Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 43

It was unnerving.

The railing was wet from thirty hours wrapped in fog and he went to wipe his hands on his jacket. A foghorn boomed from down below and suddenly he stopped himself.

Rust stains. Fabric wash.

He turned his palms up. With the sun just down, the dusk had rapidly advanced, but there was still enough natural light to make out the faint striations.

For another long moment, he stood without moving. The switch for the light over the balcony was behind him and he turned around and flicked it. The rust wasn't dark on his hands, but it had come off the grillwork sufficiently to be easily identifiable.

Again he crossed to the railing, but this time he squatted so that the top of it was at his eye level. Where he'd stood, the condensation had of course been cleared; but beyond that he thought he could make out where his hands had taken the rust. Swiping the arm of his jacket strongly over the area, the smooth and rugged Gore-tex caught in a couple of places, and then when he pulled it away, the railing had left a line of rust on it.

But far more importantly, the metal itself reflected what he'd done. The top thin layer of rust had wiped away. It was subtle, but unmistakable.

And it led to a similarly unmistakable and startling conclusion. If Bree's body had been dumped over this railing with sufficient friction to leave rust stains on her clothes, two things should have been immediately apparent to even an inept and overworked crime scene investigator. The first was there would have been a noticeable if not obvious spot on the railing where the rust had been disturbed.

And the second, Hardy thought, would have even been more telling. His own s.p.a.ce-age jacket had caught a couple of times when he'd swiped at the railing. Bree had been wearing cotton and wool, the threads of which would have snagged all along on the rough ironwork of the railing.

His brain was spinning as he stood again and looked down over the lights coming on in the city below. He didn't have to go back and check any of his folders, the contents of his briefcase. He'd memorized most of that long ago anyway.

One of the most perplexing aspects of the crime scene investigation into Bree's death had been its inability to produce even a shred of physical evidence to tie any suspect to events in this room, on this balcony. And now Hardy understood why that had been.

Fabric wash.

No trace of fabric on the railing.

David Glenn, the building superintendent, remembered him and said he could come in, but they had to keep it short. Glenn had to keep working. His friends would be showing up any time for cards and Monday night football and if the food wasn't laid out, the s.h.i.+t hit the fan.

So they went to the clean, brightly lit kitchen where Glenn continued to arrange the cold cuts and cheeses, the breads and pickles and condiments. Hardy, who by now had pretty much given up on the idea that he'd ever eat regularly again, stood by the counter and tried not to notice the food.

'I don't know exactly,' Glenn was saying. Hardy had asked him how many people resided in the building, and if Glenn was familiar with all of them. 'There's only a couple of places - the Beaumonts and then the Mahmoutis on four - that have kids. Then mostly couples, three or four singles. Say forty, give or take, altogether.'

'Full-time tenants?'

'Well.' Glenn studied an olive and popped it into his mouth. 'Owners. I told you before. Some of these people I never see.'

'Never?'

Glenn considered. 'Almost, some of them. I could pa.s.s them on the street.'

'How can that be?'

'Easy, really. The place is designed for privacy. You got your parking s.p.a.ce under the building. You take the elevator to your room. Some units, n.o.body's ever home. You ask me, n.o.body lives there, but we get the checks. Couple of them are companies. You know, hold the places for their executives when they're in town.' He must have seen Hardy eyeing the food. 'Hey, you hungry? You want a bite?'

'That's OK, thanks. Do you know who the companies are offhand?'

'Sure. There's just two of 'em. Standard Warehousing - I think they're out of Phoenix. And some Russians. Diamond merchants, they say. Talk about never here.'

'So, other than those, how many units don't have regular tenants?'

He chewed another olive. 'It's not something I give much thought to. Maybe two, I'd say, maybe three.'

'Is one of them nine oh two?'

He stopped chewing, stopped fussing with the food, and gave Hardy his full attention. 'Is this still about Bree?'

Hardy nodded. 'Would nine oh two have a balcony directly under hers?'

A slow nod. 'Yeah. All the twos are the back units. Rita Browning.'

'And who is she? Do you know her?'

'Not from Eve.' He shook his head. 'She's one of 'em.'

The last person Hardy wanted to see was Abe Glitsky.

And now, carrying a brown paper bag, here he was, being shown into the Solarium by one of Freeman's young a.s.sociates. Aside from Hardy and Freeman, two other a.s.sociates labored at the table drawing up subpoenas for the hearing in Braun's courtroom the next morning.

Freeman whistled happily, tonelessly, annoyingly, but none of the worker bees joined in. This was not volunteer overtime. Freeman had knocked on office doors, interrupting, recruiting. And they'd barely begun - after the subpoenas were prepared, they were going to serve them well into the night.

'We need to talk,' the lieutenant said.

Hardy gestured apologetically to the people working for him. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Five minutes.'

