“I guess.”
Hardy took a breath—this was the moment. “If we can talk about this, talk about Ken, lay to rest the talk about your having an affair, say exactly what you’ve just said to me, how you just snapped and did some crazy things—I think we might have a chance.”
She just looked at him.
He spoke quietly. “We can get another shrink—or even Ken if you want—to argue for leniency based on the stress you were under.”
Now shaking her head.
“What?”
“No,” she said. “I told Ken. No.”
Hardy stopped. What did she mean, no?
“That’s again saying I killed them, isn’t it? I’d be saying I just snapped one morning and killed them.” Her body had straightened, her head was up now, eyes getting life back into them. “As soon as I say that, then there really is no hope.”
Was this déjà vu? Or déjà, déjà déjà vu? Hardy had been through this a million times. If she didn’t have something new to say, the jury was going to vote the death sentence. Didn’t she see that?
“I’m not going to tell anybody, ever, that I killed Larry!”
Hardy met her eyes, defiant and hard. He noticed she didn’t include Matt, and before hadn’t named him. “Them,” she said. She could say Larry, but not Matt. She might let people—Ned or Larry—control her up to a point, but when she moved out from that control it was on her own.
It occurred to him too that she had changed over the past year—maybe she’d decided not only that she wasn’t going to take it anymore with Larry but with any other men as well. She’d just gotten assertive, cured of the submissive streak that had allowed her to accept being beaten.
If she was getting better Hardy was glad for her. Still, he thought, strategically it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
What was he going to argue in front of the jury? What could he say that might induce them at least to spare her life?
Since he was in the building anyway he thought he would drop by Dean Powell’s office on the third floor, see if he was putting in his time at his desk while he campaigned.
He was. Sitting alone, reading what looked to be a police report, Powell started at Hardy’s knock. After the surprise, the genial candidate appeared. “Hardy! Come on in, take a load off.” Half out of his chair, hand extended, he could afford to be gracious. After all, he had won. “How’s Freeman? Not taking it too hard, I trust. I ought to give him a call, congratulate him on a good fight.”
Hardy closed the door behind him. He leaned back against it, not moving toward the seat in front of the desk. “Dean,” he began, “I want to be straight with you a minute. Off the record, is that all right?”
The smile remained, but Powell’s expression went a little sideways. He sat back down. “Sure, Mr. Hardy.”
“Dismas is okay if Dean is.”
The smile flickered back. Hardy hadn’t had much luck reading Powell. He couldn’t really blame himself. Powell was in an unusual predicament—on the one hand he wanted votes so badly that it was almost painful to watch. On the other, the two men’s relationship was adversarial. It must be awkward, Hardy thought, to feel like your adversary might wind up voting for you, to want your adversary to vote for you, even to like you.
“Dean’s fine,” Powell said. “I assume you’re here about Jennifer Witt.”
Hardy nodded. “This is off the record,” he repeated. “I don’t want this to be construed as a presentencing conference or anything formal, and I’d prefer if what we say here doesn’t leave this office.”
“You have my word.”
Hardy would rather have heard “Sure” or “Okay” or anything but “You have my word,” which he thought clanged with insincerity if not downright duplicity. Still, he was here and determined to press ahead.
“I wanted to talk about the death penalty.”
Powell folded his hands in front of him on the desk. “All right,” he said mildly. “Talk.”
“I don’t think it’s just.”
Powell waited.
“You and I both know that there are people out in the system with sheets a mile long that make Jennifer look like a den mother, and these guys are getting ten years for armed robbery with priors and serving six.”
“That’s true. It’s one of the reasons I’m running for AG. That’s got to stop. We need more jail space. We need tougher sentencing.”
Hardy didn’t need the campaign speech. “Dean, my point is that going capital on Jennifer Witt is going overboard.”
Powell looked up at him. “A woman who’s killed not one, but two husbands”—he raised a palm to stop Hardy’s argument—“we don’t have to be legalistic, Dismas. David Freeman won that one in court, sure, but since we’re off the record, we know the truth about that. Let’s not kid ourselves. This woman has twice plotted and killed in cold blood for money and, in this second case, also managed to kill her own son. If that isn’t a death penalty case I don’t know what is.”
Hardy braced his foot back against the door. “Have you talked to her? One on one?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Maybe to get a handle on the fact that she’s a human being.”
Powell sat back. “Let me ask you one—have you tried to visualize the crime? Can you imagine the kind of person who takes out a gun and shoots her husband at point-blank range and then turns and”—Powell exploded in righteous anger—“and blows away her own child? Can you imagine that?”
“She didn’t do that. It wasn’t like that—”
Powell slammed his desk, coming halfway up onto his feet. “Bullshit! That’s just what it was like. The jury says that’s what she did. I proved it. Beyond a damned reasonable doubt.” Gathering his control, he sat himself down, lowered his voice. “If you want to call such a person a human being, you’re welcome to, but don’t expect any tears from me. Or any mercy, either.”
There was a knock at the door and Hardy stepped aside, pulling it open. It was Art Drysdale, Hardy’s old mentor, the ex-officio administrative boss of the office. “Everything all right in here? How you doin’, Dismas?”
