The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  “Thanks,” he told her. He ducked under the bar, gave McGuire a half-salute and called down that he was getting his own drinks, Moses shouldn’t worry about him.

  When Hardy got back with the drinks, Farrell nudged Sam and said, “Tell him.”

  “Tell me what?” Hardy said.

  Sam sampled her Scotch, nodded appreciatively. “I don’t know how it came up,” she began.

  “At dinner,” Farrell said. “I started telling you about this situation with Amy.”

  “That’s it.” She came back to Hardy. “Well, the point is he mentioned this boy Andrew Bartlett and I said I knew a little about it. I’d been following it in the papers. I was interested because back when I was young and foolish, I used to hang out sometimes with Linda.” At Hardy’s uncomprehending glance, she added, “His mother.”

  “What do you mean, hang out?”

  A shrug. “Just that. Go to bars, meet guys. This was before I met my true love here, of course. But if you wanted to pretty much guarantee you’d get lucky of a given night, you wanted to hang with Linda if you could. She could materialize men out of a vacuum. You’re thinking ‘so what?’ Aren’t you?”

  In fact, that’s what Hardy was thinking. Sam could make almost any story listenable. But the wild child Linda Bartlett was now the married Linda North, and other than the fact that San Francisco continued to be a small and self-referential little world, there wasn’t anything particularly fascinating about the fact that she’d hung out and picked up men with Sam Duncan when both of them had been younger. But Hardy said, “Go on.”

  “Well, since it’s the law and by definition must be endlessly enthralling, I say to my darling here, ‘I’m not surprised the little kid didn’t turn out right. His dad ran off and his mother didn’t give him the time of day.’ ”

  “So Andrew was around when you and Linda were hanging out?”

  “He was around in the sense that he was alive. He must have been three or so about this time. But Linda would dump him with anyone at the drop of a hat. I even kept him with me for a couple of weekends when she went away with somebody. He was the cutest little guy, if you like three-year-olds, which, you know, are not generally my favorite. But even given that, this was a woman who shouldn’t ever have become a mother. The boy was nothing but inconvenient to her. She was going to have her fun and all he did was get in the way.”

  Sam drank more of her Scotch. “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I stopped hanging out with her. It just became obvious, the kind of person she was. I like to think I’m as shallow as anybody—it’s why Wes loves me, after all—but she just wasn’t going to be involved with her own son, and that was that. After a while it got so I couldn’t stand to see it.”

  Farrell jumped in. “The reason this might be important to you, Diz—”

  “Hey!” Sam hit him on the arm. “It’s my story, all right? I understood your point at dinner. I’m getting to it.”

  “I’m listening,” Hardy said.

  “Thank you. The point,” she shot a glare at Farrell, “being that the boy really has had a difficult life, especially in his early years. So in spite of the pampered rich boy he might seem to be, he was essentially an abandoned kid, raised, if you want to call it that, by an emotionally removed if not outright abusive mother.”

  “She abused him, you think?”

  “I don’t know if she actively abused him, like beat him or anything like that, but I guarantee you he’s deeply scarred. And, finally, the point is . . .”

  “Ahh,” Farrell said, “the point.”

  “. . . is that in many jurisdictions, but especially in San Francisco, the wise defense attorney, such as my esteemed roommate here, will take every opportunity to present his criminal client as the victim of something, childhood abuse being perhaps the all-time favorite.”

  “It is a good one,” Hardy said.

  “And Andrew is legitimately in that club.”

  “If you can get it into the record,” Farrell said. “It may not get him off, but it sure as hell couldn’t hurt in sentencing.”

  “No,” Hardy said. “I don’t imagine it could.”

  17

  We’ve got a problem.”

  At his desk, Hardy motioned Wu in. She’d taken some care dressing and making up this morning. She often did, so this wasn’t unusual in itself. But the two-piece pin-striped dark blue business suit she wore was such a far cry from the way she’d looked in his daughter’s bathrobe, nursing the mother of all hangovers, that Hardy blinked at the transformation. He’d been listening again to the tape he’d made at Juan Salarco’s—something about it bothering him—and now he removed his headphones, gave Wu his attention. “Hit me,” he said.

