The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  “It was slick how, just when Gina admitted they’d gotten together—”

  “I think she said they’d been intimate.”

  “That, too. Right then Susan gets up and leaves the courtroom, right when Moses hangs his head in deep chagrin. It was almost like it was choreographed. To your credit, I think the jury noticed it.”

  “The choreography?”

  “No. The actual display of emotion.”

  Shrugging, Hardy said, “Natural reactions. I hope Moses and Susan don’t break up over it.”

  “Just for fun, I’m going to keep at this until I find a crack. But Sher and Brady and Stier, they’ll be at it in earnest until they stop breathing.”

  “Well, I wish you luck. Them, too, while I’m at it. But how can you argue with the truth?”

  “You’re not giving this up, are you?”

  Hardy drank a little more gin. “Probably not. Not that there is anything to give up. But even if there were. No.”

  BEHIND HIS CLOSED office door, Hardy in his shirtsleeves was throwing darts.

  There was no point in pretending that he was going to think about, much less concentrate on, anything else until the verdict came down, which would happen when it happened—today, tomorrow, a week from now.

  He was playing a solitaire game, twenty down, and was now on “eleven,” having thrown only four rounds of three, which meant he’d missed twice. He was locked in, a thin current of adrenaline pumping through him, keeping him focused and alert.

  As he was pulling his darts from the board, the phone on his desk—his direct line to Phyllis—buzzed, and he went over to pick it up. “Yo.” Phyllis always hated when he did that, which was why he almost always did.

  “Mr. McGuire’s wife and daughters are out here to see you.”

  “Give me a second and I’ll be right out.” Hardy straightened his tie, put on his suit jacket, and dropped the darts into their place behind the cherry-wood closet that hid his dartboard. Opening his door, he stepped out into the lobby area, across to his in-laws, and hugged them each in turn, making appropriate noises, leading them into his office, where they could sit and have some space to relax—Susan, Brittany, and her younger sister, Erica, whom he hadn’t seen since the whole thing had begun.

  When they’d all taken seats, Hardy offered them water, coffee, tea, wine, anything, and after they all turned him down, he boosted himself onto his desk. “I’m glad you came by. It’s so good to see all three of you hanging together. And this is really the hard part,” he said. “The waiting.”

  “This is nothing,” Susan said. “The hard part’s been the last three months. Now it seems that no matter how it comes out, we’re going to be in the middle of more controversy again, Diz.”

  “You don’t need to be.” He looked at each of them in turn. “None of you need to be. Are you being hassled by reporters?”

  Brittany spoke up. “Only every minute of every day.”

  “We just tried to have lunch at Lou’s,” Susan said. “We finally decided maybe we needed to hide out up here. I hope you don’t mind. It was crazy in there.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Hardy said. “That was a good thought, although it might be a while until the verdict comes in. If it drags on, you can all come over to our house and stay with me and Frannie, then come on back in here and hide out more tomorrow, no problem.”

  “Well,” Susan said, “actually—”

  Her younger daughter cut her off. “That’s not the main thing. The main thing is if Dad really slept with that woman.”

  Susan cleared her throat, waited until she had everyone’s attention. “I already told the girls, Diz, that they shouldn’t concern themselves with that. Gina pulled me out of the courtroom and told me what she was going to say, and also that it was a lie.”

  Hardy’s eyebrows went up. “She told you that?”

  Susan nodded. “Trying to spare my feelings.”

  “Right,” Brittany said, “but you know what the problem is with someone who tells you they’re lying?”

  Hardy knew. He nodded. “They might be lying about that, too.”

  “So what’s the truth?” Brittany asked him. “Do you know?”

  “What do you think, Uncle Diz?” Erica asked. “Did he tell you? Do you know for sure?”

  “I know what I believe, but I can’t know for sure, Erica.”

  “And what’s that?” she pressed. “What you believe?”

  But Hardy refused to be drawn into this discussion. “The point,” he said, “is not what I believe. It’s that you don’t need to say anything.”

  “But they keep asking . . .” Erica continued.

