John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

The apartment radiated good taste. Graham Russo might be a jock, but there appeared to be a lot more to him than that. A further consideration raised its ugly head, though, and Hardy couldn’t put it aside: a place like this, and the lifestyle that went with it – the wine alone, for example – cost some serious money, and Graham was, at best, underemployed. He wondered how his young client could afford to keep all this up.

But he’d find that out on his own time. For now, he was here to hold hands, and that’s what he’d do. He asked permission to put on a pot of coffee and – another peace offering – offered it around.

He and Graham found themselves talking baseball at the table. Lanier was on the low leather couch on the left side of room, going through a stack of magazines, seeking stuff that might be tucked into them.

In her search for syringes and vials of morphine Sarah Evans had been looking through things in the bathroom, a small cubicle with a sink, shower, and toilet that had been patched onto the back corner of the room.

Hardy thought that Evans had a really wonderful, sincere smile. Like the Hispanic DA he’d met with Glitsky yesterday, she barely seemed old enough, in his eyes, to be a Girl Scout, much less a homicide inspector.

When Hardy poured the coffee, she came out and sat down with the men, smiled, and placed her pocket tape recorder on the table between them. Shoulder-length dark hair framed a freckled oval face, set off by widely spaced green eyes. A compact and athletic, very attractive body was evident under the utilitarian work-clothes. ‘You don’t mind?’ she said, still smiling. ‘Two birds with one stone.’

Graham knew the law. He knew that talking to a police officer during an official investigation was a very serious matter. He had called his attorney first thing because he hadn’t wanted to be tricked.

But then, after he’d admitted the two officers into his apartment, he’d really seen Sergeant Evans. He fancied that she’d noticed him as well. They were about the same age. The law was one thing, he knew, but this was a pretty woman and he had had some experience with them. He had no doubt that he could charm her and get her on his side, in spite of what her job might be, her professional role.

This went beyond the law. It was only common sense to take advantage of the way people worked. He would be in control. Talking to her would be a smart move, although the book recommended against it.

Sometimes you just had to go on what you felt.

Hardy began, ‘No. I’m sorry, but my client doesn’t-’

‘It’s all right.’ Graham held out his hand, stopping him. ‘You said it, didn’t you, Diz? I might as well cooperate. I don’t have anything to hide.’ He shrugged, casually looked over at Evans. ‘Shoot, Inspector.’ A broad smile. ‘Not literally, of course.’

Sarah returned the smile and took a sip of her coffee. She appraised him for another longish moment, then looked down, gathering herself, tucking away the last hint of the smile.

All right.

She launched into the standard police interview intro for the transcriber, then began. ‘When you talked to Inspector Lanier on Saturday, you said you didn’t know your father had morphine at his apartment-’

‘Wait a minute,’ Hardy said again. ‘I really have to object to this. You shouldn’t answer that, Graham.’

But the boy had gotten himself relaxed. ‘Diz, I want to explain.’

He focused on Inspector Evans. ‘That’s not exactly what I said. I said I didn’t know how it got there.’

Lanier abruptly closed the magazine he was leafing through, shifted on the couch, said, ‘Wait a minute.’ His face clouded. ‘No, all right.’ He grabbed the next magazine on the pile.

Evans asked, ‘But you knew it was there, the morphine?’

‘Graham.’ Hardy might be upsetting his client, but he had to speak up again. He really didn’t want Graham saying any of this. It could not help him. As a lawyer Graham must know this. What was he thinking? Didn’t Graham understand that this wasn’t casual conversation? It was being recorded and would be transcribed and perhaps used against him. Maybe Hardy’s getting inside wasn’t going to be worth the cost, and that worried him even more. ‘We can talk about this later, when we’re alone.’

Graham ignored him, smiled at the pretty inspector. ‘The morphine? I showed him how to give himself shots. He was in a lot of pain.’

The pain again. Graham kept bringing up the pain.

‘What from?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t ask?’

‘No. My father wouldn’t have told me. He would have said mind your own business. He didn’t want anybody to pity him.’

‘So you went up to your father’s apartment and showed him how to administer these morphine injections to himself?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Even though you weren’t particularly close?’

Graham cast a glance at Hardy. Looking for approval? Hardy couldn’t say. The horse was already a couple of acres from the barn and still running. Hardy had tried to stop Graham when it might have done some good. If his client reined himself in now, he would just look worse. So Hardy sipped his coffee and waited.

‘Just because we weren’t close, I didn’t want the guy to suffer.’ Graham shrugged. ‘He asked me to show him. I showed him, but I didn’t shoot him up. I knew what he was going to do.’

‘And what was that?’

Graham wasn’t blinking in the face of the questions. He leveled his gaze at her. ‘What he did do. Kill himself.’

Hardy thought he’d convey a little relevant information that his client might not know. ‘The autopsy came in last night, Graham,’ he said. ‘It didn’t rule out homicide.’

Graham stopped his cup halfway to his mouth, put it down on the table, sat all the way back in his chair. ‘Well, that’s bullshit.’

Hardy nodded. ‘Maybe, but it’s why these guys are here.’

Graham leaned forward, elbow on the table, and looked right at Evans. Again, the expression struck Hardy as a little much. The old eye-to-eye for sincerity was, he suspected, no guarantee that the truth was next up. ‘I didn’t kill my father. He killed himself.’

Sarah Evans wasn’t giving anything away. She nodded, moved the tape recorder slightly, sipped from her mug. ‘So how often would you say you saw your father in the last six months?’

‘I don’t know. Six, eight times.’

‘More than once a month, then?’

‘He was getting senile. He had Alzheimer’s, you know. He’d call me, then forget he called me. He didn’t remember where he’d put things. I’d come up and find them.’

‘The morphine?’

A pause. ‘Sure, yeah.’

‘What was the pain from?’ she asked again. ‘Who gave him the morphine?’

He smiled broadly this time. ‘You already asked that.’

‘And you said you didn’t know.’

That’s right. Still don’t.‘

She shifted gears on him. ‘Don’t you work for an ambulance company?’

‘I’m a paramedic. I ride in ambulances.’

‘And you carry syringes and-’

Hardy couldn’t sit still any longer. ‘Excuse me, but Graham already said he didn’t know where the morphine came from.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I’m asking now about the syringes.’

‘It’s the same-’

But Graham put a hand over Hardy’s arm, stopping him. ‘I may have brought some syringes, left some there. I wanted to make sure he had clean needles.’

In the silence that followed, Lanier turned another page of his magazine. Graham leaned across the table and adjusted the louvered blinds. The room lightened up by half again. It was a great day above the fog here on Edgewood.