Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  Entertaining the possibility that he should cut down on his intake, and forgetting his own oft-uttered advice that beer on whiskey was mighty risky, he stopped at a place down Seventh Street and ordered a Rainier Ale. The bar didn’t have a pay phone.

  He brought the bottle of green death over to a small table next to the door and stared up at the television screen broadcasting the evening news. The financier, the judge and the prostitute again. He moved to the other side of the table, where he didn’t have to look at the damned set. White noise.

  They’d enjoyed the vacation. The two weeks had been good for them. They’d come back refreshed, reinvigorated, reconnected. They’d purposely put off discussing his career plans—there would be plenty of time for that. Instead, they talked about babies and childbirth, about whether Moses and Susan were an item, about food and their past lives—Eddie and Jane. And if they should move to a bigger house before or after the next child came along.

  Hardy had run daily on the beach. A couple of days of rum drinks, then he’d surprised himself by going on the wagon for the rest of the trip. He was tan and lean and liked it.

  Then, the first week home, catching up with Abe about Owen Nash and May Shinn and Andy Fowler. Cleaning out some tanks at the Steinhart with Pico. Pouring a few shifts at the Shamrock to keep his hand in.

  At first it was a nagging unease, a touch of insomnia. He hadn’t wanted to admit how much he’d invested, how great had been the risk, when he’d given up bartending right after Christmas to go back to the law. But now, in the long and formless days stretching before him, he was starting to come to the numbing realization that he’d failed in one of the fundamental decisions in his life.

  He’d been fired. His services were not wanted. It wasn’t that the people he worked for were so honorable or talented or better at their jobs than he was, at least he didn’t think so, but the fact that he’d been judged by those people and found unacceptably wanting. Never mind their standards. He was out, they were in.

  It got to him. He found himself internalizing the rejection. More, he couldn’t seem to get it out of him. Who was he at forty, anyway? A castoff, a reject. He had told Frannie what the hell, he didn’t want to be underfoot all day, he’d go out and interview a few places, get some work, try to get some feeling back that he was doing something worthwhile—that maybe he was worthwhile.

  People were nice. Men and women—lawyers and office managers—in business suits like he was wearing. But they didn’t hire him. They’d call him back, it was just a slow time. Maybe he could try the public defenders.

  He thought he was a logical man, and logic was telling him that in terms of the marketplace, he was worthless.

  Well, shit, he wasn’t going to accept that. He’d lived a pretty good life, thank you, and it damn sure wasn’t over yet. The hell with the rest of you.

  Then he made his big mistake.

  Frannie was a rock at home, telling him not to push it, time would take care of it. Something would come up. She loved him.

  But once you started thinking people didn’t want you, it was easy to start believing nobody wanted you for anything. You were just a burden, a drag, plain and simple, not able to carry your own weight.

  He thought he could feel Frannie pulling away. She swore it wasn’t true, she wasn’t. She was with him. But he found he couldn’t talk with her anymore. He could tell it was making her lose confidence in him, and that was too much to ask her to carry. She needed him to be strong, especially now, building a family. So he resolved to put on a happy face. Lots of laughs, long silence between.

  He idly thought of finding someone he could talk to where he wasn’t constantly reminded of his situation. Of course, he wasn’t going to, but wouldn’t it be nice to be around someone who thought you were okay, not aware of any of the baggage?

  He’d taken to stopping by the Shamrock after his interviews and having a round or two. It was more time that he didn’t have to face her. He stopped working out.

  He’d been home a month now, six weeks. He told himself enough was enough, it was time to beat this thing, not let the bastards get him down. The first step, he told himself, was physical—get back in shape, stop drinking, tighten up.

  He stood behind Celine Nash as she pumped up and down on the Stairmaster. Her hair was fixed back with a hot pink headband. A patch of darker pink showed where she was sweating between her shoulder blades. Her ass was a phenomenal pumping machine. Up and down, step step step. Sweat was pouring off her. He thought about turning around and walking out.

