The Suspect

by John Lescroart

  “BETHANY SAID SHE SAW ME? How could she have seen me?”

  “She said she saw your car.”

  “She saw me pull into my garage?”

  “Yes. Then leave a couple of hours later.”

  “So she saw Caryn’s killer come and then go.”

  “That would be Inspector Juhle’s assumption, I believe. And he came in your car.”

  “No he didn’t. Not possible.”

  Deep inside, Gina was somewhat heartened by the unequivocal denial. Either Stuart was an extraordinarily good liar, or he was telling the truth. “Okay, leaving the car for a minute, let’s talk about you and your wife not fighting, specifically about you never having hit her.”

  “Okay.” Forward now on the couch, Stuart’s blood was up. “What about ‘never’ don’t you get?”

  “I guess the part about the domestic disturbance call to the police last summer.”

  Stuart grimaced. “They found that already?”

  “That’s one question. A better one is, what about it? And as for them finding out about it already, I told you yesterday that they’re going to find out everything about you, every little thing you’ve ever done, and they’re going to drag it in front of the whole world, so it’s way to your advantage to come out with it right up front—anything that’s going to look bad when they bring it up later. Like, for example, hitting your wife.”

  The little tirade found its mark. Stuart shifted defensively back on the couch—legs crossed, arm out along the cushions, stalling for time while he decided what he was going to say. When he made the decision, he kept it simple. “I never hit her.”

  “She hit you?”

  “No.”

  “But the cops came?”

  “My busybody neighbor called them.” A pause. “There might have been some noise. I did tell you we’d had some arguments.”

  “So you had this one time last summer when the police came?”

  “And left. They just wanted to make sure nobody was hurt.” He shrugged. “Nobody was. They went away. End of story.”

  Gina stared at him, her face set. “Okay. And that’s it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is there anything else you think might be relevant to Inspector Juhle’s ongoing investigation of you, Stuart, that your lawyer, if she wanted to protect you, might need to know?” Gina’s tone had by degrees become more confrontational. Now she glared expectantly across the room and watched her client pretend to think until she could stand it no more. “You need a hint?” she snapped. “I could give you a hint.”

  He sat there, frowning. “Let me ask you something. Why are you being so hostile all of a sudden?” he asked. “What’s that about?”

  Gina couldn’t come up with an answer right away. She sat back in her chair, gathering herself for a moment, before she finally said, “I read one of your books last night.”

  “The whole thing?”

  “In one sitting, yes. Healed by Water. I liked it a lot.”

  Stuart’s mouth turned up at the corners. “I didn’t realize you knew that I wrote books.”

  “I’m your lawyer,” Gina said. “I know everything. Get used to it.”

  “And that’s what’s bothering you? That you liked my book?”

  “Not exactly,” she said evenly, “but since you asked, I’m mad if your beautiful book conned me and you’re really guilty. I feel personally abused when I find out an eyewitness saw your car coming and going just about when Caryn was killed. I can’t figure out why you’ve got all these anger issues when you write about such spiritual, holistic stuff. I’m really pissed off if you’re in fact sleeping with your wife’s sister. I’m furious if you’re as good a liar as you are a writer. I’m confused about your lack of reaction to your wife’s death. I’m baffled and confused by cops coming to break up fights at your house when you say you’ve never hit your wife. Is that enough?”

  “I can explain—”

  “Not just yet, please.” Her jaw jutted. “So yes, I think we can say that something is bothering me, that I’m a little bit hostile. And while I’m on it, I’m not in the habit of letting myself get fooled by men. I had a damn fine man for a good while there and I got used to it. So I’m afraid my guard might be down, and that makes me mad too. How’s all that?”

  “I didn’t kill Caryn.”

