John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

So it didn’t look as though the old TV-as-cultural-nemesis distraction was going to work with his wife tonight. He’d have to develop a new technique. ‘I didn’t,’ Hardy replied. ‘He just got out. Pratt let him go. What are you drinking?’

Frannie was white-wining, and Hardy waved Alan off and poured it himself while he was behind the bar. He went to the jukebox and put on Van Morrison. ‘Moondance’ was thirty years old and still sounded to Hardy as though it had been recorded yesterday.

He pulled up next to Frannie. A better kiss. ‘Okay,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘it is seven oh four and we are officially on a date. Now, for the record, I didn’t do anything with Graham Russo. Well, that’s not true. I talked to him in jail. How were the kids today?’

‘Notice the clever way he tries to change the subject.’ Frannie sipped her wine. He had to admit it, she was good, sticking right to the subject at hand. ‘The kids were fine. Nobody broke any bones. They had two fights after school, one less than usual. Do you think you and I ought to talk about Graham Russo? I thought if he went to jail you were out of it.’

‘I did too.’ Hardy tipped his glass up. ‘Then he went to jail.’ A shrug. ‘I couldn’t just drop him.’

‘No, you wouldn’t be able to do that.’ Frannie sighed. ‘So how did he get out? You really had nothing to do with it?’

‘ Nada . Pratt just let him go. You heard Donna and Phil, so it’s got to be true. It was political.’

‘I also heard the case wasn’t over.’

‘That may also be true. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. But I’m not certain he killed his father at all.’

Frannie put her glass down. ‘I thought he did. I thought that was a given.’

‘You’re not alone.’

‘So what did happen?’

‘I don’t know. I get the impression he might be protecting some doctor, somebody he knows. Maybe one of his family. He’s adamant he didn’t kill his dad or help him kill himself.’

She reached over and covered his hand with hers. ‘But, Dismas, don’t all clients say that, especially at first?’

‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘Still…’

‘Still you want to believe him.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m intrigued, I guess.’ Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and jumped up.

‘What?’ Frannie asked.

He was behind the bar, rummaging. ‘Something I just remembered,’ he said, pulling out the phone book, opening it on the bar.

‘Who are you looking for?’

He ran a finger down the page. ‘Singleterry,’ he said. ‘There’s only four of them. No Joan, though.’ He told Frannie about the money, about Graham’s explanation, where Sal had wanted it to go. ‘Do you mind if I make a call or two? You have another glass of wine? The phone’s right up front there, you can watch me the whole time.’

‘A thrill a minute,’ she said. ‘Dismas, are we on a date? Are you working now?’ But she touched his hand again. ‘It’s all right. Go.’

In five minutes he was back, frowning.

‘What?’

‘Two of them were home and both of them said I was the second person asking about Joan in the last three days. They didn’t know any Joan.’

‘Okay?’

‘Which means that Graham had called looking for her. Which means maybe he didn’t make up the story about the money.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘I don’t know, Fran. It might mean he was telling the truth.’

Sarah Evans gave herself an hour to sulk about Graham Russo’s release. It bothered her that she’d gone to all the trouble of investigating and then arresting him, and then the DA had simply let him go. She could fume for the rest of her life if she wanted. But she reminded herself it was only one case in what she hoped would be her long career. And she had done her job. No one had found any fault with her.

The rest of it – Pratt’s decision, the AG’s response – all of that was out of her control.

It wasn’t going to ruin her life, or even her night.

In fact, part of her was almost relieved. She’d thought Graham Russo was about the most attractive man she’d ever met and she hated to think that someone so good looking could be evil inside. That was superficial of her, she knew, and there were a million examples to the contrary, but before she and Marcel had started finding things at Graham’s apartment, she almost allowed herself to feel some kind of connection with the suspect. They were about the same age. He was a lawyer and, like her, a jock.

She had felt his eyes on her. Stupid, but it had been there. It was the first time she’d felt that kind of easy attraction in five years or more. More.

But – a cop to her bones – she wasn’t above using that attraction to get Graham to open up to her, as she’d done at his place. She could smile and feign enthrallment with his every word, and what made it work was that it wasn’t all acting.

And maybe, when she thought about it, it had been as Pratt had thought – Graham helping his father out of his misery. If that had been the case, Sarah didn’t necessarily have a problem with it. She had doctor friends who’d told her about pulling the plug at the request of anguished relatives of suffering patients. She didn’t think the practice ought to be institutionalized, lest it be abused, but she understood it privately.

Or maybe Graham hadn’t been any part of it. Even Strout’s autopsy, she had to admit, called the death suicide/homicide equivocal. In other words, Sal might have killed himself. The forensic evidence didn’t rule out that possibility. In any event, it was behind her now, and she wasn’t going to think about it, not tonight. Her softball team had a game.

She lived alone in a two-bedroom over a grocery store on the corner of Balboa and Fifteenth Avenue. When she opened the door, she stopped on her landing, loving the unusual – in San Francisco, almost unheard of – feel of a warm night. It was great to be in the yellow nylon Blazers shirt, the dark-green shorts, the yellow knee socks. She yanked the gold baseball cap with the green B down over her hair, pulled her ponytail through the adjusting slot in the back.

Forget the cop world. She was thirty-two years old, in great shape. She had the job she wanted and had worked for, but it didn’t rule her every waking moment. She knew it might, though, if she didn’t have other interests.

That was one of the reasons she played serious, organized women’s softball. It relieved the stress. It also guaranteed that she maintained her separate existence outside of the world defined by the Hall of Justice.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the grocery window as she passed it on the way to her car. She looked about eighteen. Life was good. The ball was going to carry a mile.

‘Oh, Graham, thank God you’re all right!’ His mother, Helen, rushed down the steps of the Manor in the exclusive Seacliff neighborhood on the northwest rim of San Francisco. He was only halfway up the slate walkway that bisected the enormous sloping lawn, and she ran down to greet him in the warm evening. She barely came up to his neck, but held his shoulders in her hands and pressed her cheek against his chest, a hug.

He put his arms around her and waited. The door to the Manor still hung open, but no one else appeared.

The skin on his mother’s face was as smooth as marble. Though he knew that several cosmetic surgeries stretched it to its limits, the results so far were seamless; she looked a decade younger than her age. This, Graham knew, was fortunate given the person she was married to, the role she played.

Helen had always attracted men, with her wide-set blue eyes, high cheekbones, cornsilk hair. Now, in the warm dusk, dressed in tailored pants and a scoop-necked blue cotton blouse, she could have been Graham’s girlfriend, not his mother. Beyond a doubt, on the outside she was a beautiful woman, as befitted Leland Taylor’s trophy wife.