The Mercy Rule

Evans stuck out her chin. ‘With all respect, sir, if I were a man, this wouldn’t be news. It would never have come up. It would have gotten buried.’

Glitsky snorted. ‘You really think that?’

‘Yes, sir. No offense. I’ve seen it happen several times.’

The lieutenant took that in. ‘If you wanted to step down on your own, you could save everybody a lot of trouble.’

‘It would make a lot of trouble for me, sir. I’ve worked hard to get here and I deserve to be here.’

Glitsky looked long and hard at the sergeant’s face. She had made a tremendous error in judgment, but she still had the spine, independence, and intelligence that made a great cop. He considered his words with care. ‘You know, Sergeant, this detail – homicide – it’s not heaven. You don’t get here and then stop.’

‘I didn’t say-’

He held up a hand. ‘You said you deserved to be here, you earned it. Well, that’s true, you did. But you don’t just earn it and that’s the end of it. You continue to deserve to be here, every day. Every single day, or you leave. That’s the gig.’

Sarah took the rebuke stoically. ‘He was found i

Glitsky opened the drawer again, looked down at the scratch he’d prepared and signed off on – the formal charges he’d pla

He pushed the drawer closed and brought his eyes up to hers. ‘I’m happy for you,’ he said.

There were days in the next few weeks, before he finally found out for sure, when Hardy wondered if it had all been worth it. He had had to know what had happened with Sal Russo, and the knowledge had nearly killed him. The gash that the second bullet had traced across his middle was a constant reminder of how close it had been. Another inch and a half and the slug would have ripped through both lungs and his heart.

He knew he still wasn’t finished with the nightmares; the last click under his jaw was burned into his psyche. He would jolt awake, as often as not drenched in sweat, and lie there in bed next to Fra

Sit in the chair in his living room in the dark. And still, with everything he’d suffered, he’d been lucky. The leg wound had passed cleanly through his calf muscle. His doctor assured him that he’d be able to jog his four-mile loop again within six months, although his long-jump career was probably effectively over.

Concentration, although improving, was still a problem. He would be sitting with Fra

He saw it now, at nearly noon on a Tuesday in the middle of October, and he jerked his head up. He was in the Solarium trying to follow an article in one of the law journals about some new ‘natural death’ hospice care facilities that were apparently operating within the law in Oregon and Montana and maybe several other states. He was making notes on arguments that might help his doctor clients here in San Francisco, although it was begi

Hardy had checked with the licensing board and already had a promise that the doctors would be allowed to continue to practice. Freeman had told him that under the circumstances, Hardy might even do better. ‘Hell,’ he’d said, ‘you could probably get a letter of apology.’

But neither Hardy nor his doctors, some of whom had recently discovered that political grandstanding had consequences in the real world, were willing to push their luck.

Hardy liked to think that the trial of Graham Russo had made the attorney general rethink his hard-line position on assisted suicide. If nothing else, Powell had come to realize that his earlier push for prosecution of these doctors was politically unpopular. And if it wasn’t going to win votes, the AG wasn’t interested in it.

Hardy was sitting up straight with his back against his chair. He told himself that the bandages around his chest were good for his posture. Any slouching was intolerable. There was a comforting and familiar buzz in the lobby behind him – associates coming and going, phones ringing. He looked out through the glass into the enclosed garden area where some pigeons were enjoying the sunshine.

Hardy was going to be all right, except that now his chest was an agony of itching from where they’d shaved him, where the last scabs were falling away. He tensed his calf and felt the familiar stab of pain. It, too, was healing, he supposed, but it wasn’t done yet. He went back to his article.

David Freeman, brown bag in hand, knocked at the Solarium lintel, walked right in, and began unpacking. He pulled out a couple of wrapped sandwiches, a large bottle of Pellegrino water, little plastic glasses, and a jar of marinated artichoke hearts. ‘I took the liberty,’ he said, unwrapping the white butcher paper. ‘Mortadella, sourdough, provolone. Brain food.’

Hardy pushed his journal to the side. ‘I thought that was fish.’

‘Fish too,’ Freeman said. He had finished unwrapping the sandwich, spreading the paper out under it, making it neat. Pushing it over in front of Hardy, he poured some Pellegrino into one of the glasses and placed it in front of him too. This kind of solicitude from Freeman was unusual, and Hardy glanced over at him. ‘What?’ he said.

‘What what?’

‘Don’t give me that, David.’

Freeman left his own sandwich unmolested, still wrapped in front of him. He sat back. ‘They cut a deal with the judge’s wife. Pratt accepted a plea.’

Hardy threw a disbelieving glance at the old man. ‘What do you mean, she accepted a plea? What plea?’

‘Manslaughter on Sal Russo, three years. Assault with a deadly weapon on you, three years concurrent, no additional time for the gun.’

For a second the room tried to come up at Hardy.

‘Diz?’

‘Assault with a deadly weapon? It was attempted murder, David, she tried to kill me. She did kill Sal Russo. And what do you mean no additional time for the gun?’

Freeman let out a long breath, cracked a knuckle. ‘It seems Mrs Giotti’s been under a lot of stress lately, imagining that Russo was a threat to her husband’s career and that you somehow were part of this giant conspiracy.’

‘Imagining? She told me her husband and Russo had started a fire that killed a fireman. She told me she’d killed Russo to shut him up. She told me she was going to kill me so I couldn’t talk about it.’

Nodding, Freeman went along with him. ‘Yes, indeed, my son. Quite mad, wasn’t she, imagining all these terrible things about her husband and some fire?’

‘But Giotti-’ Hardy stopped himself. He couldn’t say, and that realization choked him.

‘What? The judge denies everything and her doctors confirm that she’s imagining it, so we all know it never happened. Except, of course, for some nasty-minded columnists.’ Freeman eyed Hardy shrewdly. ‘Unless someone knew something admissible that could actually pin the arson on Giotti. You wouldn’t know anybody like that, would you, Diz?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not. If you did, I’m sure at the very least you’d want to tell your old pal David?’

But Hardy knew he could never tell Freeman or anybody else what Giotti had told him under the seal of the attorney-client privilege. It had been the worst five dollars he’d ever earned. ‘I don’t know anything, David.’

The old man nodded. ‘I believe you. But you know, with Pratt not exactly being in love with you to begin with, the fact that you couldn’t provide any more information on Giotti didn’t make her want to throw the book at his wife. After all, the judge still has some influence. You cross him at your peril. Pratt knows that. You’re lucky she didn’t charge you for trying to kill her.’