Authors: John Lescroart
After leaving Jane, his mind a jumble, he had driven back down to China Basin to view the Cruz parking lot another time. He walked to the hole in the fence, now inexpertly patched with baling wire. The Cyclone fence hadn’t been pulled away by kids. It had been cleanly cut top to bottom.
He’d called Pico from a pay phone to see how Orville was doing. The machine answered from Pico’s office. Hardy tried his friend at home and learned that the shark hadn’t made it.
“I should have warned you about my luck lately,” Hardy had said, and told him about the baseball game. But then he had remembered that Steven Cochran hadn’t died yesterday. Maybe his luck was changing.
Pico sounded depressed, and Hardy had asked if he wanted some company. Pico had said okay, and they’d sat up around the kitchen table, playing Pictionary with Angela and the two older kids for a couple of hours.
So it was late when Hardy got home. He called Glitsky immediately. The sergeant wasn’t in high spirits, just asked Hardy if he could come see him first thing in the morning about the Cochran investigation.
“Sure,” Hardy said. “Something happen?”
“Yeah. Somebody else died, and it definitely wasn’t a suicide.”
Glitsky hung up.
20
EMPTY. EMPTY EMPTY.
The word kept replaying like a looping tape in Sam Polk’s head ever since he’d pulled his car into the driveway. Empty. The house, Nika gone now, completely empty.
He had called her to tell her after the cops had been at the shop for a couple of hours. She’d expressed sympathy over Linda’s death, but by her voice, he could tell she wouldn’t be there when he got back home.
Oddly, her absence was all right, preferable in some way. The note on the table in the hallway had read: “Sammy, I’m sorry, but I just can’t handle two funerals in one week. All this is getting so heavy, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I went to Janey’s (you know, in Cupertino) for a couple of days and try to get my head straight about all this. You can call if you want (the number’s in our book). Sorry about Linda.”
Sorry about Linda. That was all. Sorry about Linda. The empty house seemed to echo more in the darkness. No point in turning on any more lights—the one in the kitchen above the stove was enough. All he had to see was the bottle.
So this is where it all—all the work, all the planning and sweating and saving and effort—this was where it had gotten him. To a kitchen table at an empty hour in an empty house, drinking alone at midnight.
He wondered why it was he really didn’t drink so often—now it was the only thing he wanted to do. First it had hurt his stomach, but after a while that had stopped. He poured another splash into the glass, got up, stumbled a little, and grabbed a handful of ice from the automatic ice maker.
Back at the table, he flipped the picture album open again, the one he hadn’t been able to find for nearly a half hour. Nika had put it in one of the drawers underneath the bookshelves, not even out in plain sight.
There was Linda. He forced himself to look. She hadn’t been beautiful, but there was something about her, a willingness to please. People liked her. He hadn’t thought enough lately about how much he had liked her. Not that they’d talked all that much the last few years, but some people didn’t communicate that way. Especially since she’d grown up and started doing some of her own things—the drugs, guys and so on.
But what could he have done about that? It wasn’t his business, really, after she got out of high school. He told himself she had been an adult.
He poured again, clinking the bottle loudly. Why did Linda think he had become interested in his love life again anyway, gone looking for someone else to put in his life? Linda had made it clear that she had her own life. Okay, then, he’d go and have his. God knew, he’d earned it, raising a daughter alone and running a business by himself. She had had no right to begrudge him what he found with Nika.
The telephone rang in the empty house and he felt his stomach tightening, cramping again. Even if it was Nika, he didn’t want to talk. He let it ring eleven times, then it stopped. He went upstairs to his bedroom, carrying the glass with him, his heart pumping now with fear. He realized who had been on the phone, probably, and it wasn’t Nika.
But that was stupid. How could anybody know yet? Tomorrow, maybe—no, definitely—they would know, but not yet. He sat on the bed. He’d forgotten all about that. Or not forgotten, but put aside. He couldn’t afford to keep doing that, not for long.
He was in trouble. How could it have gotten this complicated so fast? Just two weeks ago he’d had a simple problem with money, and a simple solution, and now he had nothing going on less.
