Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 25

But Hardy wasn't going to the jail. He pulled over at the first gas station he came to and called Phil Canetta's home number.

A tired, worried woman's voice answered. 'h.e.l.lo. Phil?'

Hardy told Mrs Canetta who he was, that he was working with her husband. Could he get in touch with him this morning? It was important.

'I don't know where Phil is. He went out after dinner and never came home. He always calls,' she said. 'If you do talk to him...'

Hardy promised that he'd have Phil call her, then hung up, frowning. This was unexpected and unpleasant. Canetta had left Freeman's office, gone somewhere, presumably on this investigation, and hadn't come home?

The wind gusted around the phone booth and he hunched himself further into his jacket. He dropped another quarter and punched some b.u.t.tons.

'This better be good.'

'Jeff, it's Dismas Hardy. Sorry to wake you, but I need to know where Al Valens stays when he's in town.'

'You need that, huh? How about I need some more sleep? What time is it anyway?'

'Early, but I've got a hot item for you. Swing by my house sometime this morning.'

'After I get up.'

'Fine. That'll be good enough. Valens, though?'

Jeff thought a moment. 'I think the Clift. What do you got? Is this about Beaumont?'

'Good guess,' Hardy said, 'though what isn't lately?'

'You're right, everything.' The reporter sounded truly exhausted. 'What time is it?' he asked for a second time.

'I don't know, Jeff. What's the matter - you get home late last night?'

'As a matter of fact, after you left I hung for a while, talked to a colleague about this very stuff, finally went home and had dinner, couldn't sleep, and decided I had to pay a call on Damon.'

'At his home?'

'I'm a sympathetic reporter, remember. He's a night owl. He'd see me. He has before.'

'So when was this?'

'Late, a little after midnight. I felt like I'd never get any sleep if I didn't get an answer or two on all this stuff.'

'And?'

'And he wasn't home.'

'Until when?'

'I left at one and he still hadn't come in.'

'And yet you got to sleep after all.'

'Not enough. I'll catch him today after-' Jeff sighed. 'This thing with you - you ought to be able to tell me about it now over the phone, don't you think?'

But Hardy didn't want to do that, knowing there was a lot more power in the physical reality. 'Come by the house,' he said. 'You'll be intrigued, I promise.'

It was against the rules, but the clerk was persuaded by the badge to give Mr Hardy of the DA's office the room number of Mr Valens. He took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and walked the long hallway back to the suite at the end.

Hardy heard some muttering, 'All right, all right, just a second,' and prepared himself to move. It took all of his restraint not to draw the gun. When Valens cracked the door, he put his shoulder against it and kept coming.

'What the...' Valens was wearing slacks and shoes, but still was wrapped in one of the hotel's white bathrobes, and now he clutched it in front of him.

Hardy quickly closed the door behind them. 'Sorry to be so pushy, but we have to talk.'

'Who the h.e.l.l...?'

'Dismas Hardy. Maybe you remember. We met briefly yesterday with Mr Kerry. You said you'd never called Ron Beaumont. Is any of this coming back to you?'

Valens was backing away, but got stopped by a chair. He nearly fell, then righted himself. 'Sure. Mr Hardy. I remember.' He grabbed at the robe, which had fallen open. He was getting his bearings back, tying the sash, but still obviously wary of the crazy man who'd crashed his door. 'I called you just last night at your home to correct that. I had forgotten that I did in fact call Ron. With the press of yesterday's events it temporarily slipped my mind. Didn't you get that message?'

'No, I didn't. You know why? Because my answering machine went up in flames this morning with the rest of my house.'

The fiddling with the robe stopped. 'Are you saying your house caught fire?'

'Not all by itself. Somebody helped it.'

Valens drew a deep breath and spoke very carefully, still clearly unnerved by Hardy's entrance, his continued presence. 'I'm very sorry to hear that.'

'Yeah, well, I'm in a little bit of a bad mood about it myself.'

Valens sat against the back of the chair. He stole a glance at his watch, at the door.

'Are you expecting somebody?'

A nervous shrug. 'Damon's got a breakfast meeting in an hour. I'm scheduled to pick him up.'

But Hardy shook his head. 'Not until we clear up a few things between us. Bree Beaumont, the fire, like that.'

Valens straightened up, put on a face. 'But I really don't understand. What do those things have to do with me?'

Suddenly, Hardy's adrenalin seemed to kick itself up another notch. He pulled the gun from his belt, took a step toward Valens and pointed it at him. 'What do they have to do with you? I'll tell you. I'm investigating Bree Beaumont and you lied to me yesterday. I'm getting close. The fire was somebody warning me to stay away and the only person I can think of who's got any reason is you. How about that? Is that clearer?'

Valens spread his hands. Patent terror. 'I didn't set your house on fire, Mr Hardy. I was in this room all night. I'm in the last days of a political campaign that I've been waging for nearly a year. Bree Beaumont is not in my life. Damon Kerry is. I didn't lie to you.' Another empty gesture. 'You don't need that gun. What you're calling a lie was a simple mistake. I forgot something, that was all.'

But Hardy's blood was way up, his voice dripping sarcasm. 'Oh yes, you forgot. You called the husband of a murdered woman who'd worked on your campaign, and it clean slipped your mind.' He snapped at him, raised the gun. 'You forgot that? I don't believe you.'

'It was only for an instant. By the time I realized I'd made a mistake, you were gone. So I called you last night.'

