John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

The couch was frayed and worn, its once-bright red, gold, and green brocade now lackluster, nearly sepia. The three-bulb standing lamp behind the sofa threw almost no light; two bulbs needed to be replaced.

She was going out. All right. This was just a mood. If she didn’t like her apartment, she’d change it soon. It had never bothered her before. She wasn’t stuck with it forever. She’d just turn off the television…

‘… Graham Russo, who was arrested, then released, last week for assisting at the suicide of his father…’

He was not home. The house was as dark as it had been the night before.

She’d parked at the bottom of the street, across from a streetlight under a canopy of trees. Now she stood leaning against the hood of her car, looking north, back toward her apartment, trying not to think.

Edgewood dropped off in a cliff. From where she stood, she could look down a hundred feet or so into the backyards and onto the roofs of the multi-story buildings below her, on Parnassus. In one of the upper windows – close enough to see clearly – two men were in a bed together, naked.

The chill had come up again, a brisk breeze out of the west, although with her fisherman’s sweater, she wasn’t cold. Still, she tightened her arms around herself. A stair street – Farnsworth – fell off steeply to her right. In the wake of the chik-chik-chik of an owl flying overhead, she heard footsteps coming up the steps.

She’d left her apartment hurriedly, unarmed. Now she backed into the shadow of the canopy as the steps came up to her, paced and rhythmic, jogging.

Suddenly certain, she stepped out into the light as Graham got to the top of the steps. Seeing her, breathing hard, he stopped. His shoulders dropped and he shook his head as if she’d finally beaten him. Gathering another breath, he spread his hands, palms out. ‘Am I under arrest?’

The thought was so far from her mind that she laughed out loud. ‘What are you doing?’

It took a minute for him to figure out what she meant. ‘Trying to stay in shape. Running off some of this’ – he gestured ambiguously, took in another lungful of air – ’all this madness.‘ He was still panting. ’Those are some serious stairs. More than a hundred, I’d bet, but who’s counting?‘ Then, focusing back on her, ’So if I’m not under arrest…?‘

She took a half step toward him. ‘I guess I’m finally off duty. I thought you might have some of that wine left.’

They walked uphill, in the middle of the street, in silence.

Inside, he turned on the indirect track lights and opened the curtains to the view. Downtown and the East Bay shimmered down below them. ‘I was going to take a shower,’ he said, indicating the tiny booth that was his bathroom. ‘There’s no room to change in there.’

She swiveled in the chair, grabbed one of the magazines. ‘I won’t look.’

When he got out of the shower, he opened a bottle of red and poured them both a glass. They moved to opposite ends of the low leather couch. Graham was back in his uniform – barefoot, baggy running shorts, a T-shirt. Sarah, tennis shoes and all, had her legs curled under her.

Though Barbara Brandt’s announcement that she’d counseled Graham in the minutes before he’d killed his father was the immediate catalyst that had gotten her out of her own apartment and up to here, Sarah felt no inclination to raise the subject. She’d told him she was off duty, and she was. Graham evidently hadn’t yet even heard about it; he’d been out jogging to the beach and back, over an hour. The phone, she noticed, was unplugged.

She had no idea where the words came from. ‘Your father painted,’ she began, out of the blue.

The comment seemed to require an adjustment to Graham’s mind-set. He shifted on the couch, averted his eyes. ‘He did a lot of things. Are you still off duty?’

She had to smile at that. ‘Yeah.’

‘You want to talk about my father?’

She nodded. ‘Looks like. I was at his place. It got a little bit inside me. So did he.’

Graham leaned down and put his wineglass on the floor, then stood again, crossing to the bookshelves. He turned. ‘You know, when I got the letter, I hadn’t talked to him in like fifteen years. He was at my high school graduation, just came up and said hello when my mom wasn’t around. Congratulations. I had no idea what to say back. I think I just looked at him. All I really remember is it made me feel sick.’

‘And that’s the last time you saw him? I mean, before the letter?’

Graham shook his head no. ‘That’s what’s funny. When I worked for Draper, I’d see him on Fridays all the time, out in his truck behind the courthouse. I’d stand at the window and watch him out in the alley. Everybody seemed to love him.’

‘But you didn’t go down?’

‘I thought I hated him.’ Still across the room from her, he pulled a kitchen chair over and straddled it. ‘Even after the letter…’ He stopped.

‘I thought the letter was when you connected.’

He considered that for a beat. ‘I saw him in Vero then, once. But it wasn’t very good. I was a jerk. I think it’s my truest talent, jerkhood.’

‘I think it’s jerkitude.’ Then, realizing how that could be interpreted, she added, ‘Not your truest talent. The word.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, whatever you call it, there it was. So right after I read the letter, I decided I’d sucked it up enough. I should spill out how I felt. It would do me good. My dad had caused us all so much grief and I’d never told him how I felt about it, what he’d put us all through. So he writes me this, this beautiful letter, reaching out really, and somehow this cues me – sensitive guy that I am – that the time is right to go and beat up on the old man.’

‘Literally? You hit him?’

‘No. I might as well have. I told him he was a son of a bitch who had a hell of a nerve thinking he could make some kind of amends.’

Sarah didn’t think Graham was aware that he’d stood up and begun pacing.

‘As though he’s going to somehow make up for leaving us, just walking out. In his dreams. What’d he think I was going to do, forgive him? Take him back with open arms? Get a life, Sal but I’m not letting you back in mine! I don’t want to make you feel better. Not now, not ever. I don’t care how you feel. And we’re not going to be friends, for Christ’s sake. You think we can be friends? I hate you, man. Don’t you fucking get it? I hate your guts!’

He was yelling by the end. Now, in the small room, the silence when he stopped left a vacuum. He was breathing hard, looking back at Sarah as though in panic. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I beat him up. I beat the hell out of him.’

She waited until he’d crossed to the kitchen sink and scooped a few handfuls of water into his face. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘So what did he do? How did he react?’

He was leaning against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest, his massive shoulders slumped. ‘He said I was right. He was crying. And you know what, I was glad he was crying. He said he was so sorry.’ Graham blew out in frustration. ‘And right in character, I told him sorry wasn’t good enough. Sorry didn’t make any damn difference anymore.’

In the pause she asked, ‘And then what?’

‘Then I left.’

‘So how did you…?’

‘That was later,’ he said.

There was an old hose in the alley where he parked his truck across from his apartment. It had been left behind by the construction crew at the federal courthouse, and Sal Russo had claimed it. He had it hooked to a spigot and was washing out the bed of his truck, which got tolerably rank by the end of Friday.