Nothing but the Truth

by John Lescroart

“I didn’t read anything in the article about Griffin. Or Bree Beaumont either.”

  “Glitsky wants it quiet for now. Damon Kerry is definitelyinvolved, so there are, as they say, political ramifications. ” Freeman didn’t respond in any way, so Hardy went on, reciting the facts as he knew them.

  By the time he finished, Freeman was sitting back in his chair, his hands linked over his comfortable middle, his neck tucked down into his ratty tie, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell a couple of times. Slowly, he raised his head, squinted across the desk. “So where are you now?”

  Hardy reached forward and lifted the stapled and marked-up copy of Griffin’s notes from his briefcase. “Griffin found something. I’m convinced it’s right here.” He passed the pages over the desk. “The yellow highlights.”

  The bassett eyes came up, baleful humor. “I guessed that.” After a moment’s perusal, he flipped back a few pages, nodded, came back to where he was and looked up again. “So Griffin eliminated Ron?”

  Hardy leaned forward himself. “Where do you see that?”

  Patiently, Freeman went over it. “This first entry. ‘R. at eight oh five, NCD,’ with the exclamation marks. ‘R’ has got to be Ron, don’t you think? Eight oh five is when he left for school with the kids, too early to have done it. NCD is ‘no can do.’ You got all this already, right?”

  “Sure,” Hardy said, feeling like a fool. NCD, he thought. No can do. Just like WCB meant “will call back.” But he’d never before run across the former. “Sure,” he repeated. “Ron was out.”

  “Okay.” Freeman nodded. “I suppose the timing was right for him. Now what’s this ‘Herit.’?”

  “I just came from there. It’s the cleaning service that did Bree’s place.” He leaned across the desk. “Tuesday, Thursday as it indicates. They do Bree’s on Thursday, so it was after the crime scene had two days there. By the way, it’s not there, but Griffin found a watch at the scene and tagged it into evidence.”

  “When?”

  “On Thursday. Heritage found it and gave it to Griffin.”

  “And crime scene didn’t on Tuesday?”

  “I don’t know,” Hardy said. “I guess not. Glitsky would say they’re overworked and underpaid. It’s gone now in any event.”

  Freeman was nodding distractedly, his eyes never leaving the page. “Never mind, never mind. Here it is again. This fabric wash. ‘R. stains.’ Did Ron . . . ? What was this? Semen?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she and Ron were sleeping together.”

  Now, Freeman did look up.

  “They had separate bedrooms,” Hardy went on. “Definitely Bree, and maybe Ron, too, were involved with other people. Sexually.”

  “Charming,” Freeman replied. “The modern couple. So you read the autopsy. Was there any evidence of rape that morning? Intercourse?”

  No.

  “Hmm. Rug stains?”

  Hardy shook his head. “Crime scene would have them.”

  “Oh yes, those competent crime scene analysts.” Freeman thought another moment, then pointed to the briefcase. “Do you have a copy of the police report in there?”

  Hardy handed him another folder and sat while Freeman leafed through to the page he wanted. “She was wearing a dark blue cotton blend skirt and pullover powder blue sweater. Panty hose. Black shoes, half-inch heels. Ah, here we go.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got what you’d expect—blood and dirt, but there’s also a rust stain on the left hip and on the hem of the sweater. Rust.”

  “When she went over the balcony,” Hardy said. “It’s an iron grillwork railing.”

  “Well, there you go.” Freeman, pleased with himself, leaned back in his chair again.

  “So why does it say ‘fabric wash’? That’s got to mean forensics didn’t find anything on the fabric, right? But they did find blood, dirt, rust . . .”

  “Maybe it’s some kind of detergent. Maybe it just means there was nothing on the drapes, or the rug, or the upholstery, all of which was true. Those fabrics were a wash.”

  “Maybe.” It still troubled Hardy. Griffin’s damned exclamation points were all over the place with the cleanersand this note, and he couldn’t make them mean anything.

  But Freeman, on his billable time, wasn’t wasting any of it. To his satisfaction, he’d solved the mystery of what the “r” stood for, so he was moving on, now down to the 9:02 phone call.

