John Lescroart - The First Law

"What is it, Fran? Do you hear me? Easy."

"I can't be easy!" she screamed. Then, "Dismas, you've got to come home."

"I will, but…"

"Please! Now!"

"Are you all right? Should I call nine one one?"

"No, but it's…" Her breathing came in ragged gasps. "Just get here."

"Okay, sure. I'm on my way, but what's…"

"I can't explain. You'll have to see. Oh God, I've got to call the school."

"The school? Why? Are the kids…?"

"I've got to call the school," she repeated, and hung up.

"Fran? Frannie?" He stared at the dead phone.

"What is it?" Glitsky asked.

"Not good," Hardy said. A muscle twitched at the side of his jaw. "Whatever it is, it's not good. She's calling the school." He turned to his friend. "Listen, Abe, I'm done here. I've got to go now." He hit the ignition. "I can drop you someplace on the way."

"No." Glitsky was already halfway out of the car. "You go."

The car peeled out in a spray of gravel.

Holiday was alone now in the Yerba Buena Motel at the corner of Van Ness and Lombard, not even three blocks from Michelle's house. She had come back home last night traumatized and panic-stricken. She was sure that the policemen that had been at his place had followed her home. They both had to get out of there right away. So they'd walked down here, a few blocks, and Michelle had checked them both in under her name.

And now she was gone. She had a deadline for a big article on bonzais for Sunset and she needed to do a ton of research. She told him he should just hang out here in the room and she'd be back mid-afternoon with some lunch. He called Hardy's office three times and redundantly left Michelle's cell phone number each time, but it appeared that his lawyer had taken the day off. The one time he ventured a look out the window, a black-and-white police car had been parked in the lot outside. The next time he looked, it had gone, but the anxiety hadn't.

This was getting bad, he knew. He was going to have to do something. He couldn't just sit here.

When the maid knocked, he let her in and went out across the street and into the convenience store on the corner. At least his picture wasn't on the front page of the newspapers out front today. He bought a quart of milk, a quart of apple juice, six apples, a Snickers candy bar and a copy of the Chronicle. When he got back, the maid had finished.

He drank the milk and ate an apple and the candy bar. He read the Chronicle, was pleased to note on page two that they still hadn't found him, although the search continued. He tried Hardy again, but he still wasn't in.

Finally, he took a clean towel from the bathroom and used it as a tablecloth on the bedside table. He took his gun from his jacket pocket, made sure there wasn't a bullet in the chamber, nor a clip in the handle. After wiping it clean with the towel, he tried the action, sighted down the barrel, squeezed off a succession of phantom rounds. To his surprise, he found that the clip had only four rounds in it, and he opened his box and squeezed in another three, so that it was fully loaded. He worked the action to chamber a round, then dropped the clip and put another bullet in its place.

Finally, he jammed the clip into the weapon.

Loaded for bear.

Thieu didn't get much sleep, but he wasn't accustomed to more than five hours anyway, so it didn't bother him. After he and Faro had finished their dusting at Holiday's, he decided on his own that Dismas Hardy's strategy had if not a flaw, at least a difficulty. Thieu still had to find a way that he could plausibly inject himself into a discussion with Sephia and Rez about their possible presence at Holiday's duplex. That wasn't his case. On the other hand, he had been the responding inspector to the Terry/Wills scene. Any concerns he had about the inviolability of that scene would be completely appropriate.

So at a little before two, he appeared at the Diamond Center and ten minutes later found himself in a small anteroom off the showroom floor, explaining about his problem to the private security guards Sephia and Rez. "So the basic security of the scene is still my responsibility," he lied, "and I know both you guys and"-he looked down at his pad- "and Roy Panos have been helping out Inspectors Cuneo and Russell, isn't that right?"

"Some," Sephia replied. "Mostly that's been Roy, though."

"Yeah. I already got him." Thieu passed over Roy quickly. He didn't want them to ask what he meant by saying he "got" him. "But they mentioned you, too."

Sephia looked to Rez-a question. Then he shrugged. "We just talked to them a couple of times."

"But you never went with them. You never were at Terry's and Will's apartment?"

"Why would we?" Rez asked. "Did anybody say we were? Why don't you ask them, the other inspectors?"

Thieu played innocent. "They're out today interviewing witnesses and they asked me to clear this up. Look, we're trying to get the neighbors and other folks to tell us who had been in and out of there. It's a simple question. Have either of you guys ever been there before?"

Rez looked at Sephia. They both looked at Thieu. "No, of course not."

Now Thieu had them. He pulled out his tape recorder and they couldn't very well refuse to repeat the denial. Then, when he got to the end, he set the hook. "By the way," he said with the tape still running, "have either of you guys ever been to John Holiday's apartment?"

Glitsky wandered around downtown for over an hour, his mind jumping between Hardy's sudden emergency and the odyssey they'd witnessed with Sephia and Rez. He ended up at David's Deli, where he sat at the bar and ordered a pastrami sandwich and a Cel-Ray soda. He checked his watch. He was dying to know, but wanted to give Hardy time to work out the problem. Whatever it was, it seemed serious, but if he'd have wanted Glitsky's company or help, he would have asked in the car.

Again, he looked at his watch. If he bolted down his sandwich, he could get back to the Hall in time still to get in a half-day. He could just say he was feeling better and didn't want to be home if he wasn't really sick. It would be a good example for the troops.

"No," he said aloud. Suddenly he stood up, took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his seat to save his place. At the pay telephone, he called Treya at work, but a different woman answered at her personal number, and this brought a crease to his brow. "I'm trying to reach Treya Glitsky."

"I'm sorry, but she's not in. Is this Lieutenant Glitsky?"

"Yes it is."

"Treya's left for the day, Lieutenant. She left a message if you called that you should get home, or at least call, as fast as you could. And that you should be very careful."

"Call home?"

"That's what she said. She left here in a hurry. She said she'd try and page you."

He hung up, dug in his pocket for some coins as his pager went off, and punched in his home number. "Treya, it's me. Tell me Rachel's all right."

When Treya had her voice under this much control, she was dangerously angry. "She's fine, but I think you'd better come home."

"What is it?"

"I guess you'd say a threat. A threat to Rachel."

"What kind of threat?"

"Just a picture of her. A Polaroid, probably taken yesterday, from what Rita and she were wearing. Rita's holding her on the steps. Somebody circled Rachel in red."

Suddenly Glitsky understood the urgency of Hardy's problem, as well as Frannie's panic. She, too, had gotten a recent Polaroid of her children. The message was unequivocal, its meaning clear. We know where your children are. We can get to them anytime we want. Back off or they die.

A fingerprint search is nearly always run first by a computer against a local database of known criminals. In this case, since Thieu had some specific people in mind, he'd asked Faro to hand check the prints they'd lifted from Holiday's and Terry/Wills's places directly against Rez, Panos and Sephia.