42
WES FARRELL HAD been awake since he’d gotten the call from Homicide at around one o’clock that morning, telling him that Maria—sweet, ambitious, smart Maria—had been killed in an apparent robbery. They’d taken her purse; police found it in the gutter around the corner with her driver’s license but no credit cards or cash. Even though there was a reasonable amount of foot traffic on Nineteenth Street—911 fielded seven calls in the immediate aftermath—there had been no witnesses to the crime. People heard the shot and came running, but the perpetrator had fled, leaving no signs.
Wes wasn’t particularly tired, but he couldn’t seem to get his brain to focus. He’d canceled all of his morning meetings. In a minute, he was planning to draw the blinds in his office and lie down, but until he found the energy to commit to even that, he passed the time by mindlessly pumping a Nerf basketball at the basket hanging from a bookshelf. He’d been doing the same thing, over and over, for the past twenty minutes.
Treya’s familiar knock, almost inaudible, startled him back to where he was. Before he had a chance to say anything, she opened the door a crack, swung into the office, and closed the door behind her.
“You’re awake,” she said. “I thought you might be sleeping.”
“No. But I’m a zombie.”
“Are you still not seeing anybody?”
“Like who?”
“Dismas Hardy’s out here. He says it’s important.”
“Of course he does.” Farrell realized that he was still holding the Nerf ball, so he took another shot at the basket and missed. “Oh, hell, Treya, he’s here, just let him in.”
Hardy hadn’t gotten two steps into the room before he stopped and looked his former law partner up and down. “What’s happened?”
Farrell almost couldn’t get the words out. “One of my investigators got killed last night. Maria Solis-Martinez. Excellent kid. Sweet as sugar. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Something to do with work?”
“No. Random robbery. Shot her in the face, grabbed her purse, and ran, the a*shole. Did I once say I didn’t believe in the death penalty? I get my hands on who did this to her, I’ll shoot him myself.”
“I’m sorry, Wes.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, too. “ He drew a deep breath, shook his head in dismay, raised his hand as though he was going to say something else, then let it fall. “Treya said you had something important?”
“It might be. I think so. It’s why I came right up.”
“Up from where?”
“The jail. Hal Chase.”
“The jail, the jail, the f*cking jail. And Hal Chase. I already told you it was out of my hands, Diz. The grand jury has spoken, and I’m not in the mood to argue about it. If you don’t like the case against him, get him an early trial date and convince a jury to acquit him, but meanwhile . . .” Farrell’s anger finally caught up with him, and he raised his voice. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a few things on my plate here, and I’m having just a little trouble trying to deal with any of them. Is that clear enough for you?”
Hardy waited a long three-count, then took a seat on the coffee table. “I’m not here to argue about the grand jury.”
Wes, who looked wrung out by his little explosion, inclined his head toward Hardy and sat on the arm of a stuffed chair. “Didn’t you just say you were here to talk about the grand jury? Your man’s indictment?”
“No,” Hardy said. “That’s probably what you expected to hear, so you actually thought you heard it, but all I said was I’d come up here from visiting Hal Chase in jail.”
“Jesus Christ, you can wear a guy down, Diz, you know that?”
“That’s not my intention, especially right now. I’m sorry about your investigator. I can come back another time, no sweat. But you need to hear what I’ve got, and the sooner the better.”
“All right. What?”
Hardy started from the beginning: the bare fact of Katie’s affair, corroborated independently by Daniel. On to Glitsky’s discovery of the telephone records and the dozens of calls to the jail, where her husband not only did not receive those calls but where his use of the telephone was severely discouraged. Hardy concluded with a few words about Burt Cushing’s daughter and her acne problems, which had put the sheriff into close contact with Katie Chase, at about the time she was conducting an affair and speaking to someone at the jail numerous times a day. In conclusion, he said, “It turns out the number she was calling wasn’t Hal’s, on the tier, but Burt Cushing’s main office number.”
By the time he’d finished, Farrell had slid down off the arm and into the chair. “I already know the answer,” he said, “but have you come across anything like evidence that they were having this affair?”
“Just the phone calls.”
“Lots of people talk to each other on the phone. That doesn’t mean they’re having sex.”
“Granted. But ten times a day?”
“Did they meet somewhere that might have a record of it? Photos of them checking in together at some motel? Witnesses?”
Hardy didn’t bother answering, just shook his head.
“So why are you telling me this?” Farrell asked.
“Because you need to know it.”
“No, I don’t. How long has it been since this alleged affair ended?”
“Couple of years.”
“And you think, I gather, that it’s relevant to her murder?”
Hardy stared across at his friend.
Eventually, Farrell raised a hand and, with his thumb and forefinger, pressed at his eyes, left them there for a moment, then brought the hand down and stared at the ceiling. “You know this investigator of mine, Maria?” he asked. “You know what I said about her death being unrelated to her work? I lied.” He took a deep breath. “She’d just volunteered to reopen the investigation into Alanos Tussaint’s death. You know about that?”
“A little hearsay.”
Farrell filled him in on the rest: Luther Jones’s recanted testimony, the possibility that he was close to cutting a deal to testify again.
“Which I guess won’t be happening now, will it?”
Farrell seemed almost glassy-eyed. “I think I need to call in the FBI, although that’s pretty much admitting that I’ve lost control of the situation, if I ever had any. Did I actually campaign for this job?”
Hardy hesitated. “Hal told me that this was the third or fourth time this year.”
“For what, exactly?”
“For Cushing pulling in a handful of guys—Hal was one of them—and giving them the story they were to tell if anybody came around asking questions about accidents that happened in the jail. He didn’t know about the accidents themselves, hadn’t been in the vicinity at all—”
“But of course he would say that.”
Hardy shrugged. “The point is, Katie knew about them, too. And she wanted to be important, wanted to do something worthwhile with her life, not just be a stay-at-home mom.”
“How do you know that?”
“She was one of Frannie’s clients. Self-esteem was one of her big issues.”
Farrell cocked his head. “Are you shitting me? Your wife’s client?”
“Cross my heart.”
Farrell shook his head in disbelief. “So you’re saying that when Katie finds out about these alleged murders in the jail, maybe she calls her former lover and asks about them and threatens to expose what’s been going on?”
“Yep. Maybe.”
“Did she talk about any of this stuff with Frannie? Specifically? Did she say she was going to threaten somebody—this former lover of hers, maybe the sheriff himself—who worked at the jail?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“But you’re saying maybe she did, and then maybe because she did that, he had a motive to kill her? To shut her up?”
Hardy held his ground. “Not impossible,” he said.
“Maybe not in the ultimate cosmic sense,” Farrell replied, “but so unlikely that it is beneath contemplation. Truly. If that’s going to be part of your working theory on your client’s defense, you ought to cut a plea right now and call it a day, Diz. I’m serious.” Farrell all but collapsed into his easy chair. He shook his head wearily. “What am I ragging on you about? I’m getting a pretty clear picture of what’s going on here. Do I think part of it might have extended out to Katie’s death? Could have. Do I think it also has something to do with Maria? Goddamn, I hope not. There is no evidence at all either way, which is a big problem when you have law enforcement officers like Hal Chase turning to crime. I just don’t know how to go about any of this, except calling in the feds, which is something I really don’t want to do.”
“On that note,” Hardy said, “I do have an idea.”
He didn’t get to tell Farrell his idea just yet. The telephone rang, and Wes shook his head—more interruptions, more exhaustion—then picked up the receiver. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. All right. Yes, I hear you.”
He hung up. His shoulders all but collapsed. “Luther Jones is dead. Heroin OD in the jail.”