John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

He smiled at her. “I would have thought you’d have been sick of it by now.”

“I might be sick of it, but I’m not too tired to talk about it if you want to.”

He paused a moment. “I just marvel that she can be so dumb. Sticking with the story that she didn’t know much about the weed. I mean, come on, I knew about it, everybody knew about it.”

Her forehead creased in a look of concern. “I don’t think I knew that. You knew Dylan? How well did you know him?”

He waved that away. “I met him first when he was her boyfriend for a while when they were in college. Then again when Maya hired him, just after he got out of jail. I told her it was a mistake. And of course, she listened to me as much as she always does, which is not at all.”

“Harlen, come on. She listens to you.”

“Maybe listens, but doesn’t hear. I told her this dope stuff could be a problem a couple of years ago, told her to fire him. No chance.”

“Why not?”

“She was saving him, I think. This messianic complex she’s got. She’s got everything and she’s so lucky and so she’s got to help losers to balance the scales or something. Not realizing, of course, about the people who are covering for her.”

“You mean you?”

“Let me just ask you,” he said. “Who’s got her kids right now?”

“I don’t mind that. They’re good kids.”

“No argument. But they’re not ours, are they? And you and me, we didn’t sign on for the little darlings, did we?” Sighing, he went on. “She shouldn’t even be in this at all. I told her not to go down there. Six in the morning? I mean, what kind of hour for a meeting is that? And why do these things with her become my problems?”

“I didn’t know you’d talked to her. When was that?”

Again, he waved off her question. “The night before. She called and asked me what I’d do. I told her to call him back and find out what was so important, but again, naturally…” He turned a palm over, meaning she’d ignored his suggestion. He let out a long breath, his head shaking from side to side. “And then there’s this Levon thing too.”

“The other victim?”

He nodded. “Levon Preslee. Actually not a bad guy.”

“You knew him too?”

He faked a short-lived smile. “Hey, I’m a politician. I know everybody.”

“So what is this Levon thing?”

“He gets out of jail, he comes to my sweet little sister to help him out, since she helped Dylan when he got out. And if you haven’t guessed yet, these guys-Levon and Dylan-still talk to each other. So I know people, right? It’s what I do. So way back then I put him in with Jon Francona over at ACT, and it worked out pretty good until… well, until last fall.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. So, well, the point is, why I might be thinking about this stuff right now, and getting a little edgy about it, is Jon Francona died two years ago, so nobody in the world, besides my sister and you, has got or knows of any connection between me and Levon Preslee, and I’m just a little wee bit concerned that along with this forfeiture stuff we’re all wrestling with, somebody’s going to pull that up and wave it in my face too. And don’t get me wrong, I love the publicity and all, but I think that might actually do me some harm.”

“Well”-Jeannette reached out and put her hands on her husband’s knees-“nobody’s going to fault you for helping the poor man out all those years ago.”

“Nobody’s going to know, Jeannette. Nobody can entertain the thought even for a minute that I knew this guy from Adam.” He let out a last deep sigh. “I mean, I keep telling myself Maya put herself in this position. I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to let her get herself out of it. I can’t cover for her anymore, or else everything we’ve got is at risk.”

“Come on, hon. I think that must be a bit of an exaggeration.”

Harlen chewed at the inside of his cheek and pushed himself up out of his recliner. “Not really,” he said. “Not too much.”

Paul Stier’s first witnessthe next morning was San Francisco’s ancient medical examiner, Dr. John Strout. The good doctor had been a fixture in and around the Hall of Justice for over forty years and had appeared in court at least a thousand times, maybe more. Tall, with wispy white hair and positively gaunt instead of merely thin, he’d somehow evaded the mandatory retirement he should have taken the better part of a decade ago. But no one was pushing for it, because he remained highly and universally respected. His voice and manner retained a casual authority and easy affability that his Southern drawl only accented.

Now he sat back, comfortable, and waited while Stier positioned the poster board with the mounted autopsy photographs on the tripod next to the witness box, where both Strout and the jury could see. In many trials Strout’s testimony, which concerned itself with the cause and basic fact of a victim’s death, might have a huge impact on the verdict. The patterns of bruises on the deceased’s body could be highly significant. The shape of an injury could identify or eliminate an object as a possible murder weapon. Other, more subtle distinctions-blood alcohol levels, scans for various drugs or poisons-could be spun in myriad ways to cast doubt or lay blame.

But today, no one expected much in the way of fireworks from Strout’s testimony. In fact, after the previous day’s nearly unrelenting drama, the courtroom-sans mayor and supervisor-had nowhere near the buzz Hardy had expected. And this was a relief. After his conversation with Gina and Wyatt last night, he’d come to accept their mutual view that maybe Kathy and Harlen’s presence wasn’t doing his client as much good as they’d hoped.

So Strout’s testimony was going to establish conclusively that there were in fact two dead people, killed at the hands of another. Nevertheless, you never knew exactly what was going to come up in live testimony, and Hardy was paying close attention as Stier took the small pile of photos from the last juror to have viewed them, placed them with the other marked exhibits, and walked to the center of the room.

“Dr. Strout,” he said. “To begin with Dylan Vogler, the gunshot victim. Were you able to determine the time of death?”

“No.” He looked over to the jury box, speaking to them in an avuncular tone. “When the medical technicians arrived, he was warm to the touch. That suggests, for example, that he hadn’t been in the alley overnight, but I can’t say more than that.”

“What killed Mr. Vogler?”

“A gunshot wound to the chest.”

“Please describe the injury.”

Strout did so-the entrance, the exit, the track through the body-and Stier took it from there. “How quickly would an injury like this be likely to incapacitate the victim?”

“The bullet went in his chest and then right through his heart. Most people would collapse immediately from the injury and die shortly thereafter.”

“Doctor, would you tell the jury what defense wounds are?”

“Defense wounds are injuries typically sustained when the deceased tries to ward off blows or an attack. Injuries to the hands, for example, or forearms, usually. Sometimes to the legs.”

“Did you find any defense wounds on Mr. Vogler?”

“No.”

“Any abrasions, scrapes, cuts, or bruises to suggest he had been in a fight or struggle?”

“No. I can’t say there were.”

“In fact, did Mr. Vogler have any sign of injury of any kind except the gunshot wound that killed him?”

“No.” In other words, Hardy thought, Vogler either knew his attacker or was shot without any warning, or both. But Strout had one last word. “It was a pretty efficient killing.”