  “He’s a writer.”

  “Who is? Andrew?”

  She nodded. “On his computer. They delivered more discovery here yesterday while I was out. This disk,” she held it up, “is not good. You want to see?”

  “It would make my day.” He took the disk from her and slipped it into his computer.

  “ ‘Perfect Killer Dot One,’ ” she said.

  “Love the name.”

  Hardy’s fingers moved over the keyboard. Wu came around behind him as the document appeared on the screen. Quiet and intent, together they read Andrew’s short story about a young man filled with jealous rage who kills his girlfriend and his English teacher. For over ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the tick of the computer’s cursor as Hardy scrolled through the document.

  When they got to the end, Hardy found his heart pounding. He had also broken a sweat. He pushed his chair back from the computer, stood and went over to open one of his windows, get some air. After a minute, he turned to Wu. “I’d better go meet the client.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Wu asked. They were driving out to the YGC in Hardy’s car, the top down. “Do I come across as some kind of monster?”

  “Not at all.” Hardy didn’t know exactly what to say. He looked over at her. The light changed and he pulled out. “Why do you ask? Did somebody say that?”

  “More or less. That I didn’t feel anything. That there wasn’t anybody real inside of me.”

  “Who said that? Somebody in the firm?”

  “No. A colleague.”

  “Well, whoever it was can ask me. The other night, talking about your dad, that was real enough.”

  “But I was drunk then, with my guard down.”

  “I’ve done research on that exact topic. It still counts.”

  “I don’t know.” She turned in her seat. “But I’m thinking if that’s all people can see in me, then maybe that’s all my dad saw, too.”

  Hardy kept it low-key. “Or maybe it wasn’t you at all. Maybe your dad just wasn’t able to show what he felt.”

  “No, he really didn’t approve of me. Or like me very much.”

  “Or maybe the idea of showing you terrified him, so he was extra-tough so you wouldn’t ever find out and take advantage and hurt him.” Trying to lighten it up, he added, “And if that’s the case, you better watch out. It’s genetic, that kind of thing.” Hardy flashed a quick look at her.

  Abruptly, Wu had turned straight ahead in her seat, her eyes on the road.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Her lips tight, her jaw set, she nodded. But said nothing.

  Throughout all of his schooling at the best institutions in San Francisco, Andrew had been inculcated into the sensitive, educated modern child’s nutritional paradigm of healthy eating. Sutro had both a juice and a salad bar, and that’s where, for a mere $4.45, he bought his lunch every day. Over the years, like most of his classmates who’d been forced to witness the brutal slaughtering of some food animal on videotape in school, he had come to believe that humans shouldn’t eat meat. A few days of real hunger after his arrest, though, had conquered his qualms. Besides that, the YGC vegetarian alternative meal was total slop.

  Wu didn’t think it was the food, though, that accounted for his
pallor and lethargy today. He’d shaved, showered, and combed his hair, but in the jail outfit—blue denims, gray sweatshirt—he showed no sign that yesterday afternoon’s depression had lifted at all. If anything, it seemed worse.

  He greeted Hardy with a bored and sullen silence. He only shook, no grip, after a pause long enough for Hardy nearly to withdraw his own offered hand. Wu started to explain that Hardy was here because he had more experience with murder cases and . . .

  “You said that yesterday. So we’re going to adult trial?”

  “Maybe not,” Wu said. “We’re hoping that this hearing . . .”

  But he cut her off again. “No you’re not. Yesterday you said that was hopeless. They get one of the criteria, it’s over, right?”

  Andrew had stuffed himself into the old school desk. Wu sat at the table. Hardy was standing in the corner, leaning against one of the walls, arms crossed. He spoke matter-of-factly. “You can always go back and admit the petition. I’ll bet you I could talk Johnson into accepting that if you wanted to change your mind. You want to do that?”

