Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  He felt her breathing slow down. A bare arm came up to his shoulder and held him, pulled him down to her. A second passed. Five. Her grip relaxed and he lifted himself away from her. Her blue-gray eyes had teared up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a mess.’

  ‘You’re okay,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ She waited meekly by the door while he grabbed his coat, then took her arm. They walked out into the warm early night.

  * * * * *

  On the way back to the Hall, she told him about Owen’s Saturday appointment on the Eloise with May Shinn.

  ‘I know,’ Hardy said. ‘We’re looking into that.’ He considered telling her about everything they’d found on board, but there was still police work to be done there, and all of that could wait. What Celine needed was some understanding and a little time to get used to her father having been murdered. Hardy didn’t think an update on the investigation would do a thing for her piece of mind.

  They got to her car — a silver BMW 350i — and she hugged Hardy briefly, apologizing again for her ‘scene.’ She told him he was a good man, then she was in her car, leaving him with the faint scent of gin, a memory of her body against his and the feeling that, without ever meaning to, he’d done something terribly wrong.

  * * * * *

  They were having pizza in the reporters’ room on the third floor of the Hall of Justice, the same floor that contained the offices of the district attorney.

  The room, befitting the esteem with which the police held the medium of print journalism, wasn’t much. There was a green blackboard that kept up a running total of murders in San Francisco thus far that year (sixty-eight). There was a bulletin board tacked three deep with Christmas cards the press guys had received from their friends in the building, as well as the jails some of them had gone to reside in. The surface area of all three desks combined did not equal the expanse of oak on Ken Farris’s desk in South San Francisco. There was also an old-fashioned school desk. Jeff Elliot sat in that one.

  It wasn’t bad pizza. Anchovies, pepperoni, sausage and mushroom. Cass Weinberg, an attractive gay woman of about thirty, had ordered it. She was with the Bay Guardian and didn’t have much going on until later that Friday night, so she thought she’d bring in an extra large and schmooze with whoever might be hanging. Holding down the second ‘big’ desk was Oscar Franco from the Spanish-language La Hora. Then there was Jim Blanchard from the Oakland Tribune, who’d been worried for the past eighteen months about his job ending when the paper went bankrupt.

  ‘My theory,’ he was saying, ‘is that Elliot here did the guy himself. Otherwise how’s he gonna get a story this good.’

  Cass picked it up. ‘You used to be a sailor, didn’t you? Didn’t you tell me that? In college?’

  ‘He did,’ Blanchard said. ‘At college, in Lake Superior.’

  This was true. Before the multiple sclerosis had kicked in, Elliot had loved to sail, spent his summers under the canvas. He’d covered the America’s Cup for his high-school newspaper as a special project. ‘Not in Lake Superior, on Lake Superior, anchovy breath,’ he said.

  ‘In, on, doesn’t matter. He finds out where Nash keeps his boat, scams his way aboard and kills the guy,’

  ‘Then I jump overboard and hand-feed his hand to the shark.’

  Blanchard popped pizza. ‘Exactly. That’s the part that took guts.’

  Cass was judicious. ‘It could have happened. People nowadays do anything to get famous.’

  Jeff was in heaven. He would take all the razzing they were going to give him. He was one of them now.

  Oscar Franco rolled his bassett eyes around the room. ‘How long you guys been in the business an’ nobody even noticed the really big story today? Just me.‘

  Cass looked at Blanchard. ‘That’s the longest sentence he’s ever said, isn’t it?’

  ‘You laugh,’ Franco said. The big story is in Department Twenty-seven on the Charles Hendrix sting. Fowler threw out the case.‘

  ‘Oh boy.’ Blanchard sat straight up.

  ‘That man is a mensch,’ Cass said.

  ‘What?’ Jeff Elliot didn’t like to miss a big story, no matter whose it was. ‘Judge Fowler? What did he do?’

  Oscar explained it to him. Cass and Blanchard sat listening for a moment, then both of them asked him to slow up and start again while they took a few notes. Owen Nash was a good story, but this thing with Fowler might be the opening sally in a protracted war.

