Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  From where they had parked, the three carriers hadn’t been able to hear a thing except the twittering of the birds and the casual noise of the picnickers, but as they got closer a low roar gradually became audible, then undeniable.

  “Either of you guys ever jump in here when you were a kid?” the first man asked. He didn’t want an answer, was babbling out of nervousness, and neither of his two companions said a word. In any case, his story was drowned out in the sound of the water pouring out of the input pipes into the temple, but he kept right on talking. “When I was growing up, this was the thing to prove your manhood, let me tell you. I knew a guy broke a leg and almost drowned, but I rode it halfway down to the lake.”

  He was referring to what had once been a popular rite of passage for teenagers on San Francisco’s peninsula. For years, males with testosterone poisoning would come down here with other guys or their girlfriends, mostly at dusk, and jump over the low wall of the temple down fifteen feet into the churning, ice-cold water, which surged at thousands of gallons per second into a circular, tiled pool. The flow would pick these kids up—or occasionally push them down and not let go—and shoot them out a fifty-foot submerged tunnel, then to the canal that led to the reservoir.

  Now, in response to the occasional drowning, the state had installed a wide-meshed steel grate to cover the pool and jumping in was no longer an option.

  As the three conspirators got to the low wall, the woman—she was by all accounts the leader—looked back and made sure that their car had pulled out of its space and was now idling, ready to take them out of here. There was a young couple on the platform with them, the boy’s arm around his girl, both of them mesmerized by the rushing water, unlikely to move away in the next five minutes.

  A solo man, midfifties, in shorts and hiking boots, was climbing the low steps to the temple even as she waited, and behind him a family of four were getting up from their blanket, looking like they were walking this way.

  The shorts-and-boots man caught her eyes for an instant, and she too quickly—stupidly—looked away. Guilt, guilt, guilt. He kept looking at her. She’d caught his attention, a critical mistake. He seemed to notice the picnic basket on the ground at her feet. His brow darkened, perhaps at the basket’s unlikely presence there, perhaps at the somewhat odd trio in scarves and pulled-down hats, jackets and heavy pants.

  She cast another quick glance at the family behind them. Yes, they were coming here, too, up to the temple.

  Their car was in place now, waiting. She couldn’t wait any longer, even if it had to get a little ugly. They’d planned for this contingency. They were ready.

  She nodded to her two partners, jerked her head indicating the middle-aged solo hiker. In their planning meetings, they had decided that if fate handed them a situation like this, they would take full advantage of it. This would increase the profile of what they were doing. The public outcry was always vastly more satisfying if people got hurt or dead. That possibility made the game that much more meaningful. It also gave it a greater edge of excitement.

  One of her men lifted the picnic basket to the edge of the railing while the other strolled casually over behind the man, who was now—apparently—transfixed by the show beneath them, the crashing water and noise and simple power of the spectacle. But then he looked up again, saw the picnic basket in its even more unlikely place. He started to raise a hand, began to speak so she could hear. “Hey, what’s—?”

  It was time to move. Another nod and both men went into action. Her partner, who had once jumped into this temple to prove his manhood, caught the solo hiker from behind and flipped him over the edge as if he were a sack of flour. At the same time, her other partner had opened the top of the basket and taken out one of the buckets, dumping it whole onto the grate while she did the same with the other one.

  And then they were running, the basket left behind, the teenage lovebirds left flat-footed, unable to decide whether to help the older hiker or chase the bad guys.

  They skirted the approaching family on a dead run, piled into their waiting Camaro, and sped with squealing tires from the parking lot.

  Hardy heard about it on the radio on the way to his office after his talk with Glitsky. The emergency news report was warning citizens of San Francisco to avoid using their tap water until the actual substance that had been dumped into Crystal Springs could be positively determined.

  “. . . although the labeling on the buckets recovered at the Pulgas Water Temple lead authorities to suspect that it is the gasoline additive MTBE . . .”

