The Suspect

by John Lescroart

  THIRTY-TWO

  THERE WASN’T MUCH CHOICE. THE BAILIFFS Took Clair Robley into custody. Stuart had to get some medical attention for his bleeding head. Poor Bethany, rattled into hysteria, was in no condition to testify. Judge Toynbee recessed the hearing for the day.

  With today’s plan A, the hearing, suddenly scuttled, Gina’s plan B, after only a little thought and all the success she’d had with Abrams’ witnesses, was to return to her office to start organizing her notes for the eventual 1118.1 motion for a directed verdict of acquittal that she’d have to file when the prosecution rested after presenting its case in chief at the trial. True, this might still be most of a year away—although she was going to try to shorten that time if she could—but the morning had provided just too many opportunities to take this case apart board by board. And while her arguments were still fresh in her mind, she wanted to commit them to paper.

  Of course, if they got to trial, Abrams would be a lot more careful to prepare Officer What’s-His-Name from the Highway Patrol again. And Faro wouldn’t try to be cute about the garbage.

  But Gina wanted to be ready to pounce if any hint of these weaknesses made their way into the trial. As it stood now, the prosecution’s case looked like it was all going to come down to Bethany Robley’s testimony. In all, Gina was somewhat heartened—Bethany had never seen Stuart that night and, better yet, had never even said she had. So it came down to the car, and from what she’d seen in discovery, she’d never mentioned Stuart’s personalized GHOTI license plate.

  But as it happened, Wyatt Hunt called Gina’s cell phone to report in on his morning interviews soon after she got outside the Hall of Justice and into the continuing drizzle, and it looked as though Gina’s immediate implementation of plan B was going to have to wait as well. Here was Gina’s chance to go down the Peninsula and personally meet up with William Blair, and she wasn’t about to pass it up.

  So Hunt picked her up out in front of the Hall in his MINI Cooper at a few minutes after three, and as they swung around the Hall and back onto the freeway going south, he said, “I thought this hearing was going to run all day. What happened?”

  “Mayhem.” She gave him the short version. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Wyatt shifted into the freeway traffic, enjoying the story. Like most other of his fellow professionals in the field of criminal justice, Hunt found that his sympathy over any one person’s individual misfortune—Stuart’s, Bethany’s, Juhle’s—usually got subsumed in the pure joy of the absurdist theater of it all. “I wish I’d been there. A cane?”

  “Big ol’ cane.” In retrospect, Gina was beginning to see the humor in it herself. “Pretty soon now they’re going to have to rig the Hall with cane detectors.”

  “I can see it,” Hunt agreed. “First no metal, then no cell phones with cameras, now no canes. I bet shoes are next.” Wyatt put on his announcer’s voice. “Coming soon to a jurisdiction near you, the Naked Courtroom. For security reasons, you must leave all your clothes at the door.”

  “And people think trials are ugly now.”

  They drove on in a companionable silence. The windshield wipers slashed back and forth, the drizzle picking up into something approximating real rain. After a minute, Wyatt looked over at her. “So did Devin get to talk before they called it off?”

  “He did, but I’m thinking about now he’s wishing he didn’t. His version of things started out good, but it was all spin.”

  “I told him that too.”

  “He should have listened to you.”

  “Always, though he rarely does. It’s tragic, really. I’ll have to go over to his place and make fun of him.”

  But Gina shook her head. “I’d give it a couple of days, Wyatt. Seriously. It wasn’t pretty. Not for him, anyway.” After a small hesitation, she said, “So how’d your morning go?”

  “Good. McAfee’s still in play. And even though Mike Pinkert’s basically got the same alibi as McAfee—in bed, except he was there with his wife—I believe him. Unless my gut is completely useless, he’s just not in it.”

  “You don’t believe McAfee?”

  “Not completely. And I still like his motive more than anybody else’s. Tonight I’m going to talk to the people in his condo building, see if anybody saw him go out or come in around eleven. Meanwhile, I’ve got to say that Pinkert’s pretty much out of contention. Oh, and while we’re on it, so’s your Mr. Conley.”