  They were still into it when Jeff saw the cop — Glitsky, that was it — who’d been at the coroner’s the night before, going towards the elevator. He left his pizza on the small desk, grabbed his crutches and said he had to run, hoping he’d catch the guy before the elevator got to the third floor.

  * * * * *

  Glitsky wasn’t happy in the first place about having to stay around late on a Friday night booking somebody for murder, writing up a report on his conversation with her, the reasons for his arrest when there wasn’t the hint of an indictment. But more, he’d finished all that, closing in on eight o’clock, still a chance to get out and have a nice dinner with Flo, when he went to his car downstairs and found out that, new tune-up or not, it wouldn’t start.

  ‘Officer.’ Now there was this reporter again.

  The elevators weren’t setting any land speed records and the temperature in the hallway was over eighty degrees.

  Elliot came right up next to him. ‘Excuse me, Officer,’ he repeated.

  Glitsky corrected him. ‘Sergeant,’ he said. ‘I look like I’m wearing a uniform?’

  ‘Sorry. Sergeant. We met last night, briefly.’ Jeff introduced himself again. ‘At the coroner’s. Owen Nash.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Elliot pushed on. ‘Well, we’re on the third floor. I thought you might be seeing the D.A. about that, about something breaking?’

  The one elevator in service after business hours arrived with a small ding. Glitsky stepped in and Elliot stuck with him. ‘I just did an hour-and-a-halfs worth of IRs upstairs.’

  ‘So something’s happening?’

  Jeff thought this was a pretty scary man. ‘Something’s always happening,’ he said. ‘That’s why there’s time — it keeps everything from happening at once.’

  The elevator doors closed — finally. ‘As to the third floor, that’s where they give out keys to city vehicles, and my goddamn Plymouth has quit on me again, and all the other cars are out for the weekend, so I’m taking a cab home.’ Elliot didn’t know it, but Glitsky swore about as often as he laughed out loud, maybe twice a year.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Jeff didn’t miss a beat, and though he’d been planning on stopping back in at his office, he said, ‘I’m heading home now, I could drop you off.’

  Glitsky said he lived out on Lake, and Jeff only fibbed slightly, saying it was right on his way. The sergeant thawed a little. ‘That’d be nice. Where are you parked?’

  They had reached the ground floor and the door opened, hitting them with a welcome shot of cooler air. ‘First slot out the back.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Abe said.

  Jeff grinned his winning grin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Handicapped.’

  * * * * *

  Except for the green gauzy glow of the fish tank, the lights were out. The bedroom window, facing east to the city’s skyline, was wide open, but no air moved. Hardy’s wife was curled against him spoon fashion, and he was inside her, holding her to him at the waist. They were both sweating, at it now a long time, Hardy wanting to prove something.

  ‘Diz.’

  He shushed her, trying not to hear her and break his own spell. He’d started with his eyes closed, she coming to him, feeling a distance there after the quiet dinner, the brooding in the living room.

  ‘Diz.’

  He didn’t want to hear her and buried his mouth into the back of her neck, under her hair. When he opened his eyes, he could make out the shape of her back in the dim light. Only her back. Any back. An
yone’s he wanted it to be.

  But he was closing in on it now, feeling the thrust of her — wanting to help him even if she was ready to quit, reaching down for him, arching herself backward. He pulled at her waist, up against him now, feeling the air now between them, closing the distance, hard up in her wetness. Harder then, pounding, losing her as he felt himself starting, finding it again and driving in again and again and again.

  It was Celine’s back. An angry Celine. And Hardy for some reason furious too, feeling her grip, the tight grip she had on him. And now he heard her, crying out, after she thought it was over, liking it rough, and the sound of her cry starting something at the base of his backbone, moving up.

  He slapped her against him, as hard as he could, knowing he wasn’t hurting her, crying out himself, his hands now up against Celine’s breasts that were somehow wet, crushing them to her, crushing himself against Frannie’s back, she pumping him, the sweet agony…

  Finished now, he lay on his back, breathing hard. He felt the sweat cooling, the lightest warm breeze through the window. Frannie was on her side, leaning on her elbow, all up against him. She kissed his cheek. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She kissed him again. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about. I liked that.’

