John Lescroart - The Suspect

"She didn't even come in, Gina. She left after we had dinner."

"Okay. And Stuart? She may be the nicest woman in the world. That's not my point. My point is the reporters have now seen her. So she's in the story. And if there's any way she could get a bigger part in it, that will happen without either of you doing anything. So, for the last time, there's no bigger part for her in this, is there?"

Nothing.

"Stuart?"

He sighed into the receiver. "What I've told you is true. We've never been involved. We've never had sex. Okay, clear enough?" "Except that I hear a 'but.' "

Another pause. "Three years ago, when she was going through her divorce, Caryn suggested that I take her away from all the madness she was going through. So I took her up to the lake and we hiked around up there a while."

"How long?"

He hesitated. "Five days."

"Five days? You're in a loveless marriage and she's getting divorced. And nothing happened?" "We didn't have sex, if that's…"

"Of course that's what I'm saying. Don't go all Bill Clinton on me." "There's not. She would have… maybe she wanted to. Maybe I was tempted. I thought it was a good idea to cut off the last two days, and we came home early. I was married to her sister, for Christ's sake. We had a deal and I wasn't going to break it. And that's the truth."

"Swell. Who else knows you guys went up there? Who might tell?"

"Well, certainly her ex-husband, maybe some of her friends."

Gina's voice went flat. "So it's going to come out. And it'll be part of your motive."

"Except that nothing happened. And nothing is going to happen, I promise you. People can believe it or not."

"I'm not thinking about people in general, Stuart. I'm thinking about nineteen specific people on the grand jury. Or maybe twelve in a murder trial."

"I'll just tell them the truth."

"Stuart, you just told me the truth, and I'm not too sure it helped."

"Well, I don't know what else I can do. Did you hear what else I told those reporters tonight? Something else that was true?" "What's that?"

"That I'm willing to cooperate with whoever it takes, even the police, to find who killed Caryn. In fact, just between you and me, maybe I'm going to try to find out myself."

"Not a good idea. This is why we have police."

"Except at the moment they think I did it."

"No, they're just saying you're a person-"

"A person of interest. I know, I know. And that means I'm the prime suspect as soon as they find something they can use as evidence. And then I'm in jail. I don't want to go to jail, even for a day."

"No. You're right there. You don't."

"Well, then, what's my option? Sit around and wait until Juhle piles up enough innuendo and hearsay to bring charges against me? Listen, Gina, if he's not looking for somebody else, then he's not looking for whoever did this, because I didn't. Have I mentioned that before?"

"A couple of times, I believe. And that brings us to some good news at last."

"What's that?"

"Your lawyer is starting to believe you."

The Travelodge did not have room service, so Stuart let his daughter sleep and went out to pick up breakfast and a newspaper. So at about 8:15, Stuart and Kymberly were drinking their Starbucks and eating croissants at the coffee table in his hotel room. His daughter turned a page of the paper, leaned forward over it for a minute, then looked up. "You've made USA Today, Dad. 'Writer Denies Implication in Doctor Wife's Death.' Oh, God. Nationwide." "Can I see?"

She passed the pages over, and he scanned the article quickly. It wasn't long, maybe two hundred words in the Regional News section under San Francisco. Before he had a chance for any kind of a comment, the telephone on the side table next to the couch rang once and Stuart grabbed it. "Hello. Yes, speaking." But after that he wasn't speaking-he listened for a minute, at the end of which he said, "All right, thanks." Then sat holding the phone.

"Dad?"

Startled out of his reverie, Stuart smiled awkwardly at his daughter, then hung up and lifted his coffee cup to his mouth. "That was the police," he said. "We can go back home."

"Home," Kym said. "What's home going to be like now?"

He met his daughter's eyes, saw the incipient tears, and put his arm around her, bringing her in next to him, holding her as she broke.

Kym didn't think she could stand to be inside the house where her mother had been slain. She wasn't sure she could ever go back through that front door again. And fortunately, before they'd even finished their coffee, Debra had shown up unbidden at the hotel. She volunteered to take her niece shopping for some clothes (no argument about the shallowness of fashion this time from Kym) and then out to lunch someplace nice. After that, they could both go back to Debra's apartment, where Kym was welcome to stay with her as long as she wanted, and at least until the funeral. The medical examiner hadn't released the body, so they weren't sure yet when that would be. Certainly no sooner than next Monday.

So at a little before noon, after wandering aimlessly in the empty house for most of an hour, Stuart found himself alone upstairs at his computer in his small writing office next to his bedroom. He hadn't checked his e-mails since Thursday night, and now he was scrolling down through nearly a hundred of them. It did not appear that the police who'd searched his house so thoroughly over the past couple of days had opened his files, and this surprised him; but maybe they'd dumped his hard drive data onto a disk and taken it downtown to peruse at their leisure.

The correspondence was mostly predictable-fully half, in spite of his spam-blocking software, was unwanted, unsolicited mail of one kind or another; eight or ten were messages from people who'd enjoyed one of his books or others of his writings; both his agent and his publisher, offering any kind of assistance (but possibly not exactly heartbroken over the commercial possibilities of him being in the news); another twenty forwarded jokes that he routinely deleted; fifteen or so from people who'd heard about Caryn.

He had almost gotten to the bottom of the queue when he saw a familiar sender's moniker-TSNK-that brought him up short and caused his stomach to go hollow. Stuart had heard from TSNK before, twice. The first time had been a little over a year ago, a few days after Sunset had published a short piece that featured some of Stuart's favorite outdoor recipes for cooking trout.

At that time, he'd printed out the offending e-mail but then decided to ignore it. It had to be from some crank. Stuart hadn't considered calling the police or the FBI. He never even mentioned it to Caryn. Stuart, though, had kept the message, but he'd never had to go back and look at it to remember it in its entirety: "It is bad enough when the ignorant kill God's and nature's noble animals in the name of food or sport. But when someone who glorifies himself as the friend and benefactor of nature does it, the crime rises to the level of evil. Now we know who you are. Punishment for your crime might come at any time. Prepare yourself. THOU SHALT NOT KILL."

TSNK.

He'd heard from them, or him, or her, one other time four months ago, in the wake of another article he'd done-this one published in Field & Stream-on an albacore run he'd taken with a party boat out of Morro Bay.

The seventy-foot party boat had left the dock at midnight, and after a night running southwest for about sixty miles, they'd hit a good-size school of tuna. Although every one of the twelve other anglers hooked up, in the aftermath of bringing the fish aboard, Stuart had been appalled by the general greediness on the boat. The common attitude seemed to be that suddenly all of the boatmates were potential enemies, intent on stealing each other's catch. Two fights broke out, fists actually flung, when one of the mates tagged a bigger fish (they were all within three pounds on either side of forty!) as the catch of one man, when another was sure he had boated it.