The First Law

by John T Lescroart

  They might not know exactly what it was, but they understood that something truly bad was happening. Uncle Moses and Aunt Susan had been here until late last night, Rebecca and Vincent banished with their younger cousins to the back of the house while the adults drank and argued.

  This morning, their father and mother had barely spoken—were they getting divorced? Why was someone trying to hurt Dad? Were they actually trying to kill him? What were they going to do about that? What was Dad going to do?

  He was trying to find who it was, wasn't he? Get them arrested? What were the police doing? Were they in danger?

  Hardy found it difficult to finesse these questions, particularly since Frannie wasn't helping much. She was still mad at the situation, mostly at her brother, true, but beyond that she'd been dealing with the kids' blossoming reaction to all this since six o'clock this morning, by which time her hungover husband was already long gone for work. Tears and fears. What was going to happen to them? What if Dad died? What was this all about?

  "I don't want to live like this," Frannie said. "I don't know how these people have done this to us." They were keeping their voices abnormally low so that Vincent and Rebecca, doing their homework in the rooms directly behind the kitchen, would not have more cause to worry. To Hardy, the tension in the house twanged with every sound.

  He crossed the kitchen and put his arms around his wife.

  She leaned up against him. "I don't know what to do," she said. "I just feel so helpless."

  "That's what Abe and Treya are coming over for," he said. "We'll come up with some plan, the four of us."

  "But I don't understand why the police, or Clarence Jackman for that matter, why they don't believe you in the first place. That's the part that's making me crazy. You didn't do anything wrong."

  "That's funny. John Holiday seems to think I started the whole thing. Me and David." At Frannie's look of disbelief, he explained. "Going after Panos."

  "Hello?" Frannie didn't want to hear this nonsense.

  "You've got over a dozen clients he's harmed one way or another. That's not you starting it."

  "I tried to make that same point myself. Evidently Mr. Panos can do whatever he wants, and if somebody like me calls him on it, I'm at fault."

  "John really said that?"

  "More or less."

  "That really makes me mad."

  "You must be a bad person, too. Anyway, I tried to explain that maybe I'm not a moral paragon, but what I'm doing is within the law, whereas everything Panos has done and is doing is against it. Call me delusional, but that's a big difference."

  "Did he get it? John?"

  "Not really. He's not much into right and wrong. He simply pointed out that I should have been prepared to handle this stuff before I started in on Panos to begin with."

  She moved back into his embrace. "It's like this bad dream where you're drowning and calling out the names of everybody who could save you on the shore right around you, but nobody hears."

  "I know," Hardy said. "I know." What else could he say? That's exactly what it was like. He and Frannie were having the same nightmare.

  Or maybe not exactly the same. She boosted herself up onto the kitchen counter, and she sat with her ankles crossed, her hands clasped between her legs, her head held low. "This has always been my biggest fear, you know that?

  That somebody was going to take all this law stuff personally and come after you. Or us. Me and the kids. And you always told me that that never happened. Except now it has."

  "I know." He rested his own weight against the opposite counter. "What do you want me to say? I never thought it would."

  "But now that it has ... maybe we should re-consider..."

  "What?"

  She raised her eyes. "Maybe everything, I guess."

  Hardy didn't like the sound of that at all. "Everything takes in a lot, Fran. You're not saying you and me, I hope."

  "Not specifically, no.... But the life we have. If it's not safe ..."

  "This is one moment, Fran. It's not our life. Our life has been good. It still is good."

  "But not living like this. If we lost the kids ..."

  Hardy stepped toward her. "That's not going to happen—"

  "Don't!" She snapped it out, stopping him. "Don't say it's not going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen. You've always told me that this wouldn't happen."

  Hardy backed off, took a breath. "So what are you saying? What do you want to do?"

  "I don't know!" Anger flashed in her eyes. Then, after a beat, with some measure of calm, "I don't know. Maybe we should just leave here. Start over someplace else, with you doing something else?"

  "And how do we do that exactly? What do we live on, for example?"

  "We'd find something."

  "Something that's going to support four of us, with two kids in college in a couple of years? I don't know how we're going to do that. And then what? Sell the house?"

  "We could."

  "Frannie. We can't." He approached again, but more cautiously. "Listen to me. I don't want something else. This is what I do. I'm trained in it and I'm good at it. I may even be doing some good from time to time."

  "But your life is threatening all of us, Dismas. Can't you see that?"

  He gathered what he felt to be the last of his reserve.

  He'd come to where she sat and he set his hands on either side of her hips. He felt that it would take all his strength to keep his voice modulated, and when he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. "Can't you see that what's at stake here is exactly that? The way we live, the way we want to live. Some crop of assholes comes in and threatens us, threatens that, what do you want me to do? What do you want us to do? Pack up and move? I don't believe it. Because then what?"

  "You're alive at least."

  "We're alive now. And we're where we belong. We're just scared."

  "And so we live with this fear?"

