Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  “Chuck, Chuck, bo-buck, bo-nano-bano, bo-fu . . .”

  “Dismas.” She put a shushing finger to his lips.

  “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he said.

  “I’m sure you have.” She gave him an amused look. “He’s a wonderful guy.”

  “I’m sure he is. It’s a wonderful song, too. You can’t do it to Dismas, you know. Dismas, Dismas, bo-bismas . . . it just doesn’t scan.” The club soda arrived.

  “Club soda is a change,” Jane said.

  Hardy sipped. “Change is my life right now. If I have my old usual couple of beers before lunch, you can forget about the afternoon. I tried it a few times. Bad idea.”

  She sipped her Champagne. “So you’re really back at prosecuting?”

  “I am.”

  “And you like it?”

  He lifted his shoulders. “Sometimes. It’s more b.s. than I remember, but it’s all right.”

  They waded through another five minutes of small talk before they ordered—calamari for Hardy, a quattro formaggio calzone for Jane. Hardy broke down and decided to have some wine, so he and Jane ordered a half bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  When the waiter had gone, Hardy said, “So you’ve seen your dad?”

  She nodded. “You were right. There’s definitely something.”

  “That’s what I thought. Frannie says it’s a woman.”

  Jane took that in, sipped at her champagne. “Why did she say that?”

  Hardy told Jane about the jade paperweight, how Andy had demanded he take it. “Frannie said seeing it every day reminded him of his broken heart, so he had to give it away.” He held up a hand. “Her words—she’s more melodramatic than I am.”

  “I also think she’s right.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “He didn’t deny it. I asked him point blank if he was all right, if something was bothering him.”

  “And what’d he say?”

  “He said he’d just become more aware of mortality lately, that nothing lasts forever.”

  “This is not exactly headline stuff, Jane.”

  “I know. It just seemed evasive the way Daddy’s always been about his personal life. So I asked if something specific had triggered all those feelings, you know. He said a friend of his had died and he just had to accept it. I asked who, and he said I didn’t know him, it didn’t matter.”

  “He said you didn’t know him?”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t think he meant that, meant it was a man.”

  It occurred to Hardy that, impossible as it might seem, Andy Fowler could be gay. In San Francisco, you never knew. “But if that’s what he said . . . ?”

  “No. There was a pause before he said that. Something, anyway. Then he patted my hand and thanked me for being concerned, but that he could work all this out himself, he was a big boy.”

  The food came, the wine ritual. Hardy dipped some fresh bread in a little bowl of olive oil on the table. Jane cut into her calzone and let the steam escape.

  “What I think,” she said, “is it might have been someone he’s ashamed of being involved with, maybe the wife of one of his friends, something like that.”

  “And she broke it off?”

  “Either that, or he couldn’t go on with it anymore. Can’t you just hear one of them saying it? ‘We’ll just have to pretend the other one died.’ I can imagine Daddy taking that tack.”

  “Yeah, that flies.”

  “It’s a problem when you’ve always been perfect. You can’t even let your daughter see anything else. Even when I told him that whatever it was, I’d still love him.”

  “You told him that?”

  “Of course. I would.”

  “No, not that you would. You told him you suspected it was something he might be ashamed of?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  Hardy was thinking Andy Fowler didn’t need so many words. He was a subtle and intelligent man, accustomed to dealing with nuance every day on the bench. He could imagine Jane’s forthright approach scaring him off, driving him back further within himself, if that’s where he was.

  Hardy chewed on the delicious bread, filled his mouth with wine and sloshed it around. “Well, whatever it is, you think we can do anything to help him out? He talked about a vacation.”

  Jane smiled. “Sure. Daddy’s idea of vacation is not bringing work home for the weekend. You know any women he might like?” But she tossed the idea away. “No. I can hardly see Daddy allowing himself to be set up.”

  “Maybe it’s what he says—awareness of mortality. That can stop you.”

  Jane scratched at the tablecloth with a perfect coral fingernail. She and Hardy didn’t need reminders of the lessons of mortality. Every time she thought of their son, Michael, who’d died in a crib accident ten years before, it stopped her again, as it had stopped her life, and Hardy’s, back then. A tear came from one eye and she turned away.