  So Hardy brought him up-to-date about Bree’s call to Kerry. When he finished, Freeman looked perplexed. “But you say the call wasn’t at nine oh two?”

  “No. It was earlier—it began at ten after seven.”

  “So what’s this nine oh two?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I mean, David, about Griffin having it here, but I can’t see it. I figured it was a time that would lead us to Kerry, and it did, but then the time was wrong.”

  “So it’s not a time.”

  “No—look back. That’s how he writes his times, everything. Eight oh five, eleven forty-five, now nine oh two.”

  Freeman gave it another minute, then waved a hand. “All right, let’s pass on that and go on. What’s ‘Bax T’ at eight-thirty?”

  “The last person we know of to see Griffin alive. Maybe the very last.” Hardy went on to explain about Thorne and Elliot and Glitsky’s probable warrant to look for printed materials. “If Abe finds evidence on any of about four fronts, I think we can stop looking.”

  Freeman drummed his fingers a couple of times. “So why are we doing this, you and me?” Before Hardy could respond, the drumming stopped. “Did Canetta by any chance work for this Thorne guy?”

  “Not that I know of. Sometimes Jim Pierce.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “Security at hotel conventions, like that.”

  “But not Thorne?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t connected Thorne to any of this before yesterday, so I never asked.”

  Freeman pressed it. “Well, think about it. Wouldn’t the ethanol producers have conventions here, too? I mean, this is Convention City, USA. And all of them need security, right? If Canetta was in that loop, one of a hundred cops doing freelance . . .” A shrug. It was obvious. “And you know for a fact that Thorne is involved with Kerry, too?”

  “Through SKO, yeah, close enough.”

  The old man cleaned an ear with his finger. “Okay, so what’s this last thing—burn or brown and then a dollar sign?”

  Hardy sat back. “This, old master, is why I have come to you. Although wait a minute, let me see that.” He studied the scrawl for the tenth time. “Bree’s maiden name was Brunetta. This might say B-R-U-N. How’s that?” He passed the pages back.

  “Not impossible,” Freeman said. “Maybe Thorne was blackmailing her about something in her past, when she was Brunetta. In any event, it looks like Griffin found some kind of money connection, maybe called Thorne on it.”

  Hardy recalled the box of Caloco documents in Glitsky’s kitchen. Ron’s—or had it in fact been Bree’s?— talent for creating wealth, or at least substantial lines of credit. Had Thorne tried to get Bree under his control, and by extension under Valens’s and Kerry’s control, by threatening to expose her financial shenanigans? Or— even better—ruin her credibility and reputation with Kerry in the same way?

  Hardy finally sat back. Freeman regarded him intently. “You think Thorne did your house, too, don’t you?”

  It was Freeman’s first mention of that incident and, perhaps as he’d intended, it caught Hardy slightly off guard.

  “As you’d say, I don’t think it’s impossible.”

  Freeman nodded sagely. “And when you went to see him this morning, were you packing then, too? I know the expression is lawyers, guns, and money, but guns don’t really belong.”

  A sheepish grin flitted for a moment over Hardy’s face. David was truly terrifying. He saw everything. “I thought I might need some protection.”

  But Freeman wasn’t laughing
. “I don’t think so. I think if he would have given you an excuse, he’d have a bullet in him right now.”

  Now, unbidden, the grin flickered again.

  The old man pointed a finger. “Listen to me, Diz. You’ve got every right to hate the man, but it’s up to the law to punish him, not you. You’ve already put this where it belongs—in Glitsky’s corner. Don’t get yourselfkilled over it. Too many people have already. Two of them carried guns and knew how to use them. Does that tell you anything?”

  Hardy nodded. “They didn’t shoot fast enough.”

  Again, there wasn’t any sign that Freeman thought this was funny. He checked his watch, looked down and wrote something. “Thirty minutes at two hundred an hour comes to a hundred bucks. I’ll add it to the rent.”

  Upstairs in his office, Hardy called the toll-free Movado number and gave the serial number of the watch to a helpful operator. All she could tell from the number was that the watch had been sold within the past five years in San Francisco, at the Jewelry Exchange. There was no record of the buyer’s name.