  It was okay, he told himself. He was here to work out and he’d chosen Hardbodies! because he’d already been in the place and it had the machines he was looking for.

  He hadn’t seen her since she’d stopped in front of his house before the vacation, when she’d realized she couldn’t be in his life. Well, he wasn’t putting her back into his life now. Enough time had gone by since then. He wasn’t starting anything by showing up here.

  He climbed onto the machine next to hers. “Yo,” he said.

  They were sitting together in the steam room. He was on a towel, leaning back against the cedar wall, in gym shorts and a T-shirt. She’d gone to the locker room after her workout, gotten rid of her leggings and changed into a one-piece black bathing suit.

  The talking wound down. She was doing all right, she said, keeping busy. He wished he was. Well, at least he was exercising. That was doing something. Yes.

  The temperature was near a hundred and twenty. The room was tiny, cramped, perhaps five by seven feet, with a furnace near the floor, which was covered with rocks. Celine got up and poured more water from a pitcher over the rocks and a cloud of steam lifted and hovered. She went to sit down on the wood where she’d been, then jumped and said, “Ouch.”

  “Here.” Hardy moved enough towel out from under him to give her room. He could feel his heart pounding through his T-shirt. Their legs were together.

  She leaned back next to him and took his hand, putting it high on her thigh.

  “Celine . . .”

  “Shh . . .” Her shoulders came up against him. “I’ve been coming here for six months and have never seen another soul in this room.”

  She lifted the elastic on her nylon suit and guided his hand under it. “Feel me,” she said. She was shaved bare, the skin smooth as though it had been oiled, already wet where she was moving him.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh dear God.”

  One hand held him in place against her and the other lifted his shirt, found the band of his shorts and reached under them for him.

  Silk and oil. Honey and salt.

  That proved he had been right. He was no better than anyone else, and worse than most. He tried to tell himself, once, that he hadn’t been technically unfaithful. There had been no penetration, therefore he hadn’t really made love to her. Feeble. Beneath contempt. More honest if he had.

  Now he had proved that the world’s assessment of him was valid. He wouldn’t hire himself to do anything. He could barely look at himself in the mirror.

  He started practicing darts, putting away gallons of Guinness. Avoiding Frannie, avoiding himself. Putting on weight.

  Thank God, Celine hadn’t tried to follow up. That, at least, seemed to be over.

  But he resided in a deep cave, in total darkness.

  It was ten-thirty. There were four bottles of Rainier Ale on the table now, a rocks glass with mostly water in the bottom, a faint taste of Irish to it. He blinked, wondering where he had been, and tried to focus on the clock over the bar. No use. He stood uncertainly.

  Jesus.

  Outside, the night had turned cold and the street came up at him, forcing him against the outer stucco of the building for support. Seventh Street stretched empty for what seemed like miles, shining as though it were wet. Was his car parked up at the Hall of Justice? Even if it was, how could he get it home?

  He tried moving along but everything suddenly seemed to hurt, to throb—his should
er where he’d been wounded in Vietnam, the foot he’d hurt last year in Acapulco.

  There were noises behind him, laughter, then a skipping, leather on concrete. It finally registered, coming toward him.

  He straightened up, turned around, saw an arm, something, a blur that hit him in the forehead, knocked him to one side. He heard another dull thud—was that him?—and his head cracked back against the stucco and he went down.

  There were images. The gagging jolt of smelling salts. A light behind his eyes. Something sticky under his hand. The cold concrete.

  “Let’s take him down.”

  “Wait a minute. Is this him?”

  Hardy forced his eyes open. The flashlight hit him again and he winced. Shadows emerged, recognizable. Cops.

  A lucky break. One of them had found his wallet, less cash, in the curb. Hardy had never given his badge back to Locke. If he wanted it he could come and ask for it.

  “Are you Dismas Hardy?” one of them asked.

