The Suspect [by] John Lescroart
[New York] Dutton [2007]
978-0-525-94998-5 $26.95
Stuart Gorman is a 50-year-old writer of outdoor books about fishing and rambling in the wilderness. When we first see him, he is floating on a lake in the Sierra with a fly rod across his lap. But he is not finding the peace he seeks. He has just flown up the highway from San Francisco, where he has had a terrible fight with his headstrong, brilliant, difficult, still-pretty orthopedic surgeon wife, Dr. Caryn Dryden. She wants a divorce.
Their marriage had definitely cooled a long time ago. They started out as real soul-mates, and their lives complemented one another. He was supportive as she went to med school, running the household and supporting them with two jobs. But the birth of Kymberly, their high-maintenance daughter, changed the dynamics of their life together. They grew apart as Caryn got more and more involved in her high-powered career. Now she was involved in creating a new office with two business partners, she was borrowing money and making investments, and she had invented a new product for total hip replacement: the Dryden Socket, which had passed the FDA tests and studies, but now, on the brink of it becoming FDA-approved, there were glitches she had to deal with. She had no time for a husband or a daughter, and, now that Kym was off at college, there was no reason to stay together.
Stuart had slammed out of the house, gotten a speeding ticket, and consumed most of a quart bottle of vodka he’d found in the cabin’s freezer. When he woke up this morning, he found he’d trashed the cabin. He tried to work his anger out in exercise, but it just kept building. Finally he decided he would go home and have it out with her. Meanwhile, at the same lake, a 47-year-old attorney from San Francsco, Gina Roake, notices the solitary fisherman, who looked so peaceful, as she catches and cooks a rainbow trout, and makes camp for the night. Little does she know that she will be meeting the fisherman soon, when Stuart’s State Assemblyman friend Jedd Conley recommends her to defend him.
But I’m getting ahead of the story – why does Stuart need defending. He drives back to San Francisco to have it out with his wife, and he can’t find her at first. She’s not in bed, or the bathroom. She’s not working or in any other part of the house. He finally finds her in the hot tub. He calls the police, then pulls her out of the tub and tries CPR, until the cops arrive and call him off – even from where they’re standing, they can see that rigor has already set in. Then Inspector Sergeant Devin Juhle questions him. Without an attorney present, he freewheels his story, and says some things he maybe should not have, but he is still thinking of himself as innocent, and has no idea that, to Juhle, he sounds guilty, guilty, guilty.
And that’s what he tells the group of lawyers at lunch at the Chinese-Greek restaurant across from the Hall of Justice. This group includes Gina Roake. That’s when she hears about the case for the first time.
Later that day, she is introduced to Stuart by their mutual friend Jedd and she becomes his attorney. He tells her he is innocent, and she tries to tell him that the cops and DA are gunning for him as if he were guilty, so he has think more defensively than he has been – this includes not spouting off whatever comes into his head, but to be more circumspect about what he says and does. Appearances, in this case, may speak louder than reality.
The police continue to do their job, interviewing neighbors of the Gorman/Dryden household, including a girlfriend of Kym’s, who saw Stuart’s car enter the garage at the appropriate time to be guilty. She said she knew the car and had ridden in it many times. Other neighbors talk about the fights the parents had. Stuart confides to Gina that the fights were actually between Kym and him. Kym has bipolar disorder, and in her manic phase tends to pick fights with her parents. The parents decided long ago that they would band together to keep their daughter’s illness from the public.
Kym, who has come back from Oregon, is very distraught about the fact that her father is accused of her mother’s killing. She knows he didn’t do it, and leans on the eyewitness to change her story. She is now staying with her mother’s sister, who appears to the public to be an item with Stuart, which gets tongues wagging around town.
Stuart, trying to find other people who might have had it in for his wife, tells the cops and Gina about someone who calls himself “Thou Shalt Not Kill” or “TSNK,” who has sent him threatening e-mails. The police blow it off.
Stuart, still not getting the seriousness of the situation he’s in, goes down the peninsula in his truck, with stolen plates (not a cool move), armed with a handgun (also not cool), to interview people involved with his wife’s businesses – the man financing her new ventures, the two men she’s partnered with to start a new practice, and the people involved with the production of her Dryden Socket. He collects some good information, but during the time he’s been gone, the detective and the DA make their case. The fact that he has fled has zoomed Stuart to the top of the suspects list (even though there is really no list – just him) and a warrant for his arrest has been issued.
Stuart, who doesn’t know this yet, has registered in a motel in San Mateo and calls Gina. She goes down to see him, and makes the mistake of calling Juhle on her cell phone to tell him that she will be bringing him in at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. Juhle follows the cell call and takes him into custody, betraying both Gina and Stuart. Stuart ends up in jail, where he didn’t want to be.
The trial goes speedily on, with some good jabs early on by Gina, and then some miserable failures as it becomes clear to all who can see it that the DA, the cops, and even the judge are pretty well convinced of Stuart’s guilt. When Kym’s friend from across the street takes the stand, her mother, knowing that Kym had threatened her daughter, and believing that the threat came from Stuart, attacks him with her cane. This causes there to be a hiatus in the case, which allows Gina to attempt something that will, hopefully, unmask the killer.
Realizing that some of the power players in the background were banking on her inexperience – this was her first murder trial, Gina is galvanized to do the best she can, to dedicate herself to her profession as she has not done since her fiancé, one of the principals in her own firm, died. The “Thou Shalt Not Kill” suspect makes himself known, and major changes happen in the lives of the major players. A ripping good yarn from a master storyteller. Highly recommended. ~ lss-r
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This is a book from my local library.
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