Free The Keeper by John Lescroart Page A

miserable?”
    â€œMaybe more than that.”
    JaMorris chimed back in. “And how does she do that?”
    â€œI don’t know any of the details here—names and so on—but you could find them easily enough. A couple of weeks ago, you might remember, there was a stink about this inmate who died in jail. He slipped and fell and banged his head against his cell or something and died. Does that ring a bell?”
    Abby resisted the urge to laugh. “Always,” she said.
    â€œYeah, well, this time they had their usual investigation, and another inmate said it wasn’t any accident. He saw one of the guards kill him. Hit him on the head, locked him in his cell, and left him to die.”
    JaMorris picked it up. “The guard was Hal?”
    â€œEvidently not. But Hal told Katie that the inmate was right, one of his coworkers killed the guy. Hal was one of the six guards who all alibied each other. Oh, and did I mention that the inmate witness recanted his testimony? Hal was part of the team who helped persuade him.”
    â€œSo if Hal filed for divorce,” JaMorris said, “Katie would have brought this out?”
    â€œThat’s my take,” Daniel said. “Even if he hadn’t gotten arrested, there would have been a full-fledged custody fight, and she would have used that to try and keep the kids. She wouldn’t have had to warn him. He would have known she’d take him down. He might do prison time, and you know what prison is like for former guards?”
    Abby didn’t have to guess. “So your theory is that Hal had decided to leave Katie for this other woman, but he couldn’t divorce her because she’d go public with the cover-up that the guards were all part of. So if he wanted out, he had to make sure she didn’t talk and couldn’t accuse him. Therefore, he had to kill her.”
    â€œIt’s a motive,” Daniel said. “My dad didn’t have one for you guys. I do. And while we’re at this, there’s one other thing you ought to know about Patti Orosco.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Abby asked.
    â€œShe’s filthy rich.”

14
    T O THE CASUAL observer, Lou the Greek’s restaurant—directly across the street from the Hall of Justice—might appear to have health and hygiene issues. People in the know suspected that the A it received every year from the city’s Health Department was the result of either a health inspector with severely poor vision or an influential clientele who didn’t want the place to change or get hassled. Nevertheless, if you lingered on the stairway that led down to the door—say, waiting in line—you’d detect an odor that spoke to the presence of some of San Francisco’s treasured homeless population, who used the stairway as a windbreak, bedroom, and sometimes toilet.
    Lou got in every morning about four hours after closing at two A.M. and before the place opened at six. He rousted the sleepers, hosed everything down, Cloroxed, squeegeed, then opened up for the early-morning drinking crowd.
    In spite of all that, but mostly due to proximity to the courts, the place was always jammed at lunchtime. Cops, lawyers, clients, reporters, jurors, witnesses, all of them needed lunch, and Lou’s was convenient, cheap, fast, and surprisingly and consistently good. This was all the more unexpected considering that it served only one course every day, the ­famous Special, which was nearly always an original combination of the ethnic foodstuffs of Lou and his wife, the cook, Chui—Greek and Chinese. So you’d get a lot of lamb and pork dishes, squid and octopus and shrimp, meatballs, noodles, rice, grape leaves, and bao dumplings, seasoned heavily with lemon juice, Mae Ploy, or soy sauce. Often weird but always edible, if not downright tasty.
    Its other great advantage was that its popularity tended to produce a noise level comparable to a jet