Naked, he walked downstairs again, his glass empty. He had to hold the banister, and even then the steps seemed to fall unevenly.
Well, so what. He was alone and could do as he damned pleased, and if he was tired and drunk because his little girl had been killed, then he was, and fuck anybody who didn’t like it.
But then another thing intruded. God, there was so much it didn’t seem possible it all fit together. But this was important. This was more important, even, than Linda—
no,
he didn’t think that.
But it
was
crucial. He’d told the police there wasn’t any money. But what if they found Alphonse and he had the money? That meant it wasn’t his—Sam’s—money. And of course Alphonse would have the money.
But, on the other hand, once he said it was his money . . .
Shit, there ain’t no one on earth forgets a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, even if his daughter just died. At least it would be there in the back of your mind.
So what could he tell the cops? They’d seen it, all of it, the excuses and the bullshit, and they would smell this one all the way to Sacramento.
If he’d told them right away about the money, then it might’ve been all right, because, goddamn, seeing Linda lying there had gotten to him, and they would have asked him some questions and anything would have worked.
. . . a lopsided smile and admitting that he played stakes poker.
. . . a slush fund for the good workers, tax-free, until the troubles with Cruz had been resolved.
Goddamn. Something.
But now he had trouble seeing it. They wouldn’t buy it, and Sam couldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t buy it himself.
“You mean, Mr. Polk, that you had one hundred twenty thousand dollars in that safe this morning and you
forgot it
for how long . . . six hours? Mr. Polk, how old you think I am?”
The bottle of Jack Daniel’s was empty. Empty. Like the safe, like himself. He went to the cabinet and grabbed another bottle, this time some French brandy that Nika liked.
Okay, so he was in trouble but the thing was not to lose the money. Once he had that back he could think of something. It didn’t matter what the police might think of him. He hadn’t done anything illegal yet, and if he could just remember that he’d be okay.
He walked outside. Up in the city it had been cool, but the weather still held here only a dozen miles south. He smelled the first gardenias, maybe a touch of jasmine. He breathed in again. Small white lights led out through the manicured garden to the hot tub. He looked at them in a kind of awe. He owned this. This was where he’d arrived at. It wasn’t just a crummy kitchen drinking alone, it was a goddamn Hillsborough estate with grounds and landscaping and a hot tub, thank you.
He tripped on the first flagstone step, but didn’t go down. Out at the hot tub he lifted the thermometer and saw it was 104 degrees.
If he just got loose and thought, he’d come up with something.
The water stung, but only for a second. He sat on the first step, looking down at his balls, and thought it was still a little too cold, and he could also use the jets.
There, now, that was better. A bottle of some French shit at my elbow, a glass in my hand, and some jets blasting away all the tension and worries. People had worked hard their whole lives and gotten to worse places.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bricks lining the tub. And had another sip of brandy.
Maybe I don’t think enough, she said to herself. Maybe I’ve been on automatic too long.
There was only the one light on in the trophy room, as they called it, down the hall from Steven’s. The one with all the pictures. She’d been gravitating to it a lot lately.
Big Ed’s snoring was audible from time to time in the next room, but it didn’t bother her. Really—it was funny—not much of what Ed did bothered her. Cigars, maybe, once in a while, but she had her vices that he tolerated, too—not being home enough, for example, running around helping everybody who asked, being unable to say no.
She looked at the wall with its pictures. She and Ed had talked about taking down the ones of Eddie, but then she realized that there would be no reason for it. It wouldn’t lessen the pain. It was just another of the idiotic ideas she’d entertained in the last week.
Now she ran a finger across the bottom of the frame of the one where he was down at the merry-go-round at the old Playland at the Beach. He’d been seven or so when the picture was taken.
The little boy—mounted on the horse, mane splayed out in the wind—smiled out at her like his face would break. Erin remembered the day too perfectly. She saw the smear of mustard still on his cheek from what had been his first corn dog. Somebody’s hand was just visible at the bottom of the picture. That had been Mick, reaching up to ride double.
