The Suspect

by John Lescroart

  But today, still hungry from his lack of lunch at Lou’s, Juhle wasn’t ten seconds back inside the door to the homicide detail on the fourth floor in the Hall of Justice when his lieutenant, Marcel Lanier, saw him and called out his name.

  The door to Lanier’s small office, built into the corner of the cluttered room that served as headquarters for the city’s fifteen homicide inspectors, was open. Behind it, at his outsized desk, the lieutenant was having his lunch—an enormous construction of marbled rye bread stuffed with three or four inches’ worth of what looked like pastrami or corned beef with cheese and pickles. Lanier finished chewing, took a sip from his can of Diet Coke, swallowed, and said, “This is impossible if it’s true, so it’s probably a hoax. But Strout”—this was John Strout, San Francisco’s septuagenarian medical examiner—“called and said they’re done with the preliminary cutting on your girl and maybe you’ll want to go down and see where they’re at.”

  Juhle would normally have attended the autopsy if he’d known it was going to happen, but he’d never expected it so soon. “They’ve got something?”

  “That’s what it sounded like. I can’t see him calling us up if he didn’t have something to talk about.”

  “Yeah. That wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “Okay, then.” Lanier sunk his teeth again into the sandwich.

  “You going to eat all of that, Marcel? I’d pay you five dollars for a bite.”

  Lanier chewed another few seconds, drank, swallowed, smiled. “Why am I thinking you had lunch at the Greek’s?”

  “If you want to call it that. Lunch, I mean.”

  “What’s the Special today?”

  “I don’t know what it was. Some kind of fish eggs and this rubbery, doughy stuff. I couldn’t eat two of ’em. I don’t know how the guy stays in business.”

  “Clucks like yourself.”

  “Okay, then, ten bucks. One bite. Come on.”

  Juhle wanted to get to Strout’s office, but the sandwich was going to come first, dammit. Lanier took pity on him and, since very few mortals could eat an entire pastrami and swiss on rye from David’s Deli at one sitting anyway, he gave him half of it. For free! Said if his legendary generosity went toward motivating his troops, that was enough thanks for him.

  So feeling motivated at least in spirit, Juhle left Lanier’s office and poured himself a cup of coffee, then went to his desk to eat. Juhle couldn’t believe how good the sandwich tasted. The pastrami was still warm, the Swiss cheese nearly melted, the mustard pungent enough to get his eyes watering. It somehow made even the stale coffee more than palatable. For a second, he idly wondered if maybe Lou or his wife hadn’t yet heard of the concept of “sandwich” as a possible lunch item. Maybe Juhle could swing by David’s and buy a few pounds of lunch meats and cheeses, a selection of condiments and some loaves of rye bread, deliver it all across the street, and leave Chui written assembly instructions. Fresh sandwiches on the menu at Lou the Greek’s might improve the dining experience for the city’s entire criminal law community for generations to come. As the source of the bounty, Juhle could become a cultural hero.

  Meanwhile, though, he thought as he ate the last delectable bite, he was a cop on a case that, if his gut was right, looked like it was about to become a righteous, high-profile homicide. Suddenly energized, he pushed back from his desk and went out the door, where he turned left and began to jog down the hallway toward the elevators.

  The ambient temperature in the medical examiner’s lab was fifty-five degrees. Since this was very close to the average San Francisco temperature regardless of season or time of day or night, most of the time visitors to the morgue were dressed in enough layers of clothing that they didn’t notice the chill. Today though, the city basked in its sixth consecutive day of an unusually warm Indian summer and Juhle was in shirtsleeves. In his hurry to get downstairs after dawdling in his sandwich reveries, the jog had worked up a light sweat. Now, standing with Strout over the table where Caryn Dryden’s body lay, he found he was having to fight himself to keep his teeth from chattering.

  Oblivious to his visitor’s discomfort, lost in his work as he always was, the medical examiner had paused in his perusal of the internal organs, most of which—Juhle was happy to see—were thankfully still inside the body cavity. Now Strout probed at a spot in the skull at the temple in front of the right ear, the surrounding area of which he’d shaved bare. “I went ahead and measured the diameter of the depressed skull fracture, which here you can see. I’ve concluded this was probably caused by an object with a rounded cylindrical surface like, say, a baseball bat.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “No cut. Nothing with an edge, anyway. This looks like some-thin’ round hit her.”

  “You got a round indentation in the skull?”

  Strout nodded. “I’d say enough to knock her out, which might have been the point of it.”

  Juhle persisted. “But something round?”

  “Looks like that from the fracture.”

  “A wine bottle?”

  “Coulda been.”

  Juhle folded his arms over his chest for warmth. “There was a wine bottle in the trash compactor.”

  Strout nodded, then spoke in his trademark Southern drawl. “You want to go get it from evidence and bring it on down, I could tell you if that’s probably what hit her. They ought to check that sucker for prints and blood and hair, which you’re probably already doin’, right? Although, the guy had any brains, he washed it before…” Suddenly the ME frowned. “The trash compactor?”

  “Yep. In the kitchen.”

  Strout wagged his head. “Most folks here in the city, don’t you think, if we get glass, we recycle it?”

  Strout was right. Most San Franciscans of a certain economic level—and the Gorman/Drydens fit within it—recycled glass and paper as a matter of course. The city even provided separate receptacles for regular pickup. The people he was talking about simply did not normally throw an empty wine bottle into a trash compactor. “So what does that say to you, John?” Juhle asked.

  “Well, two things. One, whoever threw it away wasn’t thinking straight, maybe in a panic over what he’d just done. Two, maybe he didn’t know where they normally threw away the recycling.”

  “I don’t like that one so much,” Juhle said.

  “Why not?”

  “It would tend to eliminate the husband.”

  “Yes, I s’pose it would. You thinkin’ it was him?”

  Juhle played it close. “He called it in. It would help if I knew what time she died, since he says he didn’t get into town until six this morning.”

  “Well, if that’s true, it wasn’t him. Although due to the hot tub immersion, the exact timin’s goin’ to be squishy, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t want to hear that.”

  An amused flicker crossed Strout’s face. “Somehow I didn’t think you did, Inspector, but even so there might be enough to hang your man.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, the plain fact is that by the time we got my people there this morning, she was in full rigor, meaning she’d been dead at least an hour.”

  “One hour? I thought—”

  “I know what you thought—that rigor kicks in at about two hours. But the heat speeds it up and it can be well advanced in an hour.”

  “Which would have given the husband plenty of time.”

  “Maybe it would have. ’Cept for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  For an answer, Strout reached out and grabbed Caryn’s arm by the wrist, lifting it to bend at the elbow. When he let it go, it fell back down to the table. “The rigor’s pretty well passed, as you can see. Time we got her in here and on the table, which was eight forty-three exactly, it had already got to where you could move her joints if you exerted some pressure. So full rigor, which is from about hour three to hour eight, was over. And that makes the latest time of death at twelve forty-three, or sometime th
e hour before.”

  “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? Ca
use 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.”

  SIX

  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.”