The Suspect Page 4

  This time, Juhle’s smile stayed. “If my luck holds,” he said.

  Gina hated it when cops played these silly territorial games. For Juhle’s benefit, and mostly just for the fun of it, she decided to put a little of the needle in. She turned to Hunt. “Just as good citizens, Wyatt, we ought to get in touch with this guy and give him a heads up.”

  “Hey, come on!” Juhle put some humor in it, but not all that much. “Give a poor cop a break. Besides, he gets lawyered up, I’m really going to think he’s guilty.”

  “Having a lawyer means he’s guilty?” Gina asked.

  “No. Of course not. How silly of me.” Juhle remained genial. “You’re absolutely correct. Perish the thought.”

  “Don’t be fooled,” Hunt said. “He doesn’t agree with you.”

  “I’m picking that up, Wyatt.”

  Juhle stabbed one of the awful pot stickers with his fork and picked it up. Staring at it for a second, he again put it back down on his plate. Gina’s casual dig at him had obviously struck a nerve. “Let’s put it this way. He hasn’t been charged with anything yet. If the autopsy comes back looking like someone murdered his wife, I would hope that he’d want to cooperate in every way he could to help us find the killer. If he’s got a lawyer there with him, running a screen every time I ask him a question, I’m going to wonder about what’s going on with him a lot more than I would if he just sat and talked to me.”

  “But you admit you’re trying to get him to implicate himself.”

  “No.” Then patiently, “I’m trying to get at the truth. If he’s innocent, the truth—pardon the phrase—the truth will set him free.”

  “Only in a perfect world, Inspector. You know that.”

  “Okay, granted,” Juhle said. “But an innocent guy doesn’t call a lawyer before he’s even charged with anything.”

  Gina thought this was turning into a ridiculous discussion for two old pros to be having. She’d started out totally goofing with Juhle, and now she was enjoying the rise she was getting out of him, so she went on. “He does if he’s going to talk to cops and say things that could get misconstrued. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “And all I’m saying,” Juhle responded, “is that to us cop types, that happens and we’re going to think the guy’s got something to hide.”

  “Well, to quote the Beatles,” Hunt said, trying to lighten everybody up, “‘everybody’s got something to hide ’cept for me and my monkey.’”

  “Thanks, Wyatt,” Gina said. “That was helpful.”

  Self-effacing, Hunt said, “I try to contribute.”

  “I think I got your friend mad at me.”

  “Naw. That’s just Devin. He’s a cop, so he thinks like a cop. It’s a whole mind-set they test you on at the Academy. First question is whether you think if a guy’s got a lawyer, is he guilty? If you say, ‘Not necessarily,’ you flunk out.”

  “How heartening.”

  They were crossing Bryant Street at the light. “So,” Hunt asked, “what brings you down here? I haven’t seen you near the Hall in forever.”

  “At least. Maybe longer. I don’t even remember the last time I was down here.”

  Reaching the opposite curb, they turned right together and started up the block. In front of them, unmarked as well as black-and-white police cars and taxicabs were double-parked in the street all the way up to the front steps of the Hall. Someone had chained a large Doberman to one of the handrails in the middle of the wide and shallow stairs, and his barking competed with the Jamaican in dreads who was exhorting all and sundry to embrace Rasta as their salvation and Haile Selassie as the one true God. A homeless man wrapped in newspaper slept just beyond the hedge that bounded the steps. A full dozen attorney types stood talking with clients or cops in the bright sunshine while regular citizens kept up a stream in and out of the glass doors. “Can you believe? I think I’ve actually missed the place,” Roake said.

  “You get inside, I predict you’ll get over that pretty quick. You meeting a client?”

  “No. I’m hoping to latch on to a conflicts case.” These cases were very common; the Public Defender’s Office would in the normal course of events be assigned to an indigent client who had been accused of a crime. If that suspect committed the crime with a partner, the PD could not also defend the accomplice—it was a conflict of interest. So the court would assign a private defense attorney such as Gina, whose fees the city would pay, to represent the accomplice.

