The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  “Your driver ought to take you to and from work.”

  “My driver works the day shift. I come in too early and go home too late. I think I’ve mentioned this to you before.”

  “I probably didn’t pay attention. So what time?”

  Glitsky said six-thirty or so and Hardy told him it was his lucky day. He had his own meeting after close of business with Amy Wu about this double homicide she was handling.

  “That would be Andrew Bartlett,” Glitsky said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Doesn’t it get boring when you already know everything?” Hardy asked. “But I bet you haven’t heard that Boscacci’s filed him juvie.”

  “Sure he did. And next year I’m quarterback for the Forty-Niners.”

  “I’ll expect great tickets. But it’s true. Boscacci, I mean.”

  Silence. Then. “How did that happen?”

  “Wu is having him cop a guilty plea in exchange for juvenile sentencing.”

  “And Jackman agreed? Jackman who likes to say if you’re old enough to kill somebody, you’re an adult? That Jackman?”

  “The very same. And I’ve heard him say the same thing. But Wu says it’s a done deal.”

  “I’d make sure before I go real large telling anybody. Like the newspapers.”

  “Well, that’s what Wu and I are going to be talking about, so I’ll let you know.”

  4

  The name Youth Guidance Center, or YGC, had an avuncular ring to it, as though the juvenile detention facility were some kind of a counseling haven for wayward children, a rest stop filled with soft stuffed chairs and couches, pastel colors, New Age music in the background. And in reality, in simpler times when the place was new, it had pretty much been like that. Kids who stole hubcaps, or smoked a joint, or played hooky from school, would wind up at the YGC and receive counseling, maybe a day or so of lockup to impress upon them the serious consequences of breaking the law.

  Nowadays these relatively petty crimes never hit the radar of the police department. Juvenile felonies were commonly every bit as serious as crimes committed by adults, so in today’s San Francisco, the YGC’s primary function was, mostly, to lock up seriously dangerous criminals who happened to be under the age of eighteen. True, the center had a suicide-prevention watch. It also held a few dozen abandoned or abused children while they awaited suitable outplacement to foster homes. But in the main, “the cottages,” as the jail facility was called, housed murderers, rapists and a varied assortment of vandals, robbers, muggers and burglars. Most of the inmates were awaiting or in the middle of their respective trials or hearings, which occurred in courtrooms on the premises, just adjacent in the administrative wing.

  Wu hated being late. This morning between Boscacci and Hardy, she had also talked to Hal North, told him about her success with Boscacci, and scheduled what she thought might be a relatively lengthy appointment with the North family before the detention hearing—they had a lot they had to go over. She particularly wanted to hear more about the results of Hal’s discussions on the admission issue with his wife and stepson, about which he’d been disconcertedly vague, telling her that he and Linda hadn’t had as much time as he would have liked to talk because of an event they had to attend at the yacht club. Wu shouldn’t worry, though, he told her. He’d have it all worked out with Andrew and Linda by the time they got to court.

  This was Wu’s first formal court appearance at the YGC, and she had gotten lost on the way up, then caught in traffic. After the uphill half-jog from down the street where she’d managed to find a parking place, through the admin building and up the steep walk to the cottages, she fought to catch her breath for a minute just outside the gate in the razor-wire-topped Cyclone fence. A bailiff appeared in response to her ring and escorted her without a word into the building proper—a one-story structure that reminded her of a cross between a military barracks and an inner-city high school. Drab and institutional and depressing as hell, she thought.

  The bailiff led her to a pocked wooden door in the hallway and opened it. Sitting in an old-fashioned school desk in the opposite corner of the tiny room, next to the one outside window, Andrew Bartlett lifted a hand about an inch in a halfhearted greeting.

  “Here she is.” Hal stood to Wu’s right, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed and clearly unhappy. “At last.”

  “Hal.” Linda shot a frustrated look at her husband, then turned and smiled at Wu. “It’s all right. You’re here.”

