John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

‘You better watch out,’ Hardy said, ‘You’re starting to sound like a lawyer.’ He pushed back his chair a couple of inches. ‘So that’s what brought you down here today?’

Glitsky nodded. ‘More or less.’

‘And here I thought it might have been your two inspectors – checking into Carl Griffin’s investigation as your best friend had suggested – had stumbled on to something.’

‘Well, since you mention it.’ Glitsky bunched the brown paper bag and tossed it into his wastebasket. The papers he’d been studying before Hardy’s arrival didn’t appear to be in any order, but he started picking through them as though he’d arranged them in some way. ‘Here’s copies of some notes from Griffin’s notebook. He was working the building where Bree lived. No sign he’d gotten anywhere with witnesses, but it was Carl and he didn’t write any follow-up’ – he glanced up at Hardy and shrugged – ‘so who knows?’

Glitsky picked up another stapled group of pages. ‘Crime scene. Zip. No glass anywhere to match what was in her scalp.’

‘Which was what?’

A flip of a page. ‘The theory is that it was from a leaded crystal wine or champagne glass. The Beaumonts didn’t have anything to match on hand.’

Hardy was into Griffin’s notes. ‘Here’s Jim Pierce again. Damon Kerry. Al Valens. How’d Griffin get these guys?’

‘The grieving husband, your friend Ron. Wanted to help find whoever killed her.’

‘And he thought one of these guys…?’

But Glitsky was shaking his head. ‘He just gave Carl a bunch of names, Diz. People Bree had hung out with.’ A pause. ‘Why did you say Jim Pierce again ?’

‘What?’

‘You said “Here’s Jim Pierce again.” ’

Hardy smiled. ‘That wasn’t me. It must have been somebody else.’ Then, relenting. ‘It’d be neat if the odd slip of the tongue got by you once in a while. Anyway, I just visited him – Pierce – and his wife a couple of hours ago. You’ll be gratified to know that your inspectors had already been there.’

A nod. ‘Rattling his cage is all. He’s got a decent alibi.’

‘Just decent?’

‘Driving to work. Left home around eight, at the Embarcadero office forty minutes later.’

‘Forty minutes? I just did it in fifteen.’

‘This is Saturday afternoon. Try it on a weekday morning, rush hour. Coleman and Batavia did it last night and it took ’em an hour. And he was at his desk forty minutes later.‘ Glitsky shrugged. ’OK, anything’s possible as we know, but nobody’s put him anywhere near her place. He told my guys he hadn’t seen her in four months. They’re checking, but so far they hear the same thing. No contact.‘

‘What about Damon Kerry?’

This time, Glitsky’s mouth tightened. ‘He’s running for governor, Diz. I just don’t think so.’

‘I don’t either, but was he around at least?’

Glitsky nodded. ‘He was in town, shooting TV spots.’

‘Seeing her?’

‘Sometimes. Often.’

‘Were they sleeping together?’

This almost brought a true smile, which for Glitsky was a rarity. ‘What a quaint way to put it. Let’s just say that for a married woman, she spent a lot of time with him, but it’s not like Kerry’s such a hot item that reporters are on him around the clock. His people quote resent the implication. She was a technical adviser on environmental matters. That’s the story.’

‘On the payroll?’

‘No. Another committed volunteer, which is what makes this country great.’ He held up a hand. ‘I know, but Griffin never got to him and here four days before the election, without any physical evidence, you don’t just send two inspectors down to grill him.’

‘Why not? I would.’

Glitsky liked that. ‘I’m sure you would, which is why you don’t work for the city anymore. No, what you do is what we’ve done – ask him to come down and give a statement and of course he’s promised full cooperation. As soon as he’s got a free minute, which ought to be by Christmas, he’s going to give it top priority.’

A weary sigh. ‘You know, Diz, you and I might have our good reasons for hoping it isn’t Ron, but it still might be. Really. He looks a lot better than Kerry, or Pierce for that matter, and that’s even before what’s in the mystery box.’

Hardy didn’t want Glitsky thinking this way. He was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so. I like it that Kerry’s in election mode, he’s stressed to the max and this lady hits him with something that’ll derail his campaign. He’s got no time to think so he does the first thing that occurs to him and she winds up dead. Oops. Makes perfect sense to me.’

‘He’s at her house?’

‘Could have been. Do we know? You find his prints?’

‘Prints, please.’ Fingerprints were useful when they could be cross-checked against those of known criminals, but if someone hadn’t ever committed a crime, their prints would not be in the database. ‘We got prints from the door to the balcony and some dishes in the sink. Ron’s prints and the kids, which we didn’t need to run ’cause we knew who they were. Then we’ve got a dozen, fifteen more, unidentified. Could be other kids, family friends, anybody. But no known criminals.‘

‘Maybe Damon Kerry, though.’

‘We may never know and even if he was, so what?’

‘It puts him at the scene.’

Glitsky rolled his eyes, his patience with amateur detective work growing thin. ‘Why wouldn’t he be at the scene at some point in the last few months? He knew her. So he went to her house? So what?

‘Listen,’ he continued, ‘I’ll tell you what. You get to Kerry, borrow his shoes, and find some lead crystal residue on them. Then find somebody who can put him at Bree’s place or better yet, can prove they were doing each other, or stopped doing each other, or anything…’ His voice wore down, his eyes came up. ‘The more I think about it, Diz, and I hate to say it-’

Hardy held up a hand. ‘Then don’t.’

The Pulgas Water Temple sits in a peaceful and picturesque location among low rolling hills about twenty miles south of San Francisco. A semi-circle of high white Ionian columns rises behind a reflecting pool and forms an elegant structure that commemorates the completion of one of the most famous (or infamous) engineering feats in California history, the Hetch-Hetchy Project. This marvel of architecture and city planning captured the plentiful water and snowmelt of the Sierra Nevada mountain range at Yosemite and delivered it, mostly underground over nearly two hundred miles, into a shallow valley that had once been an Indian prayer grounds.

This once-holy spot is now the Crystal Springs reservoir, the source of San Francisco’s drinking water and, in fact, one of the principle reasons that naturally dry San Francisco is a major metropolitan center and not a quaint tourist destination with nice views and bad weather.

The sculpted grounds of the Temple is a popular picnic destination and this bright, warm afternoon held a typical Indian summer scene – family blankets with food and drink spread on the grass, boats in the reflecting pool, dogs and kids and couples and a handful of bicyclists and solitary readers. Occasionally a Sheriff’s patrol car from San Mateo County would cruise the lot, but there was no regular security presence at the site. There had never been any need of one.

The parking lot was nearly filled and the nondescript Chevy Camaro that pulled off the main road and into it had to park at the far northern end, nearly three hundred yards from the Temple.

The two middle-aged men got out of the front seat and the two women from the rear. All of the eventual witnesses agreed that the group was dressed too warmly for the day, the women with scarves over their heads, the men with hats pulled low, but as they got out of the car, they attracted no attention. Without exchanging a word, they congregated at the trunk, then two men and one of the women began walking toward the Temple with a large picnic basket. The other woman got back into the car in the driver’s seat and rolled down the window.