The Mercy Rule

by John Lescroart

  ‘I asked them to stay for dinner,’ Frannie said.

  ‘He’s already had it.’ Hardy went over to the refrigerator. ‘Did he drink all my beer too?’

  Glitsky slid off the counter. ‘I don’t drink beer. In fact, I don’t drink at all.’

  Frannie was smiling at Glitsky. ‘We know you don’t drink, Abe. That’s all right. We still like you.’

  Hardy wheeled. ‘How can you like a guy who eats all your cashews?’ He opened a bottle of Sierra Nevada pale ale, took a sip, faced his friend. ‘So what’s up?’

  As though they’d been discussing it all along, Glitsky reported, ‘We got the autopsy back on Sal. I thought you’d want to hear. Strout’s going with homicide/suicide equivocal.’

  Frannie didn’t like how this sounded. She put her wineglass on the counter and crossed her arms in front of her. ‘What’s this? What homicide?’

  ‘Just a case,’ Glitsky said, getting a pained glance from Hardy for his troubles.

  ‘Abe’s,’ Hardy said. ‘Not mine.’

  ‘That’s funny.’ Frannie wasn’t buying it. ‘It seemed like it had something to do with you.’

  ‘No. A client of mine, that’s all. His dad. Estate case.’

  ‘And that’s why Abe was telling you about it? Abe the homicide cop?’

  Hardy had another pull of his beer. He shrugged. ‘One of life’s little coincidences. My client’s dad. It looked like he killed himself, but maybe somebody else did it. Doesn’t have anything to do with my client, necessarily. Right, Abe?’

  A straight-faced nod. ‘Right. Not necessarily.’

  Taking a beat, Frannie reached for her wineglass again. ‘Not necessarily, that’s good. That’s a nice show of solidarity. I’m impressed.’

  ‘Frannie doesn’t want me to take on any more murders.’

  ‘I gathered that.’

  ‘She thinks homicide equivocal can mean murder.’

  ‘Well, she’s not all wrong there.’

  Hardy came back to his wife, gave her his biggest phony grin. ‘So, what’s on for dinner?’

  Glitsky was gone.

  As it turned out, Frannie had cooked a delicious chicken breast entrée with white wine and cream and artichoke hearts over rice. The kids had dominated the table talk with gross-out jokes – ‘What’s green and goes backwards? Snot’ – that kind of stuff, until the adults told the little darlings they could be excused. Abe’s ‘homicide equivocal’ didn’t get a chance to raise its head again.

  But now, almost eleven o’clock, the kids finally in their beds, Hardy and Frannie stood in the center of the kitchen, surveying the wreckage of the dinner, the pans and dishes.

  Hardy grabbed a sponge and turned on the hot water, started washing up. ‘This is why when I die I’ll be welcomed into heaven with fanfare and trumpets,’ he said.

  But singing her husband’s praises wasn’t on Frannie’s agenda at the moment. She went back out into the dining room, brought in a load of dessert dishes, put them on the drain. Then she stopped and leaned against the counter. ‘Okay. What about this client? What client?’

  ‘Graham Russo.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you mention him. When did he become your client? Is it a big estate?’

  ‘Not really, and pretty recently, come to think of it,’ Hardy said. ‘Roughly this morning, in fact.’

  ‘And his dad was murdered?’

  Hardy turned the water off. ‘He’s not charged with the murder, if it was a murder. I’m just helping the guy, Frannie. He’s a good kid. I know him from the Shamrock. He thinks the cops are hassling him.’

  ‘He thinks Abe’s hassling him? Abe doesn’t hassle people.’

  Hardy shook his head. ‘No, not Abe. Abe’s just pushing paper anymore. It’s one of the new inspectors. Maybe.’

  ‘So your client is under suspicion?’

  ‘That may be a little strong. He’s worried that it may get there. He needs his hand held, that’s all. It’s no big deal.’

  She was silent, arms crossed again. After a minute she said, ‘It’s no big deal, but the head of the homicide department came by here especially to tell you about it as soon as the autopsy was finished?’

