Hardy 11 - Suspect, The

by John Lescroart

  "What about her body temperature?"

  Strout shook his head. "Useless here, I'm afraid. She cooked up to right around one-oh-five. Her core temp when my staff arrived at her house was a hundred and three. When she got here it was still over a hundred. You want, you can put on some gloves and get a feel for where she's at right now. Go ahead."

  "I'll pass, John, thanks."

  "Well, suit yourself." He put his own rubber-gloved hand into the cavity he'd cut below her chest, and nodded as though verifying something to himself. "Damn close to what you and me are right now," he said. "My guess is she was in the tub most of the night, and that agrees with the time of death we're talking about."

  Juhle folded his arms and tried to rub some life into them. "So she didn't drown?"

  "You cold, Inspector? We could get you a lab coat. No?"

  "I'm fine, thanks."

  "Can't let it get too warm in here. You know what I'm sayin'? But to answer your question. Yes, she did drown. Probably got knocked out first, then held under the water. But definitely drowned."

  "The blow to the head? Would it have killed her if she didn't drown first?"

  "No. My guess is somebody pushed her down and held her. Probably didn't take thirty seconds. And, of course, she probably couldn't put up much of a fight. But it's going to be a hell of a thing to prove."

  Juhle frowned. "Why's that?"

  Strout lovingly ran his rubber-gloved thumb over the shaved contusion. "Well, this area around the fracture we're looking at. You can see it's got some swelling, which means blood flowed to it after she got it. Any good defense attorney is going to say that she just banged her head sometime before she hopped in the tub, and there's no real solid way anybody's gonna prove she didn't. And by the way, her blood alcohol was point one one, so she was legally drunk, plus she had what looks on the first scan like she had some opiate on board ..."

  "Vicodin," Juhle said.

  Strout shrugged. "Don't know yet, but could be. The point is, she could have just passed out from the wine and drugs and heat and slipped under the water and drowned. No way to prove she didn't."

  "So you're not going to call it a homicide?"

  Strout knew the game intimately, and his enjoyment of it played on the features of his face. "Well, it's a homicide, you know, until I rule otherwise. And from what I'm seeing here, with this bump, I'm not going to call it suicide. So the door's still open for you anyway."

  "But you're not ready to call it a homicide?" Juhle broke an easy grin. "I'd buy you a nice lunch at Lou's."

  "Can't. Sorry. Not there yet. If it was a murder, and just between us I'm thinkin' it probably was, you got yourself a tough row to hoe. Guy did a hell of a good job, just speakin’ from a professional point of view. Gonna be damn hard to prove a righteous murder since I can't swear on the stand that it even was one. They'll ask me if it could have been an accident or even a suicide, and I'm gonna have to tell them yes. And that's not what you want to hear, is it?"

  "Okay, but here's the other image I can't seem to get out of my mind."

  After he left Strout, Juhle had stopped upstairs on the third floor where the DAs worked, and in particular the cramped office of an assistant district attorney named Gerry Abrams. Juhle was seated in the uncomfortable wooden chair behind the desk of Gerry's office mate, who was in court for the afternoon. "Stuart Gorman gets home at the ungodly morning hour of what? Six o'clock, six thirty, somewhere in there, right? You ever start a drive at two a.m.? Me? Never. Anyway, he putzes around for a while, goes upstairs and sees the bed is empty, then goes down and out to the hot tub and finds his wife. You with me?"

  Abrams, feet up on his desk, hands templed at his mouth, opened his eyes and inclined his head about an inch. He was paying close attention. He made a circle in the air with his index finger, indicating that Juhle should keep talking.

  "Okay, so he pulls her out of the tub and when the first cops arrive, he's doing CPR on her." Juhle stopped. "Get it?" he asked.

  Abrams opened his eyes again. "What's the problem with that? If he knows CPR, he's going to try ..."

  But Juhle held out his palm. "Not so fast, Tonto. The problem, according to what I just heard from Strout, is that this would have been while she was still in absolutely full rigor. She was stiff as a board. And I don't care how much experience somebody has with seeing dead people. Even if it's your first time, you're not going to mistake a body that's already stiffened up with somebody who's got a chance to get resuscitated."

