Hard Evidence Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  PART TWO

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  PART THREE

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  PART FIVE

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Teaser chapter

  “Raymond Chandler once wrote that the test of a first-rate murder mystery is whether you would keep reading it if the last chapter—and the revelation of whodunit— were missing. In the matter of John Lescroart, I would keep reading any of his books, even without that last chapter.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  Praise for the Novels of John Lescroart

  Hard Evidence

  “Gripping. . . . This author is a master of details. . . . One never doubts the world he has created.”

  —West Coast Review of Books

  “Top-notch . . . Lescroart weaves a tale of revenge and passion that ends with a startling revelation and satisfying conclusion.” —Chattanooga Times-Free Press

  “The plot bounces effortlessly between the courtroom and the intraoffice battles among prosecutors. . . . The writing is excellent, and the dialogue crackles.” —Booklist

  “Blockbuster courtroom drama . . . so keen you almost forget there’s a mystery too. . . . Lescroart’s laid-back, soft-shoe approach to legal intrigue is all his own.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Solid . . . a well-written and cleverly conceived legal saga.”

  —The Baton Rouge Advocate

  The Hearing

  “A spine-tingling legal thriller.” —Larry King, USA Today

  “[The Hearing] works so well not only because of Lescroart’s narrative skills but because he so clearly knows San Francisco, knows its legal world, and knows its characters.”

  —The Washington Post

  “The heroes are engaging, the foes are threatening, and the legal background and the law are well served.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Highly entertaining.” —Chicago Tribune

  “Excellent stuff.” —San Jose Mercury News

  “A bang-up job . . . explosive.” —Rocky Mountain News

  Nothing but the Truth

  “The novel’s pacing is reminiscent of classic Ross Macdonald, where a week’s worth of events are condensed into a few hours . . . [a] winning thriller.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Riveting . . . one of Lescroart’s best tales yet.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “A rousing courtroom showdown.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “You’ll not unravel this one until the last gavel falls.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  The Mercy Rule

  “A thought-provoking and important novel . . . well-written, well-plotted, well-done. A winner!” —Nelson DeMille

  “A master’s take on a troubling social issue.” —People

  “Readers of The 13th Juror will already be off reading this book, not this review. Join them.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Very entertaining . . . a large and emotionally sprawling novel.” —Chicago Tribune

  Guilt

  “A great thriller: breakneck pacing, electrifying courtroom scenes, and a cast of richly crafted characters.” —People

  “Begin Guilt over a weekend. . . . If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A well-paced legal thriller . . . one of the best in this flourishing genre to come along in a while.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  A Certain Justice

  “Electric. . . . Lescroart swings for the fences with a West Coast take on The Bonfire of the Vanities . . . a richly satisfying thriller, and a breakthrough book for Lescroart.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A gifted writer with a distinctive voice. I read him with great pleasure.” —Richard North Patterson

  “Engrossing.” —San Francisco Chronicle

  The 13th Juror

  “I double dare you to begin reading John Lescroart’s new suspense trial novel The 13th Juror and put it down. The man is one of the best thriller writers to come down the pike, and this one is on the money.” —Larry King, USA Today

  “A fast-paced text that sustains interest to the very end.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  Praise for John Lescroart

  “The superior element of Lescroart’s writing is his creation of lifelike characters.” —Houston Daily Sun

  “[Lescroart] never wrote a bad page.” —USA Today

  Also by John Lescroart

  The Suspect

  The Hunt Club

  The Motive

  The Second Chair

  The First Law

  The Oath

  The Hearing

  Nothing but the Truth

  The Mercy Rule

  Guilt

  A Certain Justice

  The 13th Juror

  The Vig

  Dead Irish

  Rasputin’s Revenge

  Son of Holmes

  Sunburn

  Copyright © John T. Lescroart, 1993

  Excerpt from Betrayal copyright © The Lescroart Corporation, 2008

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincide
ntal.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Lisa, who is always there; and to Nishion Matosian, aka Don Matheson—Marine, cop, bartender, actor—always the best man.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the initial inspiration and the continuing education, I’d like to thank Joel T. Kornfeld and Al Giannini, respectively.

