John Lescroart - The First Law

Susan tightened her arm around her sister-in-law. She could think of nothing to say.

Nat Glitsky's one-bedroom made Abe's duplex feel like the Taj Mahal by comparison. As the Hardys had done, Abe and Treya decided that they'd feel safer, for this night at least, somewhere other than their homes. They, too, waited until it had gotten dark. They, too, watched for following headlights on the way over, making sure there were none.

Now all the adults were in the postage-stamp living room while Rachel slept next to grandpa's bed. Abe sat hunched over, all knees and elbows, on the end of the coffee table. His face was set and expressionless, his eyes dark and forbidding. After much discussion with Treya and his father, he'd decided to call the station cops. Hearing who he was, they'd bumped it up to the station captain, who'd come over from his home, and the duty sergeant.

"All right." At this point, Hardy felt he'd take any sign of cooperation. "At least that's some action. What did they say?"

Glitsky shot him down. "Basically, they weren't too interested. Wasn't that your impression, Trey?"

"That might be overselling it," she said. Turning to Hardy. "They couldn't have cared less is more like it."

"And you showed 'em the picture? Told 'em the whole story?"

"Of course."

Hardy sat forward, using only the front two inches of a wooden chair Nat had brought in from the kitchen. "How could they not care? What's it going to take?"

"It's probably a prank," Treya said bitterly. "This kind of stuff happens all the time."

"All the time? They said that?"

"Not those exact words. They seemed to expect Abe to take it that way and were a little uncomfortable that he didn't."

"Even after I pointed out to them that I had been a cop for a while myself and really didn't run into something like this every day. Or even every year."

"What'd they say to that?"

"Nothing. They didn't care enough to argue. But more to the point," Glitsky added, "what would we like them to do? So I told them. Go rattle some cages. We know who it was."

"But let me guess. They said they'd do passing calls at the school and your house. More than that would need to come from downtown."

"You've been reading his mail," Treya said.

Nat, who'd been sitting, listening to all this at the end of the couch, suddenly piped in. "What I don't see is how they don't care. 'Nothin' happened,' they say. I go, 'Nothin'? Look at this picture. This is a threat on my granddaughter's life! Something like this happened to you, what would you do?" He threw up his hands. "They look at me like I'm an old man, like I got nothing left up here."

"It wasn't you, Dad," Abe said. He came back to Hardy. "And it wasn't even that they didn't believe me, which was kind of a relief after the past few days. It was just, 'Hey, we can send the picture down to the lab, but after that, what?' "

"Yeah, but my favorite part," Treya said, "is the captain starts telling us about dope-sellers in the projects, who threaten the families there. 'You don't let us do our thing here, you get in our way, we're going to kill you and your kids, get it?' "

"And this teaches us what?" Hardy asked.

Treya's mouth formed a kind of smile, though she wasn't amused. "The actual message got a little lost in the telling, I think. But we should realize people get threatened all the time."

Abe picked it up. "And we of all people ought to know that cops can't really prevent crime from happening. We can only clean up after it."

"Great. I'm thrilled to hear it," Hardy enthused. "So in the meanwhile, what do we-and by 'we,' I'm not talking society in general, I mean 'us'-what do we do?"

"I called Clarence," Treya said, "and the good news there is that I think he's come around to believing you both, finally. He's really worried about this."

"Good for him," Hardy snapped. "Better late than never. What's the bad news?"

"Same as usual," Glitsky said. "What's he supposed to do now? What can he do? He's not unsympathetic, but so what? He hopes whoever it is doesn't kill anybody."

"Me, too." Hardy's fuse was just about burned all the way down. "And it's not some unknown whoever. It's Panos."

"Wade?" Glitsky asked. "Or Roy? Or Sephia and Rez? Or somebody else on the payroll we don't even know about?"

Hardy knew what he was saying. He shook his head in frustration, finally raised his eyes. "I called Kroll, you know. Told him I was out of the lawsuit. It was over."

"What'd you say about Holiday?"

"Nothing. And he didn't ask. Why?"

"Because I'm not involved in your lawsuit, whatever some people might have thought. So if that was it, the lawsuit, there's no reason to threaten me." He took a long breath. "On the other hand, if either of us is still looking to get at the truth behind these murders and this finally gets homicide to rethink Holiday, who's that leave?" Glitsky nodded. "That's what they're warning us off. Both of us."

"Yeah, well, he's my client. What do they think I'm going to do, give him up?"

"I think it's crossed their minds you might."

Hardy's hard stare went around the room. "I can't do that."

"No one here is asking you to," Treya said, "but he's not Abe's client."

"What does that mean?"

Glitsky straightened his back. "I'm not trying to clear Holiday. I'm letting the law take its course from here on out."

Hardy snorted. "Our friend, the law."

"Sometimes it might be. I talked to Paul Thieu late this afternoon. I apologize. With all this madness"-he gestured around him-"I never told you. He went last night as we recommended and found some Sephia and Rez prints at Holiday's. Then he got a statement from them saying they'd never been there."

"Son of a bitch." Hardy pumped a fist. "I knew it! So he's off?"

Glitsky temporized. "Maybe. If Gerson does the right thing. It's possible. But the point is I told Paul that no matter what, I was out of it. No credit, no blame, no nothing. I'm done."

"If they've got Sephia and Rez at John's, we both are."

"I repeat," Glitsky said, "maybe. I'd hold off on the party until I got the official word. I'd feel better if I heard that these guys were already behind bars. In any case, even if they pull our guys in, they still might be a long way from dropping any charges against Holiday. I'd be tempted to keep a low profile if I were you."

Hardy left Nat's place at 10:30. He called Frannie from there and Susan, who was still awake, told him that his emotionally drained and exhausted wife was asleep on the fold-out. Hardy, no less depleted, was nonetheless wired and would not be able to sleep even if he had a truckload of valium on board. But a black and tan or two might do the trick. He told Susan he was stopping by to see her husband and might not be home until the bar closed. Nobody should worry. Things might be looking up.

When he got to the Shamrock, the forty or fifty patrons were kicking into the kind of manic mode he'd seen hundreds of times over the years. Suddenly it was the kind of night that developed out of nowhere when a critical mass of humanity encountered just the right cosmic mix of alcohol, noise, and sexual possibilities. The juke, which had been audible down around the corner on Tenth where Hardy had parked, blared out Toby Keith's "Wanna Talk About Me" at the absolute limit of its speakers. Some football, loud, on the two TV's. The four dartboards had games going; all the stools were taken at the bar. Chairs, couches, floor space, packed.

Hardy made his way through the crowd, nodding and talking to the many familiar faces, a steady line of patter going, since he knew most of the patrons at least by sight. The Shamrock was the oldest bar in the city, now going on 110, but it wasn't big. Side to side, the public area from the bar stools to the wall was maybe twelve feet. Back at the dartboards, it widened to eighteen or so. He worked his way through the mob to the back of the bar, then hung his coat on the rack and ducked under the opening.