The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

“Yes.”

  “Ballistics studies, matching samples of bullet slugs and so on?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Let me ask you this, then. Prior to reading this story, did you know that guns made in Israel were fingerprinted ballistically before they were sold, and that this information was embedded with the registration number of the weapon, so that any bullet fired from that gun anywhere in the world could be matched to its owner?”

  Huron smiled as though in appreciation of a bit of fascinating trivia. “No,” she said, “to tell you the truth, I didn’t know that. That’s an interesting fact.”

  “Yes, it is,” Brandt said, “and you, a sophisticated criminologist, didn’t know it.” He half-turned back to Wu and Hardy, came back to the judge, nodded genially. “I have no further questions.”

  The suddenness of it clearly surprised Wu, but Hardy thought it was a very effective jab, trumping Huron’s own undeniable sophistication with an even better example of Andrew’s. But he didn’t want to risk causing damage to Wu’s rhythm or confidence, so he just leaned back, crossed his arms, nodded as though he were enjoying himself.

  Wu stood and called her next witness, this one someone she had known from college—Padraig Harrington, Ph.D., a teacher at San Francisco State University. But just as Bailiff Cottrell got to the back door and opened it to call the witness, Brandt stood again. “Your honor, sidebar?”

  Judge Johnson adjusted his glasses, raised his voice to the back of the room, saying, “One minute, please, Dr. Harrington” and motioned counsel up to the bench. When they were all in front of him, Johnson said, “Yes, Mr. Brandt?”

  “Your honor, before we begin with this witness, I’d like to ask Ms. Wu what it is that Dr. Harrington is a professor of?”

  “I don’t see the relevance . . . ,” Wu began.

  Johnson cut her off. “I do. Answer the question.”

  “English Literature.”

  “English Literature?” Brandt raised his eyebrows, clearly a rehearsed gesture. “Your honor, with the court’s permission, I’d like to ask Ms. Wu for the general import and relevance of Dr. Harrington’s expected testimony.”

  “You’ll see when I ask him,” Wu retorted.

  “Not good enough,” Johnson said. “It’s a legitimate question. Answer it.” Johnson was being just nails on the bench and Hardy longed to raise some objection to protect Wu, but knew that anything he said now would only alienate the judge further, and hurt their client’s chances. He’d have to stand and take it.

  Wu swallowed, blinked, looked quickly to Hardy, then threw a glance at Brandt. “He’ll be talking about the nature of fiction and the degrees of similarity between an author and a character that the author has created. In other words, is a person capable of making up things that he’s incapable of actually doing?”

  Brandt fairly dripped derision. “Your honor, is there some science here that I’m missing? The petitioner is willing to stipulate that fiction authors make things up. If that’s the gist of Dr. Harrington’s testimony . . .”

  Wu interrupted. “He’s going to address specific elements in Mr. Bartlett’s story, your honor, as compared to elements in the actual crime.”

  “And this will demonstrate what, exactly?” the judge asked.

  “That even the degree of sophistication exhibited by the character in the story, minimal though it is, as my last witness demonstrated . . .”

  Brandt corrected her. “ . . . tried to demonstrate.”

  “. . . as my last witness demonstrated,” Wu repeated, “even that small degree of sophistication is less than that possessed by Mr. Bartlett.”

  “Or more,” Brandt said.

  Her stage whisper getting out of hand, Wu shot the question at Brandt. “What do you mean, more?”

  He turned directly to her. “I’m willing to accept it’s different. The author’s either more sophisticated or less. There’s no way to tell from what he wrote.”

  “Both of you, listen to me.” Johnson was a few inches out of his chair, leaning over the front of his bench. “You’ll both address your remarks to the court and the court only. I don’t want anything personal marring these proceedings. As to the point at issue, I agree with Mr. Brandt. Ms. Wu, given petitioner’s stipulation that fiction authors make things up, it’s this court’s ruling that we don’t need to hear from this witness.”

  “Thank you, your honor.” Brandt immediately bowed and turned back toward his seat.

  Wu stood in shock. “But . . .”

