John Lescroart - The Suspect

Juhle clearly still didn't like it. He threw a last malevolent glance at Hunt, another at Gina, even half-turned as though he would be going back out the door he'd just entered. But at last he got himself settled enough to talk. "So what have you actually got?"

Suddenly, though, and to everyone else's surprise, Stuart spoke up. "Before we get to that, Inspector," he said, "we should tell you about the garage door."

"What about it?"

Gina held out a flat palm, hoping to cut off her client. "Stuart…" "No," he said. "This is relevant. Wyatt was just telling us how anyone…"

"Stuart!" Gina's voice cut through the room, brooking no dissent. "I mean it. We don't want to hear it." "Maybe I do," Juhle said.

By now, Gina had moved up between the inspector and her client. "I'm sure you do, but you're not going to." She turned back to Stuart, making sure he was getting her message. Everything was strategy. Very little was truth. Let Juhle think that they'd found holes in his case, and let him convey that impression to the DA. "Now, Inspector," she continued, "I invited you out here to look at these e-mails. If you're interested, the computer's upstairs." She turned and started walking, and the men fell in behind her.

Hunt sat again at the keyboard and the rest of them huddled behind him in the small room. Hunt took them all back to the first e-mail. "And this was after what, again?" Juhle asked.

"An article in Sunset," Stuart replied. "Just recipes for cooking trout outdoors."

Juhle glanced briefly at the threatening e-mail. "Guy's obviously a nutcase."

"The point," Gina said, "is that it wasn't Stuart. He didn't send this."

"You got any way to prove that?"

From the console, Hunt spoke up. "That's the problem, Dev. We can't-"

But suddenly Stuart interrupted. "Excuse me, Gina. Permission to speak?"

She looked over at him. "Probably not. Not here, anyway."

"How about out there?" Stuart indicated the adjoining room. "It might be worthwhile."

"Okay." She spoke to the other men. "Give us a second, guys. Be right back."

Gina and Stuart were about five steps out of the room when Juhle started in. "I don't know if you've ever heard of it, Wyatt, but we've got this thing in law enforcement called obstruction of justice, where if you impede an investigation you can go to jail."

Hunt tapped idly at the keyboard. "Has somebody we know impeded an investigation?"

"Briefing a suspect's lawyer on the progress of an official investigation might even fall under aiding and abetting."

Hunt stopped with the keyboard, turned around. More impatient than angry, he laid it out straight. "Give it a rest, Dev. You know I work for Gina's firm, you knew she was representing Stuart. If you chose not to put that together, that's your problem, my friend, not mine. I never admitted nor denied anything about my involvement or lack thereof with Gina when we talked the other night, and you never asked, so what's the issue?" Juhle started to say something but Hunt held up a finger, stopping him. "And you didn't give me any information I wouldn't have known by the next day, anyway. None of which, I might add, convicts Gorman of anything."

"Taken together, it well might, Wyatt."

But Hunt shook his head. "Which parts, taken together? That he was pissed off at his wife? That he yelled at a Highway Patrol guy?"

Juhle shot back at him. "How about that he's got a history of domestic violence? Or that he's having an affair with his sister-in-law? That he's suddenly worth several million more dollars? That his neighbor saw his car pull into his garage? I know, I know, it might not have been him driving. But guess what? Who else could have been driving his car?"

"Except if it wasn't his car."

"Right. The neighbor girl who admits she likes Gorman also wants to nail him for murder, so she lies to put him at the scene. Come on, Wyatt, none of this speaks to you?"

Pointing at the computer screen, Hunt said, "Not as loud as this stuff. You don't really believe he sent these threats to himself?"

"No, he probably didn't. But I also don't see them as much of a viable threat."

"Except that the wife is dead."

A shrug. "He just as easily could have gotten his last message from this lunatic on Friday and realized it would be a good distraction. In fact, it just as well might have been the thing that made him decide that this was a good time to do what he needed to do with his wife."

Hunt rolled the chair back from the computer desk, crossed his arms, looked up at his friend. "It's unbelievable."

"What is?"

"How little any of what we actually know makes any difference. You realize that. It's all mind-set. You think because he's the spouse, he did it, so everything reinforces that. I know the same facts, and nothing proves he did it. Do you know for a fact he's boinking the wife's sister? I mean, do you have hotel receipts, pictures, anything real?"

"Not yet. We're looking."

"Very strong. It's all guesswork." Hunt looked up at his friend. "You know what this reminds me of, me and you? Remember when Cheney shot that guy last year, the hunting accident? So I'm out with some guys and one of 'em makes a joke about how dangerous it is going hunting with the vice president. And another guy across the table, knee-jerk, he says he'd rather go hunting with Cheney any day than get in a car with Ted Kennedy."

"That reminds you of me and you?"

"My point is that Cheney could have done anything, killed the guy even, and no matter what the facts were, his supporters didn't care. No matter what Cheney does, Ted Kennedy's always going to be worse. That's what I'm talking about. Fixed positions."

"Except I'm not fixed, Wyatt. I'm trying to build a case, and many elements of what I've found so far point to the same conclusion."

"Are you looking at anybody else?"

"Nobody else has popped up as too likely."

"How about the business partners?"

Juhle shrugged. "I've talked to three of 'em so far. Furth from her investment group down in Palo Alto, and her two medical partners, McAfee and Pinkert. And yep, there might be some motive, but also there's lots of alibi."

"Midnight Sunday night? Good alibis? That's a little weird itself, don't you think? I mean, if they weren't home sleeping."

"They were. All of them."

Hunt chuckled. "Well, there you go again. They have wives? You ask them?"

"One divorced, two blissfully married, and no. No reason to, not yet. Nothing points to any of them, Wyatt. You or Roake get me something that looks real, I'll look into it, I promise. Meanwhile, it's all Gorman all the time. Why? Because he did it, that's why. He's made some mistakes, guaranteed. I just haven't found any of them yet."

Gina was back at the doorway, Stuart behind her. "What haven't you found yet?"

Juhle didn't miss a beat. "Any way to tie these threats to a person or even a location. It's going to make it tough. What have you two been up to out there?"

Indicating her client, Gina said, "Stuart's got some diaries he keeps up, notes on his trips, pictures. Since we know the dates of these e-mails, he wanted to check if he was out in the wilderness when they got sent, which would pretty much eliminate him as the sender, right?"

"Possibly. And?"

"Well, the first date, August twenty-third, last year. He was in the middle of a six-day hike in the Bitteroots with two friends of his, one of them Jedd Conley. California Assemblyman Jedd Conley? Who probably wouldn't lie about whether or not they'd brought computers along. They didn't. Here's the photo of the three of them, identities and dates on the back." Gina thought the photo was persuasive enough as she passed it over to Juhle, three guys with loaded backpacks gathered around the hood of Stuart's SUV. "And Stuart didn't send these messages, Inspector. They're legitimate threats, and the last one appears to have been carried out."