  Suddenly Hardy reached forward and turned up the volume. He’d never heard of the stuff before this week and now suddenly it was everywhere. The announcer was continuing. “A group identifying itself as the Clean Earth Alliance has faxed a communiqué to this station and other local news media claiming responsibility for the poisoning.

  “Damon Kerry, the candidate for governor who has been running on a platform to outlaw the use of MTBE as a gasoline additive in California, is in San Francisco today. In a just concluded press conference at the St. Francis Hotel, he responded to critics who have accused him of some kind of complicity in this attack. He had this to say about this latest escalation in what has been called the gasoline additive wars.”

  Hardy had arrived at the entrance to the parking lot underneath his building, but he waited out in the street, not wanting to lose any of the transmission. An angry-sounding voice came over his speakers. “The people who have tried to poison San Francisco’s water supply are terrorists. They say that the purpose of this poisoning is to call the bluff of the oil companies who contend that MTBE is not a significant health hazard in drinking water. They say that this vile act will dramatize their position. But I say that what they have done is unconscionable and criminal. No one associated with my campaign has anything but contempt for these people and their actions.”

  The emergency bulletin switched back to the station’s deejay, again cautioning citizens about the hazards of drinking the water, giving some more details about the attack itself, the man who’d been pushed over into the temple and who was now in critical condition with a broken back, the spotty descriptions of the terrorists.

  Hardy heard it all in a kind of trance, then looked at his watch, slammed his car back into gear, and pulled out onto Sutter Street. Whatever he’d been planning to do in his office could wait. He wasn’t a dozen blocks from the St. Francis and that’s where he was going.

  Al Valens was in charge in the lobby. He was short, energetic, well dressed, and powerfully built. Hardy stood on the sidelines for a moment inside the revolving doors of the hotel’s famous clock lobby, taking the lay of the land.

  Valens was smiling, frowning, slapping backs, nodding sagely—whatever the minute demanded. Reporters, the curious, and the usual press of clueless tourists were still milling about. Cameras and lighting equipment were being packed up and put away. “Hey,” he heard the short man say to a small knot of reporters, “you heard Mr. Kerry say it, and now you’re going to hear Al Valens say it. We had nothing to do with this. Nothing. This is awful. These people are cretins.”

  Valens threw a worried glance up the stairs to the Compass Rose Bar, a spacious sitting area off the hotel’s lobby. Hardy and Frannie had met there a hundred times. He knew where Kerry was hiding.

  There was, of course, still some security around him— four uniformed hotel guards, a plainclothed bodyguard, and a man in a tuxedo whom Hardy recognized as the room’s maître d’. Kerry himself was in an area cordoned off behind a velvet rope. He sat forward, alone, on a low couch. Occasionally he would reach for the glass of water that rested next to an iced pitcher on the table in front of him.

  The name and face of Damon Kerry had been familiar in San Francisco for the better part of the past twenty years. He’d made his debut as a city supervisor. There he served two fairly distinguished terms that gave the lie to the initial impression that he was a spoiled rich kid whose daddy had bought him the office
as a toy. Kerry was always a Greenpeace, Save the Whales for Jesus kind of guy—in San Francisco that always flew politically—but he also actually put in time cleaning up oily bays and beaches, serving in soup kitchens, doing things.

  When he moved up as an assemblyman in Sacramento, he continued with his activism—especially in environmental areas—and his San Francisco constituency never abandoned him. He was their boy, liberal to the bone, sincere and electable, but always before in a low-key way. He was about to be forced to leave office under California’s term-limit laws, and this—some said more than any personal ambition for higher office—got him rolling on the MTBE bandwagon and into statewide exposure. Also, of course, Al Valens got involved.