  Andrew kept his eyes on the table in front of him. “That’s eight years automatic.”

  “That’s right,” Hardy said.

  He looked up. “I didn’t do this.”

  “Well, then,” Hardy said, “you don’t want to do those eight years, do you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Which, like it or not,” Hardy said, “leaves us with an adult trial, unless we can win this hearing next Tuesday.”

  He pointed to Wu. “She says we can’t do that.”

  “We’ve got some problems,” Hardy admitted, “but we’ve also got some strategies. To make them work, though, we’re going to need your help. If you think it’s even worth it to try.”

  Andrew shrugged.

  Hardy came forward, his voice hardening up, pressing him a little. “You do? You don’t? I’m not reading your signals very clearly. You want to try using some words?”

  It was clear that Andrew hadn’t had too many people talk to him so harshly. “All right,” he said finally. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Let’s start by you telling me about the gun,” Hardy said.

  “What about it?”

  “I’m curious why you brought it to your rehearsal that night.”

  Andrew didn’t have to think about it. “It was just in my backpack. I’d been carrying it around for a few weeks.”

  “But you took it out that night. At Mr. Mooney’s. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So how did that happen?”

  He shrugged. “It was a prop, that’s all. We were doing Virginia Woolf, you know. That was the play. And Mike—Mooney—he thought it might add to the tension if we had a gun on stage. It’s not really in the script, but he just wanted to see how it would feel.”

  “So he asked you to bring a gun to rehearsal?”

  “No. I had it with me anyway, so I brought it up. It was my idea. I thought it might be cool.”

  Hardy thought this would be a good time to shake things up. He forced an amused little chuckle, walked up to the table, looked down at Wu. “The boy’s good, Amy,” he said. “This is some brilliant delivery. I can see where he got the lead in the play.”

  “What are you talking about?” Andrew asked.

  Hardy kept his tone easy. “I’m talking about acting, Andrew. What else?”

  “I’m not acting. This is what happened.” A pause. “Really.”

  Hardy nodded, chuckled again, talked to Amy. “Damn,” Hardy said. “Impressive. I mean it. I’d be pretty well swayed if I were on a jury.”

  “Me, too,” Wu said. “We put him on the stand, he flies.”

  Hardy looked down at him. “It’s always a big decision whether or not to put a defendant on the stand himself. But we get a world-class performer like yourself, it’s a real bonus.”

  “Why are you saying this? I’m not performing. I’m telling you the truth.”

  Again, Hardy spoke directly to Wu. “And the award goes to . . .”

  “I’m telling the truth, goddamn it! What are you saying?”

  Hardy didn’t rise to the challenge. Retreating to his neutral corner, he leaned against the wall again, crossed his arms. “You tell him, Amy.”

  She took the cue. “Andrew,” she said. “Andrew, look at me.”

  He dragged his pained expression back down to the table.

  “Why Mr. Hardy is skeptical is that in ‘Perfect Killer,’ you tell that same story as the—”

  Andrew jumped as if he’d been stung. “How do you know about that? I never . . .” He shot a look to the corner, where Hardy was the picture of nonchalance. Nothing there. He came back to Wu. “I never even printed that out.”

  “No,” Wu said. “I don’t suppose you would have. But it was still on the disk.”

  Hardy spoke up. “It’s pretty standard procedure now, Andrew. The police get a search warrant and dump your computer files, read your e-mail. That’s the one thing I’d criticize about your story. The writing was good. It reminded me a little of Holden Caulfield, but you hadn’t done your research on the latest tech stuff. Didn’t you know they’d served a warrant at your house? Didn’t it occur to you that they’d look for everything they could find?”

  Andrew slumped at his desk. His arms hung straight down, his head bowed. They let him live with his new reality for a minute or more, a very long time under those circumstances. Finally, he sighed and raised his head. “Look,” he said, “I’m not acting. I’m telling you guys the truth. What I made up was that story. I had my guy, my character—”

  “Trevor,” Wu said.

