The Hearing

'The police do?'

'No, no. My office.'

'I thought you didn't have an office.'

'Hey, what am I, stupid? No, I keep an office. I just don't use it much. So anyway, I'm down here having a couple of brewskis, my girl calls all in a panic. The cops are there, they got a warrant, they're doing a search. Well, I go a little ballistic and who's gonna blame me?'

Hardy lifted his shoulders ambiguously.

'So I'm smack in the middle of something in the female line here and I've got to run uptown, rush hour. Time I get there, I'm not feeling my most cooperative. Now Patsy, my girl, she makes a nice presence at the door – you know what I'm saying? – but she's a little weak on the business side, filing, stuff like that. So I say to the search party, "Fine. You're showing me this kind of respect, you're treating me like I'm vermin, you can go find the shit yourselves."' He wore his apologetic look again, his voice back to calm and reasonable. 'So that's all it was with Elaine. She got in the middle of it, that was all. 'Nother couple of weeks, I would have gotten back to her and told her I was sorry. If she hadn't gotten herself shot.'

The recitation seemed to tire him out. His expression went strangely blank, then he recovered, grabbed a pretzel, picked up his beer glass and drank. 'But how'd we get on Elaine? You were asking about the OD.'

'Cullen.'

'Right, Cullen, OK. And the guy who killed Elaine. Your client.'

'Cole Burgess. Cullen snitched him out. He was the source of the murder weapon.'

'And I'm supposed to know these guys? How do you get to that?'

'I don't, really. I went by the Hall today to see if I could get my hands on some early discovery on Cullen since Cole's prelim is next week. Cullen had a matchbook from here on him.'

'Yeah, that's what Banks said.'

Hardy shrugged. 'You'd told me you hung out here. I thought there was a chance you might have known him.'

Logan couldn't believe it. 'Dismas, turn around, would you?'

Hardy did.

'How many people you see here?'

Hardy did a quick count. 'Thirty-five, forty.'

'That's about right.' Logan popped another pretzel. 'At four o'clock. You know how many people are jammed in here come nine or ten? You can't take a deep breath 'cause there's no room to put it. So the odds of me knowing one guy…' He let the sentence drop, shook his head at Hardy's optimism. 'Forget it.'

'Well, I thought I'd ask,' he said. 'Couldn't hurt. Thanks for your time.' He started to get up.

Logan stopped him. 'But the McNeil thing. You're really going ahead on that? My guy still might settle, but who knows for how long? I think you're missing a bet.'

'That could be.' Hardy conveyed that clearly he believed it was the least of his worries. And in spite of all his talk about Cole and Cullen, carrying that message to Logan was the primary reason for his visit here. Maybe the news that McNeil wasn't going to settle would flush something. He smiled politely. 'It wouldn't be the first time.'

Driving up from Jupiter to his office, he stopped on 7th Street and this time got lucky with Strout. The coroner, lanky and laconic, knew Hardy from several trials as well as his days as an assistant district attorney. It didn't matter that he was doing defense now. Generally, Strout had no ax to grind over which side the courtroom you called home. He was a scientist who dealt in medical facts, equally useful -or not – to both the prosecution and the defense.

It was near the end of the workday and he came out himself to the lobby to let Hardy back into his office, a large room filled with medical books and a famous collection of murder weapons from antiquity to the present. Many were under glass, but an equal number – including a reputedly live hand grenade on a candlestick pedestal on his desk -were out there for anybody to grab, wield, and use. Hardy could read the upside-down title of the book that was open on Strout's desk: The Golden Age of Torture – Germany in the 15th Century.

'There's a sweet-looking little tome,' Hardy remarked. 'Keeping up on the old research, are you? Are they teaching that in med school now?'

Strout lifted the book, ran a finger fondly over the open page, put the volume back where it had been. 'If you ever wonder why cruel an' unusual punishment made it to the Bill of Rights,' he drawled, 'you don't need to look any further'n this. The stuff people was doin' to one another back then, just as a matter of course.'

'Slightly cruel, was it?'

The coroner chuckled. 'I tell you, Diz, the least of 'em is more'n most people would believe anybody without serious mental problems ever did to one another. And here we got our judges splittin' hairs over what's cruel and unusual, what the foundin' fathers meant. They all ought to read this book, settle their minds on the matter. I mean, this tongue clamp here, for example-'

'John.' Hardy held up a hand. 'Maybe another time, huh?'

'Not your area of interest today?' Strout settled into the chair behind his desk, chuckling contentedly. He reached for the hand grenade and threw it gently from one hand to the other. 'No. Lemme remember. Cullen Alsop.'

'Ten points.'

Strout nodded and came forward. His hands hovered an inch above the desk and he bounced the grenade nonchalantly on the blotter. 'Well, it was pretty much what I thought it might be. Heroin overdose all right, as expected. I asked the police lab to do a quick analysis of the heroin left at the scene, and it's really their report I'm drawin' on more'n anything in the blood itself. But let's just say in laymen's terms that if he used one syringe, which needle marks indicate – he's only got the one fresh one, relatively speaking – then it was very pure stuff.'

'And there's no doubt that was the cause of death?'

'No.' He was bouncing the grenade again, thinking. 'There was some trace alcohol and if we ran down to the C-scan level, odds are we'd find other drugs. But this was heroin.'

'And higher quality than what's on the street?'

Strout lifted his shoulders. 'I don't know. It might be what's on the street now although with each passin' hour, that becomes less likely.'

'Why is that?'

'Because if stuff this pure is out there, we'd have seen at least a few more overdose deaths. You may 'member late last summer, one weekend one of the dealers brought up a new load of brown tar that hadn't been cut? No? Well, it killed seven kids in four days.' Strout clucked in dismay. 'But now, we got Mr Alsop so far and that's all.'

'And that means… what?'

'By itself, nothing definite. But it could mean a few things. One,' he let the grenade fall to the blotter and held up a finger, 'the boy was dealing himself, checking out the product, guessed wrong on its potency. Two,' another finger, 'he knew what it was and decided it would be a painless way to kill himself. And three, somebody else knew what it was and gave it to him.'

'Which would have made it a murder.'

A shrug. 'Out of my domain, Diz. Absent any sign of struggle or motive or anything else, I'm listin' cause of death as accident/suicide. Have you talked to Banks?'

'Ridley?' Hardy shook his head. 'Not since Wednesday night, and not for lack of trying. He hasn't returned my calls. But even Wednesday,' he added, exaggerating slightly, 'I know he didn't like the timing of Cullen's death. The day he gets out, he's dead, he can't testify. So what's the deal, do you think? Somebody set Cullen up to sink Cole, then somebody killed him before he could. It doesn't make any sense.'

'Yeah, but so little does anymore, Diz.' Strout picked up the grenade again, hefted it casually. 'Maybe Banks'll come in with something,' he said. 'I'm sure he's looking.'

Hardy sat with it a minute, then got to his feet. 'Well, thanks, John, you've been a help.'

29

Glitsky eventually persuaded his sons that he could probably take a shower, get dressed in his jeans and a light sweater, and make it to his favorite chair in the living room without stressing out too much about it. They didn't have to watch him continually – he gave his word he wouldn't go outside or do the long version of his tap-dancing routine around the duplex.