  Kerry was one of the perennially and effortlessly young-looking, and Hardy wanted to hate him for it. He was in his mid-forties, but he passed for less. There wasn’t a line marring the ruddy, healthy skin of his face. He was trim in a dark blue suit, neither small nor overimposing. Sitting on the couch, he was the boy next door grown up and made good. An open face, appealing without being too handsome. Clear blue eyes, a strong nose, one perfectly chipped tooth. On looks alone, on the vibe he projected, you wanted to like the guy.

  But it was a passive scene up the stairs here in the bar. All the action was in the lobby below them. Hardy thought he could take some advantage.

  Walking confidently over, he nodded easily at the bodyguard, put a bright tone to his voice, a decent volume. “Is that Damon Kerry?”

  The nearest hotel guard did his job, moving into Hardy’s way. “Hey, no interviews. He’s done that. You missed it, too bad.”

  It wasn’t Hardy’s intention to threaten or bluff. He stepped a little to one side, held up a hand as though apologizing. “I’m not a reporter.” His voice went up another notch as he faced Kerry behind the velvet rope. “I’m Ron Beaumont’s attorney. Bree Beaumont’s husband?”

  “I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England. I said no interviews and you’re not—”

  But Kerry’s head had jerked up and now he was on his feet. “No, no, it’s all right.” The politician’s smile, hand outstretched. “It’s all right,” he repeated to the security troops. “I’ll talk to this man.” Then, to Hardy, up at the rope. “Hi. Damon Kerry. What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I’m trying to clear my client before they decide to arrest him. When I heard you were down here, I thought I’d take a chance, see if you’d talk to me. Maybe it’s my lucky day.”

  Kerry threw a look over Hardy’s shoulder, perhaps expecting Valens to come and take him away from all this. But help wasn’t on the way and he came back to Hardy, offered another weak smile. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Hardy was tempted to get sarcastic—tell him he’d seen him on television and wanted to know who did his hair. There was only one topic that Hardy could be here about, and Kerry had to know it, which was the reason he’d gotten this far. He motioned to the rope separating them, to the couch Kerry had just left. “Maybe back there?”

  Reassuring his guards for the third time that it was okay, Kerry moved the rope aside and let Hardy come through, then followed him to the couch, where they both sat. Kerry put on an interested face and they spent a minute on the familiar topic of Hardy’s first name—how Dismas had been the good thief on Calvary, was the patron saint of murderers.

  “But what I’m here for,” Hardy concluded, “is maybe you can give me a better take on Bree. People say you two were close and I wondered if she ever mentioned any enemies, or that she was afraid for her life?”

  Kerry reached for his water glass and took a quick drink. “Honestly, no. Her death alone was a big enough shock, but when I heard that someone had killed her . . .” He shook his head. “I thought it was impossible. Nobody could have hated her, not personally. She was the sweetest person alive.”

  “So you think it was related to . . . what? This gas stuff?”

  Another shake of the head. “I don’t know. A burglary, maybe. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time.” He lapsed into a short silence. When he spoke again, Hardy had an impression of greater directness. “I can’t imagine, really, although after what happened today, I sometimes feel I’m at a loss to explain anything anymore. I mean who would poison drinking water? What twisted logic makes these people do anything? If they could do that . . .” He trailed off. “How about her husband? Your client? Doesn’t he have any thoughts on this? Didn’t I read that he’s disappeared?”

  “He just knows it wasn’t him. I don’t think it was, either. What do you think?”

  Kerry looked out beyond his security perimeter, then back to Hardy. “I don’t suppose he’d be under suspicion if there wasn’t some evidence, would he?”

  “It happens all the time. Do you know Ron?”

  “No. We’ve never met, not personally.”

  Hardy frowned.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I guess I’d just assumed you’d been to their place socially.”

  “No. Bree was a consultant and friend—a good friend, even—but she kept her family separate. I never even met her children. Still, you understand I’m not saying anything accusatory about her husband. I’m sure he’s devastated by this as well.”

  Hardy leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “He really didn’t kill her.”

  The intensity seemed to startle Kerry. “All right.”

