Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

"No idea."

  "But he talked to you two or three times?"

  "Yes. Is that a problem?"

  Bracco shrugged. "Was he talking to you about the same things each time you talked to him?"

  "Yes."

  "And what specifically was the subject of those conversations?"

  "I think he may have been trying to connect Nolan in some way to another couple who had been murdered a few days before Nolan himself was killed. I have the memory that he was trying to implicate Nolan in those murders somehow, which was ridiculous, and I told him so."

  "Do you remember specifically any questions that he asked?"

  "No. I couldn't really give him answers to the questions. This was a long time ago, and it didn't seem very important."

  "When was the last time you saw him?"

  "I don't know. Sometime last summer."

  "And when was the last time you spoke to him on the phone?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Do you know that Mr. Bowen disappeared last summer?"

  "Yes, I believe I did hear something about that just recently. Certainly I stopped hearing from him."

  "Were you aware that his records indicate that he called you on the morning that he disappeared?"

  Loy decided he had heard enough. Holding up a palm, he said, "Just a minute, Jack. What's your point here, Inspector?"

  "Mr. Allstrong was apparently contacted by Mr. Bowen on the day he disappeared. I was wondering if he remembers any of the substance of that last phone call."

  Allstrong reached out his own hand. "That's all right, Ryan." Then, to Bracco, "I don't remember any last phone call at all. I didn't know until just now that this last phone call was on the day he was supposed to have disappeared. As far as I know, Mr. Bowen might have just called the office on a routine housekeeping matter. I wouldn't know that. In any event, I don't remember talking to him. And while we're on this, Inspector, why didn't anybody ask these questions last summer when they might have been a little fresher in my mind?"

  "The Bowen case has been reopened as a possible homicide, and we're going into more detail than when it was a missing person."

  Loy sat up straighter, as if prodded. "If Mr. Allstrong is a suspect in a homicide, Inspector, I'm going to advise him to stop talking to you right now."

  "Mr. Allstrong can stop speaking to me anytime he wants. And I never said he was a suspect. But he does appear to be someone who might have had contact with Mr. Bowen on the day he disappeared." Bracco talked straight at Allstrong. "But this leads to my next question, about Mr. Bowen's wife. Did you ever meet her or speak to her on the phone?"

  "No."

  "Are you quite certain?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, it appears she made a number of phone calls to your number. Do you have any explanation for that?"

  "Again," Loy said, "he already told you he doesn't remember speaking to her. Mr. Allstrong gets a hundred calls a day, Inspector. He doesn't have time to speak to most of those people."

  "Mr. Loy. Your client indicated he wanted to cooperate in this investigation. I have a number of questions I want to ask him." Bracco nodded. "He doesn't have to answer any questions, but what I need are his answers and not your suggestions as to what might or might not have happened. So again, Mr. Allstrong, do you have any explanation for phone calls that Mrs. Bowen made to your phone?"

  "Well, of course, Mr. Loy is right. I get lots of phone calls."

  "I can appreciate that. But the last call Hanna Bowen made in her life was to here. And it was the day before her death. I think you can understand why we are curious about two people who call Allstrong Security, one of whom disappears and the other dies immediately after the contact. It does appear an unlikely coincidence." It also wasn't true, but Loy and Allstrong didn't have to know that. Hardy's plan was simply to have Bracco show up and make it clear that the cops, too, were now part of the picture.

  "Well, okay," Loy said. "You've asked your questions. Mr. Allstrong has told you what he knows. If you don't have anything further, I think it's time to end the interview."

  But Bracco ignored Loy again. "Mr. Allstrong," he said, "if you didn't receive these calls, to whom in your company might Mrs. Bowen have spoken?"

  Allstrong shrugged. "I could ask Marilou, our receptionist. She's the first line of defense. If Mrs. Bowen was hysterical or nonspecific about what she wanted or who she wanted to talk to, her calls would have stopped at the front desk. But as Ryan here says, we can always ask and make sure."

  Bracco finally reached for his coffee and took a sip. It had gone tepid and he made a face.

  "Is something wrong, Inspector?" Allstrong asked.

