Fatal

by John Lescroart

  This was a letter that the archbishop of San Francisco had written a few months earlier to the Catholic high schools in the diocese, reiterating what he believed to be the true teaching of the Church: i.e., it opposed same-sex marriage, homosexuality, birth control, and abortion. The letter specifically forbade educators to “visibly” contradict these teachings, and many believed that this was a thinly veiled threat to dismiss teachers who could not support the Church’s stand on these issues.

  Ron nodded to his daughter. “Of course, I glanced at it, but it was so reactionary, I couldn’t take it very seriously. Really? Gay issues aside, and that’s bad enough, but the Church is also against birth control? Still? Your mother and I both thought it was ridiculous. But haven’t we all discussed this already back when it was news? And far more than it deserves? Mr. Reed isn’t going to get fired, Janey. He’d sue and win, and after all the pedophile stuff, the archdiocese is not going to survive another round of lawsuits.”

  “And I still don’t see,” Kate said, “what this has to do with Aidan. Unless . . .” As though coming to some profound understanding, she brought her hand up and covered her mouth.

  “Jesus Christ, Mom!” Aidan exploded. “I’m not gay, all right! Really! Maybe you haven’t noticed I’ve had a girlfriend for the past two years . . .”

  “Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean . . .”

  “It does in this case! Jesus! I’m sure.”

  “All right, all right, everybody. Calm down.” Ron was out of his chair, on his feet. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this.” He faced his son. “Nobody’s saying anybody here is gay. And since that’s not it, I still don’t get what cutting school has to do with anything.”

  “They’re a bunch of hypocritical cretins,” Aidan said.

  “Who’s that again?” Ron asked.

  “The teachers, the administration, the whole bunch of ’em. None of them have the guts to stand up on the record and say, ‘Hey, we’re not on board with this stuff. We’re not doing it.’ Either that, or they’re actually in favor of all this medieval shit. And whichever it is, I don’t want any part of it. That just makes me a hypocrite, too. Going to their school.”

  “That’s exactly what I told him,” Janey said. “And he decided he had to do something.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kate said. “Did you cut, too?”

  “No. But if they fired Mr. Reed, I would.”

  “She’s in eighth grade,” Aidan said. “Grade schools didn’t get the letter, so there’s nothing to react to. But SI is different,” Aidan said. “The high schools got the letter and should have blasted back at it, but instead they—or at least we, SI—just wimped out. So if I don’t want to be associated with that, and I don’t, I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to quit.”

  “I think it’s the right thing, too,” Janey said.

  “Well,” Ron said, “it’s arguable and idealistic, for what that’s worth. But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t come to your mother and me and talk about this. We talk about things in this family, do we not?”

  Aidan snorted. “You would have just said don’t do it.”

  “That’s so not true,” Kate said. “We would have talked about it just like we’re talking now.”

  “And finally decide I shouldn’t do anything.”

  “Or maybe something a little different, maybe that wouldn’t make you lose a semester.”

  “In other words, nothing.”

  “Not really, no, not nothing. Maybe an open letter of your own to the Chronicle or the archbishop. Or we—all of us—could go down to SI and tell the administration that if they don’t take a different stand, we’re pulling you out of school for your senior year. And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure we can come up with other options that might work, too. But we can’t have you just cutting school and disappearing for a day or two, Aidan. It’s too hard on your mother and me. Okay?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Well,” Kate said, “we’ve got the whole weekend coming up. That gives us a little time to figure something out. How about that?”

  His face clamped down, Aidan shrugged. “All right, I guess.”

  * * *

  “All right, he guesses.” Ron’s second drink nearly finished, he spoke quietly so that the kids, now off somewhere in the back of the house, couldn’t hear. “Give me a break.”

  “That’s just how he saves some face with us.”

  “Do you think I care if he saves his precious face? This is about where he goes to college, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s the only real issue here. Not whether they fire some teacher because he may or may not be gay. I mean, really? That’s an issue? How about the half million or so we’ve spent on their private educations, so that—follow me here—they have a chance in a mega-competitive world to get into the right college? Haven’t we made that pretty fucking abundantly clear by now?”

  “They know that, Ron. They know the bottom line.”

  “Well, I would have said so a few days ago, but now I’m not so sure. Now I see this self-righteous moral posturing and I’m asking myself, ‘These are my kids? Putting everything we’ve done for them at risk?’ Don’t they get it, really?”

  “They get it, Ron. They’ll come around. They’re trying to do what they think is right.”

  “How special for them.”

  “They’ll come around.”

  “They’d better,” he said.

  6

  BETH FOUND THE NAME LAURIE Shaw beneath one of the six mailbox slots just outside the entry to the lobby of the building, a reasonably modern, nicely kept up place on Green Street. She pressed the button over the name and waited.

  Laurie was the woman who’d been having an affair with Frank Rinaldi, the murder victim from this morning. Beth knew that although she was nothing like a suspect in the Rinaldi murder-suicide, she had been the victim’s lover. As such, suspect or not, an interview with homicide inspectors was definitely in her near future.

