The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  “Thank you, Clarence. That’s nice of you to say.”

  “I mean it. May I ask you, though, did anything specific bring you back today?”

  She offered a slinky grin. “If credit is due, I’d have to give it to my oh-so-subtle partner.”

  “No offense to Mr. Farrell, but that would be Mr. Hardy?”

  She nodded. “You’ve got to love the guy, except when you hate him.”

  Jackman gave his own imitation of a smile. “Yes, I had a little of both experiences just this morning. I wonder if you could give him a message for me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Just tell him that it’s not about scratching backs. It’s about justice and that’s why Jamahl isn’t being charged with murder.”

  “Jamahl isn’t being charged with murder. Got it.”

  “It’s about justice, too. That’s important. That’s why he’s supporting my campaign.”

  “Jamahl and justice.”

  A wide grin. “And Jackman.”

  “Hand in glove,” Roake said. She gave the DA a chaste buss on the cheek. “I’m all over it,” she said. “See you next week.”

  30

  Outside the YGC courtroom after lunch, Hardy said hello to Ken Brolin, Andrew’s anger management psychologist, while he was in the hallway catching up with the Norths. Hal and Linda maintained their chilly demeanor, not saying a word to him as he introduced Brolin to Wu, explaining that she would be conducting Brolin’s interrogation on the second criterion when court was back in session.

  When the younger bailiff—Cottrell—called everyone in from the hallway, Hardy went out to his car, drove to the 280 freeway and headed south. He’d called Mike Mooney’s father during the lunch break. The sad old man had been home, but had no idea how to get in touch either with Terri or Catherine, Mooney’s ex-wives. He hadn’t heard from either of them in years and years. So Hardy had asked him if he was still in possession of his son’s effects. If the dissolution papers were among them, Hardy might be able to track the women down.

  As it happened, the reverend had his son’s papers and files stored in an empty room of the rectory until he could decide what to do with them. Until now, he hadn’t even had the heart to glance at all the stuff, but he said Hardy was welcome to go through it if he’d like, if it would help him identify Mike’s killer.

  Mooney stood and raised a hand in feeble greeting as Hardy came up the walk. He wore his black sports coat today, and had obviously been in his chair on the small front porch waiting.

  If anything, the house was sadder during the day, in the sunshine. Five painful minutes after he’d arrived, after he had assured Reverend Mooney that he would be welcome to join him if he’d like to take this opportunity to start going through Mike’s possessions, Hardy was alone in one of the unused back bedrooms of the sprawling house. Even with the blinds open and the overhead light on, it was a dim room, with a threadbare light-orange carpet. There was a dresser with a mirror over it, a made-up single bed, an empty pocket-door closet, a small bathroom. Three rows of four packing boxes were tucked into the corner under the windows.

  Hardy went to the nearest one, cut through the tape and lifted the cover. Clothes. Being thorough, he pulled out each item—folded shirts and pants—until he got to the bottom. He then repacked in reverse order. The entire effort look him less than two minutes. The second and third boxes also contained clothing items, although in the bottom of the third box, he found an envelope filled with snapshots—all students, some with Mooney and some alone—none even slightly objectionable or incriminating by themselves. Although Hardy, with his secret knowledge, found himself fighting a rising tide of anger.

  In the fourth box, he ran across his first paperwork, mostly scripts and what appeared to be students’ papers. He went through these with a little more care, hoping to find perhaps some correspondence that he’d be able to use. But Mooney had evidently been a careful and very private man, and there was no indication that he had any private life at all, much less, as Wu had called it, a “secret” one.

  By the time he’d found the marriage dissolution papers filed among some old tax filings and ancient bank statements in the seventh box, Hardy was tempted to keep looking through the rest, just to see if anything of import to his investigation would come to light. But he’d already thumbed through a thousand or more sheets of paper, including many, many letters (mostly to and from current and former students), and again, there had been no overt signs of impropriety. He decided that he’d gotten what he had come for. If it turned into a dead end and he needed more, he could always come back.

