Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  ‘A few months. He died in June and he joined in, when, November or December?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so. Around there.’

  ‘And did he come into the club every day?’

  ‘Well, we have two locations, you know, downtown and the golf course, so I couldn’t speak for both. But as to downtown, I’d say no, perhaps once a month.’

  ‘Six times?’

  Shields lifted his shoulders. ‘Let’s say between five and ten. I didn’t count.’ He smiled affably. ‘It’s not like we keep tabs on members.’

  Hardy turned friendly. ‘Of course not. The times Mr Nash came in downtown, did he come in for lunch or dinner, or to work out, or what?’

  ‘Mostly I’d say lunch, although that’s just an impression.’

  ‘All right. Well, let me ask you this. Did you ever see Mr Nash having lunch with Mr Fowler?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you recall ever seeing Mr Nash and Mr Fowler in the club having lunch at the same time?’

  ‘No, not specifically.’

  ‘Not specifically? Do you mean you might have and you don’t remember? You just have an impression?’

  ‘No… I mean I didn’t see them together or at the same time.’ He glanced at the jury, showing signs of nerves. ‘It was just a figure of speech.’

  ‘Of course. How about sports? Squash, golf? To your knowledge, did Mr Nash play either of these with Mr Fowler?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’

  ‘Well, isn’t it a fact, Mr Shields, that the prosecution here asked you to check your reservations cards for both the golf course out by the ocean and the courts at the downtown location — tennis and squash — to see if Mr Nash and Mr Fowler had reserved time together?’

  Shields frowned. Apparently this smacked of keeping tabs on the members. Even if one of them was on trial for murder, members were presumed to be gentlemen and were not to be checked up on. ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And did you do that?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I did that.’

  ‘And did you find any record that Mr Nash had ever played any of these sports with Mr Fowler? Or even in an approximate time span?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘In fact, Mr Shields, isn’t it true that you have no indication whatever that Mr Nash and Mr Fowler knew each other or spent time in each other’s company in any way at all?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true.’

  Hardy said he had no further questions.

  Of course, it still didn’t prove Fowler had not lied to Shields about when he had known Owen Nash. Or if he had known Owen Nash at all. In fact, Hardy thought, here he had danced around with this man for the better part of a half hour and hadn’t really challenged his essential testimony in a substantive way. What was there to challenge? Like the other afternoon’s witnesses, Shields was a good man who no doubt was telling the truth. Fowler was a man charged with murder who was known to have lied in the past. Hardy could throw up smoke, but he doubted he could obscure that fact from the jury.

  54

  Glitsky came up through the gallery, pushed open the swinging door and strode into the courtroom proper. He was a well-known and respected police officer and his entrance, in itself, was not unusual. That he came to the defense table was, though not unprecedented, very much out of the ordinary.

  Pullios was standing in what had become counsel’s spot in front of the bench. She was beginning to question Gary Smythe, Andy Fowler’s golf partner, fellow Olympic Club member and stockbroker. They certainly had done their homework — witnesses were coming out of the woodwork.

  Glitsky leaned over, putting a hand on Hardy’s arm. Looking up at him, he thought he’d never seen the sergeant so drawn. There was a pallor underneath the pigment of his skin. His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing, and Hardy was reminded of cases of shell-shock he had witnessed in Vietnam. ‘Get a recess,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve got to talk, now.’

  Abe Glitsky wasn’t given to histrionics. If he said ‘now’ he had good reason. Hardy nodded. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, interrupting Pullios, who had been in the middle of a question. She turned to face him, her expression unpleasant.

  ‘Yes, Mr Hardy?’ Chomorro said.

  ‘Your Honor, an emergency has come up. I wonder if the court would grant a short recess.’

  ‘Your Honor,’ Pullios fumed, ‘I’ve just begun with this witness.’

  ‘Ten minutes, Your Honor.’

  Pullios gave Glitsky a questioning look.

