Fatal

by John Lescroart

  No response, save the shaking of heads. “Okay, then,” Ron said. “Let’s call it a wrap.”

  24

  BETH’S MORNING WORK HAD ENTAILED trying to assimilate a lot of her thoughts and notes. Ike’s call telling her not only about Theresa’s lack of success with Peter Ash’s phone records, but Theresa’s own lack of alibi for Monday night, made her decide to step back and try to get some perspective on where the case stood.

  Which was pretty much nowhere.

  She had three women—out of perhaps dozens?—whom she assumed Peter had slept with in the past six months, and who might therefore in theory provide some kind of primary or ancillary motive for his murder: his secretary Theresa Boleyn, his landlady Carol Lukins, and the mystery woman, who might very well be Kate Jameson.

  But with all three of these women, there were problems.

  In spite of Ike leaning toward Theresa as Peter’s killer, Beth intuitively didn’t believe it, and over the years, she’d very much come to trust her intuition. Theresa was heartbroken, obviously, and probably had lied about her true relationship with her boss, but that did not make her a murderer. Beth knew that they could try to get a warrant to search her apartment for the murder weapon, if she had been unwise enough to keep it. But they had no probable cause, and this meant that no judge would sign off on the warrant. Period.

  Carol Lukins might have been intimate with Peter on the night he got shot, but that was just a hunch on Beth’s part, based mostly on Carol’s too strenuous denial that she’d even seen him that night. But until Beth got her DNA report, she didn’t even have the bare fact of any relationship at all between Carol and Peter. And therefore, any theory of his murder stemming from that could only be the wildest of conjectures.

  This left Beth with the mystery woman, who perhaps had something to do with Peter’s apparent breakdown, and—Beth didn’t want to believe it, but also didn’t want to fool herself—who might in fact be Kate. But even if this were the case—and how, even as a cop, could she ask her again without threatening their friendship?—the last known contact between this woman and Peter had been six months ago, so why would she have suddenly killed him last week?

  But talk about intuition: Beth had known Kate her whole life, and she was the type of woman who caught spiders in her house and released them outside rather than dispatch them. No matter what Peter Ash may or may not have done to her, Beth found it hard to believe that Kate could have killed him. And certainly in her present state she did not kill him and then haul his body somewhere near the ocean or the bay and throw him in.

  Meanwhile, there were other avenues they hadn’t even really begun to explore. Peter’s immediate family—Jill and the twins, Eric and Tyler—whom he had abandoned to their rage and grief; the unusual volunteerism of Geoff Cooke; Peter’s professional acquaintances, including his clients, because say what one will about how much his clients loved him, in the world of high-stakes litigation, sometimes things went badly and quickly awry.

  * * *

  It was nearly a four-mile walk from Theresa’s apartment down to where Market Street ended at the Ferry Building, but it was almost all downhill, and she thought the exercise would do her good. Even as she told herself—again and again—that it didn’t matter, that nothing really mattered anymore.

  She wore fitted jeans, a ribbed green pullover, and hiking boots, and now in the sun had removed her light windbreaker and tied it around her waist. Since her affair with Peter had started, she’d grown her blond hair longer, and now it hung a few inches down her back in a ponytail.

  Because she often worked irregular hours and even on weekends, her card key let her onto the elevator and into the firm’s main work space at all hours. Today, the usual Saturday group of red hots—attorneys, paralegals, secretaries—toiled away in their cubicles and offices. She said hello to a few of her colleagues as she walked down the hallway, finding it surreal that no one seemed to think it odd that she was there.

  Or even acknowledged that Peter was gone.

  Most of them had already shared with her their condolences—they were so sorry, and wasn’t his death the saddest, most tragic thing? But that appeared to be about the extent of their sympathy or concern.