She let her eyes go around the other pictures. It was true, there weren’t many of Steven, and none in the past two years. There was Mick, playing ball, graduating, diving from the pier at the place they’d rented the past few summers at Bass Lake. Jodie was accepting her debating award last year, biting her tongue in the front of her mouth in concentration over her cooking at the Girl Scout camp, in her first formal dress for the frosh hop at Mercy.
Stepping back, she tried to find the most recent picture of Steven. There was one of him with Eddie at the wedding two years ago, before he’d done that ridiculous thing with his hair that Big Ed had wanted to scalp him for. Another one, the year before that, was really just a snapshot of him and his dad and Eddie when they had come home with their limits of salmon.
That was it for the latest ones of Steven. The most recent after those was Steven at about eight, with Jim, Steven forcing a smile from the front seat of that Corvette Jim had loved so much. Before that was his First Communion, with the white pants and jacket.
How could she and Big Ed have missed what this wall proclaimed so clearly? There wasn’t one shot of Steven all alone, by himself, the star of the show, for at least the past six years.
Last night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, she and Ed had sat in this room, wondering if they could have done things differently. And even then, with all these pictures staring down at them, they hadn’t seen it. It was the same as always, she thought. They just took for granted that Steven was up there on the wall with his brothers and sister, a good well-adjusted kid like the others. They’d raised them all the same—same environment, same values. Of course they’d all turn out okay.
After agonizing over every parental decision with Eddie, then Mick, then of course Jodie because she was the first girl and there were lots of things that hadn’t come up with Eddie or Mick, by the time Steven had come along they’d done it all before, right? So raising Steven would be the same as it had been with Eddie or Mick.
And finally she had been able to start taking the time she’d craved for herself, to somewhat offset the nagging guilt that she wasn’t accomplishing much in her life except raising kids. Not that that wasn’t important, but she had more to offer.
And Big Ed, too. He’d finally found the time for the fishing trips he couldn’t ever take when the kids had been little. And for the poker once a month. And, mostly, just for the solitude—reading in the room out behind the garage, or walking down to the beach.
Neither of them had meant to be neglectful of Steven. Maybe, she reflected again, maybe it had just gotten too hard to think about. Forget what the evidence of their own eyes was telling them—that Steven was getting away from them, that he was nothing like the other kids. No, that didn’t fit in with the leisure they thought they’d earned, so ignore it. It would probably work out.
And now the boy lay broken and bandaged down the hall, and Erin had no inclination to blame anybody but herself.
“Thank you, God. He’s still alive,” she whispered, a real prayer, just talking to God. She hadn’t done that since she’d gotten the news about Eddie, and she didn’t really think about it now. Just thank God Steven wasn’t gone, too.
She walked down the hallway. The house felt empty. Because Frannie had gone back home today? No, probably just a reflection of how she felt—empty.
Ed snored once again. She heard him turn over in bed. Steven lay on his back, breathing evenly. She leaned over and held her face above his, taking in the sweet-smelling air he exhaled. It was still not adult’s breath, but that wonderful stuff that came out of kids’ mouths. The air in heaven, she thought, must smell like a baby’s breath.
She touched the good side of his face, but so lightly he didn’t move. Moving up a chair next to the bed, she sat and forced herself to keep thinking about the things she was going to change in her life. She really had stopped thinking enough the past few years. You could be endlessly busy and still not be doing enough of the right things. Maybe she and Ed had gotten lazy that way, morally lazy, selfish.
She put her head down on the blanket, up against his hip. She didn’t know how long she’d been dozing when he moved, moaning. She reached up and caressed the side of his face.
“Mom?” he asked.
“I’m here, Steven,” she said. “I’m right here.”
21
“ALPHONSE PAGE?” Hardy said, somewhat surprised to hear a name he had never come across.
Glitsky, out in the avenues on another homicide, stopped by Hardy’s as promised. It made three days in a row that Hardy had been awakened before seven a.m.
“Alphonse Page. Of this there is little doubt.”
They were in Hardy’s kitchen. The fog outside was thin and still, the kind that had a chance to burn off.