  Hardy put the sponge all the way down. He turned to face her. ‘I don’t want another murder case, Frannie. I’d probably turn it down if it got to that. I don’t have the time anyway. It just got my interest, that’s all. There are some elements that might be slightly more fascinating than Tryptech’s transom accident, if you can believe that. Graham’s dad evidently had Alzheimer’s. It looks like he killed himself, but it might have been an assisted suicide.’

  ‘So maybe Graham did do it?’

  ‘He says not. He wants help with the estate, that’s all.’

  ‘And you believe that?’

  Hardy averted his eyes. ‘I don’t disbelieve it, not yet.’

  Frannie nodded. ‘Very strong,’ she said. Her arms were still crossed. She sighed. ‘He’s going to get charged, and you’re going to wind up defending him, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Frannie, I couldn’t defend him. First, I’ve got Tryptech, which is pretty full-time, you might have noticed. Next, Graham’s got no money, certainly not close to what he’d need for a murder defense, even at my rock-bottom rates. If he gets charged, he’ll take a public defender. It’d be a high-profile case – other defense sharks are going to swarm all around it.’

  ‘I didn’t hear a promise that you wouldn’t take it.’

  ‘It won’t get to there.’

  She sighed again. ‘Famous last words.’

  The autopsy report had been on Sarah’s desk when she and Lanier had come in from the field at the end of the day. That made it official. She remained late at the office, catching up on paperwork, and was there when the fingerprint expert checked in with his report. Graham Russo’s fingerprints were all over his father’s apartment – on the safe, on the morphine vials, on the syringes. Graham had told Lanier that he didn’t know how his father had come upon the morphine, had only been to the apartment ‘once or twice.’ Sarah’s suspicions took a quantum leap forward.

  If the coroner was saying it wasn’t a definite suicide, then she and her partner would find out what it definitely was. And Sarah knew where they’d start. She figured they had probable cause to search Graham’s residence, see what else they could turn up. The judge who signed the search warrant agreed with her.

  3

  Next to Hardy’s bed the world began jangling all at once. He pulled himself up with a moan from what felt like world-record REM sleep and slapped at the alarm. There was a moment’s silence, then another jangle.

  ‘The phone too,’ Frannie said.

  Hardy grabbed at the receiver and noted the time on the digital clock – seven o’clock. ‘Grand Central Station.’

  ‘They just woke me up with a search warrant. What am I supposed to do now?’

  ‘They’ve got a warrant?’

  ‘I just said that.’

  ‘Take it easy, Graham. You’ve got to let them in.’

  ‘I already have.’

  Hardy threw a glance out his bedroom window. A heavy fog had rolled in during the night. ‘What are they looking for?’

  ‘Just a second.’ Graham sounded like he was reading from some official paper. ‘Morphine vials, used or unused syringes, baseball cards, sports memorabilia, documents reflecting number combinations of safe or safety deposit box…’

  ‘Why do they think you might have any of that stuff?’

  ‘They won’t tell me. They just showed me the warrant, not the affidavit. They’re doing me a favor letting me call you.’

  Hardy knew this was true, so it couldn’t be too bad. Not yet. He hoped.

  The police had rung Graham’s doorbell at exactly seven o’clock, the earliest possible moment. Because it tended to bring to mind visions of jackbooted Nazis breaking down doors in the middle of the night, the police were prohibited fro
m serving search warrants between ten P.M. and seven A.M. unless there was immediate danger that evidence would be destroyed, or the suspect would disappear, or something specific of that nature.

  So the fact that they hadn’t come in the middle of the night meant that this was probably a relatively routine search. On the other hand, ringing Graham’s bell at the first allowable second was not a good sign.

  Hardy let out a breath. ‘Okay, you hang in there. Don’t be hostile. Give me your address, I’ll be right over.’

  He swung out of bed. As he was pulling on his pants, Frannie spoke. ‘That would be Graham Russo?’ She was sitting up in bed, arms crossed over her chest. Children’s sounds came from the rooms farther back.

  ‘My psychic wife.’

  ‘The one who has nothing to do with a murder case?’