Glitsky wasn't so sure. He faced down the impatient stares and responded calmly. 'Maybe a little more.'

The frustrated comments of the young a.s.sociates were not quite inaudible as they'd trudged up the stairs. Hardy closed his office door behind them, and turned on the lights. Glitsky wasted no time. 'We're being set up.' As he explained it, Hardy went over and sat down heavily on the couch. His papers and research materials were still spread all over the coffee table in front of him, but they seemed somehow unimportant anymore - old news, irrelevant. Kind of like himself.

'From what I can gather,' Glitsky concluded, 'the DA's new theory is that we're running a coverup, protecting Ron Beaumont. You're his attorney, I'm your friend. We're all going to make a lot of money on Bree's insurance.'

'That'll be fun,' Hardy said grimly, 'when that happens.'

'I think so, too.' Glitsky wasn't smiling either. 'I hear you're pretty strapped for cash. I wouldn't even put it past you to burn down your house. How about that?'

'Just as a stop-gap measure before I collect on Bree.' It was a small relief to understand the grilling he'd taken with the fire inspectors that afternoon. Somebody had pointed in his direction as the arsonist, and now he knew who it was. 'This boy Scott Randall is a menace, Abe. You put him with Pratt and they start doing the tango together - watch out.'

'I'm watching. But they do have me thinking I've got to release the information about Griffin and Canetta being tied to Bree Beaumont.'

'Why is that?'

'To prove that...'

'You're trying to find who killed them? What do they have on you? What could they have on you?'

'I haven't arrested Beaumont.'

'You know where he is?'

'No.'

Hardy almost laughed. 'Well, there you go. That's a pretty good reason.'

'Yeah, but they're getting me on appearance. They cast Ron as the obvious suspect and I'm not looking for him. I'm covering for him.'

'You're looking at the facts instead. How about that? That's how it's supposed to work.'

'I know. I know.' Glitsky heaved a great sigh. 'You're right.'

'Not often enough,' Hardy said, 'but every once in a while and this is one of those times.' Although this was pure bravado.

In fact, the situation was worse than Glitsky suspected. Would anyone - Randall or Pratt or the internal affairs people - believe that Hardy had known of Ron Beaumont's whereabouts and hadn't told his friend the lieutenant? It was unlikely.

Further, if Hardy did tell Glitsky where Ron was now - and he had no intention on that score - what was his friend supposed to do? Become an accessory to the federal crime of kidnapping? Place Hardy under arrest? Or - even if Hardy could somehow downplay what he'd done with Ca.s.sandra - was Glitsky supposed to put Ron into the system, the very result Hardy had struggled to avoid at such great cost?

He couldn't tell him. There was no way.

But by not telling him, he was leaving Glitsky vulnerable to the charges that Randall and Pratt were a.s.serting against him, and that could cost him his job, his credibility, his honor.

'What?' Glitsky asked.

'Nothing. I don't know. Maybe an idea.' Hardy pretended to search through the pages laid out on the table in front of him. 'Here,' he said, 'right here. Bree's funeral.'

'What about it?'

Smoothly deceptive, hating himself for what he had to do, he began to walk Glitsky through it. He said - it had just occurred to him - that maybe Ron had an alibi for the time of Griffin's death after all. Maybe the priest at - what church was it now? St Catherine's? - maybe he'd been with Ron for most of the day, or at least some reasonable portion of it, the important times, taking care of the myriad details.

Abe remembered, didn't he? When his wife Flo had died, he'd been at the synagogue from early morning until late in the day. Had anybody ever checked with Ron what he'd done? It was, after all, his sister's funeral.

'What do you mean, sister?'

Hardy felt the blood drain out of his face. 'Did I say "sister"? I meant his wife. His wife's funeral. The point is, if Ron's got an alibi for Griffin, he didn't kill Bree, did he? If you got that, you rub it in Randall's face that you're not covering up anything. Why doesn't he get out of your way and let you do your d.a.m.n job?'

Sitting on the corner of Hardy's desk, Glitsky made a swift decision and pulled the phone over. 'Does it have the number there? St Catherine's.'

It did, and when five minutes later he replaced the receiver, the lieutenant was close to actually smiling, the scar between his lips standing out white. 'Everything should be that easy,' he said. 'Ron was with the priest all day. His kids. A couple of other people.'

'That's what it sounded like.' Hardy feigned satisfaction, leaned back in the couch, and broke his own smile. 'That's great.'

'It's at least good.' Glitsky didn't skip a beat. 'So that brings us,' he said, 'back to Baxter Thorne, who as you point out is one slick-'

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Hardy got up to answer it. David Freeman stood in the hallway, hands in his pockets. 'Five minutes are up,' he said pointedly.

'One more,' Glitsky said.

Freeman looked at him, nodded, and came back to Hardy. 'If n.o.body's left down there when you make it back, don't blame me.'

