Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  Carl didn’t take this as good-natured ribbing, and maybe it wasn’t. He considered that he was an old-fashioned cop, a dog sniffing where his nose led, discarding anything that didn’t smell, following what did. His nose told him he was about a step away on Beaumont.

  He stood in Glitsky’s doorway on his way out of the office. He wore his black Raiders windbreaker over an orange and blue Hawaiian shirt that he tucked into a shiny pair of ancient black slacks. The shirt billowed over his belt. He looked about halfway to term.

  Griffin was telling his lieutenant that he was going to be seeing a snitch on a gang-related in the Western Addition first thing this morning. He was late for it now, which didn’t matter because the snitch would be late too. Then, depending on how things broke with the snitch, if he got time, he planned to try to find the knife in the Sanchez case—the crime scene investigators hadn’t been able to locate it in the house, but he’d bet it was somewhere on the block, so Griffin was going to poke around the shrubs and see what he came up with. His guess was she got out of the house and threw it somewhere and then came back before she dialed 911. Anyway, then—

  Glitsky interrupted him. “How we doin’ on Beaumont?”

  “Pretty good.”

  Glitsky waited.

  “Couple more days.”

  “You writing it all up?”

  Griffin lifted his windbreaker to show Glitsky the notebook tucked into his belt. He patted it. “Every word.”

  There was no point in pushing. Griffin would tell him when he had something and he’d write it up when he got to it. Meanwhile, it sounded like he was moving steadily on at least two of his other cases. It would have to do for now.

  But if Beaumont didn’t close in a couple of days, Glitsky knew he would have to pressure Carl to share his discoveries—he was starting to take heat about it.

  “All right.” Griffin started to turn and for some reason, Glitsky said, “Watch your back, Carl.”

  A nod. “Always.”

  “Griffin wasn’t the brightest light in the detail,” Abe said. “You ever meet him?”

  “Couple of times, yeah.”

  “So you know. Anyhow, we figure he arranged some kind of sting, put the heat on one of his witnesses. Guy might have been on something, didn’t like the way it was going. Anyway, he didn’t respond well under pressure, felt he was getting double-crossed, shot Carl, something like that.” Glitsky made a face. “We may never know for sure.”

  Hardy clucked in commiseration, then gestured down at the file he was holding. “So who’s got the case now?”

  Glitsky nodded at the stack of folders he’d just gone through. “I got these off Tyler Coleman’s desk. That one doesn’t look much like it’s been worked.”

  “Why not?”

  Glitsky shrugged. “It’s their sixth active. Time they got it, the thing’s already over a week old. Priorities.”

  Hardy knew. Homicide inspectors didn’t want to waste their time—when the kill was no longer fresh, the scent disappeared. Suddenly, Hardy pulled the telephone around and punched for information. A minute later he hung up. “Unlisted, of course. If it were listed, I could just call and save myself an hour, but I wouldn’t want to do that now, would I?” He was on his feet. “I’ve got to go. Are you going to be around?”

  Glitsky checked his watch—nine o’clock. “I was thinking about seeing Orel.” Glitsky was a widower with a fourteen-year-old son at home. He tried to make some time for him every day. Some. Now he looked across the desk into the worried face of his friend. “You get something, call me at home. Fair?”

  Hardy pointed a finger—they had a deal—and hit the door running.

  As Hardy drove out to the site of Bree Beaumont’s death, he realized that it was going to take some kind of miracle to get Frannie out of jail tonight. Even if he convinced this guy Ron, Frannie’s friend Ron, to divulge his secret, then what?

  Glitsky had counseled him against calling on Judge Braun at her home, and he was right. It would only make matters worse, perhaps get Hardy his own contempt citation. He had to put it out of his mind, take things one step at a time.

  But he kept getting distracted. He couldn’t understand it. How could Frannie have let this happen, degree by degree? Now the family truly had a problem that was going to impact both him and their children in a major way. And all because Frannie had simply gotten her back up. At any point, she could have done something differently and avoided this mess.

