Kerry threw a look over Hardy’s shoulder, perhaps expecting Valens to come and take him away from all this. But help wasn’t on the way and he came back to Hardy, and offered another weak smile. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
Hardy was tempted to get sarcastic – tell him he’d seen him on television and wanted to know who did his hair. There was only one topic that Hardy could be here about, and Kerry had to know it, which was the reason he’d gotten this far. He motioned to the rope separating them, to the couch Kerry had just left. ‘Maybe back there?’
Reassuring his guards for the third time that it was OK, Kerry moved the rope aside and let Hardy come through, then followed him to the couch where they both sat. Kerry put on an interested face and they spent a minute on the familiar topic of Hardy’s first name – how Dismas had been the good thief on Calvary and was the patron saint of murderers.
‘But what I’m here for,’ Hardy concluded, ‘is maybe you can give me a better take on Bree. People say you two were close and I wondered if she ever mentioned any enemies, or that she was afraid for her life?’
Kerry reached for his water glass and took a quick drink. ‘Honestly, no. Her death alone was a big enough shock, but when I heard that someone had killed her…’ He shook his head. ‘I thought it was impossible. Nobody could have hated her, not personally. She was the sweetest person alive.’
‘So you think it was related to… what? This gas stuff?’
Another shake of the head. ‘I don’t know. A burglary, maybe. She was at the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He lapsed into a short silence. When he spoke again, Hardy had an impression of greater directness. ‘I can’t imagine, really, although after what happened today, I sometimes feel I’m at a loss to explain anything anymore. I mean who would poison drinking water? What twisted logic makes these people do anything? If they could do that…’ He trailed off. ‘How about her husband? Your client? Doesn’t he have any thoughts on this? Didn’t I read that he’s disappeared?’
‘He just knows it wasn’t him. I don’t think it was either. What do you think?’
Kerry looked out beyond his security perimeter, then back to Hardy. ‘I don’t suppose he’d be under suspicion if there wasn’t some evidence, would he?’
‘It happens all the time. Do you know Ron?’
‘No. We’ve never met, not personally.’
Hardy frowned.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I guess I’d just assumed you’d been to their place socially.’
‘No. Bree was a consultant and friend – a good friend, even – but she kept her family separate. I never even met her children. Still, you understand I’m not saying anything accusatory about her husband. I’m sure he’s devastated by this as well.’
Hardy leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘He really didn’t kill her.’
The intensity seemed to startle Kerry. ‘All right.’
‘But somebody did, Mr Kerry. Please, I have to get a take on who she was, out in the real world, not with her husband and family. You say she had no enemies, she was the sweetest person on earth, but I know Caloco wasn’t happy with her, for example. Maybe somebody else wasn’t either. Somebody killed her. I’ve got to see who she was. Can you help me at all here?’
Kerry’s reaction was surprising. Notably, he didn’t look up for the saving arrival of the cavalry. Instead, his eyes turned inward for a beat, and then he sat back on the couch, Hardy thinking man-oh-man, here’s another one.
He didn’t come up with it immediately – Hardy had obviously caught him off guard by moving away from specific questions. Kerry had probably been expecting the kinds of questions Hardy had been expecting to ask about motives and opportunities.
But now it was clear that whatever Kerry said, he wanted to get it right. At length he came back forward, hands clasped in front of him, but easily this time, far more relaxed than he’d been. He met Hardy’s eyes for the first time. ‘She was the ugly duckling.’
This seemed to contradict everything Hardy had heard about Bree to this moment – her beauty, charm, brains, persuasiveness. His face must have showed his confusion, because Kerry jumped in to explain. ‘What I mean by that is if you want to know who she was, you’ve got to start with that.’
‘With what, exactly?’
Kerry drew in a breath, thought for a moment. ‘The fact that while she was growing up, she was a nerd, a brain at a time when you didn’t want to be smart if you were a girl. Well, she was a really smart girl, with glasses and goofy hair and no style at all and this kind of absent-minded “what’s going on around me” feeling…’ He trailed off.
‘You knew her as a child?’ Hardy asked.
A really genuine smile. ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. I only met her – knew her – for a few months, but we got to know each other pretty well.’ A pause that Hardy elected not to interrupt. Kerry was talking, which was what he wanted. He’d start again. And after a sigh, he did.
‘Anyway, that’s where she came from. She wasn’t very popular. She had no friends, no social interests. Just studying and chemistry.’
‘But she was so pretty. She must have had dates? In high school?’
‘No,’ Kerry said. ‘Guys didn’t think she was pretty, if you can believe that. She told me she didn’t have one date. She went to school dances with her brother, it was that bad.’ He wanted Hardy to understand. ‘You know those movies where this really plain girl takes off her glasses at the end and suddenly she’s the prettiest girl in town? Well, that was Bree, except that her movie didn’t end until she was in her mid-twenties and by then she was so used to being plain and ignored by men that she just couldn’t accept any other view of herself. Plus, her brains still made her threatening as hell to a lot of guys.’
Plus, Hardy was thinking, she was married, which meant she wasn’t in the market. Or did it?
But Kerry, obviously still in thrall to her memory, was going on. ‘The thing about her, and maybe it seems funny or contradictory or something because she was so smart, but the self-image stuff I think really slowed her down in how fast she grew up… I’m trying to think of the right word. She was just very naive, I’d say, insulated. Almost unaware of anything in life, anything except her studies, which translated into her job. I mean, until…’ Now Kerry really was at a loss.
‘Until you?’ Hardy prompted.
Kerry lifted his shoulders, an admission. ‘It was starting to happen before we met. She was ready for it.’
‘For what?’
‘The change, the conversion. Well, it wasn’t really that.’
‘OK. What was it?’ Hardy became fleetingly aware of a buzz out in the room, a rush of convivial laughter from a gaggle of young couples pulling tables together. Afternoon drinks after shopping in a different world than that inhabited by Hardy and Frannie. He came back to the candidate for governor, with whom he seemed to be having a genuine communication. It was almost surreal, but he was going to keep it going if he could. ‘What was the big conversion all about then?’
‘It was her whole life, really.’ He fixed Hardy with a thoughtful expression. ‘This may sound presumptuous…’ Again, he stopped and Hardy waited. ‘It wasn’t so much that she grew up all at once as the fact that she realized she had grown up. She was a beautiful swan. She could fly.’
‘OK.’ This didn’t make all the sense in the world to Hardy, but he’d sort it out later. ‘But this conversion was public, right, on some radio show? And had to do with you?’
A shrug. ‘I don’t know how much of it had to do with me. But the debate we had seemed to mark a shift. She realized we had the same goals and we’d been set up to be on different sides. Actually, she’d been set up. She got bitter about her employers and I can’t say I blame her.’