The First Law dh-8

by John Lescroart

  "I'm working on it," he told her. "But in the meanwhile, I've got a problem maybe you can help me with."

  She nodded. "If I can."

  He took a deep breath and came out with it. "I know who beat up David. Does the name Nick Sephia ring a bell?"

  It did. Roake remembered the earlier "mistaken" battery when Sephia had turned and knocked Freeman to the floor outside the courtroom during the summer. "You're sure it's him?"

  Hardy considered for a second. "Beyond a reasonable doubt, and you would be, too."

  "Okay. So what's your problem?"

  He gave her a truncated version of his own interaction with Blanca, backfilled through Jackman and Glitsky, then brought it around to Silverman and Holiday. "In any event," he concluded, "Blanca started out fine, but recently hasn't been too inclined to bust any hump for me. Somebody convinced him I'm just scamming to get Holiday off."

  "But somebody shot at you."

  "If you happen to believe that." He shrugged. "I can't explain all this, Gina. I don't think, though, that you have the stink that Abe and I have somehow developed. You're Freeman's fiancee. You've seen Blanca here. He'll talk to you."

  "And what do you want me to say? Or do?"

  At this, Hardy tried to smile. "First, just deliver a message. When I originally told Blanca I thought I knew who'd shot at me-this was like two hours after it happened-he checked on Sephia and found out he was in Nevada, at least four hours away."

  Roake's brow furrowed in thought. "Which leaves him out."

  "That's what Blanca thought, too. And that seemed right, even to me, until John Holiday pointed out that Nick's got the use of the Diamond Center's helicopter. Forty-five minutes to state line."

  Roake seemed to be waiting for more. At last she said, "Excuse me for thinking like a defense attorney, but since that's what I've been my whole life, Nick having access to a helicopter doesn't mean he shot at you."

  "No, of course not. But at least it means that my accusation wasn't whole cloth. I wasn't just getting in a random dig at Panos and his people, which is apparently what Blanca has been thinking. The thing is, I believe that both Jackman and Blanca really do want to find who did this thing to David. I'm telling you it was Sephia. If you mention this incident between David and Sephia last summer, or maybe Kroll's threat to David the night before… before this happened, maybe they'll listen at least enough to call Sephia in to talk. If there's a god, it's not even impossible Blanca could be convinced to pull a search warrant."

  Roake's eyes had taken on a faraway cast.

  "What are you thinking?" he asked.

  "What? Oh." She lifted her left hand, displaying the diamond ring. "Just imagining what I thought I'd be feeling like today. Married to him, I mean." Her smile didn't come any more easily than Hardy's had. "Not like this." Then, abruptly, "But the answer is yes, of course I'll go see Blanca, or anybody else you suggest. He's on in the morning?"

  "Yes."

  "All right." Again, her focus shifted. "Can I ask you another question? How do you know?"

  "Know what?"

  "That it was this Sephia person. Do you have any proof?" The question obviously struck a nerve-Hardy visibly reigned in a rising tide of temper. She put out a hand and touched his. "Don't get mad at me, Diz. I'm on your side, but it's a legitimate question."

  "I'm sure it is. Jeff Elliot had the same one."

  "Well?"

  "Well, I'm getting damn tired of it, to tell you the truth. I know it was Nick. What am I supposed to do, let him kill more people while I try to find proof that he's killed others?"

  She drew a deep breath. "The short answer to that, I'm afraid, is yes. If he did kill somebody else, or even beat up David, and God knows I want pure, sweet revenge for that. But still, you need…"

  Hardy cut her off. "So he shoots at you, you don't fire back?"

  "No. Somebody shoots at you, you fire back at where the shot came from. That, as you know better than anyone, is self-defense. If you happen to kill the shooter, two things, you've proven he was behind the gun, and you get your revenge. But you don't get shot at, decide who it must have been, then go to his house and shoot him back two days later. Because what if it could have been, even should have been your guy, but it wasn't?"