  Seeing it, or simply knowing, he reached over and covered her hand. “Let’s leave it for now, Jane. Come back to it later,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

  He missed the stud the first time and figured it must have been the wine.

  After lunch, he’d stopped at a sporting goods store on Market and picked up the dartboard he’d promised himself. Back at his office, he’d banged on the wall opposite his desk, listening for the hollow sound to give way to solid wood, locating the stud, or thinking he had.

  The first stroke of the hammer drove the nail through drywall clear up to its head. Hardy was a good carpenter. Wood was one of his hobbies. It wasn’t like him to miss a stud. He banged on the wall, thought he’d found the stud again, and this time was right.

  Measuring off eight feet with a ruler from his desk, he put some tape down on the floor just under where his chair would normally be. Then he moved the chair back up, took out his leather case and fitted the blue flights onto the shafts of his darts. He stood up at his tape line and threw two bull’s-eyes and a 20. Leaving the darts in place, he picked up the phone.

  Judge Fowler had called in sick. That was odd. Judges never called in sick—their dockets were too full. A sick day inconvenienced too many people. Hardy tried his home, but no one was there either, not even an answering machine. He was tempted to call Jane again but why worry her?

  Maybe Andy was simply taking a mental-health day. God knew, he worked hard enough to deserve it. Maybe after seeing Jane last night, he’d gotten drunk again and was hung over. In any case, if Andy Fowler wanted to take a day off, Hardy would not disturb him.

  He looked at the still-large pile of case folders on the corner of his desk, wondering what unknown thrills lay in store for him in that mountain of paper. He considered going around to his darts and throwing a solo game of 301 to keep his eye up. He wondered if Jeff Elliot was back from the Marina or wherever he’d gone. He should call Frannie and see how Rebecca was doing.

  Anything, he thought, but . . .

  It wasn’t a big enough room to pace in. He pulled his chair up to the desk and sat down, feeling lethargic and heavy. The wine. Blame it on the wine.

  Elizabeth Pullios was still wearing the gold chain with the ruby, but that was all she was wearing. Christopher Locke, the district attorney, was lying with his hands crossed behind his head. He had a barrel chest covered with curls of black hair. His stomach was beginning to bulge, but it was a hard bulge. He had a pretty good body for an older guy, she thought. And as long as he let her be on top, his mobility wasn’t much of an issue—she could control things, which was how she liked it.

  She moved forward a little, adjusting her position. The D.A. moaned with pleasure. His black, broad-featured face broke into a grin. “My, don’t we look smug,” Pullios said. She tightened herself a little around him and he closed his eyes with the feel of it.

  “I feel smug,” Locke said. “Come down here.”

  She leaned down over him. He took one breast in each hand and pulled her face up to his. She took his
tongue into her mouth and bit down on it gently, then pulled away.

  “You are such a bitch,” he said. Still smiling. She moved her hips again. He tried to come up to meet her face, but her hands were on his shoulders, forcing him down, grinning at him.

  “I know, and you love it.” She came down and licked the bottom of his ear, staying there, beginning to rock rhythmically.

  “God, Pullios . . .”

  She pulled away, halfway up. Her face now was set. She had found her angle, concentrating. Her hands cupped his head, tighter. He rose to meet her, feeling it build.

  “Not yet, not yet . . .” She was breathing hard, her teeth clenched. “Okay, okay.” She pounded down against him, now straightening up, arching, her head thrown back. “Now. Now. Now.” Grinding down into him as he let himself go, collapsing against his big chest, a low chuckle escaping from deep in her throat.

  12

  Turning south on Highway 1, Hardy was thinking that fate could be a beautiful thing.

  The dunes with their sedge grasses obscured the view of the ocean, but with the top down on the Suzuki, Hardy could hear and smell it. The afternoon, now well along, was still warm. Dwarf cypresses on the east side of the road attested to the near-constant wind off the ocean, the evergreen branches flattened where they faced the beach, as though giants walked the land, stomping them to one side.

