The Rule of Law by John Lescroart

Author:John Lescroart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

21

HARDY FINALLY DECIDED to go ahead and file the motion for recusal against Ron Jameson that he’d written over the past week. All along, he had thought that there was little chance that the motion would prevail, but that wasn’t the point: the filing alone, he thought, might put the district attorney off his feed for a while, and that at the very least might give the man pause before he tried to pull his bullying bullshit on other defendants.

It was a cold and clear Friday morning, and rather than mail the motion Hardy decided to walk the half mile or so from his office down to the Hall of Justice, where he would file the motion himself.

That process—essentially handing a few pages to a clerk behind a window—took him the better part of an hour, the wheels of justice at every level continuing to grind exceeding slow. He didn’t know after all these years why this still had the ability to surprise him. Maybe because it had been so long since he’d done any kind of grunt work himself; he also wanted to believe that bureaucratically things must have improved. But this seemed to be a vain hope, at least this morning.

Out on the front steps, his breath forming vapor clouds in front of him, he hesitated for a few seconds before shrugging, making up his mind, and crossing Bryant. He didn’t have any plan or expectation about what if anything he’d run into down the stairs to Lou the Greek’s, but he could use a cup of hot coffee in any event, and you just never knew.

He stopped inside the doors and for a few seconds let his eyes adjust to the dimness. The place had its usual half dozen morning drinkers at the bar to his right, but all of the floor tables were empty. At the farthest-back corner booth, though, he recognized a familiar face and made his way through the empty room.

“Any room in there where an old guy can sit and rest his weary bones?”

Devin Juhle looked up at him in mild surprise, then slid over. “Hey, Diz. What brings you down here?”

“I had a recusal motion on our esteemed DA that was burning a hole in my pocket. It suddenly felt like a good day to go file it.”

“You’re going ahead on that?” Beth asked.

Hardy nodded. “I just did.”

“That ought to liven things up over at the Hall,” Juhle said.

Hardy wore a tight little smile. “It might at that. Stir the pot a little.” He nodded across the table at the two inspectors. “Meanwhile,” he said, “I’m not interfering with official police business, I trust.”

“Not egregiously,” Beth replied. “We’re just about to head out to talk to Rita from El Sol again in the Valdez case. If that doesn’t work out too well with her, we were talking again about the odds of getting Phyllis to wear a wire.”

“Probably not much better than they were yesterday,” Hardy said, “but still worth trying. I

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