  “Right, Trevor. I had Trevor—”

  Hardy cut in. “Andrew,” he said. “That’s the most incriminating document I’ve ever read and I’ve been in this game a long time. No judge in the world is going to let you off if he gets a look at that, which he will. How many other stories like that are in your computer?”

  “None just like that.”

  “Thank God,” Wu said. “What in the world were you thinking, Andrew?”

  Unbowed, he snapped back. “I was thinking about writing a story. You know, fiction?”

  “We know all about fiction,” Hardy said. He hadn’t moved from his spot in the corner by the door. “But this just . . . Well, it isn’t fiction. I flat don’t believe it.”

  “You can believe what you want. Haven’t you ever read Crime and Punishment? Or John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure?”

  “I’ve read them both,” Wu said. “What about them?”

  “Well, I had just read Debt to Pleasure earlier in the year, when I was starting to have some problems with Laura.” His eyes went back and forth between his attorneys. “When we first started rehearsing with Mike, she . . . well, like Julie in the story, she was just all impressed with him, that she’d gotten the part, all that. It got to me. We actually broke up about it.”

  “That wasn’t in the story,” Hardy said. “The breakup.”

  “No,” Andrew said. “That’s because I made up the story. Have I already mentioned that? I thought I had.”

  Hardy’s mouth grinned, but his eyes didn’t. “I don’t know who convinced you that sarcasm was a powerful debating tool, Andrew. But whoever it was didn’t do you a service. I understand that you made up your story. It’s not that tough a concept to grasp. But you have to admit that there’s a lot of it that seems pretty closely based on your own experience. Now, do you want to tell us about that, or not?”

  Andrew tried stewing for a moment. He turned to Wu, who might show some sympathy, for support, but she stonewalled him. At last, he spoke. “When I wrote it, I was jealous of Mike with Laura. I was going for a weird-guy feel like Lanchester did.”

  “You got that,” Wu said. She turned to Hardy. “The Debt to Pleasure again.”

  Hardy deadpanned. “I’ve got to read it.”

  “In the end,” Andrew said, “that’s why I didn’t send out
the story anyplace. It was too derivative. I mean, a really really bright guy who’s basically insane. It’s been done a million times now. Plus, I don’t think the ending worked really well. I wanted Trevor to find a really unique way to commit these murders, but in the end, I fell back on the gun.”

  Hardy had to fight a disorienting sense of surrealism. Here’s a client up for murder and what he wants to discuss are plot points in a story that might hang him. “Have you published before?” he asked.

  “No. But I’ve sent out a bunch. I did get a nice note back from McSweeney’s on one of them, not a straight rejection.”

  “I’m happy for you.” Hardy finally moved up to the table, pulled around a chair and sat in it. “Listen, Andrew, whether or not you made this up, we’ve got to work on some kind of spin for this story. You’ve got to see that it casts you in the worst possible light.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Andrew said.

  “No, it’s peachy,” Hardy said. “But I’m not talking about its literary quality. I’m talking about the events and motive around these two murders that have actually taken place and that you’re charged with committing and that you pretty much exactly mirrored in the story you wrote two months earlier. Two murders—your teacher and your girlfriend. Your dad’s gun. Even down to your alibi.”

  “Don’t forget my favorite moment,” Amy said. She’d printed the thing out at the office, and now had found the page, and read aloud. “Talking about the gun now. Here’s your narrator. But what if I get rid of it after? Then, even if they can recover the slugs, they won’t be able to compare the ballistics marks. I double-check and make sure the gun isn’t made in Israel, where they shoot their guns before they sell them. Then the ballistic readouts are computerized and matched with the weapon’s buyer, so even if the gun itself is unavailable, they can identify its owner.”

  “That’s true,” Andrew objected. “That’s what they do. I found it in my research.”