Hardy: The Suspect Part 16

"My point is that Cheney could have done anything, killed the guy even, and no matter what the facts were, his supporters didn't care. No matter what Cheney does, Ted Kennedy's always going to be worse. That's what I'm talking about. Fixed positions."

"Except I'm not fixed, Wyatt. I'm trying to build a case, and many elements of what I've found so far point to the same conclusion."

"Are you looking at anybody else?"

"n.o.body else has popped up as too likely."

"How about the business partners?"

Juhle shrugged. "I've talked to three of 'em so far. Furth from her investment group down in Palo Alto, and her two medical partners, McAfee and Pinkert. And yep, there might be some motive, but also there's lots of alibi."

"Midnight Sunday night? Good alibis? That's a little weird itself, don't you think? I mean, if they weren't home sleeping."

"They were. All of them."

Hunt chuckled. "Well, there you go again. They have wives? You ask them?"

"One divorced, two blissfully married, and no. No reason to, not yet. Nothing points to any of them, Wyatt. You or Roake get me something that looks real, I'll look into it, I promise. Meanwhile, it's all Gorman all the time. Why? Because he did it, that's why. He's made some mistakes, guaranteed. I just haven't found any of them yet."

Gina was back at the doorway, Stuart behind her. "What haven't you found yet?"

Juhle didn't miss a beat. "Any way to tie these threats to a person or even a location. It's going to make it tough. What have you two been up to out there?"

Indicating her client, Gina said, "Stuart's got some diaries he keeps up, notes on his trips, pictures. Since we know the dates of these e-mails, he wanted to check if he was out in the wilderness when they got sent, which would pretty much eliminate him as the sender, right?"

"Possibly. And?"

"Well, the first date, August twenty-third, last year. He was in the middle of a six-day hike in the Bitteroots with two friends of his, one of them Jedd Conley. California a.s.semblyman Jedd Conley? Who probably wouldn't lie about whether or not they'd brought computers along. They didn't. Here's the photo of the three of them, ident.i.ties and dates on the back." Gina thought the photo was persuasive enough as she pa.s.sed it over to Juhle, three guys with loaded backpacks gathered around the hood of Stuart's SUV. "And Stuart didn't send these messages, Inspector. They're legitimate threats, and the last one appears to have been carried out."

Juhle took in that information with a stone face. Wyatt Hunt twisted around to look at him and said, "Well?" "It's a complication," Juhle conceded. "Except that the threats weren't really directed at Caryn, were they?"

Juhle having gone, the defense team was back downstairs in the kitchen. Hunt sat across from Gina at the table, his hands folded in front of him. From his perch on the counter, Stuart said, "Facts aren't going to make any difference, are they? Juhle's not seeing them."

Gina said, "He's going to have to deal with this latest stuff on some level. All things being equal, we bring these e-mails up in front of a jury, we've got a good leg up on reasonable doubt right there."

"Okay, but I don't want to keep talking about being in front of a jury. That means I'm arrested. We've got to keep it from getting to there."

"Granted," Gina said. "But we've got to be realistic too. And prepared."

"So what are you saying?" Stuart asked. "That he's going to arrest me no matter what? Even if he doesn't find any new evidence?"

"What do you mean, 'new'?" Hunt asked. "He doesn't have any yet, does he?"

"Not much physical evidence, no," Gina said. "And as I say, today might actually have slowed him down." She threw a glance at her client. "But realistically, we've got to be aware that it's not going to take too much more, Stuart. Maybe just the DA saying he wants to go for it. It's high profile enough that Gerry Abrams just might want the opportunity."

"Who's Gerry Abrams?"

"An a.s.sistant DA," Hunt said. "A tad ambitious, as Gina will attest."

She nodded. "Gerry does love a challenge."

"Terrific," Stuart said. "So what do I do in the meanwhile?"

Gina and Wyatt shared a glance. Neither of them had an answer for him.

17.

No, thanks, he didn't have much of an appet.i.te and didn't want to join Gina and Wyatt for lunch.

When they'd gone, Stuart paced in a cold fury from the hot tub on the enclosed porch in the back, out through the library, back into the kitchen, across the dining room and then the large living room and up the stairs to their-now his-bedroom. Down the hallway to Kymberly's room at the front of the house, he peeked through one of the two windows, through slats in the blinds, and noticed Bethany's window in the house directly across the way.