  For now, he had to keep moving forward. The way the 707 was going, they could be crucial to the fifth criterion—circumstances and gravity of the offense, the one he’d been planning to argue—by tomorrow. Judge Johnson had made it abundantly clear that neither alternative theories nor hearsay evidence were going to make the cut. Hardy would need demonstrable facts, both from Anna Salarco and from what, if anything, he might discover from talking with Mooney’s wives, and even then Johnson might not admit them.

  Reverend Mooney lent Hardy the telephone in his office—another room of sepia tones—and he called information to get the number of the law firm Blalock, Hewitt and Chance, and/or the attorney, Michelle Ossley, who had evidently handled both sides of Mike’s uncontested divorce from his first wife, Terri. Neither were listed in San Mateo, Santa Clara or San Francisco counties, so Hardy placed another call to his office and asked Phyllis to please check Martindale-Hubbell—a directory of attorneys—and have either Blalock, Hewitt, Chance or Ossley call him on his cellphone, if she could find them.

  He had better luck with Catherine’s attorney, from the second divorce—the spouses had used different lawyers this time. His name was Everett Washburn, a sole practitioner who practiced out of Redwood City, another fifteen miles south. His secretary informed Hardy that Mr. Washburn was expected to be in court until four or four-thirty, after which he would probably go out to the Broadway Tobacconists for drinks and a cigar, his invariable ritual after a court date, if he wasn’t going out with the client. Could she take his name and have Mr. Washburn get back to him tomorrow?

  “I’m in a bit more of a hurry than that, I’m afraid. I’m trying to find a witness for a murder hearing that’s in progress right now and I think she may have once been one of Mr. Washburn’s clients. Does he have a pager number?”

  “Yes, but he turns it off in court, and then leaves it off if it’s after five or if he’s out with clients. He thinks it’s rude to let cellphones interrupt important conversations. Also, he had a heart attack a year ago and won’t work anymore except during business hours.”

  Hardy was happy for him, but this wasn’t any help. “Maybe I could try it anyway?”

  “Certainly.” She also took his name and all of his phone numbers and would tell Mr. Washburn if he called, which was doubtful, that it was rather urgent. Hardy thanked her and sat at Reverend Mooney’s desk, staring at the motes flickering in the thin shafts of sunlight that penetrated the window slats. After a moment, and before he forgot to do it, he punched in the numbers for Washburn’s pager, left his own cell number as a callback.

  His watch said 3:40 as he swung onto 101 South, heading for the courthouse in Redwood City. Traffic was heavy, but the time passed quickly enough as he took phone calls from both Messrs. Blalock and Chance. Ten years ago, their firm had broken up after Hewitt had died, and though both remembered Michelle Ossley, neither of them had kept up with her. Chance thought he’d heard she left the law biz and moved to Florida to work with her new husband in a travel agency, but he wasn’t sure. Neither of them had ever heard of Ossley’s divorce clients, Mike and Terri Mooney.

  Hardy paid five dollars to park in the Redwood City Courthouse lot, only to discover that here at four-thirty, all the courtrooms were deserted and locked up. On the front steps, he saw two middle-aged black men in business suits talking together. Both of them had thick briefcases at thei
r feet; both projected an air of solidity.

  Hardy strolled over and excused then introduced himself. “Would either of you gentlemen know where I would find an Everett Washburn?” he said.

  Washburn was a different suit of clothes than Hardy’s friend and mentor David Freeman, but he was cut from the same cloth. No doubt pushing seventy, Washburn wore suspenders and seersucker rather than Freeman’s rack brown suit, but neither believed in shining their shoes, neither shaved with particular care (and Washburn sported an impressive gray walrus mustache), and both seemed to believe that the smoking of daily cigars with some kind of strong alcohol was the key to longevity, to say nothing of sex appeal.