  “He’s not my Mr. Conley, Wyatt. He’s everyone’s Mr. Conley, maybe soon everybody’s Senator Conley. He’s alibied up?”

  “Greenpeace fund-raiser with like five hundred people at the Marina Yacht Club. Unless he’s got a body double. Some politicians do, you know.”

  Another thought that struck Gina as funny. “Not Jedd, I don’t think,” she said. “So, do you know where we’re going now?”

  “PII, right?” He pointed at the terminal screen in his dashboard. “I got it on the navigation system before I picked you up.”

  “Of course you did,” Gina said.

  Hunt nodded. “We aim to please.”

  Bill Blair wasn’t in at first, and Gina thought that was instructive in itself.

  Then Wyatt said to his secretary: “That’s a shame, because Ms. Roake had some questions for Mr. Blair on the Kelley Rusnak matter. Kelley was supposed to be Ms. Roake’s witness in the Caryn Dryden murder hearing. Anyway, she’d like to keep this private and hoped to give him a chance to answer a few questions. But if he’s not around, she’ll have to take her questions to Jeff. That’s Jeff Elliott of the Chronicle. And see if he can get some answers for her. So if Mr. Blair’s not here, I guess he’ll just have to read the paper tomorrow and respond to that.”

  Though she was a woman, the secretary reminded Gina of the William H. Macy character in Fargo. Smiling miserably at both of them, she swallowed a couple of times, then said, “Let me just run and check to see if maybe he’s gotten back when I wasn’t at my desk.”

  Gina almost said, “Yah, shure,” in that great Frances McDormand Norwegian accent, but stopped herself in the nick of time. “That’d be nice,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Less than two minutes later, they were making their introductions to Mr. Blair, a short heavy man of about forty-five, with small eyes and colorless hair combed into a very short pageboy.

  His corner office seemed almost to sulk behind its tinted windows on this gray afternoon. Fluorescent lighting overhead gave the room an impersonal feel that wasn’t much mitigated by the view of the enormous parking lot outside, the lack of even mass-produced “art” on the two remaining walls. A massive light oak desk was piled high with neat stacks of papers and documents—a small sign of order perhaps hiding a larger chaos? A couple of self-consciously modern chrome-and-leather chairs sat on industrial carpet facing his work space, and Blair indicated that his guests take them, then went to his own chair behind the desk and sat down.

  Gina wasted no more time. “Mr. Blair,” she began, “thank you for seeing us without an appointment, but time is short. Kelley Rusnak was going to be a witness for me in Stuart Gorman’s hearing on the murder of his wife, which is going on in San Francisco this week. Kelley met with Stuart down here about two weeks ago. She told him she might be in some kind of danger because of her involvement with the Dryden Socket.”

  “Nobody murdered Kelley. Apparently she killed herself.”

  “Apparently,” Gina said. “Did you know Kelley well?”

  Her reply, and then the following question, both seemed to surprise him. “We’re a small company, but no, not really more than anyone else. Less than some. She wasn’t management, after all.”

  “I noticed, though, that you gave the statement about her death. Is that the company policy?”

  “Well, fortunately, until lately we haven’t had to have a policy on that. In this case, we needed a statement for the paper, so I ginned one up. I’m afraid I don’t really see anything particularly sinister about that.” With one hand, he m
oved one of the piles of paper to a new location about a quarter inch from where it had been. “I told all this to Mr. Elliott this morning. You’re trying to muddy the waters surrounding your client. Laudable in an attorney, I suppose, but actually fairly tedious for the rest of us.”

  So, Gina thought, the gloves were coming off early. She gave him a saccharine smile. “Be that as it may, the reason Mr. Elliott was interested in the story had little or nothing to do with my client, but with the cover-up around the Dryden Socket that both Caryn and Kelley were trying to expose.”

  He shook his head, his lips tight. “There is no cover-up, Ms. Roake. I don’t know how these rumors get started, but there is no problem with the Dryden Socket. It’s a remarkable device that marks a major improvement in the technology of hip replacement. The FDA will be issuing its formal approval any day now, and we’re gearing up for tremendous worldwide demand. If we thought the product was harmful, do you imagine, one, that the FDA would give its approval and two, that we’d be so foolish as to go ahead with increased production, with all the lawsuits that a faulty product would entail?”