  "Probably true." Abrams' eyes flicked the corners of the room. "And the point is?"

  "The point," Juhle said, "is that Gorman obviously had to know his wife was dead. How could she not be? He was putting on a show for when the guys from Central Station answered the emergency call and showed up. They come in and see him doing CPR . . . you see what I'm saying? He looks like he's trying to help, not like he killed her."

  "Maybe he just panicked and was really trying to save her."

  "Gerry, she'd been dead underwater for six hours. This isn't like a close call."

  "In real life, maybe not. But it's colorable, as they say, to a jury. If I'm defending him, I can hear myself: 'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in the intense emotion of finding his beloved wife of twenty years dead in the hot tub, Mr. Gorman couldn't think of any other response than to try and breathe some life back into her, even if it seemed impossible. He loved her so much, maybe that love could produce a miracle. There was literally nothing else he could do.' " Abrams spread his hands. "This flies on gilded wings, Dev. Two or three out of your twelve are going to completely accept it, no problem."

  "I can't."

  "Well, of course not. It's ridiculous on the face of it. So since when has that been a reason not to make an argument to a jury?" Abrams finally brought his feet to the floor and pulled himself up in his chair, elbows on his desk. "How's his alibi?"

  "He says he was on the road, driving down from Echo Lake, a little southwest of Tahoe. Leaving, as I believe I've mentioned, at two o'clock because he couldn't sleep."

  "So he could have left at say, eight the night before, and who would know?"

  "Right. Nobody."

  "So you think it's him?"

  While he'd been talking, Juhle had straightened out a paper clip and now he was bending it around his finger. "I'll tell you what I got in some kind of order and then you tell me. First, she'd told him just Friday that she wanted a divorce. Second, she made a ton of money— I mean, evidently a large ton—and now it's all his, although he's never really cared much about money."

  "No," Abrams said. "Me neither."

  "Few are so shallow," Juhle agreed. "Then the CPR thing. Except really for truly, it doesn't strike me that he's in any kind of mourning. Their daughter being hurt by all this, okay, that got to him. But the wife? They were over anyway."

  "You got all that from him? From Gorman?"

  "Most of it. Not the CPR. But everything else, horse's mouth. Finally, he plants this scenario with Vicodin and alcohol and a hot tub with a temperature of exactly a hundred and five degrees, which he just happens to mention to me in case I needed to have a theory for how she died. And which, p.s., fits the facts perfectly."

  Abrams, his eyes with a faraway look they got when he was concentrating, scratched at a blemish in the wood of his desk. "Too perfectly, you're thinking."

  Juhle nodded. "Strout even said it was a damn professional-looking job."

  Finally, Abrams met Juhle s eye. "Well, you've got your work cut out. Especially if his alibi holds. I wouldn't go near a grand jury yet with what you've got." Abrams paused, shook his head disconsolately. "Strout's sure, huh? Cause of death was drowning?"

  Juhle nodded.

  " 'Cause drowning is a bitch to prove murder. Any sign of struggle?"

  "Just the bump."

  Abrams was staring at the wall behind Juhle's head. Suddenly he snapped back into focus, flashed a quick smile. "Well," he said, "it's early innings. Meanwhile, you hear about
the woman's body they found this morning out in the flats in the bay?"

  "No. What about her?"

  "She was so ugly even the tide wouldn't take her out."

  "Wow." Juhle shook his head in admiration. "A joke, right? And people say lawyers don't have a sense of humor."

  6

  Wes Farrell rarely wore a coat and tie except when he was in court, and almost never when, as now, he was in his third-floor suite at the Sutter Street offices of Freeman, Farrell, Hardy & Roake. When Gina walked in on him after returning from her frustrating time in Department 21, one of the courtrooms in the Hall of Justice, the near-legendary schlumpiness that was Wes s trademark was even more pronounced than usual. He wore only a T-shirt, red running shorts that read STANFORD across the back, a pair of black knee-length socks, and Birkenstock sandals. His long gray-brown hair was partially tied up in his usual ponytail and he was down on one knee over by what passed for a work desk by the window. Wes liked to think that he had the world s greatest collection of epigrammatic T-shirts, and perhaps he was right. The one he wore today read I'M OUT OF MY MIND . . . please leave a message.