  33

  The administrative offices of the main fire station on Golden Gate Avenue did not bear much resemblance to the Hall of Justice. Here the expansive lobby was open to the public without the benefit of metal detectors and police guards in the doorways.The milling crowds of discontented lowlifes that were a common feature in and for blocks around the Hall were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the marble walls—inscribed with the names of the heroic dead of the department—seemed to shine with pride. Well-appointed businesspersons came into the building and walked purposefully to the elevators, in which they were whisked to their destinations.

  So Hardy had no premonition of dread as he walked through the fifth-floor office labeled “Arson Investigations.”

  After leaving Freeman, he’d gone upstairs to his own office and returned phone calls for the better part of a half hour. He called Bill Tilton, the insurance agent, and pretended he was a potential employer of Marie Dempsey. She’d faxed him a résumé but he couldn’t make out the phone number or address too clearly. Tilton, inadvertently breaking every confidentiality law in the book, gave him what he needed.

  In the next call, a secretary with the arson unit told him that they wanted to talk to him at his very earliest convenience. If he would give them a time he could drop by the main offices this afternoon, the investigators would be there for him. He’d made an appointment for one-thirty, assuming that the urgency was that they wanted to assign liability back to him.

  His first sense that things were not right came as the secretary directed him not to one of the investigators’ offices behind her, but to a small, empty office with a scarred metal table in the middle of it and four wooden chairs along one wall.

  He’d been in enough of these and immediately recognized this for what it was: an interrogation room.

  He didn’t have to wait long to find out. He hadn’t even taken a seat. Walking to the one window, he looked down and out to the west. Visibility was a couple of blocks, and suddenly Hardy felt a chill of apprehension.

  He turned quickly, intending to walk out and invite whoever wanted to talk to him down to his turf, to the Solarium. Freeman had counseled him to leave the police work to Glitsky, and it was good advice, but he knew more than Glitsky and he had a deadline. There was much he still had to do—he couldn’t afford to be detained here. But as soon as he looked, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere soon. Three men were standing in the doorway, in a pack.

  “Mr. Hardy?” “How you doing?” “Have a seat.” Friendly as undertakers.

  The last one in closed the door.

  Recognition kicked in. This was not the amiable Captain Flores but the man who’d been so uncooperative and surly yesterday afternoon. He identified himself as Sergeant Wilkes, no first name. And, folder under his arm, he was running the show.

  “This is my partner, Sergeant Lopez, and this,” he said, indicating a wiry young cowboy in a denim jacket, “is Sergeant Predeaux.”

  Predeaux, leaning one shoulder against the wall opposite them, broke an icy smile over the toothpick he was chewing. “Rhymes with Play-Doh,” he said.

  “Sergeant Predeaux,” Wilkes added, “is with the arson unit, too. He’s one of our police members. Sergeant Lopez and myself, we’re with the fire department.”

  “Good.” The antagonism was already thick in the room. Hardy, determined not to add to it if it could be helped, put on a face. “So what did you find?”

  Wilkes made a show of opening his folder. From Hardy’s perspective as a lawyer, there wasn’t much in it—a schematic of the house, a couple of pages of notes, and perhaps a formal report. Still, Wilkes took his time, going over it silently while everyone else waited. Finally, he decided the moment was right.

  “We’ve got clear indications of accelerant, petroleum based, probably gasoline, on the front porch. There is a lot of technical detail supporting our conclusion, but basically we have determined that this was in fact an arson occurrence. Both from the rate of burn and the initial call reporting the fire, we can pretty closely pinpoint the start of the blaze to about three-thirty a.m. Sunday morning.”

  This wasn’t any surprise to Hardy, but the next line of inquiry, though no less surprising given the circumstances here, was unpleasant. Lopez shifted next to Wilkes, as though he’d been restraining himself. He spoke up. “We understand you weren’t sleeping in the house that night. Is that correct?”

  Hardy shifted his eyes from one man to the other. He made it a point to nod and answer in even tones. “That’s right. Did I mention that to Captain Flores? I was with my children at my in-laws’.”

  “And why was that?”

  “Why was what?”

  “Why were you at your in-laws’?”

  “Because my children were there. It was Halloween night,” Hardy said. “They were staying with their grandparents and I wanted to be with them.”