  "Sometimes, yes. Sometimes we have to. Hopefully not for too long." He brought a hand up and touched her cheek. "Look, Fran, I don't like it any more than you do, but you just can't let the bastards win. Sometimes they push you far enough and you've got to fight or else they'll take it all. They'll just take it because they can, because nobody will stop them. And that's wherever we move, whatever we do."

  25

  At a little before midnight, in her camouflage outfit and with her heart pounding against the wall of her chest, Michelle walked all the way up one side of Casa Street, crossed where it abutted on Marina Boulevard, then all the way back on the other. There were several mature trees sprouting from squares cut in the sidewalk, and these blocked some of the illumination from the streetlights. Still, she thought she could tell if a person, or even two, was sitting in any of the cars parked solidly against the curbs on both sides. She saw none.

  This time, she left the newspapers where they were and took the steps to the landing quietly, but two at a time. At the top, a sudden light-headedness came over her so strongly that she thought for a second that she would faint.

  Straining to hear any sound that would mean discovery, she could hear nothing except the beat of her heart throbbing in her ears. Unable to stop herself, she walked back down the stairs and peeked out for another look at the street.

  Back upstairs, she opened the screen door, wincing at the squeak, waiting another minute, listening. Then suddenly in a great hurry, she inserted the key, opened the door and closed it behind her.

  She stood in blackness, letting her eyes adjust. After a time, some faint illumination of the streetlights through the front windows seemed to create spectral shadows, and eventually these resolved into shapes and spaces, and she felt she could walk safely. The errand was simple enough—she was picking up some of his clothes, whatever bills might have accumulated, a checkbook and ATM card if she could find them in his rolltop.

  Michelle hadn't worried until she'd gotten to the front stoop, when suddenly the entire idea struck her as foolish beyond imagini
ng. Except now she was already here, inside.

  It was an older building and the hardwood floor creaked as she moved back down the hallway toward John's bedroom. She'd made the walk several times and had never noticed the sound before, but now the boards seemed to be screaming in agony at her light and cautious tread. What if the people downstairs woke up and called the police?

  She stopped, pinned to the wall, sweating now even in the chilled hall. She was not cut out for this kind of work. But there seemed nothing to do but continue, and the back half of the hallway was blessedly more quiet. If she walked faster...

  She had brought a small but powerful Maglite flashlight and a string shopping bag that could stretch to accommodate everything she needed, and she went right to his dresser—socks and underwear in the top drawer, a couple of shirts in the next one down, an extra pair of jeans, tightly rolled. Her bag was nearly full, but then she was almost done—just the checkbook and the mail.

  The rolltop did not budge at first. Nor at her second try.

  Straightening up, she took several deep breaths, took hold of the two handles. When she jerked at it sharply, the old wood released and the top flew up with a rattle and a crash.

  For a full minute, she didn't move, barely trusted herself to breathe. But there was no sound from below, from anywhere. Far in the distance, a siren wailed, but then stopped almost immediately. It wasn't about her.

  The checkbook with his ATM card was in the top middle drawer, where he'd told her she'd find it. Farther back, a picture frame, face down, stopped her completely. Carefully, she lay the flashlight on the desk and reached in, lifting it with both hands, setting it upright in front of her.

  It was, of course, Emma and Jolie. She should have known. Unable to tear her eyes from the image, by the flashlight's beam she studied the faces of John's lost loves.

  It was the furthest thing from a posed shot with say-cheese smiles and orchestrated effervescence. Perhaps because of that, she knew why this was the one he'd kept, the one he'd framed. It was a feeding moment, the baby in a high chair anticipating the bite, which judging from her clean face might be the first of that meal. The mom bringing a spoon toward her. Although she immediately recognized John in the infant's face, the mouth especially, the baby took after her mother even more. Particularly in this picture, where they wore the same expression, a kind of rapturous expectation. Both so vividly alive. Both so young.

  A noise, close by, shattered her revery. In her nerves and haste she reached both for the flashlight and the picture.

  The frame escaped her grasp in the now-sudden dark and it came down, the glass breaking with its unmistakable, sickening sound. In the aftermath, the silence was complete again.

  But, she thought, not quite as it had been before. Now, glued to the chair, shaking but immobile, she imagined someone else within hearing distance, listening as she was for another sound. She put her hand over her mouth to stop her own breathing, tried in vain to summon some saliva, to swallow.

  Someone was at the screen door, which creaked again.

  A second later, she heard a key turn, and the hallway light came on. A man's voice called out, "This is the police. I have a weapon drawn. Come out where I can see you."

  Michelle went to stand up, then thought better of it. "I'm in the bedroom, down to your left," she said. "My hands are over my head. I won't move until you say so."

  Like last time, there were two of them, but not the same two. The Asian man, the one who'd been holding the gun when he walked in, put the thing in its holster, then approached her with his wallet out and badge showing. After asking her to stand up, he introduced himself as Sergeant Inspector Paul Thieu of San Francisco homicide. He didn't waste any time at all. He patted her down quickly and thoroughly, then asked what she was doing here.

  She thought she'd go with the same basic story that had worked before. "I watch John's apartment when he's away."

  "You do, do you? Can I see some identification, please?"