  Hardy smiled. ‘That’s him. They’re hassling him, that’s all. He’s got some enemies downtown.’

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘I’ve got to go, be there for him. Keep him calm.’

  ‘I know you do. Don’t worry about the kids, I’ll get them fed and clothed and off to school.’

  He gave her a look. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow. It’ll be a trade, sharing those special parental moments.’

  ‘But I do have a real idea,’ she said.

  ‘My favorite kind. Let’s hear it.’

  ‘On the way to his place, start thinking about a defense attorney you can recommend for him. David Freeman, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’ A pause. ‘If he needs one.’

  Hardy had his map out. He stopped for a minute to consult it at the corner of Stanyan and Parnassus. Graham’s street was well hidden. He turned right, went a block, then hung a left onto a nearly vertical lane that he thought was the equal of any incline in the city. Street signs warned off trucks and delivery vehicles - too steep. Another sign informed him that this was not a through street. Whoever lived up here, Hardy thought, didn’t want anybody else to know about it.

  He checked his map again. With the fog he couldn’t see more than a hundred feet up the hill. He wished he’d gotten directions to Graham’s place instead of simply the address, but he was stuck now. Nothing to do but keep going. If he was lost, he’d find a phone.

  He nosed his old Honda up the steep hill, ran into another ‘Not a Through’ street that snaked off to the right and took it, and then suddenly – miraculously – the fog was gone. He’d climbed right out of it.

  Into, it seemed, a wonderland.

  Edgewood Avenue was paved with red bricks, lined with custom gingerbread houses, bathed in bright morning sunlight. On either side of the street a variety of trees were in full white and pink blossom. He rolled down his window and heard birds chirping.

  What was this place? Hardy had lived in San Francisco for nearly all of his adult life, and he’d never been here, never heard anyone mention it, although it was less than half a mile from the Little Shamrock.

  He pulled over at an open space at the curb, farther up the hill, just about to the copse of pine and eucalyptus that marked the end of the amazing dead-end street. He stood a moment outside his car, marveling at the red bricks, at the scented air. The fog below was a blanket of thick billowing cotton. The red spires of the Golden Gate jabbed through it.

  But beyond the fog, to the east, the downtown skyscrapers’ windows twinkled in the morning sun. Ships were moving on the bay. Across the water Treasure Island seemed close enough to touch. A ribbon of traffic was moving on the freeways, coming in over the Oakland Bay Bridge.

  He found the address at the end of a driveway, a front door cut into stucco where once, obviously, there had been a garage. Standing at the door, he paused a moment.

  As soon as he knocked and entered Graham’s converted-garage mother-in-law flat, he was going to fall into the role, representing the rights of his client. And then if the police did find anything, he would be hip deep in Graham’s defense.

  Could he extricate himself after that, even if he wanted to? All his protestations to the contrary, would he really want to get out?

  He was aware that his pulse had quickened. It never did that when he contemplated the mounds of paperwork and number crunching with Tryptech that awaited him in the office. But he couldn’t afford the luxury of loving his work, he told himself again. He had other priorities now. He was a grown-up.

  Then there was some noise from inside, and he took in a breath and rapped on the door.

  ‘Your client isn’t cooperating, so we don’t either.’ Hardy wasn’t through the door yet. Inspector Marcel Lanier, whom he’d known for years, wasn’t letting him in. ‘We’re conducting a search. You’re not entitled to be in here. It’s simple.’

  Hardy lowered his voice. ‘How’s he not cooperating?’

  Lanier shrugged. ‘My partner’s got some questions. He said if he’s a suspect, he’d like his lawyer present.’

  ‘He’s smart, that’s why. That’s his right.’

  ‘Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. But it’s not his right to have anybody present while we look around here. People have been known to take things. You wouldn’t believe. So as soon as we finish up here, you can come on in and we’ll all have a nice talk on the record.’

  Hardy could see Graham – barefoot, in running shorts and tank top – sitting at the huge country table by the floor-to-ceiling window, louvered shades blocking most of the sun and view in the back of the long, narrow one-room apartment. Lanier’s female partner was back talking with him.

