The third book in the Dismas Hardy series, 1993

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.

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 traumatised, 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 moustache 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 nosedive 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 plum 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, jumped 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.