  "Am I interrupting something?" Gina asked, mostly in jest. "What are you doing?"

  "Training Gert, or trying to." He looked vaguely over to the other side of the large room. His office was haphazardly decorated, to say the least: a couch with some floral touches, a battered coffee table, two leather upholstered chairs, a television set on an old library table, a sagging Barcalounger over by the wet bar, which was in turn piled with drafts of legal briefs and old newspapers. "C'mere, girl, come on, now! Bring the ball. Good girl."

  Gina stepped farther into the room, closing the door behind her, and only then saw Wes's new Labrador puppy chewing a yellow Nerf basketball. As soon as she saw Gina, the dog forgot the ball entirely and bounded across to her, tail wagging, turning in little circles, jumping up. Wes hopped up to his feet, scolding. "No, Gertie. No, no, no. Bad girl."

  Gina reached down to pet the dog, who was now on her back in apparent dog glee. "It's all right, Wes. She's a good girl." Gina scratched her belly. "Aren't you, sweetheart? Good girl." Then, to Wes, "Have you been bringing her in here a lot?"

  "Nothing on my calendar this afternoon. I thought I'd work on her fetching. I'm starting to think she's got a learning disorder or something."

  "ADHD," Gina said. "All dogs have it."

  "Bart didn't." For nearly fifteen years, Bart had been Wes's pet, a good-size boxer that he'd had to put down a few months before. The experience had nearly broken his heart until his girlfriend, Sam, had come home with Gert about three weeks ago. "You threw a ball for Bart, he knew what to do with it. Gertie doesn't have a clue. Maybe it's a guy thing."

  "A guy thing?"

  "You know, Bart was a guy. Gertie's a girl. Maybe girl dogs don't like ball games."

  "Maybe you haven't trained her yet, Wes. Could that be it?"

  "I'm trying. We've been at it half an hour now and look at her." Gert was still enjoying the tummy rub Gina was administering. "Hopeless."

  Gina straightened up and brushed some dog hair off her skirt.

  "Well, keep at it. I'm sure she'll get it someday." Suddenly, she seemed to notice her partner for the first time. "Nice outfit, by the way. Very professional. I'd like to have seen Phyllis's face when you passed her."

  Phyllis, the firm's elderly, opinionated and dictatorial receptionist, manned the phone banks from an oval station in the center of the lobby one floor down with all the warmth and personality of a glacier. Wes looked down at himself and shrugged. "She has yet to see me this afternoon. I came up by elevator directly from the garage." A pause. "Hey, I told you I wasn't expecting clients," he said. "Or company."

  "Well, I'm afraid you've got it." She boosted a haunch onto the back of the couch and swung her leg back and forth. "I've just come from the Hall. You know how many lawyers they have on the list waiting to pull conflicts cases? It used to be twenty-five. You'd get a day about once a month. Now it's a hundred and ten. You're lucky to get three days a year."

  Walking across the room, Farrell picked up the Nerf ball, cleared a space on his library table, and sat on it. "Three's not a big number. I guess the word's out. You bill the city and you get paid. It's a good gig. Gertie." He wagged the Nerf ball, threw it back across the room, and came back to Gina. "And you never know what you get. Last time I went down, all I got was a deuce"—a drunk driving case— "and had to plead it out. The guy was doing fine, almost passed the field sobriety test, but when the cop asked him when he started drinking, his answer was 'Panama, 1989.' "

  "Wonderful," Gina said.

  "Why were you there, though? Last I looked, we had a pretty good caseload downstairs. Besides which, I thought you'd more or less retired from, as we say, the active practice of the law." He pointed. "Get it, girl. Get it."

  "Yeah, well, I thought about it a lot over the weekend and decided it was time I jumped back in. I'm a lawyer; I ought to do some law."

  "What about the book?"

  "The book isn't going anywhere. It'll be there if I decide to go back to it. It also isn't going anywhere in the literal sense. It's just something to hide behind." Gina glanced over to where Gertie was circling the ball, sniffing at it. "Anyway, I didn't want to steal away billing hours from the kids. I've always kept my name on the conflicts list, and I decided I'd take my turn this time instead of passing."

