Fatal

by John Lescroart

  Jill and Julie both jumped up, following him through the house, urging him back, but in a moment the front door slammed shut.

  Beth waited until, apologetic almost beyond words, they had come back. As gently as she could she asked if any of them minded if she went on for just a few more minutes.

  “Do we really have a choice?” Julie asked.

  “Well, as we just saw, Tyler did. So do the rest of you.”

  “I’m so sorry about that,” Jill said. “No one’s themself around here lately. That really wasn’t like Tyler. He’s a good boy. It’s just been so hard.”

  “I understand that,” Beth said. “I’m not here to harass anybody. If you can spare me just a little more of your time. Eric? You’re at Berkeley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So Monday night?”

  The young man pouted, wrinkled his forehead, shot a glance at the ceiling—in all a marginally convincing display of trying to recall whatever he’d done. Finally, the answer came to him. “I was here, with Mom.” He looked over at his mother. “That was Monday, right?”

  “Yes,” said Jill, turning to Beth, explaining. “Eric called me Sunday night just to check up on how I was doing. I probably gave him the impression that I was a little tired of being alone and he said he was sick of meal ticket food, so why didn’t he come over the next night and we could have some dinner together. Which is what we did.”

  “Did you stay overnight here, Eric?”

  “No. I had an early class the next morning so I had to be back in Berkeley. I think I left here around nine or nine thirty. Does that sound right, Mom?”

  “I think so, yes. Not much later than that.”

  “I know I was back in the dorm by a little after ten. Does that help?”

  Pretty slick, Beth was thinking through her frustration, how they’d both given themselves alibis, almost as if they had it planned. Although she did not believe that Jill had killed her husband, or conspired with Eric, she was not so sure about the possibility that Eric might have acted on his own. He was a bitter and angry young man. Nevertheless, they had pretty effectively insulated each other from her inquiries.

  But not completely. On a hunch, Beth asked, “Do you have a gun, Eric?”

  From the reaction in the room, Beth might as well have just fired hers.

  Julie exploded. “No way!”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Jill said. “Of course he doesn’t own a gun.”

  But Eric’s expression told Beth that she’d hit a nerve. Keeping her eyes on him, she pressed her advantage. “You can’t buy a gun in this state if you’re under twenty-one, Eric. You want to tell me?”

  For a long silent moment, Eric didn’t move. Finally, he met Beth’s eyes. “All right. Yes. I bought a gun on the street in Oakland.”

  His mother turned on him in disbelief. “Eric! Why on earth . . . ?”

  “To protect myself.” He turned to Beth. “Berkeley’s a lot rougher than people think.”

  “Do you still have it, Eric? The gun.”

  “No.”

  “No? What happened?”

  “Somebody stole it from me. That’s the truth,” he said with real defiance. “I didn’t have it two weeks and somebody took it.”

  “Where did you keep it?”

  “In my room at Berkeley.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Unit One, near campus.”

  “So when did it go missing?”

  “Like I said, right after I got it. That’s the truth, like it or not.”

  Jill said, “I think at this point we’re going to want to call a lawyer.”

  “Mom,” Eric said, “we don’t need to worry about that. Me having bought a gun doesn’t mean squat. It doesn’t prove I shot anybody.”

  Beth decided to cut to the chase. “But did you? Did you kill your father, Eric?”

  “No, I didn’t kill my father. Not that I wouldn’t have liked to. But whoever it was beat me to it before I could get my hands on another gun and get up the guts.”

  “You need to stop talking right now, Eric,” Jill said. “And I’m sorry, Inspector, but I’m not going to allow any more questions until we’ve talked to a lawyer.”

  26

  BETH HAD JUST GOTTEN OUT of her car underground at the public garage in Berkeley when her cell phone chirped with her partner calling her again—the sleep he was lacking didn’t appear to be a major priority in his life.

  “You’re not going to believe this and you’re going to like it even less,” Ike said. “But Theresa Boleyn just killed herself.”

  “You are shitting me.” Beth felt her legs suddenly go weak, and she leaned back against her car. “Tell me.”

  Ike ran down the details as Beth tried to get her head around this altered reality. Ike was going on. “. . . sought to be easier to warrant up and get inside her apartment, see if she’s maybe got a gun hidden somewhere . . .”

  “Funny you should mention.”

  “What’s that?”

  She told him. “Which is why I’m over here in Berkeley.”

  “Without a warrant? You’re going to need a warrant, Beth.”

  “Thanks for reminding me, Dad. I’ve got the office on it. Meanwhile, I’m here to see if I can find Eric’s gun, which he says was stolen, which in turn strikes me as the tiniest bit convenient. Cynic that I am, I want to make sure it’s not under his bed or something. We’ve got no bullet to test it against, but it would still be nice to see if the mysterious disappearing gun could help us somehow, especially if our boy lied about the disappearing part.”

  “So you’re going to search for a gun and . . . ?”

  “Talk to the roommate, hopefully before Eric thinks to call him and coach him about what he needs to say.”

  “Who’s the roommate?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  “So you’re thinking it wasn’t Theresa who killed Ash?”

