John Lescroart by The Hearing Read Free Book Online Page A

election, she had purged the office of all but a very few of Locke’s old prosecutors, and it was no secret that this was part of the reason that now her office couldn’t seem to convict anyone. She’d had to let them go for their political incorrectness, to say nothing of the general culture of incorrigibility. Locke had been black but he’d hired, in Pratt’s view, far too many white males who’d adopted a macho “win at all costs” mentality that had infected the office—getting convictions, sure, but at what cost?
    Sharron’s own motto was: “There’s more to being a prosecutor than getting convictions.” To which the Locke crowd tended to respond, “Oh yeah? Like what?”
    So any mention of Chris Locke and his administration put Sharron Pratt on the defensive, and it was immediately apparent that she was on it now, the fingers of her right hand thrumming uneasily on the bar.
    Torrey carefully reached over and covered her hand with his. “Elaine was having an affair with Locke.”
    â€œWith the D.A.? While she worked for him? How much younger was she than he was? God, that man!”
    Torrey suppressed his desire to point out to his boss that the two of them—he and Sharron—were in precisely the same relationship that Elaine and Locke had enjoyed. There would be no point—Sharron would be hard pressed to see any similarity, in spite of the fact that in both cases the D.A. was sleeping with an assistant D.A. But Locke had been a predator of gullible young women; she was nothing like that. She and Torrey had a mature relationship between equals, and that could not have been true with Locke and Elaine.
    Instead, he waited her out in silence. Then: “In any event, after Locke was killed, she needed a shoulder to cry on, and we—”
    Pratt pulled her hand out from under his. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
    â€œIt wasn’t that, Sharron.” He took her hand again, patted it soothingly. “It wasn’t that. Okay?”
    She finally nodded. “Okay.”
    â€œThere wasn’t anybody she could talk to here. The office was changing. She felt there were spies everywhere.” He shrugged, making light of it. “I was doing some neighborhood work in the African-American community, outreach stuff, you know, just like you were. Anyway, Elaine and I, we got to be close for a while. Platonically. Really.”
    He squeezed her hand. “She’d lost her mother and her lover within a week. She wanted to talk ideas. What was the place of a strong, smart black woman in a white man’s world? What was the price of her mother’s fame? Was any of it worth it? Was it wise to have affairs with married men? Where was she going? What had she done? That kind of thing.”
    He paused. “Eventually, she got it together. I put her in touch with Aaron Rand and you know the rest. But she was just very special somehow. And now . . .” A sigh. “I cared about her, and now I feel I owe her something.”
    â€œWhat? You couldn’t have prevented what happened with her. It wasn’t anything to do with you.”
    â€œNo, I know that.” He considered his phrasing. “Let’s just call it a payback. This bum who killed her, if somebody’s going to take him down, I’d like it to be me.”
    Â 
    Two hours after he’d left Glitsky, after a visit to Frank Batiste, the chief of inspectors, Hardy was coming out of his shock but still wasn’t sure how to proceed. He had, at least, gotten Cole Burgess booked into the jail, and now he wanted to talk to him, get some take of the damage. He took the outside corridor from the back door of the Hall. It was bitter with a wet wind, and when he got inside the door to the jail, he stood a minute getting the warmth.
    The admitting sergeant at the counter was a short, skinny Caucasian with the name tag