  Chomorro checked the wall clock. ‘If I give you ten minutes now we won’t have time on direct here.’ He took in the jury and gave them a weary smile. ‘How about if we call it a day today and pick up with Mr Smythe tomorrow?’

  ‘No,’ Glitsky said sotto voce to Hardy. ‘Don’t let them do that.’

  Hardy stood. ‘That won’t be necessary, Your Honor. A couple of minutes will do.’

  Which annoyed Chomorro. ‘Well, which is it, Mr Hardy? Do you want a recess or not?’ He directed himself to Glitsky. ‘What’s this about, Sergeant? Care to share it with the court?’

  Glitsky was clearly torn. It was ingrained that cops didn’t work with the defense, even if there was a personal connection, such as he and Hardy. It got to be too much. He shrugged at Hardy, as much to say he tried. Then, to Chomorro and Pullios, ‘With counsel?’

  The judge motioned them all forward and they clustered in front of the raised bench. Glitsky still looked pale. ‘This is unofficial, Your Honor, and I apologize for interrupting, but I’ve just come down from homicide.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Glitsky took a breath. ‘It seems May Shinn is dead.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ from Hardy. Pullios hung as if poleaxed. ‘What?’

  ‘And we got two neighbors — independently — who read the papers, watched some TV.’ Glitsky turned to Hardy. ‘Both of them say they saw your man there this morning.’

  ‘Fowler?’ Pullios nearly yelled.

  Glitsky turned back to her and nodded. The same.‘

  At that moment Peter Struler pushed open the outer doors and started up the aisle, almost running. ‘I think this might make it official,’ Glitsky said.

  NASH MISTRESS FOUND DEAD

  Homicide Not Ruled Out

  In Apparent Suicide

  by Jeffrey Elliot

  Chronicle Staff Writer

  May Shinn, who for a short time last summer was the prime suspect in the murder of Owen Nash, was found dead in her apartment this afternoon, apparently a suicide victim. The body was discovered by Special Investigator Sergeant Peter Struler, who had had an earlier appointment with Ms Shinn following a statement she had given yesterday in the murder trial of former Superior Court Judge Andrew Fowler.

  In spite of the appearance of suicide, spokespersons for both the police department and the district attorney’s office refuse to rule out homicide as the cause of death. Following the discovery that Mr Fowler had visited Ms Shinn in her apartment this morning, jurors in his trial have been sequestered and Mr Fowler himself has been placed into custody. Mr Fowler had been late to court this morning and had initially told the court he’d had car trouble.

  As this paper goes to press the exact time of Ms Shinn’s death has not been determined. Her body was discovered slumped over a makeshift altar in her apartment, dressed in the ceremonial white robes of the Japanese ritual suicide known as seppuku, or more commonly, hara-kiri. Most other essential forms of that ritual were carried out as well, according to police sources (see box on back page). The altar had been strewn with papers from litigation Ms Shinn had been involved in related to charges brought against her by the grand jury and the district attorney’s office last summer.

  Ms Shinn’s attorney, David Freeman, said he was ‘terribly shocked and saddened’ by the death of his client. ‘May Shinn has become another victim of the lack of due process in our courts,’ Freeman said. ‘Her illegal, premature arrest following the death of the man she loved put her into a
downward spiral of depression from which there was no escape. One can only hope she has now found some peace…’

  * * * * *

  As Jeff Elliot was typing the last words into his computer, Dismas Hardy was drinking what must have been his twentieth cup of coffee. He sat, no place to go, on a yellow bench in the windowless visitor’s room at the morgue.

  Strout was still inside, personally doing the autopsy on May Shinn. Locke himself had put in an appearance, as had Drysdale, Pullios and, of course, Struler. Glitsky had come in around eight-thirty and stayed to keep him company for a while. Hardy was not responsive.

  He was still reliving the scene in Chomorro’s chambers after Struler had come in with the official word.

