The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  If Hardy and Wu could make that happen, then Andrew would get himself not just an administrative hearing, but a de facto juvenile trial. If he lost at the 707, then worst case Hardy and Wu would get two chances to hear the prosecution’s case. And to beat it. And even if Andrew then lost again in adult court, Hardy might still be able to appeal, saying that they’d been forced to go to the 707 before they could adequately prepare.

  Hardy knew this wasn’t just a long shot, it was a full-court bomb at the buzzer. But occasionally, he knew, they went in.

  So as he turned into Beaumont Avenue, in the first block off Geary Boulevard, he felt some small grounds for enthusiasm. Twenty feet of free, legal curb space yawned open on his right, and he pulled over and parked. He’d driven out with the top down on his convertible—there was no fog and the last days’ winds had finally abated—and now he sat, headlights off, letting a sense of the crime scene seep into him. He forced himself to wait, to observe, to listen. There was no hurry. If his coming out here was going to do any good at all, he had to slow down and take time.

  It was a short block. Eleven relatively small two-story housing units squatted between the major thoroughfare of Geary and the next street south, which was Anza. The address he sought was the fourth building down from Anza, and, at least from the outside, by far the smallest residence on the block. Set back a little from the street, it was also the only building with a lawn in front and a driveway with a separate garage on the side. Lights shone from the upstairs windows while the bottom unit—Mooney’s old place—was dark.

  Finally, he put up the hood on his car, grabbed his legal pad from the seat next to him, got out of the car and went to lean against one of the streetlights on his side of the street. With six of these, all miraculously functioning, the area was surprisingly well lit. This wasn’t the most unusual thing in the world, Hardy thought, but it almost never happened on his own block, which was in a similar suburban, high-density neighborhood.

  He made a note to check and see if Public Works had come out to install new lights since Mooney’s murder. Sometimes a station captain or one of the beat cops, called to a crime scene in one of these nice neighborhoods, would take the opportunity to check the city’s housekeeping and let somebody know. If the street had been significantly darker two months ago, it might make a difference to eyewitness testimony.

  Standing there on the curb, Hardy became aware of a subtle rhythm. He timed it out of curiosity—he didn’t think it was really worth writing down. About every forty seconds, the street noise from Geary, less than two hundred feet away, increased dramatically as eastbound traffic, released from its last red light, sped past on the way to the next one. The sound wasn’t anywhere near deafening, but once Hardy became aware of it, he waited through a few cycles, trying to determine how loud it could get.

  Loud enough to cover gunshots? He didn’t think so. Certainly not for the closer neighbors. And it would be quieter as it got later.

  The gunshots were a question and he jotted it down.

  Andrew’s walk was critical to his story and Hardy wanted to see if it made sense, so he checked the time and started moving south a few blocks to Turk, where he then turned east along the periphery of Lone Mountain College. This time of night, the road was quiet enough and might be conducive to memorizing lines. Certainly, this was a better route for that purpose than anything along Geary would have been. There was also quite a bit of street parking—it was where Andrew said he had parked on the night of the murders.

  Rather than go all the way to another busy street, Masonic, Andrew said he had turned south again, crossed the campus of the University of San Francisco by the baseball diamond, then come out through a little cul-de-sac. Andrew hadn’t known the name of this street when he’d traced his route for the detectives, but Hardy was glad to see that it fit his description—a paved walkway allowed foot access to the campus at the end of the street.

  When he turned back west at Fulton, Hardy found the uphill going a little slower. There was also a significant increase in traffic—it might have been more difficult for Andrew to concentrate or memorize his lines on this part of the walk, but maybe not. There simply was no way to tell.

  He passed St. Ignatius Church at the top of the hill, continued down a couple of blocks to Stanyan, then turned right and made it back to his car. He checked his watch. He hadn’t been particularly pushing himself, and he’d made the circuit in eighteen minutes—rather far from the half hour it had supposedly taken Andrew. Although Andrew might have stopped once, twice, several times, to set a line or perhaps just to think, he’d never specifically mentioned stopping. Hardy didn’t feel comfortable with the twelve-minute difference. He made another note.