  Where the highway turned inland at Fort Funston near the Olympic Club golf course, hang gliders filled the sky. Even on a windless, cloudless day, thermals up the cliffs at the shoreline provided decent lift. Hardy thought he might like to get into hang gliding sometimes. Take the wife and kids. Soar.

  The fate that had saved him from his files had come in the guise of a call from Abe Glitsky, who’d been called down to Pacifica to view a body that had washed ashore. Calls from the SFPD to other local jurisdictions over the past few days had gotten the word out, and when the call came in, Abe had been in the office and volunteered to go down and have a look. He’d called Hardy from his squawk box, patched in.

  The turnoff was just north of Devil’s Slide, a two-mile stretch of Highway 1 where the curving roadway’s shoulder disappeared at the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff. Most of the time, the area was shrouded in fog, and it was the rare year that didn’t see another verification of the fact that automobiles could not fly.

  Hardy wound back on a rutted and unpaved roadway toward the city. Glitsky’s car was parked in the dirt area at the bottom, along with a couple of Pacifica police cars. As Hardy was getting out of his car, an ambulance appeared on the road he’d just used.

  The tide was out. Getting on four o’clock, there was still no wind at all, no fog. Maybe, Hardy thought, we’re going to have our three days of summer.

  He nodded to the ambulance guys, but was too anxious to wait for them. Crossing the soft sand, he got to harder ground and broke into a trot. The officials were knotted around a still green form about twenty yards from the line of surf.

  Hardy nodded to Glitsky, who introduced him around. “Here’s your victim,” he said.

  The body lay covered with a tarp, on its back. Hardy asked permission to look, and one of the Pacifica cops said go ahead. He pulled the tarp away and involuntarily stepped back.

  Sand flies buzzed around the half-open mouth, the nose, the empty eye sockets, the thinning head of gray hair. Hardy was momentarily startled by the fact that the body wore jogging sweats identical to a pair he owned— except that the body’s green sweatsuit had a large crescent-shaped tear in the right torso. There was also a ragged break in the lower left leg, with flesh showing beneath it. Two small clean holes—one in the chest and one just over the crotch—spoke for themselves. Forcing himself to take it all in, Hardy noticed the wedding band on the left hand. But, by far, the most arresting detail was the end of the right arm, a jagged and torn mess of tendon, bone and sickly greenish white flesh. Hardy knew what had happened to the hand.

  The ambulance men had made their way across the beach with a stretcher. Hardy stepped away and let them move in.

  “You get an ID?” he asked Glitsky.

  Glitsky had a scar that ran through his lips, top to bottom; when he got thoughtful or tense, it seemed sometimes to almost glow white in his dark face. It was glowing now. He wasn’t saying anything.

  “Looks about the right age for Owen Nash,” Hardy said.

  Glitsky nodded, still thinking, looking off into the horizon. “That’s why you’re here,” he said.

  “Shot twice?” Hardy asked.

  Glitsky nodded again. “Before the sharks got him. Small caliber, one exit wound out of two.” Like a dog shaking off water, he came back to where they were. “Once in the heart, and whoever it was tried to shoot his dick off.” He thought another moment. “Probably not in that order.”

  Hardy felt his balls tighten. Suddenly Glitsky spoke to the ambulance attendants who had opened the stretcher and were preparing to lift the body. “Excuse me a minute.” He went over to the body, got down on one knee and picked up the left hand. “I’m going to take off this ring,” he told the Pacifica cops.

  He looked at it briefly, showed it to them, then brought it over to Hardy. “You see anything?” he asked.

  It was a plain gold band. On the flat inside surface, there was a tiny stamp in the gold that said 10K. Nothing else at first glance, Hardy faced away from the sun and held the ring up to catch the light, turning it slowly. “Here you go,” he said. He brought it closer to his face. Worn down flush to the gold, invisible except at one angle, Hardy could make out some initials. “E.N. and some numbers—something looks like fifty-one.”

  “What was Nash’s wife’s name?”

  Hardy remembered mostly because of the boat. “Eloise. And fifty-one—sounds like a wedding date, doesn’t it?”

