Their common humanity?

The thought brought him up short. Unexpectedly, the urge to goodness was still in the world. It wasn’t him alone, or Frannie alone. He came back to Ron Beaumont – if he was innocent, and Hardy was now willing to believe he was, he was living a nightmare as hellish as Hardy’s own, or Frannie’s.

And his wife was right – ‘the best thing,’ she’d said. The options were endless, but the best thing was if she didn’t have to tell. And for that to happen, they were all depending on him. On his judgment and skill, yes. But more than those, really, at the base of it, on his humanity.

Turning back to Pierce’s letters, he realized with surprise that he wasn’t going to go anywhere with them. At least not today. There was no time. For the moment, he knew all he needed about Pierce. He’d lied under duress. He had loved Bree. Maybe he’d even killed her – out of jealousy, rejection, his own despair.

But the trail to the truth did not lead through Pierce from where Hardy sat now. He had to choose his best course, and that led him back to Carl Griffin, who had died pursuing the same thing.

Heritage Cleaners ran its business out of an upstairs office overlooking a grimy, wet and – today – windswept alley in Chinatown. Hardy turned off Grant and into the narrow passageway. A thin trickle of some kind of effluent flowed down a narrow and shallow concrete trough that bisected the way. He passed several dumpsters rich with the odors of cabbage, rotten meat, and urine. The body of a small brown puppy lay pitiably against one of the buildings. Hardy couldn’t help himself – he bent over, closer, to be sure it couldn’t be saved. Then he gathered some newspaper, wrapped up the bundle, and placed it in one of the smelly dumpsters.

Checking the address, Hardy ascended the dark flight of stairs. If he were going to take his shirts to the cleaners, he thought this would be his last choice. But once inside, the office was a surprise. Though still a far cry from the modern antiseptic bustle of FMC’s headquarters, Heritage was well lit, apparently organized, a couple of computers at some workstations.

And – the big surprise – it wasn’t a laundry.

A frail-looking, elderly Chinese man sporting bifocals and a starched, white collarless shirt looked up and rose from one of the fours desks when the door opened. He spoke good if accented English. ‘I am Mr Lee. How may we help you?’

Hardy handed him a business card. ‘I am helping to investigate the death of a police officer and I wonder if I could have few minutes of your time.’

Mr Lee checked the card again. ‘Are you with the police?’

‘No.’ At the man’s frown, Hardy pressed ahead. ‘But I believe the officer may have come here and spoken to someone about a woman’s death.’

The man did the math in his head. ‘Two deaths now?’

‘Actually, three or more.’ He paused to let the fact sink in. ‘I’m working with the police.’ This wasn’t precisely true, and Hardy was about to tell Mr Lee he could call Abe to smooth things over, but saw that he was nodding, accepting. ‘The inspector was Carl Griffin.’

Again, a frown. Deeper this time. ‘A big gentleman, wasn’t he? Not too clean? He’s dead?’

Hardy felt a spark of hope. ‘Yes. He was killed a few weeks ago. I was hoping to find out what he questioned you about.’

The nodding continued, then Mr Lee motioned for Hardy to follow, and led him over to the desk he’d lately abandoned. The old man worked with the keyboard, nodded, and pointed at the screen. ‘Twelve oh six Broadway,’ he said. ‘Our customers.’

‘Do you clean the whole building?’

‘No. There are, I believe twenty-three or four units, all individually owned. We contract through the superintendent for the public areas, and many residents are happy with our service.’

‘And Bree Beaumont was one of them?’

‘Yes.’ Mr Lee shot a glance at Hardy, and ventured a personal comment. ‘It was very sad about her.’

‘Yes it was,’ he said. Sadness was all over this case. He gave the sentiment a moment. ‘So what is your schedule there, for cleaning? I gather you go on Tuesday and Thursday – is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you do each place twice a week?’

‘No. Generally, we clean once. Half the units on one day, the other half on the other.’

‘And which was Bree?’

‘Thursday. Every Thursday.’

Hardy saw the reason for Griffin’s earlier visit. If Heritage had come on Tuesday, possibly within an hour or two of Bree’s death and before the crime scene unit had arrived, then trace evidence might be found among the cleaning supplies, in the vacuum cleaner bags and so on. But evidently this had not happened.

Still, he wanted to be certain. ‘So you didn’t go to her apartment on the day of her death?’

‘No. That’s what Sergeant Griffin asked us.’

‘Did he ask if any of your staff saw anybody unusual in the hallways? Anything strange that they noticed?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Mr Lee was still seated, and now sat back, folding his arms patiently. ‘But – have you been there? Yes? – then you know. It’s really not that type of apartment building. There’s only two units on each floor, except for the penthouse, where there is one.’

Hardy remembered. At Bree’s twelfth floor, there was simply a landing with a window and a door. Residents weren’t exactly out wandering in the halls, loitering about in the locked lobby. ‘So there was really nothing to be found in any of your supplies. The crime scene had already been there by the time you came on Thursday?’

Mr Lee shook his head. ‘I don’t know that. But Inspector Griffin… just one minute.’ Pulling open the drawer again, Lee pushed junk around for a minute, found that he wanted, extracted it, and handed it up to Hardy.

It was a crinkled piece of paper. Hardy’s pulse quickened as he realized what it probably was – a sheet torn from Griffin’s notebook. In the by now familiar scrawl, Hardy read: ‘10 01. Received from Heritage Cleaners. One Gold and Platinum Movado Men’s watch, serial number 81-4-9880/8367685. Evid/case: 981113248. C. Griffin, SFPD Badge 1123.’

‘Where did you get this?’ Hardy asked. ‘Where is the watch?’

Mr Lee shrugged eloquently. ‘When the inspector came here, he said he still needed the watch. I should hold the receipt. If no one claimed it, eventually it might come to us.’

‘But how did you get the receipt in the first place?’

‘The inspector gave it to my supervisor in the building. They found the watch when cleaning.’

‘And this was when your people found the watch? On the Thursday?’

Lee considered a moment. ‘Yes. The date on the receipt is October first, see. A Thursday.’

‘And no one has claimed it since? Reported it missing?’

‘No,’ Lee said. ‘Not to my people.’

Hardy wasn’t surprised to hear this. If the watch inadvertently got left behind, say snapping off during a struggle at the crime scene, it would be the height of folly to go back and try to get it. But stranger things had happened.

Of course, Hardy realized, it might also be Ron’s watch. With the upheaval in his life since Bree’s death, he simply might not have missed it. But Griffin would have just asked Ron about that. Wouldn’t he?

Instead, he’d taken it as evidence, logged to the Beaumont case number. The problem was that by this time, Hardy knew the file backwards and forwards, and there wasn’t any watch in the evidence lockup or anywhere else.

Hardy asked if he might have a copy of the receipt. When Mr Lee returned from making one, he handed Hardy the copy, then clucked sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help more, but I haven’t even heard about Sergeant Griffin’s death until just now.’ Mr Lee wasn’t rushing him, but clearly he felt this investigation had little to do with him or his staff. It had taken enough of his time on a work day.