Hardy 11 - Suspect, The (27 page)

"No! She was . . ."

But Gina pressed ahead. "Don't be ridiculous! Listen to yourself. Think about the reality, not what you wish might have happened to spare everybody's delicate feelings. She was naked in the hot tub. He got there because they'd been having an affair for a while and that's what they'd arranged. You with me so far?"

"You don't know any of this."

"I know it as much as you know anything about the motive. Forget the motive for a minute. The
facts
point to him being in the tub with her, and for the obvious reason. She knew you were going to be gone. Kym was already gone. She had the house alone, and they set it up together. They were being romantic, having a glass of wine. Everything was cool. And then they had some disagreement about something—probably not something like the Dryden Socket, which had been simmering for weeks or even months. Something personal, some change in their status quo. Maybe she told him she wanted to stop, and she told him this was their last time. Maybe anything. The point is, he couldn't deal with it. So he got out of the tub, went behind her, did what he did, and got out of there."

His face set, Stuart nodded. "All right. Suppose we go with that. The problem is, Juhle thinks that mystery man must have been me. Same scenario, exactly. She told me she wanted the divorce and I lost it and killed her. Except that I didn't. It wasn't me."

"Right," Gina said. "I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt on that part. In fact, I don't think it was you, Stuart. If it was you, I don't think you would have come back down the next morning. You never would have done the CPR. And mostly, I don't think you would have done it to Kym."

He looked across at her. "Never," he said. "Never."

"I know. But my real point is, you're not going to get to any of this yourself. Not solo. Not even with me and Wyatt looking. And certainly not while the police are trying to find you. Who's going to talk to you once the word is out in the news? There's no chance."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Gina drew a breath and held it for a minute. "You're supposed to come in with me, Stuart."

He glared at her defiantly. "I can't do that."

"You have to," she said. "There's no alternative, if you don't want to be taken by force when they find you, which they will. And then, if you don't actually get shot when they come to arrest you—which is not impossible—then you start off not only as a murder suspect, but as an armed fugitive, in which case you're in twice as deep shit as you are now."

Stuart stood unmoving. "I know there's something going on with the socket."

"Ya-fucking-hoo," Gina said. "I'm sure you're right. And there's also something going on with Bob McAfee. Wyatt had a long talk with him today, and his alibi isn't as strong as Juhle would like to have us believe."

"Then why have they decided to arrest me?"

She stared at him. "Are you kidding me, Stuart? Nobody's that naïve. Not even you."

"What?"

"You send your daughter to talk to a critical prosecution witness. She conveys the message that her testimony is inconvenient. What does that look like to you? You're lucky Kym's not in jail herself right now for witness intimidation." Her client's unyielding and uncomprehending expression pushed her into a rage.
"Goddammit to hell,
Stuart! They think you're dangerous. Get it? Dangerous. Killer on the loose. Armed. Threatening witnesses."
Gina shook her head. "What the
hell is the matter with you? Do you understand that the first cop that sees you will be ready to shoot you dead?"

"But that's not... I mean, none of that is ..."

They could go around like this forever. Gina reined in her anger, controlled her tone. She had to close the deal. "Look, Stuart. The good news is that we can get a hearing in ten days, and if they don't have their evidence by then, the judge might not hold you to answer at trial."

"Might
not." Stuart held out his hands, pleading with her. "I don't get it. Even if they really think it was me, why would they go ahead if they've got no way to prove it? Why wouldn't they wait?"

She shrugged that off. "You want more? Beyond all of the above? Okay, you're a name. Your wife was important. When important people get killed, the public wants to see somebody charged, and if nobody is, the DA comes under fire. So Gerry Abrams is protecting the reputation of his boss. And at the same time, if Abrams convicts you, he makes his name."

"So it's just politics? Stupid city politics?"

"Politics. Ambition. Bad luck. You name it. But whatever it is, these are the cards we got dealt, and the only choice is to play them. I'm sorry, Stuart, but there it is. That's why I came down here tonight. There's no other option. The alternative—you hiding out this way—only puts off the inevitable. And you have to believe me, it would be much, much worse."

"I could leave the country."

"You could," Gina agreed. "Never see your daughter again, live with the constant fear of extradition, have everybody in the world believe you killed Caryn. Then your passport expires. What do you do then? You want to do that?"

Stuart closed his eyes; his body sagged. Finally, he looked over at her. "I don't know if I can do jail, Gina. The idea of being with those guys scares the shit out of me."

"I know. I don't blame you. But there's a separate section in the jail, outside of the general population, called Administrative Segregation, Adseg for short. It's where they keep at-risk prisoners. After you surrender, I'll try to make sure that that's where you wind up."

"Surrender?"

"Just a word, Stuart. Just a word."

"Shit."

"I couldn't agree more."

22

Gina parked her Jetta in her
space under her building and, making sure that the garage door had closed behind her, took the inside stairs to the back door of her condo. Walking up the short hall, turning lights on all the way, she went directly to her kitchen and opened the freezer section of her refrigerator, where she had a stash of commercially frozen dinners as well as several labeled plastic containers of her own preparations.

The largest of these was a deep, square Tupperware holder with a piece of tape on the side that read
lasagna/sausage
and she pulled that out, took off the cover, re-covered the dish with a paper towel and stuck it in the microwave, setting the timer for ten minutes. She walked over to the bar area and flicked on the radio which, since David, she'd kept tuned to classical.

