Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  Hardy thought it was good coloration for Carrie Pierce to believe that. He doubted that any man had ever looked at her and not thought about sex. But if she wanted to retain a sense of her value as a person outside of that context, she’d better believe that there was more.

  “The point is,” Pierce said, “that evidently someone— one of my colleagues perhaps—had told the police that I’d been furious at Bree for leaving Caloco, especially so abruptly.”

  “And were you?”

  Pierce looked at his wife, then nodded. “Pretty mad, yes. Betrayed, hurt, all of it. But that was personal.”

  “But her leaving? Changing sides in these gas additive wars I keep hearing about. That was business.”

  Pierce wore a look of amused toleration. “And you think that the big bad oil companies got together and, because she’d had a philosophical change of heart, we decided to kill her?”

  Hardy had to smile himself. “Actually, hearing it out loud it doesn’t sound too plausible.”

  “It’s completely absurd,” Carrie said. “Regardless of what you may hear on the radio, murder isn’t really one of Caloco’s business tools. Or any of the seven sisters’.”

  “Seven sisters?”

  Pierce explained. “That’s what they call us, the spin-offs of Standard Oil after antitrust broke up the mother company. But none of the sisters would have any reason to kill Bree or anybody else. Frankly we don’t need to.”

  Hardy said it mildly. “Even for three billion dollars?”

  Pierce had on his tolerant face, the one Hardy supposed he used for the public. “And what is that figure, three billion dollars? Where does that come from?”

  “That’s the number I’ve been hearing. Isn’t that the yearly income from this gas additive everyone’s fighting about?”

  “MTBE?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Pierce nodded. “That sounds about right. Three billion.” He pulled out a stool, sat on it, and indicated Hardy take one, too. Which he did. Carrie excused herself and moved over to the main counter to pour more coffee.

  Hardy tried not to follow her movements, but it was not easy. He tore his eyes away, back to Pierce. “So my point is that that’s a lot of money. And if Bree led the charge against this stuff . . .”

  But Pierce was shaking his head. “No.” He lifted his hand, ticking off the points on his fingers. “First, Bree didn’t have anything like that kind of power. She wrote our drafts, she was a great and persuasive spokesperson, but Jesus Christ himself could come down and say MTBE was the devil and it wouldn’t just go away. The stuff has cleaned up the air unbelievably. It works, Mr. Hardy. The EPA loves it. Hell, it mandates it—that’s a long way from being outlawed. It’s not going away because one woman says it might have side effects, which, p.s., is nowhere near proved. Second, and this is always a tough one to sell, but three billion really isn’t all that much money.”

  Hardy had to reply. “Three billion? We’re talking three billion dollars.”

  Pierce nodded. “It’s all relative. It’s mixed into gas at eleven percent. And basically the stuff’s only used in California, and only for half the year at that. So you do the math. Three billion represents about ten percent of half of California’s gasoline bill. It’s a drop in the bucket.”

  “You’re telling me you wouldn’t miss three billion dollars?”

  “Somebody in some department might notice, but long-term? That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s nothing.”

  Carrie came back over with an urn of coffee, china cups and saucers, sugar and cream on a silver platter. “It’s the hardest part of Jim’s job, Mr. Hardy. Making people see that this isn’t all about money. They think because we make a profit that we must be evil. But Jim hired Bree to do good, to find out how to make a better product, betterfor the world. No one seems to understand that. And that cost billions, too, to retool the refineries—”

  Pierce reached over and patted her hand. “What Carrie’s saying is that it’s a complicated issue. It’s true that we’ve spent billions developing MTBE and for a while everyone was thrilled with it. It seemed to be doing the job. Now some questions have come up and we’re looking into them. But the point is that we’re committed to clean fuels and if it turns out that we have to develop some new refining tool, we’ll do that, even if it costs billions, which it will because everything costs billions. That’s the price of admission in this league.”

  He took a sip of his coffee. “But the other point, Mr. Hardy, is that Bree’s getting a case of the doubts is no reason on God’s earth for any oil company to do anything, much less have her killed. And that’s essentially what I told the police.”