  Crossing the street, he stood under the streetlight and looked up at the Salarcos’ unit. From reading the police reports, Hardy knew that the involvement of this critical witness had been reluctant at first. Salarco was a mow-blow-and-go gardener with an INS problem—no green card. Ironically, the Salarcos were only involved in the case because Andrew himself had told the detectives about them. Sergeant Taylor had asked him if he had any idea who might have called nine one one before he had—that person had had a thick Mexican accent.

  Andrew had volunteered that he bet it was the people upstairs—they had definitely been home that night. Their baby had been crying incessantly, and it had been distracting to the max. Andrew had told Sergeant Taylor that it was one of the reasons he couldn’t just go into one of Mooney’s back bedrooms to work on memorizing his lines. He’d had to get out where it was quiet enough to concentrate.

  So Taylor had asked Salarco if he’d seen or heard anything, or had called nine one one. At first the neighbor had said no. He and his wife had a sick baby. That’s all they were concerned with. But Taylor had a hunch and asked about Salarco’s immigration status, then explained that he was not with the INS, that Salarco’s testimony might be crucial to a murder investigation and might in fact mitigate in his favor with la migra. Hardy knew this was probably a cynical lie on Taylor’s part, but it did accomplish its goal—Salarco talked.

  At the sidewalk in front of the house, Hardy took a deep breath, hoping he could make the man talk again.

  The door to the Salarcos’ upstairs unit was around the driveway side in the back. A small flatbed truck took up most of the space between this building and its neighbor. There was no light over the door, and Hardy heard nothing when he pushed the doorbell, but after few seconds, he heard footfalls within, coming downstairs. Then, “Sí? Qué es?”

  “Señora Salarco?”

  “Sí. Policia?”

  “No. Habla inglés?” Hardy dug for some words that he hoped were close enough. “Soy abogado de Señor Bartlett.”

  “Momento.”

  The footsteps retreated. Hardy had time to turn around and examine the truck and the building. Wooden fence posts lined both sides of the empty flatbed. He saw no tools. The windows in the cab were up. The house was old, ramshackle, very small—less than half the size of the other buildings on the block. Hardy had wondered how an illegal handyman could afford the rent to even a doghouse in this neighborhood, and the answer was that it wasn’t much bigger than a doghouse, and from the outside at least, not much nicer.

  Another set of footsteps on the stairs. This time the male voice, though heavily accented, spoke English. “Yes.”

  “Mr. Salarco?” he said through the door. “My name is Dismas Hardy. I’m the lawyer for Andrew Bartlett. About the murder case?” No response. “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like to talk to you if I may.”

  Salarco didn’t ponder for long. Perhaps, Hardy thought, he considered anyone involved with the case a potential official who could turn him in. If so, Hardy was happy to let him keep believing that.

  With bright red skin and an unlined face, he struck Hardy as much younger than his stated age of twenty-eight. A little above medium height, in his T-shirt and jeans, Salarco could have been a weight lifter, with his mass
ive arms and well-developed shoulders, tiny waist. But the face—Hardy came back to it—it was the face of a boy. “Tardes, señor . . . what is it, please, your name again?”

  “Hardy. Dismas Hardy.”

  “Deezmus. I don’t know that name.”

  Hardy kept it genial. “Nobody does. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  They ascended a narrow stairway that ended in another door that opened into Salarco’s living room. It was little more than a cubicle, but nicely furnished in Salvation Army. A beaded bottle of Modelo Negro rested on the coffee table, along with a paperback book—Cien Años de Soledad. So the gardener was a reader, perhaps with intellect. It was good, Hardy thought, to find out early.