  He pulled her to him and kissed her. She put her head down against his shoulder and started breathing regularly. In one minute she was asleep. Hardy lay with his eyes open, listening to the gurgling of the fish tank for almost an hour.

  18

  He woke up refreshed, his devils exorcised by spent lust and deep sleep. In the light of day, he thought it hadn’t done him any harm to fantasize — it was natural once in a while. No need to whip himself over it.

  Now he wasn’t fantasizing. Frannie was in his here and now. He was cooking breakfast — french toast and sausages — in his black cast-iron pan, the only artifact he’d taken from his time with Jane. In the decade he’d lived alone, that pan had been one of the inviolate certainties in his world. He cleaned the pan with salt and paper towels, no water, no soap. After every use, he put a drop or two of oil in it and rubbed it in. No food stuck to that pan. It was a joy.

  Taking a bite of a sausage link, he turned a piece of sliced sourdough bread over in the mixture of egg, milk and cinnamon — dripping it only for a second so it wouldn’t get soggy — and forked it into the pan, where it hit with a satisfying hiss. Outside, the sun had come up hot again. Maybe they’d get an entire weekend of summer this year.

  Frannie was dressed in hiking boots with white socks, khaki shorts and a Giants t-shirt, ready for the historical expedition to Martinez that she, Hardy and Moses had planned for the day. They were going to track down the elusive origin of the martini.

  ‘Or is it the origin of the elusive martini?’ Moses had asked. This had been last Wednesday night at Yet Wan.

  ‘The martini itself is not elusive,’ Hardy had replied.

  ‘But the ideal martini can be elusive.’ Two bartenders, Jesus, finally coming to an agreement. Frannie was smiling, remembering. She came back down the hall from the front door with the morning newspaper and laid it on the table in front of Rebecca, who was finger-painting with baby food on the tray of her high chair. Standing, opening to the front page, she grabbed a sausage and took the mug of coffee Hardy handed her,

  ‘This Jeffrey Elliot’s turning into a daily feature.’ Hardy came over and stood with his arm around her.

  SUSPECT ARRESTED IN OWEN NASH MURDER

  by Jeffrey Elliot

  Chronicle Staff Writer

  Police yesterday arrested May Shinn, the alleged mistress of Owen Nash, for the murder of the local financier. According to the arresting officer, Sergeant Abraham Glitsky, Ms Shinn had purchased a ticket to Japan after the discovery of Nash’s body on Thursday on a beach in Pacifica, and was attempting to leave the jurisdiction after she had agreed to remain in the city.

  Although Glitsky refused to go into much detail regarding the evidence collected thus far, he did acknowledge that a search of Owen Nash’s sailboat, the Eloise, had revealed traces of blood and a .25-caliber Beretta handgun registered to Ms Shinn. Additionally, a slug, imbedded in the wall of the boat, was recovered. The gun had been fired twice, and Nash’s body contained two wounds. The Ballistics department has not yet conclusively identified the gun as the murder weapon, although Glitsky conceded he thought the possibility ‘likely.’

  The article picked up on the back page, but Hardy was already at the telephone. ‘That’s what I like,’ he said, ‘when I follow the comings and goings of my dear friends and professional colleagues by reading about them in the newspaper.’

  ‘What are you eating?’ Glitsky asked. ‘It sounds great.’

  Hardy swallowed his sausage. ‘You forgot my phone number, Abe. I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘On Friday night? Come on. I got done talking to Elliot around nine-thirty, ten. I thought I’d call you this morning.’

  ‘What were you doing talking to Elliot?’

  ‘My car went out again. He was at the Hall. He gave me a lift home.’

  ‘What a guy,’ Hardy said.

  ‘He seems like a good kid.’

  ‘I know he does. Nicest guy in the world. Is she out of jail?’

