The 13th Juror

by John Lescroart

  Dean Powell, running for State Attorney General, still had to function as a prosecutor, and especially between now and November he was careful not to use too much of the code himself. Nevertheless, he didn’t need a translator.

  “If you ask me,” Tony Feeney was telling him, “we got a stone BDI here. Professional women, some dispute over funding. Both of them Canadians. In my opinion, she’ll go sideways like she has the three other times.”

  Feeney was another Assistant District Attorney in Powell’s office, getting the more experienced man’s take on whether he should even bother charging Mr. Duncan J. Dunlap for aggravated assault on his live-in girlfriend Byna Lewes—a “professional woman.”

  BDI was the code for a case in which the defendant believed and usually loudly proclaimed to police that the woman he had just savagely beaten or killed had brought the attack on herself. BDI stood for Bitch Deserved It. In this case Dunlap thought Lewes was holding out on him and might be about to choose another pimp. Feeney thought Lewes would “go sideways,” which meant she’d refuse to testify or, even better, change her testimony on the stand. And, by the way, both parties were African-Americans, called “Canadians” by members of law enforcement to avoid offending anyone in earshot.

  Byna Lewes had promised to testify against Mr. Dunlap on the three previous occasions when he’d beaten her, and each time she had relented, saying he was truly sorry (this time) and he really loved her. He just needed some help. Maybe the city could help pay for his counseling.

  Powell crossed his hands behind his head. “You ever wonder why we keep doing this?”

  Feeney had no response. He sat across from Powell, hoping he’d be remembered if Powell got lucky and took up residence in Sacramento.

  “How badly was she hurt?” Feeney opened the folder, starting to take out the pictures. But Powell held out a hand, palm up. “Just describe it, Tony. How bad?”

  The Polaroids had been taken by the arresting officer in Byna’s hospital room shortly after the attack, before she’d been bandaged. Her left eye was swollen shut, her nose looked broken, there was blood in her hair and over her ear. Feeney went to the police report and saw she’d also had her arm dislocated. “Not bad,” he said, “about average.”

  “We charging it?”

  Powell was getting to the meat of the issue. If Byna—the victim—would cooperate in the case against Mr. Dunlap, then he would be charged and the matter would proceed. If, on the other hand, the victim chose not to assist the prosecution, would not appear and testify—which in these cases was very common—then the case would fall apart.

  “Well, it’s a little iffy, is the problem. On picture night here”—Feeney gestured to the file—“Ms. Lewes had had enough, she was coming down as soon as she got out of the hospital and filing charges and put that bad man away.”

  “So what happened? He come see her?”

  “He would have, but he was in jail at the time. But naturally, the minute he’s out on bail, he buys her roses, candy, says he’s sorry. Only this time she’s not sure she believes him, but she’s so afraid of him she doesn’t want to testify.”

  “Logical. Good reasoning.”

  Feeney held up one finger. “But,” he said, “she says if we give her a subpoena she’ll testify.”

  “What a citizen! This is a beautiful story. And you’re asking me what I’d do?”

  “I know what you’d do, Dean. I’m just wondering how you’d explain it. We got a third offense, we’ve got a witness who says she’ll testify. How do you just drop it?”

  “You don’t drop it, Tony. You file it, hold her hand every day and try not to feel too bad when she doesn’t show up for the trial.”

  David Freeman’s office was up one flight of ornate, scroll-banistered stairs in the front corner of the old building on Sutter Street. Below him, the ground floor was comprised of the comfortable reception area, a conference room that faced a brick and ivy inner courtyard and a small law library. Four years before, Freeman had redecorated and put in a lot of glass down below, giving the place an open feel.

  At the head of the stairs, outside Freeman’s lair, Phyllis Wells kept the howlers at bay, the howlers being their own code name for associate attorneys.

  Phyllis had been with David for thirty-two years and in that time had seen associates come and go—enter the practice as eager law school graduates hoping to ride the coattails of the brilliant David Freeman to fame and glory, carve a reputation in the city and perhaps beyond, become a partner in a reasonable six or seven years. Most didn’t last two.