  "That didn't happen here."

  "No? What's different?" Again she touched his hand. "My only point is you'll hurt yourself, Diz." After a minute of silence, she added, "You've got to find something, that's all. At least for yourself, if not for the law. You've got to know. Really know."

  Hardy shook his head and swore under his breath. Another silence built. Broken finally again by Gina. "Here's a terrible thought," she said.

  "Terrible is my favorite. What is it?"

  "Just that I've got the key to David's apartment." She started running with the fantasy. "If something David owned found its way into Sephia's, say, pocket, and Blanca happened to see it, that might get to probable cause for a search. I can't believe I'm saying this."

  "They do a search of his place, they got him," Hardy said, rising to the idea. "The plant would only get them inside. It would take some real evidence after that-say blood splatter on his clothes, and my guess is that there would be plenty-to arrest him."

  "Right. We'd just be facilitating a legal search."

  They looked at each other with a thrill almost of illicit love, both of them wondering how it would be to play outside the rules. To beat these criminals at their own game.

  Finally Hardy pulled out of it. "It's a beautiful idea, Gina, but maybe we won't need it."

  "I couldn't do it anyway," she said.

  "I don't know if I could either."

  "Probably that's a good thing," she said. "It's why they're them and we're us."

  "Right," Hardy said. "If we don't do it by the book we're as bad as they are. Does something seem wrong with this picture somehow?"

  Hardy and Frannie hadn't had the best night of their lives so far, and now with Glitsky's urgent and atypical call inviting himself and Treya over to talk about their options, it didn't look as though it was going to improve. They were in the kitchen, an hour after a dinner that had featured a meltdown of sorts from the kids, who had finally processed the reality that their father had been shot at and badly hurt in the bargain.

  They might not know exactly what it was, but they understood that something truly bad was happening. Uncle Moses and Aunt Susan had been here until late last night, Rebecca and Vincent banished with their younger cousins to the back of the house while the adults drank and argued. This morning, their father and mother had barely spoken- were they getting divorced? Why was someone trying to hurt Dad? Were they actually trying to kill him? What were they going to do about that? What was Dad going to do? He was trying to find who it was, wasn't he? Get them arrested? What were the police doing? Were they in danger?

  Hardy found it difficult to finesse these questions, particularly since Frannie wasn't helping much. She was still mad at the situation, mostly at her brother, true, but beyond that she'd been dealing with the kids' blossoming reaction to all this since six o'clock this morning, by which time her hung over husband was already long gone for work. Tears and fears. What was going to happen to them? What if Dad died? What was this all about?

  "I don't want to live like this," Frannie said. "I don't know how these people have done this to us." They were keeping their voices abnormally low so that Vincent and Rebecca, doing their homework in the rooms directly behind the kitchen, would not have more cause to worry. To Hardy, the tension in the house twanged with every sound.

  He crossed the kitchen and put his arms around his wife. She leaned up against him. "I don't know what to do," she said. "I just feel so helpless."

  "That's what Abe and Treya are coming over for," he said. "We'll come up with some plan, the four of us."

  "But I don't understand why the police, or Clarence Jackman for that matter, why they don't believe you in the first place. That's the part that's making me crazy.
You didn't do anything wrong."

  "That's funny. John Holiday seems to think I started the whole thing. Me and David." At Frannie's look of disbelief, he explained. "Going after Panos."

  "Hello?" Frannie didn't want to hear this nonsense. "You've got over a dozen clients he's harmed one way or another. That's not you starting it."

  "I tried to make that same point myself. Evidently Mr. Panos can do whatever he wants, and if somebody like me calls him on it, I'm at fault."

  "John really said that?"

  "More or less."

  "That really makes me mad."

  "You must be a bad person, too. Anyway, I tried to explain that maybe I'm not a moral paragon, but what I'm doing is within the law, whereas everything Panos has done and is doing is against it. Call me delusional, but that's a big difference."