  Bypassing her desk, she opened the door to Peter’s office and then closed and locked it behind her. She walked over to the window and looked way down to the Ferry Building, now back to its normal bustling weekend self. Putting her hand out, she pressed it against one of the indentations left in the glass by the bullets, all three of which had been left unrepaired by decree of Manny Meyer as a memento of that terrible day.

  This room, the door locked behind them, was where it had begun, when the desperate platonic hug they’d shared had lasted and lasted and had become something emotional and raw and more, something terrifying and wrong and perfect as the black smoke from the fire below had curled around the building and Peter had lifted her onto his desk and taken her almost before either of them could process what was happening, what had happened, what it might mean.

  Now she was back out in her cubicle. She just sat at her desk, her hands folded in her lap. It wasn’t loud in the office by any stretch, but the industrious worker bees all around her were creating an ambient white noise—a telephone ringing, a copy machine spitting out work product, the random beep of a computer, disembodied voices—that she suddenly found to be all but intolerable. She wanted to stand up and scream and get everybody’s attention and remind them that Peter was dead, goddammit, murdered less than a week ago, and what the fuck were they all doing in here pretending that nothing had changed?

  Finally, shaking, really wanting to scream, she got up and went into the bathroom, not to use the facility but to get her bearings. She threw several handfuls of water onto her face, wiping her eyes, then her cheeks with the harsh paper towels.

  Outside, she stood still in the hallway. The noise hadn’t abated. One of her fellow secretaries, Cheryl Padilla, undoubtedly on her way to the bathroom, gave her a quick, automatic smile and a “Hi, Terri,” before she stopped in a double take and asked if she was all right.

  “Fine.”

  “Sure?”

  “Fine. Really.”

  A questioning look, then, “Okay.”

  She didn’t speak to anyone else on her way out. Riding down the elevator alone, she left the building just as the clock on the Ferry Building struck noon.

  Most of the pedestrians on Market were heading toward the water and the farmers’ market and the ferries, and she went along with the flow, through the artist exhibits where Market met the Embarcadero.

  To her left, skateboarders were cutting their way through the light crowd moving across the Justin Herman Plaza with its hideous dry fountain.

  Pushed along by the thronging masses, Theresa found herself in the first line of people waiting for the light at the curb. Again, noise seemed ubiquitous—plastic-can drummers, steady honking out in the traffic, an auto alarm going off in one of the pay parking lots, the sudden squawking of a flock of gulls overhead. It was suddenly unbearable, all of this cacophony reverberating inside her brain, the jarring street noises and now the pounding bass of a rap track from one of the passing cars, the clang of the F Market historic streetcar descending on the crosswalk where Theresa stood in front of the other pedestrians right at the curb.

  Clang. Clang! Clang clang clang!

  Still a hundred feet from its next regular stop down at Mission Street, the streetcar rumbled heavily on its tracks, now nearly to where she waited, her eyes fixed on the bright façade of the Ferry Building, looming there across the double-wide street, right in front of her.

  Clang! Clang!

  The trolley was rapidly closing the last few feet between them.

  Without any hesitation, Theresa stepped off the curb and out onto the tracks.

  PART THREE

  NOVEMBER 14–NOVEMBER 27

  25

  “I SHOULD NOT BE DOING this,” Beth said. “I should be working.”


  “When I called, didn’t you tell me you’d already been working all morning?”

  “That’s true.”

  “So this is a lunch break in your regular workday. They let you eat lunch, right?”

  “It’s more or less encouraged, actually.”

  “Well, there you go. Besides, when your daughter showed up with that sandwich from Lucca that she was going to split with Laurie, I realized she hadn’t bought one for me, which probably meant nothing doing in the lunch realm for you, either. It didn’t seem right.”

  “So you wound up staying at Laurie’s overnight?”

  Alan nodded. “I keep a toothbrush there at all times. So I asked Ginny what you might be up to this fine day and she said she thought you’d be working. She also said you probably wouldn’t mind if I called you.”

  “God bless that child,” Beth said. “And by the way, this is the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.”