  Not one had hung on to become a partner. They worked their twelve-hour days and nights and weekends and wrote briefs and even got trial experience and then moved on, either to their own practices, to one of the big downtown firms or out of the law altogether.

  The reason: David Freeman did not want partners. Not for nothing had he named his firm David Freeman & Associates. It wasn’t about to change.

  He didn’t like to delegate. No, Phyllis knew it was more than that. He was incapable of delegating. Which was why, she thought, this situation with Dismas Hardy was a little unusual—Hardy was doing work that Freeman had always done himself. Freeman even seemed relatively pleased with Hardy’s results. This was so out of character that it worried Phyllis. She wondered if David were sick. If he would tell her if he was.

  Not that she had anything against Hardy. There was a good feeling around him. He was nice-looking in a craggy way, not too lean. Sometimes maybe a bit too quick with the humorous phrase for her taste, but God knew she’d seen enough humorless attorneys pass through these halls. It was refreshing to have one who seemed not to take himself so seriously.

  Freeman had instructed her to let Hardy come in when he needed to talk, confer, even visit. Of course, technically he wasn’t an associate, not one of the howlers. He wasn’t even “of counsel.” He just rented a room.

  He came and went rather haphazardly and was beginning to show some sign of trusting her, which, of course, he could do, although she’d been somewhat resentful at the beginning when David had suggested he share her as his own secretary. But that had been working out, too. He was up on the fourth floor, connected to her by an intercom that he rarely used.

  Still, it was a change giving him information before she’d cleared it with David. Now her boss—Freeman would always be her boss—was at trial and here was Dismas Hardy, casually asking how Jennifer got referred to the firm. She had thought he already knew. Well, it wasn’t a big issue—he had just come up the stairs from somewhere, snapped his fingers and come back, stopping at her desk.

  Jennifer Witt was David’s client, there was no mistake about that, even though she remembered it was near Hardy’s first month or so in the office when she’d buzzed him after she’d beeped David in court and he’d told her to get Hardy down there to meet Jennifer in jail. But if Phyllis had learned anything in thirty-two years in this business, it was that information was the coin of the realm, and its dissemination—almost always—was strictly need-to-know.

  “It just occurred to me,” Hardy was saying, “that here I’ve been learning all I can about this woman and I don’t even know how we got involved with her. I mean, she thought I was David when I first met her, so she didn’t know him either, am I right?”

  Phyllis smiled, adjusting her glasses. “Didn’t you ask her?”

  He leaned comfortably against the partition separating her desk from the open hallway. “If I recall, she said something about her husband’s lawyers, but I didn’t know who they were.”

  “She couldn’t tell you?”

  “She could if I went over to the Hall, paid four dollars for a parking space, rode the slowest elevator in America up seven flights, got patted down and admitted by the guard into the women’s jail, waited fifteen minutes for them to get Jennifer, and then asked her.” He knew he was charming her and, more strangely, she knew it and didn’t mind. Now he grinned openly. “You’re stonewalling me, Phyllis. I can tel
l.”

  The referral had come from Donna Bellows, a member of the firm of Goldberg Mullen & Roake. Hardy called her from his office, two flights up from Phyllis.

  It was the middle of the week, the middle of the afternoon, and he got right through. Introducing himself, he was struck by the immediate chill that came over the deeply pitched voice.

  “Perhaps it wasn’t clear at the time, Mr. Hardy, but not only doesn’t this firm take many criminal cases, I personally didn’t want anything to do with Mrs. Witt, so I’m not inclined to be of much help. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you know her? Personally?” He had to keep her talking or she was gone, and he did have something he wanted to get to.

  “I never met the woman. I never want to. Now I’m sorry, but if you’ll excuse—”

  “Please, if I might—one quick question. Can you tell me anything about Crane & Crane? Any connection to Dr. Witt?”

