The Motive

by John Lescroart

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “The bottom line, Inspector, is that knowing these witnesses had already identified somebody else, you took a single photo of my client, showed it to them, and asked if this was the person they saw, not the other person they had ID’d, right?”

  Cuneo had nowhere to go. “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Inspector, in all your hours of training, has anyone even hinted to you that this was a proper way to make an ID?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  Hardy bowed from the waist. “Thank you.”

  But even after all this, there was one more nail to be driven into the inspector’s coffin. He pressed ahead. “Sergeant Cuneo, during your visit to Catherine Hanover’s house for your first interview, did you touch her?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did you shake hands?”

  “I may have done that. I don’t remember.”

  “But to the best of your recollection, you did not touch her otherwise?”

  “No.”

  “In passing perhaps?”

  “Your Honor. Asked and answered.”

  “Cross-examination, Mr. Rosen. I’ll allow it.”

  Cuneo: “No.”

  “Aside from the handshake, did any part of your hand come into contact with any part of Catherine Hanover’s body at any time?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  Cuneo: “No.”

  “Were you standing close enough to Catherine Hanover to touch her during any part of your discussion?”

  “Objection.”

  This time Braun, obviously irritated by the needless interruptions, paused briefly. Hardy hoped the jury caught the signal. “Overruled. Sergeant, you may answer the question.”

  Cuneo obviously didn’t want to, but he couldn’t refuse, although first he looked at Rosen for a cue. By now he had the whole imaginary drum kit going, his eyes slits at Hardy. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? You were or you weren’t close enough, Sergeant. Which is it?”

  “Yes, then, I was.”

  “Standing close enough to touch her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But in fact you touched neither her arm nor her shoulder?”

  Rosen, from his table. “Your Honor!”

  But Cuneo, thoroughly worn down, replied before the judge could rule. “I don’t know.” Behind him, the gallery, which had obviously been closely following the testimony, made itself heard even through the security screen, as Cuneo mumbled. “Maybe I touched her once or twice by mistake.”

  Hardy stood stock still, then delivered the coup de grâce. “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I missed that. Could I have it read back?”

  Jan Saunders read Cuneo’s words again, playing it straight. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I touched her once or twice by mistake.”

  Glitsky and Treya kept getting what they were told was good news, but it didn’t seem to give them much relief. The great news was that the echocardiogram ruled out aortic stenosis. Today’s X-rays on Zachary’s heart also showed no abnormality or sudden growth in size. The EKG—wires and leads stuck all over the infant’s body while he lay exposed and cold on the gurney sheet—also indicated that the heartbeat was regular. Through it all, the baby didn’t cry, but endured it with a stoicism that would have done his father proud.

  All the tests took the better part of an hour. In his office when they were done, Dr. Trueblood walked a careful line between optimism and realism. “I have to tell you that Zachary’s condition as of today is the best that we could possibly have hoped for just a couple of days ago. Of all the children that I see in here, he’s in the top one percent. And this is really terrific, terrific news.”

  These wonderful tidings were delivered, however, in a funereal tone. The old hunched man sat behind his desk with his shirt undone, his tie askew and his mottled hands linked in front of him. The light in the office itself was muted, the shades drawn against the dreary wetness outside, while the pitter of the constant rain provided the only soundtrack. “All that said, I feel I need to caution you that, though this is far better than aortic stenosis, it’s still something to take very seriously. Sometimes a VSD can change quickly, especially in the early months. We’ll want to keep a very close eye on Zachary.”

  “What does that mean?” Treya asked.

  “Well, first I mean just watch him. If he shows any marked or dramatic change in color, breathing, feeding or energy level, you can call me at any time, day or night. You’ve got all my numbers, right? But then beyond that, it would be a good idea to bring him in here every week for the next four to six weeks for the same kind of tests. . . .”

  Treya interrupted. “Every week?”

  “Yes. For the next month or month and a half. Then, if there’s no change, we’ll go to once a month and see how that works out.”

  “What then?” Holding his wife’s hand, Glitsky didn’t want to betray his own fear. Treya needed him to be calm and even optimistic, and his voice reflected that. He wasn’t relaxed, but they were moving into a routine, one they’d grown used to. He just wanted to know where they were now.

  “Then,” Trueblood said, “say, when he’s a year old, we’ll go to once every six months, and then once a year.”

  “For how long?” The Glitskys asked it simultaneously.

  “Well, assuming the hole doesn’t close up by itself— and it may do that because it’s so small—but assuming that it doesn’t, once a year certainly until he’s a young adult. Maybe longer.”

  “Forever,” Glitsky said.

  Trueblood nodded. “Possibly, yes. But remember, they’ve found these VSDs in autopsies of ninety-year-olds.”

  “So you’re saying Zachary could have a normal life?” Treya asked, barely daring to hope.

  “He could. You’ll have to be aware of his situation, of course. He’ll have to be premedicated for any dental work or surgery, but other than that it’s possible that it may never affect him at all. Maybe he’ll be able to run, play sports, do anything. Maybe he’ll need heart work in the short term, or in five years. We just don’t know yet at this stage.” Reading the agony in their faces, Trueblood broke out of his professional voice. “I realize that it’s difficult not knowing,” he said, “but please try to remember that it’s better than almost any alternative we had just a day ago. It’s entirely possible that Zachary’s going to grow up to be a fine, normal, healthy child.”

