Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  Valens had to admit Kerry was good at this next part. He’d heard it from dozens of podiums up and down the state and it always played beautifully, the great American public hating rich corporations as it did.

  “So guess what these noble oil companies did? They spent lots and lots of their own money developing the very additive that their own gasoline needed to become clean and efficient—our old friend MTBE.” Here, Valens was pleased to note, there was often if not always a chorus of well-orchestrated “boos.”

  After which Kerry would continue: “And then, as it turned out—just a coincidence, my friends, I assure you—it turned out that the oil companies found that their production of MTBE, made of a by-product of gasoline refining that they had earlier been throwing away—well, would you look at that? Here’s a surprise! MTBE started to bring in a yearly income of THREE BILLION DOLLARS!”

  More boos.

  “Oh, and darn, they forgot to tell us one last little detail.” A moment of suspense. “Wouldn’t you just know it? The dang stuff causes cancer and respiratory degeneration. Actually, the oil companies didn’t really forget to tell us that. What they did was tell us the opposite— that MTBE was nearly medicinal in its impact on human health. The air so much cleaner we’d have a new Eden. Why, read the initial reports”—again, drafts by Bree— “and you’d almost come away believing it’s so safe you could drink the stuff.

  “Except for one other problem.” And here Kerry would turn his most serious. “Except it makes water taste like turpentine. It leaks out of holding tanks and Jet Ski engines and everywhere else liquids leak out of. And once it gets into the groundwater, the wells and waterways of our great state, it never comes out. Never. Ever. It doesn’t evaporate. It doesn’t break down chemically. Ask the City of Santa Monica, which had to shut down five of its wells—that’s half of its water supply—because of MTBE contamination from local corner gas stations.

  “And even now, ladies and gentlemen, even today as I’m talking to you, this stuff is added to every gallon of gasoline sold in California at a rate of up to fifteen percent per gallon. That’s fourteen point two million gallons of MTBE every single day.”

  This statistic usually stunned the crowd into silence.

  The candidate would wait as long as he could, then hang his head a moment. His timing was excellent. He’d look up, sometimes even able to summon a tear. “It can’t go on. For our children and our future, it’s got to be stopped. My name is Damon Kerry and I’m here to stop it.”

  “So, bottom line, we can’t comment about Ron and Bree. We have to stick to the issues. We’ve been through this all before, Damon. It’s only a couple more days.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  But Valens knew there couldn’t be any “buts.” “Listen, ” he said with intensity. “Every day in every major city in this state, the callers to these shows are spreading the word that the oil companies killed Bree to punish her because she changed camps and came over to your side.” Valens stopped any reply, a hand up. “Look, Damon, here’s what I’m saying. You know it as well as I do—people love conspiracies, they love to hate these oil guys. This helps you.”

  “But I’m not accusing the oil companies of—”

  “And that what’s makes it so brilliant!” Valens knew that his candidate could see this clearly, so why did he have to keep explaining it? “Damon, you’re Mr. Clean. But your worthy opponent, who favors pumping MTBE until more research can be done? Guess what. He looks like he’s with the oil interests—”

  “Which he is.”

  Lord! Valens couldn’t get over Kerry’s fascination with the literal truth. “Yes, of course he is, but what matters for you is that we couldn’t buy the radio time they’re giving us. If we get them thinking about Ron Beaumont as a villain, it all gets diluted.”

  “I don’t know, Al. I wish they would come up with some villain, some suspect. Somebody to take the heat off.”

  “Take the heat off who?”

  “Who do you think, Al? Me.”

  “What about you?”

  “And Bree.”

  “You had a professional relationship. What’s to talk?”

  Kerry gave him a look. “This would be a bad time for somebody to find out, though, wouldn’t it? She’s back in the news, the story’s no longer dead, reporters start digging.”

  “And find nothing. Do you hear me? You have to relax. They find nothing.”

