Nothing but the Truth (36 page)
Five minutes later, the phone rang at the Cochrans’. Hardy was nervous as he picked it up. “Frannie?”
Hearing her voice, he realized he should have gone to see her again tonight when he’d passed right by on the way to Jeff Elliot’s. Twenty times a day wouldn’t be too much. He should forget all this faux police work. Glitsky was on it now and it would move along on its own. “How are you holding up?”
He heard her take in a breath, knew she was summoning her strength to answer. “Pretty good,” she said with a cheer so false, it made him sick.
The Beck was unable to restrain herself, in her excitement pulling at his leg, the cord, whatever was nearby. He figured it wouldn’t be a good time to reprimand her for it. “Listen, I’ve got somebody here who wants to talk to you.”
“Okay, but come back, please.”
Hardy handed the phone to the Beck and stood there listening to the details of the past two days, the questions she’d had to endure at school, when was Mom coming home, what were they doing to her down at the jail—all his precious daughter’s thoughts and worries that Hardy hadn’t been able to take time for.
Vincent woke up and was groggily leaning against him, sucking his thumb although he’d stopped doing that six months before. “Is that Mommy? I need to talk to Mommy.” Too sleepy to cry, but leaning in that direction.
So the kids both got to talk. Then Erin—was there anything Frannie needed her to do tomorrow, for school on Monday? She shouldn’t worry: Grandma was on the job.
There wasn’t any criticism of Hardy stated or implied, but he knew. He knew. He was good at some things, and at others hopeless. And now he felt keenly that the father role, the one that perplexed and frustrated him so often if not always lately, had become a victim to his need to figure things out, to keep busy, to win.
The priority was wrong—he felt it in every bone.
But what else could he do? He could give lip service to David Freeman’s input, to Glitsky’s machine, but he knew and cared more about this investigation than Freeman and Glitsky combined. Like it or not, he was the prime mover. Lives—and not just his family’s—now depended on him and what he did next.
Finally, his turn came again as Erin corralled both of the kids back to bedrooms, to bedtime.
He told Frannie that he loved her, but he couldn’t leave it at that. He might hate himself for it, but he had to find out more. “I’ve got to ask you, have you heard from Ron today?”
“No. How could I? They don’t let anybody call me here.”
“No, I know that.”
“Well, then.”
Hardy told her. Ron had disappeared from his hotel.
He listened to her breathing for a minute. “Why would he do that? I thought—didn’t you say?—he asked you to help him. What does this mean?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”
“No, unless he just got scared for the kids again.”
“But why wouldn’t he have left some message with me?”
“I don’t know that either. Maybe he will.”
“Maybe,” Hardy said flatly. “I hope so.”
A silence hummed on the line. “Dismas?”
“I’m here.”
“I’ve told you everything I know. Really. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing.”
If he didn’t completely believe it, he felt at least he had to accept it. “Okay.”
Another silence preceded the tremulous voice. “Tell me you believe me, Dismas. Please. I need you to believe me.”
“Of course,” he said with deliberate ambiguity. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Bright and early.”
“That would be good,” she said. Then, “Dismas?”
“Yes.”
He waited.
“I love you,” she said.
His knuckles were white on the phone. He knew he was being imprecise. “Me too.”
He finished two solid manhattans with Erin and Ed and they talked about the water poisoning and the poor middle-aged hiker from the water temple who had finally died from his injuries. Erin got Hardy a blanket and a pillow and told him he should stay here on the couch and have breakfast with his children in the morning. They were missing him, if he couldn’t tell.
He was asleep in ten seconds.
21
Valens had left Damon Kerry up at his mansion an hour ago and back at his hotel he paced as though he were caged. His suite at the Clift was bigger than some apartments he’d lived in and the wraparound view of San Francisco was expansive, but none of that mattered.
It was now near midnight of what had been the longest and one of the most difficult days of his life. The only thing that made it even remotely worthwhile was today’s latest poll that put Damon essentially dead even for Tuesday’s election. Technically he was still two points back, but with the pollster’s margin for error, the campaign was neck and neck.
Finally, the buzz came and he walked over, looked through the peephole, and pulled open the door.
Thorne cast a last quick look behind him at the hallway, then stepped into the room. “This is just not smart, Al,” he said in his softest tone as he pushed the door closed, twisted the deadbolt, connected the chain. Turning, he faced Valens, his expression betraying nothing—a bland smile, rheumy eyes. “This isn’t a good idea. We must not be seen together.”
Valens barely noticed the rebuke. He was too wound up. “It’s midnight, Baxter. Nobody’s looking, trust me. It’s just this . . .” He spread his arms, the enormity of it. “. . . today.”
Thorne nodded understandingly. “The election’s in three days. This always happens. It’s nothing unusual. It might even get worse.”