  Silence, the decision being made. Hardy knew that he and Ms. Bellows weren’t adversaries in any real sense. She might have felt a loyalty—or more than that—to her client Larry Witt, but good lawyers at least tried to observe the professional courtesies with one another. Hardy was counting on that. He heard her sigh, going ahead with this distasteful discussion.

  “All right, I’m sorry, Mr. Hardy. I liked Larry Witt. I read the papers and I’m afraid I believe that his wife killed him and their boy.”

  “From what you’ve read in the papers?”

  “That, yes, and some other things.”

  “What other things?”

  Another pause, considering, rejecting? “Let’s get back to the one question, shall we?”

  Though there might be a wide vein of information here, Hardy knew he’d have to let it go if he wanted to find out about Crane & Crane. He’d spent the better part of a frustrating yesterday and all of this morning chasing down the chimeras of “other dudes”—Melissa Roman’s parents, Witt’s first wife Molly, a Dr. Heffler from Dr. Lightner’s form. He had not so much as spoken to any of them. Now he had Donna Bellows on the telephone and he’d take whatever she was willing to give.

  “Crane & Crane. Some connection to Larry.”

  “That name is familiar in the sense that I believe I’ve heard it, that’s all.”

  “It’s a Los Angeles law firm.”

  “That may be it. You say Larry and—?”

  “I don’t know. He called them a few days before he died.”

  “Before he was killed, you mean. He didn’t just die. He was killed.” He listened to her breathe for a moment. “I was Larry’s financial advisor. With respect to Crane, he may have mentioned them in some context. This would have been about six months ago? Whatever it was, if anything, it couldn’t have been too important. I really don’t remember, but I can check.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “Frankly, I do mind, Mr. Hardy. I don’t like my clients being shot to death. It really bothers me. And I don’t want to help their killers get free. But I’ll look into it. I said I would and I will.”

  Hardy thanked her.

  “I’ll call you,” she said, and hung up.

  “Date night” was a free-form event. The traditional and sacred Wednesday ritual had taken them—before the children had been born—as far afield as Los Angeles or Reno or Santa Fe on the spur of the moment. Date nights had been known to continue for several days, Hardy calling in to the Shamrock to have his shifts covered while he and Frannie gambled or perused art galleries or decided to take the ferry out of Long Beach over to Santa Catalina, the island of romance.

  Tonight they were on another ferry chugging across the bay to Sausalito. Out near Alcatraz the water was choppy, the wind high, the sun lost in a bank of fog that was rolling over and around the Golden Gate Bridge. The temperature was in the fifties.

  “Ah, summertime.” Frannie watched Dismas suck the bracing air. They stood at the front rail on the upper deck, blown and sprayed. “Nothing like the middle of July to get rid of the winter blahs.”

  Frannie leaned into the rail, holding on to it with both hands. “Maybe that’s it,” she said. “The winter blahs.” She looked up at her husband, her smile as lost as the sunlight. He put an arm around her, bringing her inside his heavy coat, and she leaned into him.

  “You all right?”

  She considered whether she should tell him, how much she should tell him. She felt like she was sneaking out, cheating on him. But she didn’t want to get into it, not just now. It would become a discussion, the theme for the night, and she didn’t need that. She didn’t need to clear everything with Dismas. She loved him, but she had her own life, her own feelings.

  For Frannie, seeing Jennifer Witt was somehow bringing things to the surface and that, she felt, was good. Once she recognized what she was dealing with, she’d be better equipped to handle things. Questioning how you felt wasn’t necessarily threatening to her and Dismas, or to the kids. She loved them all—her husband and her children. It wasn’t that.

  It was what she’d started to say to Jennifer—that there was just so much that she hadn’t been able to take time for. She was losing sight of who she was, of who Francine Rose McGuire Cochran (and now Hardy) had turned into and how it had all happened. And how she felt about it.

