John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

‘An armed nuclear weapon?’

‘She finds that nobody’s there, all right, but out in the hallway for pickup is the day’s press releases, bound and labeled for distribution, all about the water poisoning, doomsday in San Francisco, sidebars on the dangers of MTBE pollution, like that. Anyway, she pulls a few off the top of the pile and brings them back for her article.’ A beat. ‘Get it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

Jeff’s voice went down to an excited whisper, but it rang with triumph. ‘They had to be written and printed up before it happened.’

Hardy took a moment to let it sink in. If this were true, it appeared to link some of the eco-terrorist activity with FMC, but not necessarily to SKO, and certainly not to Valens or Kerry. How could it help him?

But Jeff thought he had the answer to that, too. ‘Because FMC is run by this joker named Baxter Thorne…’

‘Who works for SKO,’ Hardy guessed.

‘You’re too smart, except not so fast, Red Rider. Back when she interviewed him, Sherry couldn’t get Thorne to admit who paid him. He calls himself a public affairs consultant. According to him, he represents all kinds of environmental groups and other clients, but says his contracts demand confidentiality. She asks him specifically about some of these activist groups and he admits he’s given them some advice.’

‘Advice. That’s a nice word.’

‘I thought so, too. But even nicer is this. I call this buddy of mine, a colleague in Cincinnati, at the Sentinel -’

‘You’ve been a busy boy, Jeff.’

‘This could in fact be my Pulitzer, Diz. You’d be busy, too. Turns out that Baxter Thorne is not unknown in Cincinnati. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge, but my buddy knew – for years Thorne was the dirty tricks guy for Ellis Jackson.’

‘Who is…?’

‘You’re going to love this – Jackson is the CEO of Spader Krutch Ohio.’

Hardy felt a little tingle along the back of his neck and knew it wasn’t the cold outside leaking through his office window.

Jeff was going on. ‘So we’ve possibly got SKO paying for dirty tricks in San Francisco. We’ve got somebody who might put MTBE in the water, might kill Bree Beaumont…’

‘Might burn my house down,’ Hardy added evenly.

‘That, too,’ Jeff agreed. ‘But what we don’t have and we do need is how, if we’re on the right track, Baxter Thorne came to be worried about you.’

‘Somebody told him.’

‘I’m with you. But who?’

Hardy wracked his brain, trying to keep himself from the knee-jerk reaction for the second time today that it had to be Valens. But it might go higher – Hardy couldn’t rule out that a directive could have come from Damon Kerry himself, although Jeff Elliot wasn’t going to accept that.

But why stop with Kerry? The connection between SKO and him might even be Phil Canetta – cops who worked freelance security at conventions had also been known to provide muscle, to help with dirty tricks. Had Canetta ever done that kind of work with SKO, he wondered. Or with Baxter Thorne?

‘I really don’t have any ideas, Jeff,’ he said, ‘other than I’d like a few private moments with this Thorne fellow.’

‘Did you talk to Al Valens this morning, by the way?’ Jeff asked. ‘At the Clift? Since you woke me up for it.’

‘Didn’t I tell you all about that?’

He heard Jeff sigh. ‘No. I think you left it out.’

And suddenly, the morning’s information clicked with what he had just learned from Jeff. Bree’s report. She had changed her mind about ethanol and Valens had tried – successfully he said – to keep her from talking to Kerry about it. Who would this silence benefit even more than Kerry himself? SKO. And SKO’s operative in San Francisco Baxter Thorne.

What if Valens’ efforts to keep Bree quiet hadn’t worked after all? What if someone needed to shut her up?

Valens again, once removed.

Maybe.

But Hardy didn’t want to lead Jeff Elliot there. He had his own agenda and he figured he’d sure as hell earned the right to pursue it now. ‘I thought he’d told me a lie,’ Hardy said mildly, ‘and I wanted to talk to him about it.’

‘And had he?’

‘It was more a misunderstanding. It got straightened out.’ Deflection time. ‘You ever catch up with Kerry?’

‘Today’s agenda,’ Jeff promised, ‘if I get to it.’

‘What would stop you?’

‘One of the problems doing a daily column,’ Jeff said, ‘is you’ve got to write it. Kerry’s going to be impossible until Tuesday. Tomorrow I’m going for Thorne.’

‘How are you going to get to him?’

Hardy would bet Jeff’s eyes weren’t tired now – he was on a scent. ‘A little classic bait and switch. I’ve put in a call to FMC that I’d like an interview on the Pulgas story, which he’ll want to talk about. Once I’m in the door, I’ll ask different questions.’ He changed his tone. ‘I think we’re very close, Diz, really.’

‘I hope so,’ Hardy said, ‘but do me one favor, would you?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Don’t go alone.’

After they hung up, Hardy immediately put in a call to Glitsky’s pager. Jeff Elliot might hate him for it, but from Hardy’s perspective, this was now a police matter, and that’s where it was going.

In fact, even without Bree Beaumont, the case could be made that the arson at Hardy’s house, if it had been started by the same people who dumped the MTBE, was related to a San Francisco homicide, and therefore in Glitsky’s domain. Even though the Pulgas Water Temple was in San Mateo County, it was city property and Glitsky could assert at least dual jurisdiction – he had authority to investigate the death of the middle-aged hiker who’d been killed there yesterday.

And now, with the new information Hardy could supply from his talk with Jeff Elliot, that investigation might lead him to Baxter Thorne, and perhaps all the way back to Bree.

Waiting for Glitsky’s call, he got up from the desk, stretched, and came around front to throw a round of darts. But he didn’t retrieve any of them. Instead, he walked to the window and looked down on to Sutter Street, then returned to his chair and pulled his collections of paper up closer to him.

Now that he knew he was looking for something specific – evidence of any relationship between FMC and Bree – he thought he might have a better chance of seeing it.

But the telephone rang.

‘Yo.’

‘Get a earphone, some kind of beeper, something, would you? I’ve been calling all over town trying to run you down.’

‘I’ve been here at my office. And I called you, remember?’

‘Yeah, well, I couldn’t imagine you’d be working on a Sunday so I didn’t think of there.’

Hardy ignored the bad attitude. Abe had gone to a murder scene and had spent the last several hours there. It was understandable that he was in a surly mood. ‘OK, so now we’re talking. You interested in what I called about? You will be.’

‘Not as much as why I want to talk to you.’

Glitsky’s tone wasn’t getting any better.

‘What?’ Hardy asked.

‘The cop who got shot.’

It suddenly hit him. If Glitsky needed to reach him on that matter, there could only be one reason. His stomach went hollow in a rash. ‘Phil Canetta.’

His friend’s voice was grim. ‘You heard it here first.’

‘Where are you?’

Glitsky told him.

Hardy was in the Muir Loop, just inside the Presidio. He’d driven through the urban forest many times before, and in his memory it was serene and lovely, a two-lane road overhung with boughs, winding through an expansive eucalyptus glade.

But today in the late afternoon it seemed that menace dripped from every branch. With the dense fog, visibility was no greater than fifty feet. He crept along at fifteen miles per hour, squinting into the nothingness. There were no curbs on the street here, no street lights, and twice he felt his tires leave the asphalt.