“You think he killed Cochran?”
Abe shook his head. “I am fairly certain he killed Linda Polk, that’s all. Different MO than Cochran anyway. Cut her throat.”
“Money? What else.”
“Well, it gets a little funny there.” Hardy waited. “Her father called it in—the same guy you told me about, huh?”
“Short, sad, dumpy?”
“That’s him.”
“What was he doing at work on a Sunday?”
“He said he was feeling guilty he hadn’t been in all week. Wanted to get a fresh start, jump on Monday, like that.”
“Oh, certainly.”
“I know.”
The two men nodded at each other. “So,” Glitsky continued, “there was no money around, although there was a safe in the room, closed up tight, and the victim, Linda, was lying in a pool of blood right by it.”
“So he emptied the safe.”
“In any event, it was empty when Polk opened it up for a look. I guess it was either him or Alphonse, maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe? Why else would she have been aced?”
“Diz. The lab tells me she was filled with sperm. They also found three or four hairs in her crotch. Appear to be from a black man.”
“Jesus, she was raped?”
“I don’t know, but that waters down the money as the only possible motive. She’d certainly had sex just before she died, like, within an hour or two.”
“But why did she go to the office, where the safe was? It had to have something to do with money.”
Glitsky shrugged. “No, it didn’t. It probably in fact did, but it didn’t have to.”
Hardy got up and paced. “Well, shit, Abe, so who’s Alphonse Page?”
Glitsky took out a photograph he’d gotten, reluctantly, from Page’s mother when they’d gone to his house the previous night with a warrant. Hardy’s forehead creased, studying the picture, as Glitsky went on. “Polk identified his knife at the scene. Prints with blood on ’em all over the place—some even in the back at a wrapping machine.”
Hardy threw the picture onto his table. “And there wasn’t any money?”
“Good point,” Glitsky said, and noted something down on his pad. “Anyway, lab’s doing a run on the car, but I’m sure enough I got the warrant, put out the APB. Alphonse came home early last evening, dumped some bloody clothes in the hamper, packed a sports bag and split. So far he hasn’t come back, and I’m not expecting him. He did it.”
“Could he have done Eddie?”
“I don’t know. We don’t know where he was that night, but we’ll find out. After I talked to you last night I got out the file on Cochran. Read it cover to cover. ’Specially read about the car, Cochran’s. You’ll never guess.”
“Black man’s hairs.”
Glitsky smiled. “In the front seat. You’re a genius, Hardy. Lab’s not done with the comparison, but you want to bet they’re not Alphonse’s?”
Hardy sat down. “You know what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“I think we’ve got a drug deal gone bad here.”
Glitsky rubbed the scar that ran through his lips. “Well, damn, what an incredible idea!”
Glitsky then told him about the trace of cocaine found on Polk’s desk.
“So did you bring him in? Polk?”
“He was pretty incoherent after it hit him. I mean, his daughter had just been killed. He’s coming downtown this afternoon. Wanna be there?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. Cavanaugh seems to think Polk did it, you know. I mean did Eddie.”
“I didn’t think he raped his daughter.”
“Maybe she wasn’t raped.”
“And who’s Cavanaugh?”
Since it was now part of his active investigation, Glitsky wanted to get it firsthand. He and Hardy drove separately over to St. Elizabeth’s and both of them parked in the empty lot behind the rectory. Rose greeted them at the door.
“Father’s rehearsing the graduation over to the church,” she said. “You can wait here or go on over.”
They walked through the lifting fog. Sixty boys and girls in uniforms—gray corduroy pants and white shirts, maroon plaid dresses and white blouses—were lined up at the door of the church. Two nuns fluttered around trying to keep order.
“They still do this? Uniforms, even?” Glitsky seemed genuinely surprised, parochial elementary schools not being his everyday turf.
“Hey, if it works don’t fix it.” Hardy held his hands out. “Look what it did for me.”
Glitsky, his eyes still on the line of kids, started moving again. When the last child had gone inside, Glitsky and Hardy followed and sat in the sixth row in the first empty pew.
