Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 26

23.

She's checked out to...'

The jail's uniformed desk sergeant squinted at the log. 'Glitsky, homicide, next door.'

Hardy wondered about this new development as he walked in the bitter fog around the corner to the main entrance of the Hall. Frannie was signed out to Glitsky? How did that happen and what did it mean?

He'd stowed the gun in the trunk of his car so he wouldn't have to confront the Hall's metal detector. It remained a miserable morning. Hardy checked the time, surprised at how early it still was for all that had gone on. He wasn't entirely certain he'd done the right thing by letting Valens go about his campaign business, but he couldn't imagine that the man was going to disappear, at least not until the election. If some real evidence of wrongdoing by Valens turned up before then, Hardy would bring it to Abe's attention, but in the meanwhile, he had more important things on his mind.

His house, his wife, his life.

The Hall's familiar lobby - on weekdays a perennial throbbing and vulgar ma.s.s of disgruntled humanity - was empty this early, and his footfalls echoed. Knowing he'd have no patience with the elevator, he took the inside stairway to the fourth floor, then walked down the long hall to the homicide detail - an open room with fifteen back-to-back desks and several square columns poking about, floor to ceiling, seemingly at random.

There wasn't a body to be seen in homicide itself, although through the grimy, wired-gla.s.s windows, he could look across through the fog to the jail, where spectral shapes moved in the outer corridors.

The door to the lieutenant's office was open. No one was inside, but Hardy noticed that Kerry's water gla.s.s that he picked up yesterday was gone - a good sign. He knocked anyway. 'Anybody here?'

'Yo!' Glitsky appeared in the doorway of one of the interrogation rooms.

Before he could say anything, Frannie appeared behind him. They met in an embrace in the middle of the room.

'I had to tell her,' he heard Abe say. 'I didn't know how long you'd be hung up back there and she had to know.'

The words barely registered. He was lost in holding her.

But Glitsky was still talking, explaining. 'I'm on my way driving down here, I realize we bring witnesses over from the jail every day to talk to them. So I just went and signed her out into my custody. It's Sunday, n.o.body's here to question why I got her. It seemed like a good idea.'

'It's a great idea.' Frannie said. 'Plus Erin's bringing the kids down.'

'And I'm going out for some food,' Glitsky said. He was already putting on his jacket. 'It'll be a party.' He pointed a finger at Hardy. 'While I'm gone, I'm leaving you in charge. Don't let her escape.'

They were alone together in the homicide detail's interrogation room, kitty-corner at the table. The fog was pressing tight up against the windows, the wind gusting audibly.

It wasn't exactly warm inside either.

First was the house, Hardy's a.s.sessment of how bad it was, what they were going to have to do about living in the next weeks, the somber details. It hit Frannie especially hard that, even after her expected release from jail on Tuesday morning, she wouldn't be able to go back to her old life. 'This is all because of me, isn't it?'

It was difficult for Hardy to tell her it wasn't. He couldn't imagine that anything relating to Bree Beaumont's death would have had any effect on their lives if Frannie had not become involved with Ron, hadn't promised to keep his secrets.

'You did what you had to do,' he told her equivocally. 'But at least I've got somebody scared and that's always instructive.'

'It's more than just that.'

'Maybe,' he admitted.

'Do you think something else could happen? To you?'

In truth, Hardy thought if he kept pus.h.i.+ng, which he fully intended to do, that something else surely would happen. That's even what he wanted - without an act there couldn't be a mistake upon which he could capitalize.

And this, of course, was not without risk, even serious risk. But, answering her, he simply shook his head. 'If I get any closer, I'll give it to Abe. Let the pros run with it.'

Frannie tightened her grip on his arm. 'You can do that now, Dismas.'

'No,' he said pointedly. 'Not if I want to protect Saint Ron's kids...'

'I wish you'd stop calling him that.'

Hardy figured he'd earned the right to call Ron Beaumont anything he wanted. He waved the objection off. 'The point is, if I want to protect his kids, that's why I'm doing all this, isn't it? That's what I'm supposed to believe.'

'What do you mean, "supposed to believe"?'

