Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  ‘Well, isn’t she the nice little Gestapet.’

  Drysdale butted in. ‘When did you know about Fowler, Diz?’

  Hardy stopped and took a breath. ‘You know, Art, it’s funny, but I don’t believe we’ve established that I did know about Fowler yet. We have some unnamed source finking me into a room with Jeff Elliot. Although I’m beginning to suspect that in Mr Locke’s little fiefdom here, if you’re accused, you’re guilty.’

  The district attorney was on his feet. ‘Don’t get any smarter with me, Hardy.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’ He paused, then added, ‘Chris. From what I’ve seen, I’m already smarter than you.’

  ‘What you are, is out of a job.’

  ‘And what you are, Chris…’ Hardy slowed down, pulling out of it. He looked him in the eye. ‘What you are, Chris, is a total flaming asshole.’

  * * * * *

  He thought about it at Lou’s over his third black-and-tan. They’d planned to fire him all along. They didn’t want any new information out of him, anything incriminating. That had been a front.

  Figure it out — before they’d asked him question one they’d told him to bring all the Nash files down to the office. They were planning on taking them from him. Which they’d done.

  Ha, guys. Guess what?

  The funny thing was he had withheld information from them. But he really hadn’t leaked the news about Fowler and bail. He’d only found that out this morning when he’d read the newspaper. Jeff Elliot had discovered it and used the information Hardy had given him about subpoena policy to make it appear it had been a D.A. leak. He was a clever guy, Jeff Elliot, and he’d cost Hardy his job, though at the moment Hardy was thinking that fell more into the category of a favor.

  So maybe Locke and Drysdale had had grounds to fire him after all — he had known about Andy Fowler’s relationship with May Shinn and hadn’t come forward with it immediately. That wasn’t being a team player. But, he told himself, even if they had reasons they didn’t have the right reasons.

  It still wasn’t noon. He thought he’d call Frannie, see if she was home, take her and the Beck out for a nice lunch.

  37

  Of the three men A.D.A. Elizabeth Pullios slept with on a fairly regular basis, two were married and two worked in the district attorney’s office.

  There was District Attorney Chris Locke, who called her Pullios. She had him for the rush and the control —intimacy with your superior might be a double-edged sword, but so far it had cut only one way. Actually, in this case, Locke was the one who had most to lose if it came out. She knew not only the law on workplace harassment but the implications, if played right, and she knew how to play them. If a strong man who happened to be your boss had a relationship with you, it was his problem. You were the employee, he was the boss. And he could — and often did — fire you if you weren’t cooperative. The true vulnerability of many women in the workplace was something that played into the hands of someone like Pullios. Further, the odds of a backlash were long in her favor. For example, the way she had pushed and manipulated to get May Shinn indicted after lifting the file from another prosecutor… most any other assistant D.A. would have been stripped and flayed by Locke. Instead, since Locke knew Pullios was a damn good prosecutor, as well as ‘one helluva squeeze,’ diverting his gaze and rage to a junior scapegoat like Hardy had been so easy it was almost unfair. Except that nothing was unfair. If you won, fairness was a concept that didn’t apply.

  Her second lover was Brian Powell, to whom she was Elizabeth. Brian had been her ‘boyfriend’ for three years. Forty-five, handsome, politically correct, he was a divorced, childless stockbroker who made six figures and did not hassle her. He understood when she was busy. She considered getting engaged to him (he hadn’t asked yet but she could lead him to it if she wanted) when it was time to run for D.A. and a mate would be helpful; until then he was someone pleasant to be with and be seen with.

  The other man in the office — and in some ways the only one personally dangerous to her, called her Molly. That was Peter Struler, married and the father of three. He gave her the impression that he could take her or leave her, though he’d been taking her with some regularity for the past four or five months. With a law degree from Duke and three years in the FBI, Struler was both brain-smart and street-smart. He was also irreverent and funny. As an investigator for the district attorney’s office he worked under a separate jurisdiction from both the SFPD and the sheriffs department. It was the private police arm of the district attorney’s office and was used to protect attorneys going out to see witnesses in bad areas, to deliver subpoenas and, occasionally, to carry on its own investigations.