  But she hadn’t, and that had something to do with Ron, something personal.

  He didn’t want to follow that train of thought, which of course made it irresistible. What about if Frannie was simply a novice at covering her tracks, at making excuses? She’d never had to learn those tricks before because she’d never cheated before. They’d always told each other everything. But now, suddenly, with Ron (whoever the hell he was), with his dead—no, his murdered—wife, things had changed.

  Frannie hadn’t even mentioned the subpoena?

  Hardy couldn’t imagine getting a subpoena to appear before the dogcatcher, to say nothing of the grand jury, and not discussing every detail of it with his wife. What had he done? How was he connected? How should he act? What did it mean?

  And yet Frannie had been summoned, days ago, to be a witness in a murder investigation and hadn’t mentioned it to him even in passing?

  Didn’t want to bother him with it? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think that was it at all.

  Something else was in play here.

  He missed his left turn onto Broadway, immediately swerved—not in time—and swearing, slammed his hand on the wheel so hard that he thought he might have broken it. Finally, his insides curdled, he made the next left that presented itself five blocks later.

  Why had he left Frannie at the jail? Allowed himself to be conned out to ask Ron Beaumont about his damned secret? He and Frannie had each other’s trust or they had nothing. Something was very, very wrong with the picture, with Frannie’s actions as well as her explanations for them. How could she have done this to all of them?

  And, perhaps more fundamentally, what exactly had she done?

  He opened his window to breathe in some of the cold, sea-scented air. It wasn’t just anger after all. He brought his hand to his chest and pressed. His heart was beating strongly all right, but he felt as if a piece of it had been nicked away.

  When it gets down to North Beach, Broadway is famous for its strip shows and tawdry tourism. But after it moves out of the old Italian neighborhood, through the city’s longest tunnel, then across Van Ness Avenue, it begins to define the ridge of the escarpment that falls steeply down to Cow Hollow and the Marina. At this point, the avenue boasts some of the most impressive residential structures in San Francisco.

  The palazzos of power brokers share the street with consulates and private mansions and estates. The mayor lives on Broadway; so does one of the state’s U.S. senators, the best-selling author west of Mississippi, the head of the country’s most profitable fashion house, the managing partner of the city’s largest law firm. Broadway is the legal address and occasional residence of the heads of three of the ten wealthiest families in California. Overlooking, from a great height, the spectacular panoramic view of the Bay and both of its famous bridges, Broadway—particularly its north side—seems as far removed from the mundane cares of working people as it is possible to get. And yet, Hardy reflected, this is where Bree Beaumont had been murdered.

  He had gotten his emotions back in check and was in the grip of what he knew to be a dangerous calm—he was sure it was his body’s defense against his tendency to feel things too deeply, to fall prey to his emotions.

  He would sometimes get this way at trial, his concentration focused down to a single point. He was going to do what he had to do and do it right. Later he’d reflect on it, curse himself, drink too much, laugh, get sick, whatever. But not now.

  Now he’d act.

  Double-checking the address, he pulled up an
d parked at the curb. Aided by his glance at the police report in Glitsky’s office, he was recalling the story he’d followed in the newspaper after it had broken. He’d known that the woman, Bree, had been Max and Cassandra’s mom, so it had been more than ordinarily compelling. But Frannie had—even then—never mentioned Ron. What Hardy remembered was that the mother of some of his kids’ classmates had been killed. Talk of politics. Big oil. Which meant big money. A beautiful young victim.

  And somehow his wife now in the mix.

  The Beaumonts lived on the top floor of this monster, the penthouse—twelve floors up. The brass surrounding the glass double-door entry was polished to a shine. Inside, the expansive marble foyer that opened onto the elevator banks seemed to shimmer under a couple of enormous chandeliers.

  But there was no getting in—the doors were locked, as Hardy realized he should have expected at this time of night. There was a night bell to one side of the door, which he pressed, but nothing happened.