  When Hardy found Washburn in the backroom of the Broadway Tobacconists—private humidified cigar vaults, bottles of single malts and rare cognacs on the low tables—he was holding court with a few well-dressed younger people of either sex. Next to him, an elegant and statuesque middle-aged black woman in a bright red dress smoked a cheroot and kept her free hand protectively on Washburn’s forearm.

  Reluctant to interrupt, Hardy watched and listened to him for a while through the thick, blue, fragrant smoke. Finally, and again Freeman-like, Washburn called the shot himself. Smiling around at the gathered group, whispering something to his attractive companion, he rose and walked directly up to Hardy. “If you’re looking for Everett Washburn, son, and by the way you’re standing here I gather you are, then you’ve found him.” He had a large watch on a fob chain that he consulted. “There’s barely five minutes left in the business day, and even if I didn’t have a beautiful woman waiting for me when I get free, I don’t work after that, so you’d better talk fast.”

  “I’m trying to locate Catherine Mooney. You represented her sixteen years ago in a divorce proceeding against her husband, Mike, who was killed a few months ago in San Francisco. I’m representing the suspect in that homicide, and Catherine may have some crucial information that could free my client.” This was a stretch, but Hardy didn’t care. “I have to talk to her as soon as I can.”

  Washburn’s expression showed nothing. He brought his cigar to his lips, squinted his eyes against the smoke. “You got a card with your cell number? You got your phone on you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s have ’em both.”

  Hardy dug out his wallet, extracted his business card, gave the man his cellphone.

  “Let’s go find ourselves a little more light.” He led the way out of the room, out of the store, stopped on the sidewalk outside and turned around to face Hardy. “You wait here.” He walked off ten or fifteen steps and Hardy watched as he first punched some numbers, then talked into the phone, then read from Hardy’s card, and finally closed the phone up. When he came back, he handed the phone back to him, pocketed the card in his shirt. “I like the dart on the card,” he said. “Nice touch.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If she wants to talk to you, she’ll call you. That’s how I left it.”

  Hardy knew that that was all he was going to get, and damned lucky at that. If Catherine Mooney had remarried and changed her name, which was not unlikely, Washburn wasn’t about to give it to him. Without the call, Hardy might never find her. “I appreciate it,” he said.

  Washburn waved the thanks away with his cigar. “Professional courtesy, Mr. Hardy. I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”

  “Could I ask you one more question?”

  A quick smile washed away the merest flash of impatience. “Certainly.”

  “In case I need to see her in person, would you recommend that I stay in the area, or go back up to the city?”

  “And which city would that be? Pace,” he said. “A joke. I’d stay nearby.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  Washburn checked his pocket watch again, nodded with satisfaction. “And with twenty seconds to spare, too. If I would have gone over, it would have cost you.”

  Now it was after six o’clock and Hardy brought his cup of espresso to the pay phone by the kitchen at Vino Santo Restaurant on Broadway, across the street from the tobacconists, about five blocks from the courthouse. He had his cellphone with him, of course, but he didn’t want to use it and risk missing Catherine if she called.

  “Hello,” Frannie said.

  “I’m assuming the kids must have put the phone in your bed, right? Which is how you’re able to answer it.”

  “Dismas, I’m fine.”

  “In other words, not in bed as the doctor—no, scratch that, two doctors have ordered.”

  He heard her sigh. “Did you call to yell at me? Because if you did, you can just call back in a minute and leave it on the machine.”

  “I’m not going to yell at you. I’m calling to say I’m probably not getting home anytime soon. I’m down in Redwood City, hoping to talk to a witness for Andrew Bartlett. Are you making dinner?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, our two darlings are cooking up something even as we speak. It smells delicious. What’s gotten into them, do you think? They’re being angels.”

  “They love their mother and want to take care of her, that’s all. Since, apparently, she won’t take care of herself.”

  “You didn’t talk to them?”

  “I talk to them all the time. It’s what a father ought to do.”

  “That and not nag the mother.”

  “Unless she asks for it.”

  “Well, whatever you said, thank you. It’s really made a difference.”