  The danger of Peter Struler was that Elizabeth Pullios liked him a lot. She had met him when he had escorted her, in his official capacity, on an interview with some lowlifes she had needed to put away even lower life-forms. After she had been her very efficient self, talking to witnesses hiding behind their drawn curtains, she had come out into the sunlight to see Struler playing basketball, shirt off, with eight black high-school dudes on a glass-strewn court — a little boy having the time of his life. She had fallen for him, gotten uncharacteristically shy and made excuses for them to get together officially until he called her on it and she told him, driving out to another site, that she thought maybe she was in love with him. He didn’t have to worry about it, though, she added quickly. She would get over it. And she didn’t want to hurt his marriage.

  ‘My marriage is solid,’ he had said, pulling the car over. ‘Nothing is going to threaten my marriage. But I think we ought to get something straight between us.’ And they did, right there in the car.

  * * * * *

  Now they sat, again in his city car, eating Chinese takeout at a parking lot at the Presidio. There were whitecaps on the Bay and you could see halfway to Alaska.

  Struler was quoting from the front of his chopsticks wrapper. ‘ “Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food with Chopsticks, the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and culture.” ’

  She nodded. ‘It’s a wonderful view, too.’

  ‘Now look at this,’ Struler said. ‘If this is true, why did they have to invent cranes.’

  ‘Cranes?’

  ‘You know, derricks, cranes.’

  ‘If what’s true?’

  Struler read:‘ “Learn how to use your chopsticks Tuck under thumb and hold firmly Add second chopstick hold it as you hold a pencil Hold first chopstick in original position move the second one up and down Now you can pick up anything!” ’

  He tried to lift the briefcase. ‘It’s just not true. How can they get by with that. I can’t even lift this thing. I bet there’s no way you could even pick up a dog.’

  ‘A dog?’

  He pointed at the paper. ‘It says “anything.” “Now you can pick up anything!” You’re missing a bet here, Molly. You’re the lawyer. I smell a major lawsuit. Class action, false advertising, big bucks.’

  She let him rave. It was one of the things she liked best about him, his capacity to run with essentially nothing. ‘Plus their punctuation is really weak. They don’t use periods. Did you ever notice that?’

  She reached over and grabbed the briefcase herself, placing it on her lap, snapping open the clasps.

  ‘Why do I sense you don’t share my fascination with this topic? The future is the Orient, mark my words.’

  She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Business before pleasure.’

  He put his hand between her legs. ‘Who made that up? Some lawyer, I bet.’

  ‘You’re a lawyer, Mr Struler.’

  ‘No, I just went to law school, I never took the class on business before pleasure. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I flunked the bar.’ He moved his hand a little. ‘Actually, I never took the bar, did I?’

  ‘Peter.’

  He made a face. ‘Molly.’ But he put his hands in his own lap. ‘Okay, what?’

&nb
sp; ‘This is a two-week-old murder…“

  ‘My favorite.’

  ‘My point is, the police have already embarrassed themselves over it — the Owen Nash thing. Abe Glitsky has been handling the case and he made the original bust.’

  ‘Lucky guy.’

  ‘Right. He’s not going to do it again. There’s very little evidence. Plus the guy who got fired today —Hardy — they’re at least pretty good friends. Anyway, the police cooperation is going to slow down for a while.’

  ‘And you turn to me. I am touched.’

  ‘I’d just like you to take a fresh look at it, that’s all. This is an important case and I don’t want it to go away. I made a big pitch for this one to Locke. Whoever killed this guy, they’ve made me look pretty bad.’

  Struler thought a moment, then took some papers out of the briefcase and glanced at them. ‘Is this all of it?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s all the paper. There’s some other evidence logged, the murder weapon, stuff like that, but it’s been pretty well gone over.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Start over. We need a new theory and it’s in here somewhere. Somebody killed Owen Nash.’