“What are they graduating from?” Glitsky whispered, but before Hardy could say anything a bell rang by the side of the altar and Father Cavanaugh, in cassock, surplice and stole, flanked by two acolytes, appeared through a side door. He came up to the altar rail, surveying the crowd, nodding to Hardy. He brought his hands together, palms up, and at his signal the children all stood. Hardy nudged Glitsky, and they got up too. The sergeant appeared puzzled.
“Let us pray,” Cavanaugh intoned with a deep resonance.
“I know that guy,” Glitsky said.
“ ’Course I was younger then, still in uniform, even before Hardy and I were teamed,” the policeman was saying.
Rose was used to policemen not wearing the blue. Except for
CHiPs
and a few of those older shows, no one on TV wore a uniform anymore. This man, Officer Glitsky, had very nice manners, even if he talked a little loud, but he looked scary with that scar running through his lips—nowhere near as good-looking or friendly as her favorite black policeman, Tibbs.
“No, I think I do remember,” Father replied. Rose was pouring coffee from silver into fine china. The policeman used a lot of sugar. The other man, the one who looked a little like Renko, drank his coffee black. Father, of course, had a lump and half & half. He’d had cream until last year, when the doctor had told him to cut down on his cholesterol. Margarine instead of butter, half & half instead of cream. But he still had his eggs most mornings. “We talked about the riots at Berkeley, the police role there, if I recall.”
Inspector Sergeant Glitsky sucked rather loudly on the coffee. Maybe it was too hot to drink yet. “You know, Father, I think we did. How do you remember that?”
Bless the father, he had a memory.
“It made a great impression on me at the time, Sergeant. You were the first officer I had talked to who didn’t just spout the official police line.”
“What was that?” the other man asked. Rose wasn’t exactly eavesdropping. She had been planning on dusting this room today anyway. And she felt she should be around to pour more coffee if any of the men got low.
Father answered. “Once the students threw or broke something, it was open season for the police. They had the right then to use whatever force was necessary to keep things under control.”
“It was just a pissing contest,” the sergeant said. “Stupid. They should’ve just got some guys who didn’t think all those students were revolutionaries, that’s all.”
“So who’d they get?” the other man asked.
“Bunch of rednecks they recruited from Alabama or someplace. Deputized for the riots. You know, bust some heads and see the Berkeley chicks running around without bras on. Weren’t you around for that, Diz?”
Dismas, that was his name. Dismas smiled halfway and said his major concern at the time had been stopping those dominoes from falling, whatever that meant, although Father and the sergeant both seemed to get it.
“Well, your friend here, Dismas, is too modest. He was quite a force for moderation back then. It took some courage for a policeman, and a black one, to take that kind of stand.”
The sergeant seemed a little embarrassed and sipped at his coffee, but not so loudly. “Mostly self-preservation, I’m afraid,” he said. “The trend of importing Southern gentlemen for the police force wasn’t going to do my career any good.”
“So what were you two guys doing together?” Dismas asked.
Father smiled, remembering. “The activist days . . . sometimes I long for them again.”
He had never really been a radical, of course. An activist, yes, but within the system. The kind of man he still was—working for the homeless now, or getting some of the businessmen in the parish to hire boys from the projects.
“A few of us were volunteered to assist Father, that’s all. He had an idea—who knows, it might have worked—that there should be a gun drive where every unregistered piece could be turned in and the citizen would get an immediate amnesty, no questions asked.”
Father shrugged at Dismas. “I’m afraid we were all a little naive back then.”
The sergeant came to Father’s defense. “It didn’t do all that bad. I was surprised we got the response we did.” He turned to his friend. “Got about a hundred and fifty weapons citywide.”
“One hundred and sixty-three.”
Father and his memory. Rose was proud of it. She walked over to the pitcher and picked it up. The sergeant held out his cup for more.
Father believed, he was saying in his humble way, that it was better to try things and fail than not try at all. They didn’t know it wouldn’t work until they tried it.
