The Motive

by John Lescroart

  Wes had his tie on now and stood up, grabbing his coat. “And now it begins in earnest, huh? Can I do anything to help at home? Maybe Sam . . .”

  Hardy shook his head. “No, I told you, we’re fine. In fact, it’s added a whole new dimension to our marriage, where she pretends it doesn’t bother her and I pretend that I appreciate her understanding. It’s special, but what am I supposed to do? It’s a little late now.”

  “You could pray for a short trial.”

  “Prayer is always a solace,” Hardy said. “I might go for that.”

  Twenty minutes later, he left his office to a gaggle of well-wishers in the lobby. This was a major case for the firm, and everyone was aware of its importance. It was still bitter cold outside, but Hardy was damned if he was going to hassle first with the impossible parking around the Hall of Justice, which for twenty-some bucks a day would not get him appreciably closer to the courtroom than he was in his office, and then with the gauntlet of the TV cameras and Minicams. No, wrapped in his long heavy coat and wearing gloves, he would walk the twelve blocks carrying his twenty-pound briefcase and sneak in past at least most of the jackals through the back door by the jail.

  First though, there was the jail itself, and the pretrial meeting with his client. Over the months, he’d grown accustomed to seeing Catherine in the familiar orange jumpsuit that was her garb in the lockup, so this morning when she entered the “Passion Pit” in low heels, a stylish green skirt and complementary blouse, earrings, eye shadow and lipstick, he boosted himself off the table where he’d been sitting. He met her eyes and nodded in appreciation. “Okay, then,” he said, “that works.”

  The female guard who’d escorted Catherine from the changing room closed the door behind her. Now the client took a step or two into the room, toward him, and stopped. There was something in her stillness that struck him as a falsely brave front, but she summoned what passed for a smile. “You ever get tired of being a lawyer,” she said, “I think you’ve got a career in women’s fashion.”

  Hardy had pulled a bit of a break with the judge when she’d allowed Catherine the dignity of changing into normal clothes upstairs instead of in a holding cell next to the courtroom. Hardy had contacted the good husband, Will, and he’d sent over three boxes of clothes and underwear, none of which fit her anymore because she’d lost so much weight in jail. So Hardy had her take her measurements and write down her sizes, then had spent the better part of a day a few weeks before buying a wardrobe for her at Neiman Marcus.

  As it turned out, this straightforward and practical move had backfired in a number of ways. First off, Hardy really didn’t know all that much about women’s fashion, but his ex-wife, Jane Fowler, happened to still work in the field—she’d been a buyer at I. Magnin for years. The two weren’t exactly close anymore, but they had lunch together a couple of times a year just to keep up. When he asked if she would do him a favor and accompany him on the shopping expedition, she’d agreed.

  What happened next he might have guessed if he’d thought about it. But he really wasn’t sufficiently paranoid yet, and maybe never would be, to fully appreciate what appeared to be happening around this case. Several tabloid reporters shadowed him on this shopping trip. Not only did someone snap a picture of him holding up a sexy bra, but the article followed up with the news that Hardy had bought the clothes with the firm’s credit card, implying that he was paying for it. Although of course he’d just be listing the clothes in his regular bill to Will Hanover for his hours and expenses, the article made the purchase look suspect.

  And the icing on the cake was that Jane appeared behind him in the bra picture. The Romeo not just fooling around with his client, but now caught with his ex-wife. Frannie liked that part almost as much as the picture of her—wearing formless jogging clothes, with her hair in disarray and a somehow distracted and worried look on her face as she carried a couple of bags of groceries. The caption under that one: “Brave But Clueless.”

  Hardy shook his head to clear the memory. In front of him, Catherine did a little self-conscious pirouette. “I really look okay?”

  “Better than okay.”

  She sighed, then threw a second sigh at the ceiling. When she came back to him, she was blinking. “I’m not going to cry and ruin these eyes today.”

  “No. Don’t do that. That would be wrong.”