  Bracco reached over and turned off his tape recorder. He decided he'd give the shit one last stir. "This doesn't seem to be going anywhere, gentlemen. I came here under the impression that you'd like to cooperate in these homicide investigations, but I'm not picking up much of a spirit of cooperation. In fact, frankly, you both seem pretty darn defensive for people who've got nothing to hide."

  "That's ridiculous," Loy said. "We've answered every question you've asked. The plain fact is that Mr. Allstrong doesn't know anything about the Bowens other than what he's told you. He runs a huge corporation with branches all over the world. He doesn't have time to get involved in these small parochial matters. Look, Inspector, we're sorry Mr. Bowen disappeared, and about whatever happened to his wife. But to imply that there's any real connection between Allstrong Security and these events is just an absurd flight of fancy."

  "Amen to that," Allstrong intoned.

  "Well, then"-Bracco pushed his chair back-"thank you for your time."

  AT THREE-FIFTEEN, Glitsky was standing in front of a video monitor in the tiny electronics room between the two similarly minuscule interrogation rooms that fed off a narrow hallway that, in turn, was separated from the homicide detail by a glass wall. "I give up," he said to Debra Schiff, "what is it?"

  "That, sir, is the top of your head."

  Glitsky looked again. He wore his graying hair short and close to his skull. Leaning over, he squinted into the seven-inch monitor. "Could be," he said. "I couldn't prove it isn't."

  "You see any identifiable part of your face?"

  "No." He turned to her. "This is all the camera got in there?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Lord." Glitsky walked out of the electronics room, took one step to his left, and reentered the interrogation room he'd left a minute before.

  The room was four feet by five feet, so it was really more like a closet. It had no windows. Suspects in homicide investigations were often brought in for questioning and placed in these rooms, where they could be left alone and theoretically observed as they fidgeted or talked to themselves or otherwise did things that might be both incriminating and admissible in court. The problem was that the camera that was supposed to record all of this activity was cleverly hidden within the ceiling and the room was so small that the only image captured on tape, ever, was the top of the head of the suspect. As Schiff had just demonstrated to Glitsky.

  "It's hopeless," Schiff told him. "We can't do business like this. We need a new room."

  "I thought this was the new room." Glitsky was right. The entire homicide department had transferred to the fifth floor from the fourth only a little over a year before. Newly designed and supposedly state of the art. "But you're right, it's a little small too. Who approved the plans for this thing?"

  "Well, nobody, which is kind of the problem. There's a couple of guys in robbery who moonlight doing construction here in the building."

  "We didn't bid this out?"

  Schiff laughed. "Are you kidding me? We have employees that do the maintenance in the building. We try to bid this out, the union's going to have a fit. We'd be taking their jobs."

  "Well, then, why didn't we have the people in maintenance do it?"

  "Because they said there's a three-year backlog on maintenance, and they'd need to charge us seventy-five thousand doll
ars from our budget. So we got the two guys from robbery to do it."

  "Perfect," Glitsky said. "So where do you propose we put it, this new room?"

  "I don't know, Abe. Anyplace else. Maybe out where the lockers are. Or take part of the computer room, which is way too big anyway. But this thing is just crazy."

  "I agree with you." He tried a small joke. "I'll try to bring it up to somebody in facilities."

  Schiff didn't laugh. "Sooner would be better, Abe."

  "I hear you, Debra, I'll see what I can do. Really." But even as he was finishing up with this unwelcome bit of housekeeping, Glitsky saw that one of the clerks from reception was hustling his way. "Yo, Jerry," he said. "What up?"

  "I've got Bureau Chief Bill Schuyler with the FBI holding for you, sir. He says it's important."

  The doorbell rang in Hardy's hotel room. They'd gotten a small suite at the Rex, not far from Hardy's office, and Hardy had checked in at a little before five o'clock.

  He crossed to the door and, taking no chances, looked through the peephole. Glitsky frowned at nothing in the dusky light. When Hardy opened the door, the lieutenant focused the dark look on him. "When Phyllis told me you were here, I thought maybe she was kidding me."