  He supposed he nodded, grunted—something.

  “He as drunk as he smells?”

  Another whiff of the salts. Hardy brought his hand up to his face, felt a crust. He looked down. His white sweater was matted dark.

  “I’m Hardy,” he said.

  They got him up. Pain, nausea. “Watch out, guys.” He staggered a step or two away and vomited bile and beer. He leaned against the building. “Sorry.”

  They stood back a couple of yards. He caught his breath, spat a few times, tried to see what time it was but his watch was gone.

  If they could do it, he told them, he’d rather go home than the hospital. He didn’t think anything was broken. He might have a concussion; his head felt like an anvil attached to his neck by some two-pound test. And someone kept swinging the smith’s hammer.

  They put him in the rear seat.

  He rested his head back. Lights passing overhead, the freeway overpass. He closed his eyes. Nothing to see.

  It was almost midnight, and Moses had been there for a half hour. To her brother, Frannie looked particularly vulnerable. She was now five months pregnant and showing it. Her arms looked thin, he thought. Her face was too hollow. Maybe it was the contrast with the fullness of her belly and breasts. There were circles under her eyes. She sat forward on the low living-room couch, her elbows on her knees, her hands crossed under the bulge of her stomach.

  Moses was telling her that the best thing to do was wait. He’d turn up. Moses had had his own lost weekends, or nights.

  “This isn’t a lost weekend, Mose.” She hesitated. “He’s with Jane. I know he’s with Jane.”

  Moses shook his head. “There’s no way, Frannie.”

  “She came here today asking for him.”

  “Jane did?” He mulled that. “What did she want?”

  “She wanted Dismas. She always wants Dismas. He’s gone back to her before.”

  “Frannie. Come on. He wasn’t with you then. He wasn’t with anybody. It probably had to do with her father being arrested. He and Diz were friends, right?”

  “Are, I think.”

  “Well?”

  Why hadn’t she thought of that? These raging hormones were making her crazy.

  “He probably went down to get him out, help get him out, whatever they do down there. Lost track of the time.”

  “Diz never loses track of the time. What if he got Jane’s father out, and then they all went out somewhere to celebrate, and then her father left them together . . . ?”

  “What if he was snatched by invading space creatures and dissected alive in the name of intergalactic research?”

  “I don’t want to kid about it.”

  “I don’t want to play ‘what if.’ He’s probably just hung up. It happens.”

  They sat for a long moment. “It’s just he’s been so unhappy lately, like he’s lost.”

  Moses cricked his back, got up slowly and crossed over to the mantel. He rearranged the herd of elephants, something he did differently with every visit. “You know, Frannie, I just don’t think anybody’s ever prepared us, guys like me and Diz, for how tough real life is.” He tried to make a semi-joke of it, but he was serious, and she knew it.

  “Life with me isn’t tough, Moses.”

  “I’m not saying with you. I’m saying, you know, life in general.”

  She got up and moved some elephants back the way they’d been. “You’re just getting old, brother.”

  Moses grabbed her gently and pulled at her hair. He was a year older than Hardy. He had raised his sister from the time she was eight. Of the ten things he cared about most in the world, he liked to say that eight of them were Frannie. The other two were closely guarded secrets.

  Facing the bay window, Moses saw the police car pull up in front. “Here he is, anyway,” he said. “See? He must’ve been doing something with the cops.”

  41

  There was fog everywhere—in his head, out the bedroom window.

  “I don’t deserve this.” Frannie had been up awhile, had taken a shower and gotten dressed. She sat across the room, by the door to the nursery, in her rocking chair. “I am very sad that this happened, but it wouldn’t have if you’d come home.”

  “Frannie . . .”

  She stopped him, pressing on. She wasn’t crying but her cheeks were wet. “I know this is a hard time for you, although I’m not sure why. And you don’t have to try and tell me. But I don’t deserve you treating me this way. Not calling, letting me sit and worry all night. I won’t have it in my life.”