  The limo had pulled to a stop. Kerry hated to keep his crowd waiting. He needed to get out and press the flesh, keep connected to his voters. He reached for the door handle. “All right, Al, I hear you. I hear you.”

  13

  Abe Glitsky lay awake, trying to ignore the television noise in the next room. His housekeeper/nanny, Rita, loved the TV as much as Glitsky hated it. She’d been living with them now for almost five years and was a treasure, especially with Orel. Abe needed her so badly, he knew he would tolerate much worse in her than an unfortunate taste for popular dreck.

  Still, tonight, with Frannie Hardy in jail and an unsolved high-profile murder starting to get renewed media attention, the inanities were intolerable. Finally, he threw off the covers and sat up.

  Five minutes later, fully dressed, he was out of there. He was telling himself that maybe it wasn’t the television after all. What had gotten him up and moving was the sudden bolt that Frannie and his unsolved high-profile murder were one and the same case. Not that he hadn’t known it before, but he’d been viewing them as more or less separate problems, and suddenly it struck him that they weren’t.

  One other thing was certain—he hadn’t woken her up. From the looks of her eyes, she hadn’t slept yet in her cell.

  “Abe. Hi . . . ?” A quick look around the walls of the interview room although there was no place anybody could hide. Glass block and light green stucco. The question was all over her face—where was her husband? What was Abe doing here by himself in the middle of the night?

  The door closed behind her and she took a little half-step hop, jumping out of the way of something, the sound. Then a pitiful smile, embarrassed. “I’m not good at this.”

  Abe was standing close. “Who is?” He came up and put his arms around her for a second. She felt almost dangerously insubstantial, all tiny bones. He pulled back and looked at her, swimming in the orange jail jumpsuit. “Are you eating?”

  She shrugged, no answer. “Is Dismas coming in? Is he out there?”

  “No, it’s just me, checking on how you’re holding up.”

  Frannie crossed her arms, the ghost of her old self trying to appear, a dance in her eyes. “No, checking on how I’m holding up was last time, before you went home. This is something else.”

  The scar stretched between Glitsky’s lips. His own beaming smile. His head bobbed appreciatively. “You should be the lawyer.”

  “I’ll pass, thanks.” Boosting herself onto the table, she looked up at him. “So what is it? The deal?”

  Glitsky’s brow furrowed. “What deal?”

  “It’s not that? I thought they must have come and asked you—”

  “I don’t know any deal. What deal? Who offered you a deal?”

  “Scott Randall, that bastard. He was here an hour ago. Doesn’t understand why I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about him, like he really didn’t get it.” She was watching Glitsky’s face. “You really haven’t heard about this?”

  “Nothing. What did he want?”

  “He wants Ron.”

  “And how was he going to get that from you?”

  “He said he’d drop the contempt charge, stop worrying about the secret. I wouldn’t have to tell that to the grand jury.”

  “In return for what?”

  “For where Ron was. He thought I’d know where he was.”

  “But you don’t, right?”

  Frannie was studying the wall over his shoulder.

  “Right?” Abe repeated, but he already knew. “Damn it”—the rare profanity came out with slow
deliberation— “what are you doing, Frannie? I’ve been on your side up to now, trying to get you out of here, because I have known and loved you for years, and I know you’re not involved in any murder. Am I at least right on that?”

  She nodded, met his eyes. “I swear to you, Abe.”

  He sighed heavily, perhaps reassured. “All right, then. What else did Mr. Randall want?”

  “Just that. He wanted to get his hands on Ron and question him. He said he knew that’s where the answer was. With Ron.”

  “And where is that?”

  Sitting on the edge of the table, Frannie hung her head and swung her feet back and forth like a child. Finally, she looked back up. “Abe, he left the house and she was alive. When he came back she was dead. Somebody killed her.”

  Glitsky started to respond, but she put her hand on his arm, stopping him. “I know, I know. You told me, remember? The time of death. Technically, he could have done it before he left to take the kids to school.”