  "Yeah, she's a great kidder, that Phyllis."

  Glitsky threw a quick look around. "Obviously, you think this is necessary."

  "Precautionary, that's all."

  Glitsky nodded, his expression set and hard. "In any event, we've got to talk."

  "And, lo, as if by magic, here we are talking right now."

  Abe tightened his lips enough that his scar stood out in relief. "Would you like to know the result of your ill-advised encouragement to Darrel Bracco that he go down and have a chat with the Allstrong people?"

  Hardy's face grew sober. "Is he all right?"

  "Physically, he's fine." Glitsky pushed on the door and Hardy stepped back to let him in, then followed him into the sitting room. Grabbing the chair behind the desk, Glitsky spun it around and straddled it. "But he's slightly ticked off at you. As am I, I might add."

  "And why is that?" Hardy sat down on the love seat.

  "Because he was starting to get a feeling about this Bowen case, or cases. That he could crack them if he just had some time. And now that's not going to happen, ever."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I got a call this afternoon from Bill Schuyler. You remember Bill Schuyler? He's the FBI bureau chief who couldn't find the agents who'd testified in the Scholler trial."

  Hardy's eyes lit up, although he tried to keep any sign of enthusiasm out of his face. "Tell me the FBI's taken over the cases."

  "Lock, stock, and barrel."

  "Citing national security issues?"

  "Citing they're gonna do it and we can't stop them. I think the actual line was 'I don't got to show you no stinkin' badges.' But even Schuyler went so far as to say that he didn't really like it, but the order came from high up and there was nothing he could do about it. You know what a huge concession that was from him?"

  "I can imagine."

  "I bet you can. So you know how me and Darrel have spent the last three hours? Packing up all our files on either of the Bowens and delivering them over to the Federal Building. These are two now very probable homicides in my jurisdiction, Diz, and now I'm off them for no reason that I can understand."

  "Which accounts for your less-than-stellar mood, not that you normally need anything specific. But that was faster than I would have thought." He held out a hand. "I'm not talking about the three hours. I'm talking about Allstrong getting someone to pull the FBI's strings. He's got to be seriously highly connected, which is what we figured, anyway."

  "So you knew this was coming?"

  Hardy nodded. "I hoped something like this would happen. This soon is a surprise, but that's not a bad thing either."

  Glitsky's face remained hard. "Well, I'm glad you're so happy about it. Darrel and I are feeling just a little bit used and abused."

  But Hardy shook his head. "I told Bracco last night, and I'll tell you now, you weren't going to get Allstrong on either of the Bowens. Never. Those cases are old, Abe, what evidence there might have once been is gone. And since these guys are stone pros, I'm guessing there wasn't much in the line of evidence anyway to begin with. So this FBI takeover, it's actually very good news."

  "Yeah, I'm trying to keep my celebration pretty low-key. But just for the record, what's good about it?"

  Hardy sat up straight. "All of a sudden the whole situation, which from Allstrong's perspective was under control and stagnant, is fluid again. It's a live issue. He's going to have to react and keep reacting if he wants to keep it where he can control it, which means he's going to have to deal with me."

  "Like he dealt with Bowen?"

  Hardy shook his head. "Not if I can help it, Abe, not this time. He's tried that approach and now it's come back to bite him. He's going to see that."

  "I hope you're right, but even so, if the FBI is protecting him from prosecution, what difference can anything you do matter to him? Best case, you're a nuisance. He's never going down for murder if the Feebs won't let anybody build a case."

  "Ah, but that's just it, you see? I don't want him for murder. I want his help to try to get my client out of prison. Then I'll just go away."

  Glitsky's brow came down and hooded his eyes. "I hope I'm not hearing that all this has been about all this time is getting your damn client off."

  Hardy's head snapped at Glitsky's rare use of a swear word. If he'd come to that, he was far angrier than Hardy had perceived. "Abe," he said quietly, "listen to me. Like it or not, my client's the only leverage we've all got. The Bowen murders pose no threat, they're ancient history. The attempt on Evan at San Quentin, same thing. That assailant's dead and it's never going to be anything more than a prison beef anyway. So what's the only other crime we know about that he's done here on U.S. soil? Putting out the hit on the Khalils, right? Which means Ron Nolan. And who's the only guy interested in connecting him to Nolan? Me. He's going to have to come to me."

