John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

But Graham took offense at this tack. ‘He lived on the fringe, Sarah, okay? He sold illegal fish, he might have run some money, so sue him.’

‘I’m not saying-’

‘Yes, you are. Maybe he wasn’t a good citizen, but there’s no way he did anything that hurt anybody. He’s not so unlike his oldest son that way.’

‘What way exactly?’

‘You follow the rules, you play fair, and you get screwed anyway. It makes you lose faith in the sacred rules.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You’re doing it here with me, Sarah, right now. The rules don’t work sometimes. Then what do you do?’

‘You don’t break them, I know that. Or if you do,’ she added, mostly for herself, ‘when you’re caught and punished, you don’t whine about it.’

He looked over at her – the strong face, the set jaw. He reached across and put a hand on her leg. ‘Hey,’ he said gently. ‘I shouldn’t have put you in this. I’m sorry.’

She let out a breath. ‘I put myself in this, Graham. If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. And I know people break rules all the time and sometimes it seems justified. What I was trying to get to was Sal – if running this money around might have gotten him killed.’

Graham let out a sigh of his own. ‘But he stopped a long time ago.’

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know. Couple of years at least.’

‘You’re sure.’

‘I think so, yeah. When he started forgetting more, he thought it wouldn’t be safe.’

‘Which is what I’m getting at.’

Graham pondered for a minute, his feet up on the dashboard. It was just dusk. The window on his side was open and the skyline was a sparkling jewel over the darkening water. ‘He wouldn’t have started up again. There was no reason to. He didn’t need the money and it wasn’t that much anyway. A hundred now and again. Not worth the risk he might forget and lose enough money for somebody to make them mad at him.’

‘Maybe that somebody ran into him recently, last week even. Asked for a favor. One time. And he forgot. Or forgot that he would forget and said okay.’

‘And then what?’

‘I’m just thinking. It might be a motive, that’s all.’

Graham put his hand on her leg. ‘Sarah, we don’t need a motive. He killed himself.’

She turned to him. ‘Stop saying that, Graham! Please. Nobody believes that.’

‘I do.’

She moved his hand off her. ‘It’s not true. That’s why I don’t believe it. I know what happened well enough now. I’m just trying to come up with some theories that might help your defense. This might be one of them.’

Another silence. Graham looked across at her. ‘So what did happen that you’re so sure of?’

‘Graham. Come on.’

‘No, really. I want to know.’

She took her eyes from the road. It didn’t matter, they were barely creeping. ‘What are you saying?’ she finally asked.

‘What are you saying?’ he shot back at her. ‘After all this time, after everything, you still think I killed Sal?’

‘I’m saying somebody was there. If it was you, helping him, it wouldn’t matter to me, Graham. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘It would matter to me! Jesus, Sarah, don’t you believe anything I’ve told you?’

‘Don’t yell at me. Please don’t yell at me.’ She was afraid to look over at him again. Her eyes were glued to the road, hands tight on the wheel at ten and two. ‘Because I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘Somebody was there. Somebody did help him die. Or killed him.’

Abe Glitsky stood in the main doorway to the homicide detail, seemingly unable to move. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out.

It was the beginning of a new week and most of his inspectors were already in the big open room, sitting at their desks, drinking coffee while doing paperwork, going over their day’s schedule, writing reports on witness interviews, taking notes on transcripts, busy busy busy. No one looked up.

Abe wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction. He finally got his legs moving and walked into his office, closing the door quietly behind him. His door, installed and freshly varnished on Friday with a nice new-wood yellowish finish, wasn’t yet completely covered with bumper stickers and wanted posters and shooting targets from the police range, but someone – or a team of trained professionals – had done a pretty good job getting to most of it. There was even a bullet hole. The centerpiece was a large picture of Bozo the clown with the international symbol for no through it.

Taking deep breaths, he sat at his desk. The room seemed smaller with the door closed. He couldn’t see anybody outside the windows in the drywall. He had not been able to before the door was in, either, but he hadn’t noticed.

Now he suddenly felt cut off from the detail. He steeled himself, and finally brought his eyes right. Inside, the door looked pretty much the same as it had on Friday, new and nicely varnished, except for where the bullet had splintered the wood around its exit hole.

He remembered that years before, during one or other of the endless labor disputes in which the city always seemed to be embroiled, some unknown and never apprehended officers had released chickens on a Friday night into the offices of Police Chief Dan Rigby. Apparently, some felt at that time that their chief was acting in a chickenshit manner, not standing up for the demands of his troops. It was a not-so-subtle but ultimately effective way to express their displeasure.

Glitsky didn’t think there was anything like that going on here. The detail wasn’t in the midst of any turmoil that he knew of. He got along with everybody.

Pratt, he thought. Her staff. But no, not here in the detail. Nobody who worked with her would have risked it.

This was just a practical joke. He didn’t find it very funny, but he remembered that Rigby hadn’t laughed all that much about the chickens either. In fact, Rigby’s reaction had been so over the top that it had cost him some respect. Glitsky wasn’t going to have that happen to him. He was going to remain cool and never mention it to a soul.

But he was as mad as he’d ever been.

Pushing back from the desk, he walked over and scratched away at the splintered wood. The hole went all the way through. Instinctively, he searched the opposite wall. There it was, up by the ceiling, the next place the bullet had hit. He couldn’t believe that some idiot inspector, goofing off, would discharge a firearm in the building, even if it had been during the weekend when the odds of hitting someone with the bullet were marginally lower.

For just a second he toyed with the idea: maybe he could find the slug somewhere in the building and run ballistics on it and all the weapons of his inspectors. This might identify the shooter, whom he would then publicly humiliate, horribly torture, and then fire, not necessarily in that order. He crossed over to the hole. Sure enough, the slug had been pried out.

Of course, he realized, these were pros. Idiots, but professional idiots.

Whoever did it had customized themselves a light load of powder – probably not as light as they’d intended. But they’d given the matter some thought – and then dug the slug out and disposed of the evidence. Pros.

His telephone jarred him back to where he was. ‘Glitsky.’

‘Hardy.’

He was already angry enough, and now Hardy wanting to banter his way back into his good graces. ‘What do you want?’

‘You get a message over the weekend?’

‘Yeah. Great, you’re sorry. I got that Friday, too, at your office, remember? Sorry’s a big help. Is that it? I’m busy.’