  * * * * *

  They were in Andy Fowler’s old office but all vestiges of Andy’s old WASP effects had been decorated away. The gray Berber wall-to-wall had been lifted and hardwood shined up beneath it. Inca or Aztec rugs lay under stuffed furniture in bold Latin designs. Photographs of Reagan, Bush, Quayle, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson shaking hands with Leo Chomorro covered the back wall. The desk was heavy and black and, unlike Andy’s, nearly bare on its surface. Chomorro sat behind it, elbows on it, hands together.

  Pullios leaned, arms crossed, against the bookshelves. Struler straddled a fold-up chair, and Glitsky stood by the doorway. Drysdale sat in one of the chairs next to Hardy, who tried to appear calm.

  Chomorro addressed himself to Hardy.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that you knew Fowler had been to Shinn’s this morning when you told me he had car trouble?

  ‘No, judge, not then. He told me at lunch —’

  ‘And how long were you planning to withhold this information?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth.

  ‘You don’t know. Your client is suborning, threatening, possibly killing a prosecution witness —’

  ‘We don’t know that, Your Honor. There’s no hint of that —’

  ‘Not yet,’ Pullios said.

  ‘In any event, you thought you could keep this to yourself? At the very least, Mr Hardy, I’m going to have to report this to the State Bar.’

  ‘He did not threaten her,’ Hardy said, ‘and Struler here says she killed herself—’

  ‘It appeared she killed herself,’ Struler said quickly.

  ‘Fowler didn’t kill her.’

  Pullios looked at him. ‘Like he didn’t kill Nash, right?’

  Hardy kept his voice flat. ‘That’s right, Bets. How about, as a change of pace, we wait for the coroner’s report? Get a fact or two and find out what we’re dealing with before the accusations start.’

  Chomorro broke it up. ‘Regardless of what Mr Fowler did or didn’t do, you’ve got a defendant going to visit a prosecution witness. At the very least, her testimony’s going to be no good.’

  ‘She’s not giving any testimony,’ Pullios said. ‘She’s dead.’

  Chomorro shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’m inclined to think we’ve got a mistrial here. Maybe we ought to start over fresh.’

  ‘I’d agree to that,’ Hardy said quickly. He could barely admit it to himself, but the thought still wouldn’t go away… had Andy killed May?

  But a mistrial wasn’t to Pullios’s liking — she thought she had the thing won now. Hardy couldn’t say he blamed her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Judge, I don’t agree.’ She went on to argue that May Shinn was only one witness and that her testimony hadn’t, in the event, been suborned. ‘If Mr Hardy will stipulate to the fact that the defendant had known the gun was on board —’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you discussed it in his daughter’s presence,’ Pullios said. ‘I’ll call her.’

  ‘She’d never testify against her father.’

  Chomorro’s black eyes glared. ‘She’d better or I’ll hold her in contempt and put her in jail until she does…“

  And so it had gone. Hardy couldn’t have Jane get on the stand for any reason — by some incredible stretch she might mention having known — biblically — Owen Nash. What was worse? The jury knowing about Andy’s pre-awareness that May’s gun was on board, or another reason he might have had to want Nash dead?

  In the end, Chomorro had decided on his strategy to keep Fowler in custody at least until it had been determined that May Shinn had or had not killed herself. The jury, which up to now had been allowed to return to their homes under the stricture that they not discuss the case with anyone, were to be sequestered in a hotel until that question was settled so that this development would not prejudice them against the defendant.

  Glitsky finally saw fit to interject a thought — Fowler’s clothes should be tested for fibers, hairs, semen and blood. He was a homicide cop — if there had been a killing he didn’t want the evidence to get thrown away this time. Pullios told him that was a good idea and he told her he knew it was. Investigating murders was what he did when people let him.

  55

  The door to the visitor’s room opened. It was after ten-thirty and Hardy looked up, half-expecting to see Strout coming in to tell him that May had in fact been murdered, that the knife wounds were inconsistent with what could be self-inflicted. Instead, he looked into the basset face of David Freeman, who asked politely if he could sit down.

