The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  Nightcap. A harmless little old nightcap.

  Maybe he’d have it now—a couple of fingers of gin and peppermint schnapps over crushed ice. It would help him sleep, finally. And God knew he had to get some sleep if he was going to be any good at work tomorrow. Sleep had to be the first priority. If he had one short one now, the only effect would be sleep. He’d wake up refreshed, strong for whatever challenges the day might bring.

  And with Boscacci’s murder, there would be lots of them.

  But something kept him from opening the freezer, from reaching for the crushed ice.

  They kept a three-legged stool in the kitchen because Frannie needed it to reach the higher shelves, and suddenly, the refrigerator still open, Hardy found himself sitting on it, leaning over, elbows on his knees.

  In the dimness—stove light, refrigerator light—he turned his hands over, looked at his palms. There was no shake. Closing his eyes, he dropped his head, sighed audibly.

  “Sir? Are you all right?” Wu was a spectral shape in the doorway. Barefoot, wrapped in the comforter they’d provided, she came into the light.

  He looked up, raised his hand in greeting. “I’m trying to make the critical midnight snack decision. Could you eat something?”

  “Do you have some aspirin first?”

  “Sure.” Hardy reached into the top drawer right next to the refrigerator, where he’d taken to storing the bottle so he could get it with his coffee, so he wouldn’t have to walk the extra steps to the bathroom. “How many you need?”

  “What’s the legal limit?” she asked.

  “I’m impressed, sir. I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “I can’t, really. If it’s not in that one black pan, I’m hopeless. But that pan, I know all its secrets. I treasure it, for what that’s worth. No soap, just salt and a wipe. Nothing ever sticks. It’s magic.”

  Hardy had grabbed one of his daughter’s bathrobes and Wu had put it on to come and eat. Now they sat kitty-corner to each other at the dining room table, splitting a very runny four-egg omelette of fried salami, artichoke hearts, cheddar cheese. Sourdough bread. They both had cups of hot Ovaltine.

  Hardy had closed the connecting door to the kitchen so his family wouldn’t wake up, but still he whispered. “And you can drop the ‘sir’ if you want. I realize that my august personage is intimidating, but somewhere beneath the awesome authority figure beats what Mr. Buffett calls a schoolboy heart.”

  “Warren Buffett talks about a schoolboy heart?”

  Hardy shook his head. “No. But Jimmy does.”

  Wu couldn’t quite get to a smile. “I’ve got a searing headache and you’ve got a schoolboy heart. Want to trade?”

  “No, thanks. But they can remain our little secrets.” Hardy tore a piece of the bread and sopped up some melted cheese. “Anyway, that pan. My mother got it from her mother and gave it to me when I went away to college.”

  “I bet she missed it.”

  “Not for long.” Hardy pushed some egg around. “My folks both died my freshman year of college. Plane crash.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, it was a long time ago. I’m over it by now.”

  Wu squeezed her eyes shut, fighting her hangover, then put down her fork. “You are? Really?”

  “Pretty much. Sometimes I have to concentrate to remember them at all. Even what they looked like. And their voices, forget it. That’s what I wish the most I had some memory for, their voices. But I can’t hear them.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you how long that took? Before you felt, I don’t know, normal again?”

  “It was a while.” He met her eyes. “Certainly more than four months.”

  Wu blinked a couple of times. “I keep wishing I’d done something more, somehow. Something my dad would have approved of.”

  “He didn’t approve of your being a lawyer?”

  “I don’t know. More, I think, he didn’t approve of how I lived. You know?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “I mean, being almost thirty, not married, no kids. Oh God, I hurt.” She pressed her hands up against her temples. “And the great irony is that one of the reasons I stayed in school and became a lawyer was to make him happy. Even if he didn’t like me, I could always be a good student, and I thought that pleased him, so I kept at it. But it really didn’t matter.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t like you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was too much like my mom. She left him—left us both, really—when I was thirteen. Another guy she divorced a year later. Then a few after that.” She fell silent, pushed again at her temples, drew a pained breath.

