John Lescroart - The Suspect

Afterward, when the run was over, the men sat apart, guarding their burlap sacks of catch, lest another fisherman substitute his name tag to try to get more fish.

The story Stuart wrote for Field & Stream had been his knee-jerk solution to the rampant avidity. Wasabi and soy sauce in hand, he'd gone up to the first mate and asked him to bring up the largest fish Stuart had caught and cut up half of it-fifteen pounds of fillet- into sushi for breakfast for every man on the boat. The other half he gave to the short-order cook in the galley and told him to make as many variations of albacore as his heart desired to keep the crew and his fellow fishermen happy. So, besides the sushi, they'd all fed like lords on fresh breaded albacore, on seared sesame albacore, on garlic stir-fried albacore, and on albacore with butter, lemon and capers. By the end of the day, the men-even the earlier pugilists-were all friends, sharing recipes, tips and even tackle, trading their fresh tuna for each other's canned, planning other fishing trips as a group.

Stuart had thought it a very successful story about how an example of simple sharing could break the grip of irrational territorialism on a bunch of alpha males. TSNK apparently didn't have the same opinion: "You've been warned once, and you have not heeded. Your influence could heal, and instead you choose to let it harm the helpless creatures ofthe deep. The albacore shall have their vengeance. THOU SHALT NOT KILL"

This second time, Stuart did report the e-mail to the police, who directed him to the FBI, who in turn told him they would pass it either to Fish & Game or up the chain to Homeland Security as a possible threat from a terrorist organization. But Stuart had never heard another word about it from anyone, and in his heart he believed that the authorities considered the whole thing more or less a joke. And, in truth, he knew it was highly unlikely that Al-Qaeda cared much about whether he killed the fish he caught. On the other hand, there were organizations that did; if you said the word "terrorism" on U.S. soil before 9/11, you would have probably been more likely, and accurately, to conjure up images of Timothy McVeigh or the work of

PETA or the Earth Liberation Front than of Osama bin Laden and his followers.

These people were serious. And they, or someone perhaps sufficiently like them, had him in their sights.

In the emotional devastation he'd been enduring since last Friday when Caryn had told him she wanted a divorce, the thought of his most recently published article, an atypical foray outside of the fishing world in Western Sportsman, hadn't crossed his mind. Since he'd handed it in six weeks before, though, he'd worried sporadically that his tale of the boar hunt he'd gone on in the Sierra foothills might draw the attention of TSNK.

Now, the simmering of his all-too-familiar anger welling up again within him, he clicked twice on the message. It was dated last Friday, at 2:00 in the afternoon: "The beasts of the fields are sacred unto God, and now you have taken to slaying them as well as their brothers in the waters. This is intolerable. We know where you live. There will be no more warnings. Soon you will suffer as your victims have suffered. TSNK"

From her office, Gina placed a call to Wyatt Hunt, computer whiz. She was at Stuart's house a half hour later. "Is it possible Juhle missed this?"

They were in the kitchen, a room in which Stuart felt marginally comfortable. He was sitting on the counter by the sink. "Wouldn't he have told us if he saw it?"

"It may be why he hasn't arrested you."

"Well, there's one way to find out."

Gina placed the call from the kitchen phone and got the inspector on his cell phone. He was down in Hunters Point, interviewing another witness in a suspected gang slaying, but he wasn't making much headway-the homey ain't be 'membrin' nothin'. "No, I'm out on the stoop now, hoping nobody shoots at me. What's up, Gina?"

She told him, and read the latest message.

The bare fact of it made very little impact on the inspector. "It's an e-mail? No. We didn't download his files, but thanks for the idea."

"Devin, this looks to me like a threat to Stuart and maybe to his family. It says that they know where he lives. That it's the last warning."

"Are you sure he didn't go to some Internet cafe and mail it to himself?"

"Reasonably sure, yes. He got two other similar notes in the past year from the same sender. On the second one, he notified the authorities."

"When was that?"

"I don't know exactly. Four or five months ago."

"He could have been planning it back then. Set up the story."

Gina said, "Look, Inspector, I'm giving you the courtesy of this phone call. If you want to come here to look for yourself, my client would let you in without a warrant. It's your call."

"No. I'll be there. Don't erase anything. Don't touch anything. Give me an hour."

"One hour," Gina said, hanging up. She softened her tone to Stuart. "He was underwhelmed, but he'll be here. He doesn't think it's impossible you sent it to yourself."

Stuart's smile showed a few teeth. "They get an idea in their heads, they hold on to it pretty hard, don't they? Okay, so even forget this Thou Shalt Not Kill guy. Isn't Juhle looking at anybody else? Any other suspects?"

"I don't know. He should be. That's all I can say." She hesitated, looked out the window over his shoulder, came back to him, made an involuntary grimace.

"What are you thinking?" he asked. "Something."

"I'm thinking I'd like to see where it happened, if you could deal with it."

He took a beat, then said, "Sure," and boosted himself off the counter. "Out here."

The hot tub was still uncovered, still filled with water, although someone had turned it off, and the temperature was now tepid. They'd left the blackout blinds open, and the backs and sides of the neighboring homes and backyards were visible on all sides. Stuart dipped a hand into the water and stirred it.

Outside, the early autumn weather kept imitating summer. From a feeder by the back fence, birdsong punctuated the stillness. A smell of chlorine hung in the air, a hint of humidity. Stuart didn't turn around, but spoke quietly. "I'm starting to believe somebody drowned her. Somebody hit her on the head and pushed her under. I've got to find out who that was."

"We've talked about that, Stuart. That's the police."

A bitter laugh. "They're not motivated like I am." He turned back to her. "Now you want to ask: If I didn't love her anymore, why would it matter so much?"

"All right. That did occur to me."

"It's not so much Caryn. It's me. I'm the one who's going to have to live with the suspicion for the rest of my life, people thinking that I killed my wife. You think I want to look into my daughter's eyes and have her not be absolutely certain that I didn't do this? To say nothing of my friends, acquaintances, publishers. I can't have it. I won't have it." The small outburst seemed to settle something in him. "They're not locking me up. Whoever did this…"

"Whoever did it," Gina said, "will have made some mistakes, Stuart. When Juhle widens the net a little, he'll get to them."

"He's not looking. There's no net."

"There will be, though. I promise. It's only been two days and he's been spending his time eliminating you."

" Wasting his time eliminating me. And after four days, murders don't get solved, do they? Well, this one has to get solved." Stuart again put his hand into the lukewarm water. He kept it there, moving it slowly back and forth. "Okay," he said, as though he'd been arguing with himself and had reached a conclusion. "Okay, then."

Wyatt Hunt was upstairs in the small office, sitting at Stuart's computer. Gina and Stuart were packed in, standing behind him. "There's no way," Hunt was saying, "that you can identify where this came from."