  Johnson snapped at her. “Put your offer on the record if you wish.”

  She returned to counsel table and then repeated for the court reporter what she had told the judge. When she finished, Johnson wrote something, then looked up. “Dr. Harrington,” he said, raising his voice to be heard in the gallery, “you’re dismissed. The court thanks you for your time.”

  Johnson had announced a twenty-minute morning recess before Wu would call her next witness. This one was testifying on Andrew’s potential for rehabilitation. Most of the rest of the courtroom had emptied out. Bailiff Nelson—Brandt’s “pussycat”—had wheeled Andrew off to go to the bathroom, while Bailiff Cottrell and the court recorder had disappeared through the door that led back toward the judge’s chambers. Brandt was just suddenly gone, as were the Norths, probably out into the main hallway. This left Wu and Hardy, at the defense table, alone.

  “His honor seems a little bit biased,” Hardy said.

  “Yeah, like Bill Gates is a little bit rich.”

  Hardy managed a small smile. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it, though. It’s going to come down to five, anyway.”

  “If that’s the case, we’re in trouble.”

  Hardy shrugged. “Maybe not.” He brought her up to date on the two major elements he’d unearthed since he’d last talked to her with the Norths last night at the hospital—Michael Mooney’s gayness and Anna Salarco’s failure to identify Andrew as the person who’d run from Mooney’s place just before Juan had discovered the bodies.

  Wu’s eyes lit up. “Will she testify?”

  “Maybe. She’s got some issues with her husband.” He explained the INS problem they faced. “So it’s not a slam dunk, but she called me on her own, which is a positive sign. The husband’s a good guy, but he’s afraid of getting deported. I can’t say I blame him.”

  “Can we do something to help them?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Turn them on to some good immigration attorneys? Something?”

  Hardy shook his head. “Maybe, but not until she testifies. I don’t want to get into the whole question of whether we’re suborning or buying her testimony by offering her some kind of immunity. In fact, I was going to attack her husband’s ID of Andrew on pretty much those grounds myself, except say it was the police promising to help him if he gave ’em Andrew. So I wouldn’t feel right about it. Afterwards, if she comes through, different story.”

  “But if she’ll say it actually wasn’t him . . .”

  “I know. But it’s more than that. Her husband’s on the record saying it was. He’ll have to admit he was wrong, and as of yesterday, that wasn’t happening. He’ll look like a fool and, maybe worse, he’ll look like he can’t control his woman. And as long as they’ve got his ID, they’ve got a case.”

  They both settled into their thoughts. Finally, Wu asked, “What about the gay thing?”

  “The one I’m not allowed to mention?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  Hardy blew out in frustration. “I’ve been wrestling with that all day. What am I supposed to do? I promised the kid.”

  “Against Andrew’s life?”

  “I know, I know. But the question I have is really, so what? If Andrew didn’t know Mooney was gay, then nothing changes. He’d still be just as jealous. Maybe I could run it up for a jury in the trial, but it’s weak. It’s not going to do it on its own. And without the kid’s testimony, it’s only hearsay anyway.”

>   “Could you get it somewhere else?”

  Hardy considered, drummed his fingers on the desk. “Even if I did,” he said slowly, “what does it get us? So Mooney was gay? Maybe Andrew’s homophobic and killed him for that?” He shook his head. “And meanwhile we’ve outed the boy and screwed up his dad. No, it just doesn’t work.”

  “Except it opens up another world about Mooney.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that everybody loved him, right? He was the world’s best teacher, and so on. But the truth is, nobody knew him. He had a secret life. It seems to me anything we could bring up that points that out has got to help Andrew. At the barest minimum, it might give us somewhere else to look for who killed him.”

  Hardy’s fingers stopped drumming. He suddenly sat up, put out his hand over hers. “The wives,” he said.

  “Whose wives?”

  “Mooney’s.”

  “He had wives?”

  Hardy nodded. “Two of them.” His ridiculous memory had somehow retained the names. “Terri and Catherine.”

  “Well. What about them?”

  “They would have had a hunch, wouldn’t you think?”