  “I’m sorry. Terrrible traffic. I even gave myself an extra half hour,” she lied, then showed some more teeth, took a breath, turned to her client. “It’s good to see you again, Andrew. How are you holding up?”

  The boy dropped his head, lifted it, shrugged. “ ’kay.”

  Confident and prepared, Wu smiled at him. “Good,” she said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of here today.”

  Linda piped in. “You think we can do that?”

  “Oh, I think so.”

  “Really?” Hal asked.

  “Probably,” she said. “The hearing today is about whether they keep Andrew here until he’s sentenced, and I don’t see why they’ll need to do that.”

  “So what happens?” he asked. “What about bail?”

  Wu shook her head. “No. I thought I’d explained that. Juveniles don’t get bail. The judge either lets Andrew go home with you and Linda, or he orders him kept here—detained.”

  “Just like that?” Linda shot a hopeful glance at her son. “One way or the other.”

  “Yes. And in this case, look what we’ve got. Both parents here showing support and concern. A minor with no previous record who poses no risk of flight—you’ll both watch out for him, right?” She turned to Hal. “Then there’s your standing in the community, sir. Beyond that, if the judge wanted more assurance, I’m assuming you’d be willing to pay for whatever private security, even a twenty-four-hour-a-day guard, that the court could want to be sure Andrew stayed out of trouble.”

  “He wouldn’t need that,” Hal said.

  “No, I don’t think so either. So I think . . .”

  But Andrew finally spoke up, interrupting her. “What do you mean, ‘sentencing’? Don’t you mean ‘trial’?”

  Wu’s startled glance went from her client to his stepfather, back over to Linda. “That’s one of the other issues we’re going to have to discuss. I thought you might already have . . .”

  Hal cut her off. “I was waiting for you to get here . . .”

  “To what?” Andrew asked.

  “Just talk about the case.”

  “What about it?”

  “The evidence, your plea, like that.”

  “What do you mean, his plea?” Linda, her voice suddenly very sharp, backed up a step so she could face both Hal and Wu together. “His plea is not guilty. It has to be not guilty, right?”

  Wu drew a quick breath. “Well, as I said, there are a few legal issues . . .”

  Three sharp raps sounded on the door to the room and it immediately opened to the bailiff. “Time,” he said. “Let’s go. Can’t keep the judge waiting.” Then, perhaps sensing the tension in the room, he asked, “Everything all right in here?”

  “Fine,” Wu said. She turned to Linda and Andrew. “We’ll have all the time in the world to talk about everything after the hearing. It’ll all make sense, you’ll see.”

  Linda looked to Hal for support. “I hope so.”

  But the bailiff had his job to do. “Sorry, but you’ve all got to move out,” he said. “Hearing’s in ten minutes.” He looked at Andrew. “You’re going to want to hit the can first. And quick.”

  “Can’t he walk down with us?” Linda asked.

  “No, ma’am. He’s in custody. Rules.”

  Out on the pavement, walking down to the admin building, Wu broke the uncomfortable silence that had been holding since the three of them left the visitors’ room. “The main thing,” she said, “is that we’re all in agreement as to what’s best for And
rew.”

  “Hon,” Hal stopped and put a hand on her arm, “we went over all of this yesterday.”

  “I know, but I thought it was more hypothetical, all this about Andrew admitting something. But in there you both sounded like Andrew is going to confess and then go to prison. How can he do that?”

  Wu forced herself to look into Linda’s eyes, to feign a confidence she didn’t feel. “The fact is, we have to face that as an option. If we plead him out as a juvenile, then there’s no life without parole hanging over his head.”

  “But he’s not guilty,” Linda repeated. She turned to Hal. “We talked about this every time the inspectors came by with some new thing, didn’t we? And then this terrible lineup mistake . . .” The voice wore down. “He just didn’t do this, Hal. Don’t tell me you don’t believe that.”