  “One,” Gina didn’t miss a beat, “the FDA would give its approval if they never got wind of problems because they occurred after the formal closure of the clinical trials. And two, you would if you needed immediate cash, had huge overseas orders that you could fill first, and were already working on an improved product that you could have in the pipeline before too much damage was done.” She leaned back in her chair, looked over at Wyatt, back at Blair. “This issue isn’t going to go away. Some folks have suggested the possibility that Caryn Dryden was killed to shut her up.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “Do you remember what you might have been doing on the night Caryn was killed?”

  “I don’t even know what night Caryn was killed.”

  “It was Sunday,” Wyatt Hunt offered helpfully. “Three weeks ago.”

  Blair scrunched his tiny eyes, the muscles in his cheeks working steadily. “This is beyond the pale,” he said. “I have no idea what I was doing three weeks ago on a Sunday night. I’m quite certain, though, that whatever it was, it wasn’t drowning one of my longtime stars.” Suddenly he pushed back his chair and got himself onto his feet. “I’m afraid this meeting is going to have to come to an end,” he said.

  “The issue isn’t going to go away,” Gina said as she stood up.

  But Blair didn’t move. Safe behind his desk, he stood almost at a military attention. “I have nothing further to say to you,” he said.

  “And you are not to return to these premises, or I’ll have you removed. Go be ridiculous in the courtroom where people have to put up with you. And while you’re at it, you might brush up on the libel laws before you start spreading any more vicious lies.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  WYATT DROPPED GINA AT HER SUTTER Street office. The now-constant rain hadn’t speeded up the commute any, and they didn’t get back until about four forty-five. It had already been a long and exhausting day. Was it only this morning that she’d learned of Kelley Rusnak’s death? And gone jogging with Hunt? It seemed impossible.

  As she was coming up the stairway to the firm’s main offices on the second floor (they’d expanded the first-floor offices to accommodate an influx of new associates and a new word processing department), a wave of exhaustion suddenly washed over her. She actually stopped a few steps short of the top and put her briefcase down, wrestling with the idea of simply turning around, catching a cab for home, and maybe even squeezing in a short uninterrupted nap before the inevitable written or dictated recap of her day at the hearing. And then of course she’d also want to go over all of her discovery again to be sure that nothing escaped her in the continuing crush of events.

  Plus, she’d be needing to review Bethany Robley’s statement so she’d be ready for her cross-examination tomorrow. Or, at least, she hoped it would be tomorrow. Clair Robley’s courtroom attack on Stuart today might have repercussions beyond those anyone expected, and she had to be ready for them, too.

  And then she needed to check on Stuart, to see how seriously he’d been hurt. And make sure she got Wyatt’s latest news after he and his crew interviewed the people about McAfee’s alibi. And then she had to remember to call Fred Furth, whom she’d subpoenaed along with Kelley to corroborate Stuart’s explanation of why he’d “disappeared” down the Peninsula.

  And maybe segue somehow from Furth’s testimony into some of the PII issues. And then…

  Stopping herself, she realized she was already beginning to spin out of control. She had to keep her focus. The minute her mind started to relax—even standing in her stairwell—a half dozen other ideas, chores and responsibilities assaulted her consciousness. Maybe she’d manage a few hours of sleep before dawn, but that was all she could realistically expect, or allow herself.

  She picked up her briefcase and finished her climb.

  Only to be greeted by Phyllis as soon as the receptionist saw her. “Ah, Ms. Roake.” In the rarefied and humorless world of the firm’s ancient spinster of a receptionist, attorneys did not possess first names. “Mr. Farrell wanted to see you the minute you got in. On the Gorman matter. Shall I tell him you’re on your way up?”

