Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

  A long, dead silence.

  One of the channel buoys at the mouth of the marina chimed deeply, followed almost immediately by the forlorn moan of a foghorn. Jim Pierce tossed his cigar butt into the bay, reached over to flick off the television.

  His wife looked as though she were waiting for him to say something, so he obliged her. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nothing matters.”

  “You can’t do this!” Valens was actually near to screaming. He had pulled Damon Kerry out onto the roof of whatever goddam hotel they were in after his talk to whatever goddam group it was. “You can’t do this with two days to go! You’re alienating people, don’t you understand? And you can’t do that and win.”

  “I’m being myself,” Kerry said. “I’ve never lost an election and I’ve been myself in each one.”

  “Yeah, but Damon, you’ve never run for governor before!

  “This is not a city supervisor job. This is high office, and that’s why I’m on board, remember? I do this. I keep candidates from being themselves, especially with forty-eight hours to go. I’ll tell you what—you want to be yourself, be yourself on Wednesday.” He paced off a few steps and swore succinctly.

  Kerry came up behind him. “I am not alienating my electorate. I’m trying to reach people, to tell the truth. People respond to that, to me.”

  “No,” Valens said. He turned around, despising the law of politics that the tall guy always wins. Kerry had him by half a foot, and this close, Valens had to look up at him. But he was going to say his piece—uphill, downhill, sideways—and Kerry was going to have to hear. “No no no. Listen to me carefully. You are not trying to reach people or tell the truth or be yourself or any of that. You are trying to get yourself elected. That’s all you’re trying to do right now. And we’re running behind all day, missing meetings, you’re deviating from the script . . .”

  “There’s no script. There’s—”

  “No, Damon. The script is all that’s left at this point. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Smile, smile, smile. And keep moving, keep moving, don’t miss an opportunity to repeat, repeat, repeat.”

  “Except we missed a few this morning, didn’t we, Al? And why was that? Because you were late picking me up.”

  “You overslept, Damon.”

  “I depend on you, Al. I was exhausted and I’m getting sick. And what about you? The job of the campaign manager is get the candidate where he needs to be. That’s what he does. He doesn’t keep the candidate from being himself.” He put a couple of fingers up to his forehead. “I really am getting sick,” he said. “I’ve been sick for weeks.”

  Valens was at the edge of the roof. Below him, he was aware of the gauzy glow of the city’s lights through the fog. He’d been in similar situations in nearly every election with which he’d been involved—the schoolgirl squabbling during the last leg of a campaign.

  Damon Kerry undoubtedly was feeling sick, and Valens didn’t really blame him. The pace was grueling, the pressures unrelenting. Valens might be frustrated and worried in his own right, but for the sake of the election, it was time to calm the waters. “Damon,” he said gently, “we’ve got one more day and tomorrow starts early. Why don’t we get you back home, get a good night’s rest if you can? We’re close now. We can still pull this out.”

  “It’s not just the election.” Kerry was shaking his head. “You don’t know, Al.”

  “Yes, I do, Damon. I really do. And what I know is that it is just the election.”

  But Kerry wasn’t on that page. “All I know is that if I hadn’t started down this path, Bree would still be alive. If she hadn’t . . .” He trailed off.

  But they had covered this ground a hundred times, most often late at night when Kerry’s defenses were down. Valens laid an avuncular hand up on his candidate’s shoulder. “She did, though.” He patted the shoulder gently to demonstrate his commiseration. “Let’s get you home, get some rest,” he said. “It’ll look better in the morning.”

  Thorne was at the kitchen table in his apartment halfway up Nob Hill, putting the finishing touches on a memorandum he’d print up tomorrow regarding the oil companies’ $10.8 million in contributions to the country’s political campaigns this year. In the memo, he noted that Damon Kerry had not accepted one dime from this source. Thorne thought that if he got the news release distributed early enough in the day, it would certainly get into some of Tuesday’s papers, perhaps before many people had gone to the polls, and might even make a few late-breaking news shows looking for filler by tomorrow night.

