Hard Evidence (44 page)

59

It had rained hard all night, awakening Hardy and Frannie several times with peals of thunder, a sound almost unknown in San Francisco. Sometime in the middle of the night Hardy got up to Rebecca’s cries and brought her to sleep between them in their bed.

Up alone at dawn, he put on his running shoes, shorts and a t-shirt, and headed out around the park in the rain. After a shower he made himself a breakfast of hash, eggs, toast and coffee, and ate reading the paper, occasionally looking up into the gray clouds through the kitchen skylight.

Jeff Elliot was not featured on the front page or anywhere else. The day-to-day workings of the trial were not exactly grist for the media mill. He knew Jeff would be around when the jury retired to deliberate, maybe sit in for the closing arguments, but that the mundane world of the courtroom was no match for the exploits of Arnold Mousenegger. Journalistic priorities. Mice over men.

After breakfast he leaned over to kiss his wife and baby. He wore jeans and work boots, his old Greek sailor’s hat over a heavy white fisherman’s sweater. He hoped that this day, of all days, José decided to get to work on time.

*     *     *     *     *

It was still steadily pouring as Hardy turned into the Marina parking lot on a day possibly much like the one on which Owen Nash had gone out for the last time. There were only two other cars in the lot; Hardy got within fifty feet of the guard station, opened his car door, grabbed his smaller briefcase and sprinted.

José, at the desk beyond the counter, put down his issue of
Sports Illustrated
and stood up. He recognized Hardy right away.

‘I bet you’re getting a little bored with this, but I’ve got a couple of questions for you,’ Hardy said. He took off his hat and put it on the counter next to the briefcase.

José seemed to be an easygoing guy. It was a miserable morning with no one else around. He was happy with the interruption.

‘I was going over your statement yesterday, José.’ Hardy snapped open the briefcase and was getting out some of the paper. ‘And there’s something I didn’t understand.’

José nodded, leaning over the counter, looking at the inch-thick pile of type. He grinned. ‘I say all that?’

‘Well, between your interview with Sergeant Glitsky and your trial testimony —’

‘My girlfriend, she say I’m too quiet, I never talk. I should show her these.’

‘I could make you a copy if you want,’ Hardy said. ‘Meanwhile, let me ask you, see here, when you were first talking to Sergeant Glitsky…’ Hardy opened the transcript to the page he had highlighted and turned it around for José to see. ‘At the end of the interview you said you’d seen May Shinn here at the Marina on Thursday morning.’

Jose was frowning, looking at the page. ‘
Si
,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Tom and me, we talk about that after we see she kill herself, right?’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Well, you know after the trial, we talk about that day.’

‘The Thursday?’

‘
Si
. Only I see her in the morning, you know?’

‘I know, José. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.’ He pointed down to the transcript. ‘You see this part? Where you say she was going away from you?’

‘
Si
.’

‘So how could you be sure it was May?’

‘Well, I see her a lot.
Tambien
, that thing she wear on her head, and that coat. Nobody else with a coat like that one.’

Hardy tried to keep his voice flat. ‘What was the thing she was wearing on her head?’

‘I don’t know how you call it. Like a fur hat.’

‘And the coat?’

‘Well, you know, the coat like some,’ he searched for the word, ‘like some painting.
Muchos colores
.’

‘Okay, José, let me ask you this, and I’ve got all day if you want to think about it — did you at any time see May’s face?’

‘No. I don’t have to think. She was, like, way down there.’ He gestured down the street. ‘She don’t have a car, I think. Least I never see her drive a car. She always before come down with
Seňor
Nash.’

‘She never came down alone, maybe a little early to wait for him, let herself aboard?’

He shook his head. ‘No. Not that I remember. Maybe Tom, he know something else.’

‘Maybe.’ Hardy, trying different combinations, had to look back down at the questions he had prepared. This time he did not want to leave anything out. ‘José, do you remember what time you got into work that morning, that Thursday?’

José straightened up nervously. ‘The shift begin at six-thirty.’

Hardy gave him a conspiratorial look. ‘I know that, José. But I’m talking about that specific day. I won’t tell a soul, I promise.’ He was hoping he wouldn’t have to make José himself tell the world on the stand, but he wasn’t promising that.