  “Right. Okay, you’ve said that. Thank you.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  She shrugged. Suddenly, and very much to her own surprise, she slammed her palm flat down on her computer table—a shockingly loud report, almost like a pistol shot in the closed-up room. “Jesus fucking Christ, Stuart! Do you think this is some kind of game, or what? Do you have any idea of how much trouble you’re in right now? You don’t think it matters, somehow that I don’t need to know, that you got yourself arrested for domestic violence five years ago? Or that you threatened a Highway Patrol officer last Friday night just before you told him you were getting out of the house so you wouldn’t kill your wife? What are you thinking? This is serious shit, and you are hip deep in it.”

  “But how did they…?”

  Finally, the last of her reserve broke and she was on her feet. She’d made no plan for it—it wasn’t part of her usual repertoire or strategy—but she was yelling at him. “Goddammit, Stuart! It never happened is not the same thing as they won’t find out. Because they always find out! What have I been telling you? It all comes out! Always! That’s the way it works.” Hovering over him, she straightened, then whirled and crossed over to one of the windows. She parted the blinds, though she wasn’t really looking out at anything.

  Gina had to get her anger under control. Letting out a breath slowly, she closed her eyes, concentrated on the beat of her heart. When she looked over at him again, Stuart was forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees, looking at her as though he were pleading for something—and maybe he was.

  She summoned what calm she could and turned to face him. “I’m sorry I raised my voice. That was unprofessional. I apologize.”

  He made some conciliatory gesture. “It’s all right. People get mad.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “They do.” Gina crossed all the way back to where he sat and lowered herself onto the opposite end of the couch. She glanced at her watch, then over to him. When she spoke, all the fight was out of her voice. “All right, Stuart,” she said. “Inspector Juhle’s going to be here in no time. Do you want to tell me about the first domestic disturbance call? The one five years ago.”

  He was facing her, face drawn and pale, the fatigue around his eyes almost painful to see. “It was just another fight. The first bad one, really.” He lowered his voice, ducked his head away from the admission. “I guess some dishes got thrown. One of them cut her a little. She was bleeding when the cops came.”

  “That’s your version. So what’s the police report going to say, Stuart? What’s the version the cops got?”

  He inclined his head an inch. “I don’t know. I never saw any report. I’m not sure what Caryn told them.”

  “But they took you downtown?”

  “Yeah. Then Caryn came down and eventually they let me go back home with her. I took some anger management classes. The problem went away.”

  “Until last summer?”

  Perhaps embarrassed, he looked down, shrugged. “I never did hit her. Not last summer, not before. Never.”

  “Okay.” Gina was fairly sure that the distinction between Stuart hitting his wife and throwing a plate at her would not make much of a difference to a jury, if it came to him being in front of one, but if the exact type of domestic violence he’d committed mattered to Stuart, she’d let him live with his own conscience. For the time being, at least. “So what about this Highway Patrol guy?” she asked. “Did you threaten him?”

  “No. I was pissed off, getting pulled over.” A self-deprecating half-smile. “That anger thing again, I know. Every other driver on the road was speeding, and he pull
s up behind me. So I mentioned that minor point when he got to the window. Probably I could have phrased it better, okay, but I didn’t threaten him. I gave the guy my autograph at the end, so how bad could it have been?” He leaned in toward her. “Gina, listen, I’ve got a temper, okay. I work on it. Living with my two girls could try the patience of a saint, but the way I deal with it is to get away when I can. I’m not a violent guy, and I didn’t kill Caryn, and that’s God’s truth. It’d do wonders for my peace of mind if I thought my own attorney believed me at least.”

  She just stared at him, unable and in any event unwilling to give him even a small part of what he wanted from her. The truth was that Stuart’s peace of mind was about the last thing she cared about at this moment. There were much more pressing issues than her client’s tender feelings, and they were rushing at her from all directions.

  Finally, she checked her watch, crossed her legs, and sat back.

  “We’ve got forty more minutes, Stuart, before Juhle gets here. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and we’d better get to it. You ready to tell me something I don’t already know?”

  After the interview, when Juhle and Stuart had both gone, Gina thought the knock on her door was probably Stuart coming back to fire her, or more specifically, to rescind her hiring. She wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to work with her after her attitude today. Although he would need some lawyer, that was for sure. The interview they’d just had with Juhle should have removed any of Stuart’s doubts that his wife had been murdered and that he was the prime suspect.