  Treya squeezed Glitsky’s hand, forced a smile of sorts. He knew her, knew that she didn’t want to hear any false or possibly false cheer. She wanted to know what to do so that they could be prepared for it and do it right. “So I guess we’d better set up an appointment for next week, then. That’s the next step?”

  They got home by three o’clock, and Treya said she didn’t want the two of them moping around together until it got dark, so Glitsky called his driver, Paganucci, thinking he would go check in at work for a few hours, maybe catch up on his mail, answer some of the more legitimate urgent calls, perhaps even talk to Batiste or Kathy West about the conspiracy and the various issues it raised.

  But the normally taciturn driver hadn’t taken him a block when he said, “Excuse me, sir.”

  He’d been looking at the slow continuous rain, his mind on his wife and new son, wondering how long it would take for this oppressive weight to lift, for life to begin to feel real again. In the backseat, arms crossed, he cleared his throat. “What is it, Tom?”

  “Well, sir, it’s the Hall. You know they’re having the Hanover trial there, and the place is a circus, way worse than usual. Even going through the jail door, you’re going to have to break through a line of ’em to get in. And then upstairs, there’s probably a dozen in the hall just outside your office. They’ve been there all day since the morning, waiting for you to show up.” Paganucci, depleted after the lengthy string of words, glanced into the rearview. “Knowing what you’ve been going through at home, I didn’t know if you were really fe
eling up for that.”

  Glitsky was silent for a beat. “That bad, huh?”

  “A zoo. Plus, look at the time, the trial’s going to be getting out about when we get there or a little later, and then we’re talking maybe three times as many of the vultures. I wouldn’t normally say anything, you know, sir, but I just thought you ought to get a heads-up.”

  “I appreciate it, Tom. Thanks.” They were moving east on Geary. “Why don’t we take a detour and think about it?”

  “You got it.” Paganucci hung a right onto Fillmore Street. “Anyplace in particular?”

  “I don’t know. My wife doesn’t want me home. Says I’m too morose. You think I’m morose, Tom?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Me, neither. It’s just most people don’t have my sense of humor. Not that I’ve had a lot to laugh about lately.”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’re close enough. Why don’t we swing by the Painted Ladies? See how they’re doing.”

  “The Painted Ladies, sir.”

  “Let’s kick it up, Tom. Lights and sirens.”

  “Sir?”

  “Joke.” “Joke.”

  “Ah.” Then, “Good one.”

  “There you go.”

  Hanover’s old place was now a gaping hole, still shocking even after most of a year. Especially since its sisters—cousins? daughters?—had been resuscitated and now preened with all or more of their former glory on the 700 block of Steiner. Paganucci, back to his habitual silence, drove the long way around Alamo Square and pulled over to the curb in front of the empty lot.

  Hat on, in full uniform, Glitsky opened the door and let himself out into the steady drizzle. Walking up the steps to the front landing, he stepped over onto the earth in the footprint of the old building. Though soaked with the constant rain, the site still crackled with broken glass and the remnants of cinders. Glitsky thought he could still detect a slight burned odor. Walking through the vacant space, he got to the back of the lot and turned around due west to face the park across the street—a grassy knoll topped by windswept cypresses—deserted now in the awful weather. Crunching back the way he’d come, he made it back to Steiner, turned and looked at the row of lovely houses one more time.

  He had no idea why he had come here. Could it have been as random as Paganucci’s suggestion that he might want to avoid his office downtown today? He didn’t think that was it.

  Something nagged at him.

  The house next door had a small sign in the front window that read: ANOTHER QUALITY REMODEL BY LEYMAR CONSTRUCTION. The health issues with his son had buried any other thoughts for the better part of the past few hours, but now suddenly he found that the loam had heaved as an idea mushrooming to the surface of his consciousness. No, not one idea exactly. More an accumulation of related inconsistencies.

  What did it mean that Jim Leymar of Leymar Construction said he hadn’t charged Hanover anything near a million dollars?

  Why did Missy D’Amiens, apparently, lie to her landlady about where she worked?

  For that matter, what had happened to her car? Or to the ring?

  At the outset, Glitsky had of course considered from several angles the possibility that Missy D’Amiens, and not Paul Hanover, might have been the primary intended victim. But she had never assumed a prominence. Always cast into semiobscurity by Paul’s huge shadow, and then lost in the swirling maelstrom of events and media insanity that had seen Catherine charged and arrested, Missy’s death came to feel to Glitsky like a kind of unfortunate footnote in an unsung and unknowable life. In some ways, she had become to him just another one of San Francisco’s homeless, albeit a wealthy one, who one day merely disappeared, never to be mourned or missed.

  But even the homeless, he knew, were sometimes—in fact, depressingly often—killed for their meager possessions, for their shopping carts, for their prime begging turf, for half a bottle of Thunderbird. As a more or less random human being walking around in San Francisco, Glitsky suddenly began to appreciate how tempting a target she might have been on her own, without reference to the Hanovers and their politics or money.