“I know,” Sergeant Glitsky replied, “back then anything seemed possible. The times they were a-changin’.”
Father sat back in his heavy chair, sighing. “Ah, yes, those changin’ times. Back then Reagan was governor. Now . . .”
All the men laughed.
“Thanks, Rose, a little more, please. Now what brings you gentlemen to the church’s door this fine morning?”
Darn! It was more about the Cochran boy’s death. And Father had seemed to be getting over that the last day or two. At least his appetite had returned. Perhaps the accident with Steven had forced him to turn his mind to more immediate problems, but that’s how life was, wasn’t it? One thing after another.
She put the pitcher down and went back to her dusting. There was some talk about Dismas hearing Father’s confession, but that didn’t make any sense, then Father was talking about Eddie coming by with that problem.
“When was that, Father?” the policeman asked. “Do you remember?”
“Actually, he came by twice. Once, I believe it was the Wednesday before . . . before he died. As I mentioned to Dismas the other day, one of his coworkers had said something about not having to work for very long, that he and Mr. Polk wouldn’t need much money pretty soon. That he, Eddie, didn’t need to worry about building up the business again.”
Father came forward now in his chair. “Eddie was a very smart kid. He put a few things together and came up with the idea that Polk was going to do something illegal—he didn’t know what. So he came by here and wanted my take on some options he’d worked out. But at that time he really didn’t know much, so he left pretty unresolved. Anyway, when I saw him the next time—”
“And when was that?”
Father looked out the window, trying to remember. “If I’m not mistaken, that was Sunday.”
Rose frowned, trying to remember something. Lord! It was hard always remaining a silent fly on the wall. But then she saw Father look at her and smile. She lit up with contentment. With his memory, he was undoubtedly right, and that was the end of it.
“In any event”—he turned back to the others—“he had kept on kind of pushing Alphonse to say specifically—”
“Alphonse? The employee was Alphonse . . .” That seemed to excite the sergeant. Rose was forgetting to dust.
“Yes, I think that was the name. Anyway, evidently Alphonse wasn’t too bright and said something about drugs.”
“Well, excuse me, Father, but it’s not clear to me where you come in.”
She knew this was a hard question for Father. She knew where he came in—for Eddie, for two dozen or more other people, really for anyone who asked. But how does he tell the sergeant without sounding like he’s bragging?
“Oh, I think Eddie just wanted someone to talk to about it.”
“About what?”
She was getting a little annoyed at the sergeant. He didn’t have to push—Father would tell him.
“What he should do, I guess.”
“This is what he was telling me,” Dismas said to his friend, “at the Shamrock.”
Father nodded sadly. “You had to know Eddie. He was”—he paused, then went on a little more quickly—“he was kind of like all of us were back in the sixties. Thought it was his business to be involved. That if he just stuck his head in and pointed in the right direction, people would see it. He would go and talk to Mr. Cruz—you know him?” Both men nodded. “And see if there might be some way to get back his business for a period of time while Army—Eddie’s company—rebuilt. Then in the meanwhile, if that happened, he thought he had a chance of talking Polk out of it”—he paused—“out of doing something wrong, something that might hurt him.”
Now Father hung his head. “So he asked me about it, and I”—his eyes turned back to the room, pained now—“I, wizard counselor that I am, said he might as well go ahead, that he didn’t have anything to lose.”
Silence. He didn’t need to add—nothing except his life.
“One more thing,” Hardy was saying as he got into his car. “Last night I remembered another thing Cruz had lied to me about.”
“Cruz? Oh yeah, Cruz.” Glitsky was late for another appointment, not at his most attentive.
“I asked him about the scene—his parking lot—what shape it had been in. He told me it was pretty bad.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“No, Abe, wrong point. How could he have seen it? His boy, secretary, whatever, told me it was cleaned up by the morning.”
Glitsky thought a moment. “Maybe he saw it on the late news, ran down to check it out.”
“Who called it in?”
Abe rolled his eyes to the still-clearing sky, reached into his car and handed something over the roof to Hardy. “You coming down for the Polk interview? One-thirty?”