  Hardy nodded, understanding the great vulgar maw of the media and what these women were going through. “Let them ask,” he said. “That’s their job. Your job is not to respond. I’m afraid you’ve got to decide what you believe for yourselves.”

  “But,” Erica said, “if Dad didn’t have this relationship with this woman, that means he went and killed Jessup.”

  “Not necessarily,” Hardy said. “Maybe somebody else killed him. But listen up. You’re all laboring under the impression that you have to say something, that you have to explain things or even have an opinion. Well, here’s the easy answer: you don’t have to say a word to any of these people. Just say, ‘No comment.’ Whatever they ask you. ‘No comment.’ Not even ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I couldn’t guess’ or anything else. Just ‘No comment.’ ” He broke a tight grin. “You guys want to practice? It takes practice, believe me. It’s weird and unnatural, but it has to happen. If you want, I can ask you questions all afternoon, and you can tell me ‘No comment.’ ”

  “But that seems like we’re actually hiding something,” Erica said.

  “Like what?” Hardy asked.

  “Like we’re covering up for this lie. Gina’s lie.”

  “How do you know it’s a lie? Or which part of it is a lie?”

  “Dismas,” Susan said, “come on. Am I supposed to tell my friends that the reason I know my husband didn’t kill that man is because he was being unfaithful to me at the time? And I’m okay with that? Hey, it’s no big deal?”

  “No,” Hardy said. “You’re supposed to say that it’s none of anybody’s business. Let them wonder and speculate all they want. It’s a family matter, and you and Mose and you girls are dealing with it as best you can, and you’d appreciate a little respect for your privacy. But even better would be if you just said ‘No comment’ to everybody. If they’re your really close friends, then I can give you a special dispensation to say, ‘I’m sorry, but really, no comment.’ But don’t even feel like you have to do that. Privacy, I realize, is a little out of fashion, but it’s a real concept.”

  “But what’s the truth?” Brittany asked.

  “Let’s say that the truth is what Gina told your mom. She and your dad never had the affair she told the court about.”

  “If that isn’t true,” Erica said, fighting back tears, “then that makes my daddy a murderer.”

  Hardy took a moment to reply. “Your father fought in Vietnam, sweetie, where he killed people, and so did I. That doesn’t make us murderers. Homicides aren’t always murders. Sometimes they’re justified.”

  “Do you think,” Brittany asked, “if he did it, this one was?”

  “Nobody can answer that except your father, Brit.”

  A long silence settled. At last Brittany let out a heavy breath and said, “I’ve got one that maybe you can answer, Uncle Diz. Do you know what happened to Tony?”

  Again, Hardy paused. “We know he packed up and left town.”

  “But why? Do you know?”

  “I do know.” And he told them. “He was a charming guy, Brit,” he concluded, “but he was basically in hiding, so when his cover got blown by that picture of the two of you, he had to go. If it’s any consolation, he wasn’t what he seemed to be. To any of us.”

  “I could have helped. If he’d trusted me more.”

&n
bsp; “Some people,” Hardy said, “maybe most people, you can’t change. I truly believe you can’t save anybody. So it’s probably a better idea to choose to hang around people who don’t need changing or saving.”

  Susan laughed with a bitter edge. “Except all these years,” she said to her daughters, “you’ve seen me putting up with your father, who often needed changing or saving, and loving him through most of it. But still.”

  “You picked good, Susan,” Hardy said. “You girls are in pretty damn good shape, too. We get over this last hump, things will straighten out. You just wait.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when there was a quick knock at the door. Amy Wu pushed it open, breathless, her eyes shining with excitement. “The court just called,” she told them. “They’re coming in!”

  AT 3:22, THE jury filed back into a courtroom overflowing with reporters, spectators, various denizens of the Hall of Justice. Out in the gallery, Hardy saw Wes Farrell, whose visage remained stern and unyielding. Also from Farrell’s office, Treya had come down, although she was sitting with Abe in another row on the defense side. Wyatt Hunt was there, too, along with some of his staff, all the McGuire women, and much to Hardy’s surprise, his wife (who, unbeknownst to him, had made her “be aware and stay quiet” pitch to Moses in the jail an hour before) and their daughter, Rebecca. Gina Roake was nowhere to be found. All four eyewitnesses and Jessup’s mother sat in the second row directly behind Stier and Gunderson’s table. On that same side, right in front of the eyewitnesses, sat Lapeer, Brady and Sher, and the crime scene supervisor, Lennard Faro.