“I’m not talking about the election. Christ, the election is the good news. I’m talking about a dead man at the bottom of the Pulgas Water Temple and this attorney Hardy going to Bree’s place and—”
“Wait, wait.” Thorne held up a palm. “Why don’t we sit down? Do you have anything to drink? You could use a cocktail. In fact, a cocktail might be just the thing.” He crossed the room to the bar, motioned for Valens to sit on one of the suite’s brocaded sofas. “This is really a remarkable room.” He admired the view for a moment, then turned, asking as if it were an afterthought, “What does the dead man at the water temple have to do with us?”
The question was an instruction and a threat and it caught Valens flat-footed, as Thorne had no doubt intended. He went back to pulling soft-drink and single-serving liquor bottles from the bar area. “But speaking of cocktails, in light of all the frenzy around this unfortunateMTBE poisoning, it occurred to me that the candidate could make an extremely dramatic presentation in the next day or two that might put him over the top to stay.”
He’d arranged the bottles and some glasses on a little tray and brought it over to Valens, placing it on the coffee table, then sitting on the couch kitty-corner. He reached for his inside pocket and extracted a flask.
“What’s in that?” Valens asked.
Thorne loved a surprise. For an answer, he smiled and unscrewed the cap, then poured a half inch of the clear liquid into one of the glasses. Picking it up, he smelled it, then passed it across the table. “You tell me.”
A sniff. “It’s alcohol.”
Another smile, this one beaming. “Yes, it is. Absolutely right. It’s ethanol, straight up.” Thorne popped the top on a bottle of orange soda and reached over, pouring it into the glass. “Bottoms up, Al. Really.”
“You want me to drink this?”
“I think that’s the idea. Go on, it won’t hurt you.” But Valens couldn’t seem to force himself to move. After a second or two, Thorne said, “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” took the glass and drained it in a couple of swallows. “Since when have you been so timid, Al? Did you think I was going to poison you?”
“No, of course not. I just . . .” He met his employer’s eyes. “I don’t know, Baxter. I’m just fucking worn down.”
Thorne gave him an avuncular pat on the knee. “A couple more days and it’s over. You hang in there it will all have been worth it. Now”—back to business—“what do you think about my idea?”
“I’m not sure exactly what it is. Make ethanol cocktails?”
Suddenly Thorne’s face showed some animation. “Actually, that might be even better. That’s just an inspired idea, Al. Really. Reporters will always take a free drink, won’t they?”
Valens felt some of his own tension break. “That’s been my experience.”
“Exactly. You see, I was thinking of having Damon drink some ethanol—as I just did—at a press briefing. Think of the contrast . . .” Thorne was getting wound up, although his voice never changed its inflection. “A few gallons of MTBE finds its way into the water supply and the whole city is shut down, the poisoned water smelling and tasting like turpentine.” He paused briefly and held up his flask. “While the other additive, the
natural
additive, ethanol, is so safe you can drink it. In fact, people have been drinking it forever. I love it,” he said. “This could be very strong.”
natural
additive, ethanol, is so safe you can drink it. In fact, people have been drinking it forever. I love it,” he said. “This could be very strong.”
But Valens wasn’t so sure. “If Damon will go for it.”
Thorne’s face clouded. “Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s careful, Baxter. He’s not an idiot. He’s never specifically endorsed ethanol. He’s just opposed to MTBE.”
“Which if my logic hasn’t failed me leaves only ethanol.”
“True.” Valens hated Thorne’s attempts to micromanage—he’d done a damn fine job with the campaign, and controlling the candidate, to date. He turned to reason. “But our strategy, you remember, has always been to let the voters make that leap, which they’re doing by themselves. This other is a little . . .
overt
, don’t you think?”
overt
, don’t you think?”
“Sometimes you need overt.” The voice was eider-down; the tone was cold steel.
Here was Thorne’s defensiveness, which he’d seen often enough before. It was a signal to Valens that he’d better walk softly, because the truth was that Thorne frightened him badly. He wasn’t fooling Valens that he wasn’t behind this water poisoning.
Sometimes, though, such as today, people died.
“I agree,” Valens said. “Sometimes overt is good. So how about I ask Damon, get his take on it? If he’ll go, we go.”
“All right,” Thorne said mildly, “since that’s our only option anyway.” He was pouring a couple of the airline portions of vodka into his glass. He added an ice cube, topped it off with more orange soda, slid back more comfortably in his chair and took a long drink. “Now, about this Hardy fellow. I’ve done some research. It turns out he may be a bit of problem.”
This was not what Valens needed just now. He came forward to the first two inches of the couch. “How’s that?”
In his low-key way Thorne outlined what he’d discoveredabout Frannie, the grand jury, Ron Beaumont, a little of Hardy’s history, that he was a meddling lawyer who wasn’t always loath to get his hands dirty.
“We can only assume,” he concluded, “since he buttonholed Kerry, that he’s made the leap—no pun—from Bree’s death to gasoline additives, which is not good news for us. I do wish we could locate Ron.” A sigh. “We should have acted more quickly, I’m afraid. I blame myself, really. I should have just hacked into her system and deleted the damn thing instead of—”
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