  Beth knew that what she should have done was call Laurie and invite her down for a nice, cozy interview in a videotaped interrogation room. Two inspectors and a videotape. It’s the way things were done. But the case was such a clean murder-suicide that Beth convinced Ike that she could get an interview done with Laurie—check off that box—on her own before dinner.

  In fact, she couldn’t have elucidated any clear reason why she felt that she wanted to speak personally to this woman, so suddenly bereft. The phone call she’d made that morning, where she had inadvertently been the one to inform Laurie of her lover’s death, had stuck with her for the whole day, and some sixth sense told her that the woman might benefit from another woman’s empathy. Beth had lost her own husband, Denny, seven years before and knew about the pain of loss.

  The buzz sounded. “Yes?”

  “Laurie Shaw? Inspector Tully with the police. If you’ve got a few minutes.”

  Nothing else came from the squawk box, but the door clicked and Beth pushed her way inside. When the elevator stopped and its door opened, she crossed the hall to number 5 and rang another doorbell.

  Laurie was somewhere in her twenties, with oversized blue eyes and a body that bordered on anorexic. She’d obviously been crying. The skin around her eyes was puffed and reddened. Her shoulder-length dark hair was a mess. Barefoot, she wore faded denim jeans and a man’s white dress shirt that hung on her.

  “Laurie? Inspector Tully. Beth. We spoke on the phone this morning.”

  Nodding, her face vacant, she pulled the door inside and stepped back.

  Beth crossed over into her apartment and followed her down a short hallway that on the right led to a spacious, beautifully appointed living room and a kitchen. The door to the bedroom was open on the left, the bed quite a bit more disheveled than just unmade—blankets and pillows on the floor and piled on the mattress.

  Three large windows made up the back wall of the l
iving room—the rear of the building—and looked down on this clear late afternoon over Union Street, then the Marina District, and finally the bay.

  In front of Beth, Laurie simply stopped walking and stood facing those windows. Without turning around, she said, “He was moving out this morning. I told him to just stay here with me. We could . . . he could pick up his clothes later. Or just buy new stuff. He didn’t believe she would be violent, but she owned her own gun.” She turned around. “What does that tell you? You don’t own a gun if you’re not ready to use it sometime, do you?”

  “Did Frank have a gun, too?”

  “No way. Frank wouldn’t shoot anybody. He thought everybody, including Shannon, was like he was that way.” As though the thought must have just occurred to her, she asked, “Do you want to sit down? Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m good, thank you.” Beth crossed over to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. “But you go ahead.” She watched Laurie cross the kitchen, where she free-poured half a juice glass of vodka from the bottle on the drain, then filled the glass with orange juice from the refrigerator. Turning around, she came back and pulled her own chair out from the table. “I’m drinking,” she said redundantly, and took a serious slug, swallowed, shivered, and shook her head. Then, putting the glass down, she broke into tears. “How can Frank be just gone?” she asked between sobs. “How can this be happening?”

  Beth found herself getting up and crossing around the table, putting her arms around her. She’d never done anything like that in the whole time she’d been a cop. She’d counseled victims and the families of victims, yes, but never before had it felt so personal. She couldn’t figure it out, and somehow it didn’t matter. She had felt this woman’s pain in their phone call this morning—not that she thought Laurie didn’t share some of the blame—and that was enough.

  The young woman’s arms came up around her. Beth held her and let her cry it out. When she was done, Laurie said, “Thank you. I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for. You’re allowed to cry.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Nobody would expect you to. Do you have someone you can stay with for a while? Or who could stay here? It would probably be better if you weren’t alone.”

  She nodded. “My brother Alan is coming over when he’s finished work. He’s taking the weekend off.”

  “Good. That’s a good idea.”

  “Meanwhile, don’t you have to ask me questions?”

  “I should, yes.” Beth took out her tape recorder.

  “So how am I supposed to help you?” Laurie asked.

  The doorbell interrupted her.

  “That’ll be Alan.” Laurie walked back down the hallway to buzz her brother in. Beth heard some muffled words, another small sob, then a male’s deep, consoling voice. She stood up and turned around as they came out of the hall and Laurie introduced them.

  Alan appeared to be in his late thirties, quite a bit older than his sister. He was a big man—six feet four or five. His hand completely enclosed Beth’s when he shook it, but though his palms were rough, his touch was gentle. His words when he heard she was from Homicide, however, were not. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t really get why you need to be here.”

  “I was just in the process of trying to explain that to your sister.”

  “Did you mention to her that when she talks to cops, she ought to have a lawyer?”

  “Alan! She’s—”

  He held up a hand, cutting his sister off. “She’s a cop, Laurie. There’s her tape recorder. She’s not here on a social call. I promise you.”

  Beth spoke up. “Laurie’s not a suspect in her boyfriend’s murder, sir. I’m interviewing her as a witness. She’s not under investigation.”

  “But you just have a few questions. Is that it?”

  “Yes, I do.” Beth blew out in frustration. This was why, she knew, you didn’t vary the protocol. Whatever your motivations, they were misunderstood. “I haven’t asked her any questions yet, other than how she’s holding up. I just want to establish what we both know to be true—that she had a relationship with Frank Rinaldi that might have played a part in this incident. I thought it would be easier on her, under the circumstances, to talk to her here rather than ask her to come down to the Hall of Justice. That’s all.”

