The Motive

by John Lescroart

  She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him. “We’re okay, right?”

  “Perfect.” He leaned down and kissed her. “We’re perfect,” he said.

  19

  Arson inspector Arnie Becker took the oath and sat down in the witness box. In a sport coat and dark blue tie over a light blue shirt, he looked very much the professional, completely at home in the courtroom. He canted forward slightly, and from Hardy’s perspective, this made him appear perhaps eager. But this was neither a good nor a bad thing.

  Chris Rosen stood and took a few steps forward around his table, until he was close to the center of the courtroom. After establishing Becker’s credentials and general experience, the prosecutor began to get specific. “Inspector Becker, in general, can you describe your duties to the court?”

  “Yes, sir. In the simplest terms, I am responsible for determining the cause of fires. Basically where and how they started. If there’s a determination that it’s a case of arson—that is, a fire that’s deliberately set—then my duties extend to other aspects of the crime as well. Who might have set the fire, the development of forensic evidence from sifting the scene, that kind of thing.”

  “Do you remember the fire in Alamo Square at the home of Paul Hanover on May the twelfth of last year?”

  “I do. I was called to it right away. Very early on, it looked like an obvious arson.”

  “What was obvious about it?”

  “There were two dead bodies in the foyer. They appeared to have been victims of homicide, rather than overcome by the fire. The assumption was that someone started the fire to hide the evidence they’d left.”

  Hardy raised a hand. “Your Honor, objection. Speculation.”

  Braun impatiently shook her head. “Overruled,” she said.

  Rosen ignored the interruption. “Would you please tell us about the bodies?”

  “Well, as I say, there were two of them. They looked like a man and a woman, although it was difficult to tell for certain. The burning was extensive, and the clothes on the tops of their bodies had burned away. Under them, later, though, we found a few scraps of clothing.”

  Rosen gave the jury a few seconds to contemplate this visual, a common prosecutorial technique to spark outrage and revulsion for the crime in the minds of the panel. “Anything else about the bodies, Inspector?”

  “Well, yes. Each had a bullet hole in the head, and what appeared to be the barrel of a gun was barely visibleunder the side of the man. So that being the case, I decided to try to preserve the scene of the crime—the foyer just inside the front door—as carefully as possible, and asked the firefighting teams to try to work around that area.”

  “And were they able to do that?”

  “Pretty much. Yes, sir.”

  After producing another easel upon which he showed the jury a succession of drawings and sketches of the lobby, the position of the bodies, the location of the wounds—the prosecutor definitely favored the show-and-tell approach—Rosen took a while walking Becker step-by-step through the investigative process, and the jury sat spellbound. According to the witness, the blaze began in the foyer itself. The means of combustion, in his expert opinion, was one of the most effective ones ever invented—ordinary newspaper wadded up into a ball about the size of a basketball. Even without accelerants of any kind, a ball of newspaper this size in an average-size room—and the foyer of Hanover’s would qualify as that—would create enough heat to incinerate nearly everything in it, and leave no trace of its source.

  “You used the term ‘accelerant,’ Inspector. Can you tell us what you mean by that?”

  And Becker gave a short course, finishing with gasoline, the accelerant used in this particular fire.

  “But with all these other accelerants, Inspector, surely they would burn up in the blaze? How can you be sure that this one was gasoline?”

  Becker loved the question. “That’s the funny thing,” he said, “that people always seem to find difficult to understand.”

  “Maybe you can help us, then, Inspector.”

  Hardy longed to get up and do or say something to put a damper on the lovefest between these two. Earlier, Hardy had interviewed Becker himself and had found him to be forthcoming and amiable. Rosen’s charming act played beautifully here—the jurors were hearing interesting stuff talked about by two really nice guys. Not only were they giving him nothing to work with, if they did get on something worth objecting to, and Hardy rose to it, he would look like he was trying to keep from the jury what this earnest and obviously believable investigator wanted to tell them. So he sat there, hands folded in front of him, his face consciously bland and benign, and let Becker go on.

  “All these accelerants, in fact everything, needs oxygen to burn, so whatever burns has to be in contact with the air. But there is only one part of a liquid that can be in contact with the air, and that is its surface. So what you can have, and actually do have in a case like this, is the gasoline running over the floor, sometimes slightly downhill, pooling in places. But no matter what it’s doing, the only part of it that’s burning is its surface. Maybe the stuff that isn’t burning underneath, the liquid, soaks into some clothing fabric, or into a rug. Both of those things happened here, so we were able to tell exactly what kind of accelerant it was.”

  “And it was?”

  “Gasoline.”

  “Inspector, you used the word ‘exactly.’ Surely you don’t mean you can tell what type of gasoline it was?”

  Hardy and Catherine were of course both intimately familiar with every nuance of this testimony. Unable to bear his own silence any longer, he leaned over and whispered to her. “Surely he doesn’t mean that?” A wisp of a smile played at Catherine’s mouth.