  He suddenly noticed a light flickering over one of the elevators. Somebody was coming down. Turning away, he walked about halfway back toward his car, then did an about-face and waited until the couple came out of the elevator. He got to the door at the same time as they opened it going out and thanked them as he passed inside.

  He rang another bell, this one from a bank next to the elevators, marked “Beaumont,” and waited. And waited. It was a school night at half past ten. The family should be home, if this were in fact home anymore after Bree’s death.

  The elevator stood open before him and he stepped in, pressing the penthouse button. He didn’t really believe anything would happen—in luxury residences such as this one, the elevator doors on the upper floors would often open directly into a living area. You needed a card or a key to go with the button. Much to his surprise, though, the doors closed and he started up.

  He stepped out into a dimly lit lobby, ten feet on a side, with a hardwood floor covered by a Persian throw rug. Through a west-facing window he could recognize the blinking lights on a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. There was only one door in the lobby, and he was standing in front of it. But no one answered his ring, his knock. In a last gesture of futility, he grabbed at the handle.

  And the door opened. “All right,” he whispered. “The kid gets a break.”

  Behind him he heard the elevator door close, but he didn’t move forward immediately. He wasn’t fooling himself. This wasn’t a deserted residence. Aside from being a recent crime scene (although there wasn’t any police tape), it was somebody’s home, and entering it without invitation was trespassing. If he went in, he was putting himself at great risk. He might get himself confused for a burglar, always bad luck. If he got caught, he could be disciplined by the state bar, perhaps lose his license to practice law. Unlawful entry was a very serious matter.

  But there were times that called for risk and this, he told himself, was one of them. His wife had never been in jail before either. If Ron Beaumont came home—or a building superintendent or security guard for that matter—while Hardy was inside, he would explain the situation. Technically, he wasn’t there to steal, so it wasn’t a burglary. Hardy would say he was worried there might have been another crime. But really, he didn’t care—he needed to find out where Ron might be, and the sooner the better.

  In any event, fortified by his rationalizations—it was always good to have some story—he pushed the door all the way open, stepped inside, and switched on the lights.

  His first sight of the place stopped him cold. He thought he remembered from the newspapers that Bree Beaumont had been a professor at UC Berkeley who’d gone into industry. That may have once been true, but if the first glimpse of their abode was any indication, the Beaumonts had left academic privation far behind.

  He closed the door behind him and was standing in an enormous sunken living room out of Architectural Digest. Wealth seemed to infuse the air around him. Framed modern original art graced the walls, each piece tastefully illuminated by recessed lighting. There were two seating areas—couches in leather and wing chairs in brocaded silk. Elegant end tables, coffee tables, a writing desk, a pair of matching marble pieces on pedestals. Along his right side, the floor-to-ceiling windows displayed the glittering city below.

  Following his eyes, he stepped up into a formal dining area—a granite table and six tubular chairs under an ultramodern lighting device. A spacious gourmet kitchen was to his left across a bar of a dark space-age material.

  Beyond the table—the wine racks, the little seatingarea off the formal dining room—Hardy got to the drapes covering the back wall. He pulled them back a foot or two, the dim light from the living room now all but lost behind him.

  French doors gave onto a balcony. He opened them and stepped out, noticing the red Spanish tiles, a small, round outdoor dining table and chairs, several plants. The balcony was neither large nor small, but the view made it magnificent. Facing due north, it was unimpeded for a hundred miles, especially on a night like tonight when a brisk breeze scoured the sky free of fog and haze.

  It suddenly hit him—this was where Bree Beaumont had gone down. Walking to the edge of the balcony, he leaned out over the substantial cast-iron railing and looked down into what from this height appeared to be a square of light—the enclosed garden where she had lain undiscovered, apparently, for several hours. Stepping back, he sensed rather than felt a gust of wind out in front of him—it didn’t even rustle the plants on the ledge, though it did raise the hairs on his neck.

  But he was wasting time out here, taking in the sights. He had to get something to lead him to Ron and then get out if he was to do Frannie any good, if tonight wasn’t already a wash.

