John Lescroart - Betrayal

"That's me."

Hardy started to reach over the seat, but she opened the door on her own-bare tanned legs and sandals-and plopped herself in. Hardy had the rogue thought that it was lucky she was teaching fifth-graders-any further into adolescence and her boy students would probably riot.

"Where to?" Hardy put the car in gear, got moving. "Can I buy you lunch someplace?"

She shook her head. "I've only got one period off for lunch-forty-five minutes. Just away from here, anywhere. Wherever you find shade."

Out of the parking lot, he turned right and crested a hill, following the main road until it dipped into an area where the homes were surrounded with old oaks.

"You can turn anywhere in here," she said.

Hardy did as he was told, and parked at the curb on a shady street in an established neighborhood of large attractive homes set on small lots. As soon as he'd set the brake and turned the motor off, she turned toward him in her seat, her near leg tucked up under her. "Sorry to hustle you out of the lot back there," she said, "but people don't need to see me talking to another man outside the school. I'm already pretty much the fallen woman. I almost lost the job over it back during the trial."

"Over what? Having a boyfriend?"

"Having two boyfriends, Mr. Hardy. Not exactly at the same time, but close enough for some people."

"Who?"

"Suburban moms, Mr. Hardy. Never underestimate the power. Some of them really never liked me. I think I must have threatened them somehow, though I don't know how or why that would be." Hardy had a pretty good idea, but he said nothing. "Anyway, thank God the nuns supported me. I love the work. I love my kids. But you didn't drive down here to talk about me. What can I do for you? Is everything all right with Evan?"

This had been her first question to him on the phone this morning, too, as soon as she'd heard who he was. But this time the question prompted an unexpected one from him. "Have you not seen him recently?"

Clearly, the answer made her uncomfortable. "Two weeks."

"That's not so bad."

She shrugged. "It's not good. Not if he's the man you love, and he is. But he's already been in prison for two years, and in jail another year before the trial." She lowered her head, shook it slowly back and forth, let out a deep sigh. "It's a hard one, the whole thing."

"I can imagine."

"I mean," she went on, "if he stays in prison. I don't know what we're supposed to do. He won't marry me. I've offered that a hundred times. I think he's starting to lose hope. I don't know what he wants out of me anymore. Sometimes I'm not even sure what I want. I know I wanted him-I do want him-but I wanted a life with him. You know? Not this." Suddenly her eyes flashed. "But I'm not giving up on us. I'm not. Don't think that. It's just…it's so hard. It's so endless."

"I believe you," Hardy said.

She raised her eyes and looked over at Hardy. "Do you think you're going to have any luck? Do you think he's ever going to get out?"

"To be completely honest with you, I don't know. I don't want to give you any false hopes, but I'm starting to think we might have a prayer."

"Is that what was so urgent?"

Hardy nodded. Maybe he'd exaggerated about needing to see her right away, but here they were now, and he couldn't feel bad about it. He felt that things had begun to move quickly, and he didn't want to lose his momentum. "There's a good chance that the FBI talked to the Khalils and didn't let the prosecution know. If that's true, we've got an appealable issue."

"Well, I'm glad. But I don't know anything about that."

"No. I didn't think you did." Hardy hesitated for a moment. "I wanted to ask you a few questions about Ron Nolan."

She rubbed her hand across her forehead, brushed a hair away. "I knew it was going to have to come to that again someday."

"Why did you know that?"

"I don't know. He was such a mistake. I still don't know why…" Letting the thought hang until there was no other way to complete it. "I feel like the whole thing is my fault."

"How is that?"

"If I hadn't gone and told Evan about Ron tipping off the FBI. Ron knew I'd do that once he told me. He just played me. And then Evan went up to his place…"

"So you think Evan did kill him?"

"Well, I mean…I don't think he was himself at the time. But I guess…"

"You guess so?"

She shrugged again, then nodded. "I don't know what else could have happened."

"A lot else could have happened, Tara. Nobody seems to know what happened. So unless Evan told you something that didn't make the trial-"

"No! He didn't do that. He didn't remember."

"I believe him. You might be happier if you believed that too. But what I'm wondering is if Ron ever talked to you about his work with Allstrong? You went together for how long?"

"September to May. How long is that? Eight months? What do you want to know about his work?"

"Whatever you can tell me."

"Well, he liked it, it paid very well, he was gone a lot."

"Back and forth to Iraq?"

"Sometimes."

"Even though he was under suspicion for causing the blow-up at Masbah?"

"I never knew about that until Evan told me just before Ron and I broke up. But that really didn't worry Ron. Nothing worried Ron. I'm pretty sure he went over to Iraq at least three, maybe four times. To get paid in cash if nothing else."

"In cash?"

"Yes." She adjusted herself in the seat. "He showed me a wrapped-up brick of something like fifty thousand dollars in cash after one of his trips."

"What did he get that for?"

"I think it was just how he got his regular pay sometimes. That's what he told me."

"How did he get that back into the country?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you can't enter the country with that kind of money in cash. You've got to claim it at customs."

She shook her head. "No. Ron didn't have any problem with that. He always flew by military transport out of Travis. He knew all the pilots and the commanders and everything. It was just part of how Allstrong did business."

"Tara," Hardy asked, "didn't it ever occur to you that Ron brought those frag grenades over from Iraq the same way, and that he'd killed the Khalils with them?"

"Of course. I knew Evan hadn't done that anyway. But there wasn't really any proof that Ron had either. But then, he was such a liar. He lied about everything to me. And to Evan."

"Did you ever hear him mention anything about the Khalils?"

"No. Not really. Not until they were dead, anyway." She looked at Hardy in a pout of frustration. "I wish I knew what you were trying to get me to say. If it would help Evan, I'd say it. But I didn't know much about Ron's work at all."

"I'm not trying to get you to say anything, Tara. I'm trying to get a handle on Ron Nolan, on what was going on around him. See if that leads me anywhere on this appeal."

"Well, for a handle, I can help you there. He said he was a warrior."

"A warrior. What did he mean by that?"

"Oh, we talked about that a lot. I really didn't like it, or agree with him, but when he talked he could make it sound like it made perfect sense."

"What did, exactly?"

"That the world needed warriors, and the job of the warrior was to kill. And that's who he was, how he defined himself."

"As a killer?"

"A killer." She nodded. "And I'm sure he was. One time…well, no, never mind."

"What?"

She paused, then shrugged. "Well, it was one of our first dates…"

Glitsky was on the phone at his desk, talking to his closest connection in the FBI, Bureau Chief Bill Schuyler, with whom he'd had many previous, nearly amicable dealings. Now the tone didn't ring with cooperation and friendship.