José shrugged. ‘I think a little late. Tom talk to me about it that day, I remember. Somebody come by the day before, asking about it, too. So I stop after that.’

Hardy smiled at him. ‘You were safe,’ he said, ‘that was me. But that day… ?’

José grinned back. ‘Pretty bad,’ he said. ‘Maybe eight, eight-thirty.’ The rain pounded at the glass all around them. ‘But I really stop being
tarde
back then, you know? This morning, even, no one going out, I’m here.’

*     *     *     *     *

He was close to Green’s, a place he favored for lunch for their breads and coffees and the sculpted wood and the view of the water. He had never been there this early in the morning, and they weren’t yet open for business, but they took pity on him standing out in the rain and let him sit at the bar and have a cup of coffee.

Okay, it wasn’t certain that it hadn’t been May. Remember that. Keeping up about the trial on her own, May could have realized the implications of José‘s testimony — she’d been seen in her coat — and then gotten rid of it, trying to scam with Struler to cover where it had gone.

He didn’t think so.

What he thought, was at least beginning to consider, to realize it had been perking for a while, was that someone else — the person who had really killed Owen Nash — had returned to the
Eloise
on Thursday morning. Maybe she —it had to be a she now, even in May’s coat José wasn’t going to mistake Andy Fowler for May Shinn — maybe she had left something incriminating on the boat, and seeing the
Eloise
in the morning paper, realized she’d have to work fast. Helped by José‘s tardiness, she had gone aboard, taken out whatever it was, stolen May’s coat so that in case she was seen (which she was), identification would be confusing.

But wait… she couldn’t have gotten aboard. Tom had locked up the boat in Hardy’s presence the night before, and José had rechecked it on his shift the next day.

Unless, of course, the person had a key to the
Eloise
. Or how about if she wasn’t going to remove something from the boat but was going to put something back in? For the twentieth time, Hardy tried to picture that drawer in the rolltop desk — the drawer where Abe had discovered the murder weapon, the same drawer he’d looked in on Wednesday night and seen nothing.

Maybe, as they were so fond of saying about baseball, it was a game of inches.

*     *     *     *     *

‘This is ridiculous.’

Abe hadn’t been thrilled to get his call before nine on a Saturday morning, but Hardy sweetly reminded him of his own call at six the day before. Besides, Glitsky was a cop first, and he was dressed and going out for another interview anyway. He might grumble, but Hardy knew that the murder of Owen Nash would get Abe’s attention until it was solved. As it was, Abe made it down to the Marina in less than a half hour and he, Hardy and José walked together in the steady rain out to where the
Eloise
still rested at her slip.

‘I know it is.’ Hardy agreed, but the implications of his what-ifs were staggering. He wouldn’t have to consider them — in fact he couldn’t — if he didn’t get this fact nailed down.

The police tape had been removed, and José unlocked the door and stepped aside so Glitsky could lead the way down.

The generators were off. It was dark inside. The rain thrummed above as the three of them stood a minute, letting their eyes adjust.

‘Looks about the same,’ Hardy said.

Glitsky wasn’t here to take inventory. ‘All right, what?’

Hardy went forward through the galley, the short hall, the master suite. The police might have removed May’s belongings but the room seemed eerily the same — the exercycle, desks, as though someone still lived aboard. Glitsky pulled back one of the curtains to let in a little more light, and Hardy walked to the rolltop desk. He opened the drawer.

‘Okay, humor me, would you? Take your time, close your eyes and visualize it. Show me exactly where you found the gun.’

Glitsky came around the bed and looked in at the open drawer. He took a small knife out of his pocket — ‘This is about the same length, right?’ — and placed it on top of the maps that were still in the drawer, back maybe three inches from the front.

Hardy nodded. ‘Did you jerk the drawer open?’ Which would have caused the gun to slip forward or backward on the maps.

Glitsky was patient. ‘No. I was my usual wonderful methodical self. You want to tell me what this is about?’

Hardy looked down again at the knife in the drawer, doing his own visualizing, making sure. He picked up the knife and gave it back to Glitsky. ‘The gun wasn’t there Wednesday night, Abe. I looked in this drawer.’