  Wu was fairly certain that she knew what Hal believed, and stepped in to save him. “I don’t think we have to discuss the actual fact of whether he’s innocent or guilty right now, Mrs. North. The issue is that he saves the court the considerable time and expense of a trial if he admits. In return, the DA agrees he’s a juvenile and he avoids the LWOP.”

  “LWOP?” Linda asked. “What’s LWOP?”

  “Life without parole. That’s what he would get as an adult.”

  North let out a snort. “But it’s moot for now, anyway. He’s not charged as an adult today, right?”

  Linda turned to Wu. “He’s not?”

  “No, ma’am. That’s why we’re here, having this detention hearing. So we have a chance to let Andrew go home for a few days.”

  “We can get it all straightened out there,” Hal said, “at home. We’ll have plenty of time there.”

  Still unsure, Linda blew out in evident frustration. She looked back up to the cottages, wrapped in their razor-wire dressing, and her shoulders sank. “Okay,” she said with great weariness. “Let’s at least first get him out of here.”

  “That’s the plan.” Wu offered her a brave smile. “Really.”

  Wu sat at the defense table awaiting the judge’s entrance. In juvenile court proceedings, the district attorney was said to represent not the people, but the petitioner, and the person accused of a crime was not the defendant, but the minor. This nicety functioned to preserve the legal fiction that youthful felons were not lost causes. The district attorney’s role was not to prosecute miscreants, but rather to ask, or petition, the state to recommend a treatment for the minor that stood a chance to result in the child’s complete rehabilitation back into society. Even if that treatment was six or eight years locked up at the California Youth Authority, or CYA, it technically wasn’t the same thing as prison, although its inmates might be hard-pressed to elucidate the precise difference.

  To Wu’s left, at the petitioner’s table, sat her opposite number, Jason Brandt. Not yet thirty, Brandt already had four years as a prosecutor under his belt, all of it here at the YGC. Brandt had a full head of neatly combed dark brown hair and wore a well-cut dark gray suit with a white shirt and muted blue tie. Affable, quick-witted, charming even, he smiled a lot and made it a point to get along well with everyone, including the defense attorneys against whom he was pitted. Wu, herself, had long harbored a bit of a secret crush on him. They’d shared drinks more than once—although his reputation was that as soon as the gavel came down, he was nobody to play with.

  Suddenly Brandt lifted his head like an animal catching a scent. He caught Wu in the middle of her surreptitious glance at him and, nodding genially, went back to his papers. Wu made it a point to continue looking about the room, which was smaller than most of the courtrooms downtown at the Hall of Justice, but had the advantage of natural light pouring in from large windows set high in one wall.

  Beyond Brandt, a very young-looking uniformed bailiff sat talking to a middle-aged woman whom Wu presumed was the court recorder. There were no jurors—juvenile trials did not have juries—and yet a nice jury box held twelve perennially empty chairs. There was no one in the gallery on the prosecution side—for the protection of the minors involved, the public was not admitted into the courtroom.

  Wu turned around farther in her chair and gave a confident nod to Andrew’s parents, the sole occupants of Wu’s side of the gallery. Hal and Linda sat hip to hip, next to each other on the bench behind the bar rail. They held hands and seemed to be leaning into each other. Wu’s eyes went briefly to Hal, and he inclined his head an inch, then raised a finger and pointed to one side of the room, where the door had started to open. Wu turned at the sound and watched as the bailiff from the cottages ushered Andrew ahead of him into the bullpen.

  As Andrew shuffled toward her now, handcuffed in his shapeless gray prisoner’s clothes, he seemed to her utterly defeated. Stopping in front of her table, he raised his head to look at his mother. His eyes opened in a silent plea, lips tightened down over a frankly quaking jaw. She was afraid that in another moment he might start to cry, and to forestall that, she stood, came around her table and helped him get seated.

  “He doesn’t need to be handcuffed,” she said to the bailiff. “What’s your name?”

  “Nelson.” The bailiff kept his hand on Andrew’s shoulder and replied in some surprise. He played no formal role in this proceeding, and it was decidedly unusual for an attorney to speak to him for any reason.