  Gina looked across the lobby to the stairs leading up. In her present state of fatigue, the dozen or so steps suddenly seemed as insurmountable as the final ascent to the peak of Whitney, or Shasta, or Kilimanjaro, all of which she’d summited in the past three years. But there was nothing for it—Wes wanted to see her right away about her case. But she still couldn’t quite get herself to move, to start the climb. In her short hesitation, staring wearily over at the steps, Phyllis read her mind and, in response, cleared her throat. “If you won’t be needing it up there, you could leave your briefcase behind the counter here with me. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  Gina’s briefcase, of a kind specially built for lawyers in trial or other litigation, was more than a foot thick and, loaded as it was with reference materials and other law books, her file folders, copies of all the discovery, Wyatt Hunt’s interrogation tapes and other junk he’d collected in his investigations, and so on, it weighed more than twenty-five pounds. If she was going to be forced to make the ascent to Farrell’s lair, at least she could do it without carrying the added weight.

  Smiling weakly, she put the briefcase down and pushed it behind the counter. “Thank you, Phyllis. That’s a good call.”

  A crisp nod. “I’ll tell him you’re on your way.”

  It wasn’t, after all, such a long or difficult journey. Ten steps across the lobby, fourteen stairs, another few steps to Farrell’s well-decorated door. In keeping with his T-shirt motif, Farrell had much of his office door covered with liberal bumper and otherwise tasteless stickers, sometimes both at once: SOMEBODY GIVE BUSH A BLOW JOB SO WE CAN IMPEACH HIM; LAWYERS, GUNS & MONEY, THE OIL HAS HIT THE FAN; MY LAST GOOD CASE WAS ANCHOR STEAM BEER. But Gina had already read them all and today they didn’t even register. She knocked once, cracked the door. “You decent?”

  “Probably not. Come on in. Watch out Gert doesn’t escape.” Wes was over by his refreshment counter, watching espresso drain into a tiny cup, and turned as she entered. His T-shirt today read A FRIEND WILL HELP YOU MOVE. A REALLY GOOD FRIEND WILL HELP YOU MOVE A BODY.

  “Phyllis said you looked like you could use some coffee,” he said.

  “How much you got?” Gina asked. “She’s a dear, that woman.”

  “Actually,” Wes replied, “company secret, but she’s a robot. And the next generation, supposedly, they’re making them with personalities. I can’t wait.” He handed her the demitasse. “So guess what? Kelley Rusnak was probably murdered.”

  The cup stopped halfway to Gina’s mouth. That had been her assumption all along, but it was nice to get the formal verification, and the vindication.

  Farrell leaned back against the counter. “My guy down in Redwood City called me about an hour ago. Kind of an interesting sequen
ce of events, actually. His theory, anyway. You want to hear it all?”

  “As opposed to what? Half of it?”

  “Don’t get snippy,” he said.

  “Don’t ask dumb questions and I won’t. All of it. Yes, please.”

  “Okay. The first thing a little weird was she had three mostly undissolved pills—Tylenol with codeine—in her mouth.”

  “Undissolved. How could that happen?”

  “Well, one way, somebody could put them in her mouth after she was already dead, or close to it.”

  “Again, though, why?”

  “Maybe because that was the only drug she had on hand with the prescription made out to her. The empty bottle was next to her bed where they found her, which is why they initially thought it was straight OD. But it wasn’t. Why? No codeine in her blood.”

  “None?”

  “Zero. She died from an overdose of Elavil, also called amytriptilene. Which is a prescription antidepressant.”

  Gina put her untouched coffee down on the table, lowered herself onto the couch, absently stroking the dog who’d come over. “But let me guess. There was no bottle for this stuff in her place, with her name on it?”

  “Right. But wait, listen, it gets better. The other thing she had on board was Rohypnol.”

  Gina knew what that was. “The date-rape drug.”

  “Exactly. And she could have taken it herself, of course, technically, but the odds are she didn’t. My guy thinks somebody was with her and got it into her drink. Then when she was woozy, popped her full of amytriptilene. She would have been feeling funny anyway, dizzy and/or sick. Maybe he told her it was aspirin. They’re tiny pills, and it looks like he gave her a lot of them. So the roofie”—the street name for Rohypnol—“kept her from waking up as she went into tachycardia from the amytriptilene. And after she was out, somebody tried to throw off the investigation—at least for a while—by trying to force some codeine down her throat as well.”

  “That’s a bizarre way to kill someone,” Gina said.