John Lescroart - The First Law

"John Holiday, I know," Faro said. A nod. "The name only." He paused, knowing that his next words would be a bomb, decided he had to say them. "I was at his house a couple of nights ago. With Paul Thieu."

All heads snapped toward him. Russell and Cuneo exchanged a meaningful look. "What was he doing there?" Cuneo asked. "What were you doing there? "

"Holiday was our suspect." Russell, bitching about turf.

But Batiste cut them both off. "I don't give a damn about any of that. Sergeant, you're telling me Paul Thieu was in this, too?"

"It seems like he would have had to be somehow, sir. Doesn't it?"

"And killed himself over it?"

"That might not have been over this," Cuneo said. "It might have been something else."

"Or maybe he didn't even kill himself at all," Faro said. "Maybe somebody killed him."

"What for?" Russell snapped.

"I don't know. Shut him up?"

"About what?" Cuneo.

Faro shrugged. He didn't know. He motioned back toward the other bodies. "So who are the other two?"

Batiste provided the identifications. When he heard the names, Faro nodded. "Just yesterday, sir, Inspector Thieu had me check fingerprints we found at Holiday's house against these guys. They'd been there."

"Which means what?"

"I don't know, sir." He looked around. "Holiday and these men must have been into something together, though."

The deputy chief didn't like this turn of events at all, and it showed all over him. His eyes strafed the men knotted around him, went back to Gerson, over to Holiday's body, took in the whole scene. "What the hell's going on? Anybody got any idea?"

"Y'all hold the fort here," John Strout said. "I'm going to take a walk, see some other clients. Jimmy." The medical examiner moved back up the pier with one of the other crime scene inspectors.

After he'd gone, Cuneo and Russell shared another look, and Batiste caught it. "Let's hear it, boys. You even think you got anything at all, now'd be a good time to share."

Cuneo cleared his throat, took the lead. "Lincoln and I, we've been working a little with Roy Panos." He jerked a thumb. "The first body up there."

"What do you mean, working with him?" Batiste asked.

"He was an assistant patrol special…"

"Related to Wade?"

"Yes, sir. His brother. He became a source."

"For what?"

"First the Silverman murder. Then Matt Creed, the other Patrol Special…" The admission was costing Cuneo. He cleared his throat again. "… and the Tenderloin multiple."

Batiste crossed his arms. "You're telling me this man Panos was a source for what, four homicide investigations?"

Russell jumped to his partner's defense. "They were all related, sir."

"I would hope to smile. Okay, so where does Paul Thieu come in?"

Again, the glance between the homicide guys, but there was no hiding it, and Cuneo took it again. "He originally drew both Creed and the Tenderloin guys."

Batiste, trying to get it clear. "But you wound up with both of them."

"That's right." Cuneo nodded. "The lieutenant handed them off to us. There was a connection with both of them to Silverman, which was ours already. He thought it would be more efficient."

"But Thieu stuck with it anyway? Why would he do that?" Blank stares all around, and Batiste turned back to Faro. "Sergeant, I'd be interested in anything you'd like to contribute."

Faro tugged at his bug, the tuft of hair under his lower lip. "He had some questions, I guess."

"What kind of questions?"

"With the evidence at the Tenderloin scene."

"He told you that?"

"In vague terms only."

"But nothing specific?"

"Not really, sir, or if there was, he didn't share that information with me."

"So what did he tell you when you were going out to Holiday's? What was that about?"

"I told you. To lift prints." Faro turned to the inspectors. "He told me it was a favor for you guys."

"That's bullshit," Cuneo said. "We never sent anybody out there." He was angry and was making very little effort to hide it. If Batiste hadn't been there, he might have swung at Faro. "We would have made any request like that directly to CSI, Len, like we always do, and you know it. This really pisses me off," he added to no one in particular.

Batiste ignored him. "All right." He pointed at Cuneo and Russell. "Put that on your list, way up there, maybe first." Again, he surveyed the area all around. "So what the hell happened here? What got Barry out here? It had to be something with these Patrol Specials, wouldn't you think? How many of them are dead now? "

"Two," Russell said. "Roy Panos and Matt Creed."

But Cuneo couldn't let that go. "You might as well include Nick Sephia. He used to work for Panos, too. He's his nephew." He indicated the spot. "That's him in the doorway up there."

"Shit." Batiste blew out heavily. "Anybody call Wade yet? Where's Lanier?" He turned and called out. "Marcel!"

Lanier came trotting up from where Sephia had fallen. "Yes, sir?"

"You'd better get ahold of Wade Panos and get him over here ASAP. That's his brother Roy, and his nephew Nick. This has got to have something to do with him. We've got to find out what he knows."

"What are you thinking?" Lanier asked.

"I'm thinking somebody with Panos tried to broker some kind of a deal."

"Not with Holiday," Cuneo put in. "Panos and him don't get along."

"That's interesting," Batiste said. "I wonder where he was when this was going on. Well, we'll get to that. Meanwhile, Marcel, did I read somewhere you finally passed for lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, then congratulations, you're the point man on this." He gestured around. "All of it. The detail reports to you, you come to me. I know you'll thank me some day. Guys"-the deputy chief turned to Cuneo and Russell- "everything through Marcel, clear?" Batiste then turned around and looked down at the body of Barry Gerson. He went to a knee, shook his head with great sadness. "What the hell were you thinking, coming down here with no backup?"

Marcel Lanier had been a homicide inspector for twenty years, and during that time had formed some of the same conclusions about Wade Panos that Glitsky had reached. The last time Lanier had done anything even tangentially connected to the Patrol Special, he'd been trying to do a favor for both his new and old lieutenant, bridging the gap between them. That had backfired awkwardly.

Now he was coming to his interrogation of Wade Panos with a different, and mostly negative, set of preconceptions. Before he'd sent Cuneo and Russell off to the lab to check on Thieu's fingerprint question, Lanier had pressed the two inspectors for a brief recap of the events, and their interpretations of them, since Sam Silverman's death. The roles of both Roy and Wade Panos struck him as unusual, to say the least.

Lanier had been at Pier 70 for over three hours and hadn't been in a good mood when he'd arrived. By now, he was frozen to the bone, overwhelmed with his new and sudden responsibilities, sickened by all he'd seen. The media had, if anything, multiplied. They had set up camps at the pier, fighting for exclusive quotes and breaking bulletins. In the pools of artificial light from the department's portable lamps, all five bodies had been tagged, bagged and transported, but several teams of crime scene specialists were still doing their painstaking work up and down the pier.

Panos had arrived with his lawyer-his lawyer?-in time to see his brother and nephew packed into the coroner's van, and Lanier had asked them both, as a courtesy, if they could wait for a few minutes and have Wade answer a few questions, try to clear up some of the mystery here. He had managed to keep himself looking busy with the various teams-it wasn't terribly difficult-so that the few minutes could grow to a half hour.