Her own blinds were open, the room's light thoughtlessly left on, and if he squinted through the still-bright noon sunlight, Stuart could just make out what appeared to be a poster on Bethany's bedroom wall. Scanning down, he got to Bethany's front door. Abruptly stepping back from the window, he realized how close the two buildings were-a hundred feet? Less? He could clearly read the greenish bra.s.s numbers of their street address set in the stucco next to the door. Bethany's identification of his car, even in the dark, would be credible if not compelling if she got it in front of a jury.

The thought of himself in front of a jury turned him around and brought him beyond the master bedroom to the back end of the house. There, beside his tiny office, in a closet filled with file cabinets, piles of ma.n.u.script pages, rarely worn clothing, and free samples of fishing and other outdoor gear he'd endorsed, he moved an old blanket and some sweaters and junk out of the way and got down on one knee. With the door open behind him for the light, he worked the combination on his safe, reached in and felt the old Crown Royal bag in which he kept his gun wrapped, and pulled it out.

As always, the Smith & Wesson 9GVE pistol felt heavier than he knew it to be. Its empty, unloaded weight was less than two pounds, but the thing always had what he considered to be a psychic heft that made up for its diminutive size. At four inches of barrel length, the gun was a short, snubby, recreational weapon that he'd bought on a lark long before his marriage and rarely used since. He'd bought it, basically, for fun.

But today, in his nonreflective mood, he stood with the velvet bag and its gun in one hand, its two clips and one box of bullets in the other, and crossed the room to sit at his desk. Moving his keyboard out of the way, he reached in and pulled out the gun. Doubly wrapped as it was in an old, oil-stained T-shirt, he unwrapped the package and set it down in front of him.

He always kept it clean and well oiled, and now he felt a modic.u.m of satisfaction that it was ready to shoot. Checking the date on his nearly full box of 9mm bullets, he realized that he must have bought the ammunition on his last trip to the range at the beginning of the summer. More good news. He didn't want to have to stop and buy more bullets and face even the cursory questions of a clerk or, worse, possible recognition.

Pulling each bullet out individually, he checked them for external imperfections, but found none in any of the nine (eight for the clip and then, after racking a round, one in the chamber) that he slapped into the pistol's handle. Neither were there any bullet problems for the second clip that he slipped into the pocket of his Levi's.

The gun loaded now, the safety on and double-checked, Stuart stood up, and leaving his empty Crown Royal bag and half box of bullets on the computer table, he went back to the safe. Reaching in, he grabbed from a pile of fifty-dollar bills that he kept there for just such an emergency. Flipping through the money, it seemed to him that it was significantly less than he thought he'd put away, but there were still several hundred dollars all told, plenty to get by on for a while. Closing the door and twisting the combo lock, he went back to his computer, moved the ammunition box out of the way, and put the loaded gun onto the desk proper. In his ergonomic chair, he brought the keyboard back down in front of him.

On his e-mail screen, he stared at the latest threat for the briefest instant before hitting the Reply icon and typing his own message back. Out of habit, he reread what he'd typed for spelling mistakes and typos and, finding none, moved his mouse up to Send and clicked. The text: "Come and get me, you cowardly son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Satisfied, he turned off the computer, picked up his S&W, and carried it into his bedroom, where he placed it carefully on the made-up bed. He did not own anything but a generic belt holster, and had no intention of using that. Nor did he have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and that is what he fully intended to do.

But first, he needed to throw some things together. He kept his travel duffel bag on a peg in his bedroom closet, and he put that next to the gun on the bed, then went to his dresser and pulled out a week's worth of socks and underwear. He didn't know how long this was going to take; at the moment, he couldn't have said with any specificity what "this" even was. His brain took him to the probable day of his wife's funeral-the following Monday or Tuesday?-but refused to go any further.

All he knew was that he wasn't going to jail-not for a week, not for a day, not for an hour.

In the bathroom, he gathered up a small selection of essential toiletries. He thought he might find himself having trouble with sleep over the next few days, so he threw in a truly ancient, perhaps no longer effective, half-consumed bottle of Dalmane sleeping pills that Caryn had needed for a while. And her remaining Vicodin, a few tablets.

