Nothing but the Truth (16 page)
He thought that maybe, at last, she’d heard him. With an effort, he reined in his temper. “He’s gone anyway, Frannie. He’s on the run. It’s going to look like he killed Bree as soon as that gets out. Then he’s really in the news and the whole story—kids and all—comes out anyway. Then what’s all this been for?”
Her face remained set. “It’s not there yet.”
“What isn’t where?”
“Nobody’s going to look into Ron’s life. Not unless he gets charged. Ron isn’t anybody’s focus.”
“Yes, he is,” Hardy said. “He’s mine. He’s Scott Randall’s.”
“Oh, that’s real nice. That’s swell, Dismas.” Frannie spit the words out at him. “Side yourself with my pal Scott Randall.”
“I’m not siding with Scott Randall. Jesus Christ. I’m trying to get you out of here! I’m trying to put our family together again and all I get from you is poor Ron fucking Beaumont. Because I’ll tell you something, Frannie. He and his kids, they’re gone.”
She looked up at him defiantly. “You always think you know everything. You’ve got everything figured out. Well, I’ll tell you something. No, they’re not gone. He called you an hour ago. He doesn’t want to run. He wants to go back to his normal life. Don’t you see that?”
Deflated, Hardy rested a haunch on the corner of the table. “Don’t you see that that’s not going to happen?” he asked wearily. “It’s not going to happen no matter what.”
“It will if they find who killed Bree.”
Hardy shook his head. “Not true, Frannie. That’s just not true.” He forced a persuasive tone. “Listen, on Tuesday, the grand jury is going to reconvene and by then Scott Randall—even without Glitsky’s help—is going to discover that Ron has cut out. That’s going to be enough to get him indicted. After that he’s high profile. Then it all comes out.”
“Okay, that’s Tuesday,” she said. “If somebody, maybe Abe, can find Bree’s killer before that, some real evidence—”
“Unlikely.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s already been four weeks. The case is dead. You’re talking three
days?
It’s not going to happen.”
days?
It’s not going to happen.”
“What if Ron helps? What if he tells everybody what he knows about Bree?”
“Tells who? Like Abe?”
But, infuriatingly, she shook her head. “He can’t get involved with the police.”
“Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot. And while we’re at it, are you saying he didn’t tell the police all he knew when they asked last time?”
“No, I’m not saying that. And you don’t have to be such a bully. He answered their questions—”
“But just sort of forgot to volunteer anything interesting he might have known about his own
wife’s
murder? Give me a break, Frannie. This is ridiculous.”
wife’s
murder? Give me a break, Frannie. This is ridiculous.”
She slammed her fist on the table pathetically. “It’s
not
ridiculous. Don’t you see the tragedy of all this? Don’t you care about anybody else? Don’t you have any feelings anymore?”
not
ridiculous. Don’t you see the tragedy of all this? Don’t you care about anybody else? Don’t you have any feelings anymore?”
“Oh, please . . .” He was up now, spun around on her. “I’ve got more
feelings
than you can imagine right at this moment. I
feel
like killing the son of a bitch, for example. I
feel
like what’s going to happen to our kids without their mother, what’s going on with our marriage for that matter.”
feelings
than you can imagine right at this moment. I
feel
like killing the son of a bitch, for example. I
feel
like what’s going to happen to our kids without their mother, what’s going on with our marriage for that matter.”
He glared at her, but she said nothing. No denial, just a cold stare back at him.
“Shit,” he said, and walked as far away as he could, up against the glass block wall, and stood there.
Her chair scraped. A second later he felt her behind him, although their bodies didn’t touch. “Help him,” she whispered. He couldn’t think of a thing to say and she spoke into the vacuum. “You’ve told me I’m in here for another three days anyway, no matter what, isn’t that right? That’s got nothing to do with the secret.”
Glitsky’s distinction, but what was Frannie’s point? “So?”
“So if you’re right, they won’t indict Ron until Tuesday. Which means that the kids—that whole thing—it won’t have to come out until after that, and never if he doesn’t get indicted. That means you have three days.”
He turned. “
I
have three days.”
I
have three days.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“To save some lives, Dismas.”
“And how do I do that?”
“You find Bree’s killer.”
He hung his head. His wife had no idea what she was talking about. “Oh, okay. I’ll just run out and do that. Why didn’t I think of that before? It’s so simple.” He turned. “Any bright idea of where I might begin?”
“With Ron,” she said. “I told you he wants to help.”
“Well,” Hardy responded. “Old Ron didn’t get around to telling me where I could find him. Maybe next time he calls—”
“I might know,” she said.
There was a hole in the floor, a so-called Turkish toilet, against the back wall, a block of concrete with a mattress on it, and on the mattress a sheet and two gray woolen blankets. There was no sink. The walls were padded because the Administrative Segregation unit was where they put the bona fide crazies before they got medicated.