  Every little bit helped, he believed, especially in light of the continuing MTBE poisoning story, which was gratifyingly ubiquitous. Kerry’s opposition to big oil was going to play very well, possibly right up through election day.

  He proofread his final copy, then placed the papers in his briefcase, opened a cold beer and poured it into a chilled pilsner glass. Then he went into his living room and turned on the television.

  The late evening news didn’t let him down. It led off with the continuing follow-up on the Pulgas Water Temple story. The Water District had taken samples of the city’s drinking water and found levels of MTBE that were lower than the EPA standards, and so technically “safe.” But the levels were still deemed “detectable,” and residents were advised to “use caution.”

  Thorned smiled at the language, and at the hysterical reaction of the public that the media play nearly guaranteed. MTBE was bad stuff, all right—an aspirin’s worth in an Olympic-sized swimming pool was toxic—but ten or fifteen gallons in a reservoir the size of Crystal Springs wasn’t going to make anybody sick, not immediately anyway. Nevertheless, over thirty people had sought medical attention in emergency rooms all over the city after drinking the water yesterday and this morning.

  On-the-street interviews indicated that nearly everyone tasted “something funny” in the water, a turpentine taste. Thorne had made a point of drinking a few glasses in the course of the day and had tasted nothing.

  There was a nice clip of several dozen dead trout floating near the dump spot. The location of this school of fish—where the concentration of MTBE was several million times greater than it was at the pumping station for the city’s water supply—was simple luck, but Thorne found it particularly pleasing. It gave the impression that the whole lake had been polluted.

  Kerry got a couple of great sound bites calling for an immediate moratorium on MTBE use, and this was echoed by one of the state’s senators and the mayor, God bless him, who had even gone them one better. “There is no reason to tolerate even for one more moment this dangerous and insoluble toxin in our gasoline where there is an environmentally safe and effective substitute so readily available, and by this I mean ethanol.”

  Kerry’s opponent, by contrast, spoke from a location in Orange County and sounded to Thorne like an idiot. “It is not MTBE that has caused this terrible crisis any more than it is guns that kill people. People kill people, and people—criminals—have poisoned the San Francisco water supply. Gasoline without any additives would have produced the same effect, and no one is talking about making gasoline illegal.”

  Police had no clues as to the identity of the individuals or the location of the headquarters of the Clean Earth Alliance, who claimed responsibility for the act, although when found, they would be charged with the murder of fifty-three-year-old . . .

  Thorne hit the mute button, sat back and enjoyed a sip of his beer. All in all, he had to consider this a resounding triumph. There was, of course, no Clean Earth Alliance. His operatives had scattered to the four winds. Life was good.

  But his smile faded with the new image on the screen—the house—and he reached again for the remote, bringing up the sound. “. . . determined that the cause of the fire was arson.”

  The serious male anchor nodded sagely. “What makes this so interesting, Karen, is that this house was the home of Frannie Hardy, wasn’t it? The woman who is still in jail for refusing to testify regarding the husband of B
ree Beaumont, the expert on gasoline additives who was murdered nearly a month ago.”

  “That’s right, Bill.” The camera closed in on Karen. “It’s hard to believe that there is no connection whatever between Bree Beaumont’s murder, the MTBE poisoning at the Pulgas Temple, and the arson this morning.”

  Thorne hit the mute again, his frown pronounced by now. Last night he had been both wired and a little drunk, he’d had perfect cover in the thick fog. He was also feeling godlike after the Pulgas thing had gone so well.

  When would he learn? You might want it and love every minute of it, but you didn’t do things yourself. You hired experts to take care of operations. That was the safe way. Otherwise it was you who got interrupted, who had to improvise, who perhaps left physical evidence at the scene.

  He sat, scowling, ruminating over the possibility that he had personally exposed himself now, perhaps even gotten himself implicated with Bree Beaumont, and that had never been his intention. He tried to remember if he’d known that Hardy’s wife was the blasted woman in jail. He just couldn’t dredge it up, not that it mattered now.

  And the last problem, maybe the biggest problem, with screwing things up yourself was then sometimes you had to fix them yourself.

