The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  Andrew came to the door, escorted by a bailiff Wu didn’t recognize. He wasn’t handcuffed, though, and after he’d taken a step inside the small room, he stopped, his head turning quickly from side to side. “Where’s my mom?” he asked.

  “Not here.” Wu kept the explanation unadorned.

  He let out some sort of disaffected grunt, shook his head, shrugged, and slouched over to his desk, throwing an arm over the back of it. Wu was aware that the bailiff had closed the door, leaving them alone. She looked back down to Andrew, who was busy barely acknowledging her. He tossed the brown hair that hung over his forehead, swiped at it with his hand. When he’d been in the courtroom, he’d appeared to be truly vulnerable and harmless. Here Wu saw him in a different, perhaps a truer, light. He was an angry young adult—tall, well-proportioned, muscular. Traces of acne and a few days’ worth of stubble added to the picture.

  Wu asked about his head, if it hurt where he’d cracked it against the floor. He told her it was fine. Staring down at his fingers, he scratched at the desk, the noise like a mouse scampering in drywall. She continued to stare down and across at him until eventually he looked up, brushed back his forelock again, crossed his arms over his chest.

  They held each other’s gaze.

  “So?” he said.

  Wu wasn’t about to put herself through the same discussion she’d just had with his parents. Neither was she inclined to start out on the defensive, so she took a deep breath and came right back at him. “So here’s the thing, Andrew. With what just happened down there, you might be starting to get the picture that you’re in a world of hurt. This isn’t some situation where you pay the fine and do community service like last time and it’s all over. This is murder. This is as serious as it gets.”

  Andrew started to open his mouth, “But I didn’t—”

  She cut him off. “Do it? Not the point right now. I heard you say it in court. Then I heard it again from your mother just now. Maybe we’ll get to it sometime, what you did or didn’t do. For the moment, though, we need to talk about the evidence they’ve got. You know what discovery is?”

  “Yeah. It’s when somebody finds something for the first time, like Columbus and America, that kind of thing.”

  The little shithead was being wise with her. She flared, her voice harsh. “Yeah, that’s right. Good guess.” She stood up, grabbed her briefcase, went to the locked door and knocked on it. “Guard!”

  Andrew tipped his desk over getting out of it. “What are you doing?”

  She ignored him, knocked again. “Guard!”

  “Wait a minute!”

  This time the bailiff Cottrell came to the door, his face in the barred window. Wu said, “Open up,” and the sound of the key turning filled the room.

  “Where are you going? Wait a minute.”

  She whirled on him. “I don’t have a minute. Not for games. You don’t want to help me, fine, I’ll do it alone.”

  The guard stood waiting behind her, the door now ajar.

  “No, wait, please . . .”

  Wu motioned to the guard. The door closed. She turned around. “Get wise with me again, good-bye,” she said. She pulled a chair to the center table, hoisted her briefcase, sat down, stared at her client for a long moment. Eventually, he righted his own desk, squeezed into the seat, waited.

  An uneasy truce.

  “First,” she said, “let’s talk about what you’ve admitted and see where we are after that. You were in fact at Mr. Mooney’s the night it happened, practicing for a play. Then, sometime around nine o’clock, you left to walk around the neighborhood and memorize some lines you were having trouble with. You were gone for about a half hour.”

  “I was.”

  “Okay. Then when you got back, you saw what had happened and called nine one one.”

  “Right.”

  Wu came forward, elbows on the table between them. “But you didn’t wait for the police to come? Even though the dispatcher asked you to stay at the scene?”

  “I was right down the street.” He shifted where he sat, defensively, and Wu felt some gratification. At least Andrew knew that he’d done something wrong, that was certain. “I couldn’t handle waiting inside with both of them there.” His voice rose, more defensiveness. “What was I supposed to do? They were just . . . It didn’t matter. They weren’t going to move. Nothing changed in there.”

  Wu sat back with an exaggerated calm, crossed her own arms, leveled her eyes at him. “Okay, then. I think it’s time to talk about discovery. Leaving Columbus out of it.”

  Wu had her documents out on the table and she was popping Andrew pretty hard with some of the facts they contained. “So you say here in this interview that you and Laura were getting along great?”

  “Right.”

  Wu flipped to another page she’d marked. “Then how come, do you think, Laura’s mother says you were close to breaking up?”

  “I don’t know.” He squirmed. “Okay, maybe we were having some troubles, but nothing big.”

  “Having some troubles isn’t really the same as getting along great, though, is it?” She pressed him. “So you lied about it. Why didn’t you want the police to know?”

  “That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Then he added, “But I didn’t know they’d talked to Laura’s mom.”

  “That’s not why you lied, Andrew,” she said. “It’s why you thought you could get away with the lie.” She paused, then continued almost gently. “They talk to everybody, Andrew. Don’t you understand that yet? Everybody. Family, friends, friends of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers, students, teachers—you name it. And everybody’s got a story. When it doesn’t agree with yours, guess who looks bad?”

  But Andrew was shaking his head. “Still, no way they can prove I did this,” he said. “I haven’t told that many lies. Maybe some small ones.”

  “You mean like your car? You call that a small one?”