  ‘If you tell me you don’t have any ideas who, that would be a fib, wouldn’t it, and then I’d have to spank you.’

  She leaned toward him and licked his ear. ‘I don’t have any ideas.’

  * * * * *

  In spite of Elizabeth Pullios’s belief that the police were going to let it lie, Glitsky jumped on Hardy’s discrepancy. There was nothing better than a suspect who told a lie. It opened up all the doors and windows, let some new air in. Of course, he didn’t know for a fact that Farris had lied —he could have simply made a mistake, remembered incorrectly. But he was on the record — Glitsky had been in on the conversation, he remembered it — as having said white was white one time and then white was black the next. It deserved reflection.

  Glitsky’s own reports revealed that Farris had been at Taos during the weekend of the murder. What was at Taos? Hadn’t he said it was a place with no phones, no electricity? Had anyone else seen him there? Were there records of his plane flight? A hotel? Rental car?

  He took some notes, placed a call to the Albuquerque police, then reached Farris at his office at Owen Industries in South San Francisco.

  ‘Sergeant, what can I do for you?’ A busy man, sounding like it.

  ‘You know we’ve got an open case again, sir. It looks like May Shinn wasn’t on the Eloise. And if that’s true she didn’t kill Mr Nash.’

  ‘Of course, I read that. I’m not sure I think it’s true.’

  ‘Well, yes, sir, but the D.A. seems to think it is. And while that’s the case, we have to go on with the investigation.’ There was one of those infernal beeps again. Glitsky had forgotten about them.

  ‘Just a minute, would you?’

  He sat on hold for twenty seconds, keeping time with a pencil on his blotter.

  ‘Sergeant? Sorry about that. It’s still crazy here. I know, I tried to call the D.A. this morning but they told me some nonsense that your man Hardy wasn’t working there anymore and nobody’s gotten back to me.’

  ‘They said Hardy didn’t work there anymore?’

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  Glitsky shook his head. ‘Well, that’s ridiculous. I’ll give him your message, but I’m calling to clear up a little inconsistency. We’re kind of starting over here, so I apologize.’

  ‘It’s all right, but what’s this story on this judge knowing May? That’s really a shock.’

  ‘We’re looking into that, too. But what I’m wondering is when you last saw Mr Nash alive.’ He did not explain about the apparent conflict in Farris’s testimony.

  ‘I remember distinctly. We had lunch down at the Angus.’

  ‘Yes, sir. And you told us it was on Friday.’

  Beep.

  ‘I did? I don’t remember which day it was. If I said Friday, I must have been mistaken.’

  ‘This was the weekend you went to Taos.’

  ‘I remember what weekend it was. I always fly out to Taos in the morning, which would have been Friday, so the lunch must have been Thursday. I could call the restaurant and double-check.’

  ‘That would be helpful.’

  ‘You want to hold, I can do it right now.’

  He came back in about a minute, saying that the restaurant still had the reservation records and it had been Thursday.

  There was no way to make this next question sound innocuous, but if the answer was yes, it would save Glitsky a lot of footwork. ‘Mr Farris, is there staff at the place where you stay in Taos?’

  You didn’t have to draw a map. He didn’t answer right away. Glitsky heard him take a breath on either side of the recording beep.

  ‘Owen Nash was my best friend, Sergeant. I don’t benefit in any conceivable way from his death. To the contrary. I’m personally devastated and professionally handicapped in ways you can’t imagine by Owen’s death. I’m sure there’s a substantial paper record of my comings and goings that weekend and if you decide it’s your duty to look into it, you go right ahead… If I were you, Sergeant, I’d first spend some time on this judge. But that’s up to you. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a full load here.’