  A host of other knowledgeable and helpful people assisted in the making of this book. Among them are several attorneys from the San Francisco district attorney’s office: Jim Costello, Susan Eto, Jerry Norman and Bill Fazio. From Davis, thanks to attorney Steve Shaffer. The substantial liberties I have taken herein with assistant district attorneys in San Francisco are the purest of fiction and the result bears no resemblance to these or any other members of a very professional, efficient, and forthcoming prosecutorial team.

  Nonlegal contributions were no less important: San Francisco coroner Dr. Boyd Stephens was extremely gracious with his valuable time. No less so were Tristan Brighty, Mike Hamilburg, Joanie Socola, Dr. Phil Girard, Mark Detzer and Bob Eisele. All contributed importantly to the finished work.

  Finally, I’d like to thank my two young children, Justine and Jack, for their wonderful attitudes and behavior for most of the time I spent completing this endeavor.

  If there are any technical errors, they are solely the fault of the author.

  Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based on imperfect knowledge.

  —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.

  PART ONE

  1

  Dismas Hardy walked hip-deep in green ice water, his rubber-gloved hands on the fins of a six-foot white shark.

  Outside in the world, it was nearly two o’clock of an early summer morning, but here at the Steinhart there was no time. The overhead light reflected off the institutional green walls, clammy with distilled sea sweat. Somewhere, out of the room, a motor throbbed dully.

  The only noise in Hardy’s world was the steady slush and suck of the water curling behind him as he walked around and around, alone in the circular pool.

  Pico Morales had called around seven to ask if he felt like doing some walking. When Pico called, it meant that some fishing boat had landed a great white shark and had contacted the Aquarium. The sharks bred just off the Farallons, and the Steinhart—or Pico, its curator— wanted a live one badly. The problem was that the beasts became so traumatized, or wounded, or both, after they were caught, that none survived. Too exhausted to move on their own, they had to be walked through the water so that they could breathe.

  It was Hardy’s third and last hour-long shift tonight. He’d been spelled by a couple of other volunteers earlier, and Pico was due any minute, so Hardy just walked, unthinking, putting down one foot after another, dragging and pulling the half-dead monster along with him.

  On his first break, he’d stripped off his wetsuit, changed and walked over to the Little Shamrock for a Guinness or two. Hardy’s brother-in-law, Frannie’s brother Moses McGuire, had been off. Lynne Leish was working her normal Sunday shift behind the rail, and Hardy had taken his drink to the back and sat, speaking to no one.

  On his next break, he’d gone out and climbed a fence into the Japanese Tea Garden. Sitting on a footbridge, he listened to the orchestrated trickle of the artificial stream that flowed between the bonsais and pagodas. The fog had been in, and it hadn’t made the evening any warmer.

  Hardy wasn’t paying attention when Pico came in. Suddenly there he was at the side of the pool, his huge bulk straining his wetsuit to its limit. Pico had a large black drooping mustache that got wet every time he brought the steaming cup to his lips. “Hey, Diz.”

  Hardy, willing his legs forward, looked up and grunted.

  “How’s the baby?”

  Hardy kept moving. “Don’t know.”

  Pico rested his cup on the edge of the pool and slid in. He shivered as the cold water came under his suit. Next time Hardy came around, Pico grabbed the shark and goosed its belly. “Let it go,” he said.

  Hardy walked another two steps, then released the fins. The shark turned ninety degrees and took a nose-dive into the tiles on the bottom of the tank.

  Pico sighed. Hardy leaned his elbows up against the rim of the pool. “Lack of family structure,” Pico said. “That’s what does it.”

  “What does what?” Hardy was breathing hard.

  “I don’t think they have much will to live, these guys. You know, abandoned at birth, left to fend for themselves. Probably turn to drugs, run with a bad crowd, eat junk food. Time we get ’em, they’re just plumb licked.”

  Hardy nodded. “Good theory.”

  Pico, in the bottoms of his wetsuit, his enormous stomach protruding like a tumor, sat on the lip of the tank, sipping coffee and brandy. Hardy was out of the pool. The shark hung still in the water, its nose on the bottom. Without saying anything, Pico handed his mug to Hardy.

  “We’re doing something wrong, Peek.”