  Hardy picked up his own cup, took a drink. Most of what Pierce said made logical sense if he accepted the premise that three billion dollars wasn’t a lot of money, but that remained a bit of a leap. “I once figured out how long it would take to count to a billion,” he said. “If you did nothing else. One number every half second, twelve hours a day. You want to guess?”

  Pierce shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. A week?”

  Hardy shook his head. “Thirty-two years, give or take a few months.”

  Pierce chuckled. “Get out of here.”

  “It’s a really big number, a billion,” Hardy said.

  “Can that be right?” Carrie asked.

  Hardy nodded. “It’s right. But my point is, it might be why people seem to have a hard time thinking three billion isn’t a lot of money. Why Bree might have been killed for it.”

  “She was one person, Mr. Hardy,” Pierce said.

  “So was Hitler. If he’d been killed, it might have avoided World War II.” He shrugged. “Look, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m trying to get a handle on what I keep hearing on the radio, that the oil companies had a motive to kill her.”

  Pierce remained unruffled, as though he’d heard it all before, which he probably had. “You’re welcome to look, Mr. Hardy, but it will waste a lot of your time.” He sipped coffee. Hardy had the impression he was stalling for a moment. Then he seemed to reach some decision, and sighed. “You know the source of all this radio nonsense, don’t you?”

  “No. I thought it was kind of a groundswell . . .”

  Pierce was shaking his head. “Not at all. It’s a well-funded group of eco-terrorists. Don’t laugh. That’s what they call themselves. Eco-terrorists.”

  “And?”

  “And they all seem to be working to get Damon Kerry elected since he’s the standard-bearer against MTBE.”

  “All right.” Hardy didn’t see where this was going.

  “Well, at the time she left us, Bree was very much under the spell of Damon Kerry, too. Perhaps more, although I shouldn’t say that after all I’ve had to endure on that score.” He glanced at his wife, whose lovely face again betrayed her distaste for this subject.

  Pierce turned back to Hardy. “What I’m saying is that at least these are the kind of people who admit to resorting to violence, or the need for it. Maybe somehow Bree crossed them, joined the camp and was going to renege, something like that.”

  “You’re not saying Kerry—”

  “No no no, not personally. But somebody behind him. Possibly. Really I don’t know. I don’t like to point a finger at anybody, but . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Hardy remembered Canetta’s comments about Al Valens, who had also left a message for Ron Beaumont. A question presented itself. “You said this group—these terrorists—are well funded. Where do they get their money?”

  Carrie nearly blurted it out. “That’s easy. SKO.”

  Pierce snapped at her. “We don’t know that, not for sure.”

  “Of course we do.”

  Husband and wife glared at each other.

  “Who?” Hardy asked.

  Making a show of reluctance, Pierce let out a long breath. “Spader Krutch Ohio.”

  “The farming conglomerate?” Hardy asked.

  Pierce nodded. �
�Corn. Ethanol, the other additive. It’s a huge company, as you say, heavily subsidized by the government. They’ve got a stake in seeing MTBE outlawed.”

  “So they could make the three billion dollars?” Hardy asked.

  Carrie’s color was up. “They would kill for it.”

  Pierce shook his head from side to side. “I doubt that. But there is, I believe, very little doubt that they are the source of these funds.”

  Hardy digested this information for a moment. “Have you told the police about this?”

  “What exactly is there to tell?” Pierce stood up. He’d given Hardy several minutes—nearly a half time’s worth—and now the interview was over. “They asked me about my suspicions. I told them I’d heard about these economic motives and frankly, gave them short shrift. Poor Bree wasn’t assassinated, she was murdered.”

  Hardy realized that this, from an oil company’s senior vice-president, was self-serving. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Still, he thought, three billion dollars.

  They had all begun moving back toward the front door. Carrie laid a hand on his arm, guiding him through the dimness. “If there is anything more you need,” she said, “Jim and I want to help, but we don’t really know anything more than we’ve told you.”