  Laurie said, “Alan, she’s not interrogating me. She really just wanted to make sure I was okay. Please, Beth, just stay another few minutes. Ask your questions. I’m so glad you came by. I don’t want you to feel like I’m throwing you out.”

  Beth looked from one sibling to the other. “Well, one way or the other, Alan, Laurie is involved in a murder-suicide. So you can see that there are questions that are going to get asked. But I really did come here because when I talked to her on the phone this morning, she sounded really upset. And I thought that under the circumstances, this would be easier than some of the other options.”

  “That’s the truth,” Laurie said. “You need to apologize.”

  Alan still didn’t look like he bought it. “I’m sorry, but you don’t hear too often about cops making condolence calls.”

  “It doesn’t happen every day,” Beth said. “Laurie’s situation here struck me as just particularly tragic. So I thought she could probably use a little support.”

  “Well, you’ll pardon me for being protective of my little sis.”

  “Of course. Truce?” She put out her hand and he took it.

  Again, gently.

  7

  JILL’S BOOK CLUB HAD BEEN meeting on the usually inconvenient Friday night once a month for more than five years, and the meeting night wasn’t going to change now. Tonight, because Peter had had such a hard time yesterday—couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, obviously working too hard—she offered to stay home if he felt he needed the company. She would make him a strong martini, cook him dinner, open a good bottle of wine.

  “No. Get out of here. Have fun. I’ve just got some low-grade thing. I’ll probably be in bed by eight.”

  After she left, he ate take-out Chinese with the desultory twins. Tyler and Eric, until recently his golden boys, were the enemy camp. He was seeing them now with unblinkered realism. Both of them were entitled slackers—although Eric was worse than Tyler—who with their incessant needs had robbed him of so much of his emotional, not to say sexual, life with his wife. The pathetic truth, which he’d somehow come to accept as his lot in life, was that Jill only had time for him when everything was peachy with the boys.

  Which was almost never.

  To say nothing of the unending financial drain—about to get much worse since they were starting college in a few months—that would eat up eighty grand after-tax dollars a year minimum for the next four years.

  Shit. It was unbelievable. When he was eighteen—their age—he moved out of his parents’ house and never looked back. Paid for his own college, did ROTC, went to war, got his law degree, all on his own dime.

  Every part of that was a foreign concept to these spoiled rotten kids.

  But if he called them on their bullshit, it would only lead to conflict, to an argument. And he just didn’t have the energy. Or, he suddenly felt, the will. He didn’t really care, didn’t want to get into anything unpleasant, so he kept his tone civil. “So where are you guys off to tonight?”

  Both of them doing the eye roll thing with each other. As if he wasn’t even there, as if he couldn’t see it. But he pushed on. “I’ve got a dead night since Mom’s got her book club. I thought maybe we could all go out and catch a flick.”

  “A flick?” Eric said, setting a new record for derision in two words.

  “Uh, it’s Friday, Dad,” Tyler said, trying to undo some of the damage. “We were just going to hang.”

  “ ‘Hang’ doesn’t really tell me much,” he said.

  “You know,” Tyler said, “just with the guys.”

  Peter didn’t know. He didn’t have a clue. But
he kept up the front, mild and understanding. They’d go do what they did, which would probably be stupid and perhaps dangerous, but nothing he could do would stop them. “Sure,” he said. “I just thought. No big deal.”

  Ten minutes later they were gone.

  In another life that suddenly felt like very long ago he’d been reading and as far as he remembered very much enjoying a book called Stuff Matters. It was right where he’d left it on the table next to his reading chair in the living room, but now when he picked it up and leafed through it, he had no idea how much he’d read, where he’d stopped, anything. He looked at the front cover for a minute, read over the flap copy on the back. Had he actually started it? It seemed impossible.

  His next stop was in front of the television, where he might be able to kill a couple of hours, and perhaps deaden his mind, watching a ball game. The Giants were playing the Cardinals at AT&T Park and he normally loved listening to the banter between Kruk and Kuip, but after half an inning, he shut off the damn thing, went up to his bedroom, stood there flat-footed and empty-brained for some immeasurable time, then turned around, went down the stairs, grabbed a jacket from the hall closet, and walked out the front door and into the night.

  * * *

  McCarthy’s in West Portal wasn’t more than half a mile from Peter’s house in Saint Francis Wood. He had passed by it a hundred times but hadn’t been inside in years, ironic because as soon as he opened the door, he remembered it as his kind of place, or at least the kind of place he’d frequented, often with Jill, when they were younger.

  Prime time on Friday night, people packed all the tables and crammed the bar. Peter stood just inside the door, wondering if he should just turn around and try another watering hole. Before he’d moved, though, a burly, bearded guy right in front of him pushed back from his place at the corner of the bar and stood up. Turning, he saw Peter standing there and made an extravagant gesture, offering up his seat. “Kept it warm for ya.”

  “Thanks.”