“We’re fine, Art,” Powell said evenly. “Everything’s fine. Just a little disagreement among professionals.”
Drysdale looked from one man to the other, raised a hand and closed the door again.
“You really think she did it, don’t you? You know her husband—Larry—was beating her?”
“So what? Nobody’s talking battered wife here. Freeman never did.”
“We should have. I should have. Jennifer wouldn’t allow it but she was wrong.” He almost said dead wrong. “She thought it would prejudice the jury, make them think she was using it as an excuse.” Sitting down, he gave Powell as much as he could of the short version. “I’d just like you to consider if it was self-defense.”
“Bring it up in the penalty phase, I’ll consider it. I’m not a monster, Hardy.”
“I can’t bring it up. I’ve just told you why.”
“You can’t bring it up?” Powell went all the way back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling, running his fingers through his mane the way he did. He took a long moment, running it around different ways. Finally, he came down. “This is pretty goddamn sleazy.”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t try to lay this human-being guilt trip on me now, Hardy. To tell the truth, it was heavy enough deciding to go capital on this, but I’ve played by the rules from the get-go. I don’t give a shit what spin you put on it, we’re sitting here talking about circumventing the system, and as far as I’m concerned this is an unethical conversation and it’s over right now.”
Powell was up out of his desk, around it, to the door. He pulled it open. “I’ll see you in court,” he said. “Not until.”
Hardy’s first reaction was that he needed a drink. His stomach was in knots, his breathing coming shallow. He stayed thirsty until he got inside the door of Lou’s, then abruptly decided not. It was s
till early in the afternoon, and a drink or two now would end his day. And he needed all the time he could get.
He was at his desk, going over his options.
Lightner’s motion to introduce de facto witnesses to Jennifer’s pain and suffering at the hands of her husband wasn’t bad—might well garner some sympathy for her. But as soon as Jennifer saw the way the wind was blowing there—and it wouldn’t take long—she would either go berserk in the courtroom or insist on testifying that no beatings took place.
So given that, what was he going to do next Monday? If Powell’s reaction was any indication, Jennifer hadn’t won many hearts in the courtroom. Dressed in a way that separated her from the commoners, for the most part sitting without expression at the defense table, she hadn’t testified on her own behalf. Another of Freeman’s questionable decisions.
The package arrived, messengered over from Donna Bellows. Grateful for the distraction, Hardy opened it, little more than an envelope, depressingly thin.
There was the letter from Larry Witt to Donna Bellows. There was a covering letter to go with the offering circular. Finally, there was the circular itself.
Dear Donna:
I wonder if you could take a look at the enclosed. As you will see, the YBMG Board is offering all doctors (we are called “providers” in the brochure) an option to buy into the new for-profit plan. The shares are a nickel each, and the tone of both the covering letter and the brochure is very negative—there’s slim to no chance that this is a worthwhile investment.
So why did they bother sending the thing out?
My concern is that the Board has only given us three weeks to exercise the option, and that they sent this circular now, over Christmas, when so many providers are either on vacation or swamped with personal business at home.
I realize that the most shares any individual can buy is 368, so potentially the greatest personal exposure to any provider in the group is only $18.40, but—
Hardy abruptly stopped reading.
Larry Witt, control freak extraordinaire, was asking his two-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer to look into a maximum exposure issue of less than twenty dollars?
He must have read it wrong, got the decimal misplaced. He looked at the last line again. “ . . . the greatest personal exposure to any provider in the group is only $18.40 . . .”
Shaking his head, thinking what an absolute pain in the ass Larry Witt must have been, Hardy stood, stretched, and gave up for the day. He went downstairs to watch the World Series in the conference room. Maybe his side would win.
Frannie had her feet up on the couch, a book facedown on her chest. Her eyes were on her husband and she was trying not to nod off.
“No, listen, this is really interesting.”
His wife shook her head. “Anytime you’ve got to say that, it isn’t.”
Hardy put his paper down. “You used to be more fun.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Let me get this straight—you’re sitting in our living room on a balmy October night, you didn’t taste the fantastic dinner I made, you didn’t even want wine with it, and for the last ten minutes you are reading to me aloud from some stock proposal that isn’t worth anything anyway, and I’m the one who used to be more fun?”
He nodded. “A lot more. I remember. I know it can’t be me.”
Frannie swung her feet to the ground, patting her lap. “Okay, come here.”
Hardy crossed the room. “What am I going to do, Fran? She still won’t let me use the only thing that might save her.”
“I don’t think you’re right, about it being the only thing that can save her. It’s not just the beatings . . . Jennifer’s life with her husband was terrible, but she didn’t kill him, Dismas. She never lied to me, not even about Ned. She never denied to me, about him. She just didn’t say she did it. But she absolutely denied killing Larry. She had no reason to lie to me, she avoided it in the case of Ned.”
Hardy could think of at least one reason why Jennifer might want to lie to Frannie. Frannie was his wife; he was Jennifer’s lawyer. It would be better if he believed she didn’t kill Larry and Matt.
