John Lescroart - Dead Irish

Cruz was glad he was sitting down. He could feel a sponginess in his legs and knew they wouldn’t have held him if he was standing. He would have had to slump against something.

“And two,” Hardy continued, sticking up a second finger, “you described to me how bad it all looked, with the blood and all. Now my question, my problem” (the bastard was really enjoying himself) “is how you could know what it looked like if you went home at eight-thirty or nine when the lot was empty?”

He tried to swallow, then cleared his throat. No good. Wheeling around in his chair, moving slowly, carefully, he took one of the cut-crystal wineglasses from its tray on the bookshelf behind his desk and pushed the water button on his small refrigerator. God, the water was delicious. He spun back around. “I didn’t kill him.”

“There, now, that’s direct.”

Hardy stood up. Cruz didn’t like looking up at him-it threw off any sense of balance between them-but he still felt too weak in the legs to risk rising himself. “You mind if I get a glass?”

Then Hardy had the water and was sitting back down on the edge of the chair, elbows on his knees, holding the glass in both of his hands in front of him.

“What about the black guy, the suspect? We ran his picture in La Hora .”

Hardy nodded. “He’s a suspect.”

“And so am I?”

“Let’s just say my curiosity gets aroused when I get lied to.” Eye to eye. In no hurry whatsoever. “Pretty natural reaction, don’t you think?”

Cruz gulped down the last of his water. “Maybe I should call my lawyer.”

Hardy sat back in the chair. “You’re certainly welcome to. But I’m not here with a warrant. I came to talk.”

“I really didn’t kill him.”

“But you saw him?”

He closed his eyelids, and the sight flashed up behind them again-turning into the dark lot, headlights finding the body. Keeping the beam on it as he drove up, he’d gotten out of the car and stood staring for who knew how long, not recognizing Ed Cochran-there wasn’t much to recognize-but knowing who it had been in any case. “I should’ve called.” He went to drink more water, raising the glass to his lips, but it was empty.

“When was that?”

“When I saw him.”

“That night?”

He found himself sighing, feeling the release, wanting to keep talking now that it had started, with nothing to hide. “I had an appointment with him at nine-thirty. I stayed working until maybe eight, eight-thirty, got hungry and went out to dinner.”

“Where?” Hardy asked.

He didn’t have to think about it. Every minute of that night had been looping in his mind for over a week. “Place called The Rose up on Fourth.”

Hardy nodded. “I know it. Anybody see you there? Could swear to it?”

Of course. Wendell could swear to it. They had flirted a little, discreetly. “I think the waiter I had might remember.”

“What’d you have to eat?”

Again, no need to think. “Calves liver, pasta, some blush Zinfandel.”

“Then what?”

“Then I came back here. There was a car-I assumed it was Ed’s-in the middle of the lot.”

“But you didn’t have your meeting?”

“He was already dead.”

“Just like the police found him?”

“Yes, I assume so.”

Now that he’d said it, he started shaking again. He didn’t trust his hands to reach for his water glass to refill it. He put them on his lap, out of sight under the desk. Hardy leaned back in his chair now, frowning.

“What was the meeting supposed to have been about?”

Did he really want to hear about it? All of it? Cruz realized it might not seem, on the surface, to have made a lot of sense, but if he could just make Hardy understand the issue with Jeffrey- how Jeffrey had started to take Ed’s side-then it would be all right. Anything was better than trying to keep all those lies in his mind.

He hadn’t realized at first how bad it would be, having Jeffrey not believe him, even think he was capable of murdering somebody. But now, once he came forward, the police would find no evidence. They could have an investigation and find him innocent, and that would end all this horrible distrust between himself and Jeffrey.

But when he had finished, Hardy was still frowning. “So how come you couldn’t tell us this last week?”

He saw that his hands were back up on the desk, folded tightly together. He spread them, palms up. “I was afraid. I just… I know there’s no excuse. I don’t know.” He tried to smile, man to man. “It was a lapse, that’s all. I was nervous.”

Hardy stretched, looked at his watch and slowly pushed himself up from the chair. “Can I use your phone?” he asked.

Though it was still probably too early for Abe to be in the office, Hardy felt he ought to get the police involved right now. This warranted bringing in the troops. They might or might not corroborate Cruz’s story, but he had admitted being in the lot that night at the relevant time. That would be enough to get something official going. Then, whether he’d killed Ed would either come out or it wouldn’t. Either way, it was now a police matter.

Hardy left a message for Abe and told Cruz that another officer would be coming by later in the day. He was, of course, welcome to have an attorney present at that time.

Though Hardy knew it was patently ridiculous-that no real cop would simply walk out on a murder suspect leaving the later interrogation to another officer-he couldn’t think of a better way to continue with Cruz. He’d done what he’d set out to do, which was prove he’d lied. Finding out why was out of his province. If Cruz tried to run he’d only get in deeper, and the publisher was, after all, an established, wealthy and even well-known citizen. Hardy didn’t think he would run.

At home, Hardy heard Abe’s message of the night before about Alphonse and felt satisfaction. Between Alphonse and Cruz there seemed no doubt they had the man who’d killed Eddie. At the very least they would have enough, once and for all, to call it a homicide.

Of course, he’d wait for the official word before passing it along to Moses and Frannie or the Cochrans. And though it wasn’t going to help anybody’s immediate pain much to know that Eddie Cochran hadn’t killed himself, it would eventually be a consolation. The rejection factor would be gone. His death-the death itself-was a tragedy, sure, but the wound could heal over now. The quarter of a million dollars for Frannie wouldn’t hurt, either.

STEVEN KNEW his mom was trying. Maybe she just couldn’t do it.

She changed the bandages religiously, brought his ice cream and sandwiches, opened and closed the window and turned on and off the television or radio and probably would try to build him an airplane and take him for a flight if he asked her.

It was all still Eddie.

He didn’t blame her, couldn’t blame her. He felt the same thing, or guessed he did. Maybe it was different losing a son than losing a brother. But either way, it was a bad loss.

All this reaction in him-probably even the running away- had to do with that, with losing Eddie. He’d had a couple of days to think about it and, bright kid that he was, had come up with this theory… there was this minimum amount of acceptance everybody needed to get along, no matter where they were. With Steven, it was this house. And up until last week it had been close but there was enough. He was at absolute zero-until you factored Eddie in. And even though he hadn’t been living at home for a while, Eddie had always been there in a way. His presence, his attitude, was felt. And Frannie, too, though not so much. Still, though, he gave Frannie (in those hours while the drugs were wearing down and he hadn’t yet called Mom) a plus three, more than anyone he lived with. And Eddie? Geez, Eddie was off the chart, maybe plus a hundred and six on a scale of one to ten. He couldn’t exactly figure it out, but he knew that to Eddie he had been about the funniest, smartest, most fun little (but not so little) brother in history.