  He threw a glance at the ceiling, then leaned onto the back legs of his chair. Lifting then dropping his shoulders, he stared into emptiness.

  Wu found her place in the documents, read silently, then raised her eyes to his. “When the police arrived, Andrew, you told them you’d walked to the rehearsal that night. You remember that? You don’t call that a lie?”

  “I couldn’t have them go look at the car right then. I went down to it after I called them.”

  “You mean after your nine one one call?”

  “Yeah. To get away from the scene. I already told you I couldn’t stand being in the room with them.”

  Wu clasped her hands in front of her. “So instead of waiting just outside Mooney’s door for the police to arrive, you walked—what, a block or two?—back to your car.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And why, again, did you do that?”

  He moved his hair out of his eyes. “I already told you, I . . .”

  Bam! She slapped down hard on the table between them. “Cut the shit, Andrew! Right now!” She raised a finger and pointed it at him. “You went to the car to get rid of the gun and you lied to the cops because you didn’t want them to look where you’d hidden it. Isn’t that it?”

  He stared at her, openmouthed. Wu had truly frightened him now. For the truth was that she hadn’t read anywhere in discovery that Andrew had ever mentioned the gun that night. She had read nearly all of the eyewitness testimony and had come to the conclusion that he’d just gotten rid of it. And now his terrified visage verified that she’d guessed right.

  Andrew’s hand again went to his forehead. “How do you know about that?”

  “The same way the police do, Andrew. They know there was a gun left in the room after the shooting, and—”

  “But how could they know it?”

  “The upstairs neighbor told them.”

  “Who’s he? How did he know about any gun?”

  “His name’s Juan Salarco. Another witness the cops managed to talk to. Also, you might like to know, he�
��s the man who picked you out of the lineup.”

  “I don’t even know the guy.”

  She pulled some copied and stapled pages from one of her folders, held them up for him to see. “You want to read his statement to the police, or should I just give you the highlights?” But it wasn’t really a question and she didn’t wait for an answer. “He and his wife happened to hear the shots and right after they both saw you leave—”

  “They saw me leave? Right after the shots?”

  She nodded. “Both of ’em.”

  “Then they’re lying. They’ve got to be lying.”

  She had him running now, badly scared, and this served her purpose. Time to hit him again, make him begin to see how really bad it was. “Lying or not, the fact remains that Mr. Salarco did call nine one one from the phone at Mooney’s place”—she looked down at the pages—“exactly six minutes and forty seconds before you called from the same phone. And he later told Sergeant Taylor that while he was there making the emergency call, he saw a gun on the coffee table, which wasn’t there when the first police unit arrived.”

  Now she leaned forward, her eyes boring into his. “Do the math, Andrew. Only one person could have taken and hidden the gun, and that’s you. You took it to your car to get rid of it later, and that’s why you had to lie. And that’s not a small lie. It’s a whopper.”

  Ray Nelson escorted Andrew back to his cell, while Cottrell led Wu down the corridor in the other direction. At the door to the cabins, he held the door open for her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “That turn out all right?”

  She stopped in mild surprise.

  “You weren’t in there too long before you wanted out,” he said. “Sometimes that’s a bad sign.”

  “We just had to establish a few ground rules,” she said. “After that it went fine.”

  He was walking next to her on the short path that led down to the razor-wire gate. “He doesn’t want to admit, does he?”

  They’d come to the gate and she stopped and turned to face him. The walkway wasn’t very wide. She looked up into his face. “I can’t really discuss that, you know. I’m sorry.”

  “Sure. I understand.” He unlocked the gate, pulled it open for her. “That’s the hardest part, realizing you’re really in. You’re not getting out and going home with Mom and Dad.”

  “Yes, well . . .”

  He held up a hand, perhaps an apology, if one was needed, that he’d made her uncomfortable. “Just making conversation,” he said. “Have a nice day, Ms. . . . ?”

  Wu realized that she didn’t need to be such a hard-ass. She extended a hand, offered a smile. “I’m sorry, my mind’s still back in there. Amy Wu.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. Well, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

  “I’ll watch out for your boy.”

  She briefly met his eyes. “I’d appreciate that,” she said. “He might need it. Thank you.”

  6

  Am I interrupting?” Wu asked.

  Hardy looked up from the billing and utilization numbers report, one of several similar management tools that Norma gave him every week for his review and comments—good enough numbers, but numbers nevertheless. He jumped at the opportunity to leave them, closing the folder, motioning with his hand. “I was hoping you’d make it back today.”

  “Actually, I’ve been back awhile, hunkered down in my office.” Wu motioned behind her. “I waited until Attila abandoned her post out there.”

  “Probably a good idea.” He pushed his chair back from his desk, stood up and stretched, moved toward the bar counter. “You want some coffee, a beer, water, a rare old Bordeaux?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  “Just as well,” Hardy said. “I don’t have any rare old Bordeaux. David did, though. About this time of day, I’d often come down and he’d be halfway through a bottle of something outrageous.”

  “You miss him a lot, don’t you?”

  Hardy opened the refrigerator, then straightened up. He turned to her and nodded. “Yeah, I do.” Then, shrugging with some awkwardness, he reached down and grabbed a bottled water, turned back again. “So how’d it go?”