  ‘Ah, Mr Hardy. Just came to pay my respects,’ he said. In the past months Hardy had had two interviews with Freeman in his office regarding the testimony he was going to give for the prosecution. Nominally adversarial, the two men both had maverick streaks, which they recognized in each other and which Hardy felt formed a bond of sorts that, at this point, was still unacknowledged. ‘Strout still in with her?’ Freeman asked.

  Hardy nodded, considered a moment, then decided to speak his mind. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I wish you’d taken this case when Andy first asked you.’

  Freeman shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’ve lost it. It’s not over until the jury comes in.’

  Hardy raised his eyes. ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘Particularly if Andy didn’t kill May. I think they’re reaching if they think he did.’

  ‘He was there at May’s this morning.’ Hardy was testing.

  Freeman shrugged. ‘I was there two days ago. Does the jury know it? Do they need to know it?’

  Hardy grabbed the nugget. At this point he’d take anything from any source. ‘Why do you think they’re reaching? I mean beyond wanting a conviction.’

  In their previous four hours of discussions, Hardy thought he had adequately covered the trial ground with Freeman, but he was beginning to realize that Freeman tended to answer only what he had been asked, and Hardy had stuck to Fowler’s actions as they related to the consciousness-of-guilt theory. He had all but ignored May Shinn the person, thinking she had fallen out of the loop. Now he was no longer sure of that.

  ‘Because May was depressed, she was suicidal. I spent over an hour last night trying to talk her out of killing herself.’

  ‘Why was she so depressed?’

  ‘I think that’s obvious, don’t you?’

  ‘Not just a coat.’

  ‘Coat? Oh, that? No, that just might have been the last straw, just another reminder that she couldn’t hope for anything anymore. That’s why she first called me, I guess — upset over it being stolen. But the depression itself —that’s been going on since the summer. She was in love with Owen Nash. Believed she was. After he died she lost what she’d put her hopes in. What had kept her going. Then to be put on trial for his murder…“

  Hardy shook his head, still testing. ‘I don’t know what she told you, but she didn’t love Owen Nash.’ Or so Farris had said.

  ‘No. No, you’re wrong there. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Same as with Fowler. You don’t take money from someone you love, not for sex anyway.’

  ‘She didn’t take money from Nash, she never did.’

  That stopped Hardy cold. ‘What?’

  ‘She
never took money from him.’

  ‘What about the will?’

  ‘What about it? The will was a will. I think it started out as more of a gesture, but when Owen died… I mean, wouldn’t you pursue two million dollars?’

  Hardy’s head was beginning to throb again. He reached for the cup of now cold coffee on the table next to him. Why had he always assumed that Owen was paying May Shinn? Had it been Ken Farris who’d told him that early on? Had Farris been lying?

  ‘No,’ Freeman was going on. ‘May did love Owen Nash. There’s no doubt about that. And I’ve come to believe he told her he loved her, too. He was wearing her ring when he was found. She was a lovable woman.’

  Clearly true. Look what she’d done to Andy Fowler. May obviously had more substance than he’d given her credit for. But she certainly had deceived Andy Fowler, and he reminded Freeman of this.

  Freeman nodded as if this were old news. ‘That was before Owen Nash. Before Nash she did whatever was expedient. She told me this. Certain clients, you can become like a confessor to them. Psychologist, devil’s advocate. A dependency develops.’

  Hardy, remembering Celine, didn’t need a reminder of that.

  ‘In May’s case she and I actually became pretty close. We were doing a lot of work together.’ At Hardy’s glance, Freeman went on, ‘And no, we weren’t sleeping together. Anyway, something very real seems to have happened with May and Owen, who were both pretty cynical to begin with. They changed each other, for the better.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘May dropped her old lovers — Andy Fowler, for example. Could be she might have been able to scam Owen along like she’d done with men before, but she wanted to clear the slate.’

  ‘And Nash?’

  ‘I gather it was pretty much the same, except of course he had a wider circle and more responsibilities. It might have taken longer to put into effect — this decision to go public with their intended marriage, for example.’

  Hardy remembered that Farris had said that Owen had ‘changed’ in the last months of his life. Was that the explanation?