John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘It burns you out,’ he said. ‘The kids all the time.’ ‘No, it doesn’t. Well, a little. But so what? That’s not your problem. It’s what I’m doing. If my husband were happier, life would be perfect. If you were happier with the kids…’ Hardy let out a breath. ‘I love the kids, Fran, but-’

‘There’s always a but , Dismas. There shouldn’t be a but . It’s not the kids. It’s not me or your job. It’s your attitude.’ She walked up and placed a quick kiss on his lips. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Be happy. Sing the song. Check it out.’

Abe Glitsky sat straddling the picnic bench at the table by the house. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, his hands around a glass of iced tea. Hardy was lifting the lid from the kettle cooker, checking the chicken.

‘You’re not supposed to keep lifting the lid. It won’t cook right. There’s nothing worse than uncooked chicken.’

Hardy threw him a withering look, took a pull at his beer. ‘Global warming is way worse,’ he said. ‘Acid rain. Hemorrhoid commercials. I can think of a hundred things.’ He leveled the tongs at the grill. ‘You don’t lift the lid, how do you turn the chicken?’

‘Once,’ Glitsky said. ‘You lift it once, turn the chicken, put the lid back on, come back in a half hour, it’s done. That’s why they invented this kind of barbecue, as a matter of fact. Brilliant scientists working around the clock to save you from the necessity of having to watch your chicken every minute.’

‘That’s my personality,’ Hardy said. ‘I need to watch things, stay in control. And a good thing I do too.’

Glitsky stood up and walked over. ‘You could turn them now, for example. They look about done on the bottom. Then you could sit down and enjoy your beer without interruption.’

Hardy took a minute, poking and jabbing, then started turning the pieces. ‘I’m not doing this because you said so. Independently, they look done to me too.’

‘Half done,’ Glitsky corrected.

Hardy took his beer back over to the bench, and sat down.

‘Okay, now I’m enjoying my beer without interruption. By the way, what do you hear about Graham Russo?’

‘By the way, huh?’

A nod. ‘At your very own suggestion I sit myself down to take a moment of leisure, and what should pop into my brain unaided but the thought of my client.’

Glitsky took a seat at the other end of the bench, straddling it again. ‘And here I allowed myself to hope that your wife had invited me over again because she enjoyed my company so much last time.’

‘Maybe that too,’ Hardy said, ‘mysterious as that may be to the rest of us. But while you’re here…’

‘While I’m here, seriously, I’m not talking about it.’ Hardy had heard this kind of denial before in a dozen different guises, and usually it went away of its own accord. He wouldn’t have to push. His friend would get around to telling him, off the record, or he wouldn’t.

Hardy brought his bottle to his mouth, started to get up to check the chicken again, caught himself, and sat back down. ‘So, how about them Giants?’

But the lieutenant was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think I can tell you anything this time, Diz. There is some serious juice around this one.’

‘Powell?’

Glitsky shrugged. Hardy didn’t even have to ask. He knew Powell had decided to prosecute the case. The question was when.

But he wasn’t going to get that by asking directly. ‘Did you know about the wife?’ Hardy asked. ‘Or did you read about it in the paper?’

In this morning’s paper a reporter had discovered from reading recent police incident reports that Leland and Helen Taylor had summoned the authorities to the Seacliff palace known as the Manor three times in the past six weeks.

The first two times, it seems, Sal Russo had come by and knocked on the door. When Helen had opened it, he’d simply walked in, making himself at home – Helen’s home was his home, wasn’t it? wasn’t she his wife? – helping himself to whiskey, becoming verbally abusive, refusing to leave.

The third time, Sal had let himself in through an open servants’ entrance in the back, helped himself again to a couple of drinks, gone upstairs to where Helen was napping, and lain down next to and begun fondling her, demanding his conjugal rights.

In each case police had taken Sal to a local mental-health facility and booked him as a ‘danger to himself and others.’ The third time he was held for two hours and released. The first two times he hadn’t stayed that long.

Glitsky nodded. ‘Yeah, we heard about that on Saturday.’

‘And you were looking into it as a possible motive for Sal’s murder? Get another suspect in the loop?’

‘Nice try. No comment.’

Sal Russo waited patiently on one of the plastic yellow chairs in the sunlight that streamed through the lobby door of the social welfare detention center. He had Graham coming down in a couple of minutes to take him back home. He’d surprised this social worker here – Don. Not only did the old man know who he was, he knew his son’s telephone number .

‘Hey, Sal,’ Don called to him.

He opened his eyes. ‘What?’

‘You want to tell me why you keep breaking into your old house?’ Don thought he could trick Sal into giving an answer that would incriminate himself, so they could maybe send him to jail. But Sal knew his game. Don wasn’t fooling him.

‘Sometimes I miss my wife. That a crime?’

‘Except she s not your wife anymore.’

‘We said till death do us part. I remember that clear enough, sonny. I’m trying to get her back.’

‘Still, maybe it upsets her family now, don’t you think? You do it again, they might try to lock you up.’

‘Helen wouldn’t lock me up. Don’t you worry about it. What I got on her, she wouldn’t dare! He closed his eyes and faced the sun for another minute, a peaceful look settling over his features. ’She wasn’t always Little Miss Proper, you know. We had ourselves some times. I reminded her today. Got her upset, I think. She doesn’t want anybody to know.‘

Sal suddenly brought his hand up and squeezed at his temples.

‘You all right?’ Don asked.

‘Damn headache. I’m fine. We used to smoke a little dope, you know. A few lines of cocaine once or twice. You think her Leland wants to hear about that? I don’t think so. You think Leland knows she got arrested for shoplifting that time? You think that might bother him? Her Leland’s a little too uptight to handle that news, isn’t he?’

Don chuckled. ‘And your wife had me thinking she didn’t file a complaint because she didn’t want to cause troubles for a harmless old man. You were blackmailing her, weren’t you? You’re not harmless at all, are you?’

Sal smiled. ‘Not even a little,’ he said.

Hardy got a better idea of the way the wind was blowing during dinner. It was still light outside, and the five adults were eating in the dining room while the kids ate their drumsticks in front of the video.

Susan Weiss was McGuire’s wife. A cellist with the symphony, although she’d been on strike for a while now, she had an artistic temperament and spoke her mind freely. She knew all about the troubles with Glitsky’s wife, Flo – that she had died a couple of years before after a prolonged battle with cancer. She couldn’t understand how a man – ‘even a cop’ – who’d been through that experience could be opposed to ending the suffering of someone else who was in the same place.

‘I’m not.’ Glitsky put the evil eye on Hardy, as though his friend had somehow prompted Susan, then did his best to answer her, his voice under tight control. ‘Even if I’m a cop, I’m not opposed to the idea of assisted suicide. But I think it ought to be more private, much more private than – than what we are seeing sometimes.’