A new onslaught of rain raked the boat. In the room, it sounded like they were inside a tin drum. Hardy stood there in his hat and pea coat; Glitsky and José wore slickers. All the men had their hands in their pockets. The boat bumped the slip.

Glitsky thought on it. ‘So May came and brought the gun back Thursday morning.’

‘Making her the stupidest person in America.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe she saw her name in the paper and didn’t want it in her house.’

‘The gun hadn’t been in her house. It was here, remember. Besides, she didn’t have a key.’

‘You know, that’s probably worth double-checking at her apartment.’ Abe wrote himself a note. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re saying the shooter took the gun off this boat on Saturday. So who’s going to bring the gun
back
?’

‘Someone who wants to, and almost did, frame May.’

Glitsky looked around another minute. ‘You’d swear on this, about the gun?’

Hardy nodded. ‘It wasn’t here, Abe. Somebody came by here Thursday morning, unlocked the boat and put it in this drawer. Then they took May’s fancy coat from the closet along with a babushka or something like that, locked up and waltzed away.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they hated May.’ Hardy felt like he was on a roll. ‘Owen dumped somebody for May. So this person, the perp, killed Owen out of jealousy, then when they saw May linked to the
Eloise
, figured this was a good chance to get her too.’

Glitsky sucked at his teeth. ‘What time was this, when this person came back?’

Hardy glanced at José, making a little face. ‘It must have been pretty early.’

‘Then it doesn’t really let off your man Fowler, does it?’

‘Well, I was thinking it couldn’t very well have been a man at all. José here recognized the coat —’

The guard piped in, ‘It was a woman, sir. There’s no doubt of that.’

‘It was a woman wearing the coat, okay. It could have been a man who let himself onto the boat. It could have been two separate incidents.’

‘Andy didn’t have a key.’

‘You can’t prove a negative.’

Hardy was getting frustrated that Glitsky didn’t see this. ‘Abe, the coat was aboard here.’

‘How do we know that, Diz?’

‘May said it was here,’ he said. ‘Our perp took it, which was why it wasn’t in your inventory.’

Glitsky patiently answered. ‘I’m not saying it didn’t happen your way, Diz. I’m saying it also very well could have happened at least one other way. May could have worn the coat down here, seen Andy — hell, if he was framing her he could’ve invited her down for just that reason, so she’d be seen in her unique coat. After she realized what was happening she dumped the coat, then saw her chance to get it back by hassling us.’

‘That just didn’t happen, Abe.’

‘So prove it.’

‘It was a woman, Abe —’

Glitsky was not convinced. ‘I’d make pretty sure what your client was doing that morning before I brought it up to the jury. Besides, the only woman alive related to this case is Celine Nash. Aside from having no motive, she was in Santa Cruz. I checked.’

Hardy stood his ground. ‘I still think it was a woman.’

Glitsky shrugged. ‘Well, neither of us think May did it, so who… ?’

*     *     *     *     *

Hardy’s mind was wrestling with the incomprehensible —Jane, his ex-wife, Andy Fowler’s daughter. She hadn’t told him the whole truth about her relationship with Owen Nash. It was understandable, why should she have, a one-time thing, he’d told himself. But what if… ? All right, what if. Get tough, face the possible, however impossible. Jane had continued seeing Nash, he had dumped her for May Shinn… he had totally worked her, and she had killed him and either confided in her father or, somehow, he had found out on his own. No wonder he was acting genial, passive. Cover for his daughter… Would he have done everything he’d done with that motivation? Sure, he would have hated Nash. And this torch he was supposedly carrying for Shinn —didn’t it make more sense that he’d be angry at
her
for dropping him? There would be a sweetness in making her pay for his daughter’s crime. As pay she certainly had.

He parked in front of Jane’s house — once it had belonged to both of them — on Jackson in Pacific Heights. He had heard on the radio coming over that more than two inches of rain had already fallen since midnight. Going up the steps, he knocked at the custom door with its molded glass inlay. He saw a man’s form appear through the door. ‘Perfect,’ he thought, thinking he was about to meet Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck or whoever else was the man of the month.