  Nixon’s famous line from the Watergate era brought a smile, enough to stem the immediate threat of tears. “It’s just,” she sighed, “I thought I’d never wear anything like this again.”

  “You’ll do that all the time, Catherine. You wait.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  With more conviction than he felt, Hardy nodded. “You didn’t do this. The jury won’t convict you. You’ll see. The system really does work.”

  “I want to believe that, but if that’s the case, I keep wondering how it got me to here.”

  Now Hardy feigned his own brave smile. “One little teeny tiny design flaw. A bad cop. This is the version where he gets edited out. You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “All right. I’ve got to remind you that the next time I see you, we’re in front of the jury. Some of them are going to think you and I have something going on, courtesy of our ever-vigilant media. So it’s important that you and I appear to have a professional distance. Frannie’s going to be out there. So is Will . . . no, don’t look like that. He’s got to be there. It’s critical that the jury sees that your husband is supporting you through all this, that in spite of everything, he must believe that you’re innocent.”

  “In spite of everything he’s said about me. And what he’s done.”

  Hardy nodded. “In spite of all that, he’s our witness. He’s got nothing to say about the crime itself. He’s your husband. They can’t make him testify against you.”

  “I hate him.”

  “I believe you’ve mentioned that, but it doesn’t matter. He’s out there, and it’s good for the jury to see him and see that you’re with him.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Right. But that doesn’t matter.”

  She closed her eyes and for a breath her structure seemed to crumble. Then she straightened up, opened her eyes, lifted her jaw and flashed a high-octane smile. “I’m innocent,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Correct. Let’s go get ’em. I’ll see you out there.”

  They’d been standing a foot apart and now Catherine stepped forward. “Dismas, I just want to say that I know how hard this has been for you. I mean personally. I never meant . . .”

  “It’s not you,” he said. “It’s all right.”

  She moved closer and leaned her head against his chest, the weight of it against him. Carefully, delicately, he put his arms around her and held her lightly. It was the first time they’d embraced. Catherine brought her arms around his back and tightened her hold on him. Again, her composure broke.

  He patted her back, gradually easing her away, kissing her chastely on the cheek. Without another word, he picked up his briefcase, went to the door and knocked for the guard, and was gone.

  The courtroom was Department 21 on the third floor of the Hall of Justice. Hardy had been in it on many occasions by now, but never failed to be disappointed by its lack of grandeur. More than twenty years ago, the city had installed extra security for the trial of Dan White, who’d shot Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in their offices at City Hall. Now heavy doors and bulletproof glass separated the gallery from the well of the courtroom in Department 21. Except for these amenities, the room might have been a typical classroom in a marginally funded school district.

  In front of the bar, Hardy sat at a plain blond library desk on the left-hand side of the nondescript, window-less, fluorescent-lit room. His counterpart with the prosecution—Rosen, with case inspector Dan Cuneo next to him—sat at an identical table about ten feet to his right. Beyond them was the varnished plywood jury box.
/>   They’d finished jury selection yesterday, and now the box was filled with four men and eight women; with three African Americans, two Asians, two Hispanics, five Caucasians; one dentist, one high school teacher, three housewives, a city employee, a computer repairperson, two salesmen, three between jobs. Hardy had been living with the endless calculations of the crapshoot of the makeup of the eventual panel for nine working days. Now here they were and he’d done all he could. He even felt pretty good about some of the people; but he still wished he could start again. But it was always like this— something you just couldn’t know or predict.

  He’d entered the courtroom through the back door, coming up the hallway by the judge’s chambers, to avoid the reporters and the general madness, and now at his table he ventured a half-turn to catch his wife’s eye. Frannie was in the first row, the first seat by the center aisle, next to their friend, the “CityTalk” columnist Jeff Elliot. Frannie didn’t often come to court with Hardy, but for his big trials she tried to be there for his opening and closing statements. He caught her eye and put his hand over his heart and patted it twice, the secret signal. She did the same.

