41
IN THE ATTORNEY’S visiting room at the jail, Hal Chase slid down in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. It was a few minutes after nine A.M. He was, of course, in his orange jumpsuit. He hadn’t shaved yet, and his stubble was dark. His hair looked like he’d combed it with a towel. Having slept poorly, he squinted at Hardy through bloodshot eyes. His voice was phlegmy and weary, not much more than a whisper. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“I’m asking if you and Katie talked a lot when you were at work.”
“When?”
“Any time.”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“I’m collecting information,” Hardy said. “Let’s go with that for now.”
“I don’t know what you mean by a lot. Once or twice a day? Lunchtime?”
“More than that.”
Hal closed his eyes. Hardy saw his chest rise and fall. When he opened them, he said, “No.”
“There wasn’t a period of time when you had to talk a lot? Maybe right after you had your first child?”
Hal shook his head. “We’re not encouraged to take or make private calls at work. To get to a phone, you have to come off the tier. If it’s incoming, a deputy has to get you and cover your station while you’re on the phone. If it’s outgoing, you’ve got to find a deputy. Either way, it’s a major disturbance. I might have called her, or she might have called me, a couple of times with emergencies, or what seemed like emergencies. Ellen once swallowed a good part of a bottle of Tylenol. Katie called me then, and I met her at the hospital.”
“No,” Hardy said. “It wasn’t like that. It was like ten times a day.”
Hal almost laughed. “No way. No f*cking way.” He straightened up a little. “You want to tell me what this is about?”
Hardy told him about Glitsky and the phone records. When he finished, Hal had slumped back down, his visage closed and tight. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “This was just after Ellen?”
“Apparently.”
“That was our worst time. I mean, absolutely the worst. We couldn’t say two words without fighting. That’s when she started seeing your wife, wasn’t it?”
“Pretty much,” Hardy said.
“Yeah, well, if I was going to kill her, you know, that’s when I would have done it. But I wanted her to get happy again. So who was she calling?”
Hardy shrugged and looked at him for a long moment. Then, “I was hoping you could tell me. Why did you just say ‘son of a bitch’?”
“You’re saying she had a thing with somebody here. Somebody I work with.”
“I’m not saying anything, Hal. I’m asking if you ever suspected anything like that. Then or now.”
Hal blew out heavily. “We never socialized with anybody from here. I mean never. Katie didn’t want anything to do with . . . anyone from here. Somehow I made the cut. But the rest of the guys? To Katie, they were a lower life-form.” He took a beat. “You know this happened?”
“I know the phone calls happened.”
“Did she tell your wife something? Something Katie told her?”
Hardy hesitated, then came out with it. “It came up, but only recently.”
Hal pulled himself upright, righteously angry, the volume way up. “She was f*cking somebody here at the jail? She admitted that?”
“She told Frannie she was seeing somebody. She didn’t say he was from here, but we’ve got the phone calls. They may be unconnected. We don’t know.” Hardy leaned in and lowered his voice. “I’ve got to ask you something else. I need you to tell me everything you know about this Alanos Tussaint matter.”
If Hardy had hauled off and slugged him, Hal wouldn’t have shown more surprise. His eyes darted around the room. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Hardy waited until Hal’s gaze settled, then locked in to it. “Well, Hal, that’s just patently untrue.”
“It isn’t. It’s the goddamn whole truth.”
“Hal.” Hardy drew in a breath. “Listen to me. Daniel Dunne told the Homicide inspectors that your motive for killing Katie was that she was threatening to expose your role in the cover-up around Tussaint, if not his actual murder. So how did Daniel know about it—how did he even imagine it?—if he didn’t hear it from Katie? And she had to have heard it either from you—”
“Or from somebody else who works here,” Hal said, “who was making up shit on me.”
Hardy acknowledged the point with a nod. “All right. So which was it? And if it’s the second case, who would have done that?”
Hal uncrossed his arms, got to his feet, and walked over to the glass block wall. Hardy remained in his seat, watching and waiting. At last, Hal turned and came back to the table, where he rested his weight on his palms. “First thing,” he said, “is that I never laid eyes on Alanos Tussaint. I had nothing to do with him getting killed. I’d barely heard about it when Burt Cushing had me and a few other guards up to his office and told us that if anybody asked, all of us had spent the entire afternoon the day before—one o’clock to five o’clock—transporting inmates down to San Bruno and bringing some back. He told six of us, including Adam Foster. Did we have any questions?”
“Did you?”
“Nope.”
“But you told Katie?”
Hal looked over his shoulder, then came back to Hardy. “The whole thing was getting out of control. It was, like, the third or fourth time this year, covering up for Foster. Yes, I told Katie about it. I also told her that I was thinking of trying to get transferred out to Evictions, not that they don’t have problems, but at least I’d be out of the jail. Then maybe, down the line a ways, I could leave the department altogether, maybe get into another line of work.”
“How did Katie feel about that?”
“She thought it was a great idea. Couldn’t be too soon.”
“Did she threaten to tell anyone else about this or your role in it?”
“Why would she do that?”
“Her brother said she’d do it to ruin you if you left her.”
“No. She wouldn’t have.”
“I’m just telling you what we’re hearing.”
“Well, that’s Daniel, and he doesn’t know. The thing that bothered her wasn’t the cover-ups so much as what we were covering up for, the actual stuff going on here.”
Hardy found himself lowering his voice. “Which is what?”
“Uh-uh,” Hal said. “We’re not going there. That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“I hate to tell you, Hal, but yes, it does. I need to know.”
Hal shook his head. “With all respect, counselor, you don’t need to know anything about that, whatever it is. You can believe me or not, I’m not involved in any of it. I come in and do my job, and so do most of the rest of the guys. We hear about some of this stuff, but we keep our mouths shut, and usually, it’s under control and doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“Except when it’s not and it does.”
Another shrug. “Shit happens. It’s a closed system.”
“Katie wasn’t in the system, and she knew what was happening.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Okay. So maybe she had trouble dealing with the idea that people were getting killed here in the jail and nobody was doing anything about it. Maybe she wasn’t going to threaten you with exposure, but she brought it up to somebody else, let him know what she knew.”
“The guy she was calling.”
Hardy pulled at the knot of his tie. “Did she know Burt Cushing personally, Hal?”
“No. Not really. I mean . . .”
Hardy could see it all falling together in Hal’s mind, as it was in his own. “You mean she only knew him as your boss? Department picnics, like that?”
“Not exactly. He had a problem getting medicine for his daughter’s acne a few years ago, and she met with him and the daughter a few times and . . .” Hal stopped. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
His jaw set, Hardy nodded. “Right,” he said.