He tried to control it, but he heard his voice take on a harder edge. 'I find who killed Bree by Tuesday and everybody's life goes back to normal, right? Except ours now. Now ours is a mess.' He'd gotten her to tears and he didn't care. 'And you want to know the real laugh riot here, Frannie? I'm not even sure Ron didn't do this to us.'

'That's crazy,' she said. 'He would have had no reason to do that.'

He firmly grabbed his wife by the shoulders and turned her to him. 'Listen to me. How about if he thought I was there alone, sleeping? The house burns down with me in it. Then he's got you. Did that ever occur to you?'

'No! That's not it.'

'So where is the son of a b.i.t.c.h?'

'I don't know, Dismas, I don't know.' She took his hands and held them in front of her. 'But Ron and I... there's nothing like that.'

Hardy hesitated. Although he was well into it, mention of Ron Beaumont was still personally fraught with peril for him. Still, he had to go ahead. 'You know, Fran, I've really been trying to keep Abe from looking at him officially. But it's beginning to look as if whoever killed Bree also killed Abe's inspector half a mile from Ron's house.'

'That doesn't mean...'

He squeezed her hand. 'And just so you know, Ron apparently had a few different ident.i.ties.'

'What do you mean, ident.i.ties?'

Hardy outlined Glitsky's discovery of the previous night, which now seemed about a year and half ago.

When he was through, Frannie took a while to answer. 'He must have thought he might have to run again someday to save the kids.'

'I'm sure that's what he'd like everybody to believe, and maybe it's true, but he's getting a h.e.l.l of a lot of play out of saving his kids.'

'That's because that's what he's doing, Dismas! I believe that. You did too when you met him, remember that? He didn't start any of this any more than I did.'

Hardy clucked. 'I know. He's just a poor victim.'

'G.o.d, you can be mean,' she snapped.

'Sometimes it's useful,' he replied. 'I'd just like you to consider the possibility that this guy is the great pretender.'

'No.'

'For two or three different reasons - insurance, credit cards, you name it - he kills Bree and sets you up as his alibi. When the cops start to get close to him, he cons me into muddying the waters digging up other suspects, giving himself a few more days to disappear. I don't see much wrong with that picture.'

But she was shaking her head. 'It's not him. Listen to yourself, Dismas. He didn't give himself more time to disappear and also stick around to burn down our house so he could have me. You can't have it both ways. You think he had something going on with me, don't you? That's what this is all about, isn't it? The real one you don't believe is me.'

'You've never denied it, G.o.ddam it! How about that?'

'You never asked!'

Hardy spun around and walked to the window, the fog. An eternity pa.s.sed before he sensed any movement. He was afraid to turn. She came up and hugged him from behind. 'He's just a dad from the kids' school, we got to be friends, this happened. That's all.'

She continued talking quietly into his back. 'I know you hate the whole victim mentality, Dismas. I don't like it either. But sometimes people are in situations they didn't create. Like us, now, too. We've just got to keep trying to do what's right, don't you think?'

'I don't know what right is anymore.'

'Yes you do.'

'All I know is I want to hurt whoever did this.'

'No, you want to hurt anybody right now. It doesn't have to be who did all this. Maybe you're so hurt...'

'And what if it's Ron after all? If we've both been conned.'

'Is that the worst that can happen? That somebody took advantage of your good heart.'

'I don't have a good heart.'

'Yes you do. And you're risking it here and afraid somebody's going to smash it and make you look like a fool in the bargain. But either way it's over on Tuesday, isn't it? If you don't find whoever really did it.'

Hardy turned around to her. 'And I've helped him escape.'

'Except if he's run away, then he didn't burn our house, and vice versa. Think about it, Dismas. It's not him.' She brought a hand up to his face and rubbed it against his cheek. 'More than anything, I just don't want you to be hurt. Or us to be hurt.' Her eyes pleaded with him. 'Do you think you could stand to kiss me please?'

Frannie, Erin, Ed, and the kids were finis.h.i.+ng their lunch - Chinese takeout was all Glitsky had been able to forage on a Sunday morning.