  She wore a very visible diamond worth a hundred thousand dollars or more, and drove a Mercedes with a hefty price tag as well. Anyone could have seen her, an apparently defenseless woman alone, followed her home and broken in (or simply knocked at the door on some pretense). Many people who kept guns for their personal protection kept them in the headboard of their beds, and this might simply have been a bonus for the burglar and thief. After he’d killed them both, he removed the ring from her finger, probably rifled the house for other valuables. There might have been gasoline in a container in the garage, and he’d used that to torch the place, then driven off in D’Amiens’s car.

  On its own terms, it wasn’t impossible. But it didn’t explain the other discrepancies in Missy’s story—the construction business, the false employment.

  Back in his car, Glitsky sat with his arms folded over his chest. Paganucci saw him reflected in the rearview mirror and decided not to ask him where he wanted to go. Glitsky’s natural authority was forbidding enough. When he scowled as he did now, his jaw muscle working and the scar through his lips pronounced, he was truly fearsome.

  After a few moments, he shifted in his seat, searched in his wallet, then in the little book he kept. “There’s a Bank of America branch at Twelfth and Clement, Tom. Let’s go see if they’re still open.”

  26

  With full darkness outside and the rain still falling, Hardy stood at the window of his office looking down on Sutter Street and spun around at the knock on his open door.

  “Anybody here?”

  “I am, Wes.”

  “What are you doing standing around in the dark?”

  “Thinking. You can turn the lights on if you want.”

  “Fiat lux.” The room lit up. “You know that Theresa was at the fire?”

  “You talked to her.” Hardy got to his desk, sat in his chair.

  “At length. I think she developed a little bit of a crush on me.”

  “From what I hear, she’s not exactly the crush type.”

  “Well, as the song says, Diz, ‘There’s someone for each of us they say.’ ”

  “What song is that?”

  “I think a bunch of ’em say it. You ought to listen to more country music, you know that? I mean it. Sam got me into it and now I don’t listen to anything else.”

  “I’ll put it on my list,” Hardy said. “She was at the fire?”

  Farrell plopped himself into one of the upholstered chairs in front of Hardy’s desk. “This is going to sound familiar, but she saw it on TV and drove over. Got her name and address taken by one of the arson guys and everything. She didn’t see Catherine, but that’s not really surprising given the number of spectators. She said there were probably a couple of hundred people out there that night, maybe more.”

  “Okay.”

  “What?”

  “I’m wondering if it means anything. Did you ask her what she was doing before that?”

  “Watching television.”

  “Wes . . .” Hardy’s patience, sorely tried throughout the long day, was all used up.

  Farrell held up a placating hand. “I’m getting there, I promise. She works in real estate, you knew that, right? And she does okay, pays the bills, goes on a vacation every couple of years. But not much extra. Anyway, the point is she was home, alone. She remembers specifically because . . . well, it was that day, mostly, but also because . . . I think you’ll like this . . . she remembers the call from Mary.”

  Hardy was, in fact, glad to hear this. For Theresa to be any kind of a convincing alternate suspect—for the jury’s benefit if not in actual fact—he had to be able to establish that she had found out on the same day as Catherine that Paul was going ahead with his marriage to Missy, and that he was possibly changing his will in the very near future, perhaps the next week. She had to be strongly motivated to stop him immediately, a
nd without the phone call from Mary to spur her to act, the theory would have had no traction.

  “So she was home, got the call from Mary, then what?”

  “Then nothing. She and Mary talked about it for a while, and she was extremely pissed off and upset, enough so that she canceled a date for dinner.”

  “That night?”

  Farrell nodded, pleased with Hardy’s enthusiastic reception. “I know. It’s almost too good to be true, but there it is. She got a stomachache.”

  “Who was she going out with?”

  “One of her girlfriends. I’ve got the name and we can talk to her if we need to.”

  “We might. But meanwhile, Theresa’s so sick she can’t go out to dinner, but a couple of hours later she’s at the fire?”

  “Right. But I mean, remember, this is her ex-husband’s house burning down, maybe with him in it. Of course she’s going to go.”

  “All right, I know. But still . . .”

  “Still, no alibi. I get it.”

  Hardy scratched at his desk blotter. His partner often took a humorous and low-key approach, but he didn’t miss much, which was why Hardy had thought to send him on this errand. “Anybody ever question her about it? Her alibi?”

  “I didn’t get that impression. Cuneo glommed onto her over Catherine, but he never thought about her as a suspect. And you’re right, by the way, that they’re not close, Catherine and Theresa. She should have stood up against her when Will said he was going to marry her.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  “And he’s been paying for it ever since.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “More or less verbatim.” Farrell paused. “If you haven’t gathered by now, Diz, she doesn’t particularly want to help us out on the defense. She’s finally got Catherine out of the family and wants to keep it that way. Will’s happier.”

  “Will’s a jerk,” Hardy said.

  “Well, at least he’s a happier jerk.”