John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

Hardy looked around behind him, lowered his voice. ‘You talk to Sarah this morning? She came by my house last night. She wants to go after your brother.’

‘I know. We talked about it.’ Graham’s massive hands were making confetti from the edges of a yellow legal pad. ‘I don’t think it’s a bad idea.’

‘You don’t? You did last time I asked.’ In the early days, when Hardy was gearing up for his ‘some other dude did it’ defense, he’d questioned Graham about George’s motives and opportunities. Graham had laughed at him; there was no chance his brother could have been involved. Now he was singing a different tune.

Graham looked as though he’d eaten some bad cheese. ‘Maybe I’m finally getting pissed off. I’ve been thinking about me, you know, my situation here’ – he motioned toward the door to the courtroom – ‘all this. But you know what?’

The eyes seemed to reach all the way into his soul. This was no act, or if it was, it was one Hardy hadn’t seen before in nearly five months of daily contact.

‘What?’ Hardy asked. ‘But quiet, okay?’ He raised his eyes, suddenly aware of voices from the courtroom, from the jury box, which was haphazardly filling up.

Graham leaned in toward him. ‘Somebody did kill Sal, Diz. That’s the thing. With all this concentration on getting me off, we kind of pushed that under the rug. Now I think about it, I want the son of a bitch, I don’t care if it’s Georgie.’

‘And you think it is?’

‘I’d like to make sure it isn’t, let’s put it that way. You know what I think? You know how I told you if Leland pays you, he gets something for it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What he’s getting here is keeping you off his favored son.’

Maybe on more sleep, with Freeman at his side and his wife not mad at him, Hardy would have reacted more coolly. But he felt a rush of blood, heard a pounding of it in his ears. He clipped it out. ‘I hope I’m not hearing you say you think I’m in Leland’s pocket.’

‘Easy, Diz. I don’t think you meant to be.’

‘I’m just too stupid to see it, right?’

Part of it, of course – suddenly clear – was that it could have been true, and Hardy in fact hadn’t seen it. By paying Hardy’s bills for Graham’s defense, Leland Taylor had effectively defused any investigations Hardy might have otherwise considered pursuing within the Taylor family.

Graham shrugged. ‘It’s an obvious stone and it’s unturned.’

‘There’s no way to turn it.’ Hardy’s voice echoed in the holding cell. ‘Glitsky won’t look at it. Sarah risks her job if she…’ He shook his head. ‘You know this. There’s no way.’

Graham remained calm. For one of the very first times Hardy got a glimpse of the legal mind that had gotten his client his federal clerkship. ‘There’s no way without alienating Leland, that’s true. And he’s set us up so we won’t. It’s subtle and it’s sweet, and that’s the way my stepfather works.’

‘You think he’s protecting George?’

Another shrug. ‘I know from Mom that he doesn’t know where George was. I know it worries the shit out of him. And Leland thinks a couple of other things.’

‘Like what?’

‘One, there’s bettable odds you’re going to get me off, so there’s no real risk anyway, just a few more months of my already wasted life. I’m a pawn he’ll risk losing to save his bishop.’

‘What’s the other one?’

‘Sal’s death wasn’t any great loss. He was old and feeble and a pain in the ass. If Georgie killed him, it wasn’t like a real murder. More like putting down a dog. Sal was a nonentity when he was alive. He didn’t count, not to Leland. And he would be dead anyway in a couple of months. What does it matter?’

Hardy sat back in his chair, ran a hand through his hair – shades of Dean Powell.

‘Tell him,’ Graham said. ‘See what he does.’

‘Tell who?’

‘Leland. Tell him you’re going to be looking into George’s alibi. See if he cuts off the money or, even better, offers you more if you don’t. Then at least we’ll know.’

‘We won’t know about George.’

‘But we’ll know for sure why Leland’s in. This is money, after all, thicker than blood. Georgie’s the heir apparent to the bank. If he killed Sal – hell, any scandal… good-bye line of succession.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Hardy said. He dug his thumbs into his eyes, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. He suddenly wondered if he wouldn’t be wise to plead some kind of personal crisis -toothache, migraine, chest pains – and ask Salter for a one-day continuance.

But this was only day two of the marathon that was the trial proper. It was unimaginable, but he knew he’d be more fatigued than this before it was over. If he was going to beg a day off – highly frowned upon – it should at least be when the danger of dropping dead from exhaustion was a real possibility.

But he couldn’t give in to any of this – it was the devil. ‘I might as well tell him we’re looking at Debra too.’

‘My sister?’

‘Debra’s a big reason you’re here.’

Graham shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Believe it,’ Hardy said. ‘I was reading Sarah’s reports this morning getting ready for her testimony. First phone call she made on the case was to Debra.’

‘And what did Debra say?’

‘She told Sarah you were probably lying. You couldn’t be trusted. She was the one who brought up the baseball cards, before anybody even knew about the money. She got Sarah looking at you, Graham. That’s what started it.’

‘She’s so stupid,’ he said flatly.

‘She also works at a vet’s, right? She gives shots to animals? My guts tell me a lethal injection is more a woman’s way to kill than a man’s. Debra needs the money more than anybody else.’

Graham had his head in his hands. ‘No no no. That’s not it. It’s nothing like that.’

‘What’s it like, then? You tell me.’

Sitting back, crossing his arms, Graham came back to Hardy, his voice low. ‘Deb and I were close until I was out of law school. She didn’t buy into the Taylor magic the way Mom and Georgie did, so we were on the same team. Then she married Brendan.

‘So two years after she’s married I’m at this nightclub and I look over and here’s Brendan flossing the tonsils of some babe who is not Debra. So I go over a little closer, make sure. Yep, it’s Brendan. He’s cheating on my sister.

‘So what do I do, the good brother? First I kick Brendan’s ass, then I go tell her.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘So she’s got two options, right? She either believes me and confronts Brendan, or she wimps out and tells herself some other story, like her brother’s lying to her instead of her husband.’

‘But why would you lie to her?’

‘I never liked Brendan. I didn’t think he was good enough for her, which, P.S., he isn’t. I’m trying to ruin her marriage.’ He spread his palms. ‘So anyway Brendan got home before I went to tell her and made up his own story first. He told her I’d been drunk and just teed off on him for no reason. So she blew up at me for beating up the son of a bitch, threw me out of her house, called me a liar. I wasn’t happy in my life and couldn’t stand it that she was.’

‘So that’s it?’

‘That’s it. I’m a liar. Brendan’s a good husband who loves her. End of story.’

Promptly at nine-thirty Salter pointed again at Soma, and he rose at his table. ‘The People call Sergeant Philip Parini.’

David Freeman still hadn’t made his appearance.

This was the first Hardy had seen of the Crime Scene Investigations specialist who’d drawn the Russo case, although he’d read his reports. The man himself was slight of build and precise of movement. His tailor had done a very good job on the dark blue suit. Parini parted his wispy crown of black hair in the middle of his head. A ramrod in the witness box, he rested his folded hands on the wooden railing in front of him.