  She fumbled in the breast pocket of her camo shirt and brought forth a wallet insert with her driver's license, which he took, examined carefully, and showed to his partner.

  The partner carried a briefcase. He was short, dark, well-dressed, with a soul patch under his lip. Returning the wallet insert to her, Thieu looked her up and down, seemed satisfied with something. "All right, let me ask you again.

  What are you doing here?"

  "I just told you, I ..."

  He was shaking his head no, patiently but with a determined look. He pointed to the string bag at her feet. "That bag is full of men's clothes and what looks from here like a checkbook. Which makes me believe that we've come upon you here in the act of burglary."

  "No! That's not it. Really." She implored each of the men in turn. "Look." She reached into her front pocket.

  "I have a key. The key John gave me. I didn't break in here. He's a friend of mine. I watch his stuff."

  "Clothes," Thieu said, pointing again.

  Thinking fast, she offered a hopeful face. "I wash them.

  He leaves them in the hamper. I was bringing them back."

  "In the dark? At one o'clock in the morning? You're one heck of a friend. Do you expect us to believe any of this?"

  "Well, he pays me, of course. Not much, but ..."

  "Do you know there's a warrant out for Mr. Holiday's arrest? For murder?"

  "I ... I know. I heard that. But that must be a mistake.

  John wouldn't hurt anybody."

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "No. You mean now?"

  Thieu turned to the other man. "Do you think I meant now, Len? Did you get that impression?"

  The other man nodded, shot her the straight line. "He means now."

  "No. I don't have any idea where he is. I mean, that's why I came here. I haven't heard from John in a few days, almost a week now." Suddenly, her eyes lit up. "Look, I came by here on Friday, too," she blurted. "When the other officers were here."

  "What other officers?"

  "The men with the search warrant. They had identification. A black guy and a white guy."

  "Cuneo and Russell," the other man said.

  "All right, and these inspectors talked to you?"

  "Same as you. Checked my ID. Everything."

  "And you were here, again, why?"

  "That day, the same as now, then picking up John's newspapers."

  "They're still down there, I notice."

  She shook her head. "Just the last three days. I was going to get them on the way out and throw them away."

  "And you told all this to Inspectors Cuneo and Russell?"

  "If those were their names."

  "And they just let you go back home?"

  Thieu was in a pickle.

  Earlier tonight, at the house of Glitsky's lawyer friend Hardy, Thieu had told the lieutenant that he'd come here with Faro. It seemed a reasonable risk. But it was turning out to be true what everybody said—that no good deed ever went unpunished.

  And that's what, in theory, this trip to Holiday's was intended to be, a good deed, albeit with elements of self-interest. Glitsky, Hardy and their wives had been truly distraught over this problem with Panos. Thieu hadn't seen Abe so angry in years and Treya—in Thieu's opinion a rock of sanity, patience and good humor—was if possible even madder.

  Thieu had come to Glitsky this morning with his problem.

  And this was, he supposed, why Abe was such a valuable friend and mentor. Coming here could be the solution for both of them, and for Hardy as well. Thieu got the feeling that Glitsky and Hardy had come to their decision after quite a lot of internal debate between them, and that neither was thrilled with deciding that their only viable option was to find evidence linking Sephia, Roy Panos and Rez to these murders. Clearly, they would both have preferred some kind of confrontation with these men, but in the end they were lawmen, and they'd do it according to the law.

  Finally, Hardy suggested that Thieu come here with Len Faro
and dust the place for fingerprints. The CSI team had already done the places where they'd discovered the incriminating evidence from Silverman's. Photographed the stuff in place, dusted the actual articles for prints where possible. But they hadn't done a general sweep of the entire duplex unit—dishes in the sink, doorknobs, bathroom fixtures.

  The other three suspects had never been at Holiday's house and Glitsky thought that Thieu ought to be able to get some kind of statement to that effect. Even a verbal admission might do the trick, though written or taped would be better. Once they had that, if they found fingerprints of any of the suspects at Holiday's home, the question of where the planted evidence had come from was going to drive the investigation either to one of the true conspirators' doors, or to Wade Panos.

  The only wrinkle from Thieu's perspective was the imperative to keep himself out of it. The problem as well as the source of his pique was that he wasn't assigned to any of the murders that came in the wake of Sam Silverman.

  So what excuse could Thieu plausibly invent for why he had to go to Holiday's duplex in the dead of night and dust for fingerprints?

  He had to give it to these defense lawyers. They were a devious group and Hardy clearly belonged among them.

  Thieu simply wouldn't mention it until he had the results.

  As far as Lennard Faro was concerned, Thieu was doing a routine favor for his two homicide colleagues Cuneo and Russell, just being thorough with housekeeping at the home of a murder suspect. The print lifts would go to the lab—Faro would neither know nor care what they were about, and would never ask. After the results came in, if the fingerprints of Sephia and/or Panos and/or Rez came in, then having at least established the Panos connection to the case, Thieu could come to Gerson and, man to man, admit to his earlier reservations about the evidence and the interpretations of Cuneo and Russell.