John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘This is the truth, Diz. I don’t know, maybe he had some kids with this woman a long time ago and-’

‘Where’d he get the money?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

Hardy slapped the table, shouted. ‘Jesus! What about the baseball cards? What did he want you to do with them, put ’em in a fucking time capsule?‘

It was the moment to leave – this anger wasn’t going anywhere productive. Hardy got his voice back under control, gathered his pen and his legal pad, stood up. ‘Let me tell you what this looks like, Graham. This looks like you killed your dad and stole fifty thousand dollars from him and you just didn’t have the chance – yet – to launder the money, or do whatever it is you do with that much cash. And cash seems to be your thing. I’m not saying that this is what I think’ – although Hardy was perilously close to believing just that – ‘but this is what it’s going to look and sound like to everybody who hears it. And if it looks, smells, and tastes like it, guess what?’

No reply.

Hardy took a breath. ‘Now, I’m still your lawyer and I’m going to listen to what you say, and if you want to change your mind, I’m not going to hold it against you and we’ll go on from there. But these are losing cards. This is a terrible hand.’

Graham looked up. ‘It’s what happened.’

‘Well, if that’s true, Graham,’ Hardy replied, ‘this has not been your lucky week.’

When the DA, Sharron Pratt, got the news that Graham Russo had been arrested without a warrant issued by her office, she angrily demanded that Glitsky report to her. She thought the police had seriously overstepped their bounds, particularly in this case where the larger issues surrounding assisted suicide needed to be thoroughly aired and debated. ‘I don’t understand,’ Pratt was saying, ‘why you didn’t come to me first, Lieutenant. Why did you just arrest him?’

‘We think he’s committed a murder.’ Glitsky didn’t yet understand Pratt’s anger, for while it was true that the police often came to the DA to get a warrant for an arrest, it was nearly as common to have inspectors make the arrest first. This tended to keep suspects from disappearing. ‘But look, ma’am, if you want, you can just dismiss the case.’

That’s what you’d like, isn’t it, Lieutenant?‘

‘No, ma’am. But it’s your right.’

‘Don’t try to con me, Lieutenant. That’s just what you want. If you’d come for a warrant for this boy’s arrest, you knew I would have turned you down, but now that you’ve arrested him first, you’ve focused the issue, putting me on the spot.’

Hands clamped behind her back, Pratt wore her half-moon glasses midway down her aristocratic nose. She looked over them.

Pratt was not Glitsky’s boss, and he didn’t much care how she felt about him, but he was trying to do his job, and considered his reply carefully before he gave it. ‘It was a timing issue,’ Glitsky said. ‘There was plenty of evidence to arrest, but if you want to play political football…’

Pratt’s eyes glared. Her nostrils flared. ‘Don’t you dare accuse me of playing politics with a man’s life. Your people made a mistake arresting this man.’

Glitsky couldn’t stop himself. ‘You know that the arresting inspector was a woman, don’t you?’

It slowed her for a moment. ‘That’s not the issue,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t care who arrested him. The point is we – this office – had not made a decision to prosecute. You knew we weren’t ready to issue a warrant, so you went ahead without one.’

‘I didn’t know that. Why would I even think it? Your office prosecutes homicides. What’s to know?’

Pratt nodded, as though Glitsky had confirmed something for her. She moved over to her desk, where the Russo file sat in its manila folder. ‘I’m going to bring this up with the mayor and the Board of Supervisors, Lieutenant. This police vendetta to discredit me, it has to stop.’

‘And why are we having this vendetta again?’ Glitsky asked. ‘I forget.’

‘Because I believe – and I’m right - that some of the things that you call crimes are simply not wrong, and I’m not going to prosecute them.’

‘I don’t call them crimes – the legislature does.’

Pratt was shaking her head. ‘I don’t care what’s on the books. The books are wrong. People are being hounded by you police, the city’s resources are being squandered by your harassment of prostitutes, casual marijuana users-’

‘Murderers?’

She leveled a finger at him. ‘That’s exactly my point. Based on the evidence I’ve seen here’ – the finger went down to the folder – ‘I don’t think Graham Russo is a murderer.’

‘You don’t think he killed his father?’

‘No, I do think he killed his father.’ She slapped her palm down on the desk. ‘ Of course he killed his father, technically speaking,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

Deciding it would be wiser to sidestep a direct answer to that, Glitsky took a beat, tilted his head, ladled on the sincerity. ‘Then I really am missing something here. What’s the problem with us arresting him if you think he did it?’

Sighing heavily, Pratt pulled her chair over and sat down. ‘What I’m saying, Lieutenant, is that though technically this could have been a homicide-’

Glitsky interrupted. ‘Strout called it a homicide,’ he said, ‘so it’s a homicide.’

But she was shaking her head. ‘Regardless of that, it wasn’t a murder.’

‘No? Then what was it?’

‘An assisted suicide.’

‘Which is illegal.’

‘But not wrong. In fact it was right . The boy did the humane thing and it was probably the most difficult decision of his life. And you want to try him for murder?’

‘No. I arrested him for breaking a law. That’s my job.’

‘That’s not true. Your job is to process warrants through this office. We make the decision as to whether we’re going to charge a crime.’ All the way back in her chair, she pointed again, up at him, eyes flashing. ‘You police knew this office would make that distinction. So you circumvented me. You’ve been doing this kind of thing ever since I came on here. Can it be that you really think I don’t see it?’

Glitsky stepped over to a grouping of wing chairs at the side of the room and pulled one around, sitting on it. He pointed at the file, adopted a conversational tone. ‘You said you read this. So I’m curious – how do you rule out murder?’

‘I start with the Constitution, Lieutenant, by presuming the man innocent.’ When he didn’t comment, she continued with her own perfectly plausible theory on Sal Russo’s death: it was a mercy killing.

‘So you’re saying that from now on, in cases like this the DA decides we don’t need a jury trial to get at the facts? And what do we call this, the mercy rule?’ Pratt glared at him – it was no use arguing legal theory with her. He decided to return to the evidence. ‘Okay, then, what about the money?’

‘His father gave it to him. He loved him. He was still estranged from his other children. Apparently they hated him. Why would he want them to share his money?’

‘Then why didn’t Graham just admit it? Why did he lie about everything we asked him?’

‘He was cornered. He didn’t see a way to get out, so he panicked. People do it all the time.’

‘All right. How about the trauma to the head?’

‘He could have fallen down and knocked his head anytime before he died.’

Glitsky fell silent. There were many other evidentiary points, but he knew that Pratt would have an explanation for how each of them fit her own theory. And, in fact, she might be right. The truth might be exactly what Pratt thought it was.