  “I like that eye-roll thing you do.”

  “Come on, can you picture it? Ron takes the kids down to the car, then says to himself, ‘Hey, here’s an opportune moment. I think I’ll just nip back upstairs, kill my wife, throw her off the balcony to make it look like a suicide, clean up the glass from whatever convenient murder weapon I find up there . . .’ ” She was shaking her head. “Please. I was with him that morning, and he was fine. He was normal. We just had a cup of coffee and kvetched about life, about children. You know how you do. You’ve had kids.”

  “Still do.”

  “You know what I mean. School-age. Little guys.”

  Glitsky nodded. “Okay, but he told you a secret so important that you’re here in jail?”

  “No, he didn’t, Abe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean not that morning. That morning was nothing.”

  “But Scott Randall gave me the impression—”

  “I know. And now everybody assumes Ron told me something that morning. I’m telling you that’s not what happened. I don’t even remember if we mentioned Bree at all, not on that day.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I wouldn’t tell what Ron told me.”

  “Which had nothing to do with Bree’s murder, so far as you know?”

  “That’s what I said on the stand.” Frannie had been admonished that revealing anything about what happened inside the grand jury room was a separate contempt of court. At this point, she couldn’t have cared less. “I said I didn’t know. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure.” Finally, she pushed off the table, got back to her feet. “But I’m telling you, Abe, listen to me.” She had grabbed at his arms, the sleeves of his leather jacket. “It doesn’t matter even if he did have an incredible, compelling reason to kill her, which he didn’t. And forget that he’s just not the kind of person who would ever, ever kill anybody. Forget that. The point is that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t have done it. He wasn’t there. Why is this so hard for everybody to understand?”

  Glitsky the cop almost found himself believing her, for the practical reason that what she said, particularly about the timing of the murder, made sense. If Ron Beaumont had killed his wife in the morning before taking the kids to school, while they were still hanging around or even waiting in the car, and managed to hide it from them, he had to admit that had been one hell of a party trick. Not that he couldn’t have done it—and Abe had only recently argued that it was in fact possible—except that in the real world, possible didn’t mean likely.

  But there were still questions. There were always questions. “So why is he on the run?”

  “How do you know he is, that he hasn’t just gone fishing or something to get away for a day or two?”

  This was the wrong answer and Glitsky clucked in frustration. “Your husband told me. He went by the school.” A meaningful glance. “I know that Diz also told you that, which brings up the question of why you are pretending you didn’t know. It also brings us back to why he ran.”

  “Maybe because he was scared, Abe. People get scared, even when they haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “That’s true,” Glitsky conceded. “They also get scared when they think they’re going to get caught for what they did. I’ve seen it happen. Also, I notice you didn’t answer the first part, why you’re pretending you didn’t know.”

  Suddenly her eyes really flashed. “Because there’re things I don’t have to tell anybody, that’s why. Even you, even Dismas. I’ve got a right to a little privacy, Abe, just like you do. How about that?” She took a few steps away, then stopped abruptly and turned back. “And while we’re on questions, I’ve got one for you—what did you come down here for? It wasn’t to check on me and you said it was. Why did you lie to me?”

  Glitsky held out his hands. She was right. She was Hardy’s wife, one of his closest friends in her own right, and being in jail didn’t make her a criminal, a suspect, anyone he had to deal with professionally. She was still the woman who’d cared for his boys for a month after his wife had died. “I’m really sorry.”

  She relented. A little. Arms still crossed, though. “Sorry’s good. Sorry’s a start.” But she wasn’t giving up on her questions, either. “So why did you come down here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe you could tell me something I didn’t know about Bree. It occurred to me that with everything else going on, nobody’s thought to ask you.”

  “But I don’t know anything about Bree.”

  “You don’t have any ideas about who killed her? Ron didn’t have any?”

