The Suspect

by John Lescroart

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.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Then you’re on time. Come on in.”

  He turned to reveal the two people who’d just gotten up off the couch behind him. “Gina Roake, Stuart Gorman. And this is Debra…” He stopped on a questioning note.

  The beautiful young woman stepped forward. “Dryden,” she said, shaking Gina’s hand with a cool, firm grip. “Debra Dryden. I’m Stuart’s sister-in-law. Caryn’s sister.” She half-turned and rested her hand protectively on Stuart’s arm, bringing him up into the introduction, her body language trumpeting at the very least a strong attraction for her dead sister’s husband. “We’re so glad you could come.”

  “I just hope I can be of some help.” Gina reached around Debra and extended her hand. “Mr. Gorman, nice to meet you.”

  “Stuart,” he said, “not Mr. Gorman.” He took her hand. “Everybody seems to agree that I need a lawyer, so thanks for coming.”

  Gina cocked her head. “So I gather you don’t agree.”

  He shrugged. “As I’ve mentioned to all and sundry, I wasn’t here when my wife died, so I think it might be a stretch to conclude that I killed her.”

  “It might be at that,” Gina said. “But you want to be careful what you say when you talk to the police. Did Jedd tell you that just coincidentally I had lunch with Inspector Juhle today? I didn’t get the impression that he thought your wife’s death was a suicide. Or that you couldn’t have been involved.”

  Stuart lifted his shoulders, then dropped them. “Well, he’ll find out. I wasn’t around.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Up at my cabin. We’ve got a place up on Echo Lake.”

  Gina took a beat. “You were at Echo Lake this last weekend?”

  “Yeah. Why’s that such a surprise?”

  “Because so was I. Tamarack Lake, actually, right beyond Echo.”

  “Hey, I was there too. I mean, at Tamarack. God, could that have been just last night? It seems like a year ago. You really were at Tamarack?”

  She nodded. “Camping. On the western shore.”

  Stuart was warming to the conversation, his face showing signs of animation now through the fatigue. “I was on my favorite rock on the east side just at sundown.”

  “Oh my God.” Gina was caught up in it herself. “I think I might have even seen you.”

  But Debra cut in. “Well, all this is really special, but whether or not anybody saw Stuart up there isn’t really the point, is it? Unless”—she spoke to Gina—“unless you saw him leave his cabin early this morning.”

  Debra’s tone brought Gina up short. There was more, it seemed to her, than mere protectiveness here. It struck her as jealousy, which might mean something going on between Debra and Stuart.

  Debra again put her hand on Stuart’s arm, and this time he covered it with his own and left it there for a moment. “It doesn’t matter where you were last night at sundown, Stuart. It matters that you didn’t leave your cabin until sometime early this morning.”

  Gina realized that everybody else in the room knew more about the particulars of the case than she did. “What time, Stuart?” she asked.

  “Two,” he said.

  Gina’s face showed her dissatisfaction with that answer. “Two in the morning?”

  “Maybe we all ought to sit down?” Jedd said. “Catch up on our facts.”

  Two chairs bracketed the small couch. Gina and Jedd took them as Stuart and Debra went around the coffee table and sat next to each other on the couch.

  As soon as everyone was settled, Gina came forward in her chair and repeated her earlier question. “Stuart, you’re telling me you left your cabin at two this morning?”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to drive on down and beat the traffic.”

  “Did you stop anywhere for gas or anything like that?”

  Another nod. “I pulled off and got gas just outside Sacramento. Used the bathroom.” He suddenly shifted and brought his arm off the back of the couch, reaching into his back pocket, coming out with his wallet. “Here you go,” he said after a quick search. “ARCO All-Nite in Rancho Cordova. Four fifteen a.m., this morning.” He held the receipt out to Gina.

  But striking quickly, Debra took it first and gave it a glance. When she was done, she passed it over to Conley, who looked at Stuart and said, “Well, there’s your alibi.” Finally, he gave it to Gina.

  “I told you,” Stuart said. “I wasn’t here.”