  The connection went dead in Glitsky’s hand. He tapped his pencil on his blotter. Farris’s reaction was not unusual — folks were generally unappreciative when told they were under suspicion. But, Glitsky couldn’t help but notice, he didn’t say that anybody had seen him in Taos or anywhere else. Could be an oversight, like Thursday or Friday or whatever day it had been when he’d last laid eyes on his best friend. Could be.

  It was the kind of thing, though, that Glitsky thought he’d remember.

  * * * * *

  The nap helped a little, but not much.

  After the three black-and-tans in the morning, Hardy and Frannie and Rebecca had shared some outstanding gambas at Sol y Luna. Also, because Frannie wasn’t drinking at all, he’d had a bottle of a light white Rioja. Hell, he was celebrating.

  He’d broken the news about his job and she took it in very much the same vein as he had himself. They had most of a quarter million dollars in the bank, the profit check on Hardy’s percentage of the Shamrock was coming in this week — money wasn’t the biggest problem in the world, and she didn’t like what practicing law had been doing to him.

  Which called for a little Fundador after lunch.

  Frannie drove home and Hardy got his shirt off before he crashed to sleep, waking up to Rebecca’s wails and a thundering head. He walked into the back room and picked up the baby, patting her gently, holding her against him. She tried to fasten herself onto his nipple and cried all the more at the lack of result. Frannie was coming through the kitchen.

  ‘We’re really having another one of these baby things?’ he said.

  ‘She didn’t have the lunch you did.’

  ‘She doesn’t have the head I’ve got either.’ He held Rebecca in front of his face. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know for a fact I feel worse than you, and I’m not crying.’

  The logic didn’t have any effect. He handed her off to her mother and in seconds she was suckling.

  That’s an excellent trick,‘ Hardy said. He was changing into his running clothes, his green jogging suit next up in the drawer. ’You mind if I run a little of this off?‘

  He took the four-mile circular route out to the beach, along the hard sand south to Lincoln. The air was clear, the temperature was in the low seventies and got a little nippier with the wind off the breakers.

  Here he was, unemployed during a major depression, and he smiled as he ran, the headache gone in the first twenty minutes. Down the beach, back along the park, up the Avenues, to his home.

  * * * * *

  He was sitting on his porch, cooling down, the sun still up but hidden now behind the buildings across the street. On the back-half of his run he had decided that, with h
is calendar suddenly free, the Hardy family should book a flight to Hawaii and disappear for a couple of weeks. He was daydreaming about some serious beach time, rum drinks, Jimmy Buffett riffs on a balmy breeze.

  From Hardy’s porch the six-story apartment buildings on either side blocked his vision both up and down the street, so there was no warning when Celine Nash appeared on the other side of his picket fence — stone-washed jeans, sandals, magenta silk blouse.

  He might have expected something like this to happen — perhaps he should have called her, Farris, even Glitsky with the news of his termination. Was she coming to offer her condolences, ask what happened, get news about who would now be handling the case? How did she get his address?

  He stood up, deciding he was going to change his phone number and have it unlisted. Get his address out of the new book. He should have done it — he now realized —when he had been re-hired at the district attorney’s office last February, but with the new marriage, new job, new baby, other things had filled his mind.

  He took a couple of steps off the porch. Celine saw him and stopped in her tracks.

  He came down toward her and he realized her face was frozen. Had something else happened? She stood stock-still, as though in shock.

  ‘Celine, are you all right?’

  He took a few more steps toward her, stopping just before the gate. There was a long moment. She stared at him with a look that seemed to combine horror and loss.

  Hardy heard the front door open, heard Frannie say, ‘Diz?’

  Celine’s eyes went behind him, to Frannie, fastened back, first it seemed hopefully, then almost in panic, on him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, starting to back away, ‘I’m sorry. This is a mistake.’

  ‘Celine. What’s the matter?’

  She shook her head, looking him up and down. Everything between him and Celine had always been too personal. Now, seeing his house and his wife, she couldn’t ignore the reality. Not only was he a good man, he had a life that didn’t include her on any level. She backed further away, then stopped and seemed to regain some control.