  The television was tuned to a Spanish station. Salarco turned it off, indicating that Hardy sit on the upholstered couch. “Cerveza?” he asked, and Hardy nodded. When he came back with the beer, Salarco took the opposite end of the couch. “So what do you want to know?” he asked.

  Hardy put his beer down on the table, took a relaxed position. “I’d really just like to walk through the events of the night of the murder, when you called the police. I’ve got a copy of your statements here, and I just wondered if you’d mind telling me again what you did that night, in your own words. Would that be all right with you?”

  “Sí. Sure.”

  “Before we begin, though, I want to ask you if you’ve talked to any lawyers with the DA’s office about your statements, or your identification of Andrew Bartlett.”

  He thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “Not any lawyers. I have talked to the police three, maybe four times. But no lawyers.”

  This made sense to Hardy. In the normal course of events this case wouldn’t come to trial for the best part of a year. Whoever pulled Andrew Bartlett for the adult trial wouldn’t even have had a chance to review his own discovery yet. With all the dealing and then the hurry to move Andrew up out of juvenile court, Hardy doubted whether Brandt had, either, since he didn’t have to know all the facts about the crime—he wasn’t trying the case.

  So Hardy had a clear field. But before he started to run, it was important that Salarco understand his position. He had already gotten it out, and now he handed him his business card, as required by statute. “I want you to know that I represent Andrew Bartlett, the boy you identified as the killer of Mr. Mooney and the girl, Laura Wright. I’m his lawyer. I want to hear what you have to say because I’m going to have to try to find out what happened.”

  The seriousness of the little speech hit a mark. Salarco drew his arm off the couch and onto his lap. His brow clouded a bit. “I will just tell the truth,” he said, “as I have.”

  “That’s all I can ask. Thank you.” He took a hand-held tape recorder from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. “Do you have any objection if I record what you say?”

  It wasn’t clear whether Salarco knew he had the option to refuse. He nodded, then waited. “How do you want me to start?”

  “Just what happened that night.”

  Another nod. “The main thing is Carla, our baby, she was sick. High high fever. She is crying crying, but finally, maybe about nine o’clock, we finally get her to start to sleep.” He uncrossed his legs, reached for his beer and drank. “But then downstairs, you know, just down there, right below, we hear this . . . this fight.”

  “A physical fight?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see, but I heard loud yelling—a man, two men, and a woman. Loud! Really loud! And of course then it wakes up Carla. She started crying again and . . . You have babies?”

  “Two,” Hardy said. “Older now.”

  “Well, you know, then . . . when they cry. At least me, it makes me . . . I don’t know the word. Impaciente. Crazy to have it stop.”

  “Impatient,” Hardy said. And thought, To say the least.

  “Sí. Impatient. So then Carla starts again and I am impatient with the noise from below. So I stomp on the floor like this”—he brought his heel down—“boom, boom, and it’s quiet for another few minutes, then the yelling starts again, and Carla is crying.”

  “And what happened then?” Hardy asked.

  “Then, when it started again, I went downstairs to ask them to stop.”

  “Just a minute, please.” Hardy sat up straight. This was not in anything he’d read. “You’re saying you went downstairs at a little after nine o’clock and talked to the people down there?”

  “Sí.”

  “And who was there?”

  “The girl, Señor Mike, and the boy.”

  “Andrew? The boy you identified in the lineup?”

  “Sí.”

  Hardy took a breath. This wasn’t good. If Salarco had seen Andrew at the house, close up, there was much less chance that he’d been mistaken at the lineup, or would recant at the trial. He sipped some beer to get his concern under control, and the question came out almost casually. “And what then? Did they tell you they’d stop fighting?”

  A questioning look crossed Salarco’s face.

  “What is it?” Hardy asked.

  But it passsed. “Nothing,” Salarco said. “I don’t know. But yes, they said they’d stop.”

