John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

‘No.’ Graham was convinced. ‘This was different. Really. It was great to get to lay some of it out finally.’

Hardy had both of his elbows on the table, the receiver cradled against one ear, his head held up with the other one. There wasn’t any sense in going further with this. It was time to shift to damage control, if that was going to be possible. He forced some modulation into his voice. ‘So what did you tell your friend Sarah this time? I hope parts of it were close to the last version.’

He heard an amused chuckle. ‘It’s just the obvious stuff. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Obvious?’

‘You know.’

‘I don’t, really. Why don’t you humor me?’

‘Well, the truth about my dad and me. I mean, of course I helped him out. Once it was clear that we’d kind of patched things up, the rest of it just followed.’

‘What “rest,” though? That’s what I’m trying to get at.’

A pause. ‘That I’d given him morphine a bunch of times. But not that day,’ he added.

‘You told Sergeant Evans that?’

‘Yeah.’ Another hesitation, longer. ‘And that I’d gone by there, on Friday. By Sal’s. But he hadn’t been home.’

At almost precisely the same moment State Attorney General Dean Powell was reaching his own decision. He’d quietly come down from Sacramento early in the morning and spent the morning with Drysdale and Gil Soma. Now they were finishing their lunch at a back table in Jack’s – one of the city’s finest and oldest restaurants. An elderly waiter in a tuxedo was pouring coffee all round. The white linen had been cleared of crumbs.

Powell originally hailed from San Francisco. Before his election he’d been a senior attorney in the DA’s office. His habit of combing his long white hair with his fingers had been the subject of dozens of caricatures, and he was doing this as he spoke to Soma. ‘I think we’re close to settled on the basics, but I must confess, Gil, I’ve got a reservation or two about your involvement. You ever put on a murder trial before?’

Powell, of course, knew the answer to this. He was impressed with Soma’s credentials and, more, his passion, but if the young man couldn’t stand up to the pressure of his boss’s informal interrogation now, he’d melt in the crucible of a special-circumstances-case courtroom. Better to find out sooner.

Soma brought a napkin to his lips, but didn’t waste any time with the motion. He wasn’t stalling. ‘No, sir, but I can win this case.’

‘As a murder one?’

‘It is a murder one. This morning’s police reports lock that up. This wasn’t any assisted suicide.’

Powell nodded. ‘I buy that, Gil. It’s critical, though, that we have the right man.’ He leaned over the table, combed his hair back again, then pointed a finger at Soma. ‘You hate this Graham Russo, don’t you? It’s personal, isn’t it?’

Soma glanced over at his mentor, Art Drysdale, who was stirring his coffee. No help there. ‘I don’t like him, sir, that’s true.’

‘And you’re sure you’re not seeing what you want to see here? You’ve thought about this a lot?’

Now Soma did reach for his coffee. Powell thought this a well-rehearsed move. The question appeared to call for thought and even if Soma had considered every possible ramification of it, he would take a formulaic pause. Placing the cup carefully into the center of its saucer, Soma brought in Drysdale for a beat, then proceeded. ‘The original case – the DA’s here in the city – had several holes. The money alone wasn’t really enough, and we knew that, which was why we waited. Since then we’ve discovered that there was a fight, that Graham Russo was there – he’s admitted it…’

Drysdale finally spoke up. ‘That’s a little squirrely.’

But Soma didn’t think so. ‘It’s evidently not on the tape, but Glitsky guarantees we’ve got Evans’s testimony. She’ll swear to it.’

‘Then we’re back to “he said, but she said.” ’

Powell interrupted. ‘Art, play devil’s advocate a little later. I want to hear what we’ve got altogether.’ He gestured back to Soma.

‘Okay, we’ve got the fight. We put Graham there. We’ve got the morphine, plus syringes from a box traced to his ambulance company. We got a fistful of his lies on the record. We’ve got his financial position, which is horrible, and which leads us back to the money. We’ve got means, opportunity, and motive. It’s classic, sir. He did it and we can prove it.’

On Soma’s left Drysdale cleared his throat. He wanted in.

‘Art?’ Powell asked.

‘I agree with everything Gil’s said here, but if we’re talking specials…’

‘We are.’ Powell was solid with this decision.

‘Okay, then the options we’ve got are LWOP’ – this was life in prison without the possibility of parole – ‘or death. Gil, you’re telling me you’re comfortable asking the state to put your old office mate to death?’

This, finally, stopped the posturing. Some of Soma’s spark went away. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, taking in both of his superiors. ‘To be honest, I don’t think so. I don’t think we should ask for death.’

Powell nodded. This was the right answer. Soma was passionate, but not blinded by hatred, a critical distinction.

‘I wouldn’t either,’ Drysdale said, ‘but we might wave it around early on, see if something shakes loose.’

Soma shrugged. ‘I can do that.’

‘And no other suspects? Real? Imagined? Implied?’ Powell wasn’t getting into this without having it locked up. He hadn’t gotten where he was by going high profile and losing. Drysdale passed the question over to Soma with a look. ‘We’re still checking some of his fisherman contacts. He poached for a living, but the volumes are tiny. A hundred, two hundred bucks. I don’t see anyone killing him for it.’

‘The family,’ Drysdale prompted.

‘Oh, yeah. Sal – the victim – he broke into the family house three times in the past few months. Nobody seemed to get too upset, though. They didn’t file criminal charges. Just wanted to help him get some assistance.’

Okay, Powell was thinking. The loopholes are closing up. ‘And it was definitely not a suicide? I don’t want to have that come back and bite us.’

Drydale took this one. ‘I don’t think they’ll even make the argument, but Strout’s got some pretty good stuff for us. Nobody thinks Sal killed himself. That didn’t happen.’

A silence descended for a moment. Powell raised his eyes, ‘Dismas Hardy’s doing the defense?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Soma knew the story as well as he knew his name. Three years before, in the last major case Powell had prosecuted before moving to the state capital, Dismas Hardy had pulled a rabbit from a hat and beaten him after a jury had both convicted his suspect and sentenced her to death. It was no secret that the AG longed for payback.

‘All right,’ Powell said at last. ‘Let’s go get him.’

Drysdale tapped the table with a fingertip, getting their attention one last time. ‘I suggest, with all respect, Dean, it might be wiser to wait another couple of days. Graham’s not going anywhere. Make it fat.’

This was jargon from Powell’s earliest days with the DA – FAT was the acronym they’d all used back then for making a watertight case. Frog’s-ass tight – FAT.

Powell gave it another second’s thought, then nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s probably smart. But let’s tie this sucker down by Thursday, Friday at the latest.’

He was looking directly at Soma, and the young attorney simply nodded. ‘Done,’ he said.

He’d been the head of homicide now for nearly two years, and Glitsky felt he was growing into the job, taking bold steps to improve conditions and performance. This morning, for example, after he’d trotted down to vice again with Lanier and Evans so they could enjoy the privacy of an office with a door, he’d come back to homicide and pulled a tape measure from one of the drawers in his desk.