Back in the bedroom, he rolled up another pair of jeans, four T-shirts, a lightweight fleece undershirt and two identical brown pullover sweaters. It was warm today, but you never knew. This was San Francisco, and it could be midwinter by dinnertime.

The telephone by his bed rang and he started to lift the receiver, but finally let it go until the machine picked up on the fifth ring. He heard a female voice downstairs on the answering machine, but couldn't tell who it was exactly. Debra? Gina? Kymberly? Some reporter? He couldn't say and didn't care.

Finally, in the new jangling quiet, he stood in his closet, staring at his hanging clothes. He needed a moderately heavy jacket that allowed freedom of movement, that would call no attention to himself, that would cover where he intended, should the need arise, to tuck his gun into his belt at the center of his back. He chose a gray-green front-zipping parka from Mountain Hardwear and wrapped the gun in it, then stuffed it into the duffel and zipped it shut.

Downstairs, leaving his duffel bag on the dining room table, Stuart went out to the hot tub area one last time. He leaned over the tub for most of a minute, but nothing in these surroundings stuck to him. He picked up no sense of Caryn's presence, of her ghost. There was only humidity and the faint whiff of chlorine, and a vast emptiness.

The house had a side door that led to a walkway along the fence at the edge of his property. Aware of the growing probability of reporters lurking-Juhle had reported a sighting on the street when he'd come by, as had Gina and Hunt earlier-and wanting to avoid them at all costs, Stuart went down through the garage and out that door, then along the fence into his backyard, a small wasteland of yellowing gra.s.s and untended planter beds.

Stopping on the gra.s.s and looking up at the back windows of his surrounding neighbors, he made sure that no one happened to be staring out just at that moment. Satisfied, he continued down to the end of the fence, where a gate opened into another steep uphill walkway between two other houses.

Coming out on Larkin, he walked downhill for three driveways and stopped at the fourth, taking one last quick look around for reporters or bystanders. No one. He already had his key out, and now he put it where it belonged in the garage door, turned it and opened the door up. Scarce parking everywhere in San Francisco, but particularly here on Russian Hill, had forced him to rent this place for his old black Ford F-150 pickup truck for about the last seven years, beginning at eighty dollars a month-a hundred and fifty now, and considered a bargain at that.

Throwing his duffel bag onto the floor on the pa.s.senger side, he slid in behind the wheel. He fished around in the glove box for his Leatherman tool, then got out with that and walked to the street, which was lined with parked cars. Picking out a vehicle at random, and making sure it didn't have the window sticker that identified it as one of the neighborhood cars, he squatted quickly down and removed the back license plate, replacing it with his own truck's plate. He went to the front and repeated the process. In less than three minutes, the new plates were on his pickup. One minute later, he'd backed out, closed and locked the garage behind him, and driven off in the direction of Jedd Conley's office in North Beach.

They sat drinking their coffees in the window of Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store, mostly a lunch-counter restaurant that sold cigars but only incidentally, at the corner of Columbus and Union. They were looking out at Washington Square Park with its contingent of tai chi cla.s.ses, Frisbee-chasing dogs and, because of the sunshine, picnickers spread out over the gra.s.s.

But they weren't paying any attention to the scenery or to their drinks. Stuart had just told him that he was going down the Peninsula to talk to some of Caryn's business connections down there. Conley's face was drawn in concentration as he spun his coffee cup slowly in its saucer. "You want the truth, I don't think it's a particularly brilliant idea, Stu. You don't know anything about these guys, what they're like, and if one of them killed Caryn ..."

"I'm going on the a.s.sumption that one of them had to have killed Caryn, Jedd."

"Not necessarily. Maybe it was this 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' guy."

Stuart went still for a second before shaking his head. "If it was him, he'll try for me next time regardless of what I do now."

"But you just told me ..."

"I know, I know. And if it keeps Juhle off-balance for a day or two, it's all to the good. But look at this. In the first place, he doesn't quietly come into my home while I'm not there, and apparently without a weapon. No, he's at least got a gun. He's not coming to my house to stab me in my sleep. The guy's writing me threats on the Internet, for Christ's sake, Jedd. He's never going to risk letting me see him, or get me into some kind of hand-to-hand combat. If he does anything, he's going to shoot me, probably from a distance. Plus, he wants me, not Caryn."

