep a low profile. And if you find out if and when somebody talked to the FBI, go easy from there. Get as much detail as you can, but if you meet any resistance at all, don't make anybody mad at you. Just report back to me. We don't want to raise any flags with them. If you're getting the impression that the risk factor's gone up around this thing, that would be accurate. So be careful. Just treat that as the word of the day-careful."

  When he got back upstairs to the bedroom, Frannie was in her pajamas in the bed. She put her book down. "Where'd you go off to?"

  "Just downstairs, locking up, that's all."

  She gave him a quizzical look. "Is everything okay?"

  "Fine," Hardy said. "Everything's fine."

  34

  The questions ate away at Hardy for the rest of the weekend, and at seven-thirty Monday morning he called Darrel Bracco on his cell phone from home. The inspector seemed glad to hear from him at such an early hour, and told Hardy that they still hadn't located Hanna Bowen's diary but that yesterday he'd talked to one of Hanna's best friends, a woman named Nora Bonner, and gotten what he called pretty strong corroboration for Jenna's opinion that her mother had not been suicidal. Bonner and Hanna had gone out to dinner two days before she died, and all she'd been able to talk about was what she kept calling her husband's murder.

  "Hanna didn't by any chance mention who she thought had killed him?"

  "She thought it was something he was working on, but didn't know what. Evidently, he didn't talk about his cases at home."

 
; "So why did she think it was that?"

  "The last couple of days, he told her he thought he was onto something big, that he might actually be doing some real good."

  "But he didn't say what it was?"

  "He didn't want to jinx it before he had some answers."

  "So why didn't she, Hanna, tell that to the police earlier? If Charlie was looking into something big-"

  "Because nobody was looking at Charlie's case, that's why. It wasn't a homicide, remember?"

  "All right," Hardy said, "let me ask you this. If Hanna was trying to find what Charlie was doing, how was she investigating it?"

  "That's what I'm trying to find out. If it were me, I'd probably have gone to Bowen's secretary. Or maybe he was using a private eye. But the problem is this is all ancient history now. Bowen's gone most of a year. Who's gonna know, or remember?"

  "The secretary might."

  "Right. And she was?"

  "It'll be in his admin records. While we're looking in the files anyway. Then you just track her, or him, down. Hopefully still in town, probably with another firm. Or-here's a possible shortcut-maybe the daughter knew."

  "That's worth checking. I'll ask her." Bracco paused. "Can I ask you one?"

  "Sure."

  "Last time we talked at your office, you didn't seem too enthusiastic about the odds of getting anything out of all this. Now you're calling me before I'm in at work. Did something happen I might want to know about?"

  Hardy took a beat. "That's a fair question. The answer is yeah, although it's all still pretty nebulous. I'm working on the appeal for one of Bowen's cases that was hanging fire when he disappeared. Evan Scholler. Some of the witnesses I'm hoping to talk to might have developed a motive to kill Bowen."

  "You're shitting me."

  "It's a long way from established, but it's something I'm looking at. I talked to Glitsky about it over the weekend."

  "What does he say?"

  "What does Abe usually say?"

  "Not much."

  "That's what he said this time too. But I'm thinking if you can find some independent confirmation looking into Hanna's last days, maybe that she had tried to contact these same people-"

  "What are their names?"

  "It's a family. The Khalils." Hardy spelled it for him. "The father and mother were killed about four years ago in Redwood City, and everybody thought my guy Scholler had done it. Now, maybe not."

  "So these Khalils killed their own parents?"

  "No, but they might have killed the guy Scholler got sent up for. If you're keeping score, his name was Ron Nolan. Anyway, I've got my investigator looking into this too. So, yeah, I'd say it's heating up, but it might all fizzle and go away."

  "I should talk to these people too. The Khalils."

  "Well." Hardy temporized. "First we've got to find out exactly who we're talking about, and at this point, we don't have any idea. It's a big family. And you're already well along on Hanna's last hours. If you get something solid there, you're ahead of me and then you've really got something to talk to these people about. Meanwhile, I keep scratching. And call you if I get anything real."

  "With respect, sir. If Charlie Bowen's a murder, it's police work."

  "I couldn't agree more, Inspector. I'm just trying to find grounds that'll fly for my appeal. But Hanna Bowen's murder, if it was that, is police work too. And it's way fresher."

  Bracco paused a little longer this time. "We ought to stay in touch."

  "That's my plan. If you notice, I made this phone call, for example. I've got no desire to work your case, Inspector. Really. I just want to get my client out of jail."

  Bracco let out a little laugh. "God, that just sounds so wrong. My clients, all I want to do is put 'em in jail."

  At lunchtime, Hardy was down the Peninsula again. Though he might have been able to get the information from his client, Everett Washburn also knew Tara Wheatley's address and phone number and even where she worked. He'd left a message, identifying himself as Evan's attorney, and she'd called right back on her break and agreed to meet him in front of her school at a quarter to noon.