  “That’s exactly what I mean.” Becker gushed on, explaining the mass-spectrometer reading, the chemical analysis (more charts) of Valero gasoline, the point-by-point comparison. Finally, Rosen, having established murder and arson—although no absolute causal relationship between the two—changed the topic. “Now, Inspector, if we could go back to the night of the fire for a while. After you told the firefighters to preserve the crime scene as best you could, what did you do then?”

  “I went outside to direct the arson team.” He went on to describe the members of this team—another arson inspector, the police personnel—and their various functions, concluding with getting the names and contacts of possible witnesses from people gathered at the scene. “And why do you want to do that?”

  Becker seemed to have some trouble understanding the question. Suddenly his eyes shifted to Hardy, but he braved a reply. “Well, lots of people tend to come to a fire, and you never know which of them might have seen something that could prove important. Sometimes a spectator might not recognize the importance of something they’ve seen. We just like to have a record of everybody who was there so inspectors can go back and talk to them later.”

  The reason for Becker’s sudden edginess soon revealed itself. Rosen had obviously rehearsed this part of the testimony to get to this: “Inspector, isn’t it true that, in your experience, when arson is involved, the arsonist, the person who set the fire, often comes back to admire his or her handiwork?”

  Hardy shot up. “Objection, Your Honor. No foundation. The witness is not a psychologist.” This was kind of a lame objection, since the question was more about what arson inspectors observed than what was in the mind of arson suspects, but it sounded good, and the judge went for it.

  “Sustained.”

  Rosen tried again. “Inspector Becker, among arson inspectors is it common knowledge that a person who sets a fire . . . ?”

  Hardy wouldn’t let him finish. “Objection! Hearsay and speculation.”

  “Sustained. Mr. Rosen, ask a specific question or drop this line.”

  “All right, Your Honor.” Rosen stood still, all but mouthing his words first to make sure he got them right. “Inspector, in your own experience, have you personally ever identified and/or arrested a
n arsonist who had returned to a fire he or she had created?”

  Hardy was on his feet. “Your Honor, I’m sorry, but I must object again.”

  But Rosen, this time, had made it narrow enough for the judge to accept. “Objection overruled. Go ahead, Mr. Rosen.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Hardy caught a bit of a smirk in the prosecutor’s face and, suddenly realizing his own blunder, he tightened down on the muscles in his jaw. By objecting time and again to Rosen’s questions, he’d fallen for the prosecutor’s bait, thus calling the jury’s attention to an item they might otherwise have overlooked as unimportant. Now no one in the courtroom thought it was unimportant, and Hardy had no one to blame for that but himself.

  Rosen asked the reporter to read back the question, which she did as Hardy lowered himself to his chair.

  The answer, of course, was yes. Becker himself had personally had cases where arsonists had returned to or remained at the fire scene at least a dozen times.

  “So now you were outside, across the street from the fire? Can you tell the jury what happened next?”

  Hardy had seen this coming. He might have objected on relevance with some chance of being sustained this time, but he had a use in mind for the information.

  Becker answered. “Yes, a woman saw that I was in a command position and she approached me and told me that she was related to the man who owned the burning house.”

  “Do you recognize that woman in this courtroom?”

  “I do.”

  “Would you point her out for the jury, please?”

  “Yes.” He held out his hand. “Right there, at the table.”

  “Let the record show that Inspector Becker has identified the defendant, Catherine Hanover.” Rosen gave his little bow. “Thank you, sir.” Turning to Hardy. “Your witness.”

  “Inspector Becker,” Hardy said. “In your testimony, you used the word ‘sifted’ when you talked about recovering evidence from the scene of the fire. What did you mean by that?”

  In spite of the time he’d already been on the stand, Becker remained fresh and enthusiastic. “Well, it’s not a very high-tech procedure, but what we do is kind of sweep up and bag everything around a body and then try to identify everything that was at the scene, down to pretty small items.”

  “And you used this technique after the Hanover fire?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Were you looking for anything specific?”

  “To some extent, yes. I hoped to find the bullet casings, for example.”

  Hardy feigned surprise. “You mean you could locate and sift out something that small?”

  “Sure, and even smaller than that. By the time we’re through, we’re pretty much down to ash and nothing else.”

  “And did you in fact find the bullet casings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were there any fingerprints or any other identifying marks on either of the casings?”

  “Yes. Mr. Hanover’s.”

  “Mr. Hanover’s?” Hardy said. “Not Catherine Hanover’s?”

  “No.”

  “What about the gun itself? Were there fingerprints on the gun?”

  “Yes. Mr. Hanover’s and some others.”

  “Some others? How many others?”

  “It’s hard to say. There was nothing to compare them with. It might have been one person, or maybe two or more.”

  “But did you try to compare them to Catherine Hanover’s fingerprints?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “And did you get a match?”

  “No. And the other stuff in the house was all burned up.”

  “In other words, Inspector Becker, there is no physical evidence to indicate that Catherine Hanover had ever touched either the gun that has been identified as the murder weapon or the bullets that were used on the victims? Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “No evidence she was ever even near the gun at any time? Ever?”

  “None.”

  “In fact, Inspector, isn’t it true that in your careful sifting of all the evidence found in the house after the fire, you did not discover any physical evidence that linked Catherine Hanover either to these murders or, for that matter, to the fire itself?”