  “I don’t know if I ever thought it was. And I’m pretty sure I really don’t think it now.”

  “Just out of curiosity, why not? She looks better for it than ever to me. She finds out Peter’s having multiple affairs, so in a jealous rage she kills him.”

  “Jealous rage, now, was it?”

  “Like it or not,” Ike said. “Then when the deed is done, she tries to bluff it out for a few days until finally she can’t take the guilt anymore and she walks in front of the streetcar.”

  “Well, either that or she just lost the love of her life and she’s got nothing left to live for. Which seemed more like the person she was to me. Sweet and clueless and trusting.”

  “And if the trust gets betrayed?”

  “Then she kills herself, not her betrayer, wouldn’t you think? Not saying it’s impossible, Ike. I just don’t see her killing anybody, much less the guy she loves. Even if he betrayed her.”

  “So who, then?”

  “That’s the question. Maybe Eric. Which means none of Peter’s female connections after all. He’s a bitter, angry kid with a huge chip. He admitted that he actually bought a street gun illegally. So he was definitely thinking about it. On the other hand, if his alibi holds . . .”

  * * *

  In several ways, Beth knew that the drive across the bay to Berkeley was pretty much a shot in the dark. She didn’t know the name of Eric’s roommate or if he would be in their room. She didn’t know the security arrangements at the huge student housing units.

  Would the dorm security people even let her speak to one of the residents? She knew that in San Francisco, on a similar errand, she could expect at least stiff resistance if not outright hostility and bureaucratic stonewalling. She had no real reason to believe that things would be different here on the other side of the bay, but (maybe in part because of the aftermath of her lunch with Alan) she’d felt like it was a good karma day, the empty afternoon had loomed before her, and she’d decided she didn’t have much to lose. She might as well give the god of good fortune a chance t
o play a role.

  But to even the odds, as she’d told Ike, she had asked her lieutenant to pitch in to work up a search warrant. She expected the call that the judge had signed it at any moment.

  As it turned out, the security “officer”—a college kid working as a volunteer just inside the lobby of residential Unit One—was impressed and perhaps, more than that, intimidated by Beth’s credentials. After all, she was a bona fide homicide inspector from San Francisco working on a murder that he’d actually read about earlier in the week. He was happy to supply her with the name of Eric’s roommate, Jon Chung. He punched in Chung’s emergency contact number and gave Beth a thumbs-up when the phone picked up. A few more words established that the young man was upstairs, studying. A San Francisco police officer, the guard told him, was down in the lobby and would like to speak with him.

  In less than a minute, Chung exploded out of the elevator, frantic. “Are you the cop?” he pleaded to Beth. “They’re not picking up. Tell me it’s not my parents.”

  “I’m sure your parents are fine,” Beth said. “I’m not here about them. I’m sorry if I alarmed you. I should have mentioned that right away. Everybody’s fine. I’m just looking for a little information on your roommate.”

  Exhaling, Chung put his hand over his heart and gave Beth a sheepish smile. “Wow,” he said. “That’ll wake you right up.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Dozing, more. Chemistry in a warm room after lunch. So this is about Eric’s dad then, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid it is. And the first thing I need to ask you is this. Did you ever see Eric’s gun?”

  “Whoa, Jesus. You think Eric killed his father. I can’t believe you’re even saying that. No, he didn’t have a gun. I never saw a gun. He never talked about a gun. You’re totally barking up the wrong tree.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “Officer, our whole dorm room is maybe ten feet square. I know totally everything either one of us has in the room. If there was a gun in there, I would have known it and I would have screamed bloody murder ’cause it could have gotten us expelled.”

  “Okay, let’s talk about Eric’s father. When did you hear about that?”

  Chung considered for a moment. “Last Wednesday, I think. His mom called. We were both in the room.”

  “How’d Eric take it?”

  “Mostly weird, I’d say.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Well, first, I mean, as soon as she told him, he kind of broke down. Crying, you know, sobbing actually. But then—it wasn’t a long call—after he hung up, he was all like ‘YES!’ Purely relieved, if not actually happy, and he kept getting happier. Which was a little scary. I mean, your dad’s dead. No matter what, it’s going to hit you hard, right? Even if you had issues with him.

  “But with Eric, after he got used to the idea, it was like it psyched him up. I thought that was weird. I mean, a lot of the people here pretend they don’t like their parents, and maybe they don’t. But Eric and his dad. I mean, from his reaction, he really hated him. And I can’t say I blame him, with his dad cutting out on all of them like he did. That’s pretty cold. He must have been a bastard and a half. But still, it’s hard to believe somebody actually killed him, much less his own son.”

  Suddenly it seemed to dawn on him that he was providing information in a homicide investigation. He took a step back. “You’re not here because . . . ? You don’t really think it was Eric, do you?”

  She gave the standard cop answer. “I don’t think anything yet. I’m just asking questions. I’m interested in what time he got home last Monday night. If it jogs your memory, that was the night he went over to his mom’s house to have dinner with her.”

  “Sure. I remember. Just last Monday?”

  “Right.”

  Chung worked it around in his brain, then said, “It wasn’t too late. Twelve thirty, one, somewhere in there.”