"Maybe to punish you?"

"I don't think so. And there's no sign of a struggle, which there would have been. If she heard the garage door, and she would have, she would have thought it was me coming home early. And that would have got her out of the tub with a towel around her, at the very least."

"Maybe not. Maybe while you were gone she thought about the reality of you two getting divorced and changed her mind."

Stuart's mouth curved up, but it wasn't quite a smile. "That's a kind thing to say, Jedd, but that didn't happen."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying she knew who it was. She was expecting him."

Conley suddenly seemed to remember his coffee and took a sip, then put the cup down with exaggerated care. "So you want to talk to who?"

"Everybody I outlined to Gina, the people Caryn did business with. All the other suspects. My other suspects, I should say."

"But you said they all had alibis."

"No. Juhle said that. They were all sleeping in their homes, apparently. Or maybe not. It could have been any of them."

"So what do you expect to accomplish?"

"I talk to them all, maybe I'll flush the one who did it."

"And then what?"

A shrug. "Play it by ear, I suppose. Break the guy's story, take it to Juhle. Or Gina."

"Or maybe, since he's already killed once, he'll just take you out too." Conley shook his head. "Listen, Stu, this is a bad idea. You said Gina's got an investigator working for her. He does this stuff every day, right? Questions witnesses, checks out alibis, huh? Let him do it."

"And meanwhile, what do I do? Sit around and wait for Juhle to come and arrest me?"

"You've got funeral arrangements, don't you? You've got Kym. You got Debra."

"I'm not spending any time in jail."

"Well, that's what Gina ..."

"No!"

The vehemence of the answer brought Conley up short. "Hey! Easy." He straightened up in his chair. " 'No' what, Stu?"

"You're talking about Gina and her investigator, but the fact of the matter is that neither of their jobs have anything to do with keeping me out of jail. If I'm arrested, I'm sure they'll be great, but listen to them-all of them: Gina, Hunt, Juhle. Listen to them talk and you get the impression that the whole arrest scenario isn't really in anybody's hands. It can just happen when some kid of a DA gets a wild hair."

"But Gina's kept it from happening up till now."

"Not exactly true. It's either her or the fact that Juhle can't find evidence that I did it. In spite of my blabbing my guts out to him on day one." Finally, Stuart's features seemed to relax to a degree. "I'm not complaining about Gina, Jedd. I'm glad she's on board, for which I have you to thank. But I can't sit around and wait until somebody decides I need to be in jail. I've got to do something."

"Understandable." Conley c.o.c.ked his head. "So you've come back to me? Not that I wouldn't help you in any way I can, but I can't really afford to get mixed up in this in a public way, Stu."

"I get it. Politics. Hanging out with a murder suspect is bad form. The help I want wouldn't be any more public than we are right now."

Conley finished off the dregs of his coffee, during which time he came to his decision. "All right," he said. "What are friends for? What do you need?"

Stuart cast a glance around the tiny restaurant, then leaned in across the table. "You said you'd talked to Caryn on Friday. You'd been working with her on some of the problems with PII and the socket. How serious were they?"

As though appreciating the question for the first time, Conley nodded almost imperceptibly, his eyes narrowed. "All things being equal, pretty serious. Evidently in some of the clinical trials, there'd been problems."

"Like what?"

Conley hesitated. "Like, apparently, people dying."

"Apparently? People don't apparently die, Jedd. They actually die. Did Caryn know about this? She must have."

"She was trying to understand what had happened first. There was ambiguity."

"How could there be ambiguity? People either died or they didn't, right?"

"Right. Sure. But these deaths happened after the study had been published, so due to the length of time before the problem showed up, there was some question about whether it was the result of the hip replacement or not."

"And Caryn was trying to find out?"

"Essentially, yes. You know as a public service my office looks into certain kinds of business fraud on behalf of some of our const.i.tuencies, and Caryn asked if. . ."

"Jedd. You already got my vote. I'm sure you did what you needed to do. But you're saying Caryn might have been threatening to blow the whistle on PII about these deaths. Which would cost all of the investors big money, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know if she'd gotten to that yet, but it... I'd say she was in the process of deciding what she was going to do."