  As soon as he saw her, as she walked out of the building and got close to where he'd parked, Hardy understood a lot better what all the fuss had been about. He'd just read a book called Silent Joe by one of his favorite authors, T. Jefferson Parker, where one of the underlying concepts was the idea of the woman who possessed what one of the characters called "the Unknown Thing"-an attractive force so powerful that it altered the orbit of every man it encountered. It wasn't mere physical beauty or sexuality, though they both were part of it. It was something bigger, more inclusive, subtler, and far more dangerous.

  Whatever the Unknown Thing was, Tara Wheatley had it in spades.

  When she got to the passenger door, she stopped and beamed a smile down at Hardy that, at another time in his life, would have melted him. She wore sunglasses against the bright day. Her hair was down. The plain pale-orange cotton dress she wore revealed nothing-it came to below her knees-and yet stirred something that, to his old bones, felt primal.

  "What is it about guys and convertibles?" she asked. "I'm assuming you're Mr. Hardy."

  "That's me."

  Hardy started to reach over the seat, but she opened the door on her own-bare tanned legs and sandals-and plopped herself in. Hardy had the rogue thought that it was lucky she was teaching fifth-graders-any further into adolescence and her boy students would probably riot.

  "Where to?" Hardy put the car in gear, got moving. "Can I buy you lunch someplace?"

  She shook her head. "I've only got one period off for lunch-forty-five minutes. Just away from here, anywhere. Wherever you find shade."

  Out of the parking lot, he turned right and crested a hill, following the main road until it dipped into an area where the homes were surrounded with old oaks.

  "You can turn anywhere in here," she said.

  Hardy did as he was told, and parked at the curb on a shady street in an established neighborhood of large attractive homes set on small lots. As soon as he'd set the brake and turned the motor off, she turned toward him in her seat, her near leg tucked up under her. "Sorry to hustle you out of the lot back there," she said, "but people don't need to see me talking to another man outside the school. I'm already pretty much the fallen woman. I almost lost the job over it back during the trial."

  "Over what? Having a boyfriend?"

  "Having two boyfriends, Mr. Hardy. Not exactly at the same time, but close enough for some people."

  "Who?"

  "Suburban moms, Mr. Hardy. Never underestimate the power. Some of them really never liked me. I think I must have threatened them somehow, though I don't know how or why that would be." Hardy had a pretty good idea, but he said nothing. "Anyway, thank God the nuns supported me. I love the work. I love my kids. But you didn't drive down here to talk about me. What can I do for you? Is everything all right with Evan?"

  This had been her first question to him on the phone this morning, too, as soon as she'd heard who he was. But this time the question prompted an unexpected one from him. "Have you not seen him recently?"

  Clearly, the answer made her uncomfortable. "Two weeks."

  "That's not so bad."

  She shrugged. "It's not good. Not if he's the man you love, and he is. But he's already been in prison for two years, and in jail another year before the trial." She lowered her head, shook it slowly back and forth, let out a deep sigh. "It's a hard one, the whole thing."

  "I can imagine."

  "I mean," she went on, "if he stays in prison. I don't know what we're supposed to do. He won't marry me. I've offered that a hundred times. I think he's starting to lose hope. I don't know what he wants out of me anymore. Sometimes I'm not even sure what I want. I know I wanted him-I do want him-but I wanted a life with him. You know? Not this." Suddenly her eyes flashed. "But I'm not giving up on us. I'm not. Don't think that. It's just…it's so hard. It's so endless."

  "I believ
e you," Hardy said.

  She raised her eyes and looked over at Hardy. "Do you think you're going to have any luck? Do you think he's ever going to get out?"

  "To be completely honest with you, I don't know. I don't want to give you any false hopes, but I'm starting to think we might have a prayer."

  "Is that what was so urgent?"

  Hardy nodded. Maybe he'd exaggerated about needing to see her right away, but here they were now, and he couldn't feel bad about it. He felt that things had begun to move quickly, and he didn't want to lose his momentum. "There's a good chance that the FBI talked to the Khalils and didn't let the prosecution know. If that's true, we've got an appealable issue."

  "Well, I'm glad. But I don't know anything about that."

  "No. I didn't think you did." Hardy hesitated for a moment. "I wanted to ask you a few questions about Ron Nolan."

  She rubbed her hand across her forehead, brushed a hair away. "I knew it was going to have to come to that again someday."

  "Why did you know that?"

  "I don't know. He was such a mistake. I still don't know why…" Letting the thought hang until there was no other way to complete it. "I feel like the whole thing is my fault."

  "How is that?"

  "If I hadn't gone and told Evan about Ron tipping off the FBI. Ron knew I'd do that once he told me. He just played me. And then Evan went up to his place…"

  "So you think Evan did kill him?"

  "Well, I mean…I don't think he was himself at the time. But I guess…"

  "You guess so?"

  She shrugged again, then nodded. "I don't know what else could have happened."

  "A lot else could have happened, Tara. Nobody seems to know what happened. So unless Evan told you something that didn't make the trial-"

  "No! He didn't do that. He didn't remember."

  "I believe him. You might be happier if you believed that too. But what I'm wondering is if Ron ever talked to you about his work with Allstrong? You went together for how long?"

  "September to May. How long is that? Eight months? What do you want to know about his work?"