Inside, a counter divided the well-lit space. Two doors in the back indicated the presence of some private suites, or possibly one big one. A large poster of a beaming Jedd Conley commanded one wall. It was surrounded by smaller framed shots of the assemblyman posing with what looked like at least one representative of each and every demographic unit San Francisco had to offer, which made for a crowded wall. The opposite wall featured an enormous map of the city and also the official framed photo of Arnold, which struck Hunt as somewhat incongruous since the Governator was a Republican.
"Can I help you?" A sweet-looking, matronly woman in her mid-fifties had gotten up from one of the two desks behind the counter. The other desk was clean, with only a computer terminal and a telephone. The woman seemed to be the only person here, which Wyatt thought surprising until he realized that Conley’s main office was in Sacramento. This was merely a satellite office he used as a local base.
And in turn, this gave him an idea and an opening, since he realized that walking in and announcing that he was looking to establish an alibi for Conley in a murder case probably wouldn't get him a whole lot of cooperation.
"Well, I don't know, really," he began with a self-conscious, tentative handshake. "My name is Wyatt and I'm a graduate student in poly sci out at San Francisco State, and I'm thinking about doing a report kind of like . . . well, do you know William James's book called The Varieties of Religious Experience?"
The woman looked at him warily. "I'm sorry, but no, not really. This is Assemblyman Conley's office. Maybe you want to go to the Archdiocese."
"No, I don't think so. I know it's Mr. Conley's office. And it's all right not knowing about William James," Wyatt said. "I only said that because I'm thinking about my report and calling it 'The Varieties of Political Experience.' So you see, it's not entirely stupid."
"No. It doesn't sound stupid. Actually, that sounds very interesting."
"Well, I don't know yet. I hope it will be. But I thought I'd come down and talk to somebody who was in the business, so to speak, and see if I could get a good place to start. You're not too busy, are you? I don't want to bother you."
The woman ostentatiously looked over Wyatt's shoulder, then turned around both ways and came back to him smiling. "I think I'll be able to squeeze you in," she said. "My name's Maggie Even. Long 'e.' And I wish it was Evans too, but it's just not. It's Maggie Even. When I was dating Jack, my husband, I used to tell all my friends, 'What I'm going out with him for—my plan is I'm going to get even.' And I did. Jack, I mean. Now it's my name too. Little did I know." She shook her head. "Anyway"—she put out her hand again— "Maggie."
"Wyatt."
"That's what you said."
"Just to let you know it hasn't changed." He grinned at her. They were now pals. "Anyway, I was hoping to get some record of the kinds of stuff Mr. Conley does in the course of, say, his average month. Like fund-raising, or talking to groups—everything, really."
"Well," Maggie Even said, "we've got a little problem because I'm just a volunteer until they hire another full-time person and I'm pretty new here myself. But if you want to come around"—she indicated the hinged opening in the counter—"I'm pretty sure I could find a record of his appointments somewhere."
30
Today's Special at Lou the Greek's was Salt-Baked Merides— oven-roasted baby smelt over rice, served with a searingly spicy sweet red sauce on the side. The consensus at Gina's table—herself, Hardy, Farrell and Jeff Elliott in his wheelchair—was that possibly because she had done essentially nothing to a fresh and delicious single ingredient, Chui had conceived and executed her best-ever Greek/Chinese meal. The novelty of the unexpectedly excellent food brought the table to silence for a moment, and this served to punctuate the end of the shoptalk that had been going around since they'd come over from the Hall—mostly about Gina's stellar performance at the morning session.
Now Jeff Elliott said, "So Gina, after we got off the phone this morning, I did a little research and Googled the Dryden Socket, then got Bill Blair on the phone before I came down here. He didn't seem all that happy to be hearing from me."
Gina put her fork down. Turning to her two partners, she quickly filled them in on the Kelley Rusnak suicide and where it either intersected or not with Stuart's case. When she'd finished, she turned back to Jeff. "Talk to me."
