‘And who is she? Do you know her?’
‘Not from Eve.’ He shook his head. ‘She’s one of ’em.‘
The last person Hardy wanted to see was Abe Glitsky.
And now, carrying a brown paper bag, here he was, being shown into the Solarium by one of Freeman’s young associates. Aside from Hardy and Freeman, two other associates labored at the table drawing up subpoenas for the hearing in Braun’s courtroom the next morning.
Freeman whistled happily, tonelessly, annoyingly, but none of the worker bees joined in. This was not volunteer overtime. Freeman had knocked on office doors, interrupting, recruiting. And they’d barely begun – after the subpoenas were prepared, they were going to serve them well into the night.
‘We need to talk,’ the lieutenant said.
Hardy gestured apologetically to the people working for him. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Five minutes.’
Glitsky wasn’t so sure. He faced down the impatient stares and responded calmly. ‘Maybe a little more.’
The frustrated comments of the young associates were not quite inaudible as they’d trudged up the stairs. Hardy closed his office door behind them, and turned on the lights. Glitsky wasted no time. ‘We’re being set up.’ As he explained it, Hardy went over and sat down heavily on the couch. His papers and research materials were still spread all over the coffee table in front of him, but they seemed somehow unimportant anymore – old news, irrelevant. Kind of like himself.
‘From what I can gather,’ Glitsky concluded, ‘the DA’s new theory is that we’re running a coverup, protecting Ron Beaumont. You’re his attorney, I’m your friend. We’re all going to make a lot of money on Bree’s insurance.’
‘That’ll be fun,’ Hardy said grimly, ‘when that happens.’
‘I think so, too.’ Glitsky wasn’t smiling either. ‘I hear you’re pretty strapped for cash. I wouldn’t even put it past you to burn down your house. How about that?’
‘Just as a stop-gap measure before I collect on Bree.’ It was a small relief to understand the grilling he’d taken with the fire inspectors that afternoon. Somebody had pointed in his direction as the arsonist, and now he knew who it was. ‘This boy Scott Randall is a menace, Abe. You put him with Pratt and they start doing the tango together – watch out.’
‘I’m watching. But they do have me thinking I’ve got to release the information about Griffin and Canetta being tied to Bree Beaumont.’
‘Why is that?’
‘To prove that…’
‘You’re trying to find who killed them? What do they have on you? What could they have on you?’
‘I haven’t arrested Beaumont.’
‘You know where he is?’
‘No.’
Hardy almost laughed. ‘Well, there you go. That’s a pretty good reason.’
‘Yeah, but they’re getting me on appearance. They cast Ron as the obvious suspect and I’m not looking for him. I’m covering for him.’
‘You’re looking at the facts instead. How about that? That’s how it’s supposed to work.’
‘I know. I know.’ Glitsky heaved a great sigh. ‘You’re right.’
‘Not often enough,’ Hardy said, ‘but every once in a while and this is one of those times.’ Although this was pure bravado.
In fact, the situation was worse than Glitsky suspected. Would anyone – Randall or Pratt or the internal affairs people – believe that Hardy had known of Ron Beaumont’s whereabouts and hadn’t told his friend the lieutenant? It was unlikely.
Further, if Hardy did tell Glitsky where Ron was now – and he had no intention on that score – what was his friend supposed to do? Become an accessory to the federal crime of kidnapping? Place Hardy under arrest? Or – even if Hardy could somehow downplay what he’d done with Cassandra – was Glitsky supposed to put Ron into the system, the very result Hardy had struggled to avoid at such great cost?
He couldn’t tell him. There was no way.
But by not telling him, he was leaving Glitsky vulnerable to the charges that Randall and Pratt were asserting against him, and that could cost him his job, his credibility, his honor.
‘What?’ Glitsky asked.
‘Nothing. I don’t know. Maybe an idea.’ Hardy pretended to search through the pages laid out on the table in front of him. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘right here. Bree’s funeral.’
‘What about it?’
Smoothly deceptive, hating himself for what he had to do, he began to walk Glitsky through it. He said – it had just occurred to him – that maybe Ron had an alibi for the time of Griffin’s death after all. Maybe the priest at – what church was it now? St Catherine’s? – maybe he’d been with Ron for most of the day, or at least some reasonable portion of it, the important times, taking care of the myriad details.
Abe remembered, didn’t he? When his wife Flo had died, he’d been at the synagogue from early morning until late in the day. Had anybody ever checked with Ron what he’d done? It was, after all, his sister’s funeral.
‘What do you mean, sister?’
Hardy felt the blood drain out of his face. ‘Did I say “sister”? I meant his wife. His wife’s funeral. The point is, if Ron’s got an alibi for Griffin, he didn’t kill Bree, did he? If you got that, you rub it in Randall’s face that you’re not covering up anything. Why doesn’t he get out of your way and let you do your damn job?’
Sitting on the corner of Hardy’s desk, Glitsky made a swift decision and pulled the phone over. ‘Does it have the number there? St Catherine’s.’
It did, and when five minutes later he replaced the receiver, the lieutenant was close to actually smiling, the scar between his lips standing out white. ‘Everything should be that easy,’ he said. ‘Ron was with the priest all day. His kids. A couple of other people.’
‘That’s what it sounded like.’ Hardy feigned satisfaction, leaned back in the couch, and broke his own smile. ‘That’s great.’
‘It’s at least good.’ Glitsky didn’t skip a beat. ‘So that brings us,’ he said, ‘back to Baxter Thorne, who as you point out is one slick-’
He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Hardy got up to answer it. David Freeman stood in the hallway, hands in his pockets. ‘Five minutes are up,’ he said pointedly.
‘One more,’ Glitsky said.
Freeman looked at him, nodded, and came back to Hardy. ‘If nobody’s left down there when you make it back, don’t blame me.’
‘I’ll be right there. Promise.’
Freeman shrugged – he’d tried – and started back down the stairs. Hardy turned back to Abe. ‘You heard that,’ he said.
‘OK.’ Glitsky handed the paper bag he’d been carrying over to Hardy. ‘More stuff for your private collection. Photos from Griffin’s car, the back seat, and what they’d tagged earlier. Only the so-called significant stuff is inventoried, but you can check the photos. Canetta. Couple of interview transcripts you might have missed.
‘Also, Kerry does have a Glock. It’s where he said it was and hasn’t been fired since it was last cleaned – my guess is maybe a year, maybe never. Of course, he wouldn’t have had to fire it if he pointed it convincingly enough.
‘Finally, I know you’re wanted down below, but here’s the short version on Thorne. You’re going to want to know, trust me.’ When he finished with the damning but completely unprovable information on the gasoline and one of Hardy’s elephants in Thorne’s coat pocket, Hardy asked if they had found any evidence of his connection to SKO, to the MTBE dump, or any other terrorist acts.
The answer was no, but Glitsky was pulling another warrant tomorrow, sending a couple of teams of search and cyber specialists back to the apartment and to the FMC offices. It was going to be the full press, with full phone-record followups and data searches for palimpsest disks, forensics teams.
‘Where are you getting the staff?’ Hardy asked. ‘I thought you had seven new homicides, no troops.’
‘I’m reassigning people,’ he said simply. They started back toward the stairway. ‘It’s a new management tool I’m working on, called do what your boss asks and see if it improves your life.’