  "Did he get it? John?"

  "Not really. He's not much into right and wrong. He simply pointed out that I should have been prepared to handle this stuff before I started in on Panos to begin with."

  She moved back into his embrace. "It's like this bad dream where you're drowning and calling out the names of everybody who could save you on the shore right around you, but nobody hears."

  "I know," Hardy said. "I know." What else could he say? That's exactly what it was like. He and Frannie were having the same nightmare.

  Or maybe not exactly the same. She boosted herself up onto the kitchen counter, and she sat with her ankles crossed, her hands clasped between her legs, her head held low. "This has always been my biggest fear, you know that? That somebody was going to take all this law stuff personally and come after you. Or us. Me and the kids. And you always told me that that never happened. Except now it has."

  "I know." He rested his own weight against the opposite counter. "What do you want me to say? I never thought it would."

  "But now that it has… maybe we should reconsider…"

  "What?"

  She raised her eyes. "Maybe everything, I guess."

  Hardy didn't like the sound of that at all. "Everything takes in a lot, Fran. You're not saying you and me, I hope."

  "Not specifically, no… But the life we have. If it's not safe…"

  "This is one moment, Fran. It's not our life. Our life has been good. It still is good."

  "But not living like this. If we lost the kids…"

  Hardy stepped toward her. "That's not going to happen-"

  "Don't!" She snapped it out, stopping him. "Don't say it's not going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen. You've always told me that this wouldn't happen."

  Hardy backed off, took a breath. "So what are you saying? What do you want to do?"

  "I don't know!" Anger flashed in her eyes. Then, after a beat, with some measure of calm, "I don't know. Maybe we should just leave here. Start over someplace else, with you doing something else?"

  "And how do we do that exactly? What do we live on, for example?"

  "We'd find something."

  "Something that's going to support four of us, with two kids in college in a couple of years? I don't know how we're going to do that. And then what? Sell the house?"

  "We could."

  "Frannie. We can't." He approached again, but more cautiously. "Listen to me. I don't want something else. This is what I do. I'm trained in it and I'm good at it. I may even be doing some good from time to time."

  "But your life is threatening all of us, Dismas. Can't you see that?"

  He gathered what he felt to be the last of his reserve. He'd come to where she sat and he set his hands on either side of her hips. He felt that it would take all his strength to keep his voice modulated, and when he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. "Can't you see that what's at stake here is exactly that? The way we live, the way we want to live. Some crop of assholes comes in and threatens us, threatens that, what do you want me to do? What do you want us to do? Pack up and move? I don't believe it. Because then what?"

  "You're alive at least."

  "We're alive now. And we're where we belong. We're just scared."

  "And so we live with this fear?"

  "Sometimes, yes. Sometimes we have to. Hopefully not for too long." He brought a hand up and touched her cheek. "Look, Fran, I don't like it any more than you do, but you just can't let the bastards win. Sometimes they push you far enough and you've got to fight or else they'll take it all. They'll just take it because they can, because nobody will stop them. And that's wherever we move, whatever we do."

  25

  At a little before midnight, in her camouflage outfit Land with her heart pounding against the wall of her chest, Michelle walked all the way up one side of Casa Street, crossed where it abutted on Marina Boulevard, then all the way back on the other. There were several mature trees sprouting from squares cut in the sidewalk, and these blocked some of the illumination from the streetlights. Still, she thought she could tell if a person, or even two, was sitting in any of the cars parked solidly against the curbs on both sides. She saw none.

  This time, she left the newspapers where they were and took the steps to the landing quietly, but two at a time. At the top, a sudden light-headedness came over her so strongly that she thought for a second that she would faint. Straining to hear any sound that would mean discovery, she could hear nothing except the beat of her heart throbbing in her ears. Unable to stop herself, she walked back down the stairs and peeked out for another look at the street.