  Behind her and Elliot, it was bedlam.

  Every one of the twelve rows, eight wooden, theater-style seats to a side, was completely filled, mostly with media people. Hardy also recognized not just a few people from his office who had come down to cheer him on, but several other attorneys from the building, as well as what appeared to be quite a sizable sampling of regular folks and trial junkies. And now, before the entrance of the judge, everyone was talking all at once.

  On Hardy’s side, Will Hanover sat with the other adult members of his extended family who would not be called as witnesses for the prosecution—Catherine’s two sisters-in-law and their husbands. Unbelievably, Hardy thought, given the testimony they’d supplied to Cuneo, Beth and Aaron, like Will, still considered themselves to be on Catherine’s side. Despite their comments in police reports to the contrary, none of them actually seemed to believe that Catherine was guilty. Yes, she’d known where Paul kept his gun. Yes, she’d been worried about the inheritance. Yes, she’d repeated many times that somebody would have to kill Paul and Missy. Either they didn’t believe in causality or they didn’t understand the gravity of their statements, but nonetheless, by their very presence on Catherine’s “side” of the gallery, they would be living and breathing testimony to the fact that they still cared about her—and in the great nebulous unknown that was the collective mind of the jury, this might not be a bad thing.

  Cuneo, of course, was turned around at the prosecutor’stable and sat jittering nonstop, talking to a couple of assistant DAs from upstairs in the front row, down for the show. But then suddenly the bailiff was standing up to the left of the judge’s utilitarian desk. “All rise. Department Twenty-One of the Superior Court of the State of California is now in session. Her Honor Judge Marian Braun presiding. Please turn off all cell phones and pagers, be seated and come to order.”

  Without any fanfare, Braun was seated almost before the bailiff had concluded his introduction. She scowled out at the gallery, as though surprised at its size, then faced the clerk and nodded. The clerk nodded back, then looked over to the second bailiff, who was standing by the back door to the courtroom, on Hardy’s right. They’d already called the case number and read the indictment for special circumstances double murder when they’d begun jury selection so long ago. So now, today, there was little of that earlier formality—the defendant merely needed to be in the courtroom so that she could face her accusers.

  The back door opened and Catherine Hanover appeared to a slight electric buzz from the gallery. The loss of the fifteen pounds hadn’t hurt her looks. Neither had the light makeup, the subtle lipstick, the tailored clothing. In the brassy fluorescence of the courtroom, she seemed to shine, and Hardy was not at all sure that this was a positive. Good looks could backfire. He glanced at the jury for reactions and suddenly wished there were at least eight men on it and four women, instead of the other way around. Or even twelve men, all of them older and self-made.

  During jury selection, he’d convinced himself that the women he’d accepted were of a traditional bent, and hence would be deeply suspicious of Missy D’Amiens and her unknown and thus arguably colorful and potentially dangerous past. On the other hand, he suddenly realized—and Catherine’s appearance today underscored this—that these same women might have a great deal of trouble identifying with this attractive woman whose husband’s six-figure income wasn’t enough to support her lifestyle. In the end, he’d gone along with impaneling all the women because women, at least the sort he hoped he had left on the jury, tended to believe that sexual harassment happened. But he shuddered inwardly now, suddenly afraid that he might have outright miscalculated.

  He tore his eyes away from the jury and brought them back to his client. He stood and pulled out the chair next to him for her, glad to see that she had apparently found her husband and in-laws in the gallery and acknowledged them.

  Then she was seated. Hardy whispered to her. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  The judge tapped her gavel to still the continuing buzz, then turned to the prosecution table. “Mr. Rosen, ready for the people?”

  Rosen got out of his chair. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Hardy?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “All right, Mr. Rosen, you may begin.”