  “Well, Officer Nelson, this young man doesn’t need to be handcuffed.”

  It didn’t matter to Nelson one way or the other. “That’s up to the judge,” he said. He did take his hand off Andrew, however, and stepped aside a few paces. He stood leaning against the front of the jury box, facing Wu, sublimely indifferent, which was almost more chilling to her than outright antagonism would have been.

  Wu reached over and patted Andrew’s arm. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

  He turned his face to her, then farther around, back to his mother again. “Mom,” he said, then couldn’t continue. Tears threatened to spill, but he blinked them back. Raw vulnerability took years off his age. The idea of this pathetic boy aiming a gun at a person and pulling a trigger not once but twice suddenly struck Wu for the first time as incongruous.

  Her heart went out to him, while at the same time she was a bit relieved to see the depth of his despair. He would probably have to hit bottom and see that there was no hope in pleading not guilty. After they got to talk and she showed him the evidence, he’d realize the futility of pretending he hadn’t done it. When the truth must be clear to him if he dared to look at it objectively. Andrew wasn’t stupid—she glanced over at him one last time, confident that he would come to accept that he had to admit if he wanted to save himself.

  Now in his early sixties, Judge W. Arvid Johnson had built a reputation as a reasonable and fair jurist with no particular ax to grind. Irreverently, secretly and universally called “Warvid” by the city’s legal community, Johnson took the bench today with little fanfare and no formal announcement by the bailiff or court recorder. Suddenly, it seemed, he had materialized up there, seated behind the slightly raised podium—white-haired and faintly jocular, he projected an amiable solidity.

  After a business-like nod to both counsel, he said, “All right” to no one in particular, pulled his glasses down to the end of his patrician nose and asked the probation officer to call the first case. When he’d done this, the officer listed those present in the courtroom, including the gallery, for the record, and then Judge Johnson began. “Mr. Brandt, comments on detention?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Brandt stood up behind his table. His voice sounded clear and relaxed in the small room. “Your honor, as this is a murder case, the petitioner requests that the minor be detained.”

  “He’s here under juvenile jurisdiction,” the judge said sharply. “The district attorney has decided not to file against him directly as an adult. I have to gather that that was done on purpose? Am I wrong?”

  “No, your honor, not at all.�
�� Brandt took the rebuke calmly, probably because he had a ready answer, and a good one. “We anticipate that Mr. Bartlett will admit this petition and receive the maximum commitment to the YA”—the Youth Authority. “He’ll still be confined here at YGC, of course, rather than downtown, for a brief period since he’s under eighteen, but we anticipate a quick disposition on two counts of first degree murder. So naturally the petitioner considers this a detention case.”

  Planted in her seat, Wu was surprised when Brandt thanked the judge and sat down. He’d said what he’d come here to say, short and sweet.

  Judge Johnson nodded and turned. “Ms. Wu?”

  Wu tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry. She knew that Brandt liked to keep his opponents off-balance and that one way to do this was to mess with their timing. But he’d still surprised her, catching her in mid-thought with such a bare-bones statement. Detained. End of story.

  “Ms. Wu,” Johnson repeated. “Would you care to make a reply?”

  She got to her feet. “I’m sorry, your honor. I was just . . .” She stopped herself, willed her mind clear and started again. “Your honor, before we go any further, I’d like to request that the handcuffs be removed from my client’s wrists.”

  “Request denied. I don’t believe this hearing will take enough time to make the exercise worthwhile. Detention has been requested by petitioner.” Johnson pulled his glasses down to the end of his nose and peered over them. “This is a double murder we’re talking about. We detain on murder cases.”

  “Yes, your honor, I understand that,” Wu said, “but Mr. Bartlett can by no stretch be considered a danger to the community . . .”

  Over at his table, Brandt cracked, “As long as we don’t give him back his gun.”

  Johnson whirled on him. “That’s enough of that, Mr. Brandt.”