  Another nod. “I once lived on them for a whole year. Two thousand twelve I think it was. I’m still not sure why I stopped.”

  They were out at the table on what Beth euphemistically called her back deck—six feet on a side with stairs leading to the postage stamp lawn two stories below. The sun was actually bright enough that she had put the table’s umbrella up over their heads. Behind the facing backs of all the surrounding buildings, the early afternoon was dead calm.

  “So Laurie didn’t mind Ginny coming by with more food for her?”

  “I’m knocking on wood,” Alan said as he reached over and did just that on the railing. “Evidently, Ginny primed her for it last night, and Laurie was actually looking forward to food when she woke up. I haven’t seen a sign of that in months. I think if your daughter keeps that up, coming by and just being Laurie’s friend who eats like a normal person, she might really pull her out of this. And it is so good of you to let her do it.”

  “It’s not me,” Beth said. “Ginny’s doing this all on her own. The two of them just connected.”

  “True, but they wouldn’t have if you hadn’t thought to put them together.”

  “Okay, maybe that. I’ll take a tiny bit of the credit.”

  “Good. That’s settled, then. And while we’re settling things, I wanted to let you know that this impromptu lunch we’re having here today does not count as the dinner I asked if you wanted to go out to.”

  “So you’re saying I’m still committed to seeing you again?”

  “I am. Burdensome though it may be.”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said with a mock wistful tone. “I’ll have to check my schedule. I’m notoriously hard to get a date with.”

  “That’s been my experience.”

  “Well, you pick a time and place and then we’ll just have to see.”

  * * *

  Beth could hear the relief in Ike’s voice. Heather was on the mend, home from the hospital. They were going to have to keep her on a huge dose of intravenous penicillin for the next twenty days or so, but the prognosis was for a complete recovery. She could also hear his fatigue—her partner hadn’t had any sleep in at least seventy hours. When he volunteered to go out to Jill’s home with Beth, she told him it wasn’t necessary. In fact, she suggested that he take Sunday off as well—sleep all day if he could—and unless Beth had identified or arrested a suspect by Monday morning—unlikely bordering on impossible, she thought—the two of them could pick up the investigation at that time.

  So at around noon, Beth parked her Jetta across the street and knocked at Jill Corbin-Ash’s front door. A younger, preppily dressed woman who self-identified as Jill’s sister, Julie Rasmussen, greeted her none too cordially and in a businesslike manner led her to a large, open room in the back of the house—an enormous TV, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a fireplace.

  As she came in, Beth had the very strong impression that she’d interrupted an argument. The two boys slumped on either end of the brown leather couch, avoiding eye contact with each other and everyone else. Wearing an overlarge pair of sunglasses to cover her bruises and holding a glass of red wine, Jill stood by one of the bookshelves.

  The icy vibe showed no signs of thawing after the perfunctory introductions, so Beth waded right in. “I wanted to thank you all for agreeing to meet with me today. I know this is a difficult time for all of you, and I don’t intend to take too much of it.”

  Tyler, the shorter, darker one, straightened himself up a bit. “Yeah, well, excuse me, I don’t want to be difficult, but I don’t really get why you need to take any of it. Our time, I mean. You’re investigating Dad’s murder, right? And none of us had anything to do with that. I’d think that would be pretty obvious.”

  Beth tightened her lips and met his gaze. “Tyler, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Tyler, I understand the last time you all were together here, your brother and your father got in a fight.”

  Tyler looked down the couch, then back at Beth. “Dad was being a jerk,” he said. “Drunk and stupid, thinking we’d all just ignore everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Tyler said with heavy irony. “Just walking out on Mom and disappearing on us. Just ruining everything. Getting in a fight doesn’t mean anybody wanted him dead.”

  “I did,” the other boy said. “Fuck him.”