  Hardy, Amy, and Moses sat at their table, the tension almost unbearable as the jurors took their seats—far too slowly, it seemed to Hardy.

  So slowly.

  Hardy’s hands were sweating, his stomach in a knot. He loosened his tie, which had begun to choke him. Picking up his glass of water, he realized that the water’s surface telegraphed the tremor in his hands, and he put it back down.

  The stone-faced jurors were taking their seats one at a time. Not one of them met his eyes or even glanced in the direction of their table.

  Next to Hardy, Moses seemed drained of blood except for his eyes, which were deeply bloodshot. His breathing was audible. Amy Wu sat on his left, holding his hand and rubbing it.

  At last the bailiff came to his feet. “Department Twenty-four of the Superior Court of the State of California is now in session, Judge Carol Gomez presiding. All rise.”

  Gomez appeared through the courtroom’s rear door and, in a swirl of robes, took her place at the bench. “Please be seated.”

  Blessedly, Hardy thought, at least she appeared ready to move things along. He found himself putting a hand on Moses’s arm.

  Gomez turned her head and spoke to the jury. “In the matter of the People of the State of California versus Moses McGuire, has the jury reached a verdict?”

  The foreman, Philip Waxman, one of the fathers of a daughter on the jury, stood at his seat. “We have, Your Honor.”

  “And is that verdict unanimous?”

  “It is, Your Honor.”

  “Please give all the verdict forms to the bailiff.”

  The bailiff took the forms to the judge, who examined them to make sure they were appropriately filled out, signed, and dated. Gomez then gave them to the clerk. “Madam Clerk, would you please read the verdict?”

  She began with the caption of the case, including the defendant’s name, case number, and what court they were in. And then at last.

  “Count one. We, the jury in the above entitled cause, find the defendant, Moses McGuire . . .”

  44

  WHEN MOSES FIRST went on the wagon, he’d listened a lot to a Collin Raye song entitled “Little Rock,” whose lyrics referred to the fact that the singer hadn’t had a drink of alcohol in nineteen days. It hadn’t sounded like much of a deal, not such a long time, but Moses had found in the living of it that it was nearly an eternity.

  I won’t have a drink today. I won’t have a drink today. I won’t have a drink today.

  One day at a time. Forever. Or nineteen days, whichever came first.

  In reality, he hadn’t had a drink in a lot longer than nineteen days, since the day of his arrest. In jail, they didn’t serve wine with the meals. But since the not-guilty verdict, since he’d been back behind the bar, he’d had easy access, and not drinking under those conditions made all the difference. So today was a kind of personal milestone, his nineteenth day back at the bar. He’d been crossing off dates on the calendar, and now that he’d made that magic number nineteen, he decided he could start to let himself think that this time he might just make it.

  Now, on a relatively balmy late-summer Tuesday evening at 5:30, life was almost back to normal. The Little Shamrock had a good crowd going. Regular Dave was back in his usual spot, on his third beer since four o’clock. One of the dart leagues was having a tournament in the back room, and there were twenty or so players, whooping it up and spilling out into the hallway that led up to the bar area proper.

  Four couples sat at eight of the ten stools at the bar. Back by the bathrooms, a group of six or eight college-age kids—legal, as Moses had made sure—was on the first round, and everybody was into drinks made with premium-call liquors. If Moses could keep them happy, that would turn out to be a nice profit center.

  This, too, gave him some small hope for the future. Only small, because he was not as solvent as he once was. He had relinquished another 24 percent of the bar to his brother-in-law as payment for Hardy’s representation. He couldn’t really complain, since he was free again, and Hardy had made that happen. Despite a definite cooling in their friendship, Hardy was still a good guy, and their deal left Moses as the majority owner—51 percent to 49 percent. Further, when Hardy’s share of the profits reached the sum total of Moses’s legal fees in about a hundred years, Hardy insisted that he would return the 24 percent to McGuire. They shook on it.

