John Lescroart: Nothing But The Truth

‘I was just admiring that,’ the old man responded.

Glitsky rarely smiled, but Hardy decided that the expression he wore now would qualify as a decided smirk. ‘I will not beg,’ he said soberly.

‘It’s about Baxter Thorne.’

‘All right,’ Hardy conceded, ‘I might beg a little.’

Within a week of the election, during which time Glitsky’s search task force had been unable to unearth even a shred of evidence relating the Pulgas Water Temple attack to Thorne or to his company, the FMC offices in the Embarcadero had closed for good. Although police investigators had asked Thorne to stay in touch, two days after FMC shut its doors, he was gone without a trace or forwarding address.

Hardy didn’t know what he had planned to do with Thorne if he ever did catch up with him. Getting his wife and family resettled at the grandparents had kept him from seeking Thorne out until it was too late. By the time Hardy tried to contact Thorne again, the man had fled.

Glitsky, though disappointed that he hadn’t gotten another crack at him, thought that all in all it probably was good news for Hardy that Thorne had left town. It had never been one of Glitsky’s goals to arrest his friend for homicide, even justifiable homicide.

There was an attempted burglary,‘ Glitsky said, ’two weeks ago tomorrow at the Georgetown home of a senator from the great agricultural state of New Jersey, who had recently announced his decision to lead the fight against the exemption on federal fuel taxes on ethanol. No one was supposed to be home, but the maid had stayed behind and was sleeping in her quarters upstairs when the break-in occurred. She kept a loaded gun in the nightstand by her bed. You might have read about it.‘

‘Thorne,’ Hardy said.

Glitsky nodded. ‘Unidentified for a couple of days, and by the time he was, it wasn’t news anymore. It wasn’t as if the senator’s wife shot him or something to give it a profile, so it was just another bad-luck break-in. But since I’d put him on the wire as wanted for questioning, I got a call from Georgetown PD. Your man Mr Thorne is no longer, as they say, among the quick.’

Hardy eased himself off the railing. ‘Well, there it is,’ he said. Then, after a pause. ‘How come I’m not happier about this?’

‘It’s a sad thing, that’s why, somebody dying.’ Freeman was lighting up his cigar. ‘It’s always sad when somebody dies.’

The sun had gone down. Ron and Marie and the two kids waved and shouted their goodbyes from the front gate on their way out and their laughter echoed back, bouncing off the apartment buildings, as they trekked to their car.

Hardy stood with his arm around Frannie on the porch. She leaned into him, and said that if she were him, she’d feel pretty good about the Beaumonts.

‘They seem happy,’ he admitted.

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘No, I know.’

In fact, he knew more than Frannie did. In the immediate aftermath of his investigation, to satisfy his own curiosity, he’d followed up on Ron Beaumont’s story about his first marriage. The original custody hearing and eventual judgment had been big enough news in Racine, but the kidnapping itself had captivated most of the Midwest for a couple of weeks. It had been relatively easy to follow the story until it became by definition old news and disappeared from print.

Not so simple had been following the trajectory of Dawn’s life. In all the newspaper reports on both the custody hearing and the kidnapping, Max and Cassandra’s mother had been Dawn Brunetta. No one by that name lived anywhere near Racine any longer. Finally Hardy had called Ron and asked him if his ex-wife had used a professional name. Sure, he’d said – Amber Dawn.

A sergeant in Glitsky’s detail named Paul Thieu had come up through missing persons and still prided himself on being able to find anyone in the known world. Hardy, keeping the reasons for his interest to himself – some client – bet Thieu a case of good wine that he couldn’t find a pornographic actress who in the last ten years had worked under the name Amber Dawn.

And even for a motivated and experienced Paul Thieu, it had taken nearly a month. Amber Dawn, aka Dawn Brunetta, born Judy Rosen, had died of a speedball overdose in Burbank in 1996. In the last five years of her life, she had worked intermittently as an administrative assistant and actress with a now-defunct company called Bustin‘ Out Productions, which had done business out of a warehouse in Van Nuys.

Her birth certificate and other personal effects had been in the apartment she shared with a thirty-year-old actor named Dirk Balling, real name Jon Stanton. She had been forty-five years old – five years older, Hardy realized, than she’d told Ron.

Thieu wanted to know if Hardy wanted to get copies of any of her movies. He’d located seven of them in which she’d had supporting roles. He could probably find more for another case of wine, although getting the actual copies might take a little digging. Hardy thanked Thieu for his efforts, gave him his case of mixed Cabernets, and told him he’d take a pass. He had what he needed.

Now, on his porch, he tightened his arm around his wife. He heard his own children playing some made-up game back in the house. Laughing, running around, getting crazy and loud. It was going to get louder, out of control, any minute. He kissed the top of her head, and gave her a smile.

‘My turn,’ he said.

JOHN LESCROART, the New York Times best-selling author of such novels as The Mercy Rule , The 13th Juror, Nothing but the Truth , and The Hearing, lives with his family in northern California.