  “That’s good to hear. Really,” he said. Then added, “But you, don’t push it, okay? I don’t want to come home and have you on your back in bed.”

  She lowered her voice. “That’s the saddest thing. You always used to.”

  “Here’s a little secret,” he said. “I still do.”

  Hardy next reached Wu at the office, where she was getting ready for tomorrow. She told him that the Brolin testimony had gone all right. Judge Johnson had given her considerable leeway with the psychologist, who’d painted Andrew in the best possible light—a young man who didn’t need rehabilitation because he was essentially a good citizen already. As Hardy knew, they had also pulled Mr. Wagner from Sutro in, and he’d testified to Andrew’s basic goodness, his extracurricular activities, talent for writing and the arts in general. Again, there was nothing to rehabilitate. Brandt had not even bothered to cross-examine, and Wu had thought it was because he was prepared to give her these criteria. After all, he only had to win one of them. “But Mr. Brandt fights everything, I’m learning. He called his own witness. Glen Taylor, the inspector who’d arrested him?”

  “And what’d he say?”

  “Well, Brandt leads him up from the beginning of the investigation, his first suspicions about Andrew, the mounting evidence, right up to the arrest, then asks him if in all that time, did Andrew show the slightest amount of remorse for what he’d done.”

  “You objected, of course.”

  “Of course, and even got sustained, but he just rephrased. ‘Did Andrew at any time show any remorse about what had happened?’ And of course Taylor said no.”

  Hardy, at his table at Vino Santo, drew circles on his legal pad. There weren’t any notes to take or comments to make. This was pretty much pro forma police testimony in proceedings of this kind, and wasn’t particularly sophisticated or damning stuff. It sounded as though Wu had won her point.

  He wasn’t so sure, though, about the third criterion—the minor’s previous delinquent history. This both he and Wu had considered a slam dunk, since Andrew had no real record. They hadn’t even planned to call any witnesses, but would let that fact speak for itself. But again, the short lead time Andrew had demanded—aggravated by his suicide attempt—had left them unprepared and vulnerable to attack, and Brandt was ready for it. He called as witnesses two YGC counselors and another San Francisco police officer who had had occasion to meet with Andrew before this case. For while it was true that Andrew had never been “arrested or convicted,” it turned out that, as
Brandt phrased it, he had had “previous dealings with the police and youth authority.” The joyride.

  Wu had fought back with the standard argument that it hadn’t been a serious offense—he’d never been arrested or even formally charged—but Hardy thought it was bad luck to get surprised in court, and at the very least doubted if they had helped themselves on criterion number three.

  And worse, he knew that the problem with number three would impact criterion number four. Obviously, given Andrew’s presence in the courtroom and the fact that he was being charged with special circumstances murder argued more eloquently than mere words could against “the success of the juvenile court’s previous attempts to rehabilitate” him. Like all criminal lawyers, Hardy and Wu both knew that once a defendant began showing up in courtrooms, the cycle was more likely than not to go on repeating itself. From the court’s perspective, and although not legally accurate, this was really Andrew’s second offense. Johnson would be aware of the statistics—people who appeared before him twice most often managed a third; then, as adults, they would start accumulating the strikes that would eventually get to three and put them in jail for life.

  “I know we had no witnesses, but did you make any argument at all?” Hardy asked her.

  “I just reiterated that he’s got no record. There wasn’t any previous effort at rehab to be successful or not. I know it sounds bad, but we’ve got to win these last two on the merits.”

  Hardy hoped she was right. In a completely fair world, she would be, but Johnson had thus far shown himself to be so antagonistic that Hardy wasn’t sure how it would come out. It wasn’t impossible that he’d find against every one of the criteria as an object lesson for Wu to contemplate. And because no one could reasonably dispute his acceptance of the gravity criterion, Johnson would be immune from appeal on the other four. Rejection of any one of the criteria got Andrew into Superior Court as an adult, so the remaining four would be judicial largesse, a personal thumb to the nose.