John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

‘Everything does, sooner or later.’ Hardy closed the door. Freeman’s hair was doing its Einstein impression and the rest of him was decked in his usual sartorial splendor – dead cigar in his mouth, tie askew, wrinkled shirt unbuttoned, the coat of his shiny brown suit draped over his shoulders. ‘Phil Canetta’s been killed,’ Hardy said soberly. ‘You hear about that?’

The old man put his pencil down. ‘I saw something in the paper this morning…’

Hardy was a couple of steps into the large corner office when the door opened again behind him – Phyllis. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Freeman. I told Mr Hardy you didn’t want to be… he brushed right past me and…’

Freeman held up a hand. ‘It’s OK, dear. Emergency.’

She spent another instant perfecting her expression of displeasure, though Hardy didn’t think it needed much work at all. Then she made an appropriate noise of pique and backed back out.

‘Dear?’ Hardy said. ‘You call her dear?’

‘She is a dear,’ Freeman said. ‘Controls the riff-raff element. I couldn’t survive without her.’

Hardy shook his head. ‘You’ve got to get out more.’ He’d made it to Freeman’s desk, pulled around a chair, plopped his briefcase, and opened it. He picked up as though they’d been talking all morning. ‘You were right about Griffin. That we ought to start with him.’

‘I thought we were on Canetta.’

‘Both.’

Freeman’s eyebrows went up, another question, and Hardy sat down, telling him about the ballistics confirmation – both men shot with the same gun, the rest of what he knew. ‘It looks like it wasn’t more than a couple of hours after he left here,’ he concluded.

‘Where was he?’

‘Just inside the Presidio.’

‘I didn’t read anything in the article about Griffin. Or Bree Beaumont either.’

‘Glitsky wants it quiet for now. Damon Kerry is definitely involved, so there are, as they say, political ramifications.’ Freeman didn’t respond in any way, so Hardy went on, reciting the facts as he knew them.

By the time he finished, Freeman was sitting back in his chair, his hands linked over his comfortable middle, his neck rucked down into his ratty tie, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell a couple of times. Slowly, he raised his head, and squinted across the desk. ‘So where are you now?’

Hardy reached forward and lifted the stapled and marked-up copy of Griffin’s notes from his briefcase. ‘Griffin found something. I’m convinced it’s right here.’ He passed the pages over the desk. ‘The yellow highlights.’

The bassett eyes came up, baleful humor. ‘I guessed that.’ After a moment’s perusal, he flipped back a few pages, nodded, came back to where he was, and looked up again. ‘So Griffin eliminated Ron?’

Hardy leaned forward himself. ‘Where do you see that?’

Patiently, Freeman went over it. ‘This first entry. R. at eight oh five, NCD, with the exclamation marks. “R” has got to be Ron, don’t you think? Eight oh five is when he left for school with the kids, too early to have done it. NCD is “no can do.” You got all this already, right?’

‘Sure,’ Hardy said, feeling like a fool. NCD, he thought. No can do. Just like WCB meant ‘will call back.’ But he’d never before run across the former. ‘Sure,’ he repeated. ‘Ron was out.’

‘OK.’ Freeman nodded. ‘I suppose the timing was right for him. Now what’s this “Herit.”?’

‘I just came from there. It’s the cleaning service that did Bree’s place.’ He leaned across the desk. ‘Tuesday and Thursday as it indicates. They do Bree’s on Thursday, so it was after the crime scene had two days there. By the way, it’s not there, but Griffin found a watch at the scene and tagged it into evidence.’

‘When?’

‘On Thursday. Heritage found it and gave it to Griffin.’

‘And crime scene didn’t on Tuesday?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hardy said. ‘I guess not. Glitsky would say they’re overworked and underpaid. It’s gone now in any event.’

Freeman was nodding distractedly, his eyes never leaving the page. ‘Never mind, never mind. Here it is again. This fabric wash. “R. stains.” Did Ron…? What was this? Semen?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think she and Ron were sleeping together.’

Now, Freeman did look up.

‘They had separate bedrooms,’ Hardy went on. ‘Definitely Bree, and maybe Ron, too, were involved with other people. Sexually.’

‘Charming,’ Freeman replied. ‘The modern couple. So you read the autopsy. Was there any evidence of rape that morning? Intercourse?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. Rug stains?’

Hardy shook his head. ‘Crime scene would have them.’

‘Oh yes, those competent crime scene analysts.’ Freeman thought another moment, then pointed to the briefcase. ‘Do you have a copy of the police report in there?’

Hardy handed him another folder and sat while Freeman leafed through to the page he wanted. ‘She was wearing a dark-blue cotton-blend skirt and pullover powder-blue sweater. Panty hose. Black shoes, half-inch heels. Ah, here we go.’

‘What?’

‘We’ve got what you’d expect – blood and dirt, but there’s also a rust stain on the left hip and on the hem of the sweater. Rust.’

‘When she went over the balcony,’ Hardy said. ‘It’s an iron grillwork railing.’

‘Well, there you go.’ Freeman, pleased with himself, leaned back in his chair again.

‘So why does it say “fab. wash”? That’s got to mean forensics didn’t find anything on the fabric, right? But they did find blood, dirt, rust…’

‘Maybe it’s some kind of detergent. Maybe it just means there was nothing on the drapes, or the rug, or the upholstery, all of which was true. Those fabrics were a wash.’

‘Maybe.’ It still troubled Hardy. Griffin’s damned exclamation points were all over the place with the cleaners and this note, and he couldn’t make them mean anything.

But Freeman, on his billable time, wasn’t wasting any of it. To his satisfaction, he’d solved the mystery of what the ‘R’ stood for, so he was moving on, now down to the ‘902’ phone call.

So Hardy brought him up to date about Bree’s call to Kerry. When he finished, Freeman looked perplexed. ‘But you say the call wasn’t at nine oh two?’

‘No. It was earlier – it began at ten after seven.’

‘So what’s this nine oh two?’

‘I don’t know. That’s what I mean, David, about Griffin having it here, but I can’t see it. I figured it was a time that would lead us to Kerry, and it did, but then the time was wrong.’

‘So it’s not a time.’

‘No – look back. That’s how he writes his times, everything. Eight oh five, eleven forty-five, now nine oh two.’

Freeman gave it another minute, then waved a hand. ‘All right, let’s pass on that and go on. What’s “Bax T… 830”?’

‘The last person we know of to see Griffin alive. Maybe the very last.’ Hardy went on to explain about Thorne and Elliot and Glitsky’s probable warrant to look for printed materials. ‘If Abe finds evidence on any of about four fronts, I think we can stop looking.’

Freeman drummed his fingers a couple of times. ‘So why are we doing this, you and me?’ Before Hardy could respond, the drumming stopped. ‘Did Canetta by any chance work for this Thorne guy?’

‘Not that I know of. Sometimes Jim Pierce.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Security at hotel conventions, like that.’

‘But not Thorne?’

‘I don’t know. I hadn’t connected Thorne to any of this before yesterday, so I never asked.’

Freeman pressed it. ‘Well, think about it. Wouldn’t the ethanol producers have conventions here too? I mean, this is Convention City, USA. And all of them need security, right? If Canetta was in that loop, one of a hundred cops doing freelance…’ A shrug. It was obvious. ‘And you know for a fact that Thorne is involved with Kerry, too?’