  “If they’ve got a security video there,” Gina said, “it’s even better.”

  Jedd Conley nodded. “There you go.”

  “Well,” Gina added, “it’s not a lock, but it’s a help.”

  Finally, the pressure and weariness seemed to weigh in on Stuart. He came forward on the couch, frustration etched in his features. For the first time, he raised his voice. “I don’t understand how I keep hearing things like ‘It’s not a lock.’ What’s not a lock? I didn’t kill my wife. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

  Debra put a restraining hand on his knee and left it there. Depleted, Stuart sank back into the seat of the couch.

  Gina, noting the physical connection, drew a breath to give herself a minute. If Stuart and Debra were lovers, it complicated matters considerably. She forced a conversational tone. “Stuart, she had a large bump on her head.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  “Possibly enough to have knocked her out.”

  “Possibly,” he said, “but even Juhle said not definitely. Maybe she fell down. That happens too.”

  “Yes, it does.” Gina wasn’t going to argue. “You told Inspector Juhle that she told you Friday she was filing for divorce. Yes?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “How much insurance did your wife carry?”

  “I think the policy was for three million on each of us.”

  Gina’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “Three million,” she said flatly. “And besides that, how much money are you worth today?”

  “I don’t really know. I haven’t thought about that.”

  “All right. But in any event, your own personal net worth is many millions more than it was on Friday, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose so. And Inspector Juhle knows that too, doesn’t he? Because you told him, am I right?”

  “Maybe not all the details, but yeah. All right. Generally.”

  “And you also told him about how resentful you felt toward your wife? And in fact, that you’d spent all of this past weekend just thinking about how much you hated her?”

  Jedd spoke up. “You didn’t say that, did you, Stu?”

  A shrug. “I might have. ‘Hate’ sounds a little strong. I don’t remember saying I exactly hated her.”

  “I don’t think Juhle was making stuff up when he was telling me about it at lunch, to say nothing of the fact that he’ll have your exact words on tape anyway,” Gina said.

  Clearly, the fact that Juhle had secretly taped him began to sink in and shake him.

  She softened her voice still further. “All I’m saying, Stuart, is that you are a big blip on Juhle�
��s radar, and you shouldn’t let the bare fact of your innocence, and even an apparently strong alibi, lull you into thinking that you couldn’t find yourself in a world of hurt and charged with your wife’s murder. That bump on her head is bad news. So is your newfound wealth, like it or not. And let’s not even talk about the fact that you have something of a public face, which the media will eat up before you know what hit you. Even innocent, even with your alibi, you could turn into the next O.J. Simpson in a heartbeat.” She sat back, nearly finished. “That’s why it’s better to err on the side of caution here, and not let you talk to the cops alone anymore.”

  “But unlike me, O.J. actually did it,” Stuart said.

  “No.” Gina shook her head. “According to the law, which did not prove him guilty, he was innocent, even if in fact he was not. And—listen up, Stuart—just as easily, the law could find that you did kill your wife, even if in fact you didn’t. You’ve got to understand that and take it very, very seriously. The law is not about the fact of guilt or innocence. It’s about the settlement of disputes. So basically what we’re trying to avoid here is having you become any part of the dispute about who killed your wife. And you’re already damned close to being smack in the middle of it, which is where you don’t want to be. Is that clear enough?”

  Stuart said, “I think it stinks.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. But it’s reality. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to place a call to Inspector Juhle and tell him that you’ve retained me and that of course we’re anxious to cooperate with his investigation in any way we can, but that I’ve instructed you not to talk to him outside of my presence from now on. You think you can live with that?”

  Stuart still didn’t like it, but he gradually started to nod. “It sounds like I have to.”

  “That’s the right answer.” No nonsense now. Gina got her cell phone out of her briefcase and started punching numbers.

  “And now, if both of you don’t mind,” Gina said, “I wonder if Stuart and I could have a private discussion.”

  Debra’s back straightened, an electric shock through her. Her eyes suddenly blazed as she whirled around on the couch. “What for?”