John Lescroart - Hard Evidence

‘Had you set a date?’

‘No,’ she said. She picked up one of the teacups and held it a second, then put it back down. ‘It is still too hot,’ she said. ‘We only decided, finally, last Friday. It was my ring.’

‘The snake ring? The one on his hand?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘Then you’ve known since Monday that he was dead?’ Or since Saturday when you shot him, he was thinking. ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

She picked up the teacup again, perhaps stalling. ‘When it doesn’t burn the fingers, it can’t burn the mouth,’ she said. She handed him the cup.

It was strong, excellent green tea. Abe sipped it, not really understanding why you could drink hot tea on a hot day and feel cooler. ‘May, why didn’t you call us, the police?’

‘What could they do? He was already dead. I knew it was Owen. The rest didn’t matter. It was his fate.’

‘It wasn’t his natural fate, May. Somebody shot him.’

‘Monday I didn’t know that. I only knew it was Owen’s hand.’

‘What about today? Did you read the paper today? Or yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

Glitsky waited. ‘Just yes?’

May Shinn sipped at her own tea. Carefully she put the cup down. ‘What do you want me to say? My instinct, after all, was not to call the police. Whoever killed Owen will have to live with himself and that is punishment enough.’

Abe put his cup down and walked back to the turret window. Across the street was another apartment house, the mirror image of this one. A cable car clanged by below. The sun was still fairly high, slanting toward him. There wasn’t a cloud clear to the horizon.

From behind him. ‘Am I a suspect, Sergeant?’

Glitsky turned around. ‘Do you remember what you did last Saturday, during the day?’

‘An alibi, is that right? I am a suspect, then.’

‘It’s an open field at this point, but unless you have an alibi for Saturday, I’m afraid you’re in it. Did you kill him?’

Just say no, he thought, I didn’t do it. But she said, ‘I was here Saturday, all day.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes, alone. I was waiting for Owen to come back.’ A little short there, exasperated. Deny you did it, he thought again, just say the words. But she said, ‘I loved the man, Sergeant.’

‘Did you make any phone calls, order out for pizza? Did anybody see you?’

Finally it was getting to her. She sat on the front three inches of the couch, ramrod straight. ‘I got up late, around nine. Owen had left sometime around six. I took a long bath. I was nervous. Owen was doing something to make it so we could get married -deciding, I think, that he was going to go through with it. He thought best out on the water. I waited. I paced a lot. When he wasn’t back by dark, I went to bed. I couldn’t face anybody. I was crying. I thought he’d decided not to.’

Glitsky put his jacket over his knees. ‘I think you might want to put your trip on hold,’ he said. ‘And maybe see about retaining a lawyer.’

He thought about taking her downtown now, but knew that he’d be asking for repercussions if he did. It was premature. He really had no evidence. It had been a week since the gun had been fired, and even the most sophisticated laser analysis wouldn’t show powder on the hands after that long. What May had told him was plausible, though pretty unlikely, and there was still plenty of legwork to try and verify her alibi or not, maybe neighbors hearing her walking around and so forth. If she agreed to put off going to Japan, there wasn’t any risk of imminent flight, and he didn’t really have any probable cause.

Plus, she being Oriental and he being half black, he didn’t want to give anybody any ammunition to be able to accuse him of hassling her on racial grounds. She had invited him, without a warrant, into her apartment. It was bad luck to arrest somebody under those conditions. Now if she took flight, it would be a different story.

But she was standing, too. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

Glitsky was picking up his shoes. ‘Can you get a refund on that ticket? If you can’t, we may be able to help you.’

She shook her head. ‘They should refund it. God knows I paid full price, they should.’

So she’d bought the ticket recently, Abe thought. Probably since last Saturday. He hesitated. Strike two and a half. Tough call, but he was still an invited guest in her house, and she’d promised to stay around. He’d really prefer to have an indictment before he decided to arrest somebody on a murder charge.

He thought he’d bring his suspicions to Hardy and Hardy could decide whether they wanted to try to persuade the grand jury. But he doubted there was enough yet. Two and a half strikes didn’t make an out.

He said goodbye and she closed the door, gently, behind him.

Abe didn’t love himself for it, but it was too close and he thought with a little patience he would at least not have to worry over the weekend. He pulled his Plymouth away from the curb and made a point of turning west at the corner under the turret window. He drove three blocks, turning north again on Van Ness, left on Geary and back up to Union. He parked at the far end of May’s block on her side of the street.

Even with the windows down, in the shade, it was hot. Fortunately, he didn’t have long to wait.

A cab pulled up in front of the corner apartment building and honked its horn twice. Glitsky waited as May came out of the building. He let the driver load her suitcases into the trunk, let May get settled into the back seat before he pulled out into the street.

As the cab rounded the first corner, Abe turned on his red light and hit his siren. The cab, directly in front of him, pulled over immediately.

Abe came up to the window and flashed his badge. The driver asked what he’d done; Abe had him get out of the car, then asked him where this fare had asked to be taken.

‘Down the airport,’ he said. ‘Goin’ to Japan at eight o’clock.‘

Glitsky thanked the man, then opened the back door and looked in at May. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you’re under arrest.’

It was after five, but yesterday Hardy had gone home early after the beach, so today he felt compelled to check in after his visit with Farris instead of going directly home from the field. He parked under the freeway and stopped for a moment to admire the huge hole in the ground that now, after a year of political struggle, was the beginning of the new county jail.

Like everything else in San Francisco government, the decision to build a larger county jail had been arrived at after a fair and wide-ranging debate of other uses to which the alloted money should, in a perfect world, be put. Although the electorate had approved the bond measure that would provide the funds, the board of supervisors had at first leaned toward using this money to buy electronic bracelets to keep track of prisoners – Hardy grinned involuntarily whenever the thought crossed his mind – and using the remainder for AIDS research. This enlightened plan was discussed by the mayor, the board and various agencies for eleven months. Finally, over the threatened resignations of both Police Chief Dan Rigby and County Sheriff Herbert Montoya, the jail had been approved.

Hardy gazed down into the hole as the last of the workmen were wrapping it up for the day. He had a vision of five gang members in an old Ford cruising out to one of the projects to shoot whoever might be standing around, each of them wearing a Captain Video wrist bracelet to keep him from committing crimes because, see, if the cops knew where you were at all times, then it would be the same as being in jail, wouldn’t it?

The first time he’d seen her she’d had mascara running down her face, hair witched out in shanks, so Hardy didn’t immediately recognize Celine Nash, who was coming out of the coroner’s office, on Hardy’s left, thirty feet in front of him.