"Well, first, I'm sure you're going to like this, but the main thing I had to understand is that no matter what I might have read online or anywhere else, 'There is nothing wrong with the product. It sailed through the clinical trials. It's already been used on hundreds, soon to be thousands, of happy patients. Ninety-nine percent of the alleged problems came in long after the trials were complete and the reports written. And those reports haven't been vetted yet either. So there's no story.
"So you thanked him for his time and hung up," Hardy said.
"I really wanted to, but force of habit, danged if just one more question just kind of slipped out before I could stop it."
"What was that?" Gina asked.
"I asked him if it were true that Kelley Rusnak and Caryn Dry-den had both been working on the socket. And whether or not their two deaths in the past two weeks might have been in some way connected to their work at PII. Or to each other."
"That would have been the part he didn't like," Farrell said.
Jeff nodded. "Not too much, you're right."
Gina normally would have tolerated if not joined the banter, but today she was all attention. "So what'd he say?"
"That Caryn had been murdered, and Kelley had been depressed and was a suicide. There was no connection between them."
"But Stuart told me she wasn't depressed at all."
"Have they done the autopsy on her yet?" Hardy asked. "If not, I'd call down to San Mateo and see if you can talk somebody into putting a rush on it."
"I've already done that this morning," Gina said with a resigned shake of her head. "I called the homicide DA and asked him to call the coroner. They were either going to get to it right away or else they weren't.
"I know somebody in the coroner's office down there," Farrell said. "No promises, but I could make a call."
"That'd be good," Gina said. "If Kelleys a murder, then she was killed when Stuart was in jail. . ."
"That's a good alibi for him," Jeff said.
"Better than that," Hardy said. "Two murders makes it way harder to pretend they're not related. Even for Abrams, I'd bet."
"That's a beautiful thought," Gina said, "but old Gerry's hung his hat on Stuart, Diz. He's not going to let another murder get in his way."
Jeff wanted to get back to his point. "But here's the thing about Blair, guys. I pushed a little bit about why he didn't see fit to mention anything about Caryn Dryden in his statement to the press about Kelley. He said, and I quote, 'Honestly, it never occurred to me.' "
"Did he say, 'At that particular point in time'?" Farrell asked. "I love it when they add that at the end."
Gina ignored Wes. "But that's got to be a lie," she said to Jeff.
"Obviously. And since I had him lying anyway," Jeff continued, "I thought I'd see if he had anything to say about his relationship with Caryn."
"Did he have one?" Gina asked. "Personal, I mean."
A shrug. "They showed up together a lot on Google. They evidently did a lot of show and tells for investors, and not just in Silicon Valley."
"They traveled together?" Gina asked. "Overnight?"
"At least. I didn't have the time to go looking for hotel reservations and airplane tickets, but there'll be a paper trail and maybe witnesses if you send somebody to look into it."
"So what did this guy Blair say?" Hardy wanted to know. "About their personal relationship?"
"They had none," Jeff said. "Naturally. Everything between them was pure business. She was an immensely talented inventor and scientist, and he was a marketing and sales guy. Although of course he was devastated by her death."
"Maybe we ought to send
Wyatt down and see if we can get him to have a talk with this guy," Hardy said. "Find out where he was when both these women were killed, or killed themselves, if only to tell it to the judge in there."
"Not that that's going to matter too much at this stage," Farrell, ever helpful, added.
Struck by the phrase, Gina turned on him. "What do you mean by that, Wes?"
Farrell meant no offense. "I mean you'll have all these answers by the time you go to trial. You don't really need them for this hearing, where they're not going to make any difference anyway."
"Well," Gina said, "what if I'm not willing to concede that just yet? That this hearing is a lost cause, I mean. I killed them in there this morning."
"Yes, you did," Farrell agreed. "I never meant to imply that you didn't."
"But I'm going to lose anyway?"