  Back upstairs, she opened the screen door, wincing at the squeak, waiting another minute, listening. Then suddenly in a great hurry, she inserted the key, opened the door and closed it behind her.

  She stood in blackness, letting her eyes adjust. After a time, some faint illumination of the streetlights through the front windows seemed to create spectral shadows, and eventually these resolved into shapes and spaces, and she felt she could walk safely. The errand was simple enough- she was picking up some of his clothes, whatever bills might have accumulated, a checkbook and ATM card if she could find them in his rolltop.

  Michelle hadn't worried until she'd gotten to the front stoop, when suddenly the entire idea struck her as foolish beyond imagining. Except now she was already here, inside.

  It was an older building and the hardwood floor creaked as she moved back down the hallway toward John's bedroom. She'd made the walk several times and had never noticed the sound before, but now the boards seemed to be screaming in agony at her light and cautious tread. What if the people downstairs woke up and called the police? She stopped, pinned to the wall, sweating now even in the chilled hall. She was not cut out for this kind of work. But there seemed nothing to do but continue, and the back half of the hallway was blessedly more quiet. If she walked faster…

  She had brought a small but powerful Maglite flashlight and a string shopping bag that could stretch to accommodate everything she needed, and she went right to his dresser-socks and underwear in the top drawer, a couple of shirts in the next one down, an extra pair of jeans, tightly rolled. Her bag was nearly full, but then she was almost done-just the checkbook and the mail.

  The rolltop did not budge at first. Nor at her second try. Straightening up, she took several deep breaths, took hold of the two handles. When she jerked at it sharply, the old wood released and the top flew up with a rattle and a crash. For a full minute, she didn't move, barely trusted herself to breathe. But there was no sound from below, from anywhere. Far in the distance, a siren wailed, but then stopped almost immediately. It wasn't about her.

  The checkbook with his ATM card was in the top middle drawer, where he'd told her she'd find it. Farther back, a picture frame, face down, stopped her completely. Carefully, she lay the flashlight on the desk and reached in, lifting it with both hands, setting it upright in front of her.

  It was, of course, Emma and Jolie. She should have known. Unable to tear her eyes from the image, by the flashlight's beam she studied the faces of John's lost loves. It was the furthest thing from a posed shot with say-cheese smil
es and orchestrated effervescence. Perhaps because of that, she knew why this was the one he'd kept, the one he'd framed. It was a feeding moment, the baby in a high chair anticipating the bite, which judging from her clean face might be the first of that meal. The mom bringing a spoon toward her. Although she immediately recognized John in the infant's face, the mouth especially, the baby took after her mother even more. Particularly in this picture, where they wore the same expression, a kind of rapturous expectation. Both so vividly alive. Both so young.

  A noise, close by, shattered her reverie. In her nerves and haste she reached both for the flashlight and the picture. The frame escaped her grasp in the now-sudden dark and it came down, the glass breaking with its unmistakable, sickening sound. In the aftermath, the silence was complete again.

  But, she thought, not quite as it had been before. Now, glued to the chair, shaking but immobile, she imagined someone else within hearing distance, listening as she was for another sound. She put her hand over her mouth to stop her own breathing, tried in vain to summon some saliva, to swallow.

  Someone was at the screen door, which creaked again. A second later, she heard a key turn, and the hallway light came on. A man's voice called out, "This is the police. I have a weapon drawn. Come out where I can see you."

  Michelle went to stand up, then thought better of it. "I'm in the bedroom, down to your left," she said. "My hands are over my head. I won't move until you say so."

  Like last time, there were two of them, but not the same two. The Asian man, the one who'd been holding the gun when he walked in, put the thing in its holster, then approached her with his wallet out and badge showing. After asking her to stand up, he introduced himself as Sergeant Inspector Paul Thieu of San Francisco homicide. He didn't waste any time at all. He patted her down quickly and thoroughly, then asked what she was doing here.

  She thought she'd go with the same basic story that had worked before. "I watch John's apartment when he's away."