Frannie went on. “This is not just an instinct, you know. Or woman’s intuition, although I wouldn’t put that down if I were you. You’re forgetting what you proved. Never mind if she could have done it or not, Jennifer in fact did not run through the Medical Center. It did take her probably fifteen minutes to get to her bank, not five. And that means she didn’t kill anybody. She had left her house. She ran to the bank the way she told you she did. Talking about that morning, telling me about it, she volunteered the way she’d come—down Clarendon, through the Victorians, the old Haight, she talked about that, how the neighborhood calmed her down. You don’t make that stuff up.” Sometimes you do, Hardy thought. But it wasn’t a bad point. “So what you—Dismas Hardy the person—forget the lawyer—what you’ve got to do if you really want to save her is to stop doubting her, stop even considering that she might be guilty.”
“Frannie, they found her guilty. That part’s over.”
Her fingers felt good against his scalp now. “I say she did not kill Larry and her boy.”
“I can’t prove she didn’t. She did kill Ned—”
“That was different.”
“Not so different,” he said. “Ned’s dead. Larry’s dead—”
Frannie stood up and walked over to the fireplace. She spent a minute rearranging the small herd of brass elephants that liked to graze there. “I still say you’re thinking too much like a lawyer. You’re thinking what arguments you can make.”
“That’s kind of my job, Fran.”
She faced him. “I’m not attacking you, Dismas. I’m telling you she did not do it. That’s reality, not law, not what the jury found.”
“It’s one reality, Fran. Yours.”
“Damn it! Listen to me. You want to argue and fight about words, you go ahead. But there’s a major thing you’re forgetting.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Sure, go ahead, get mad. That’s a real help.”
Hardy was mad. He had gotten up, found himself standing by the couch with his fists clenched. He closed his eyes and took a breath. “Okay, I’m sorry. What am I forgetting?”
“If Jennifer didn’t do it, somebody else killed them, and did it for a reason.”
Hardy was shaking his head. “I’ve been all through the possibilities there—by myself, with Terrell and Glitsky and Freeman and the whole known universe.”
“Then you missed something.”
“Except if Jennifer did do it. How about that?”
Frannie didn’t budge. “She didn’t. I think you know it and I know I know it. Powell got it wrong both ways.”
“I don’t know that.”
Frannie was heading back through the dining room. “I feel like a glass of wine. Several. You can join me or not. I don’t care.”
“The hit man?”
The mood had mellowed some. It was ten-thirty and they’d finished most of a bottle of Chardonnay. Hardy had run all the people with motives by Frannie, and finally they had arrived at Frannie’s suggestion that one of these people, although armed with an alibi for his or her personal time, had hired someone to kill the family.
Hardy shook his head. “Don’t you suspect a professional hit man would bring his own weapon? You ever hear of a hit man shooting somebody with their own gun?”
Frannie had her legs over his on the couch. She sipped her wine. “I don’t know. It’s not exactly my area of expertise.”
“Plus, how did he get in or out?”
“Maybe he just walked. Is there a back door? A window? All I’m saying is it had to be someone. Someone besides Jennifer.”
“The problem is, Fran, even if I agree, this takes us back to police work. And they didn’t find anybody else. No hit man, no nobody.”
“Maybe Abe . . . ”
Hardy shook his head. “Abe is a good guy but he’s done on this one. Everybody’s
done. It’s down to me.”
Frannie finished her wine. “And you don’t have a lawyer argument that’s going to save Jennifer, do you?”
“No. She won’t—”
Frannie shushed him. She knew all that, she reminded him. “Okay, then. There’s only one option left.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve got to find out who killed them.”
42
Hardy sensed that he and Walter Terrell weren’t friends anymore. He had reached him by telephone at the homicide detail before nine the next morning, and they had had a brief discussion. After Hardy had introduced himself, saying he just had a couple of quick questions, Terrell had replied, “Why don’t you take your questions to somebody who gives a shit?” And then the inspector had hung up.
Hardy held the receiver for a long minute, until it started to beep at him. Okay, he thought, I can take a hint.
He had a problem—nobody was going to talk to him. Terrell was the first indication, but as he sat flipping through the interview folders and copies of police reports on his desk, he realized that he had about run out of folks who might be willing to give him the time of day, much less a substantive interview.
Tom and Phil DiStephano—forget it. Nancy—too scared, and rightly so. The Romans—he could go get in Cecil’s face, but there was no leverage even if he had a grounded suspicion, which he didn’t. There was Sam, the gay receptionist at the Mission Hills Clinic, but that could get awkward and was still once removed from any even remotely potential suspect.
Hardy went downstairs again, watched more World Series action, drank a cup of coffee and schmoozed with Phyllis. David Freeman was in his office this morning but had a client with him and Phyllis wouldn’t interrupt, not that Hardy wanted her to. It looked like another murder case. By the way, he’d been working while he’d been at home—she had typed the first papers on the Witt appeal this morning.
The ever-spinning wheels of the law depressing him, Hardy went back upstairs. He threw darts—20, 19, 18. The numbers falling, the clock ticking.
The 13th Juror Page 39