  “And then it was quiet?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “No se. When the baby is crying, time just goes, you know. But again, we just got her to sleep again and Anna and I, we come out here, to this room, and turn on the TV, real quiet, but then there is this . . . this scream, the girl, and then a . . . a bump. You could feel it up here, like something dropped. The house shook. Then right after, a crash, the sound of a crash, glass breaking. And a few seconds later, suddenly boom again, the house shakes another time, somebody slamming the front door under us.”

  Salarco on his feet now, acting it out. “Anna goes to this window, here, and I am behind her, and there is the boy running away. He stops under the light there, and turns, and Anna starts to put the window up to . . . to yell at him I think, but then Carla starts again with crying. Madre de dios!” Salarco, living it again, turned to Hardy and put both hands to his head. “Is it never going to end?”

  “And then?”

  “Then I . . . remember, I am . . . I have no sleep and my baby has been crying for ten hours straight. I run downstairs. I go to yell at them all, but when I hit the front door, I hit it with a fist and it . . . it opens.” His hands hung at his side. “And I see them.”

  “Mooney and the girl?”

  “Sí. On the floor, with so much blood. I walk in. The girl is shot, I think, in the chest, and is by the back wall. There is a big stand-up lamp knocked on the floor, broken, all smashed, next to her, but there is still light above and from in the cocina. And Señor Mike is on his back with a hole in his face. I will never forget.”

  “No,” Hardy said. “I’m sorry.”

  Salarco crossed back to the couch, sat now on the edge of it. He seemed to remember his beer and picked it up, drained it, looked across to Hardy. “Otros?”

  Hardy hadn’t put much of a dent in his first beer, and didn’t want another, but he wanted to keep Salarco talking. “Gracias. Sí.”

  When he came back with the two cold ones, he put them on the coffee table and began without any prompting. “So the phone is there, and I go to it and push nine one one, and tell what I see, where I am. And while I am talking, I notice the gun on the little table in front of the couch.” He leaned forward, knocked wood. “Just the same as this one.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “Then I see how bad this looks, me in this room with the gun. I think the boy, maybe he’s going to come back. If he sees I am there, he can say it was me.”

  “What was you?”

  “Who killed these people.”

  “Why would you have done that?”

  Salarco turned his palms up. “The noise. I already come down one time to stop it. Maybe next time, I bring the gun and make sure. Then the woman on the phone, she tries more t
o get my name, and the other thing comes to me, la migra. I know I have to go. I cannot be there when the authorities come. So I come back up here and watch out the window until the boy comes back, and the authorities.”

  “You mean Andrew again?”

  “Sí.”

  “You saw him under the streetlight there out the window?”

  “Sí.”

  “The same boy? You’re sure.”

  Salarco put down his beer bottle, turned and faced Hardy directly. “I’m sorry, señor, but it was him. The same hair, the same clothes . . .”

  “And what were they, the clothes?”

  “Like all of them wear. I don’t know how you say . . . loose?”

  “Baggy?”

  Salarco nodded. “Sí. The pants, baggy. And then the . . .” He made a gesture of pulling something over his head. “Like Eminem in the movie.”

  “You mean he had a hood? A sweatshirt with a hood?”

  “Sí. That was it.”

  “And even with the hood, you saw his face? And it was the same face?”

  After the shortest pause, Salarco nodded. “Sí. Of course. It was the same boy, I say.”

  Hardy believed him. In fact, it had to be Andrew returning from his walk, or from wherever he had gone. Perhaps having run away and then realizing he’d left the gun, which could be traced back to him. Looking up, Hardy caught a glimpse of Salarco’s wife hovering in the doorway back to the kitchen. He might have to talk to her one day as well, but for tonight, he took a last pull from his beer, then stood up. “I want to thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I am sorry about the boy, señor. Truly I am.”

  “Thank you,” Hardy said. “I am, too.”

  16

  It was well past nine o’clock by the time Glitsky sat down to dinner at the small table in his kitchen.