John Lescroart: Nothing But The Truth

In these cases, homicide inspectors collected the evidence that a jury would need to convict the completely obvious suspect and their job was done. Carl was useful here, connecting the dots.

Once in a while, since homicides came in over the transom and got assigned to whoever was on call, Griffin would draw a case that had to be worked. This hadn’t happened in over two years when the call came in about a politically connected white woman on Broadway, so Glitsky really had no choice. It wasn’t apparent at the outset that the case was high profile and if the lieutenant had suspected that it would go ballistic, he would have assigned other inspectors and Carl’s feelings be damned.

But as it was, Griffin got the Beaumont case, and he was in his sixth day, and he hadn’t made an arrest.

After receiving her doctorate from UC Berkeley in the early eighties, Bree had run that institution’s environmental toxicology lab for a couple of years before leaving academia to consult for the Western States Petroleum Association, and later to work for Caloco Oil.

Only a few months before her death, though, she’d abandoned the oil company and changed sides in the volatile wars over the multi-billion-dollar gasoline additive industry. Going public with her opposition to what she had come to believe were cancer-causing additives in California gasoline, Bree had aligned herself with the state assemblyman from San Francisco, Damon Kerry, now running for governor.

The central plank of Kerry’s platform played on the public’s fears that these petroleum-based gasoline additives, particularly a substance called MTBE – methyl tertiary butyl ether – was seeping into California’s groundwater in alarming amounts. It was dangerous and had to be outlawed, but the government wouldn ‘t move on it.

When Bree, the oil industry’s very photogenic baby, had agreed to join his campaign, it had given Kerry a terrific boost. And now, after her death, radio talk shows hummed with theories that the oil companies had killed Bree Beaumont, either in revenge for her defection or to keep her from giving Kerry more and better ammunition to use against them.

With the election four weeks from tomorrow, Kerry trailed his opponent by half-a-dozen points. Bree’s death had become big news. And every time someone mentioned her name, Damon Kerry came up as well.

But Carl Griffin wasn’t troubled. He had a plate full of active homicides and knew the suspects in three of them. He was simply assembling the packages.

On Bree Beaumont, he was confident he was close to asking for a warrant. There was just one piece of information he had to verify and he’d have it tied up. And wouldn’t that just show Glitsky and the rest of them who thought he couldn’t get anything done on this kind of case?

That’s why he never told anybody about his progress or lack of it. He wasn’t good with criticism. It rankled when other inspectors second-guessed him about what they’d do differently, where they ‘d look, why they wouldn’t talk to the people Carl was talking to.

Carl didn ‘t take this as good-natured ribbing, and maybe it wasn’t. He considered that he was an old-fashioned cop, a dog sniffing where his nose led, discarding anything that didn’t smell, following what did. His nose told him he was about a step away on Beaumont.

He stood in Glitsky’s doorway on his way out of the office. He wore his black Raider’s windbreaker over an orange and blue Hawaiian shirt that he tucked into a shiny pair of ancient black slacks. The shirt billowed over his belt. He looked about halfway to term.

Griffin was telling his lieutenant that he was going to be seeing a snitch on a gang-related in the Western Addition first thing this morning. He was late for it now, which didn’t matter because the snitch would be late, too. Then, depending on how things broke with the snitch, if he got time, he planned to try to find the knife in the Sanchez case – the crime scene investigators hadn’t been able to locate it in the house, but he’d bet it was somewhere on the block, so Griffin was going to poke around the shrubs and see what he came up with. His guess was she got out of the house and threw it somewhere and then came back before she dialed 911. Anyway, then…

Glitsky interrupted him. ‘How we doin’ on Beaumont?‘

‘Pretty good’.

Glitsky waited.

‘Couple more days.’

‘You writing it all up?’

Griffin lifted his windbreaker to show Glitsky the notebook tucked into his belt. He patted it. ‘Every word.’

There was no point in pushing. Griffin would tell him when he had something and he’d write it up when he got to it. Meanwhile, it sounded like he was moving steadily on at least two of his other cases. It would have to do for now.

But if Beaumont didn’t close in a couple of days, Glitsky knew he would have to pressure Carl to share his discoveries – he was starting to take heat about it.

‘All right.’ Griffin started to turn and for some reason, Glitsky said, ‘Watch your back, Carl’ A nod.

‘Always!’

‘Griffin wasn’t the brightest light in the detail,’ Abe said. ‘You ever meet him?’

‘Couple of times, yeah.’

‘So you know. Anyhow, we figure he arranged some kind of sting, putting the heat on one of his witnesses. Guy might have been on something and didn’t like the way it was going. Anyway, he didn’t respond well under pressure, felt he was getting double-crossed, and shot Carl, something like that.’ Glitsky made a face. ‘We may never know for sure.’

Hardy clucked in commiseration, then gestured down at the file he was holding. ‘So who’s got the case now?’

Glitsky nodded at the stack of folders he’d just gone through. ‘I got these off Tyler Coleman’s desk. That one doesn’t look much like it’s been worked.’

‘Why not?’

Glitsky shrugged. ‘It’s their sixth active. Time they got it – the thing’s already over a week old. Priorities.’

Hardy knew. Homicide inspectors didn’t want to waste their time – when the kill was no longer fresh, the scent disappeared. Suddenly, Hardy pulled the telephone around and punched for information. A minute later he hung up. ‘Unlisted, of course. If it were listed, I could just call and save myself an hour, but I wouldn’t want to do that now, would I?’ He was on his feet. ‘I’ve got to go. Are you going to be around?’

Glitsky checked his watch – nine o’clock. ‘I was thinking about seeing Orel.’ Glitsky was a widower with a fourteen-year-old son at home. He tried to make some time for him every day. Some. Now he looked across the desk into the worried face of his friend. ‘You get something, call me at home. Fair?’

Hardy pointed a finger – they had a deal – and hit the door running.

As Hardy drove out to the site of Bree Beaumont’s death, he realized that it was going to take some kind of miracle to get Frannie out of jail tonight. Even if he convinced this guy Ron, Frannie’s friend Ron, to divulge his secret, then what?

Glitsky had counseled him against calling on Judge Braun at her home, and he was right. It would only make matters worse, and perhaps get Hardy his own contempt citation. He had to put it out of his mind and take things one step at a time.

But he kept getting distracted. He couldn’t understand it. How could Frannie have let this happen, degree by degree? Now the family truly had a problem that was going to impact both him and their children in a major way. And all because Frannie had simply gotten her back up. At any point, she could have done something differently and avoided this mess.