John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

Finally, a true rise. Pierce came forward in the box, his eyes ablaze now. ‘No, no, no. I didn’t do any of that. You’re making all this up to discredit me.’

Marian Braun finally spoke up. ‘The witness has a point, Mr Hardy. You’re making a lot of accusations without any show of proof.’

Hardy sucked in a lungful of air and let it out. ‘I have proof, your honor,’ he said coolly. ‘Mr Pierce is holding it in his hand.’

Pierce still held his letter to Bree and now, in the suddenly silent courtroom, he held it up again. But this betrayed the shaking in his hands, and he quickly put them down on the railing.

Braun pulled her glasses down on her nose and glared over them. ‘He’s already acknowledged perjury regarding his affair with Ms Beaumont, Mr Hardy. But that is not murder.’

‘No, your honor, it isn’t. But there is evidence in the letters Mr Pierce has identified that directly relate to Bree Beaumont’s murder.’

Braun hesitated – if Pierce hadn’t already perjured himself, she’d have stopped this right now – but she found herself nodding. She wanted to know. ‘But be careful, Mr Hardy.’

He nodded. ‘If I may, your honor, I’d like to read to the court a portion of one of these letters.’ Braun nodded.

‘I live

Longing

Only for you.

Vast love

Eternal.

Young again

Overcome with it all

Untamed.’

Hardy didn’t wait for the treacly words to have any effect. They weren’t his point. ‘Nearly each of these letters has a similar poem in it, your honor.’ He handed the letter he’d just read up to the podium. ‘As the court will note, the first letter of each line of the poem spells another message – in this case “I love you.” As your honor will see, this is consistent with every poem in these letters.’

Braun turned through a couple of the pages, nodding. ‘All right.’

The letter that Mr Pierce now holds in his hand contains another similar poem.‘ He came up to the witness, lifting the paper from his hands. ’May I?‘ He read, breaking the lines.

‘Never have

I touched or felt

Never

Even knew.

Oh, the craving -

Touching

Wanting

Only you.’

Again, he didn’t pause. ‘Mr Pierce, can you tell the court the significance of the phrase nine oh two?’

The sweat had broken heavily now on Pierce’s face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘No.’

This was what Hardy wanted – to get him in a rhythm, saying ‘no’ before he’d considered sufficiently. ‘Isn’t it true, Mr Pierce,’ he continued, ‘that nine oh two was the number of the apartment in Bree Beaumont’s building where you would conduct your trysts?’

‘No, I …’

‘And isn’t it true that you and Bree bought this place together nearly six years ago?’

Pierce cast his eyes out to the gallery. ‘No. She…’ He stopped.

‘She what, Mr Pierce? She bought it herself?’

‘No. I don’t know that.’

‘Your honor!’ Jared Wright couldn’t stand watching his client self-destruct any longer. ‘This is an outrageous…’

Hardy raised his voice over the interruption. ‘But you do know, don’t you, Mr Pierce, that apartment nine oh two is two floors directly below her penthouse?’

‘No. I don’t think it’s…’

But Hardy, at high volume now, couldn’t stop. ‘Are you saying that it’s not directly below her penthouse, Mr Pierce? When you know that to be false?’

Pierce was unable to answer.

Hardy leaned in to Pierce and all but shouted. ‘Mr Pierce, don’t you in fact know that nine oh two is the apartment from which she was thrown to her death?’

‘ Your honor! Please !’

Bam! Bam! ‘Mr Wright, sit down. Mr Hardy!’

Fighting to slow his momentum, to regain control, Hardy looked up at the judge. His color was high, his breathing ragged.

Braun’s voice was stern. ‘I have to stop this now, Mr Hardy. It’s gone on long enough. You’ve shown the court no evidence that puts Mr Pierce in apartment nine-oh-two, no evidence for any of these accusations. You said you had proof and presented these letters and this poetry, but neither rises to the level of proof. Mr Pierce hasn’t admitted the truth of anything you’ve said related to Bree Beaumont’s murder. If you have nothing stronger, I’ve got no choice but to let the witness step down.’

Hardy took a deep breath and let it out heavily. ‘I do have physical evidence that places Mr Pierce in apartment nine-oh-two, your honor.’

The judge, too, had reached the end of her patience. This was clear from her tone. ‘If that’s true, the court needs to see it now.’

Hardy walked briskly back to his table and reached into his briefcase, and extracted the xerox copy of Griffin’s note about the Movado watch that he’d picked up from Heritage Cleaners.

Coming back before the bench, he read it aloud and then handed it up to Braun. As she was looking it over, he was talking. ‘Your honor, as you see, this note refers to a specific Movado watch which Inspector Griffin took as evidence in his investigation into the death of Bree Beaumont. I am prepared to call a witness, Mr Lee, who is in this courtroom today. Mr Lee is the manager of a company called Heritage Cleaners, which cleans apartments in Bree Beaumont’s building. Mr Lee will testify that this watch was found by his staff in apartment nine-oh-two of that building on the Thursday following Mrs Beaumont’s murder.’

Braun looked down at Hardy, across to Wright and Pierce, then out over the courtroom. ‘All right, but I don’t see…’ she paused. ‘But where is the watch itself, Mr Hardy. Without the watch-’

Hardy nodded and pointed to the witness. ‘Mr Pierce is wearing it right now.’

Suddenly, finally, there was a deep silence in the room. Hardy spoke into it, almost whispering. ‘Mr Pierce?’

Pierce could not wrangle free. He knew that there was evidence of his presence all over that apartment. And though this wasn’t prima-facie proof that he’d killed Bree, he knew what the police would find there once they started looking – glass of the type imbedded in Bree’s hairline, evidence of the struggle which had ripped Pierce’s watch off.

He fixed Hardy with an empty stare. ‘I didn’t mean-’

Jared Wright’s voice boomed out in the courtroom. ‘For Christ’s sake, Jim, shut up! Don’t say another word!’

And Braun’s gavel pounded again and again over the resulting uproar.

Glitsky was good about it. The court bailiffs took Pierce into custody over Jared Wright’s heated objections. Then there was the bedlam of the courtroom, and all of the wronged witnesses who’d been forced to waste so much of their day. Finally, the Ron Beaumont moment – apologies and thanks. Some not altogether light banter about Beaumont’s daughter, who had gone back to school.

Waiting patiently, Glitsky accompanied Hardy, Frannie, and David Freeman as they walked through the steps, processing her out of the system. David Freeman left them to go back to work, and finally they got five minutes alone in the waiting area of the jail as the female bailiff took Frannie back to reclaim her personal effects.

But Frannie wasn’t three seconds out of sight when Glitsky turned to Hardy. ‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s not like murders are my job or anything.’

Hardy felt bad about the timing of it, but there hadn’t been anything he could do. ‘I only knew this morning, Abe, and I planned to tell you all about it, but you remember we had our little discussion about if you’d known Ron and then Randall and Pratt showed up in the hallway for their moment. I figured you’d survive.’