10
“PREJUDICE,” GLITSKY SAID, “is a powerful thing.”
“What makes you say that?” They’d just finished doing the dishes, and Treya was drying her hands.
“Because I am in the grip of it.”
“Ahh. And who are you being prejudiced against?”
“Hal Chase. Husband of missing, probably now-dead person Katie Chase.”
“You think he had something to do with it?”
“That’s the thing. It’s not a thought, although in ways it’s much stronger. It’s like an automatic default. Woman disappears from her home with no sign of struggle, my very first reaction is to look at the husband. So I look at the husband—any husband—and what do I see? I see a guy who probably killed his wife.”
She put the towel down. “After hanging out with him all afternoon, do you still think that?”
“As I said, I don’t think it, not rationally. I just feel it. And I know I’m not supposed to. But my gut keeps pointing in the same direction it always points. Meanwhile, my brain is trying to come up with plausible alternatives.”
“Such as?”
“Such as a random snatch, some guy walking along the street who decides to abduct a woman out of her house, but this guy can’t be walking down the street, because then what does he carry the woman away in if he’s not in a vehicle of some kind, so that means he’s got a car or something and drove up while Hal was driving away, but then how would he know that Hal wasn’t just driving to the store for a six-pack and wouldn’t be back in five minutes?”
She smiled at him. “That might be the longest sentence of your life. And what you’re describing probably didn’t happen.”
“Right. I agree. But somebody came by, apparently, who knew when Hal would be gone and used that time to grab Katie and take her away. Which leads to the question: Why take her away? If they were going to kill her, why not kill her in the house? Whereas, if it was Hal, he’s got a reason to take her away, which is that without a body, it’s probably not going to get charged as a murder.”
“Wouldn’t that be true of anybody?”
“Yeah, but look at the hassle. Taking the body somewhere, then hiding it, and meanwhile, you’re left with traces of the victim in your car and maybe on your person. Alternatively, you could shoot her in the house, and in that case it goes down as a B and E that went wrong, and every criminal in San Francisco will be suspect. Which brings us back around to Hal, who’s Diz’s prospective client and who I’m supposed to believe is innocent, although I’m having somewhat of a hard time with that because it’s not what I feel.”
“So I see.”
“Prejudice.”
“There you go. So you’re going to stick with this for a while, this investigation?”
“If you’re not still going to be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you. I was just getting used to the idea that you weren’t going to be involved in murder cases anymore. For the record, I was comfortable with that.”
“Also for the record, this isn’t yet a definite murder case, although I must admit it’s leaning in that direction. And my prejudice about Hal isn’t doing anybody any good. I’m trying to imagine what happened to this woman if it wasn’t something to do with her husband.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t focus on the husband, Abe. Maybe you could go about getting to know her better. Who was Katie?”
? ? ?
FRANNIE HARDY WAS sipping her coffee at the dinner table. Putting the cup down, she shook her head and leveled an admiring gaze at her husband. “Sometimes,” she said, “you simply astound me.”
“Thank you. You mean because I’m already on board with Hal Chase?”
“Not really that, no.”
“What, then?”
“The fact that you’ve been home for about two hours, and we’ve just had a leisurely and pleasant dinner together, and you have spent nearly every minute of that time talking to me about your perfect game of darts this morning.”
“I know. It was groundbreaking.”
“Evidently so. Making every single shot from twenty down to and including the bull’s-eye without one miss. Not even the bull’s-eye.”
“Bull’s-eye’s the killer.”
“Of course it is. And you’ve described it all so perfectly, I feel like I was there, witnessing it all firsthand. The thrill of victory.”
“Especially the last round,” Hardy said. “Could you believe how I cleared my mind, instead of thinking about it and letting the tension get to me? That’s what could have done me in. But no, I just picked those suckers out of the board, walked back to the line, turned, and threw. Bam. Bam! BAM!”
“I think you did mention the mind-meld the first time. Or the second. One of them, anyway.”
“And that’s not what astounded you?”
“No. Actually, it was nothing about the dart game.”
“Do you want me to guess?”
“I don’t think you could, so I’ll tell you. What astounded me is that my client’s husband came to your office this morning and asked you to be his lawyer because he was afraid they were going to charge him with murder, and then you met Abe for lunch and got him on board as your investigator. And all of this was really further down your list of interesting things that happened today than your perfect score in Twenty Down.”
Hardy shrugged. “I’ve had lots of clients, Fran. But never a perfect game. Think about it. What would you rank higher, interest-wise?”
She stared at him. “Amazing.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about the perfect game? Or do you think we might chat for a minute about Hal and his situation?”
“Phyllis didn’t seem to fully appreciate it, either,” he said. “That woman is a major trial. I asked Abe if he thought he could kill her and get away with it. He didn’t think so.”
“Really, though, enough. Okay?”
“All right.” Hardy reached for the wine bottle and emptied it into his glass. “What do you want to know about Hal?”
“How was he?”
“Depressed and worried. Sleep-deprived. About what you’d expect. Homicide—not Missing Persons—had just come by and interviewed him, and he got the impression they were going to charge him in Katie’s death, and he thought he might need a lawyer.”
“Why were they going to charge him?”
Hardy shook his head. “They weren’t quite there. But they were looking at him basically because he’s the spouse. That’s always the first stop, as you may know. I told him it was early in the game and he probably didn’t have to worry yet, but I’d get going, and I’d get Abe started just in case.”
“Where does Abe come in?”
“If Hal does end up arrested, I’m going to need an investigator, since Wyatt’s out of town. Better to get in early if it comes to that.”
“Do you think it will?”
“I don’t know. Coming to me at this stage was a bit unusual, but he seemed legitimately freaked out. Have you ever met him?”
“No. But I feel I know him a little through Katie.”
“What do you think?”
“You mean, did they have such serious problems that I thought she might be in physical danger? I’d have to say no. She was just having some troubles with full-time motherhood and deciding to stay at home with the kids instead of working.”
“What did she do when she worked?”
“Pharmaceutical sales. She made a fortune.”
“What’s a fortune?”
“Two hundred, two fifty.”
“Thousand dollars? A year? Can I get into pharmaceutical sales?”
“I don’t think so. I think you have to be young, female, and pretty.”
“Two out of three isn’t bad. Young and . . . well, I’m more handsome than pretty, but that ought to count.” Hardy sipped wine. “So she was making this kind of money and then just stopped? I can see why they were having problems.”
“Diz, it wasn’t mostly about their problems with each other. You know I can’t go into detail, but it was self-esteem stuff, her place in the world, whether she was a good enough mother, like that.”
“No talk of divorce or abuse?”
“No.”
Hardy blew out a heavy breath. “So nobody knows,” he said.
“Nobody knows what?”
“Anything.”