  They reached the steps. Gina stopped, hesitated, gestured to the door. “You going inside?”

  “No. I was just doing some computer searches at home and Devin called to have lunch and I took pity on him. I live just around the corner.”

  Again, Gina showed a slight hesitation.

  “What?” Hunt asked.

  She lay a hand on his arm. “I was just wondering if Inspector Juhle happened to mention the name of the husband we were talking about back in there.”

  “Sure. It’s Stuart Gorman. The writer?”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t know the name. What does he write?”

  “Outdoors books. Fishing, mostly. I’ve read a couple of ’em. He’s pretty good.”

  “A couple of them?”

  “Maybe three by now.”

  “I hate him already,” Gina said. “I’ve been trying to finish my one damn book for almost four years, and he’s already finished three?”

  “Maybe he started earlier than you.”

  “Maybe he’s just better at it.”

  “Could be that, I suppose. Though you’re probably a better lawyer than he’d be.”

  “If he were a lawyer.”

  “Which, based on Devin’s talk with him, he’s not,” Hunt said. “And that in turn leaves you wondering if he’s got himself legal representation yet, doesn’t it?”

  Now Roake smiled. “No flies on you, Wyatt. The thought did occur to me.”

  “You want me to call him and find out for sure?”

  Gina shook her head. “Thanks. I can chase my own ambulances. The man’s just lost his wife. Let’s go wildly out on a limb and presume for a minute that he had nothing to do with killing her, in which case he’s probably—no, undoubtedly—devastated. But I kind of think he’d be better off if he gets somebody before your Devin gets another shot at him.”

  “Well,” Hunt said. “If I know Dev like I think I do, he’d better hurry.”

  FOUR

  AT A FEW MINUTES AFTER ONE o’clock, a haggard Stuart Gorman, collapsed in a wing chair next to the television in his hotel room, hung up the telephone. “I can’t believe these people.”

  Sitting across from him on the front two inches of his bed, his longtime friend and ex-college roommate, Jedd Conley, raised his head. Conley was the first call Stuart made after the police had chased him out of his own house that morning. In spite of being the State Assemblyman representing San Francisco, Conley had cleared his entire calendar for the day and met Stuart at the Travelodge within twenty minutes of checking in.

  Conley had a good face, closely shaved. Both his nose and his six-foot bearing were strong, straight, aristocratic. The broad, unlined forehead under his dark hair could have belonged to a man twenty years his junior, but the youthful look was somewhat mitigated by the lines around a mouth that had perhaps been forced to smile more than it wanted to. Today Conley was wearing a tan business suit with a white shirt and light gold tie. “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Some guy capping for a lawyer, wanting to know if I’d retained legal representation yet. The distinguished citizen had somebody he wanted to recommend. What a sleazeball. I got rid of him.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Fucking shysters. How’d they find me here so fast?”

  Conley shrugged. “Word gets out. It’s already been on TV. They probably called the cops and asked. It’s just business.”

  “Just business.” Stuart Gorman blew some of his anger into the dim room. “It sucks.”

&
nbsp; “I don’t know.” Conley stood up and crossed to the window, where he pulled a cord on the blinds and let in more light. Turning, he said, “You’re going to need a lawyer, after all. You can’t blame them.”

  “I wasn’t here, Jedd. I wasn’t physically present when she died,” Stuart said evenly, his mouth tightening up. “How am I going to be a suspect?”

  “I didn’t say you were a suspect. I said you’re going to need a lawyer. The cops, the press, the estate. It’s an automatic.”

  “As you know, I’ve already done that, talked to the cops. It was no sweat. Besides, I don’t know why we’re talking about me needing another lawyer. I’ve already got one, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Conley pulled at his forelock, sighed, shook his head. He chose his words with care. “Listen, my man,” he said, hand over heart, “you’re my best friend and my heart is breaking here for what’s happened to Caryn. To you and her and Kymberly. But I haven’t done one lick of actual law in ten years, so I’d be lousy at representing you, besides which maybe you’ve noticed, I’ve got another full-time job. It just can’t be me. But you’re going to need somebody.”