  Wu lowered herself onto the couch. “Not perfectly, I’m afraid. The judge—Johnson—detained him.”

  “No surprise there. It was murder. They always detain.”

  “I know, but I thought maybe with his age and no previous record, plus Hal North’s money if they asked him to pay for a private security guard for Andrew . . . Anyway, it doesn’t matter—I never even got the chance to argue that.” She paused again. “Jason Brandt—the prosecutor?—he came out swinging and got all histrionic. I guess it worked.”

  “How’d the clients take it? They fire you?”

  She broke a bare smile. “Not yet, but every call I got this afternoon when I got back here, I thought I’d throw up.”

  “Thanks for sharing.” But he grinned, softening it. “So what’s the status now?”

  “Well,” she said, “if there’s any silver lining, it’s a loud wake-up call for Andrew. The continued detention blew him away. He thought North would somehow take care of it like he always has. But when Andrew realized that wasn’t happening, it gave me the chance to acquaint him with a few hard truths.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the evidence.” Suddenly animated, Wu came forward on the couch. “It might have been the first time he actually realized why they arrested him. So I went through what little discovery I’d seen, which was a good start, since it placed him at the murder scene with the weapon, for example.”

  “He didn’t already know that?”

  She shook her head. “He thought he’d gotten rid of the gun without having mentioned it to anybody. Which in fact he did. But—bad luck—a witness saw it first. I surprised him with what he must have done, and sure enough, he admitted it. And this is to say nothing of five or six other evasions and outright lies, or the ID.”

  “He didn’t know he’d been ID’d?”

  “Not the specifics. Though by the time I left him I believe he was getting a clue.”

  Hardy sat back in his chair. “And how, again, is this a silver lining?”

  “Well, it is,” she said. “It really is.”

  “I want to believe you, but traditionally it’s not good news for the client when the DA’s got you nailed.”

  “It is this time.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because Andrew finally sees that they can put him away for life.”

  “And that’s good news? Maybe it’s semantics,” Hardy said. “The meaning of ‘good.’ ”

  “It is good. It means Andrew’s on his way to admitting.”

  “I would hope so, given the fact that you’ve already made a deal to that effect with Mr. Boscacci, haven’t you? I didn’t imagine that whole thing, did I? Boscacci filing juvie? All of that?” Hardy chewed on the inside of his cheek, added ruminatively, “Although I still can’t imagine why Boscacci went for it.”

  Wu curled a leg under herself on the couch. “Because it’s all about numbers. The public understands convictions. Jackman’s gearing up for reelection. If Andrew admits, Jackman gets not one, but two murder convictions on the books, instead of a long messy trial with a sympathetic teenage defendant and a wealthy stepfather with ties to the media. You would have done the same thing.”

  “Maybe, but that’s me. And I’m notoriously softhearted.”

  “Right. Anyway, I reminded Allan how hard it is to get convictions, San Francisco juries, blah, blah, blah. I told him it was possible North might even be monetarily grateful at some time in the future for saving his son the extra fifty years in the slammer, perhaps a slight exaggeration on my part.”

  “I hope slight,” Hardy said.

  Wu shrugged that away. “I don’t think Allan bought it anyway. But he did buy the fact that this was a young man’s crime of passion. By the time Andrew’s t
wenty-five, he’ll be a different person, rehabilitated by the juvenile system instead of hardened by the hard time. And so on.”

  “In other words, you snowed him.”

  “Maybe I did pile it on a little. But this is such a classically good move. It’s actually got some moral underpinnings.”

  “Alway a plus.” Hardy drank from his bottled water. He put the bottle down on his desk, took a deep breath, let it out. A longer silence settled in the space. The plantation shutters over the office windows weren’t drawn, and outside the shafts of early evening sun suddenly seemed glaringly bright in contrast to the muted office lighting. Finally Hardy spoke. “I bet you can guess what’s going through my mind.”

  Her face tight with tension, Wu nodded, but answered confidently enough. “I’ll be seeing Andrew first thing again tomorrow morning and tie it up tight. Believe me, he definitely got it by the time I left today. He sees it.”

  “He’ll admit?”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “You’re sure he will. But Allan Boscacci thinks he already has? Is that right?”

  “No. Not that he already has. Just that he will.”

  “But Boscacci’s acted on that. And he’ll expect you to do what you promised in return?”

  “And I will. Andrew will. He’ll see there’s no other real option. He already sees it, I’m sure.”

  “You’re sure.” Hardy cast his eyes at his ceiling, brought them down and ran a hand over his cheek. Now he looked over at his young associate. He knew that she was still suffering over the loss of her father, laboring under who knew what other pressures. The last thing Hardy wanted to do was kill her initiative or micromanage her cases to death, but for a moment he was tempted to have her call Boscacci right there from his office. Clear the air with the DA’s office, at least. Let the chief assistant know that the deal might not be as solid as he’d been led to believe. Later, privately, Hardy could even plead Wu’s pain and suffering to Boscacci, and this might somehow mitigate the consequences if things went wrong, which according to Murphy’s Law they must, since they could.