  “I’m sure nothing he didn’t already tell the grand jury.”

  Glitsky tried to smile. “I’m on your side, Frannie. Always. How about if I ask you some questions, see if they point me toward anybody else?”

  Her shoulders slumped, the fatigue showing everywhere. “How about if we sit down?”

  They’d been at it maybe twenty minutes, Glitsky feeling that he’d barely begun, when the guard knocked and the door opened, and Dismas Hardy appeared. “Party in Room A,” he said. But he didn’t look like he was partying, Glitsky thought. More like he’d been through some kind of sleep torture.

  Frannie got up and walked to him. Glitsky stood, realizing that his interview was over for tonight. He came around the table. “Okay you lovebirds. I can take a hint.”

  “Abe, that’s okay, we’re just—”

  But he was at the door. “I know what you’re doing. Diz, I’ll be in my office for a while.” He turned to go, then remembered something. “Oh, and Frannie?”

  “Yes?”

  He pointed a finger at her. “Eat.”

  Then they were alone, holding each other. Hardy had come straight from the Airport Hilton, wanting to fill her in. He gave her Ron’s note, which seemed to make almost no impression. And really, he reasoned, why should it? It would have no effect, if any, for days. More than that, though, Frannie was far more concerned with another issue. “Before anything else,” she said, “this thing about me and Ron.”

  “Okay.” His breathing had stopped and that was all he could get out.

  “We liked each other, like each other.” A pause. “Maybe a little more than that.”

  Hardy tried to keep any hurt or recrimination out of his voice. “How much more?”

  His wife sighed. “I think for a while I was infatuated with him. He seemed to feel the same way about me.” She read something in his face, let go of his hands. “Now you’re going to hate me, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he said. “Nothing’s going to make me hate you. I love you.”

  She stared at him for another beat. “We didn’t . . .” She stopped. “But he was there, Dismas. He was a friend. He listened. I just want you to understand.”

  “I don’t listen?”

  “Yes. I mean no, you know you don’t. Not about some things. You glaze over—the kids, school life, all those what you call mindless suburban activities. And I don
’t even blame you, not really. I know it’s not the most exciting stuff in the world, but it’s my life, and sometimes it’s just horribly lonely and mind-numbing, and then suddenly there was this nice man who didn’t think all of this was tedious to listen to.”

  “So he’d listen, did he, old Ron?”

  She nodded, going on. “Ron and I, we were just having so many of the same issues with the kids . . .”

  He couldn’t hold it any longer. “Wait a minute, Frannie. What about us? I seem to remember we’re doing some of the same things, too—live in the same house, do the kid thing, have friends over, like that. That stuff doesn’t count?”

  “I know, I know. You’re right.” There was pain in her voice, too, perhaps some faint overtones of the desperation she must have been feeling. “But you know how things have changed with us. We’re different. I hope you’re still committed—”

  “Of course I’m still committed. You think I’d be sitting here listening to all this if I wasn’t pretty damn committed?”

  “Okay, I know that. But the romance . . .” She stopped. They both knew what she was getting at. The romance, and there used to be plenty, had been all but swallowed by the maw of the mundane.

  And Hardy knew why. “We’re both working now. We work all the time.”

  “Well, whatever the reason, we know we’re not the way we used to be. There’re whole areas of each other’s lives now that we don’t have the time or energy for.”

  Hardy brought his hand up to his eyes, all the fatigue of the past hours suddenly weighing in. Everything Frannie was saying was true. Nobody’s lives were the way they used to be. But the accommodation he’d reached was to put it out of his mind. He had his job, making the money. She had hers, the house and the children’s day-to-day activities. They shared the children’s discipline and some organized playtime. They weren’t actually fighting; they were both competent, so there wasn’t much to fight about. This was adulthood and it was often not much fun. So what?

  But she evidently had reached another conclusion— she needed something he wasn’t giving her and she’d gone out and found it. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “Talk to me.”