  Or maybe in the ten minutes since he’d left Gina’s office, he’d had a chance to think about it and decided he didn’t want to fork over her retainer of sixty-five thousand dollars in cash. This was a serious hunk of change. Other lawyers were both cheaper and less hostile, and maybe he’d decided to hire one of them. She almost hoped that he had.

  She walked to the door and opened it, her game face on. Her two partners were standing in the hallway. Dismas Hardy said, “No arrest?”

  Gina nodded. “No arrest.”

  Hardy broke a grin and half-turned to Farrell, his hand out. “Ten bucks,” he said.

  “I can’t understand it,” Gina said. They had all come into her office. Hardy and Farrell were on the couch where Stuart had been sitting, Gina in her deep chair. “If I were Juhle, I’d have arrested him. He can’t need much more.”

  “No,” Hardy agreed, “but it’s cleaner if he gets an indictment first. And let’s remember that next Tuesday is grand jury day. My guess is he’s taking what he got here downtown and sharing it with the DA even as we speak. See if the grand jury is going to think it’s enough. But he might even take another week or two eliminating other suspects. Case with this profile, he’s going to want to get it right before it cranks up.”

  Farrell had slumped to nearly horizontal and had his feet up on the coffee table. Underneath he was certainly sporting one of his trademark T-shirts, but to the casual eye he was dressed like a working attorney—charcoal suit and maroon tie. “But whenever the arrest goes down, Stuart is signed on with us?”

  “I gave him the papers to take home and look over,” Gina said. “I absolutely low-balled him at sixty-five, and still I think even that money struck him as large. If I had to bet, I’d say he’s in, but after Juhle finished, we didn’t talk too much more. Stuart wanted to get back to his daughter, who is evidently pretty destroyed by all this.”

  “As who wouldn’t be?” Hardy said.

  Gina shrugged. “Well, apparently, Stuart himself.” She glanced at Farrell. “I’ve seen people more torn up over the death of their dogs.”

  “Hey!” Farrell jumped. “Bart wasn’t a dog. He was a person.”

  Gina gave him a tolerant smile. “My point exactly.”

  “How old is she?” Hardy asked. “The daughter?”

  “Eighteen. Just started college up in Oregon. Was fighting with her mother when she left and hadn’t patched it up.”

  “There’s thirty happy years of therapy,” Farrell said, “and that’s if her dad didn’t do it.” This time he threw a quick glance at Gina. “And that’s if her dad didn’t do it,” he repeated.

  Gina returned his look with one of her own.

  “I think, in his own subtle way,” Hardy put in, “Wes is asking how you’re feeling about your client’s chances.”

  “Not exactly, Diz.” Farrell pulled himself up to something resembling a normal posture, turned slightly to face Gina head-on. “I’m asking if your gut is telling you he’s guilty or not.”

  Gina’s face grew pensive. “My brain, the jury’s still way out. It’s too early.”

  Farrell pressed. “I didn’t say brain.”

  “No, I know.” She paused for a moment, took a small breath. “I guess at this point my gut wants to believe he didn’t do it.”

  Farrell looked over to Hardy. “Told you.”

  “And,” Gina went on, “now you’re going to tell me how stupid and dangerous that is. Which I’m aware of. So.” She addressed both of her partners. “What am I supposed to do, then? Not defend him?”

  “No,” Wes said. “Not believe him.”

  “I don’t believe him or not believe him, Wes. I said that in my brain, the jury is still out. It’s just the old sentimental slob in me wants to believe that sometimes men who are accused of killing their wives didn’t do it. And especially men who write beautiful books about the wilderness and other issues close to my own heart.”

  Wes, whose own early legal career had been transformed by an extremely high-profile case where he’d won an acquittal for a friend and colleague whose protestations of innocence he’d believed and who’d turned out to be guilty, shook his head sadly. “Some people think the Marquis de Sade wrote beautiful books too,” he said.

