Valens had a good answer to that. ‘Then I wouldn’t have had to call Ron to get my hands on the report last week, would I? I would have searched the house and just taken it after I killed her.’ He glanced furtively at his watch, spoke now as if asking permission. ‘Look, I do have this breakfast with Damon. And I really did leave a message last night that I’d made a mistake – it wasn’t a lie – and I did call Ron.
‘As to why I remembered to call you, it was what you said. I knew it wasn’t insignificant at all, a call to a murdered woman’s husband. You were an attorney. It wasn’t brain surgery figuring you wouldn’t go away if you thought I was lying.’
Hardy hated that it had gotten to here, to some sort of belief in the basic truth of what Valens was telling him. But there was one last question. ‘So how’d you get my phone number?’
A nervous smile. ‘I called the office and asked if somebody could find it. When I got back here, I had a message.’
‘Just like that?’
Valens shrugged. ‘I say I want something, somebody usually finds out a way to make sure I get it. I don’t ask how. That’s how politics works.’
‘Or doesn’t,’ Hardy said.
23
She’s checked out to…‘
The jail’s uniformed desk sergeant squinted at the log. ‘Glitsky, homicide, next door.’
Hardy wondered about this new development as he walked in the bitter fog around the corner to the main entrance of the Hall. Frannie was signed out to Glitsky? How did that happen and what did it mean?
He’d stowed the gun in the trunk of his car so he wouldn’t have to confront the Hall’s metal detector. It remained a miserable morning. Hardy checked the time, surprised at how early it still was for all that had gone on. He wasn’t entirely certain he’d done the right thing by letting Valens go about his campaign business, but he couldn’t imagine that the man was going to disappear, at least not until the election. If some real evidence of wrongdoing by Valens turned up before then, Hardy would bring it to Abe’s attention, but in the meanwhile, he had more important things on his mind.
His house, his wife, his life.
The Hall’s familiar lobby – on weekdays a perennial throbbing and vulgar mass of disgruntled humanity – was empty this early, and his footfalls echoed. Knowing he’d have no patience with the elevator, he took the inside stairway to the fourth floor, then walked down the long hall to the homicide detail – an open room with fifteen back-to-back desks and several square columns poking about, floor to ceiling, seemingly at random.
There wasn’t a body to be seen in homicide itself, although through the grimy, wired-glass windows, he could look across through the fog to the jail, where spectral shapes moved in the outer corridors.
The door to the lieutenant’s office was open. No one was inside, but Hardy noticed that Kerry’s water glass that he picked up yesterday was gone – a good sign. He knocked anyway. ‘Anybody here?’
‘Yo!’ Glitsky appeared in the doorway of one of the interrogation rooms.
Before he could say anything, Frannie appeared behind him. They met in an embrace in the middle of the room.
‘I had to tell her,’ he heard Abe say. ‘I didn’t know how long you’d be hung up back there and she had to know.’
The words barely registered. He was lost in holding her.
But Glitsky was still talking, explaining. ‘I’m on my way driving down here, I realize we bring witnesses over from the jail every day to talk to them. So I just went and signed her out into my custody. It’s Sunday, nobody’s here to question why I got her. It seemed like a good idea.’
‘It’s a great idea.’ Frannie said. ‘Plus Erin’s bringing the kids down.’
‘And I’m going out for some food,’ Glitsky said. He was already putting on his jacket. ‘It’ll be a party.’ He pointed a finger at Hardy. ‘While I’m gone, I’m leaving you in charge. Don’t let her escape.’
They were alone together in the homicide detail’s interrogation room, kitty-corner at the table. The fog was pressing tight up against the windows, the wind gusting audibly.
It wasn’t exactly warm inside either.
First was the house, Hardy’s assessment of how bad it was, what they were going to have to do about living in the next weeks, the somber details. It hit Frannie especially hard that, even after her expected release from jail on Tuesday morning, she wouldn’t be able to go back to her old life. ‘This is all because of me, isn’t it?’
It was difficult for Hardy to tell her it wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine that anything relating to Bree Beaumont’s death would have had any effect on their lives if Frannie had not become involved with Ron, hadn’t promised to keep his secrets.
‘You did what you had to do,’ he told her equivocally. ‘But at least I’ve got somebody scared and that’s always instructive.’
‘It’s more than just that.’
‘Maybe,’ he admitted.
‘Do you think something else could happen? To you?’
In truth, Hardy thought if he kept pushing, which he fully intended to do, that something else surely would happen. That’s even what he wanted – without an act there couldn’t be a mistake upon which he could capitalize.
And this, of course, was not without risk, even serious risk. But, answering her, he simply shook his head. ‘If I get any closer, I’ll give it to Abe. Let the pros run with it.’
Frannie tightened her grip on his arm. ‘You can do that now, Dismas.’
‘No,’ he said pointedly. ‘Not if I want to protect Saint Ron’s kids…’
‘I wish you’d stop calling him that.’
Hardy figured he’d earned the right to call Ron Beaumont anything he wanted. He waved the objection off. ‘The point is, if I want to protect his kids, that’s why I’m doing all this, isn’t it? That’s what I’m supposed to believe.’
‘What do you mean, “supposed to believe”?’
He tried to control it, but he heard his voice take on a harder edge. ‘I find who killed Bree by Tuesday and everybody’s life goes back to normal, right? Except ours now. Now ours is a mess.’ He’d gotten her to tears and he didn’t care. ‘And you want to know the real laugh riot here, Frannie? I’m not even sure Ron didn’t do this to us.’
‘That’s crazy,’ she said. ‘He would have had no reason to do that.’
He firmly grabbed his wife by the shoulders and turned her to him. ‘Listen to me. How about if he thought I was there alone, sleeping? The house burns down with me in it. Then he’s got you. Did that ever occur to you?’
‘No! That’s not it.’
‘So where is the son of a bitch?’
‘I don’t know, Dismas, I don’t know.’ She took his hands and held them in front of her. ‘But Ron and I… there’s nothing like that.’
Hardy hesitated. Although he was well into it, mention of Ron Beaumont was still personally fraught with peril for him. Still, he had to go ahead. ‘You know, Fran, I’ve really been trying to keep Abe from looking at him officially. But it’s beginning to look as if whoever killed Bree also killed Abe’s inspector half a mile from Ron’s house.’
‘That doesn’t mean…’
He squeezed her hand. ‘And just so you know, Ron apparently had a few different identities.’
‘What do you mean, identities?’
Hardy outlined Glitsky’s discovery of the previous night, which now seemed about a year and half ago.
When he was through, Frannie took a while to answer. ‘He must have thought he might have to run again someday to save the kids.’
‘I’m sure that’s what he’d like everybody to believe, and maybe it’s true, but he’s getting a hell of a lot of play out of saving his kids.’
‘That’s because that’s what he’s doing, Dismas! I believe that. You did too when you met him, remember that? He didn’t start any of this any more than I did.’