John Lescroart - The Motive

"No."

"You know anything about it? She owned her own car, right?"

"Right." Glitsky's ongoing frustration with finding another suspect and his futile investigation to this point made him Hardy's go-to guy for all facts related to the Hanover case. "She drove a black Mercedes," he said, "like Catherine Hanover's."

"Okay, so where is it?"

"Real guess this time? It's parked in a garage somewhere. Where are you going here?"

Hardy took in another slug of coffee. "She comes home from wherever she's been. Where's she been? She doesn't work."

"Is this twenty questions? She was shopping, or hanging out with a friend of hers."

"Anyway"-Hardy running with it-"that doesn't matter. What matters is she gets home and parks…"

"Maybe she took a cab. Or even the Muni."

"I doubt it, but either way her car had to be somewhere around Alamo Square. The Willises both talked about her car."

"Okay. So she had a car parked around Alamo Square."

"Then she's killed in the house. Paul's car is in the garage. There's no second car. So where did it go?" "If it was on the street, it's towed or stolen," Glitsky said. "Mystery solved. Nice talking to you." Glitsky's voice changed, softened. "I've got a pretty little thing pulling on my leg that needs her breakfast, don't you, baby?"

"You don't think it's anything?" Hardy asked.

"Yeah, I do. I think it's first-day-of-trial jitters."

"You'd have the jitters, too, if your client was innocent and you knew it."

A lengthy pause. "Well, Diz," he said, "that's why they have trials. You can prove it there."

"I don't have to prove anything! That's the thing. They've got to prove she did it. The burden of proof is always on the prosecution."

Glitsky's voice was surprisingly gentle. "Oh, that's right. I forgot for a minute there."

Jacked up for the day and realizing he'd overstepped, Hardy started to apologize. "Sorry, Abe, it's just…"

"Hey." Still low-key. "Shut up. I'll find the car for you. Now say, 'Thanks, Abe,' and hang up."

"Thanks, Abe."

"Don't mention it."

Treya had been off work for the week since her due date. In theory she could sleep in every day, but that didn't seem to be in her nature. Hardy's phone call this morning hadn't helped, either.

Glitsky was sharing ketchup with some scrambled eggs, as opposed to scrambled eggs with a little ketchup, with Rachel-"one big spoonful for Daddy, one biggest spoonful for Rachel"-when his wife appeared in the door to the kitchen. "Who was that, this early?"

"Diz. He's having a breakdown."

"Catherine Hanover?"

A nod. "He says she's innocent."

"So do you."

"Yes, but only in the privacy of my own home. I actually think it might be tougher on Diz." "Why is that?"

"It's got to be easier if he thinks his client's guilty, wouldn't you think? That way, they get convicted, on some level you've got to know they deserve it, so how bad can you feel? They don't convict, you win, so you feel good about that. But if you think they're really not guilty… I think it's eating him up."

"Just like with you."

"Well, maybe not eating me up exactly. But somebody's walking around free who shouldn't be."

"You really want him, don't you?"

"Or her. Whoever. Yeah, I want 'em."

Glitsky's face wore a sober expression, and with some reason. After Cuneo and Chris Rosen had ramrodded the grand jury into returning an indictment against Catherine Hanover late last spring, the two of them got wind of the onetime personal connection between Hardy and his client. To the homicide inspector and the assistant DA, this relationship was anything but innocent-not that they cared about sexual involvement (which in the tabloid environment of the San Francisco political scene they both assumed without discussion). Working together on the case, Cuneo and Rosen both immediately took Hardy and Catherine's involvement as another level in their conspiracy theory. Now it wasn't just Glitsky and Hardy and Kathy West. All of those three were now neatly connected to the defendant in a sensational and highly political double-murder trial. They had to be colluding in some kind of cover-up.

Meanwhile, Glitsky had been continuing on his own semiparallel investigations into Tow/Hold and Paul Hanover's other business and political endeavors when, early one evening in his office, he got an unannounced visit from an FBI field agent named Bill Schuyler.

Field officers with the FBI didn't drop in at the office of the deputy chief of inspectors every day, or even every month, so clearly Schuyler had come with a specific purpose. The fact that he'd come after normal business hours was interesting, too. Though they'd always had an easy and collegial acquaintance, neither man wasted any time with pleasantries before getting to it. "I thought you'd want to know," Schuyler began, "that I got a call from Chris Rosen-one of your DAs here-a couple of days ago. He was asking questions about you."

Glitsky, at his desk in the amber twilight, sat deeply back in his chair, fingers templed at his lips. He'd been in a tense state of waiting for the appearance of this discussion for the better part of two years, and now that it was here, it was almost a relief. But he feigned complete ignorance. "What did he want to know?"

"He was following up on a report filed by Lieutenant Lanier, who interviewed you on the day that Barry Ger-son got shot," Schuyler said. "You remember that?"

"Pretty well. What did you have to do with that?"

"Nothing directly. But you mentioned me to Lanier, said you'd called me earlier in the day."

"That's because I did, Bill."

"I know. I remember. You wanted me to round up some of my troops and help you with an arrest. Your friend Hardy's client, if memory serves. But there wasn't enough time."

"That's right. That's what happened. So what's the problem?" Glitsky asked.

"I'm not sure, Abe." Schuyler was a broad-shouldered, always well-dressed athlete with a bullet head covered with a blond fuzz. Now he leaned forward in his chair. "Rosen wouldn't say, of course. But he asked me if I'd followed up with you. With what you'd done that day. If I knew whether you'd gone ahead, anyway, without my guys."

"That would have been stupid and indefensible."

Schuyler nodded. "That's what I told him. But the real answer was no, I hadn't followed up afterward with you. I didn't know what you'd done."

In the darkening room, Glitsky blew on his templed hands.

Schuyler continued. "Your alibi was that…"

Glitsky sat bolt upright. "Whoa! Alibi? He said the word 'alibi'?"

"Your alibi is that you spent the day with Gina Roake, Hardy's law partner, at her apartment."

"That's because I did. Her fiancee had just died. We're friends, Bill, Gina and I. She needed the company. I was with her." This was strictly true, although he hadn't been with Roake at her apartment, but out on Pier 70, where both of them had taken part in the gunfight that had killed Gerson and five others. So what he was telling Schuyler was the truth, but it was also a lie. "What do you want me to say, Bill?"

Schuyler held his palms out in front of him. "Nothing, Abe. You've got nothing to prove to me. But I thought you'd want to know they're asking around."

"They? Who's they, besides Rosen?"

"He mentioned this homicide cop, I don't know him, Cuneo. This case you're on now, evidently Hardy's in it and you've been working with him again and the mayor, too, to undercut him-Cuneo, I mean-since their suspect is Hardy's girlfriend…"

"So we're somehow in this grand conspiracy?"

"He seemed to be thinking that way, yeah."

Glitsky kept his voice low, under tight control. "And what exactly are we or were we conspiring to do? Did he say?"

Schuyler shrugged. "All I'm saying is, he's building a case. I don't know what it's about, but the smart bet is somebody wants to tie you to Gerson."