  Hardy reached out and put a quick restraining hand on Farrell’s knee. “She gets it, Wes. Really.” Then, to Gina, “He doesn’t want anybody to have to go through what he did. He’s just trying to be protective.”

  Physically, Gina Roake was probably the strongest woman she knew. Three years before, she had shot and killed a man in a gunfight. Now her stare had hardened. “I don’t need to be protected,” she said. “You both should know that by now.”

  “That’s not the kind of protection I’m talking about,” Farrell said. “I’m just telling you that if this goes to a full murder one trial, it’s going to be your life for the next year or more. You’re going to start to care about this guy, whether or not he’s guilty, and I’m just giving you some friendly advice, based on my own experience, that you might feel better when it’s over if you decide right at the beginning that he did it and work on that assumption.”

  “I’ve never defended an innocent client in my life, Wes. I’m down with the drill.”

  “Good.” Farrell got himself upright. “Then there’s nothing to worry about, and Diz and I are off to a gala luncheon at Lou’s. Would you care to join us?”

  Gina shook her head. “I just ate there yesterday. Once a week is my limit.”

  ELEVEN

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  “Nothing. I just woke up from a nap. Did you hear again from Juhle?”

  “Not yet, which we can take as a good sign.”

  “Actually, I was just looking at an old AARP magazine somebody left here in the room, taking a quiz on how much I know about Michael Douglas.”

  “How’re you doing on it?”

  “Not too good. He’s not married to Annette Bening?”

  “Nope. That’s Warren Beatty. Michael Douglas is Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

  “Get out of here. He doesn’t look anything like her.”

  “His wife, Stuart. His wife is Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

  “I knew what you were saying. But then who’s his famous father?”

  “Here’s a hint. Same last name.”

  “I don’t know. John? Peter? Toby? Ryan?”

>   “The famous Toby Douglas?”

  “Stephen? Isn’t there a Stephen Douglas?”

  “He debated Lincoln, so that’s not it. How about Kirk?”

  “Kirk Douglas! He’s not old enough to be Michael’s father, is he?”

  “Must be, since he is. Or was. Any more Michael Douglas questions you didn’t get?”

  “Co-star in his first hit movie. I don’t even know the movie.”

  “Romancing the Stone. Kathleen Turner was the co-star.”

  “Man. Do you know this much about the law?”

  “At least. Possibly more. Some of it in Latin, even.”

  “Okay, then. I’m starting to feel better about you being my lawyer.”

  “Thanks so much,” Gina said. “Is Kym with you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. What about Debra?”

  “What about her?”

  “I asked first.”

  “She went home after lunch when I said I needed to get some sleep.”

  “You get enough?”

  “Couple of hours, at least so I’ll make it through till tonight.”

  “So, you want to go out?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean leave your room, get some air, take a walk? I could be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “And do what?”

  “Talk.”

  “About what? More of all this?”

  “Basically. You. Caryn. Stuff.”

  “Haven’t we done enough of that today already?”

  “Frankly, not even close.”

  “I’d want to be back here for when Kym gets back.”

  “That ought to be possible. You know, for a guy who’s doing nothing anyway, you’re making this decision harder than it has to be. I’m talking a walk, a chat, we go wild, maybe a latte. Low risk.”

  “You can be here in fifteen minutes?”

  “Or less.”

  “All right. I’ll be ready.”

  The two girls used to do a lot of things together, but they’d drifted apart in the past couple of years. Bethany, a highly strung over-achiever, found that she didn’t have the energy after her homework and other activities to keep up with Kymberly and her extreme mood swings. When Kymberly was down in the dumps, she was a total drag, often even talking about suicide, and then nodding off if they were trying to do quieter things together, such as studying or baking cookies, or just hanging out. On the other hand, when she was happy, she was recklessly crazy, invincible and immortal, and this was even harder to take—stealing things, making out with guys she didn’t even know, doing drugs.