  They’d arrived in the foyer and Pierce went for the door. “Now that we’ve opened this can of worms, Mr. Hardy, if you’re convinced it isn’t Beaumont, you might look into Kerry’s campaign after all. The funding, maybe the eco-terrorist thing. There could be something there.” He sounded skeptical, though.

  Hardy stopped, blinking in the sudden sunlight let in by the open door. It was the second time that Pierce had inadvertently alluded to Ron’s involvement in the murder. “But personally, you still think it’s Beaumont, don’t you?”

  A temporizing smile. “I believe these things tend to be personal, let’s say that. If Bree had just started an affair with one of Kerry’s people and Ron found out . . .” His voice trailed off. “Well, that’s a motive, anyway.”

  Hardy wanted to say, “So’s three billion dollars,” but instead he merely thanked the couple for their time, handed them his card, and turned back for the long walk to his parking space.

  16

  Sergeant Canetta’s sandwich from Molinari’s had given Hardy the idea. For all his peregrinations of the morning, there hadn’t been a minute when Frannie wasn’t somewhere in his consciousness. Now, heading downtown for another visit to the jail, it occurred to him that perhaps every instant she spent locked up didn’t have to be hell.

  Since it often worked for him, he reasoned that some good food might improve things temporarily for Frannie to the point where it was only as bad as purgatory—same conditions as hell, but you really knew it would end someday.

  So he stopped and bought a spread of delectables from David’s Delicatessan—lox, bagels, cream cheese, chopped chicken liver, pastrami, onion rolls, pickles, even three bottles of creme soda, which was her favorite drink in the world that wasn’t made from grapes.

  Only to be harshly rebuffed when he arrived at the jail. Was he crazy? the desk sergeant wanted to know. Didn’t Hardy know better by now? Visitors weren’t allowed to bring anything for the inmates into the jail—any piece of cake might have a razor blade or weapon in it, any drink some dissolved drugs.

  So, reluctantly, Hardy left the bag at the desk. The best of intentions . . .

  One step into the interview, Frannie turned from the guard and saw him sitting at the table, smiling at her. He spread out his arms. “Sorry. It’s just me,” he said. “I bought all your favorite food in the whole world, I really did, but they wouldn’t let me bring any of it inside.” With a helpless expression he repeated that he was sorry.

  She dissolved into tears. Just standing there in her orange jumpsuit, hands at her sides, looking at him and crying.

  Nat Glitsky didn’t like being interrupted when he was at Temple.

  Lots of times when he’d been younger, he’d been less than diligent at keeping the Sabbath, but now in his eighth decade he’d come to believe that the Ten Commandments had gotten everything exactly right if you wanted to have a world full of healthy and productive people. People should pay attention to the wisdom in all ten of them, he believed. They really should. Keeping the Sabbath, taking a day off, kept you sane.

  But nowadays even religious people mostly only acknowledged nine. Keeping holy the Lord’s day was not only forgotten, it had been completely subverted, even reversed. Woe betide the lazy bum who took a whole day off every single week to reflect and try to gain some perspective on his life and work and the world around him. There wasn’t time for that. There was only work anymore. It was wrong.

  Nat’s working days were over, and all he wished now was that he’d kept the Sabbath sacred more often back when he’d get overwhelmed with child-raising or working or the pressures of his marriage. It might not have changed his life much, but at least it would have planted the seed in his son Abraham, who was always crushed under his workload, and who now was sitting—fidgeting really—next to him.

  And that was what adhering to the commandments was all about, too. It was generational. It fostered the long view that human nature never changed. Only individual humans did. But not so often as you’d think.

  Nat finished his prayer and hit his son on the thigh. Okay, they could get up and go outside now.

  On the steps of the synagogue, they both stopped, squinting into the bright sunlight. “I love the boy, Abraham. You know that. It’s nothing to do with that. It’s you.”

  Abe drew in a deep breath. “What’s me? I didn’t plan this, you know, having to go downtown on Rita’s day off. They need me down there.”

