John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“I know. He’ll be devastated, but he’s been wrong before.”

After a minute, Hunt came forward again, elbows on the table. “But so, on the other thing, I’ve been dying to know what you found out.”

“What other thing?”

“Tess Granat? The hit-and-run? I Googled it after lunch.”

“Thank God for Google,” Hardy said, really wishing that Hunt hadn’t brought this up again. “Everything that’s ever happened, there it is.”

“Except Dylan Vogler. His early life, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that except for the few days right after he got shot, I think our friend Dylan might be the only human being Google hasn’t found and chronicled.”

“You looked?”

“Diz. Google’s half my life, maybe three quarters. It’s where you look first. Which brings us back to Tess Granat, who was very real and very chronicled. So what’d you find out?”

Hardy picked up his tea and blew on it. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? She wouldn’t say, or what? Even if she wasn’t involved, she must have known all about it.”

Hardy could see there wasn’t anything to do but come clean. “It was a privileged conversation, Wyatt. I can’t talk about it.”

Hunt broke a smile. “Diz. Dude. I’m your investigator. I’m covered by the privilege.”

“Well, just because I can tell you doesn’t mean I should. And don’t think it doesn’t break my heart.” Hardy put his cup down, moved on. “But, listen, I don’t know if we’re going to need that anyway. This Lori Bradford, as I said, might do it all by herself. We’ve got to get her subpoenaed.”

“As our witness?”

“Absolutely. And ASAP, I think.”

Hunt took a small notebook from his jacket pocket and made a note. “I’ll have Craig come by your office for it in the morning.”

“That’ll work,” Hardy said. “I’ll make one out first thing and leave it with Phyllis. Give the boy some meaningful labor, work through his problems.”

“Well, I’m hoping he’s over them. Kids, you know. Love.”

“I’ve heard of ’em both,” Hardy said.

“Anyway, if Craig doesn’t show, I will. Don’t worry. And I got Lori on tape tonight, anyhow, for what that’s worth. It’s back at the office, locked up.”

“Excellent.” Hardy put away the last bite of pork and looked at his watch. Quarter to ten. Blowing out heavily, he shook his head. “Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for these things anymore.”

“Trials?”

“Not just trials. Murder trials.”

“I thought they were the fun part, when lawyers felt most alive.”

Hardy gave him a look. “Uh-huh. Only in the sense that when you’re suffering, at least you know you’re alive.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There you go,” Hardy said.

But suddenly, Hardy realized as he was driving home that the confluence of the two new facts he’d only discovered today-the two-shot scenario at the alley behind BBW, and Maya’s involvement with the death of Tess Granat-had, much against his will and inclination, pushed him not just over the line into doubt about his client’s guilt, but into a near certainty that she might in fact be innocent.

The key element regarding Tess Granat, which he and Hunt had hinted about at lunch today, was simple and yet profound. Dylan Vogler had known about the accident and had been blackmailing Maya about it since he’d gotten out of prison. Hardy could believe-and in fact had believed-that his client had all the motive in the world to have killed Dylan. She’d also had means and opportunity.

What had changed in the Tess Granat scenario, which had the rather significant advantage of being true, was that to Hardy’s mind, it completely eliminated Levon Preslee from the picture. He’d already gotten his one favor, his job, from Maya, and maybe even through Dylan. But that had evidently been enough. That job had worked for him, for a new start on a different life. And in any event, that favor, or whatever it was, had been years before. There was no record or even sniff of a record that Maya had seen or spoken to him in eight years before she suddenly went over to his apartment on the day he was killed.

Again-why?

Because Levon had called her?

In just the same way that Dylan had called her?

Or had someone else called her? Either or both times?

Someone who was connected to both Dylan and to Levon in the present, and who might have had dealings with them in the past as well?

Paco.

At ten-fifteen, long after everyone else except the downstairs guards had left the building, Harlen Fisk sat holding a Glock.40-caliber semiautomatic weapon, the twin to his sister’s, in his office upstairs in City Hall. Harlen had bought both the guns at the same time, while he was still only a couple of years into his service with the police force. As was the custom, when Glock came out with the new model, they’d offered it at a discount to active-duty cops, in the hope that cops would come to favor the gun and entire cities would order it as the on-duty weapon for their police force. In fact, he’d insisted on buying Maya’s for her after they’d had an early robbery at BBW. You needed a weapon if you owned a store in the Haight, even if you weren’t planning to use it. It was good for peace of mind.

Back in those days Dylan’s time in prison hadn’t seemed to weigh so heavily on everyone. Not even to a cop like Harlen. They’d all known each other when Dylan and Maya had been in college, Harlen the older brother, not yet a cop. Sometimes they all smoked dope together, had some laughs. Then Dylan had done something truly dumb, and got caught. But he’d paid for it, and now he was working with Maya, doing a great job. Harlen never considered that he’d go back to crime. Why would he? He didn’t need it.

So he’d bought the guns, the Glocks. Harlen hadn’t even known or cared about the ballistics quirk-that fired bullets from this model couldn’t usually be traced back to a particular gun-until he’d heard about it at trial.

Harlen’s office wasn’t large, and most of it was filled with the old-fashioned desk and free-standing bookshelves that lined the wall to his right. To his left the view out his large windows across Van Ness included a glorious stretch of San Francisco’s somewhat grandiose architecture-the Opera House, Performing Arts Center, and War Memorial. Behind him a framed rogues gallery of himself posing with various other politicians and celebrities-his aunt Kathy, of course, Bill and Hillary, Dianne Feinstein, Robin Williams, Dusty Baker in his Giants uniform-offered mute but compelling testimony to his own popularity and success.

Harlen had made it, in a somewhat tortuous route, and in the most cutthroat of fields, almost to the very top. At least to the city’s top-and after that, who knew how far he could go? He’d been a supervisor now for seven years, after starting out as a clerk in Kathy’s office just out of college about seven years before that. Through his aunt Kathy’s tutelage and influence he’d joined the PD as a uniformed patrolman, and rose quickly, finally making it all the way to homicide for a few months before finally quitting and jumping over to the political side, starting with the low rungs of community activist work-soup kitchen and homeless shelter service on the one hand; victims’ rights advocacy, a natural with his police background, on the other. Mix in a couple of stints on various visible boards-the National Kidney Foundation, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library-and a term on the school board, and then Kathy moved up to mayor and he ran for and won her seat on the Board of Supervisors.

And now here he was, gun in hand, wondering if it was all going to end.