Farrell held up his hands. "Hey, you might not."
Kymberly Gorman was smoking marijuana with her boyfriend, Trevor Stratton, in the Volkswagen camper van in which they'd lived for most of the past weeks, except for the few days after her mother's death when she'd stayed with her aunt Debra. The two young people were parked at almost the precise spot where Wyatt Hunt and Gina Roake had turned around during their jog that morning, in one of the parking spaces where Beach Street dead-ended beyond the Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park. Although in theory a two-hour parking limit applied, in practice it was a good place to lay low, since very few cops ever ventured down the foreshortened street, and even the meter maids typically avoided the tight turnaround at the end, preferring to shoot up Polk Street for easier pickin's. Kymberly and Trevor's parking place was also less than six blocks from the Gorman/Dryden home, currently unoccupied.
Trevor Stratton was twenty years old. At six feet tall, 175 pounds, he was a well-built, good-looking kid in a slacker kind of way, at least when he got cleaned up. But like Kymberly, mostly he didn't see the need for that. Today, for example, he wore a wispy three-day stubble. His long hair was blonder than it was brown. Sporting tattered jeans and year-old ruined red tennis shoes, he was exactly the kind of guy Kymberly could never bring home to meet her mother, which made him perfect.
Not that it had been that hard, but Trevor had helped talk Kymberly out of actually attending college when she'd been on the verge of going away. He himself had started at university last year at USF, and had completed most of his freshman work. But his parents back in Illinois had never flown out to visit him, or asked to see his grades, and he realized that they never would, so he stayed for the summer, bought the van, and told his parents that he was living in an off-campus flat. So they sent him $1,500 checks for food and rent every month, which he picked up at a friend's apartment. It was a pretty great existence most of the time.
Except for having to deal with Kymberly's moods and stuff. But most of the time she was up for sex, and her whole attitude was radical and kind of cool. Plus she was a lot prettier than she thought she was. Really pretty, in fact. Trevor got a lot of points with most of the guys he knew for just being with her.
Except now, and for a couple of days now, she was in one of those difficult moods. Manic to the max. He didn't think she'd slept more than an hour or two per night since the funeral, when she'd been so depressed. Then this morning, deciding she needed to visit her father in jail. And that hadn't worked out, except to make her cold. Then they'd come out here with the van and had a few hits—trying to slow her down—but instead she got it in her head that they needed to play some music for tips, so they'd broken out his conga drum and guitar and walked down to the cable car turnaround. He'd strummed his acoustic guitar and sang a bunch of his own monotonic songs while she'd slapped the drum tirelessly for a couple of hours.
When Kymberly got going on something, she had tremendous energy. He had to give her that. And they'd made nearly twenty bucks, which was definitely worth it. But all of it had been in the steady drizzle, and while Trevor had worn his rainproof parka, he hadn't been able to talk Kymberly out of her flip-flops and T-shirt with no bra, which probably didn't hurt the tips.
But now, back in the van, she was whining again, still wound up and endlessly needy. He might have to try to talk her into taking some of the lithium, although it brought her down and got her off her high, when she'd get as boring as she was exciting now. She'd probably sleep for a couple of days if he did that, so he thought at least they ought to get it on one more time before she checked out.
"I just want to get some more clothes," she was saying. "I'm cold."
"Just use the blanket there, Kym. Here, let me wrap you up."
But she shrugged that off. "Too hot, too hot, too hot. Aren't you listening to me? Plus it smells bad. What did we do with those clothes I got with Debra? Did I leave them with her?"
"I don't know. I didn't see them."
"You did too!"
He shook his head. "You never brought them back here."
The suspicion was back in her eyes. Lately this seemed to be her fallback position with him. Not trusting him. When in truth he was the one providing for her—this ride, her food, her dope, her drink, her needs. But this was the thing, he knew, that made her so difficult at certain times and so kind of fascinating at others. You just never knew what her reality was going to be. And suddenly, now, she sat up, her stoned eyes flashing in anger at him. "You sold them, didn't you? That's what you did, Trev. You turned them back in at the store for the money."