  Hardy had a walnut-sized lump over his hairline. His left ear was raw and there was a gash in the scalp above it. They must have kicked him when he was down—his ribs jabbed at him. His headache was mammoth, his tongue bitten in several places. He still tasted blood.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Of course you’re sorry. So am I. Who wouldn’t be sorry? What do you want, Dismas? What do you want? If you don’t want me, I’m out of here, babies and all. I mean it.”

  He didn’t doubt her. Frannie wasn’t a poker player and this wasn’t a bluff.

  “I do want you,” he said. He saw her take a breath. A miracle, he thought, she still wanted him. She was as mad as he’d ever seen her, but at least it wasn’t over between them. “I know I’ve been a shit. I can’t tell you the things—”

  She held up a hand. “No litany. I just don’t want to live miserable. I don’t want that for any of us. This family doesn’t deserve it. Including you.”

  Hardy held his head in his hands. “So why do I feel like that’s exactly what I do deserve?”

  “I don’t know. You’ve somehow let those idiots make you feel they’re better than you are, which is ridiculous. What’s so hot about them? What have they done? Why does it matter what they think of you?”

  “Okay, but what if they’re right? They might be right—”

  “Damn it, Dismas. They’re not right. You’re not a loser. Why? Because I’m smart and I wouldn’t have married a loser. Don’t let them do this to you—to me. If you do they will have won.”

  Why couldn’t she see it? He’d been going around proving it for a couple of months. “You have to admit, Frannie, I’m not exactly on a winning streak.”

  Her eyes flashed now. “Thanks a lot. What am I? What’s this house and the Beck?” She gestured down to her stomach. “What’s this new guy, anyway? Doesn’t this count as winning something?”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  “Well, then,” she slammed a tiny fist hard into her leg and raised her voice. “Goddamn it! Don’t say it then.” She stood up, turned into the nursery. The rocking chair creaked on the hardwood. After a while he heard her talking to Rebecca. “It’s okay, it’s not you, sweetie. Back to sleep, now.”

  Hardy, sore and nauseous, forced himself out of bed, hurting everywhere. He stood by the nursery door, stopped the creaking rocker with his foot.

  She turned around. “Look,” she said, “whatever it is, just put it behind you. Y
ou can’t undo it. Let’s just move on, okay? We’ve got a good life here. But you’ve got to respect me. And you’ve got to respect you. End of sermon.”

  She crossed the room to him, touched his arm lightly. “Go take another shower,” she said. “A hot one. I’ll make breakfast.”

  Hardy sat on the mega-hard bench in the gallery of Department 22, Marian Braun’s courtroom. Elizabeth Pullios in her power red-and-blue never gave him a glance from the prosecution table. Hardy recognized several well-dressed lawyers hanging around, probably sent over by David Freeman for Fowler to choose among—he guessed one of them would wind up representing Andy.

  Jane came and slid in beside him. “What happened to you?”

  Hardy was wearing a three-piece suit, white shirt, one of his best conservative ties. He’d gotten his shoes shined downstairs. He looked proper except for the bandage across the top of his forehead, the swelling around his eye.

  He told her it was a long story, Jane’s favorite kind, but didn’t get to go into it because the judge was coming in and they all rose.

  Braun had had chambers next to Andy Fowler for something like a decade. That she had been the presiding judge for the Superior Court—and so the recipient of the grand jury’s indictment—had been a matter of timing. Since Leo Chomorro had moved up to fill Andy Fowler’s seat upon his retirement, the duties of presiding judge were again being rotated. What was ominous was that Braun, who had known Andy well and might be considered to be one of his few allies, had accepted D.A. Chris Locke’s recommendation and decreed that there would be no bail.

  In the normal course of events, for a typical defendant, bail would not be set before arraignment in a murder case because the court wanted to guarantee at least one appearance, at the arraignment, of the accused.