The Motive (37 page)

G
litsky’s prayers were answered. It appeared that it was “only” a hole in Zachary’s heart after all. It was so small that the doctor thought it might eventually close up on its own, although Glitsky and Treya shouldn’t count on that since it was equally possible that it might not. But whether it eventually closed up on its own or not, Zachary’s condition required no further immediate medical intervention, and neither doctor—Gavelin nor Trueblood—suggested an increased stay in the hospital for either mother or child.

So Paganucci had come out to the hospital with Glitsky’s car, and Abe and Treya were back to their duplex by noon, both of them completely wrung out with the stress and uncertainty of the previous twenty-four hours. Neither had slept for more than an hour or two. And they were nowhere near out of the woods yet with their boy. There was still some likelihood that he’d need open-heart surgery in the very near term—the doctors and his parents would have to keep a close eye on his overall development, heart size, energy level, skin color—turning bluish would be a bad sign, for example. But what had seemed a bad-odds bet yesterday—that Zachary might be the one child in eight born with this condition able to live a normal life without surgery—now seemed at least possible, and that was something to hang on to, albeit precariously. At least it was not the probable death sentence of aortic stenosis.

Rachel was staying another day with her grandfather Nat. By pretending that he was going to take a much-needed nap with her, Glitsky got Treya to lie down in the bedroom with Zachary blessedly sleeping in the crib beside her. Within minutes she, too, was asleep.

Glitsky got out of bed, went into the kitchen, turned in a full circle, then walked down the hallway by Rachel’s room. He checked the back door to make sure it was locked, deadbolt in place, and came back out to the living room. Outside, a bleak drizzle dotted his picture window, but he went to it anyway and stared unseeing at the view of his cul-de-sac below. Eventually, he found himself back in the kitchen. Apparently he’d eaten some crackers and cheese—the crumbs littered the table in front of him. He scooped them into his hand, dropped them in the sink, and punched the message light on his telephone.

The only call was from Dismas Hardy, wondering where he was, telling him that suddenly he had many questions, all of them more critical than the location of Missy D’Amiens’s car. They needed to talk. There’d already been a few developments in the first day of the trial that would affect him. But more than that, he needed to revisit what Abe had done to date.

Glitsky looked at the clock on his stove. Ten after one. There was some chance that Hardy wouldn’t yet be back in court after lunch. In some obscure way, and despite his pure fatigue, Glitsky all at once became aware of a sharp spike in his motivation. Maybe the sense of impotence he’d experienced while unseen doctors performed tests on his newborn had upset his equilibrium. Or was it the fact that now there appeared to be a reasonable chance that his son would be all right? That sometimes a cause might appear lost, and that this appearance of hopelessness could be a stage on the route to success, or even redemption? All he knew was that it all seemed of a piece somehow. It was time to get back in this game.

And, a critical point, he could do it from his home. And in a way, conducting an investigation from his home would give him another advantage. There would be no reporters, nobody to witness what he was doing, to question who he might talk to. Rosen and Cuneo, busy in trial mode, would certainly never take any notice. Everything he did would remain under the radar, where he wanted it.

He reached for the telephone.

Hardy’s pager told him to leave a number. He did that,
then immediately placed another call to his own office. If and when Hardy called back, they’d coordinate their actions. In the meantime, Missy’s car was a question even Glitsky had failed to ask. In fact, he realized, every strand of his failed investigation up until now had emanated from Paul Hanover—his business dealings, his politics, his personal life. To Glitsky’s knowledge, neither he nor Hardy nor Cuneo nor anyone else involved in the case had given the time of day to Missy D’Amiens. She was just the mistress, then the fiancée, unimportant in her own right.

But what if…?

At the very least it was somewhere he hadn’t looked. And nowhere else had yielded any results.

“Deputy Chief Glitsky’s office.”

“Melissa, it’s me.”

“Abe.” His secretary lowered her voice. “How are you? And Treya?”

“Both of us are pretty tired, but all right.”

A pause. “And the baby? Tom”—Paganucci—“Tom said…”

Glitsky cut her off. “Zack’s going to be fine.”

“Zack? Of course, Tom didn’t know what you called him.” She was obviously spreading the news to the rest of his administrative staff. “His name is Zachary.” Now she was back with him. “Thank God he’s all right. We’ve all been sick here wondering.”

“Well…” To avoid going into any more detail at the moment, Glitsky switched to business. “Listen, though, the reason I called…”

“You’re not working, are you?”

“I’m trying to, Melissa. But you’ve got the computer. I’d like you to run a name and vehicle R.O.”—registered owner—“for me. On a Michelle D’Amiens. D apostrophe…”

Hardy felt the vibration of the pager in his belt, but he was in the middle of an uncomfortable discussion with Catherine’s husband. Hardy had originally intended to huddle with Catherine in the holding cell during the lunch recess, but had noticed that Mary and Will were the only family members who’d made it to the courtroom today,
and he needed to talk to both of them. Separately. And sooner rather than later.

So he cut his time with Catherine short and was waiting at the defense table when the brother and sister got back from their lunch together. They had nearly a half hour before court would be back in session, so he walked back and said hello and asked Will if he could spare a minute, then Mary when he and Will were finished, if there was time. So, although obviously unhappy about this unexpected ambush—Will thought he knew what it was about, money, and he was right—he accompanied Hardy back up to his table inside the bullpen. Both men sat down.

“So,” Will began with a not entirely convincing show of sincerity, “how can I help you?”