  ‘I doubt it. I guess it depends who she calls. A good lawyer might find a judge to set some bail, get her out today.’

  ‘And when do I talk to her? Did she do it?’

  After a minute Glitsky answered. ‘I don’t know. She might have. No alibi. It’s her gun. She was getting out of Dodge, and she bought her ticket to Japan after Nash was identified, after the paper had it.’

  ‘No alibi?’

  ‘The famous I-was-home-alone-all-day. When’s the last time you were home alone all day, no phone calls, no nothing? I didn’t want her going to Japan.’

  ‘You think I ought to go down and see her?’

  ‘Hey!’ Frannie gave him the eye. ‘Martinez,’ she whispered. ‘The elusive martini, remember?’

  * * * * *

  In the normal course of events, there was a skeleton staff at the Hall on weekends. The D.A.‘s office was officially closed. Courtrooms were not in use. Of course, there was still police work and people getting into and out of jail, which occupied the top floors until the new one in the back lot was completed. A clerk was on duty twenty-four hours a day to let people out if a bondsman met bail. Defense attorneys came and went. There were visitors.

  Hardy had parked in his usual spot under the freeway, promising an unhappy Frannie he’d be home by noon for their foray into history. You didn’t want to drink martinis before noon anyway, he had told her. She told him she wasn’t going to drink martinis for seven or so months, and in any event, she had gone along with this idea just to be with her husband, brother and daughter and have a relaxing time together, which seemed to be becoming less of a priority for him day by day.

  * * * * *

  You thought you had trained yourself. You’d traveled far enough along your own rocky path to some inner peace that you had come to believe you couldn’t go back —events would never control you again.

  Then they took your clothes from you. They gave you a yellow gown that smelled like Lysol and put you in a small barred room with a sullen young black woman and a toilet with no seat, the whole place, beneath the disinfectant, smelling like a sewer.

  You threw away your phone calls on the man who’d been your lover’s attorney. ‘You ever need help — I mean real help — and I’m not around, you just call on the Wheel. He’s your man.’ He would come down and get her out. He was a lawyer and knew about these things. But he wasn’t at the number Owen had given her. No one had answered, and now there was no one to call and she was alone.

  You spent the night in fear, waking up sweating in the still heat, the smell of yourself, of the other woman who didn’t talk, who sat on her mattress with her back against the wall. A clanging wake-up and a meal of cold pow
dered eggs, the regimented shower, the indifference of the women guards.

  She swore to herself that she would not let them take her so easily, but it was difficult finding a mechanism to deal with it, to keep the loss of herself under control. She felt her will eroding, and she knew that’s what they wanted. To turn her into a victim again.

  She’d really believed she was through with that for good. If Owen had done anything for her, it was that. She would not be a victim. That was something she could control.

  She sat cross-legged on her mattress and closed her eyes. If she did not have a physical shrine, she would create one inside herself, even here. She had been this close to despair before. It was the day she had met Owen…

  Alone in a darkened corner at Nissho, an exclusive Japanese restaurant near the Miyako Hotel in Japan-town, a thick winter fog out the windows, she had sat contemplating her death. She would use seconal and alcohol, starting with a small bottle of sake. After lunch she would walk slowly back up to her apartment and sit by her window, watching the fog, and drink the bottle of Meursault. She would disrobe and take a hot bath. She would swallow the pills and draw the clean silk sheets up over her naked body. And she would go to sleep.

  That was where life, after thirty-four years, had led her.

  She could not have said precisely where she had failed, or which failure had marked her Rubicon. Should she have tried harder with her family? Tried to communicate more and break the icy bonds of reserve? There had been two sisters and a brother, living with her parents in a square and empty house under the flight path to Moffatt Field in Sunnyvale. Passive. ‘Remember, we are Japanese.’ Her father never able to get over his internment in Arizona during World War II, when he was a boy, snatched with his whole family from his home. The excuse for his whole life — ‘We will never belong.’ Harboring the hatred and disappointment in who he was, who they all were, doling it out to her mother, to his children, to May.