  Stuart stared coldly at his old pal for a few seconds, and then the anger passed and he settled back into his chair. “We don’t need to argue about it.”

  A pause, and then Conley said, “When you’re ready, there’s somebody I’d recommend.” Conley was back on the edge of the bed, and now he came forward. “Don’t be an idiot, Stu. You have no idea how all this stuff works. Even if Caryn took some pills and drowned…”

  “Hey. Read my lips: I was up at Echo Lake. Whatever happened last night, I wasn’t any part of it.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did anybody see you up there? Did you have company last night? Did you talk on the phone?” When Stuart didn’t respond, Conley continued, “I’m taking your silence as a no. And this in turn means that your alibi sucks and you’re going to be on your cop’s list.”

  “Okay. Maybe. If Caryn was murdered…”

  Conley shrugged. “Maybe even if she wasn’t. You remember that guy a couple of years ago? He was like a telemarketer or something, and she owned about half the real estate in the Western Addition? Anyway, the two of them went camping and the story was that she went out for a midnight swim all alone while he was sleeping, and didn’t come back. Turns out she drowned and the husband stood to inherit like fifty million dollars. Did in fact inherit fifty million bucks. You don’t think the cops considered him a suspect? You think the fact that she drowned was a defense against them thinking he killed her? You want to know the truth, you want to kill somebody, drowning them’s probably the best way to do it, evidence-wise.”

  “Okay, but did they charge him? Did they have any evidence?”

  This brought Conley up short. “Do me a favor, Stu. Don’t ask your friendly inspector that kind of question.”

  “What kind of question?”

  “Evidence questions. Whether or not crimes got charged. Legal questions.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they demonstrate what they call a degree of criminal sophistication. How about that? It could sound, to a trained investigator, like you had premeditated your actions and possibly even studied the rules of evidence.”

  “I was just asking you if they brought to trial the guy you were talking about.”

  Conley said, “In the end, no. But I was around at the DA’s for a few of the discussions about whether they had enough to bring charges or not. The cops’ position was that they had fifty million good enough reasons. And they came this close to taking it to the grand jury, even without a shred of evidence. And the grand jury would have indicted.”

  “So why didn’t they charge it?”

  “Because they would have lost at trial, and the DA knew it. And hell, nobody doubted even for a minute that the husband had done it. He was there where she drowned, he was going to inherit, they’d been having troubles in their marriage, which I know you and Caryn…” Spreading his palms out, Conley continued. “Anyway, you see what I’m getting at. How much was Caryn worth on her own? Six, seven million? Plus your life insurance…?”

  “Jesus, Jedd!”

  “Get used to it, Stu. You’re going to hear it from the police, and you’re going to have to know how to answer them. Or even whether or not to answer them. And you don’t have a clue. Which can hurt you. A lot. Kymberly, too. That’s all I’m saying. Friend to friend.”

  Finally, Stuart seemed to get the message. He settled back into his chair, chin down on his chest, his arms hanging over the sides. “So who do you know?” he asked.

  “Oh, God! It’s true, then, isn’t it? It’s really true.”

  Debra Dryden—Caryn’s younger sister—stood just inside the room’s doorway in front of Stuart, her face washed in anguish. Then she stepped into his embrace. Pressing herself up against him, holding him tightly, she began to shake. Stuart held her and let her go on, his hands locked around her back, over the silk of her blouse. “I know,” he whispered. “It’s all right.” At last he extricated himself and stepped back.

  “When I got your message, I didn’t want to call you back,” Debra said. “I didn’t want it to be true.”

  Stuart nodded. “I know.” He half-turned. “I don’t know if you’ve met Jedd Conley.”

  Debra lifted a hand perfunctorily. “Thanks for being here for Stuart.”

  “I couldn’t not be,” Conley said.

