John Lescroart - The First Law

Hardy had changed out of the Kevlar in the truck and asked McGuire, on his way to Ghirardelli Square and the Municipal Pier where he was going to ditch the guns and, if he could, the vests, to drop him back at Sutter Street. He had come in through the garage, up the inside elevator all the way to the third floor. In his office, he changed into the business suit he kept hanging in his closet. Then-it had been just three o'clock-he'd walked back by the staircase into the lobby, carrying his old clothes, hiking boots and all, in a laundry bag that he'd dropped at St. Vincent de Paul on the way home. In the lobby, he'd said hello to Phyllis and shared a moment of commiseration. After that, he looked in on Norma and said he wasn't able to concentrate at all after the news about David. He been trying for a couple of hours to do some simple admin stuff but he really couldn't work at all and was going home. Maybe she should do the same. Tomorrow they could start picking up the pieces if they could. She'd gotten up and hugged him again. He'd nearly passed out from the pain where the bullet had smashed into the vest, but she probably thought the tears were for Freeman. And in some sense, maybe they were.

"She was positive. I was there all day. She hoped that was the right thing to say."

"What did you tell her?"

"That it was the truth. How could it be wrong?"

Overtime was being had by all.

At 10:30, Lanier was out at his desk in the detail. He might have just been named the provisional and nominal head of the unit, but he wasn't going into Gerson's office for a good long while, even if it got announced officially. Cuneo and Russell both wore hangdog looks as they sat there, and Lanier couldn't say he blamed them. Something about their investigations must have gotten seriously out of whack early on, and now in the wake of today's slaughter they both seemed lost and confused.

Cuneo had it all going tonight, playing the whole invisible drum kit-snare and kick drum, riding the high hat, the occasional crash of cymbal. Lanier wondered what track he was using in his brain, because part of him obviously had no idea that any of this percussion was going on. "What I can't figure out is why Thieu would have even thought to look at Holiday's. I mean, what did he know that we didn't know?"

"The question is, Dan, what do we know now?"

"About what?"

"About the fingerprints at Holiday's house, for example. What do they mean? Were these guys friends, or what?"

"They played poker together at Silverman's," Cuneo said. "But otherwise, did they hang out together? No, I'd say not."

"But they'd both been to Holiday's place."

"I doubt it." Cuneo was upping the tempo. "No. I can't see that."

"Wait a minute, Dan, wait a minute," Lanier said. "I wasn't asking if they'd been to Holiday's. We know they went there. The prints were there. The question is why."

"Maybe they played poker there, too, once or twice."

"But why, if they weren't friends?" Lanier focused on each of them in turn. "I don't know anything more than you do, okay? In fact, I know way less on these cases. I'm asking you both to think why these fingerprints might have been enough to get Paul killed, if somebody killed him. What they might mean."

Blanks, until Cuneo suddenly stopped all his frenetic movement. It was like a vacuum in the room. When he first spoke, it was almost inaudible.

"What's that, Dan?" Lanier asked.

Cuneo looked up, let out a long sigh. "It means they did plant the evidence," he said. "It's like Mrs. Silverman thought… if they did plant…" He stopped again, stared across Lanier's desk.

"If they did plant what, Dan?" Marcel said.

"The evidence at Holiday's," Cuneo said. He gripped his temples and squeezed so that his ringers went white. "Man oh man oh man."

Michelle sat in the big chair by her picture window that afforded no view of the black night outside. The reading light glared next to her and reflected the room back at her, her own pitiful image in the glass of the window. She'd cocooned herself into a comforter that offered little comfort, huddled into as small a position as she could get herself. Next to her on the light table there was an untouched glass of white wine and an envelope. In her hand, she held what had been the contents of the envelope, two pages of her own personal stationery-no letterhead, no border, just five-by-seven heavy rag, not quite white, bits of pulp throughout.

She'd been sitting, empty now, unmoving, for the twenty minutes since she'd finished reading the letter for the second time, and now her eyes had cleared enough to read it yet again.

Dear Michelle: (she read)

As you know better than anyone, it's been my tendency to want to come across as the world's most easygoing guy. It keeps the expectations low, both mine for myself, and my friends' for me. I don't ever promise anything other than perhaps a good time in the here and now, and since I don't pretend to have any depth or seriousness, no one can be disappointed in me when I don't deliver, when I flake out, when I get drunk or loaded and do any one of the many stupid and embarrassing things that have cost me friends and self-esteem.

When I think back on the time that I was married to Emma, especially the few months after we had Jolie, I sometimes wonder what happened to the person I was then. Where suddenly for that short time it was okay to feel like things mattered.

Like everything mattered, in fact.

It was strange, but I found I actually wanted Em and Jolie to have expectations for me, to want the best out of me. When before I'd always run from that, telling myself that I was just a clown, deep as a dinner plate. Maybe also, though, because I was afraid that if I tried to be more, I'd fail. It's a true fact that if you don't try, you can never fail. Foolproof.

But a funny thing happened. I found out with my girls that the more I acknowledged how much I cared about them, the better my life became. I started trying all the time in a hundred different ways and stunned myself by succeeding. I was faithful, for example, and wanted to be. Suddenly I didn't need women on the side as a backup position if Em dumped me because I didn't deserve her. Or if she cheated on me. I just knew that wouldn't happen, ever. I believed in all of us, pathetic though that may sound. Some of my core bedrock had shifted and settled and now I could take down my guard and breathe. And enjoy.

I don't know what it was about my hardwiring that had made me fear commitment so much before that, but gradually the life I was living with them became the only thing I really wanted. Me and Em and Jolie. The whole world.

Which of course ended.

And then what a massively gullible fool I'd been, huh? To believe in all that? To think it could last? Talk about pathetic. Talk about stupid.

Well, none of that was ever going to happen to me again, ever. The goal was get a nice buzz, keep it going, risk your money and your job and everything else because then you really could fail completely. You could get to zero hope, rock bottom, which was pure freedom. And none of it mattered anyway, right? Take every single opportunity for physical pleasure and make sure it was purely physical, nothing more. Happiness was a moment and that was all it was. Any thought that a life could take on a shape and be fulfilling was out of the question.

So why am I writing this now?

Because something has shifted inside me again. Knowing you has changed me. Once and for all, I really feel as though I've laid those awful ghosts to rest. I don't know where you and I are going exactly, but I wanted you to know that suddenly I want you to have expectations of me; I want to find my best self, and be that person. I want to try and try and keep trying even if sometimes I do fail. It's all in the trying.