  “You’re married, aren’t you? Was your wife there?”

  “Yes, I’m married,” he said evenly, “and no, she wasn’t there.”

  “You having marital problems?” Lopez asked.

  “Mr. Hardy’s wife is in jail,” Predeaux said, although it didn’t seem to come as a shock to either of his colleagues.

  Hardy paused. “That’s a long story.”

  “We’ve got time.” Wilkes smiled insincerely.

  Hardy returned it. “I’m happy for you, but as it turns out, I don’t.”

  Predeaux moved a step forward. “Did you make it a habit of staying with your in-laws?”

  This, finally, was enough of a press that Hardy straightened up in his chair, sat back and crossed his arms. “I don’t believe this.” He almost barked out a laugh, but stopped himself. “You guys talk to my in-laws? They’ll tell you I was there. I didn’t burn down my own house, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Were they awake at three-thirty?”

  “Yeah,” Hardy replied crisply. “We were all sitting up telling yarns around the campfire.”

  “There’s an interesting choice of words,” Wilkes said.

  “Oh yeah,” Hardy replied. “Very telling.” He came forward in his seat. “Look, guys, I thought I was coming down here to get the lowdown on your progress, maybe get my house turned back over to me so I could get to work rebuilding it.”

  “You got insurance?” Wilkes asked.

  He sighed wearily. “Yes, sir. I’ve got insurance. Thank God.”

  Predeaux piped in. “Replacement value or loss value?”

  Another aborted chuckle. “You know, you may be surprised to learn that I haven’t checked the policy lately. I don’t have any idea.” He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. If we’re going to continue in this vein, I suggest we make another appointment and I’ll bring a lawyer.”

  “You think you need a lawyer?” Lopez asked.

  Hardy assayed a cold smile. “Here’s a tip, Sergeant. Everybody needs a lawyer.” He pushed his chair back and stood up
, squared off at Predeaux. “Am I under arrest? Are you seriously thinking of charging me with this, ’cause if you are I could use the money the false-arrest lawsuit will bring in.”

  “Funny you should bring that up.” Predeaux pulled a chair around and straddled it backward. He transferred his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You a little short on money?”

  “Who isn’t?” Hardy shot back. “What’s the matter with you people? I’m the one who got his house burned down. I’ve got at least two reliable witnesses who’ll swear I wasn’t anywhere near the place and guess what? I wasn’t.”

  “We’re looking into it, as you say,” Predeaux responded.

  “Well, good luck with that. Or with finding any evidence, which by the way, guys, is generally one of the traditional steps in a criminal investigation.”

  “He’s pretty confident, isn’t he?” Lopez asked.

  “Confident enough.” Hardy had had all he could take of this.

  They had no grounds and no evidence and he had other places to be. “So Sergeant Predeaux, am I under arrest or not?” The other three men started holding a silent conversation. Hardy butted into it. “Sergeant Wilkes, when do I get my house back?”

  “That hasn’t been determined.”

  “Well,” Hardy snapped, “when you get finished wasting your time and do determine it, you know where to reach me. Sergeant Predeaux,” he repeated, “am I under arrest or not?” He stood by the door for a moment, waiting. “I’m taking your silence as a ‘not.’ That makes this your lucky day.”

  Marie Dempsey’s place was on Church Street about a block from Hans Speckmann’s, an authentic bierstube that Hardy considered to be on a par with Schroeder’s downtown, which in turn had a reputation as the best German restaurant in the city. The neighborhood had a certain friendly charm in spite of the overwhelming preponderance of pavement and stucco, the lack of trees, lawns, shrubbery. Maybe it was the scale of the buildings, or the trolley that passed every half hour or so.

  Today, though, a wet and heavy cloud still hugged the earth, and Hardy felt at one with it.

  The address was the upper unit of a duplex in a square gray two-story building with an internal stairway. From his experience at the Airport Hilton, Hardy thought there was little to no chance that Ron would open the door to a knock or a ring. This was the reason he’d finally opted not to try to call the various numbers he’d collected on the M. Dempseys of the city, but rather to discover the address on his own. He didn’t want to give Ron any warning that he’d be dropping by.