The door closed behind her—she hardly realized and certainly wasn’t grateful that it wasn’t bars but a true door with a peephole and a place to slide food in on the bottom.
She stood, numb and mute, without moving for a minute or more.
At some level, she was aware of the cold coming up through the paper slippers she wore. Everything was cold.
Overhead there was a light, recessed behind wired glass. The light would go off sometime soon and plunge the cell into darkness.
There was no control anywhere.
She alternated between not letting herself feel anything, and reacting to everything. Last night, when the light had gone off, she’d cried for nearly an hour. Tonight, the darkness itself would no longer matter. She could tell that already.
She was trying to feel her children, to imagine them with Erin, at least warm and safe. But the connection was gone for now. In its place was only the physical stuff here—the bed and the padded walls and the smell of disinfectant.
Maybe, she told herself, her emotions had played themselves out. But an aura of panic seemed to shimmer around that thought, as if maybe her emotions had been cauterized so deeply that now they had been completely burned away, and she’d never let herself feel anything again, not at a certain level anyway.
And then her husband. Every time he came, all she felt she could do was fight and argue and explain. When all she wanted was the understanding they used to . . .
But she wouldn’t be weak. Weakness would leave her helpless, unable to make decisions for the kids if it came to that.
What was it going to come to?
No, she would just put feelings away for now. Dismas was on her side—she would believe that. He was working for her interests, as well as his own and the children’s. Though their intimacy was lost, perhaps irretrievably. It certainly felt that way. She knew she bore some of the blame for that.
For all of this.
She had never planned to do anything wrong and now all she had done had gotten her to here. Why did she still feel as though she should defend herself, that it was all defensible? Everything felt wrong. Every decision and act had cost her and her family dearly.
Would anyone ever forgive her? And why should they?
Abruptly, the cell went dark.
An undetermined period of time passed during which she remained motionless. Finally, she reached for the bed, found it, pulled the blankets to her chin, holding them fisted against her chest.
She couldn’t imagine her babies—where they were, if they were sleeping. And this, finally, brought the blessed tears.
11
In another lifetime, when Hardy had been a prosecutor with the very District Attorney’s office that he now despised, he sent people to jail all the time. Because his first wife, Jane, had been worried that some of his convicted and dangerous felons might get back to freedom with a chip on their shoulders, Hardy had applied for a CCW— carry a concealed weapon—permit. In the normal course of events, this would have been denied, but Jane’s father was a Superior Court judge, and it got approved and, through some combination of politics and inertia, got renewed every year.
Over the years, Hardy had had occasion to take one of his guns out with him twice. Neither time did he have to fire at anyone, although once he had enjoyed letting off a round for the immediate and gratifying effect.
Yet tonight, in a kind of cold fury, grabbing for a weapon didn’t feel strange at all. It was a little past dusk, and he was taking his Colt .38 Special out of the safe where he kept it since he’d had kids. He hadn’t even held the damn thing in a couple of years, but when he’d last taken it to the range, he’d cleaned, oiled, and wrapped it carefully in its cloth before putting it away.
Now he lifted it out and unwrapped it. A wipe with the rag and the finish shone. He checked to make sure it was unloaded, then spun the cylinder and worked the action several times.
On the way back from his visit with Frannie, he had decided—if that was the word, the impulse had been more spontaneous than cerebral—to carry the piece. He probably couldn’t have said why—surely not to shoot the man who might be sleeping with his wife. If he had a thought about it at all, he would have said that the gun might be persuasive in moving Ron to do what Hardy asked, whatever that might turn out to be.
So he wasn’t going to be home for long. Frannie had told him where Ron had once told her—she remembered after she found out he’d fled—where his first stop might be if he needed to run.
Hardy hadn’t told Frannie that he was going to confront Ron. No more impetuous promises. And his wife, perhaps having erroneously concluded that Hardy had been converted all the way to Ron’s side, hadn’t demanded any.
Wearing jeans, a blue shirt over a rugby jersey, and a pair of running shoes, he stood in the dim light in the back room behind the kitchen and slid the bullets where they belonged. He stuck the gun into his belt, pulling the blue shirt out over it. He put the rest of the box of bullets back into the safe, carefully closed the door, spun the lock.
On the way out, he grabbed a jacket from the peg near the front door.
It hadn’t taken five minutes and he was back at his car. Ready.
Ron Brewster.
Now he was Ron Brewster. Frannie had explained it all to Hardy, thinking she was making points for Ron, showing her husband the lengths to which this great guy was willing to go to protect his children.
But the excuses and lies that he ran into every day in his criminal practice had honed Hardy’s natural cynicism into a sharp-edged and profound skepticism that cut a swath through normal human feelings, at least whenever the law was involved. Although he fought it in his home life and with his few close friends, he found that he didn’t take much at face value anymore. He tended not to believe interesting stories—there was always something else that didn’t get said.
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