  Pico nodded. “Follow that reasoning, Diz. You’re onto something.”

  “They do keep dying, don’t they?”

  “I think this one OD’d. Probably mainlining.” He grabbed the mug back. “Fucking shark drug addicts.”

  “Lack of family structure,” Hardy said.

  “Yeah.” Pico plopped in and walked over to the shark. “Want to help hoist this sucker out and stroll through his guts? Further the cause of science?”

  Hardy emptied Pico’s coffee mug, sighed and brought the gurney over. Pico had tied a rope around the shark’s tail and slung it over a pulley in the ceiling. Suddenly, the tail twitched and Pico jumped back as if stung. “Spasmodic crackhead shark rapists!”

  “You sure it’s just a spasm?” Hardy didn’t want to cut the thing up if it wasn’t dead yet.

  “It isn’t the cha-cha, Diz. Pull on that thing, will you?”

  Hardy pulled and the shark came out of the water, slow and heavy. Hardy guided it onto the gurney. He waited while Pico hauled himself out of the pool.

  “I am reminded of a poem,” Hardy said. “Winter and spring, summer and fall, you look like a basketball.”

  Pico ignored him and reached for his coffee mug. “Need I take this abuse from someone who steals my coffee?”

  “There was coffee in that?”

  “And a little brandy. Cuts the aftertaste.”

  They flipped the shark on its back. Pico went into his office and came out a minute later with a scalpel. He traced a line up the shark’s belly to its gills, laying open the stomach cavity. Slicing a strip of flesh, he held it up to Hardy. “Want some sushi?”

  The tank gurgled. Hardy leaned over the gurney, careful not to block the light, while Pico cut. He reached into the stomach and began pulling things out—two or three small fish, a piece of driftwood, a rubber ball, a tin can.

  “Junk food,” Pico muttered.

  “Leave out the food part,” Hardy said.

  Pico reached back in and brought out something that looked like a starfish. He pulled it up, looking at it quizzically.

  “What’s that?” Hardy asked.

  “I don’t know. It looks—” Then, as though he’d been bit, Pico screamed, jumping back, throwing the object to the floor.

  Hardy walked over to look.

  Partially digested and covered with slime, it was still recognizable for what it was—a human hand, severed at the wrist, the first finger missing, and on the pinkie, a sea green jade ring.

  2

&nbs
p; Hardy expected that the guys in blue would be first on the scene. He would likely know them from the Shamrock, where the police dropped in frequently enough to keep the presence alive. Sometimes your Irish bar will get a little rowdy and it helped to have the heat appear casually to remind patrons that a certain minimum standard of decorous behavior would be maintained.

  For the better part of nine years, Hardy had been the daytime bartender at the Little Shamrock. He’d only been back in the D.A.’s office for four months now, since Rebecca had been born and he and Frannie had gotten married.

  Hardy and his onetime boss, current friend, partner and brother-in-law Moses McGuire were both reasonable hands with the shillelagh of Kentucky ash that hung behind the bar under the cash register. McGuire, Doctor of Philosophy, in his cups himself, had twice thrown people through the front window of the Shamrock. Most other times, the forced exit was, Old West fashion, through the swinging double doors. Neither Hardy nor Moses was quick on the 86—no good publican was—but both of them had needed assistance from the beat cops from time to time. The Shamrock wasn’t a “cop bar,” but the guys from Park Station had trouble paying for drinks if they stopped in during off hours.

  Hardy stood just inside the front entrance to the Aquarium. The black and white pulled up, the searchlight on the car scanning the front of the building. From the street to the entrance was a twenty-yard expanse of open cement at 2:15 of a pitch-dark morning. Hardy didn’t blame them for the caution. He stepped outside.

  They walked back behind the tanks in the damp hallway. Bathed in a faint greenish overhead light, the two cops followed Hardy amid the burps and gurglings of the Aquarium. He did know them—Dan Soper and Bobby Varela, a fullback and a sprinter. Hardy thought the three of them made a parade: the give of leather, slap of holster, clomp of heavy shoes, jingle of cuffs and keys—beat cops weren’t dressed for ambush. It reminded Hardy of his days on the force, walking a beat with Abe Glitsky.