  Becker answered with a professional calm. “Yes, that’s true.”

  Hardy took the cue and half turned to face the jury. “Yes,” he repeated, driving the answer home. But he came right back to Becker. “I’d like to ask you a few questions now about the first time you saw Catherine Hanover on the night of the fire. Did you question her?”

  “Not really. She came up to me and said she was related to the home’s owner. That was about it. There was really nothing to question her about at that time.”

  “Nothing to question her about. Did anyone else join the two of you at about this time?”

  “Yes. Sergeant Inspector Cuneo arrived from the homicide department, which we’d called as soon as we discovered the bodies.”

  “And did Inspector Cuneo question Mrs. Hanover?”

  “A little bit. Yes.”

  “Just a little bit?”

  “A few minutes. As I said, there was no real reason to question her.”

  “Yes, you did say that. And yet Inspector Cuneo chose to question her?”

  “Your Honor!” Rosen said. “Objection. Where’s this going? Sergeant Cuneo was a homicide inspector called to a crime scene. He can talk to anybody he wants for any reason.”

  “I assume,” Braun said stiffly, “that your objection, then, is for relevance. In which case, I’ll overrule it.”

  Hardy took a beat. He’d gotten in the inference he’d wanted—that Cuneo basically just wanted to chat up Catherine, and now he was almost finished. “Inspector Becker, on that first night that he’d seen her, did Sergeant Cuneo express to you any thoughts about Catherine Hanover’s physical appearance?”

  As a bonus, Rosen reacted, snorting, objecting again.

  Braun spoke sharply. “Overruled. Inspector, you may answer the question. Do you need Mr. Hardy to repeat it?”

  Hardy, with a second chance to put it in front of the jury, wasted no time. “Did Sergeant Cuneo express to you any thoughts about Catherine Hanover’s physical appearance?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said she was a damn fine-looking woman.”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “Pretty close.”

  When Hardy got back to his table, Catherine leaned over and urgently whispered to him, “What about the ring?”

  “What ring?”

  “Missy’s. Paul gave her an enormous rock. If they swept up everything in the room down small enough to find a bullet casing, they must have found the ring, too. Right?”

  “Maybe it was still on her finger.”

  “Oh, okay. You’re right. I’d just assumed . . .”

  “No. It’s worth asking,” Hardy said, although he couldn’t have elucidated exactly why he thought so. “I’ll go back and ask Strout.”

  “Mr. Hardy.” Braun stared down over her lenses. “If we’re not keeping you . . .”

  “No. Sorry, Your Honor.”

  Braun shifted her gaze to the other table. “Mr. Rosen, call your next witness.”

  Rosen got to his feet. “The people call Sergeant Inspector Daniel Cuneo.”

  Hardy put a hand over his client’s hand on the defense table, gave what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “Get ready,” he whispered. “This is where it gets ugly.”

  20

  Glitsky’s prayers were answered. It appeared that it was “only” a hole in Zachary’s heart after all. It was so small that the doctor thought it might eventually close up on its own, although Glitsky and Treya shouldn’t count on that since it was equally possible that it might not. But whether it eventually closed up on its own or not, Zachary’s condition required no f
urther immediate medical intervention, and neither doctor—Gavelin nor Trueblood—suggested an increased stay in the hospital for either mother or child.

  So Paganucci had come out to the hospital with Glitsky’s car, and Abe and Treya were back to their duplex by noon, both of them completely wrung out with the stress and uncertainty of the previous twenty-four hours. Neither had slept for more than an hour or two. And they were nowhere near out of the woods yet with their boy. There was still some likelihood that he’d need open-heartsurgery in the very near term—the doctors and his parents would have to keep a close eye on his overall development, heart size, energy level, skin color—turning bluish would be a bad sign, for example. But what had seemed a bad-odds bet yesterday—that Zachary might be the one child in eight born with this condition able to live a normal life without surgery—now seemed at least possible, and that was something to hang on to, albeit precariously. At least it was not the probable death sentence of aortic stenosis.

  Rachel was staying another day with her grandfather Nat. By pretending that he was going to take a much-needed nap with her, Glitsky got Treya to lie down in the bedroom with Zachary blessedly sleeping in the crib beside her. Within minutes she, too, was asleep.

  Glitsky got out of bed, went into the kitchen, turned in a full circle, then walked down the hallway by Rachel’s room. He checked the back door to make sure it was locked, deadbolt in place, and came back out to the living room. Outside, a bleak drizzle dotted his picture window, but he went to it anyway and stared unseeing at the view of his cul-de-sac below. Eventually, he found himself back in the kitchen. Apparently he’d eaten some crackers and cheese—the crumbs littered the table in front of him. He scooped them into his hand, dropped them in the sink, and punched the message light on his telephone.

  The only call was from Dismas Hardy, wondering where he was, telling him that suddenly he had many questions, all of them more critical than the location of Missy D’Amiens’s car. They needed to talk. There’d already been a few developments in the first day of the trial that would affect him. But more than that, he needed to revisit what Abe had done to date.