  On the library table, the intercom on the phone buzzed and Wes picked it up. "Yes, Phyllis? How intuitive of you, dear. Yes, she is. Hold on a second, I'll put her on. Can I tell her who it is?" His eyebrows went up. "Really? In person?" Holding the mouthpiece out to her, he whispered, "Jedd Conley. Not in person, but on the phone."

  For any number of reasons, Gina didn't want to talk to Jedd Conley in a room with anybody else in it, so she had Phyllis ask the assemblyman to wait for a minute while she said good-bye to Wes, then swiftly descended the stairs from his office down to the main lobby. There, she gave Phyllis the signal that she'd take the call in her own corner office and she half-ran the length of the hall, picking up on the second ring. "Hello. This is Gina."

  "Gina. It's Jedd Conley."

  "That's what I heard, but I wasn't sure I believed it. It's been a long time."

  "Yes, it has. We've both been busy, haven't we?"

  "You a little more than me. How are you?"

  "I'm good. Basically good. And yourself?" He lowered his voice. "I was so sorry to hear about David. The man was a giant."

  She stifled a sigh. "Yes, well. . . thank you. Are you calling from Sacramento?"

  "No. I'm in town, down at the Travelodge on Lombard. You know it?"

  "Sure. But to be honest, I've never really thought of you as a Travelodge kind of guy. You're staying there?"

  "Actually, I'm with a friend of mine who is in the way of needing a lawyer right away."

  "If memory serves, Jedd, wouldn't that be you?"

  "Not anymore. I haven't been in a courtroom in years. Since not long after you and I had a few of our last. . . tussles, actually."

  Gina felt a flush rise in her face. She and Jedd had never been seriously involved on an emotional level, but long before Conley had gotten married, they'd indeed had some tussles in each other's bedrooms as well as in the courtroom. "Well, I'm flattered you called, but I must say I'm a little surprised that you thought of me."

  "Well, you're an excellent attorney, that's why."

  "Who never once beat you in court, if I recall, and I do."

  "That's because all of your clients were guilty."

  "I guess that's true," she admitted ruefully. "So what about your friend? Is he guilty?"

  "Stuart Gorman," Conley said. "And no. He's not guilty. But he does need a lawyer making sure he doesn't screw things up and to walk him through the process." After a small hesitation, he said, "I know this is short notice, but that's the way these things go."

  "It's not that," Gina said. "Actually, the timing couldn't be better.
You're talking about Stuart Gorman the writer?"

  "Yep. You've heard of him?"

  "Not until a couple of hours ago. But in the small-world department, I just had lunch with the cop who talked to him at his house this morning."

  "You're kidding."

  "Not. Devin Juhle. Who, by the way, isn't as sure as you that your friend just needs to walk through it."

  "He say that?"

  "I read between the lines. But he's a cop. They always think that."

  "Well, he hid his suspicions pretty well. Stuart thought he was a good guy."

  "Maybe he is. He just thinks that if he's got a dead spouse on his hands, the other spouse probably has something to do with it."

  "Not this time. Do you think you could come on down?"

  "When?"

  "More or less now."

  A silence, then Gina said, "I'm thinking. You know that I've never defended anyone in a murder case?"

  "It won't come to that," Conley said.

  "I'm not sure Inspector Juhle would agree with you."

  "All right. But even if it does, haven't your partners both done murder trials?"

  "Yes, but they wouldn't ... I mean . . ." Suddenly Gina shook herself. "Oh, what am I saying? Of course I'm interested. I just don't want to misrepresent myself to your client."

  "He's not my client. He's my friend. He'd be your client."

  "Okay," she said. "But make sure you tell him what I told you. He's got to know who he'll be dealing with."

  "So you're coming down?"

  "Give me a half hour."

  "Gina. Thanks for coming." Jedd reached out to shake her hand. His eyes took in all of her with one approving glance. He covered their grip with his other hand and held it. "I thought under the rules we were supposed to look older as time went by."

  She shook her head, smiling up at him. "Don't start. You haven't held up all that badly yourself." She tightened her grip briefly, then withdrew her hand. "Am I on time?"

  "Neither the police nor the press have reappeared yet, if that's what you mean."