  Chris Rosen was a professional trial attorney with nine years of experience and a specialization in arson cases. He’d prosecuted three homicides and a dozen arsons in that time, winning four of them outright and getting lesser convictions with substantial prison time on the others. So he could say with absolute truth that he’d never lost a case, which in this most liberal city was an enviable, almost unheard of, record. Maybe Rosen hadn’t always gotten a clear win, either, but Hardy knew the truth of the defense bias in San Francisco—indeed, it was one of the factors involved in this case for which he was most grateful—but this was cold comfort as he watched his young, good-looking opposite number rise with a quiet confidence and a friendly demeanor to match it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Good morning. We’re here today and for the next few days or weeks— let’s hope it won’t be too many weeks—to hear evidence about the murders of two people, Paul Hanover, a lawyer here in San Francisco, and his fiancée, Missy D’Amiens.” Hardy noticed that Rosen came as advertised—he was playing it smooth. He didn’t refer to the dead impersonally as “the deceased” or even “the victims.” Rather, they had been real, live people until they had been “murdered.” He continued to the jury in his serious, amiable voice. “On Wednesday, May the twelfth of last year, someone set a fire at the home that Mr. Hanover shared with Missy D’Amiens. Firemen coming to fight the blaze found the bodies of a man and woman, burned beyond recognition, in the foyer of the house. Wedged under one of the bodies was a gun. Both victims had been shot in the head. The evidence will show beyond a reasonable doubt that neither wound was self-inflicted. Neither victim killed the other and then him- or herself. These people were murdered in their home, and the murderer lit a fire in the hope of destroying the evidence that would connect him or her to the crime.”

  Rosen paused to collect himself, as these grisly and dramatic events would obviously upset the psyche of any reasonably sensitive person. Clearing his throat, excusing himself to the jurors “for just a moment,” he took a few steps over to his desk, where Cuneo pushed his glass of water to the front edge of the desk. Rosen took a sip, cleared his throat again and turned back to the jurors.

  “We will prove to you, ladies and gentlemen, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person who fired those shots into the heads of each of these victims was the defendant in this case, Mr. Hanover’s daughter-in-law, Catherine Hanover. She did it for a common and mundane reason—Mr. Hanover was going to change his will and name Missy D’Amiens his beneficiary. When he did that,
his inheritance of nearly fifteen million dollars would go to Missy, and the defendant would get no share of it.

  “On the very day that he died, according to the defendant’s own statement to police, Mr. Hanover told her that he was thinking of changing his will in favor of Missy before the wedding date, possibly as early as the following week. Spurred by this confession of his plans, the defendant resolved to kill Mr. Hanover before he could change his will.”

  Here Rosen turned and faced Catherine, his body language as well as his tone suggesting that it pained him to make these accusations against a fellow human being. But she had brought it on herself; he so wished that she hadn’t. He raised an almost reluctant hand until his arm was fully outstretched, his index finger wavering in controlled indignation. “And shoot him she did. At point-blank range, in the head. And shot Missy D’Amiens, too, because she’d had the bad fortune to come home and be in the house.”

  Recounting the tale was imposing a great burden on Rosen, and he needed another sip of water. Hardy thought this was overdoing the sensitivity a bit, and he was glad to see something about which he could— privately, at least—be critical. He knew that juries had a way of sniffing out a phony, tactical interruption, and they might resent it. Otherwise, Rosen was presenting a textbook opening statement—recounting the facts the prosecution had and would prove, without any editorializing. He had even avoided the potential minefield of Missy’s presence in the house—clearly the killer had intended the scene to look like a murder/suicide, which would have ended the investigation before it began. But Rosen didn’t accuse Catherine of that. He steered clear altogether. Hardy, with a grudging admiration, had to let him continue unchallenged.

  “The relevant events of this tragic day are relatively straightforward and really began around noon. We will prove to you that the defendant, Catherine Hanover, stopped at a Valero gas station on the corner of Oak and Webster, about three blocks from Paul Hanover’s home on Alamo Square. A worker at that gas station will testify that he saw the defendant get out of her car, a black Mercedes-Benz C240, and fill a portable container with gasoline and put it into her trunk.