  The regular Tuesday lunch meeting at Lou the Greek’s was both a somber and an ill-attended affair. Jackman, of course, was there, but not presiding, since there wasn’t much of an assembly. Glitsky, having missed the last few of these luncheons because of scheduling conflicts, had decided on the heels of his involvement in these latest murder investigations that he was going to take a more proactive stance in defining the parameters of his job, and basically do what he wanted to do, pleading out of as many meetings as possible. He sat next to his wife. Gina Roake, like Glitsky a frequent absentee of late, was also at the table.

  But missing were Hardy, the “CityTalk” columnist Jeff Elliot, both city supervisors—Harlan Fisk and Kathy West—and, of course, Allan Boscacci. So instead of the big round table in the back that they usually filled, they had a booth for four under one of the alley-level windows.

  Instead of the usual—convivial gossip, personalities and politics—they talked about the Executioner, who had apparently claimed another victim last night, although the shooting hadn’t taken place in the city, and nobody investigating down in San Bruno had put together a possible connection until early this morning, when the police chief in that town had put in a call to Lanier and wondered if somebody from the city would like to come down and have a look.

  Lanier had driven down himself, accompanied by Sarah Evans, and they’d learned that Morris Tollman, an engineer with Amtrak, divorced, living alone in a small house by the Tanforan Park Shopping Center, had taken one shot to the head, point-blank, on his driveway as he was getting out of his car last night sometime between six and eight-thirty. Near sunset, a woman walking her dog had seen the body and called police. The local crime scene people had found a .9mm casing in the weeds beside the driveway, but no slug so far.

  On Glitsky’s prevailing theory, wild shot though it might be, Lanier, Evans and two of the local cops had gone door to door. The neighbors on both sides of Tollman had been home all evening, and nobody in either house—four adults and five children—had heard anything resembling a gunshot.

  That had been good enough to juice up Lanier, and he’d called Glitsky, who, grasping at straws, asked Lanier and Evans to try and talk to Tollman’s next of kin, if any, and see if he had a murder trial in his past. After that, he had called the ATF to try to light a fire under them. Then he had come back downtown, where, in response to the request he’d fired off after talking last night with Hardy, he’d already received by fax a long list of names from the California Department of Corrections, convicts who’d been released from California’s various jails and prisons in the three weeks or so since just before Elizabeth Cary’s murder.

  Since these people were in the computer, Glitsky assigned his General Work officers to look up the original case numbers that had been assigned to them, and then begin checking them against the hard files downstairs in the basement to see which of them, if any, Boscacci might have prosecuted. By the time Glitsky left for lunch at Lou’s, the two inspectors had identified thirty-one of the four hundred plus case numbers.

  “Which is why I’d like to get my hands on more bodies,” he was saying to Jackman.

  “He doesn’t mean dead bodies, either,” Treya said. “He means people to check the files.”

  Glitsky nodded. “I can’t ask homicide inspectors to do that, even my event number people. They’d mutiny, and I wouldn’t blame them. Even the GW guys are grumbling.”

  “I’d imagine so,” Jackman said.

  “I’ve got a call in to the mayor now,” Glitsky said. “If he sees ‘serial killer’ here, which I’m starting to, he’ll give me some more staff, but even so, it’s a monster of a job. I don’t think the FBI could do it in a month. But maybe hizzoner can also persuade the ATF to get off their duffs. Although that’s just one more list to check out.”

  Jackman lifted a peanut with his chopsticks and looked at it skeptically. The special today was Kung Pao Moussaka—not one of Chui’s all-time triumphs—and everyone at the table was picking at their food. “Are you sure it’s even worth the time, Abe?”

  Glitsky knew what Jackman meant. He sagged a bit. “No. I don’t.”

  “On the other hand,” Roake said, “if it’s the only thing you have to go on, what do you have to lose?”

  “That’s my feeling.” Glitsky sipped some tea. “Whatever else he is, this guy knows what he’s doing. I don’t believe somebody’s paying him to hit these people, and he’s not picking them at random.”

  “Are you even sure of that?” Jackman asked.