  “Eat some eggs,” Hardy said. “Nothing’s worse than cold eggs. Is your mom still around?”

  Wu took a bite, shook her head. “No. She got emphysema. She died about ten years ago, but really she hadn’t been in the picture for so long, her dying wasn’t so hard for me, even though that sounds bad. But my dad . . .” She swallowed, took another bite, drank some chocolate. “Oh, man,” she said.

  Hardy waited while she ate and gathered some strength.

  “Anyway, my dad. He regretted that he didn’t marry a pure Chinese. Instead, he marries Mom, you know, a black woman, and his family just hates her, and then I come along and look like her, at least color-wise . . .” She stopped. “And it wasn’t like he didn’t try to be nice to me, but you can tell if your parent doesn’t like you, you really can. Nothing you do is right. And I guess I lost patience with trying all the time and getting nothing back in return and so then I got mad at him, and then . . .” She swiped a finger under one eye. “And then he dies before you can fix it up.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to dump on you.”

  “It’s all right. I knew something was bothering you. I thought it might be something like this. You lose your dad, it’s not trivial. Then with the extra baggage. Have you thought about maybe taking some time off, letting some of this settle out?”

  “From work? God, no. Work’s the thing that’s keeping me sane.”

  “Because it keeps you so busy you don’t have to deal with the other personal stuff?”

  She started to say something, then pushed back from the table, pulled the robe close around her. She dropped her head, shook it slowly side to side, side to side.

  They remained at the dining room table, the dishes pushed to one side. Second cups of Ovaltine, now forgotten, had grown tepid in front of them.

  Hardy didn’t want to add to Wu’s pain right now by criticizing her performance in the Bartlett case, but she introduced the topic herself, laying it all out in a torrent of words. She had loved the idea of finessing Brandt, of snookering Boscacci. These arrogant men would see that she was good, could hold her own in a fair fight. Take that, Dad! It should have all worked out.

  “Still, you really should have nailed down Andrew’s plea before you even tried to make any kind of deal with Allan.”

  “I realize that now. I just got caught up in the rush of it. If I could do it. I couldn’t believe that once Andrew saw the evidence, he wouldn’t realize he had to lose.”

  “Except if it wasn’t about the evidence, to him.”

  “But it’s always about the evidence!”

  “No. Not always. O.J. wasn’t about the evidence. Patty Hearst. Mark Dooher—you remember Wes’s famous case? Ask him if it was about the evidence. No. It was about the passion and commitment of the defense. The vision thing.”

  “But you don’t need that if you already have an out. And Andrew had an out.”

  “You call that an out? An eight-year top?”

  Her arms crossed, she sat back, defiant. “The other alternatives were too risky. I still believe it’s madness to let him go to trial.”

  “Not if he didn’t do it.”

  Wu closed her eyes, pushed on the lids with her fingers. “Please, sir. Not you, too. It’s not whether he did anything. That’s Law I-A. It’s whether they can prove it. And the
y probably can, because he probably did.”

  Hardy jumped on that. “Aha. You said ‘probably.’ At last. Doubt enters.”

  Wu shook her head. “Not really. Not reasonable doubt, anyway. Not enough doubt to gamble his life away.”

  “Which brings us back full circle. All right,” Hardy said. “Let’s even go on the assumption that he’s guilty. What else do you know about him? I mean, personally.”

  “With all respect, who cares? It’s not who he is, it’s what he did.”

  “No. Sometimes it’s who he is. Who the jury sees. If you can make them believe he’s somebody who literally wouldn’t hurt a fly, they’ll never believe he killed a human being. Or if you gave him a compelling enough reason . . .”

  “It’s jealousy, sir. Diz. I mean, he probably thought it was a good enough reason at the time, but no jury in the world, not even in San Francisco, is going to buy it enough to let him off. You don’t get to kill people you’re jealous of.”

  “All right. How about his home life?”

  “He’s a spoiled rich kid. Not a good sell.”

