John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

Book 13 in the Dismas Hardy series, 2009

Friday, the end of the workweek.

On the small deck outside his back door a lawyer named Dismas Hardy sat with his feet up on the deck’s railing and savored a rare moment as the sun spent the last hour of its day lowering itself toward the horizon behind his home.

The house cast its ever-lengthening shadow out over the neighborhood to the east- San Francisco ’s Richmond District-and it threw into relief the bright west-facing facades of the buildings in the city before him as it stretched away to downtown. The random window reflected glints of sunlight back at him, fireflies in the gathering dusk, shimmering in the Indian-summer air.

He sipped his gin and ice, placed the glass down on the meshed metal of the picnic table they’d set up out here, and was suddenly and acutely aware that he could not be more content. His wife, Frannie, whom he still loved after twenty-three years, was inside the house behind him, humming as she did whatever she was doing. His two children were away and doing well at their respective schools-Rebecca at Boston University and Vincent at UC San Diego. The law firm of Freeman, Farrell, Hardy & Roake, of which he was the managing partner, was humming along as though it were on autopilot.

Hardy looked for a moment into the blue above him, blinking against a wave of emotion. Then, being who he was, his mouth cracked into a small grin at himself and he lifted his glass for another sip.

Inside, the telephone rang twice and stopped, which meant that it was someone they knew and that Frannie had picked it up. Her voice, with notes of sympathy and understanding, floated out to him, but he didn’t bother trying to make out any of the words. She had begun to have a somewhat thriving career of her own as a marriage and family therapist and often would wind up counseling her clients from home.

Hardy drifted, not off to anywhere, but into a kind of surrender of conscious thought. For a long moment he was simply there in the same way that his drink or his chair existed; or the light, or the breeze off the ocean a little over a mile west of where he sat. So that when the door opened behind him, he came back with a bit of a start.

Frannie put a hand on his shoulder and he brought his hand up to cover hers, half turning, seeing the look on her face. “What’s up?” he asked, his feet coming down off the railing. “Are the kids all right?” Always the first concern.

She nodded a yes to the second question, then answered the first. “That was Treya.” Treya was the wife of Hardy’s best friend, Abe Glitsky, the head of San Francisco ’s homicide department. Anguish in her eyes, Frannie held and released a breath. “It’s Zack,” she said, referring to Glitsky’s three-year-old son. “He’s had an accident.”

Accompanied by her five-year-old daughter, Rachel, Treya Glitsky opened the gate in the Hardys’ white picket fence. Dismas Hardy, in his living room watching out through the plantation shutters of his front window, called back to his wife in the kitchen that they were here, then walked over and opened his front door.

Treya turned away and, closing the gate, reached down for a small duffel bag. By the effort it took to lift, it might have weighed a hundred pounds. When she straightened up, her shoulders rose and fell, then she brought a hand to her forehead and stood completely still for another second or two. With her tiny hand Rachel held on to the front pocket of her mother’s jeans while she looked up at her face, her own lips pressed tight.

Hardy crossed his porch and descended three steps to the cement path that bisected his small lawn. The sun had gone down behind the buildings across the street, although true dusk was still twenty minutes away. As she turned and saw him now, Treya’s legendary composure threatened to break. She was a tall woman-nearly Hardy’s size-and strongly built. Her mouth, expressive and normally quick to smile, quivered, then set in a line.

Hardy came forward, took the duffel bag from her, and put an arm around her neck, drawing her in, holding her for a moment. Finally he stepped back and whispered, “How is he?”

She shrugged and shook her head. Then, her voice as quiet as his, “We don’t know yet.”

Frannie came up, touched his shoulder, and came around to hug Treya.

Hardy stepped to the side and went down on one knee to face Rachel at her level. “And how’s my favorite little girl in the whole world?”

“Okay,” she said. “But Zack got hit by a car.”

“I know he did, hon.”

“But he’s not going to die.”

Hardy looked up at the two women. Treya gave him a quick nod, and he came back to her daughter. “No, of course not. But I hear you’re going to stay here for a couple of days while he gets better. Is that okay with you?”

“If Mom says.”

“And she does. Is that duffel bag your stuff? Here, let me get it. If you put your arms around my neck, your old uncle Diz will carry you inside.”

Then they were all moving up the path and into the house. “Abe went with the ambulance,” Treya was saying. “We don’t know how long we’re going to have to be down there. I don’t know how to thank you for watching Rachel.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frannie said. “We love Rachel.” She reached out and touched the little girl’s cheek where she rested it on Hardy’s shoulder. “She’s our favorite little girl.”

Hardy and Frannie walked Treya out after they got Rachel settled in with cookies and milk in front of the television. They stopped again on the path just inside the fence. “Was he conscious?” Hardy asked.

“No.” Treya paused, then lowered her voice. “He didn’t have his helmet on.”

“What happened exactly?” Frannie asked.

“We may never know,” she said. “Abe had just brought down his Big Wheel bike and Zack was on it, but Abe told him to just sit still and wait a minute while he turned around and got his helmet, which he’d set down like two feet away on the stairs. But then as soon as his back was turned, Zack got aboard and either started pedaling or just rolling down the driveway, just as another car was coming up the street. One of our neighbors. He was only going like five miles an hour, but Zack just plowed into him and got knocked off the bike and into the street.” She flashed a pained look from Hardy to Frannie. “He banged his head.” She hesitated. “I’ve got to get down there now. You guys are great. Thank you.”

“Go,” Hardy said. “Call when you can.”

At ten-thirty Hardy was shepherding the evening’s last glass of wine, which he didn’t need at all. He was sitting in his reading chair across from the fireplace in the living room. Rachel had gone down to sleep early and easily about an hour and a half ago. Frannie was in the family room now and for the past half hour had been talking to their son, Vincent, down in San Diego. She’d already called the Beck back in Boston, both calls not so much to share the bad news as to touch base with their own offspring, to make sure they were safe.

Neither Treya nor Abe had called yet with any report from the hospital. Hardy, hamstrung by his overwhelming sense of dread, had his hand around the stem of his glass but hadn’t yet brought it to his lips. He simply stared at the fire.