  Glitsky had to shake his head. “At this point, Clarence, I’m not sure it’s Tuesday.”

  “And no hint about Allan, either, I assume.”

  Treya answered for her husband. “Abe sent out Inspector Belou this morning to talk again to Edie.” Boscacci’s widow.

  “Meaning no leads on anything in his professional life?” Jackman asked. “Any of his active cases?”

  “He didn’t really have any, Clarence, as you know better than anybody. There might be something on the home front Edie couldn’t remember with the initial shock. But I’m not holding out much hope there, either.”

  “So you really think Allan might have been shot by this Executioner, too?” Roake asked.

  “No. I can’t say I’m all the way to thinking it, Gina. I’m really just back where we were,” Glitsky said. “It’s the only place I’ve got to look. What I’m really hoping is that this guy last night has got a huge extended family, who’ll tell us that a long time ago he invested in Wong’s produce and dated Edith Montrose and bought a used car from Elizabeth Cary, and they all had the same banker.”

  “Who is a gun collector,” Treya added.

  “Right,” Glitsky said. “That’d be even better.”

  “But you doubt it?” Roake said.

  Glitsky nodded. “Seriously.”

  Everyone stopped and looked up as Marcel Lanier suddenly appeared at Glitsky’s elbow. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt. Abe. I was just up at your office.”

  Lanier’s face was mottled with emotion. His breath came as though he’d been running. “I’m just back up from San Bruno,” he said. “I begged crime scene down there to come back and look again and they found the slug.”

  “Tollman’s?”

  “Yeah. In the roof of a garage a couple of houses down. Given the circumstances, they let us run it up to our lab. . . ,” the San Francisco Crime Lab was halfway down to San Bruno anyway, “where they rushed it. You’ll never guess.”

  Glitsky was already up. “I already did.”

  “Right. Same gun, no question. And Abe? All silenced. Four of the five slugs have a scuff mark. Same place on the bullet. Microscopically identical. A silencer, and the same one. And guess what else? Tollman? His daughter said he was on a murder jury one time.”

&nb
sp; “Where? San Bruno?”

  “She didn’t know. But they lived in the city until she was five.”

  “So it might have been here. What about the ex-wife? She’d know.”

  “She might. Except she’s on a mission in India.”

  “How the gods favor the good.” Glitsky put his hands to his face and pulled them down over it. He looked back at the table. “This is it,” he said to no one and everyone. Then, to Jackman. “I need more people, Clarence. Yesterday.”

  Jackman nodded. “I’ll give you some clerks and every deputy I can spare.”

  “Guys.” The men looked back at Treya. “Forgive me for speaking up, but I’d be careful about that.” She spoke to her husband. “I know you need people, Abe, but you don’t need this to make the news, do you?”

  “What?” he said. “You’re saying the media isn’t my friend?”

  “She’s right,” Lanier said. “It gets out, it tells him we know.”

  “Good,” Jackman said. “Then maybe he stops.”

  “Or maybe he hurries up to finish,” Glitsky said.

  “Call me slow,” Roake said, “but what is it that we know, exactly? What’s he going to hurry to finish?”

  By now they were all out of the booth, standing in a knot. Glitsky leaned in to Roake. “He’s recently gotten out of prison and he’s killing the people that put him away. He’s already killed the prosecutor and I’m guessing four of the jurors. That leaves eight more, and maybe the judge, whoever that was.”

  “The good news,” Jackman said, “is if you’re right, it’s a finite list of suspects. Big, but finite. Maybe among your four hundred, Abe.”

  “That’s where I’m starting, for sure,” Glitsky said.

  “If it’s not on that list, though,” Roake said, “what are you looking at?”

  Glitsky thought of the cavernous basement to the Hall of Justice, nearly a city block square, packed to the fifteen-foot ceiling with file boxes of ancient transcripts. “A lot more victims,” he said.

  Jackman and Roake walked together across Bryant Street. They were about to say good-bye when the DA put his hand on Roake’s arm and said, “I’m glad to see you back down here, Gina. I was worried about you. Although, of course, I understood. We all miss David, though never as much as you do, I’m sure.”