  It was a beautiful street, all right, but Hardy didn’t want to stand out in it for the better part of the day. Lanier wasn’t a bad guy. He’d just gotten his feathers ruffled. Hardy would have to talk to Graham about his behavior around the police. They could make life very difficult if you made them dislike you, even if you’d done nothing wrong.

  ‘Is he under arrest?’ Hardy asked.

  ‘He’s being detained.’

  Hardy kept his patience. ‘Let me talk to my client. You guys’ being here freaked him out, that’s all. I’ll calm him down, maybe he’ll have something to say, something you can use.’ Hardy’s face cracked. ‘Come on, Marcel. If you do find something, you’re not going to want to tell Glitsky you had a chance to talk to your suspect and didn’t take it when it was easy.’

  Lanier took a beat, then stepped back and motioned Hardy in. ‘All right. Sit at the table and don’t touch anything.’

  Graham’s apartment was spotless and orderly. Hardy thought it was a fantastic living space. There was the huge picture window that dominated the back wall. Graham had adjusted the shades, and over the fog the view of downtown and points east was world class. There was a dark hardwood floor, Oriental carpets. The furniture was a mix of Danish and antique – heavy woods and teak – that somehow achieved a balance.

  The wall to Hardy’s right was lined nearly to the ceiling with books. There was a tall wine rack nearly filled with expensive wines. Three tiny vertical windows above the shelves. The rest of the right wall, near the back of the house, was given over to a kitchen area, stove, overhead racks, good cookware.

  The apartment radiated good taste. Graham Russo might be a jock, but there appeared to be a lot more to him than that. A further consideration raised its ugly head, though, and Hardy couldn’t put it aside: a place like this, and the lifestyle that went with it – the wine alone, for example – cost some serious money, and Graham was, at best, underemployed. He wondered how his young client could afford to keep all this up.

  But he’d find that out on his own time. For now, he was here to hold hands, and that’s what he’d do. He asked permission to put on a pot of coffee and – another peace offering – offered it around.

  He and Graham found themselves talking baseball at the table. Lanier was on the low leather couch on the left side of room, going through a stack of magazines, seeking stuff that might be tucked into them.

  In her search for syringes and vials of morphine Sarah Evans had been looking through
things in the bathroom, a small cubicle with a sink, shower, and toilet that had been patched onto the back corner of the room.

  Hardy thought that Evans had a really wonderful, sincere smile. Like the Hispanic DA he’d met with Glitsky yesterday, she barely seemed old enough, in his eyes, to be a Girl Scout, much less a homicide inspector.

  When Hardy poured the coffee, she came out and sat down with the men, smiled, and placed her pocket tape recorder on the table between them. Shoulder-length dark hair framed a freckled oval face, set off by widely spaced green eyes. A compact and athletic, very attractive body was evident under the utilitarian work-clothes. ‘You don’t mind?’ she said, still smiling. ‘Two birds with one stone.’

  Graham knew the law. He knew that talking to a police officer during an official investigation was a very serious matter. He had called his attorney first thing because he hadn’t wanted to be tricked.

  But then, after he’d admitted the two officers into his apartment, he’d really seen Sergeant Evans. He fancied that she’d noticed him as well. They were about the same age. The law was one thing, he knew, but this was a pretty woman and he had had some experience with them. He had no doubt that he could charm her and get her on his side, in spite of what her job might be, her professional role.

  This went beyond the law. It was only common sense to take advantage of the way people worked. He would be in control. Talking to her would be a smart move, although the book recommended against it.

  Sometimes you just had to go on what you felt.

  Hardy began, ‘No. I’m sorry, but my client doesn’t-’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Graham held out his hand, stopping him. ‘You said it, didn’t you, Diz? I might as well cooperate. I don’t have anything to hide.’ He shrugged, casually looked over at Evans. ‘Shoot, Inspector.’ A broad smile. ‘Not literally, of course.’

  Sarah returned the smile and took a sip of her coffee. She appraised him for another longish moment, then looked down, gathering herself, tucking away the last hint of the smile.