  "And then what?"

  Hardy leaned forward in his chair. "Then I play him."

  40

  Evan came to the visiting room in a wheelchair. He was going to recover completely, he told Hardy, although he joked that he never wanted to hear those particular words again. Still, it was a good sign that he could make a joke about anything. The attack, he told Hardy, had been completely unexpected and, except for his rib, professionally executed as he walked into what he thought was the empty bathroom. As far as he remembered, there were no witnesses.

  Hardy brought him a copy of the brief to look over, and they discussed some of the finer legal points that he didn't understand at first, but in the end he seemed satisfied that this was an approach that possibly had legs. Hardy also brought him up to date on the developments in the Bowen cases, the FBI takeover, and they talked about who the mysterious higher-up might be.

  "We may never know," Hardy said. "Somebody who believes that it's more important for guys like Allstrong to build companies that grow and prosper than worry about if they exactly adhere to the letter of the law. So they need to kill a few people? Look at all the jobs they're providing, the infrastructure. Totally worth the price, right? Damn straight."

  "I love the national security angle. Like if Allstrong goes under, what happens exactly?"

  "At the very least, it hurts the war effort, all the good work Allstrong's doing over there. That's always a good one they pull out." Hardy had his grin on. "But I'm also guessing that the big guy, whoever he is, loses a decent portion of his discretionary cash income."

  Evan drew a pained breath. "I don't like to think that's really happening." He looked around at the prison walls. "But then again, I don't like to think that any of this is really happening either."

  The call came in at a little after one o'clock, just after Hardy arrived back at his office.

  "Mr. Hardy. Jack Allstrong." He had hi
s hearty good-guy voice back on. "This morning I received a copy of the appeal that you're filing in this Evan Scholler case. Mr. Loy says we can probably expect an application for a writ of habeas corpus to follow. He admires your work, Mr. Hardy, and advises me that there is a fair chance the court will at least order a hearing into your issue. I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot in our last conversation, and I wondered if you might be free to come down to my headquarters office this afternoon."

  Hardy didn't think it would hurt to play a little hard to get. "If you don't know anything about Mr. Nolan's connection to the Khalils, and last time you made it pretty clear that you didn't, I'm not sure we have much to talk about."

  "Well, you seem fairly certain that Scholler didn't kill Ron Nolan, and if that's the case, there might be something we can do to help. I think it might be worthwhile to discuss it."

  Hardy let him hang for a few more seconds. "I could give you a couple of hours this afternoon, but I really think this meeting should take place in my office."

  Hardy sat at his desk with his legal pad in front him. He'd already written a few notes to remind him of things he needed to cover in his upcoming conversation. Feeling mostly embarrassed at himself for believing that he might actually have the need for it, he'd placed his gun in the top desk drawer on his left, in easy reach if in fact it came to that.

  As Phyllis let Allstrong into the room, he pretended to be writing. Looking up-"Excuse me, a few more seconds"-he motioned to the straight-backed Queen Anne chair that he'd placed in front of his desk, indicating that Allstrong take it. While he did, placing his briefcase down next to the chair, Phyllis closed the door on her way out. Scrawling some more lines, Hardy finally put down his pen and pushed the pad to one side.

  "It appears," Hardy said, "you've got a guardian angel someplace in Washington who's taken care of making the police investigation into the Bowens go away. But as long as Evan Scholler is alive and in prison, either me or someone like me is going to be digging into the connection between Allstrong, Ron Nolan, and the Khalils. Whoever tried to have Evan killed has missed his chance and, with him held in protective custody from now on, isn't likely to get another one. And as you've recently found out, appellate lawyers are interchangeable. And, trust me, Mr. Allstrong, anyone who reads my file and my notes, of which there are several copies, will start this inquiry right where I left off. Does that about sum up the situation?"