To the strains of a flute and guitar performance, she went to her bedroom, took off her clothes and got into a hot shower. Gina considered herself a no-nonsense person, and never more so than when she showered. In five minutes, she was clean and dry again except for her hair, which she toweled for half a minute, then combed out damp. From her dresser, she grabbed an old comfortable pair of blue jeans and one of David’s white button-down dress shirts, washed over the years now to a frayed near-translucence, soft as silk.

Back in the kitchen nook, barefoot, she opened one of the straw bottles of Chianti that she'd bought at Cost Plus a month before, and poured herself a glass. She laid out a regular setting, complete with placemat, cloth napkin, fork, knife, pepper and salt, Tabasco and Parmesan cheese on the small table by the front window, and had just finished watering her early blooming Christmas cactus in its tiny pot on the same table when the microwave beeped.

She brought the steaming lasagna over to her place. It wouldn't be cool enough to eat for a few more minutes, but Gina sat down anyway, picked up her wineglass, took a healthy drink from it. The guitar and flute on the radio had given way to chamber music, perhaps a Mozart concerto. She sat back, let out a long, deep breath and took another sip of Chianti, smaller this time, and started going over the events of the last couple of hours in her mind.

She'd finally convinced Stuart that he had no choice, that he had to give himself up. In his presence at the motel, she'd called Juhle on his cell phone and told him that she was ready to surrender her client. How about tomorrow, say 10:00 a.m.?

She also wanted to make clear to the inspector that Stuart was not now and had never been armed. He'd simply taken some money from his safe for random expenses and had to take out the box of ammunition to get at it; then in his haste to get out on the road he'd forgotten to put it back. He'd snuck out the back way to avoid reporters, not to evade capture. Aside from those small lies, she'd basically told Juhle the truth of what Stuart had been doing all day—talking to people who might know something he didn't about Caryn. He hadn't been running from the police and from his arrest; he hadn't even heard about the warrant. They'd be at the Hall of Justice at ten o'clock sharp the next morning.

The lasagna—one of her specialties—was cool enough to eat. She took a bite, closing her eyes and savoring it, glad she'd made it with the hot Italian sausage rather than the mild, the sauce from the vine-ripe fresh tomatoes she'd picked up last month at the Ferry Building.

All in all, she thought, the night had been a success, a definite win for the home team, although Stuart wasn't quite seeing it in that light yet. But Gina had no doubts that getting him into custody, especially given the weakness of the case against him, was by far the best course of action he could take, albeit still one fraught with risk. Indeed, though, it was the only one that made any real sense.

More than that, in making the argument to him, in dealing with his very real and legitimate concerns, in the intensity she had to draw upon to prevail, she recognized a flame of passion in herself for the law and for her work that had lain as a near-dead ember for the better part of three years. That had been part of the general malaise and shutdown she'd experienced after David's death. But if nothing else, tonight had validated her return to her vocation in an immediate and gratifying way.

This was the right thing for her to be doing, the best use of her time and talents. Over her client's reservations and even violent disagreement, and whether he saw it or not, she had already done him a world of good. If she had not prevailed, if Stuart had become the object of any kind of real manhunt, when there would have been no question that he was in armed flight from prosecution, his prospects could have been terminally dashed. And she had prevented that. It felt good—better than good. A breath of fresh air after too long underwater.

Ten thirty.

The dishwasher cycles competed with the background music turned down low on the radio, but Gina was aware of neither. Her second glass of wine was still full on the reading table next to her. She was in her reading chair by the living room's front window, having already read through all of her notes and other miscellany in the folder she was keeping on Stuart. The thin blue volume of the ever-popular California Evidence Code now lay open on her lap. She made it a point to read it through once a year as a discipline. She'd gone through nearly two thirds of it at this one sitting, and though she would have denied that it was pleasure reading, it wasn't by any means a chore.

This was the nuts and bolts of her work. Lawyers talked in numbers—Penal Code sections, Criminal Code, Evidence Code, numbered Jury Instructions. It was the language, and she was as immersed in it as she would have been in cramming her rusty Italian if she was planning a vacation to Cinque Terre.

At first she was not sure whether it had been anything at all that had caught her attention and made her look up. Dishes rattling, settling in the dishwasher? She scanned the room, saw nothing that caused the noise and was about to go back to her book, when here it was again, unmistakable. She glanced up at the clock on her mantel, frowned and dog-eared her page. Though her front-door entrance was slightly recessed from the street and not visible from her front windows, she looked through those windows anyway and saw that someone had parked illegally on the sidewalk directly across the street. So she crossed over and used the peephole, then turned the dead bolt and opened the door.

"Hey." Jedd Conley in his business suit, hands in his pockets, projecting—for him—an unusual reticence. "Is this a bad time?"

"It's a bit of a surprising time. But no. I mean, it's okay." She pointed out behind him. "Is that your car? You'll get a ticket, parked there."

But Conley shook his head. "Legislative plates. Not automatic, but most cops recognize them and cut some slack. I think I'll be safe."

"So what can I do for you? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." A quick, nervous smile. "Slightly uptight, maybe."

"You want to come in?"

"That'd be nice. Thanks."

She stepped back, opening the door, letting him in. "So what are you uptight about?"

"Life. My work. The usual. I don't know why I said that, though, why that came out." He let out a breath, tried another smile that didn't quite succeed. "I'm fine."

"Okay, good, then that's settled. Can I get you a drink? I've got a little of everything."

"Some scotch wouldn't be bad."

"It never is. Maybe I'll join you." She was moving behind the bar. "Have a seat somewhere. Is Oban okay?"

"Oban would be perfect."

"Perfection is my goal," she said. "Ice?"