  Beth shifted her gaze over to the lanky, dirty blond, raw-boned Eric, who sat returning Beth’s stare until he looked away, shook his head, and said, “Nobody even got hurt. I took a swing at him. He took a couple of shots back. Big fucking deal.”

  Beth hardened her look. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t use profanity, Eric. And when I heard about the fight, I wondered if you thought it had resolved anything.”

  “Nothing was going to get resolved.”

  “Even after he was dead? Isn’t it resolved now?”

  “He’s dead,” Eric said. “That means it can never be resolved.”

  “Inspector,” Jill came off her perch by the wall, “wait a minute. We all agreed to be here so that maybe we could fill you in on some of the background in Peter’s life, on what might have led to his murder. It wasn’t my understanding that you were going to interrogate my boys. And if you are, I think we’d like to get a lawyer on board.”

  “Fine,” Beth said. “My intention with my questions is to eliminate you from suspicion, which ought to be easy enough, but if you’d prefer to have a lawyer around, we can do that, too. It’s your call.”

  “Give it a rest, Mom,” Tyler said. “We don’t need a lawyer. Nobody killed anybody here.” He turned to Beth. “Look,” he said. “My dad went off the rails. He totally screwed up. I’m just glad it’s over. But it’s like getting a tooth pulled—it hurts a little at the time, sure, but then it’s better and doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s Dad. I wish this hadn’t happened, if only because it makes Mom so sad, but now that it has, I can’t say it’s a bad thing.”

  “He didn’t deserve to be killed, Tyler,” his mother said.

  Eric struck back at her. “You know, that’s the funny thing, Mom,” he said. “I think we’re going to find out exactly the opposite. The way he was, there’s no chance we’re the only people he screwed around with, and what I think is that somebody out there just decided they weren’t going to take his bullshit anymore. So they killed him. Makes perfect sense to me. If I’d have had any guts, I’d have done it myself.”

  “Eric! You don’t mean—”

  “The hell I don’t, Mom. Look what he’s turned us all into, a pack of pathetic victims. And why? Do any of us know how this whole thing even started?” He brought his anger around to Beth. “And how about you, Inspector? With all this background you’ve been looking for, trying to get some context, give me a break. You wouldn’t be here talking to us if you had any idea who’d killed him, would you? Well, here’s some context for you: for whatever reason, my dad woke up one morning and had turned into a monster. Whoever put him down did the world a favor.”


  From her corner, Julie Rasmussen finally piped in. “I hate to say it, but I think Eric’s right.”

  “No,” Jill said. “He might’ve come around. It might have been . . .”

  “There’s no ‘might have been’ here, Jill. Look what he’s done to you. What he’s done to the boys. And why? He obviously didn’t feel he had to give you an excuse. After twenty years of marriage? Are you kidding me?”

  Jill physically withered at the obvious truth in this final onslaught. Her legs almost seemed to give way beneath her as she made her way over to one of the room’s chairs and lowered herself into it. Looking up at Beth, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want from us.”

  There was weakness here, and great pain, and Beth had to fight down a pang of guilt as she decided to exploit it. “As I said earlier, I want to eliminate you all as suspects. A few questions and it’s all over.” She turned. “Like, for example, you, Tyler, you live in Chico, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah.” Anger and frustration emanated from his every pore. “I’m in school up there.”

  “Do you know what you were doing last Monday night?”

  “Yeah. I was at the Pub Quiz at UOB.”

  “UOB?”

  “University of Beer.”

  “How late were you there?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s an easy question, Tyler. How late did you stay there?”

  “Pretty late. Midnight. One.”

  “Were you alone?”

  He laughed at the absurdity of that. “Yeah, except for my roommates and about half of Chico. And I’m sorry, Officer,” though he didn’t sound it, “but this is complete bullshit. Why don’t you talk to our lawyer, get a warrant, and rock and roll? Don’t you have some homeless people to harass and beat up? Meanwhile, really, I’m so done. I’m out of here.” Getting to his feet, he stomped out of the room.