  “But abandoned by his father long ago, right? And pissed about it. Haven’t I heard about him needing anger management therapy? Maybe he did it, but it was literally out of his power to control. You yourself got abandoned by your mother. You can certainly sell a jury on the rage.” Hardy saw his cup of chocolate, lifted it and took a drink, made a face. “Look at Dan White. He sneaks into city hall and shoots the mayor and a supervisor dead one fine afternoon, and a jury of his peers basically lets him walk because he ate too many Twinkies that morning.”

  “He didn’t walk.”

  “No. But he got less than the eight years Andrew didn’t want to give away. My point is, now you’re in it. You’ve got an opportunity with the seven-oh-seven to get a preview of what the witnesses will say at the trial . . .”

  She stopped him. “How do I do that? That hearing’s not about evidence. It’s . . .”

  “Wu. Listen to me. It’s about whatever you can make it about. You’re entitled to call witnesses about the boy’s amenability to the juvenile system. The judge isn’t going to stop you from calling just about anybody you want. He doesn’t want to make a mistake and give you that issue on appeal. So you call Andrew’s best friend. You call the guy who identified him in the lineup. You call his school principal, his counselor, his parents, his sister. You call his shrink. You’re just trying to find out what happened. Not just that night, but to Andrew. You don’t know what happened that night. Andrew doesn’t know what happened. He wasn’t there for the murder! How could he know? Hell, he called nine one one. Why would he do that?” Hardy sat back himself, crossed his own arms, dared a smile. “At the risk of sounding like David Freeman, you can actually have fun with this.”

  He came forward, intent now. “But you’ve got to commit, Wu. Whether or not he actually did it, your job is to get him off, any legal way you can. If he’d have copped the plea, okay then, you got him a deal he could live with. But he didn’t. He couldn’t live with it. Have you asked yourself why that might have been?”

  “He’s got to think he can get off.”

  “And why, looking at all the evidence arrayed against him, would he think that? Is he stupid? Does he think a jury won’t convict him somehow?”

  “No. I don’t think he’s stupid.”

  “Well? Could it be that he believes the system will work because he’s innocent? I mean, is that even a possibility?”

  “If it is, then he’s a very unlucky guy.”

  “Okay. And if he’s unlucky, what does that mean?”

  She frowned, shrugged. “I give up, what?”

  “It means someone else killed these victims.”

  She rolled her eyes. “The famous other dude. But—”

  “Don’t say it. It doesn’t have to be a real person. It just has to be a believable story that a jury can take as an alternative. Let’s say the teacher, what’s his name?”

  “Mooney.”

  “Okay, Mooney had another girlfriend before Andrew’s, Laura is it?”

  “Yes, Laura.”

  “Right. So this other girlfriend might have been jealous, too. As jealous as Andrew was. And maybe she also told a friend of hers. And, lo and behold, her father also owns a gun, and she had no alibi that night.” Wu started to reply, but Hardy held up a hand. “I’m not saying there’s any of this. But there’s something out there somewhere, I guarantee it. There’s always something.” He paused, looked directly into her face. “At any rate, Wu, that’s what I’m going to be looking for.”

  It took her a minute for the message to sink in, but then Wu sat up straight. “You? What do you mean, you?”

  “Me. Your boss. I’m going to sit second chair with you on this.”

  “But . . .”

  “No. No ‘but,’ I’m afraid.”

  Her mouth hung open for an instant. She swallowed hard, looked down then up. “If you don’t think I can do the job, sir, then you might as well fire me.”

  “No. Although honestly, we considered it. You realize that nearly every decision you’ve made with this client from the beginning has been dead wrong, don’t you? That you’ve compromised the firm’s reputation to a significant degree?”

  Unable to deny it, she could only nod.