  Glitsky uttered an insincere “Absolutely brilliant” and held out his hand. Hardy dropped the ring in it. He put the ring in a Ziploc evidence bag and stuck the bag in his pocket. “So I can either check the prints, have Strout do some DNA testing this month at a cost of ten grand or call his attorney again. How do you vote?”

  The body was on the stretcher, and the ambulance attendants began carrying it over the beach. Hardy, Glitsky and the other men fell into a rough line behind them, and the caravan trudged over the sand. Nobody said a word.

  “The Eloise was out all day Saturday!” Jeff Elliot was excited.

  “I knew that,” Hardy said. He was at home, talking on the kitchen extension. He lived fifteen blocks from the beach, just north of Geary, and he’d seen no point in going downtown for ten minutes so that he could turn around and drive back home.

  Twenty minutes after leaving Devil’s Slide, he was cutting up some onions in his kitchen. When the spaghetti sauce was made, bubbling on the stove, he opened himself a beer and called Jeff Elliot.

  “I thought you were keeping me up on the breaks in the case,” Elliot said. “If you knew the boat had gone out—”

  “We didn’t even know it was Owen Nash, so what difference could his boat make? In fact, I would tend to agree with our good Dr. Strout,” Hardy drawled, “that yo’ conclusions were de-sahded-ly prematuah. All we knew was that a man was missing and the hand might show that it was used in karate. That’s a long stretch for hard news.”

  There was silence on the other end. Then, “You got something, don’t you?”

  “Turns out,” Hardy said laconically, “odds on you were right.”

  He told him about the body, which was on its way to, or had just arrived at, the morgue—the hand bitten off, where the shots had gone.

  “He was shot? Somebody killed him you mean?”

  Hardy thought of where Glitsky thought the first bullet had gone. He felt he could rule out suicide. “Yeah,” he said. “Somebody killed him.”

  “God, that’s great!” Elliot nearly shouted. “That is just great!”

  “The guy’s dead,” Hardy reminded him. He took a sip of his beer. “That’s not so great.” />
  “The story, I meant the story.”

  “I know what you meant. Listen, if you’ve got a file picture on Nash, you might bring it down with you, remove any doubt in case no one’s identified him yet.”

  “Good idea!”

  “Oh, and Jeff, if Mr. Farris or Celine Nash—Owen’s daughter—is down at the morgue, try to rein in the enthusiasm a little, would you? I don’t think they’re going to be as happy about it as you are.”

  “No, I understand that. Of course.”

  Hardy rang off. “Of course,” he said.

  It was going to the front page in tomorrow’s edition. Jeff’s first front-page story. Not the main headline, but lower right, three columns, his byline—not too shabby.

  Not only that, but the lead graphs had already gone on the wire that night, and Jeff had received a follow-up call from the L.A. Times, la-di-da, and from Drew Bates over at KRON-TV, who wondered if he—Jeff—had anything more to give out on the Owen Nash murder. Imagine, TV coming to him! The L.A. Times!

  He had left his forwarding number at night reception and now sat in the bowels of the building where he worked, checking the Nexis listing on Owen Nash. It was nine-thirty at night, and he’d been up since six, but he felt completely fresh. Parker Whitelaw, his editor— Christ, THE EDITOR—said he’d give him a sidebar on Nash they’d run with the pickup on the back page of the first section, but he had to have it done by eleven-thirty. Did Jeff think he could do it?

  Jeff thought for a lead story and a sidebar he could stand on his head and spit nickels, dance with Nureyev, run a ten-flat hundred. He looked at the mute reminder, his crutches, leaning on his right against the table. Well, the hell with them. He could get this done. He had the raw data—now it was just putting it together. Piece of cake, though there was more than he would have thought—and he had to get it down to three hundred words maximum. Well, hit the high spots.

  Jeff had started the Nexis search at quarter to seven after getting back from the morgue. Almost three hours, close to two hundred articles—some merely a mention at a society event, a few substantial interviews, a cover story in ’87 in BusinessWeek. Owen Nash, from the evidence here, had been a very major player. He’d been mentioned in one U.S. publication or another on an average of once every six weeks or so for what seemed like the past twenty years.