'You called me last night? Although your focus, as you say, isn't on Bree Beaumont, you're telling me that in the final hours of this campaign, you called me at home, at night, to correct this insignificant detail?'

Valens swallowed.

'Which, in any event, you know you can't prove because my answering machine is a pile of ashes. Is that what you're telling me?'

Valens shrugged. 'No, but I-'

'And while we're at it here, Mr Valens, maybe you can tell me how you got my home number, which is unlisted.' And here Hardy realized that one of the roundhouses he was throwing had finally scored. Valens cast his eyes around the room as though hoping to find an answer. None was forthcoming, and Hardy pressed at him. 'Was it one of your campaign workers, maybe? The same guys who came by my house?'

'No!'

'No? What? Was it different guys?'

'No. You're twisting what I'm saying. I don't have any guys. I didn't do any of this.'

'You didn't call me? That's your new story.'

'No, I did do that. I admitted that.'

He had moved up to within a foot of Valens. Sweat had broken on the man's face. It was all Hardy could do to not push him backwards over the chair and physically beat the truth out of him.

Hardy was in a genuine rage. He actually trembled with anger. 'If you don't say something I want to hear in the next five seconds, I'm going to shoot you in the face.' He c.o.c.ked the gun. 'Give me one reason. Right now.'

'What do you want?'

'I want why you called Ron and why you didn't tell me.'

Valens didn't waste any time making something up. Backing away, he blurted it out. 'Bree's got some files that could hurt Damon's campaign. Some reports, changing her position again.'

'Back to MTBE?'

'No, still against that.'

'Then what was the change?'

'She got religion. She'd decided that all additives were unnecessary. Ethanol, too.'

'And that hurts Damon Kerry?'

'It could if it got out, if Damon went that way.' Valens held up a hand. 'Look, I can't... that gun...'

'It won't go off by itself.' But Hardy unc.o.c.ked it. 'Bree hurting Damon Kerry,' he said, getting back to where they were.

Valens drew a shaky breath. 'Damon gets a lot of lift from talk radio because his message is so clear. Bree didn't understand that most people aren't scientists.'

'So you're saying Bree didn't tell him this earlier?' Hardy lowered the gun slightly. 'Why not? I thought she was his consultant on this stuff.'

'She thought it might adversely affect the campaign, as I just told you.' Lowered or not, Valens couldn't take his eyes off the weapon. 'Then when she died...'

'Was killed.'

'OK, was killed. Well, frankly, after that I wanted to get my hands on that report so I could get rid of it.'

'So Kerry wouldn't ever see it?'

Valens hesitated. 'That's right.'

'Because you didn't want Kerry to know what Bree thought?'

A nod. 'She was turning into a zealot. She was dangerous.'

'And had to be eliminated?'

Valens didn't approve of the word. 'She had to be managed.'

'And you did that? How?'

'By convincing her to wait until after the election before she told Damon. He wouldn't do anybody any good if he didn't first get elected, and I made her understand that. She agreed to wait. It was only after she... was killed, that I realized Ron might inadvertently let the report leak, not knowing what it was, not seeing its importance. So I called him to ask if he'd give it to me.' He pointed at the gun. 'You know, you don't need that thing. I'm telling the truth. The call to Ron was straightforward, really.'

Hardy's shoulders sagged. The rush of adrenalin had worn him out and he realized that Valens was right. He stuffed the gun back into his belt and backed up to the desk, sitting on the corner of it. 'It couldn't have been that straightforward,' he said. 'You lied to me about it.'

'If you remember, Kerry was there with us. I wanted to keep it from him until after the election.'

Hardy shook his head. 'You weren't ever going to show it to him, were you?'

'Maybe not,' Valens replied. 'Maybe someday. But Bree's conclusions weren't really the issue - it was that she was the source of them and she had such an influence on Damon. I mean, everybody in the industry knows you can formulate gas with low emissions. You don't need additives. So what? Except if Bree gets messianic and Kerry makes it his new war cry...'

'Then he looks like a fool, or a p.a.w.n, for having supported ethanol for so long.'

Valens nodded. 'That's the simple answer, but it's close enough. If he sees the report and knows it's from Bree, he moves on it now, he makes it a campaign issue. That's who Damon is. So he confuses his voters, he looks like he's waffling, all of the above. I couldn't let it happen.'

'How about if I say that sounds like a reason to kill her? How about if she changed her mind and was going to tell him and you had to stop her?'

Valens had a good answer to that. 'Then I wouldn't have had to call Ron to get my hands on the report last week, would I? I would have searched the house and just taken it after I killed her.' He glanced furtively at his watch, spoke now as if asking permission. 'Look, I do have this breakfast with Damon. And I really did leave a message last night that I'd made a mistake - it wasn't a lie - and I did call Ron.

'As to why I remembered to call you, it was what you said. I knew it wasn't insignificant at all, a call to a murdered woman's husband. You were an attorney. It wasn't brain surgery figuring you wouldn't go away if you thought I was lying.'

Hardy hated that it had gotten to here, to some sort of belief in the basic truth of what Valens was telling him. But there was one last question. 'So how'd you get my phone number?'

A nervous smile. 'I called the office and asked if somebody could find it. When I got back here, I had a message.'

'Just like that?'

Valens shrugged. 'I say I want something, somebody usually finds out a way to make sure I get it. I don't ask how. That's how politics works.'

'Or doesn't,' Hardy said.