The opening minutes had been brutal, the kids' emotions over finally seeing their mother again, then the double-whammy as they heard the news of the fire. By the time they were an hour into it, though, Hardy realized that it was as normal a family meal as you could have in a homicide interrogation room. Vincent was sitting on Frannie's lap, Rebecca was nonstop chatter about school stuff. They were all making plans about logistics, moving ahead, solving problems.

Eventually, Hardy got up and wandered out over to Glitsky's office. Over the course of the morning, he'd been tangentially aware of activity in the main room, the odd homicide inspector moseying on in for Sunday duty, maybe to write up some reports.

Hardy stopped in Glitsky's doorway. The lieutenant was at his desk, hunched over paperwork. He knocked and Glitsky looked up, and waved him in. 'Budgets,' he said, and threw his pencil down on the desk. 'Utilization percentage. Field efficiency ratios. Unit integration coefficient. I've been filling out these things for five years and I still don't know what a unit integration coefficient is.'

'Give it an eighty-seven,' Hardy said. 'That's usually good for a coefficient.' He sat down across from the desk. 'I wanted to thank you for bringing her up here,' he said.

Glitsky nodded. 'I'm sorry I couldn't have done it sooner. But with the crowds pa.s.sing through here every other day of the week, somebody'd leak it to Sharron Pratt, who tells Marian Braun, who goes ballistic and takes it to Rigby. Then I'm fired and I hate it when that happens.'

'Well, you did it today,' Hardy said sincerely. 'And I wanted to thank you.'

'Thanks accepted.' Glitsky leaned back, hooking his hands behind his head. 'In other news, you'll be delighted to hear that I've put Batavia and Coleman on alibis for the time of Griffin's death.' A short pause. 'Also for early this morning. Maybe eliminate somebody.'

'Maybe find somebody.'

'Maybe that too. Also, I put in some calls - if Ron Beaumont used one of his credit cards, we know where he is.'

'Or was.'

'Close enough. Anyway, last thing is I took your gla.s.s to the lab, but n.o.body was on. It might be a day or two.'

'Utilization coefficient difficulties?' Hardy asked.

Glitsky shook his head in mock disgust. 'I can't teach you anything. It's not utilization coefficient, it's unit integration coefficient, but yeah, that's probably it. Anyway, meanwhile I thought it was time I got a look at the crime scene myself. When the party's over in there, I thought you might like to come along.' He looked at his watch, made a gesture of apology, and lowered his voice. 'Speaking of which...'

He still had the key to the penthouse, but Hardy couldn't very well pull it out with Glitsky next to him. So they had to ring the building superintendent, David Glenn.

Glenn was in his early forties, handsome in a no-nonsense way. He wore a tonsure of buzz-cut blond hair around a lot of clean scalp. His body was trim and well defined in shorts and a Gold's Gym T-s.h.i.+rt and he projected an easy and friendly can-do competence.

'You guys getting any closer?' he inquired as the elevator brought them up.

'Any day now,' Glitsky replied.

This seemed to satisfy Glenn somehow. 'So it's not Ron, after all?'

'I didn't say that,' Glitsky replied.

'Yeah, I read it was, but if you're still looking...'

Glitsky was firm. 'That's where it is, Mr Glenn. We're still looking. It might be Ron when we stop.'

'No, I don't think so. I hope not.'

'Why not?' Hardy put in.

Glenn shook his head. 'Ah, you know.'

'Nope.' Hardy said, playing cop. 'Why don't you tell us?'

'Well, most tenants here, I couldn't pick 'em out of a lineup. They park down below underneath, ride the elevator to their places, I never see 'em. Ron, I got to know a little, that's all.'

The elevator door opened and they were on the small landing in front of the Beaumonts' door, although the view today through the one window was a gray blanket. Glenn stepped out with them, pulled a key from the ring he was carrying, and fitted it to the door. 'You get a take on people, that's all.'

'And Ron... ?'

The key worked, but Glenn just stood there a minute, thinking about the question. 'The guy's a miracle with his kids. I suppose that's it.'

'A miracle?' Glitsky asked. Hardy didn't ask because he knew what was coming.

Glenn shrugged. 'You guys got kids?'

Hardy answered. 'A handful between us.'