  “But somebody did, Mr. Kerry. Please, I have to get a take on who she was, out in the real world, not with her husband and family. You say she had no enemies, she was the sweetest person on earth, but I know Caloco wasn’t happy with her, for example. Maybe somebody else wasn’t either. Somebody killed her. I’ve got to see who she was. Can you help me at all here?”

  Kerry’s reaction was surprising. Notably, he didn’t look up for the saving arrival of the cavalry. Instead, his eyes turned inward for a beat, and then he sat back on the couch, Hardy thinking man-oh-man, here’s another one.

  He didn’t come up with it immediately—Hardy had obviously caught him off guard by moving away from specific questions. Kerry had probably been expecting the kinds of questions Hardy had been expecting to ask about motives and opportunities.

  But now it was clear that whatever Kerry said, he wanted to get it right. At length he came back forward, hands clasped in front of him, but easily this time, far more relaxed than he’d been. He met Hardy’s eyes for the first time. “She was the ugly duckling.”

  This seemed to contradict everything Hardy had heard about Bree to this moment—her beauty, charm, brains, persuasiveness. His face must have shown his confusion, because Kerry jumped in to explain. “What I mean by that is if you want to know who she was, you’ve got to start with that.”

  “With what, exactly?”

  Kerry drew in a breath, thought for a moment. “The fact that while she was growing up, she was a nerd, a brain at a time when you didn’t want to be smart if you were a girl. Well, she was a really smart girl, with glasses and goofy hair and no style at all and this kind of absentminded what’s-going-on-around-me feeling . . .” He trailed off.

  “You knew her as a child?” Hardy asked.

  A really genuine smile. “No, no, I don’t mean that. I only met her—knew her—for a few months, but we got to know each other pretty well.” A pause that Hardy elected not to interrupt. Kerry was talking, which was what he wanted. He’d start again. And after a sigh, he did.

  “Anyway, that’s where she came from. She wasn’t very popular. She had no friends, no social interests. Just studying and chemistry.”

  “But she was so pretty. She must have had dates? In high school?”

  “No,” Kerry said. “Guys didn’t think she was pretty, if you can believe that. She told me she didn’t have one date. She went to school dances with her brother, it was that bad.” He wanted Hardy to understand. “You know those movies where this really plain girl takes off her glasses at the end and suddenly she’s the prettiest g
irl in town? Well, that was Bree, except that her movie didn’t end until she was in her midtwenties and by then she was so used to being plain and ignored by men that she just couldn’t accept any other view of herself. Plus, her brains still made her threatening as hell to a lot of guys.”

  Plus, Hardy was thinking, she was married, which meant she wasn’t on the market. Or did it?

  But Kerry, obviously still in thrall to her memory, was going on. “The thing about her, and maybe it seems funny or contradictory or something because she was so smart, but the self-image stuff I think really slowed her down in how fast she grew up . . . I’m trying to think of the right word. She was just very naive, I’d say, insulated. Almost unaware of anything in life, anything except her studies, which translated into her job. I mean, until . . .” Now Kerry really was at a loss.

  “Until you?” Hardy prompted.

  Kerry lifted his shoulders, an admission. “It was starting to happen before we met. She was ready for it.”

  “For what?”

  “The change, the conversion. Well, it wasn’t really that.”

  “Okay. What was it?” Hardy became fleetingly aware of a buzz out in the room, a rush of convivial laughter from a gaggle of young couples pulling tables together. Afternoon drinks after shopping in a different world than that inhabited by Hardy and Frannie. He came back to the candidate for governor, with whom he seemed to be having a genuine communication. It was almost surreal, but he was going to keep it going if he could. “What was the big conversion all about then?”

  “It was her whole life, really.” He fixed Hardy with a thoughtful expression. “This may sound presumptuous . . .” Again, he stopped and Hardy waited. “It wasn’t so much that she grew up all at once as the fact that she realized she had grown up. She was a beautiful swan. She could fly.”