  28

  Sunday night, and Hardy was still up in the homicide detail with Glitsky. In a couple more hours, they were going to pay a surprise call on Damon Kerry, at his home, after his last public appearance of the day.

  In the meanwhile, at Hardy’s request, Glitsky sprung Frannie from her cell again. It was going to be the last chance to get away with that before the workweek began, and any single second that his wife could be outside the jail was a blessing.

  They were all still pretending that she was going to be free on Tuesday, but Hardy, at least, knew it might not be so simple.

  If Scott Randall didn’t cooperate, if Sharron Pratt didn’t relent under the mounting criticism in the press, if Frannie discovered another reason why she couldn’t reveal what Ron had told her—for example, if Ron simply reneged on releasing her from her promise—any of these could and would prolong the nightmare.

  And in any event, Hardy was going to have to get a hearing scheduled to vacate the contempt charge. He was all but certain that this would not be a cakewalk.

  For two hours, Glitsky fielded calls from the dispatcher trying to get a fix on Damon Kerry’s location, provided information on the day’s events to the police beat reporter, organized his utilization coefficients. Hardy and Frannie were together alone in the interrogation room off the homicide detail, the shades drawn and the door locked by a chair propped up under the doorknob.

  Hardy made up an excuse so he could stop by his car and pick up the gun. He had no plans to go unarmed until this had passed. He knew Glitsky would disapprove—he might get himself in big trouble, hurt someone and wind up on trial himself. But Hardy took solace in the old saying “Better tried by twelve than carried by six.”

  Then they took Glitsky’s car and parked across the street from Kerry’s house. The plan was to wait until the limo pulled away so they’d get the candidate alone. But the limo had barely stopped when a short, stocky form emerged and began crossing the street toward them.

  “That’s Valens,” Hardy said.

  Glitsky moved, opening the driver’s door, gun drawn. “Stop right there,” he ordered, “right now. Police.”

  “Police? Jesus Christ! What are you doing here?”

  Hardy opened his own door and got out, but let the car remain between him and the others. He felt for his gun, riding in the small of his back, hidden under his jacket.

  “Hey.” Valens held his hands out in front of him. The fog had finally lifted somewhat, and the voices seemed to carry like the ping of crystal. “I’m coming over to see who you are, okay? Two guys, dark car, middle of the night, get it?”

  Glitsky was advancing toward the man. “We get it. Are you Al Valens? Is that Damon Kerry’s car?”

  Valens nodded. “Yeah. And he’s in it, trying to sleep. He’s the governor of California in about two days, okay?”

  “Sure,” Glitsky responded. “But right now today I’m Lieutenant Abe Glitsky and I’m the head of homicide. I’d like to have a few words with Mr. Kerry.”

  “Not possible.” Valens shook his head emphatically. “The man has been running all day. He’s got twenty appearances tomorrow. He’s not available.”

  Glitsky allowed himself a tight smile. He spoke in a conversational tone. “I’m not asking.” He started for the limo.

  But Valens wasn’t giving up that easily. He sidestepped into the lieutenant’s path. “You got a warrant? I want to see a warrant.”

  Hardy was amazed. He had never seen Glitsky this patient, taking the time to politely answer someone who refused to get out of his way. “I don’t need a warrant to talk to him on the street, which is what I’m hoping to do.” Glitsky stopped, tried another tack. “Mr. Valens, are you trying to tell me that Mr. Kerry doesn’t want to cooperate with a police investigation into the murder of one of his consultants? You might want to ask him about that.”

  Valens thrust out his chin. “Hey, don’t pull that crap on me. We have already cooperated with you guys every time somebody came around to ask. We’ve answered questions till we’re blue in the face. Now it’s late at night and this is pure straight-up harassment. I want to know what Republican money is behind you on this.”

  “Please move to one side,” Glitsky said.

  Valens pointed a finger. “This is a mistake, Lieutenant, I’m telling you. In two days, Damon gets elected and I get your badge, you hear me?”

