John Lescroart - The Suspect

"I didn't ask. If I had to guess, I'd say no."

He sat with it for another moment. "She never went up to college at all?"

"Unless she was lying to me this morning."

"Which, I hate to say it, we can't rule out. Could you call up there and check? Reed College in Portland." "Of course. I can do it right now."

It didn't take five minutes. Kymberly had never checked in at the college. They'd already given her dorm room to another student on their waiting list.

Stuart all but talked to himself. "So she might have been here-I mean, in San Francisco-when she talked to Caryn on Saturday and Sunday."

For a long beat, Gina sat frozen to her chair. "What did you just say?"

"When?"

"Just now. That Kym talked to her mother on both Saturday and Sunday?"

"Yeah," he said. "I told you that." He leveled his gaze at her. "Didn't I? I must have told you that."

"I'm sure I would have remembered, Stuart. This is the first I'm hearing about it. What did they talk about?"

"Kym never said. I never asked. We got off the topic."

" 'Kym never said,' " Gina repeated. "You never asked." A long and disappointed sigh.

"I thought she was in Portland," Stuart said.

"Right. That's what you thought. What do you think now?"

"I think I'm a fucking idiot. It never occurred to me she might be down here. Where did she…?" He ran his hand up through his hair. "Oh, never mind. God." With a hangdog look he said, "I'm killing us here today, aren't I? First the cabin pictures, now this."

Gina was frustrated and furious with her client's consistent failure to understand his own plight, but she wasn't about to beat him up again over it. He seemed to be doing a good job of that on himself. She simply shrugged. "You didn't know," she said. "How can you help that?"

"I could have thought about it. About all these things. I don't know what else there might be, but suddenly I'm afraid I haven't given it all to you. Which puts you in an awful place."

She wanted to say that wherever it put her, it was better than where he was. Instead, she forced a nonchalant smile. "I'll live. And tell you what," she said. "If anything new comes to you, don't worry about repeating yourself. I'll deal with the redundancies. How's that?"

Enough with the recriminations and the hand-holding, though, she thought. "Meanwhile," Gina went on, "it would be good to know what Kym talked to Caryn about. If she comes by to see you again maybe you could ask her? Or… hey-"

With a little flourish, she handed Stuart her cell phone and after a slight hesitation, he punched in his daughter's number. She wasn't picking up, and he said, "Kym, it's me. Gina tells me you came by to see me this morning and they wouldn't let you in. Maybe you could be in court today-Department 12, nine thirty. And then we could have a visit after that. If you need to get a message to me, it's okay to go through Gina. I just want to know that you're all right." He closed the phone and handed it back. "I didn't want to mention the calls to Caryn until I'm with her."

"Probably a good idea."

For a brief second, there was eye contact between them, but both attorney and client looked away. The unspoken thought that hovered in the air was too dangerous to voice: there was every chance that last Sunday, Kymberly had finally told her controlling mother that she wasn't going to school. Perhaps she'd come to the house and told her in person. It would not have been pleasant. In any event, Kymberly would know considerably more about some of her mother's thoughts and actions on the last day of her life than anyone else.

It was, Gina knew, even possible that Kymberly was in some way involved in Caryn's death. She sensed that her client was wrestling with the same thought, or maybe he'd already decided how he was going to deal with it.

"Stuart," she said, "you remember how you took the heat for Kymberly on those domestic disturbance calls? You said you had done it when you knew it was really her."

He shook his head. "I'm not saying I did it in this case, though."

This was, of course, technically true. But the fact remained that while he was under suspicion, his daughter was not. To what length, she wondered, would Stuart go to protect Kym? Would he even hide something from Gina and sacrifice himself if that were the choice?

But before she could frame the question, the deputy knocked on the door and announced that they were out of time. They were shackling the jailed prisoners together for their short walk over to the Hall of Justice and its courtrooms.

Peeking out from where she and Stuart were waiting in the cell that served as a holding tank behind Department 12, Gina could see that, as advertised, it was going to be a full house, even by the standards of the busy prelim courts. The courtroom itself was a utilitarian space, completely windowless. With its old blond furnishings and high ceiling, it had the feel of Gina's old high school library. The gallery featured theater-style seating with about eighty chairs. Once the judge had gotten rid of the normal crush of business, fully three fourths of them would be cordoned off for the media. Every seat was already taken, and though there was very little standing room, the back wall accommodated those willing to deal with the discomfort.

Gina recognized several talking-head types from the networks, as well as some local print reporters, including Jeff Elliott in his wheelchair in the center aisle. She might have expected it, but didn't, and was therefore happily surprised to see both Dismas Hardy and Wes Farrell there on the defense side to lend their moral support. Jedd Conley sat a row in front of them, chatting amid the hum to Debra

Dryden, who was there on Stuart's "side" of the gallery. As a witness- albeit a hostile one-for the prosecution, Debra along with all the other witnesses would have to leave the gallery as soon as the first witness was called, but at least Stuart would see her in the courtroom, showing her support, when he came in. There was no sign of Kymberly.

Gina wondered at the rest of the crowd on "her" side of the gallery-people she'd never seen before. Trial groupies or lookie-loos, she thought, until she noticed that a couple of them in the front row were holding what appeared to be various copies of Stuart's books. Fans, she realized, and the sight of them for some reason cheered her slightly.

The other side was just as crowded, but Gina didn't recognize anyone except the medical examiner, John Strout; Len Faro from the forensics team; Devin Juhle; and Bethany Robley and her mother. Besides Faro, several uniformed policemen filled in the entire third row of spectators. In front of them, inside the bar rail, Gerry Abrams was officiously arranging folders while making easy small talk with one of the bailiffs.

She turned around to face her client, who hadn't much enjoyed being chained to twelve other inmates who had walked in their paper slippers, now wet, into the back door of the Hall and around to their cages behind the respective courtrooms. He sat slightly forward on the concrete bench that afforded the only seating in the cell, looking as though he didn't have a friend in the world. She looked down at him. "I think we've got some fans of yours out there," she said. "They're holding your books."

"My books." Stuart shook his head. "Talk about a different world." Then, suddenly, he seemed to perk up himself. "Did I tell you I got a message from my publisher yesterday? You'll never guess."

"Your sales are going through the roof."

"No fair," he said, "you guessed. Not exactly through the roof, but they're going back to press with all of them. Can you believe that?"

"Sure. From the one I've read, they should. It's a great book."

"Yeah, well, I'm afraid the sales don't have much to do with the literary quality of the books themselves. In fact, Gina, here's a great idea. Maybe we want to string this whole trial thing out even longer. Time we're done, I'll be rich."