John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

At last Hardy got a glimpse of some parked vehicles and slowed down even more. With the fog, the scene was etched in stark relief- the outlines of three squad cars, a couple of vans, some news trucks by now, the unmarked cars of inspectors. He pulled in behind the line of them, zipped up his jacket, and tried to pick Glitsky out of the milling group of spectral figures.

The lieutenant was at the back door of one of the vans, and as he got closer, Hardy recognized Glitsky’s companion – John Strout, the lanky, drawling coroner for the city and county. He was nearly on them before Glitsky noticed.

‘John, you know Dismas Hardy.’

‘Sure do.’ Strout had worked with Hardy before and testified at several of his trials. That Hardy was now a defense attorney made it odd that he was at this crime scene, at this stage, but Strout had been around the block many times, and very little surprised him. ‘How you doin’, Diz?‘ He extended his hand and Hardy took it.

‘I’ve been better,’ Hardy admitted. ‘It’s been a long day.’

Strout was his usual laconic self. ‘Wish I could say the same for our victim here. His day only lasted a couple of hours. I reckon, given the choice, I’d go for long.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Glitsky jerked a thumb. ‘Hardy’s house caught fire this morning.’

‘Not by itself,’ Hardy said sharply.

Strout caught something between the two men. ‘There some connection with that and this?’

Glitsky gave Hardy a shut-up look and said he wouldn’t rule it out, there was some possibility, but they had a ways to go on this one first, on Phil Canetta. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

Hardy got Glitsky’s message – the relationship between Canetta’s murder and Bree’s, to say nothing of Hardy’s house – wasn’t going to be part of the public debate. Not yet. It was not even immediately clear that Glitsky was overtly, officially pursuing the Griffin parallels.

‘So what did go down here?’ Hardy asked.

Strout took his boot off the van’s bumper, looked across the street, said, ‘Reckon they’re close enough,’ and headed out. Hardy and Glitsky followed.

The car had all four of its doors open. Strout walked around off the fringe of the road to the driver’s door, but Glitsky touched Hardy’s arm and the two of them stayed in the street, on the passenger side. They could see inside clearly enough in any event, and just as clearly, Glitsky wanted a private ear.

But the first sight of Canetta was more bad news. He was dressed as he’d been at Freeman’s last night, the last time Hardy had seen him. There was no way now that Hardy could pretend that his relationship to Canetta wasn’t relevant to Glitsky’s investigation, and that in turn was going to have to lead to further revelations, none of them even remotely pleasant.

The body was slumped against the back of the seat, canted slightly to its left. Strout spoke in the professorial drawl he adopted when reciting undisputed facts on the witness stand. Today, though, Hardy found the impersonal tone unsettling.

‘You can see if you lift that right arm’ – he was doing it – ‘ – rigor’s let up enough now – that the second bullet…’

‘The second bullet?’ Hardy asked quietly.

Glitsky nodded grimly. ‘He wasn’t shot here. First one was in the chest. He was facing the shooter.’

Hardy heard Strout over their conversation. ‘… probably fragmented into some ribs and ripped the heart into pieces…’

He shut that out and went back to Abe. ‘So you’re saying he was carried into the car and driven here?’

‘And pushed over to make it look like he drove out on his own. I’m not just saying it. That’s what happened.’

‘But why would somebody…?’

‘Because this is what Griffin looked like and they got away with that. Turned out, I’d say it was a bad idea.’

Hardy agreed. ‘It connects them.’

A nod. ‘Not only that, my guess is Canetta was shot with Griffin’s gun.’

Strout continued. ‘… time of death, but he’s loosened up enough, it had to be ten hours ago, maybe longer.’

‘So who found him?’

‘Couple of joggers.’

‘And Strout’s saying…?’

‘You just heard. Late night, early morning. The second shot’s in a closed car, pea soup outside. Nobody heard a thing.’

Before Hardy could ask, Glitsky expanded on it. ‘I know what you’re going to say, but don’t. This damn sure could’ve been Ron. We’ll get to that.’ He held up a hand, stopping Hardy’s reply. ‘But because I like to be thorough, I also put Batavia and Coleman out on alibis for all of your own personal heroes – Pierce, Valens, even Kerry. We’re talking between two and six a.m., but guess what?’

‘They weren’t all home in bed.’

Glitsky’s mouth turned up, but it wasn’t a smile. ‘Insight like that is what keeps us friends. Maybe they were, but we haven’t been able to reach any of them. Pierce wasn’t around today. His wife said he was out on his boat from early this morning. Also, we’ve got Kerry’s schedule but he’s not sticking to it – he and Valens didn’t make his first banquet. Two days from the election, he’s in flex mode, I guess. Valens-’

Hardy had to cut in. ‘Valens was at Kerry’s until nearly midnight. After that, Kerry left home.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Jeff Elliot.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘Only the shadow knows. But he lives like five blocks from here. And while we’re on it, Pierce isn’t much further and all of it’s downhill.’

Glitsky was silent for a couple of seconds. ‘I see you’ve done your homework. How do you know all this, hell, any of it?’

‘I’m motivated. I talked to Valens this morning…’

‘When was that? I was with you half the morning.’

‘Must have been the other half.’ He knew Glitsky wouldn’t let it go, so he continued. ‘It had to do with my house.’

‘Valens had something to do with your house?’

Strout finished his monologue and straightened up, looking over the car’s roof. ‘This boy’s been sittin’ here in the cold long enough, Abe. You needin‘ anything else here?’

Glitsky shifted his attention to the coroner. ‘Not me, John,’ he replied. ‘If crime scene’s done, you can tag him and bag him.’

Strout took a last look into the car, at the body of Phil Canetta, and clucked sympathetically. Again he straightened up. ‘Scene calls. I hate ’em, y’know that? They ain’t medicine out here, are they? It ain’t just a stripped body with something to tell you.‘

There wasn’t anything to say to that. Everybody there felt the same thing to a greater or lesser degree.

Glitsky gave Strout a gentle slap on the shoulders as he passed. Then he walked a few paces back to where the head of his crime scene unit was huddling with a couple of his team. Hardy heard him say, ‘If there’s enough lead left, get ballistics to check it against the slug that went through Griffin. I’m betting it’s the same gun.’

A short discussion ensued, after which Glitsky returned to Hardy. ‘Valens. This morning. Jeff Elliot. Bet you thought I’d get side-tracked, didn’t you?’

‘Never crossed my mind,’ Hardy said. ‘I know we’ve got to talk, but maybe someplace else.’

Hands in his pockets, the lieutenant took in the gloom around them. The body was on the coroner’s gurney and the tow truck started its mechanical cranking, getting ready to lift Canetta’s car and take it to the police lot.

Hunching his shoulders, Glitsky gave a last shudder against the cold. ‘Good call,’ he said.

In one of his brothers’ old rooms down the hall that led off the back of the kitchen, Orel Glitsky was sprawled on the floor, watching television and doing homework. Rita was with him, reading, her Spanish radio station playing softly on the end table next to where she sat on the sofa.