  Glitsky stopped walking, glanced around to Hardy, came back to the campaign manager. “Here are Kerry’s options. He can talk to me or refuse to.” Glitsky paused. “Listen to me, Valens, the reason I’m here in the middle of the night is to save him embarrassment. Nobody knows. I don’t want to make it public. But I will if I need to. Do you understand me?”

  This, finally, broke some of Valens’s bluster. “So does he need a lawyer present? What’s this about really?”

  Glitsky brought his hand up and rubbed his eyes. “He’s always welcome to have a lawyer, but he’s not under arrest at this time. If he decides to call his lawyer, we’ll wait. If he doesn’t want to talk to us at all, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to read about it in the paper tomorrow, but that of course would be his decision.”

  “You son of a bitch. Who is behind this?”

  Glitsky moved up a step closer. “That’s a very ill-advised choice of words and I wouldn’t continue in that vein if I were you. Now, as to who is behind this, I’m doing it alone. It’s police work. There is no political motive. I’m investigating a murder.”

  “That murder is almost a month old. What’s the hurry tonight?”

  “The hurry tonight is that there was another murder last night. A policeman.”

  Valens narrowed his eyes. “Connected to Bree?”

  “That’s one of the things I’d like to find out. You have to understand, Mr. Valens, that when police officers get killed, other cops get a little testy. And I’m there now, so don’t push me. I really am trying to maintain a low profile around this. If that weren’t the case, I could have pulled together a pretty good crowd by now, don’t you think?”

  Glitsky let the simple truth of that sink in for a moment. “Now, is Mr. Kerry going to consent to an interview or not?”

  Valens hesitated for a number of seconds. Then, with a last furious glare, he turned and walked back to the limo.

  There was another lengthy outburst after they got inside the house when Valens recognized Hardy. He wasn’t a policeman, so what the hell was he doing here? This was a man who had broken into Valens’s hotel room that morning, had threatened him with a gun.

  “Did you file a report with the hotel? With the police? Do you now want to press charges?” Glitsky asked the questions mildly, but they put an end to that.

  “I’ll be recording this conversation,
by the way.” Glitsky said it as casually as possible, allowing no opportunity for debate. He was positioning his portable recorder on the table and holding up a hand, forestalling any and all of Valens’s continuing objections.

  He gave the standard introduction, identified those present, had Kerry acknowledge that he was speaking of his own free will, that he was not under arrest, and that he did not want to have a lawyer with him.

  “But why is this man here?” Valens asked, indicating Hardy, not wanting to let that issue go.

  “He’ll facilitate the discussion,” Glitsky responded. “And Mr. Valens, you are here as a courtesy. Don’t interrupt again.” Valens had a legitimate gripe—there was no legal reason for Hardy to be there, but the campaign manager held no cards. What was he going to do? Notify the media and let the public know that his candidate was a murder suspect? No, he and Kerry had to cooperate, and as long as Glitsky allowed it, they had no choice but to tolerate Hardy’s presence.

  But Glitsky did have a reason and it became apparent immediately. “Mr. Kerry,” he asked. “I’m sure you remember talking to Mr. Hardy yesterday in the lobby of the St. Francis? A rather lengthy discussion about Bree Beaumont, wasn’t it?”

  “I believe it was the bar, but yes.”

  The candidate had a damp washcloth on his forehead. He was nearly reclining on the couch, his stockinged feet up on the coffee table in front of him. Although it was anything but warm—either out in the night or here in the house—his skin had a sheen as though he was sweating slightly. Glitsky thought he might have a fever and, if so, that would be to the good.

  “Well, the reason I brought Mr. Hardy along, and the reason that we’re here talking to you at all, frankly, has to do with that conversation.”

  Kerry might be tired and feverish, but he shifted slightly, summoning some reserves of energy. “All right,” he said.

  Glitsky nodded. “Do you remember telling him that you had never been to Bree Beaumont’s apartment?”

  “That was me!” Valens exploded, interrupting, pointing at Hardy again. “That’s what I called this guy about last night. I already told him all about that. I forgot, that’s all. And still that’s why he broke into my hotel . . .”