  Nat rolled his eyes, dismissing that excuse. “They always need you down there. Your son needs you out here. Suppose I just say no now, I’ve got to go back to Temple, then what?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I go get Orel and bring him down with me.

  “Among the criminals? There’s a fine solution. Better I should take him back here.”

  “Except he’s got his soccer practice.”

  “Oh yes, right. Much more important than Temple on the Sabbath.”

  “Well, he’s there, Dad, and I told him you’d be picking him up. If you’re not, fine, but I’ve got to know right now, all right?”

  Suddenly, the serenity of the temple vanished, and a rare flash of anger took its place. Nat’s voice took on a hard edge. “Everything’s now with you anymore, Abraham. You want to ask yourself why that is maybe?”

  Abe raised his own voice. “No. I don’t need to ask myself that, Dad. You want to know why? It’s because everything is a crisis. Everything has to be done five minutes ago, and so Saturday rolls around and all the stuff that needed to be done on Friday . . .” Abe reined in his own escalating temper. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I don’t mean to yell at you.”

  Nat reached up and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. Abe had his mother Emma’s height and, of course, her color. He towered over his Jewish old man, who now shrugged. “I been yelled at before, Abraham. It’s not the yelling I’m worried about. It’s your boy. It’s time passing and then it’s gone and you never saw it.”

  Glitsky had told his father he’d be getting home in time for dinner with him and Orel.

  Nevertheless, the discussion nagged at him as he drove down to the Hall of Justice. It was still on his mind when he walked through the doorway into the long hall that led to the DA’s office, airport for Flying Assholes Airways.

  What did they really need him for now anyway? On Saturday afternoon?

  The politicos thought they could just snap a finger and he’d have to come arunnin’. And he was proving that they were right, because here he was. He should have just said no, he had other plans, he couldn’t come down and discuss Ron Beaumont. But it was too late now.

  Scott Randall was in Sharron Pratt’s office with her lordship, the DA’s investigator Peter Struler,
Chief of Police Dan Rigby and Abe’s predecessor as head of homicide, Captain Frank Batiste, who was now an assistant chief. And my, weren’t things heating up? Four of the five of them—everyone but Batiste—were already in a friendly discussion about something that abruptly halted as Glitsky’s shadow crossed the room’s lintel.

  “Ah, Lieutenant Glitsky.” Pratt was sitting on her desk and actually clapped her hands as though in delighted surprise that Abe had dropped in.

  Batiste, Glitsky noticed, had found a convenient neutral corner and was memorizing the stains on the ceiling tiles. He was a good guy and his body language was tellingAbe a lot. This wasn’t his party, which meant that he’d been called down by the chief to neutralize Abe, make sure that homicide accepted the message, whatever it was.

  Rigby and Randall sat on either end of the low couch looking at some papers spread on the table in front of them.

  “Ah, Ms. Pratt.” Unable to stop himself, Glitsky silently brought his own hands together. Sometimes imitation wasn’t the sincerest form of flattery. Sometimes it meant that you saw through pretense and were telling the pretender that she was full of shit.

  He stopped in the doorway, went into his best at-ease. He nodded at the men, but no smile. “Hey, guys.”

  There was an awkward moment during which some glances were exchanged, Rigby evidently waiting for a signal that it was time to begin. He cleared his throat. “About this Beaumont thing, Abe. And now the newspaper stories about this woman in jail.”

  Glitsky nodded. “Frannie. Her name’s Frannie Hardy.”

  “Yes, of course it is. Frannie.” The chief looked over at Pratt, got some secret message, cleared his throat, spoke again. “We’ve just about decided to put out an all points on Ron, the husband, and we wanted to run it by you first, get your input.”

  “We wanted to be sure we kept you in the loop, Abe,” Pratt added.

  Glitsky did a quick take at Batiste and the two conducteda millisecond’s worth of nonverbal communication of their own. Then the lieutenant folded his arms, leaned his bulk against the doorjamb. “I really appreciate your concern, Sharron, thank you. And this all points bulletin? It would be in light of new evidence that Investigator Struler’s come up with, would that be it?”