"No I didn't, Kym. You never brought them back. You left them at your aunt's."
"I wouldn't have done that. I liked those clothes."
"You said you hated them."
"I did not. You're making that up." But something about it seemed to strike her as possible, if not actually true, and she shifted gears in that infallible way she had. "Let's just go up to the house."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not? Nobody's there. I've got my old clothes in my room, in my closet. I'm really cold, Trev. I'm not kidding. I don't want to get sick."
"You don't get sick from being cold. That's an old wives' tale."
"I don't care about that. And I don't believe it either." She was patting her pockets, feeling around in the pile of blankets and other stuff on the mattress with her. "Where are my keys? You're not the boss of me. I'm just going."
"Kym." He picked up the blanket from behind her and tried to wrap it around her shoulders. "We can't go up to your house. We just can't do that."
She grabbed at the corner of the blanket and pulled it off her again. "Where are my keys? Did you take my keys, too?"
"I didn't take them. You gave them to me."
"So give them back now. Do you even know where they are?" Yes.
"So where are they? You have to tell me. They're mine."
"They're ours, Kym. And they're in a safe place. Can't you leave this blanket over you, please? Just until you warm up. Then we can talk about it."
"But I want to go to my house and get my clothes."
"Kym. Your mother was killed there. Remember that? You said you'd never be able to go in there again."
"But I could now. My mom's not going to ..." Whatever the evanescent thought was, it had vanished. She sighed and said, "Anyway, you could come with me."
"I can't go in there, Kym. I can never go back in there. Don't you get that? If somebody saw me and knew that you were with me and then they got my fingerprints somehow, they might put me in jail."
"No! You can't go to jail, too!"
"I know. I know. But if anybody saw us there Sunday . . ."
"Nobody saw us, Trev. It was in and out; I know the combination, we hit the safe, take the money ..."
"We should've taken all of it. And the gun, too."
"No! That would have really been dumb. I know my dad. He wouldn't have known exactly how much he'd put in the safe, but he'd notice if all of it was gone. And we don't need the gun. What do we need a gun for?"
"We could have sold it someplace. And there was just so much more there, Kym,
for the taking. Stuff they never even would have missed, I bet. But now that chance is gone forever. We should have got more when we could."
But then she had that faraway look in her eyes again, and she went silent, now reaching for the towel and pulling it tightly around her, smell or not. "I knew you wanted to go back. It's so lucky you didn't go back." She reached out and touched his leg. "You didn't, did you? Go back."
"Of course not, Kym. You know I didn't. I told you that."
She recited the explanation as though she memorized it: " 'I stayed with Jen and you went to Jeremy's and bought this weed instead,' " she said.
"Right. With the money we got from the safe. And luckily I didn't go to your house, ’cause whoever was there might have ... I mean, I might have got in the way too."
"Like Mom did."
"Right. Just like that. But that's why I can't go back there now. They might think somehow I had something to do with your mother. Which I did not, Kym. I swear to God, I didn't."
Kymberly nodded and nodded, until the movement became so pronounced that it turned into rocking. A tiny, frail humming started deep within her and in a few seconds had turned to a full-throated keening that Trevor had to muffle by pulling her against him and holding her to his chest, rubbing her back, smoothing her hair, whispering soothingly to her. "It's okay, now, it's okay." And then, just as suddenly as the moaning had come on, it broke into a cathartic sobbing that wrenched at her chest and seemed to involve her whole body.
"Don't leave me," she cried. "Please please please don't leave me." Trevor continued to stroke her back. "I never would," he whispered close to her ear. "Never ever ever."
"Kym, this is Gina Roake again."
"How did you get my number?"
"Your father tried to call you this morning on my cell phone, so the number's on it."
"Okay. What?"
Hardy 11 - Suspect, The Page 28