  He came back through the drapes into the sitting area off the dining room. In a moment, he’d passed through the kitchen into a hallway he’d ignored on his first pass. It led off the sunken living room to another wing, and on the first step in, he turned on the lights.

  The room on his left had a blinking LED that caught his attention. On a desk sat the telephone answering machine. It was an office, and as such, it might have what he needed. Crossing the room, planning to check first the messages, then the Rolodex, then the computer, he heard a creak.

  Frozen, he stood listening. A step back toward the hall. An unmistakable sound now, the front door opening. There was a shift in the light coming out of the living room into the hallway.

  He had company.

  6

  There was no other option. Hardy cleared his throat loudly and went out to face whoever it was.

  “Hold it right there!”

  “I’m holding it.”

  He was standing in the hall’s entrance, his hands wide apart, palms out before him at chest height. He was looking at a man about his size wearing black slacks, tennis shoes, a green windbreaker. The man was holding a gun as though he knew what to do with it, and this got his complete attention.

  “You’re Hardy?”

  “Guilty.” He kept his hands in the air. It would be a bad time for a sudden movement to get misunderstood. “I generally let the guy with the gun talk first, but maybe I should explain why I’m here. Are you Ron Beaumont?”

  The man looked down at the weapon, then put it back into its shoulder holster. “No. I’m Phil Canetta, a sergeant out of Central Station.” He came forward. “You’re Glitsky’s pal.” It wasn’t a question.

  Hardy nodded.

  “I was at the station when he called, said somebody might want to keep an eye on you. You were on your way over here, might need some help.” An aggressive look. “I didn’t expect you’d be inside.”

  “The door wasn’t locked. I tried it and it opened. I’ve got to find the guy who lives here. Do you know him? Beaumont?”

  “No. I saw him the day of the murder, that’s all. I did meet her a couple times.” Hardy must have changed expressions, since Canetta went on to explain. “I do some moonlight security—convention work, parties. Caloco does a lot of that.�
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  “And Bree would be at these things?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.” Then, “And when she was around, you noticed.”

  “I saw her picture in the paper. Good-looking woman.”

  Canetta almost angrily shook his head. “Didn’t come close.”

  Hardy wondered a little at the strong response, but Canetta was going on. “So where is everybody?”

  “I don’t know. I hope they didn’t run.”

  “Were they close to bringing him in, the husband?”

  “I think it’s crossed their minds. Are you helping out on this murder somehow?”

  He’d touched a nerve. “Are you kidding? Station cops don’t investigate murders. This is my beat, that’s all. The day it happened, I got the call and showed up here, secured the scene until Glitsky’s people showed. The professionals.” He almost sneered the word, but then, maybe remembering that Hardy was Glitsky’s friend, he got back to business. “They must be at a movie, out to dinner, something.”

  The wall clock read almost eleven. Hardy shook his head. “It’s getting late for kids on a school night. But I don’t want to just assume Beaumont’s on the run, not when there’s so many other alternatives. Maybe this place freaks out his kids. Maybe they’re all with relatives.”

  “Does he have any?”

  Hardy wished he’d copied the file that Glitsky had given him. It might contain some of these details. There was one other avenue, but Hardy wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He only knew he hated to leave before exploring it. “You know,” he said, “there’s an answering machine in the office down that hall.”

  “Eight calls,” Hardy remarked.

  “Popular guy.”

  “Either that or he hasn’t been here in a while.”

  Canetta nodded. “I was going to say that next.” He pointed to the machine. “Let’s hit that thing, see what it says.”

  Hardy pushed the button.

  Whatever else was going on, Ron Beaumont either hadn’t checked or hadn’t erased his messages since one-oh-seven p.m. on Tuesday, two days ago. It was one of those systems that announced the date and time of the calls, so Hardy and Canetta could place them exactly. The first was a man named Bill Tilton, who wanted Ron to call back about insurance and left his number.