  Was she just some adjunct to whatever man she was with, the bearer of their babies? She didn’t really feel that with Dismas. She hadn’t felt that way with Eddie. She and Eddie had been living an adventure. Eddie had been about to start graduate school when he’d been killed. They’d been saving money for everything, discovering new places, each other.

  Then, suddenly, no warning, and Eddie was gone. And there was Dismas. Not in Eddie’s old space, but close to it. And now, two years—five minutes?—later, she was a stay-at-home mother, with no money worries, where Dismas already knew all the good restaurants and the great places, where Dismas had already made the discoveries and so many of the decisions.

  Like living in his old house—which, of course, they’d decided to do together. It made so much more sense. And she did love the house. But that wasn’t it—the point was that even though she’d changed it to her tastes—brightened it up, painted, rearranged, added a room—it was still his house, Dismas’ house, not really their house.

  All of their friends, too, were his friends and their wives. Abe, Flo, Pico, Angela. Even Moses—her own brother—even Moses had been Hardy’s friend long before she’d been in the picture. Not that she didn’t like these people—she did, but she hadn’t found them on her own.

  What about her old friends? The people she and Eddie had known? Didn’t they count? Why weren’t they part of her new life anymore? Was it the kids, or Dismas, or herself?

  She knew Dismas wouldn’t approve of the extra visits to Jennifer. The original idea had been simply to set her mind at ease about the kind of person Jennifer was.

  But now something else was happening, and it was important, tapping in to a vein of her own that hadn’t been mined in a couple of years. Maybe by talking about things with Jennifer—why she continued to let both of her husbands beat her, for example—Frannie could help her change, see the way things were supposed to work. It seemed worthwhile, even if Dismas didn’t know about it.

  She was sure he had some secrets from her. You didn’t have to tell your spouse every thought and word and deed in your life.

  And seeing Jennifer was doing her some good. She was Frannie’s own friend, confidant, and Dismas didn’t need to know about it. She could choose her own friends, make decisions for herself in her own life. Later, she’d tell him. Maybe after he and Freeman got Jennifer off. After the trial.

  She was her own person, but somehow she’d let the predictable in her daily life devalue her. She even found herself wondering whether Dismas would keep loving her, why he loved her in the first place, all the while telling herself she deserved to be loved. You’re a great girl. Wonderful, sensitive, cool—if you don’t love yourself how can you love anybody else? How can anybody
love you?

  The ferry had entered the lee of Sausalito and the chop had flattened. Dismas tightened his arm around her. “Hello?”

  It really didn’t have anything to do with loving him. She loved him, his face and his body and the easy way he did things. It was just that she needed a little more of herself in her life.

  “I’m here.” She kissed his cheek.

  23

  “Molly.”

  Freeman’s living room on Friday morning, and Hardy was sitting back in one of the leather chairs, Freeman in his maroon bathrobe checking off answers, making notes in pencil at the kitchen table.

  “Molly wasn’t here in December. She hadn’t even heard he’d died, or she’s even a better actress than our client.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “I think it would depress me if the news of my death was greeted so warmly.”

  Freeman raised his bushy eyebrows, a question.

  Hardy continued. “She hated his guts, even after lo these many years. He used to beat her, too.”

  Again the eyebrows went up. “But he didn’t beat Jennifer.”

  Hardy kept a straight face. “That’s our defense, right? He didn’t beat her. So she says.”

  “Never laid a hand on her.”

  Hardy had finally spoken to Larry Witt’s first wife, Molly. She was now a guidance counselor living and working in Fargo, North Dakota. She had not remarried and had not seen or heard from Dr. Witt in five years. “I guess we could have somebody double-check, see if she was in North Dakota over Christmas, but I’d bet she was. The news of Larry’s death absolutely made her day.”

  Freeman put down his pencil, staring out the window. “Let’s stop a minute, Diz. What kind of son of a bitch was this guy?”

  Crossing his legs, sitting back, Hardy took a minute. “By all accounts, he was a model citizen, total professional, concerned father, great provider. He just happened to beat his wives.”