John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

‘OK. So what do you think happened? You remember where the car was found?’

A nod. ‘A little cul-de-sac called Raycliff Terrace, just off Divisadero.’

Well, Hardy was thinking, strike that idea. Divisadero ran right through the heart of the Western Addition, so Griffin was where he was supposed to have been. But, being thorough, he asked his next question anyway. ‘What’s the cross street?’

Glitsky didn’t know offhand and in a minute they had a map spread out on the table between them. A loud silence ensued. Raycliff Terrace was off Divisadero all right, and on the map it looked close enough to the ghetto, but to anyone who knew the city at all, it was so far economically from the low-income housing units of the Western Addition that it may as well have been in Beverly Hills.

The cross street was Pacific, the eponymous artery of Pacific Heights, one of San Francisco’s most aristocratic neighborhoods. And, more tellingly, one block from Broadway.

Hardy spent an instant leaning over, making sure. With a kind of pang about his own incompetence, he realized that this had been David Freeman’s idea – his comment that Griffin had been the first horse at the trough. Was the old fart ever wrong?

Hardy straightened up and walked over to the refrigerator, where he pulled a magnetized pen off the door. Back at the map, he marked an X. Then another one. After a moment’s reflection, a final thought struck him, and he scratched out a third one. ‘Bree Beaumont,’ he said, putting the tip of the pen on the first mark, two blocks from Raycliff Terrace. ‘Broadway and Steiner. Damon Kerry, Broadway and Baker.’ Three blocks west of Bree, one block from Raycliff. He put the pen on the third X. ‘Jim Pierce. Divisadero and North Point.’ Eleven blocks north. Griffin had been killed surrounded by the players in the Beaumont case. Which, to Hardy, argued that he wasn’t killed in a drug sting gone wrong. His death was related to Bree’s.

Frowning, Glitsky was silent. Finally he put a finger on Hardy’s first mark. ‘Ron Beaumont, too.’

Hardy had to admit this unwelcome fact. But it wasn’t his point and in a minute he was fairly sure it wouldn’t be Glitsky’s. ‘Can you see Griffin coming up here with his snitch, Abe? I can’t. You see the snitch letting himself get driven this far out of the ’hood?‘

Glitsky shook his head. ‘You’re right. It didn’t happen. Not up here.’

Hardy ran with it. ‘It was somebody Griffin wasn’t afraid of, maybe even trusted.’

‘Enough to let him hold his piece? It’s hard to imagine.’ He had his fist balled over the Xs and he lifted it an inch, then brought it down with a great deal of force. ‘Damn,’ he said. He slammed the fist down again. ‘God damn it, Carl.’

From Glitsky, this was a violent explosion. He raised his eyes, the whites shot now with red. ‘Anybody else I’d say no chance. Carl? I’ve got to say maybe.’ He ran his palm over the entire top of his head. ‘Lord, Diz, how is it nobody saw this?’

But that wasn’t what Glitsky really wanted to know, so Hardy thought he’d spare him. Hardy had his own problems with this new information – there was another X, Hardy knew, that he hadn’t put on the map.

Phil Canetta had his own weapon. Griffin wouldn’t have had to voluntarily pass over his gun – the situation that Glitsky had found so untenable. Canetta could have simply hopped into the passenger seat of Griffin’s car, pulled his own piece, and moved things along right smartly from there. Relieved Carl of his gun, and had him drive to a secluded and quiet dead-end street. Made him dead.

But then, the more he thought about it, if any of his other suspects owned a weapon, they could just as easily have done the same thing.

The good news was that he had gotten Glitsky thinking, and not exclusively about Ron. It wasn’t a certainty, of course, and nowhere near proven, but suddenly now to Hardy the overwhelming probability was that Griffin’s murder was in fact linked to Bree’s.

‘When was he killed?’ Hardy asked. ‘Carl.’

Glitsky was still getting used to it, and Hardy couldn’t blame him. If this was what had happened, the proximity of Griffin’s murder scene to the homes of the suspects in Bree’s murder was an egregious oversight for homicide to have missed. Glitsky was back sitting down at the table. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew on them. ‘It was a Monday. Somebody reported the body mid-afternoon, say two thirty. Forensics had him dead an hour, an hour and a half.’

‘So. Lunchtime.’

Glitsky made a face. ‘He hadn’t eaten. Except some chocolate.’

Abe’s son Orel was just getting back from trick or treating, if that’s what he’d been doing, as Hardy was at the door on his way out. Glitsky had been on the phone for the past twenty minutes leaving messages with his inspectors to make it to the hall the next day, and with the crime scene unit to make sure that Griffin’s car got another careful going-over in light of what might be these new developments. If Hardy knew Abe, and he did, all of this was going to go on awhile, with the coroner, the various labs, and so on. He didn’t feel any great need to hang around. It was after ten by now and he was exhausted.

But he couldn’t go home yet – he really had to go by Erin’s and at least kiss the kids goodnight. So now he was in the Cochrans’ living room and his own son Vincent was asleep with his head on Hardy’s lap. Rebecca was curled up on his other side, still awake – Hardy was going to do an experiment someday and see how many days his daughter could go without any sleep, but for now he was contented enough with her quiet form snuggled next to him. At least she’d know he’d come by on Hallowe’en after all.

Both the kids had gone out in Erin’s sheets as ghosts. The elaborate costumes Frannie had made for both of them – Cinderella for the Beck and Piglet for Vincent were lost to the insanity of the past couple of days.

But at least they’d had their holiday night. Their respective caches of candy were already sorted in piles on the rug. The wonderful Erin had made it all work, and for this Hardy was more than grateful.

She’d also mixed a shaker of manhattans - it had been a long day for everybody, and they’d spent the last twenty minutes having a nightcap and catching up on Hardy’s progress, ending with the potentially blockbusting discovery about Carl Griffin’s death.

But Erin had a clear focus on her priorities – this might be a fascinating turn of events, but if it wasn’t about Frannie and getting everyone’s life back to normal, she wasn’t interested. ‘This policeman was before anything happened that involved Frannie, wasn’t it, Dismas?’

‘By a couple of weeks.’

‘Well, then, how can they keep her-’ A glance at the Beck, who was hanging on every word. ‘How can they keep her where she is?’

Hardy saw her point, but it wasn’t any help. ‘She’s in for fighting with a judge, Erin. That’s all it comes down to. My guess is whatever happens with the investigation, they’ll let her go Tuesday morning.’ He said it easily but harbored an uneasy fear that it might turn out not to be true. With Ron’s disappearance, all bets might be off.

‘She’s OK, though, isn’t she, Daddy?’ See? The Beck might be quiet, but she never sleeps.

Arm around her, he patted his girl. ‘She’s fine, Beck. In fact, maybe I can see… do you want to talk to her?’

‘Oh, Daddy, so much!’

Gently, he moved Vincent’s head off him on to the couch. The long shot had just occurred to him, but the idea might work. ‘Let’s give it a try.’

He got the jail’s number and called the desk, gently reminding the deputy about the deli lunch he’d provided for them that day – sure, the guy had heard about it. What could he do for Mr Hardy?