  On the home front, things were not so positive, although he held out hope that he and Susan would get back to where they once were. Clearly, she was—both of them were—trying. They would start formal counseling next week. In the meanwhile, Susan couldn’t come to grips with the person he was, with what he had done. Even though she thought she believed he was not an adulterer, Susan had never directly asked Moses to deny it, and he had never done so. Because to deny the truth of the affair all but admitted the alternative—that he had in all probability, as the evidence suggested, killed Rick Jessup. That, too, was unacceptable to her. So she was living—they both were living—in a no-man’s-land of ambiguity and distress.

  In all, he’d come to the belief that, like everything else in life, it would take time, maybe a lot of time. All he could do was stay sober and faithful and hope that they would reconnect.

  Down at the end of the bar, he brought Dave his fourth beer, refilled a couple of cocktail orders from the couples, pulled down a Guinness stout glass and added ice and a lime wedge and a good blast of club soda from the gun.

  Turning around, he dialed up “Little Rock” and three other oldies on his playlist.

  He checked his watch.

  The song came on.

  Tony’s backup person—Moses’s longtime Sunday/Monday bartender—Lynne had taken over most of the night shifts. She’d gotten used to making more money and was game for all the shifts Moses could throw her way. She was due in twenty minutes, after which he was going home to have a barbecue on the roof with his three girls.

  When he got home, he’d also announce the nineteen days, the great psychic barrier that they all knew about. They’d know he was on his way, holding up, doing as well as anyone could hope.

  He pulled a couple of Bass pints. The guy with the girl down to his right said, “Hey, Mose. What’s the only word in English that sounds the same when you take away its last four letters? I don’t think there is one.”

  “Yeah, there is,” his girlfriend said.

  The front door swung ope
n, and a middle-aged, gray-haired woman came in alone. Though it was an unusually warm night, she wore a heavy coat that went to her knees. Standing still for a second, letting her eyes adjust to the slight dimness, she saw the free stool at the bar directly in front of him and walked over to claim it, then swung her large purse off her shoulder and laid it on the bar, nodding at Moses in a familiar way. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t quite place what it was. Close up, she was a nice-looking woman, he thought, although at about his own age, maybe a little old for the Shamrock’s typical customer base.

  “Moses McGuire,” she said.

  Though the bar didn’t need it, McGuire out of habit was wiping down the area in front of her, never completely unaware of the divot he’d made with the shillelagh so many months before. He put down a napkin and said, “That’s me. What can I get you?”

  Next to her, the girlfriend said, “Queue. Take away the last four letters, still ‘Q.’ ”

  McGuire pointed at her, said, “Good one,” and held up his hand so they could high five each other.

  In the split second while he was looking away, the gray-haired woman put her hand in her purse. Now, as he came back to her, she was withdrawing it.

  She said, “I’m Penny Jessup.”

  When her hand emerged, it was holding a large silver handgun, which, with no hesitation, she held in both hands as she fired three shots point-blank into McGuire’s chest.

  AFTER THE FUNERAL at St. Ignatius and the burial in Colma the next Friday, the Hardys invited people over for an informal celebration of Moses’s life. In spite of the crowd of perhaps two hundred that had attended the services, they expected only about thirty or forty people. But about double that number showed up—Wes and Sam, Abe and Treya, Gina, Wyatt Hunt, Amy Wu, and many Shamrock customers, as well as folks Hardy didn’t know from his brother-in-law’s A.A. meetings. More surprising were the several beat cops from the Shamrock’s neighborhood and two members of McGuire’s jury.

  Hardy was surrounded by guests, pulling a cold Beck’s from one of the coolers in the kitchen, when Wes Farrell appeared beside him. “I’ll take one of those if you can spare it,” he said. When Hardy handed him the beer, he continued, “Quite a turnout.”