'I'll be right there. Promise.'

Freeman shrugged - he'd tried - and started back down the stairs. Hardy turned back to Abe. 'You heard that,' he said.

'OK.' Glitsky handed the paper bag he'd been carrying over to Hardy. 'More stuff for your private collection. Photos from Griffin's car, the back seat, and what they'd tagged earlier. Only the so-called significant stuff is inventoried, but you can check the photos. Canetta. Couple of interview transcripts you might have missed.

'Also, Kerry does have a Glock. It's where he said it was and hasn't been fired since it was last cleaned - my guess is maybe a year, maybe never. Of course, he wouldn't have had to fire it if he pointed it convincingly enough.

'Finally, I know you're wanted down below, but here's the short version on Thorne. You're going to want to know, trust me.' When he finished with the d.a.m.ning but completely unprovable information on the gasoline and one of Hardy's elephants in Thorne's coat pocket, Hardy asked if they had found any evidence of his connection to SKO, to the MTBE dump, or any other terrorist acts.

The answer was no, but Glitsky was pulling another warrant tomorrow, sending a couple of teams of search and cyber specialists back to the apartment and to the FMC offices. It was going to be the full press, with full phone-record followups and data searches for palimpsest disks, forensics teams.

'Where are you getting the staff?' Hardy asked. 'I thought you had seven new homicides, no troops.'

'I'm rea.s.signing people,' he said simply. They started back toward the stairway. 'It's a new management tool I'm working on, called do what your boss asks and see if it improves your life.'

'I like it,' Hardy said.

'Me, too. I think it's going to work. And in case it doesn't,' he said, 'there's always the FBI.'

As it turned out, in the Solarium no one had gone home, although Hardy's return to the conference room didn't occasion the warmest reception he'd ever encountered. Still, the guys finished the work and left the office, spreading out to deliver the bad news to Kerry, Valens, Pierce, Thorne, David Glenn. Everyone Hardy could think of.

After much debate, Hardy and Freeman decided to serve both Randall and Pratt with subpoenas as well. They would have to appear in Judge Braun's court for Hardy's hearing, and wouldn't that just fry them?

He wasn't sure he would call all of these people as witnesses - or even most of them. But he wanted to keep his options open, and the turns in this case had surprised him often enough already. He was d.a.m.ned if he was going to be taken unawares in court.

This strategy, though, wasn't without some peril. The shotgun approach was an abuse of the subpoena power and might even earn Hardy a reprimand from the state bar, a contempt citation of his own, but he was beyond those considerations anymore. If his strategy failed, contempt would be the least of his problems.

And then, finally, at a little after nine, even Freeman packed up and went home, leaving him alone again up in his office, his pages spread out before him, his mind numbed by the gravity of his decisions, the impossibility of what he was considering.

If Ron's got an alibi for Griffin, he didn't kill Bree, did he?

Hardy's own words to Glitsky came back to torment him. He'd used them earlier to convince himself, believing them absolutely. It was so logical that it had to be true - Griffin was investigating Bree's death and Griffin had been killed. Same with Canetta. Therefore they were all, somehow, connected.

Except if they weren't.

Except if Carl Griffin, in the course of poking into lives as he did, had discovered an unpleasant truth about the last doc.u.mented man to have seen him alive - Baxter Thorne. And except if Phil Canetta, stumbling upon the Thorne/Valens arrangement after he'd left Hardy and Freeman on Sat.u.r.day night, had gone alone after the glory - to deliver a cop killer to all the suits downtown in homicide. And he'd underestimated his man. Thorne.

A dangerous, decisive, quietly confident man of action, already armed with Griffin's gun, his adrenalin high from torching Hardy's house. Or had that been when he was feeling truly invincible, after he'd killed Canetta?

And that, of course, left Bree. And another killer entirely. David Glenn's friends had begun to arrive. He said he wanted to help Hardy with 902, but he couldn't just let him in to a tenant's apartment. He could be fired for that. Why didn't Hardy just come back with the lieutenant, with a warrant, as he had before?

But again, agonizingly, Hardy couldn't come to Glitsky. And the reason was more personal, more compelling than anything else he was likely to encounter. It was Frannie.

If Rita Browning - the invisible Rita Browning - was another of Ron Beaumont's credit card ident.i.ties, if Griffin had discovered the Movado watch in 902 and not in Bree's apartment after all...

Hardy could not let Glitsky get to Ron. There could be no arrest, no police interrogation. Because if Ron continued to deny any involvement in the murder - and there was little doubt that is what he would of - then Frannie would always believe him. Worse, she would also believe that the system had betrayed Ron. Her friend Abe had betrayed her.

And her husband, too.

So if Ron had killed Bree after all, Glitsky wouldn't be any help - he couldn't be any part of it.

Ron would have to say it himself. In front of Frannie. In open court.