John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

The north side of Stevenson was lined with the backs and delivery doors of the ancient medium-rise buildings of retail businesses that were struggling to survive on Market Street. Of the few structures whose fronts faced the alley, the most prominent was the Lions (no apostrophe) Arms apartment building, where Sal Russo had lived and died in corner room 304. Stenciled in fading black paint onto the side of the building were the words Daily, Weekly Rates .

For most of the past decade the south side of Stevenson had fit in with the run-down ambience of the neighborhood – an open sore of a construction site while the Old Post Office Building was being renovated. Recently, though, that work had been completed.

The Postal Service now had its own new home out at Rincon Annex, and the building’s other tenant – the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals – had taken it over. The federal courthouse now loomed fresh and imposing, a massive and elegant structure between Stevenson Alley and Mission Street.

Lanier and Evans didn’t notice any of it. As they stepped around the homeless man camped, sleeping now, in one of the back doorways, all they saw on the south side of the alley, the courthouse side, was a solid gray wall, already sprayed with graffiti, topped with coils of razor wire. It wouldn’t have mattered to the two inspectors if the Taj Mahal had been across the way; the Lions Arms didn’t pick up any reflected majesty from its surroundings. It was a flophouse, pure and simple.

The uniforms had canvassed the Lions Arms when Sal’s body had been found, but after dark were prime hours for a certain class of people who made their living on the street – lots of tenants hadn’t been home.

So Sarah and Lanier were back, planning to knock on more doors. Normally, inspectors don’t like to work alone in this kind of environment, but it was midday and they could get more done if they split up. Both were aware that they probably should have gotten back to this sooner, but in the crush of other priorities it had had to wait.

To accommodate a relatively spacious lobby and mailbox area – the building dated from a more gracious era – there were only four units on the first floor, and Sarah began knocking on them. The upper three stories had eight units each.

Lanier mounted the stairs that began in the back of the lobby and took the second floor. He was going to start at 204, directly below Sal’s apartment, at the front of the building. He wasn’t even there when Sarah appeared on his landing. ‘Nobody home on the first floor. I’ll start on three.’

The name in the slot next to the door said Blue, and Blue was coal-black. She was vaguely familiar by sight to Lanier – he had probably seen her around the Hall after she’d been busted for prostitution, for there was no question about her profession.

After Lanier identified himself through the door, there was the sound of some movement inside. She must have been expecting a customer, Lanier thought. Probably was putting away some novelty items, maybe a bong. The door eventually opened. She’d opened the window, but the room still smelled strongly of marijuana and, somewhat less so, of musk. Blue was tucking a red teddy-bear top into a pair of skintight black denims.

She stood in the open doorway, not asking him in. He showed her his badge. And then she surprised him. ‘This be about Sal, upstairs?’ Lanier said it was and she nodded. ‘I thought you be by sooner. I almost call you ’cept I don’t call cops. Sal was okay.‘

‘You knew him?’

She shook her head. ‘Not real good. We talk a few times in the lobby, sometimes out the alley there. He brung me up some fresh salmon sometimes. I love salmon.’ Her eyes got wistful. ‘It was so sad, him dying. You find who killed him?’

Out of habit and caution Lanier did not answer questions put to him by witnesses. Instead, he talked to her for a moment, realized he might have something, and pulled out the tape recorder he almost hadn’t bothered to bring along.

After intoning the standard introduction for the transcriber, he came back at her. ‘Did you see or hear anything on last Friday, May ninth, that made you believe Sal Russo had been killed?’

‘I didn’t know killed at the time, but somebody be up in Sal’s place with him. I hear the door open, then’ – she indicated over her head – ‘the ceiling creaks, somebody else there.’

‘And where were you?’

‘Here, in my apartment. And then some other noises.’

‘What kind of noises were they?’

‘Like he fell down. Like some scraping furniture.’ She looked up. ‘This place, you know, the walls pretty thin, not ’zactly soundproof.‘

But Lanier was going to keep her at it. ‘So you heard this noise, some furniture scraping on the floor?’

That wasn’t precisely right. ‘Wasn’t like anything pushing, more like something fell, hit against it or something, and it scraped. Then he kind of moaned and yelled, “No,” bunch of times.’

‘No?’

‘Yeah, like he was in pain or something. But pleading, like? The saddest sound.’

‘Did you hear anybody else, any other voices?’

‘Yeah, two voices. Sal and somebody else.’

‘Male, female?’

‘Male. Having some argument, it sounded like.’

‘This was before Sal moaned? Before the furniture scraped?’

Blue closed her eyes, her face a study. ‘Before.’ But there was an uncertainty.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. It was just before.’

‘And then, after the moan, what? Anything else?’

She took a moment, closing her eyes again, making sure. ‘No, just that. Then the door opened and closed again a few minutes later, and then it be quiet.’

‘So what did you do?’

The question seemed to spook her. She looked down, then at a place somewhere over Lanier’s shoulder. ‘I did go up, but later. No one answered.’

Lanier almost got sarcastic with her – dead people generally didn’t answer doors too well. But he kept his tone neutral. ‘Yeah, Blue, but you heard this noise that sounded like Sal might be in trouble while you were right here underneath him. You said you guys were friends-’

‘I didn’t say we were friends. Not exactly friends. I knew him a little. He seem like a good guy, that’s all.’

‘Okay, so why didn’t you go up and see him while you still might have been able to help?’

Again, that look over his shoulder. ‘Blue?’

‘I couldn’t.’ She paused and sighed. ‘Somebody was here, sleeping afterward, you know. I couldn’t get up.’

Dismas Hardy remained unaware of developing events for the whole day, until nearly nine o’clock Thursday evening. He had awakened at six and met Michelle at David’s Deli for a breakfast meeting an hour later. They were going down to Palo Alto – forty-some miles south – to meet with Dyson Brunei, Tryptech’s CEO, to introduce Michelle and discuss some of the substantive issues related to the lawsuit.

Hardy hadn’t taken the time to even glance at a newspaper. From his perspective the Graham Russo case was still smoldering, but the immediate fire had been put out. Hardy was going to have his hands full anyway, bringing Michelle up to speed on this litigation, continuing with his daily work. He figured that Graham was going to be in his life sometime in the future, but for now it was important to will Graham onto a back burner, impending murder charge or not.

It was easier said than done. Over lunch the conversation between Michelle, Brunei, and Hardy had come around to the surveillance equipment in use at the Port of Oakland. Perhaps, Michelle suggested, there was some video record of malfeasance, some smoking gun locked in the video camera at one of the security checkpoints. There was no record anyone had looked into that possibility.