John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘Yeah. I knew. It was the cancer, the tumor.’

‘But you didn’t tell me then?’

Bad though it sounded, the rationale was obvious enough to Graham. ‘I also told you we didn’t see much of each other.’ He broke a grin. ‘Come on, Sarah, I was trying to be consistent and you caught me anyway.’

‘And you still say you don’t know where the morphine came from?’

‘That’s right.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘Hey, can we stop this already? I’m going to open some more wine. You want a little wine? A glass of beer? Mike?’

Sarah declined, and Mike said he had to go. He had a plane at an obscene hour the next morning. The three of them walked to the door, and Graham opened it, shook Mike’s hand, told him good luck. Sarah hung back as Mike crossed the street and started walking downhill toward his car.

Sarah stood crammed next to Graham in the doorway. It seemed to her that every cell in her body was attuned to his proximity. Yet it also felt as though he was daring her not to move. He put an arm on the doorsill just over her shoulder, then put some weight on the arm – all but leaning on her. ‘Are you really leaving?’ he asked her.

She told herself that he wasn’t completely sober. His inhibitions were lowered and, okay, he found her attractive. For the moment he’d forgotten that she was a cop. That was all it was. And she would be damned if she was going to duck away. Raising her head, she was looking up into his eyes.

Bad idea. Whether or not it betrayed her true feelings, she’d better blink. Otherwise, their superficially professional relationship was about to develop an overt new element. And if she thought she had troubles up to now…

She swung under his arm, outside onto the driveway. ‘All right, Graham,’ she said, ‘if you’ll just answer three quick questions, I promise I won’t bother you anymore.’ She broke a conciliatory smile. ‘Tonight.’

‘Then afterward you’ll have a glass of wine with me?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’m on duty.’

‘So go off duty,’ he said. ‘Ask your three questions, then declare your workday over.’ His eyes never left her face.

This time she met his gaze. ‘First, I want to be clear. You did, in fact, give your father morphine shots from time to time?’

He nodded. ‘I said that.’

Actually, he hadn’t said that, Sarah knew, but he’d been speaking so freely and he’d had enough to drink that she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t remember exactly what he had admitted. But he was telling the truth now. ‘How often?’

‘Is that the second question?’

She thought about it, and decided it could be. ‘Yeah.’

‘Couple of times a week, if I was there. He didn’t like to shoot himself up. Okay, what’s the third question?’

‘After the two calls on Friday morning, when your dad called you in great pain, why didn’t you go over there to help him?’

This last hurdle didn’t slow Graham at all. He brought his arm down off the door, took a step toward her. ‘Well, tell you the truth, that’s what I did.’ Spreading his hands, he grinned sheepishly. ‘And guess what?’ he asked. ‘The old fart had gone out. He wasn’t even there.’

Shaken with the import of what she’d heard – not only had Graham been at Sal’s on Friday, he had often administered morphine to his father – she was nearly back to her car when she stopped herself up short and swore.

Her tape recorder was still on Graham’s table!

She’d gotten up with the two guys to make sure Michael Cerrone of Time was good and gone before she attempted to ask her half-drunk suspect her last three questions. Then she’d ducked outside to escape the awful chemistry, asked her questions, and all but run away.

What a fool she was.

It had been less than five minutes, but the window slits high on the side wall had already gone dark. Knocking on the door, she heard no sound from within. Maybe he’d gone to sleep already, passed out. Or, more likely, she thought, he’d had it with reporters and the police. Whoever it was, he didn’t want any. She knocked again, softly. ‘Graham,’ she whispered, ‘it’s me. Sarah.’

Sergeant ! she reminded herself. She was here not as Sarah, but as Sergeant Evans.

After a minute she heard movement. The light over her head came on. When the door opened, Graham seemed somehow diminished. His expression, she felt, made every attempt to welcome her, but she couldn’t miss the labor behind it. His eyes were exhausted, suddenly heavy lidded. ‘I thought you were having another glass of wine,’ she said.

All of Graham’s glibness was gone. It was as though he’d fallen into a deep sleep and been rudely awakened. ‘I think I’m about done for today. You gone off duty?’ But the question wasn’t inviting.

She pointed ambiguously behind him. ‘I left my recorder on your table.’

He nodded and hit the light switch next to the door, stepping back to let her pass. The recorder was where she had left it, still spinning. She flicked it off and walked back to the door, where Graham had remained, waiting for her.

Outside again, she hesitated one last moment, looking up at him. ‘Well, thanks for opening for me.’

‘Sure, anytime,’ he said. The door closed on her before she could turn away, and she wasn’t three steps down the street when the overhead light went out.

For herself, she had her answer. This man had loved his father. There were still outstanding questions about the wrapped bills, the baseball cards. Graham had all but admitted he knew more and would tell her if she would go off the record, but she couldn’t do that. Whatever else might be true, he hadn’t killed Sal for his money.

Coming up here alone had served a purpose: she now believed that Graham had revealed who he really was, to her, to Sarah. But Sergeant Evans, homicide inspector, realized with a pang of anguish that the cost had been dear. She’d helped him dig himself further into an ever-deepening hole.

Hardy was in his backyard, a long and relatively narrow strip of grass bordered by Frannie’s rose gardens. On either side apartment buildings rose to four stories. But directly behind to the east there was a clear view all the way to downtown. Also, beginning in about mid-April, when the sun contrived to shine, the path of it cut between the apartments, making a warm and cozy enclosure.

Now, tending to the barbecue, scraping the grill down, waiting for the coals to turn, Hardy was nearly recharged for the new week. Glitsky and his young son were coming over for dinner. So was Frannie’s brother, Moses McGuire, and his wife, Susan, and their baby, Jason.

It was late afternoon on Sunday and both the weather and the mood around the house had warmed a little from the deep-freeze late in the week. And here in the backyard the house shielded most of the breeze off the ocean.

The other center of chill – Frannie – came down the back stairs with a large covered Tupperware container. Hardy watched her as she put it on the picnic table that was up against the house. She stood still a moment, then set her shoulders and deliberately walked the half-dozen steps over to her husband, leaning into him and putting one arm around his waist.

‘Whatever you decide is all right, you know. It doesn’t matter to me as long as we’re in it together.’

He brought her in to him. ‘Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that,’ he said. ‘I thought you were pretty clear about no more murder cases.’

‘That’s what you told me you wanted, remember, so I got used to the idea, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a dog catcher if that’s what you want to be, if that’s what makes you happy.’ She moved away a step so she could look at him. ‘You’re the one with all the angst, Dismas. I know what I’m doing.’