  He let her live with the harsh reality for a minute, then softened it somewhat. “But everyone makes mistakes, Amy. Everyone. And we don’t want the firm to lose you. Beyond that, on a personal note, I’ve got to bear my own share of the blame for where this has all gotten to. I didn’t do my job.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Supervising you. Advising against your deal right from the first minute I heard about it. Letting you go ahead afterwards. You want more? I’ve got ’em, believe me. But now we’ve got an opportunity to right those wrongs, both of us.” He leaned in toward her. “Listen, by turning down the plea, Andrew basically bet us that he didn’t do it. Whether or not we believe him, the firm signed on to keep the DA from proving he did. I still like to think that we can get this kid off.”

  “You and me, together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get him off completely?”

  “Maybe even that. It happens sometimes. You prepare the seven-oh-seven hearing on the kind of person Andrew is, whether he was temporarily insane or had a lousy childhood or organic brain damage from braces that didn’t fit right. Or if he’s got uncontrollable rage that should put him in a program instead of jail. Me, I try to find a good alternative story. Time the trial comes around, we’ve already seen the DA’s case at the hearing, so we choose the best option and run with it.”

  “So he goes to trial after all? I was hoping there was some chance with the seven-oh-seven that I could at least keep him down as a juvenile.”

  “Not likely,” Hardy said. “Murder one with specials goes to adult court every time.”

  “Well, then, why wouldn’t every murder go adult?”

  “Murder one does. Some homicides don’t, but they’ve got to be really close to an accident, or a retarded kid, or an abused kid who kills his dad, something like those. A righteous one-eighty-seven”—the code section for first degree murder—“the kid goes up, I don’t care if he’s fourteen years old.”

  “So why are they having this hearing in the first place, if the outcome is foreordained?”

  Hardy broke a sad smile. “Because you made them, Wu. It might not have been your original plan, but you made them.”

  13

  Before they’d even come close to removing the body, the city’s power elite had descended upon the All-Day Lot—besides Glitsky, his boss and his underling, Police Chief Frank Batiste and Homicide Lieutenant Marcel Lanier appeared within fifteen minutes of each other. Of course Clarence Jackman needed to be on hand—the victim, after all, had been his chief deputy. Even a tuxedo-clad Mayor Washington himself, called from whatever party he’d been attending, showed up in his limo.

  Everyone
agreed that this was no ordinary homicide—the tendrils of Boscacci’s career extended near and far in half a dozen directions. Over the course of his life, he’d either personally or administratively been involved with the prosecution of a wide range of wrongdoers—gang members, white-collar criminals and drug dealers; scam artists, rapists and murderers. But he’d also been extremely active in the city’s hyperactive and often acrimonious labor negotiations. Politically, he had been slated to run Jackman’s next campaign, and his abrasive, no-nonsense style had not enamored him to any of the DA’s six or eight challengers.

  By the time all these heavyweights were ready to go home, they’d unanimously agreed to assign an event number to the investigation. The police department, like all city departments, had a budget and was expected to stay within it. But when something extraordinary happened—an earthquake or a papal visit, say, the mayor would agree that the event would get a number, and extraordinary expenses would come from the General Fund. Practically, this provided nearly limitless funds to allow the work to proceed. Inspectors wouldn’t have to worry about their overtime; the crime lab could run any sophisticated tests it needed beyond the routine; the whole apparatus—for a welcome change—working in unison toward a common goal. Abe Glitsky, not only as deputy chief of inspectors, but as a former head of homicide, was the logical choice to take point.

  Now, before the building had come alive, before any other staff had come in, Glitsky sat in his office, door closed, with Jeff Elliot, the influential writer of the “CityTalk” column for the Chronicle. Elliot and Glitsky were both members of Jackman’s informal kitchen cabinet, and had a lengthy and decent history between them. Not exactly close personal friends, they nevertheless got along about as well as a cop and a reporter could.

  Maybe part of that was because, in spite of Glitsky’s hatred of the reporter’s basic prying function, he couldn’t help but admire Elliot’s essential bravery in the face of his ongoing struggle with multiple sclerosis. The bearded columnist lived and worked without reference to his wheelchair, his crutches, his specially designed car so he could get around. There was no hint of victimhood about Elliot, who had more claim to it than most. He was a true mensch, and Glitsky respected him.