  “And you were in the room when?”

  “The whole night. We got in a truly vicious hearts game that never seemed to end. It didn’t break up until around midnight. Eric showed up about a half hour after everybody left.”

  “Twelve thirty?”

  “Sometime around then. Could have been a little later.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  “On a scale of one to ten?”

  He considered for a minute. “I know the game was Monday night. So yeah, I’d have to go with about ten.”

  That’s two whoppers Eric had told her, Beth thought. Two big, really important lies.

  “Well, thank you, Jon. You’ve been a help.”

  “I hope I didn’t get Eric in trouble.”

  Beth’s phone rang. It was her lieutenant telling her that her warrant was good to go.

  When she hung up, she told Eric’s roommate that she was going to be in his room for the next hour or two. She had a search warrant and, in spite of his assurance that he didn’t think that there was a gun hidden somewhere in the room, she was going to make sure.

  “You really think he might have done it?” Chung asked her.

  “I don’t think anything,” Beth said. “I’m looking for some evidence.”

  “Could I go get the homework I’m working on?”

  “Only if I go with you and check what you take when you leave. Those are the conditions. Are you good with them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, then, let me talk to your security guy here and then we’ll go on up.”

  27

  FROM BERKELEY, BETH CAME BACK to her desk in the Hall of Justice, where she could sit with a Diet Coke and try to get some perspective on where things stood now. It seemed, at the very least, that she had finally moved things along, and might in fact have unearthed a true suspect in Eric Ash, whom she had caught in two blatant lies about his alibi—he hadn’t been back in his dorm room on Monday night by ten, but closer to one. And, if true, that gave him somewhere near three hours to meet his father under some pretext, shoot him, and dump him in saltwater.

  Plenty of time.

  And it certainly looked like telling her that the gun had been stolen from his dorm room in Berkeley was a second lie. If he had hidden it so well that Jon Chung didn’t know about it, no intruder would likely have found it either.

  Beth didn’t know why Eric had admitted to having a gun in the first place—it was possible that he thought that she’d already found out about him having the gun from another source. If she did know that, him admitting it made him look more forthright and cooperative. A greater likelihood, she thought, was that he’d thrown the gun in the ocean or somewhere after he’d used it to kill his father, and he wanted to taunt Beth with that possibility.

  Beyond that, though, it certainly looked like whatever else happened to the gun, it wasn’t randomly stolen by someone Eric didn’t know.

  It was clear that, no matter what, Eric no longer had the gun. Which meant that no ballistics match was going to be possible, and so he’d arrogantly, if figuratively, waved it in front of her face. Telling her he was smarter than she was; he knew the salient facts of the case; he’d left no physical evidence; he could beat her at this game.

  That attitude, she was finding, was really quite the motivator.

  So, then, what had happened to the gun? She toyed with the idea of telling Eric she’d found the gun to play her own games with his head. But given that the body had been in the bay, it seemed logical to think the gun would be there, too. Knowing that she was lying to him would simply convince him further that if he just held on to his story, they couldn’t touch him.

  Sipping her drink, she made a few notes and then sat back in her chair. She didn’t know what to do about the suicide of Theresa Boleyn. Although she didn’t want to believe it, she realized that it was entirely possible that Ike was right and Theresa had killed her cheating boyfriend if, in fact, he’d been her boyfriend, in which case Theresa, too, had lied to them. They would, in fac
t, need another warrant to go through her apartment, car (if she had one), workstation, and so on. It was going to be an insane next few days.

  In the here and now, though, the same karma that had delivered Jon Chung to her without hassle seemed to be holding. When she booted it up, she saw that her computer contained emails from two friends of Peter’s stoner upstairs neighbor, Ned. The other two had already answered her emails, leaving their cell phone numbers. She had all their numbers now, and she picked up the phone at her desk and punched up the first one.

  Twenty minutes later, she’d talked to three of them. They were universally cooperative and totally unhelpful. Everyone agreed that all of them had gotten to Ned’s apartment early and had spent the entirety of the football game there, since he had the big TV and the beer. Where else were they going to go?

  They’d all heard the ruckus from Peter’s apartment one floor down, probably in the second quarter, and certainly all over before the half. None of them thought it had sounded like a fight, although there had been some loud noises for sure—the squeaking bed, cries of obvious passion. Two of the guys had found it to be hysterically funny, basically.

  But all of them, to a greater or lesser degree, seemed embarrassed talking about it. One of them, Stuart Aiello, wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it was because, he told Beth with a touching naïveté, he’d never heard anybody making love before, so if that was what it was, he couldn’t swear to it. But none of the other guys, he said, had had any doubt, so that must have been it. Stuart didn’t know why it would be so loud. He was the one who didn’t find it funny—it sounded to him like it hurt.

  No one had left the apartment until after the game, and they hadn’t seen anybody in the hallway on their way out. By the time they left, Peter’s apartment was silent. No one had heard him making any other noise of any kind.

  She hung up and went into the bathroom. When she came out, Ike was sitting in his chair, facing her across their back-to-back desks. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here, Ike? I thought you were trying to catch up on your sleep. How’s Heather?”