  The woman’s obvious pain and suffering did nothing to camouflage, and perhaps even served to enhance, her physical beauty. Shoulder-length, white-blond hair surrounded a captivating face—turquoise eyes, finely pored light tan skin. Debra wore a short white skirt and teal silk blouse, a gold necklace and diamond earrings. She brought both hands up to her eyes and dabbed under them. She said to Stuart, “But what are you doing here? Why aren’t you home?”

  “They’re not letting me go back there until they’re finished with their investigation.”

  “But why? You said she drowned. In the hot tub. Is that possible?”

  “She may have been drinking and then taken some pills…”

  “You’re saying she might have killed herself?”

  Stuart shook his head. “If she did, I don’t think it was on purpose.”

  “Of course it wasn’t,” Conley said. “She wasn’t suicidal.”

  Debra turned to him, a cold eye, at the interruption. “How do you know that?”

  “I just talked to her Friday afternoon…”

  Stuart spoke with some surprise. “You did?”

  “Sure.” Conley went on. “You know that, Stu. She was all in a tizzy about her invention. Remember she’d asked me to have my office look into some questions with her VC”—venture capital—“people. I’d been reporting back to her pretty regularly.”

  Debra asked, “What does your office have to do with that?”

  “Nothing specific,” Conley said. “But I’m with the State Assembly, and Caryn thought I could find out some stuff that wasn’t public yet. And she may not have been all wrong about that.”

  “What was the news Friday?” Stuart asked.

  “It wasn’t anything that was going to make her want to kill herself. We’d found some evidence that PII”—this was Polymed Innovations, Inc., the manufacturer of the Dryden Socket, which Caryn had invented—“hadn’t reported some negative results in the clinical trials—post-op leg clots—that apparently they’d known about. Caryn was furious about it. And furious is pretty much the opposite of suicidal.”

  “Maybe she started out furious,” Debra said, “but over the weekend it turned into depression.”

  “If she had gotten herself depressed by last night, it wasn’t about business,” Stuart said. He drew a breath. “Both of you might as well hear it from me, since it’s going to come out eventually. She wanted a divorce.”

  Debra said, “That’s not wanting to kill yourself e
ither. That’s wanting to move on. Ask me how I know. I’m three years free and haven’t regretted a day of it.”

  “I don’t want to believe it was a done deal,” Stuart said. “But it is what she told me.”

  “She couldn’t have wanted to leave you,” Debra said. “I mean, you’re…” She came at the thought again: “In what way exactly have you not been the perfect husband?”

  Stuart said, “A lot of ways, Debra. Too many, believe me.”

  Conley touched his friend’s arm. “You’re getting whacked every which way but loose here, aren’t you, Stu? Why’d she want to leave you? Did she say? Maybe a boyfriend?”

  A quick shake of the head. “I don’t think it was that. When would she have had the time? But I don’t know for sure. It could have been anything. Or everything. She just wasn’t happy with us together.”

  Debra’s eyes had gone glassy again. She reached out to touch Stuart’s arm, then moved a step closer to him. “Let’s not think about that right now, okay? Let’s all just try to get through what we need to do here and now.”

  “Good idea,” Conley said. “Maybe you could help talk Stuart into getting himself a lawyer. I’ve got someone in mind. And with this divorce in the mix, he’s going to need one.”

  Her hand still on his arm, Debra nodded. “Stuart,” she said softly, “I think you ought to listen to your friend.”

  FIVE

  IN THE NORMAL COURSE OF EVENTS, Devin Juhle would not have heard word one about the autopsy of Caryn Dryden for at least a few days. But in the great yin and yang of the city’s population, this turned out to be a slow weekend for death. San Francisco’s homicide rate—with about two killings every week—was not comparable, say, to Oakland’s, eleven miles across the bay, with its two hundred and twenty murders a year, but since autopsies were mandated not just for violent deaths, but for deaths of the homeless, deaths anywhere with an element of suspicion to them, usually the medical examiner’s office had an autopsy backlog of at least a couple of days after the body arrived at the morgue.