He’d given Hardy a retainer of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars eight months before. Between Hardy’s hourly rate, the billable time his associates and paralegals had spent drafting motions and preparing briefs, the large and long-running newspaper advertisements to try and locate the girl who’d run out of gas in the Presidio, the fees for filings and his jury consultant and the private investigator Hardy had hired to find out the truth about Will and his secretary (an irony Will would certainly not have appreciated, had he known), the retainer was long gone. Now Will was past due on his last two monthly invoices, nearly forty thousand dollars.

“The point is,” Hardy said, after a short recap and overview, “I don’t want this billing issue to interfere with my defense, but we discussed this, you remember, when I first signed on. How it was going to get more expensive when it got to the trial.”

“Not that it’s exactly been cheap up until now.”

“No. Granted. Murder trials are expensive. Even at the family-and-friends rates you’re enjoying.”

Will chuckled. “Enjoying. I like that.”

Hardy shrugged. “I’d hope so, since it’s saved you nearly sixty thousand dollars so far. But even so, I wanted to ask you if there was a financial problem. Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable to be here in the first days of the trial and have my client so far behind in payments.”

“It’s not that far, is it?”

“Sixty days.” Hardy waved that off. “But that’s not the issue. The issue is that I know you’ve come into quite a large sum of money recently. I’m assuming you’ve got significant cash flow, so that’s not the problem. And meanwhile, I’m going ahead with my defense of your wife and you’re not paying your legal bills.”

“Well, I…”

“Please let me finish. I find this conversation as difficult as you do, believe me. But I told you coming in that my trial day fees are three times my normal billing rates, and at the time you said that sounded reasonable. It’s still reasonable. But I want to tell you, you’re going to get whiplash from sticker shock next month if you don’t keep up on these monthly payments.”

“Are you saying you’re raising your rates now?”

“Not at all. It’s all in the contract we signed last June. But the trial has started and that changes everything.” Hardy leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “You may not realize it, Will, but it’s standard practice among criminal attorneys to get the entire cost of the defense up front. You know why that is? Because a client who gets convicted often loses his motivation to pay his lawyer anymore. Now I didn’t make that demand with you and Catherine because of the personal connection, but I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I should have.”

Will Hanover’s eyes were flashing around the courtroom, and when they came back to Hardy, he’d obviously decided to be shocked and outraged. “You’ve got some balls trying to shake me down at a time like this. I’ve paid you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars already. Up front. If that’s not good faith, I don’t know what is.”

“It was. Then,” Hardy said. “This is now. And I wanted to put you on notice that it’s becoming a big issue.”

“Or what? You’ll quit? You’d abandon Catherine over a late payment? You’ve got to be kidding me?”

Hardy didn’t rise to the question. Instead, he said, “What might be easiest is if you provide another retainer like the first one…”

“You’re out of your mind.”

Hardy didn’t pause. “…like the first one, to cover what
you owe and get us through this month, if the trial goes on that long. And then to begin the appeals process, if we need it.”

“If we need an appeal! In other words, if you lose.”

“That’s right.” Hardy’s voice was calm. “We won’t need to appeal if we win.”

“Well, I’m not writing you a check for another hundred and fifty thousand dollars on that off chance, I’ll tell you that. And you can take that to the bank.”

Hardy pushed himself away from the table, draped an arm over the back of his chair, and looked into the callow and handsome face. With an air of sadness, he came forward again. “Will. I know that you’re through with Catherine, however this comes out. I appreciate you coming down here to trial and putting on the face of the good husband. But I also think I know why you’re really doing it, and that’s because you don’t want to lose the respect of your kids.”

Will shook his head in disgust. “I’ve had enough of this. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He started to stand up.

“I’m talking about Karyn Harris, Will. Your secretary.”

Sitting back down, he said, “There’s nothing between me and Karyn Harris.”

Hardy nodded. “That’s been the party line, anyway, that you’ve worked so hard to keep from your kids. You weren’t having an affair. It was just Catherine who was crazed, right?”

“Right.” Defiant still.

“And so to your kids, you’re still the good guy, aren’t you? The dad they can trust, who’s holding the whole thing together?”

“That’s right.”

“But what if they found out you’ve been lying to them the whole time, too? How would they feel about that? About you?”

“I haven’t been lying to them. There was no affair.”

Hardy stared at him for several seconds. When he spoke, there was no threat to his voice or in his manner. It was more the measured tones of disappointment that things between them had come to this pass. “Will,” he said. “Do
yourself a favor. Take a look at the statements I’ve sent you over the past months. You’re going to notice payments totaling about five grand to an entity called The Hunt Club. You know what that is? No? It’s a private-investigator service.”

Will’s initial expression of disdain turned to disbelief and then a distillate of fear itself.

Hardy went on. “If you weren’t having an affair, one of the things I considered early on was that you had the same motive to kill your father as Catherine did. You’d gone to some lengths to create an airtight alibi. You would have been perfect. So I had to know, you see, if you were really in San Francisco on May twelfth, or down south.”

He let the words hang in the air between them. “Understand that I don’t have to bring up any of this for Catherine’s sake, and really never planned to. For my purposes, it’s enough that Catherine believed you were being unfaithful, and suddenly she needed to go see Paul to find out where a divorce would leave her. But if you in fact
were
having this affair, and the jury knew it, they might view Catherine in a more sympathetic light. And all other things being equal, that’s always to the good.”

Will’s hands were shaking, his color had gone gray. “You’re blackmailing me,” he said.

“I’ve had this for four months. If I was blackmailing you, I would have started then.”

Will glanced back at the gallery, which had started to fill for the afternoon session. In the bullpen, the popular court reporter Jan Saunders was sharing a laugh with a bailiff. Several of the jurors had wandered back in and taken their seats. “Where is all this stuff?” he asked.