by The Hearing
Further, if he traced what he thought were the logical streets—the ones he would have taken—he thought he could eliminate any route north of his imaginary line, and east of Grant. If Elaine had begun walking on any of the streets in those areas, it would have meant backtracking to get to Maiden and Grant, and she knew the city well. She wouldn’t have done that.
It was by now well past six on a Thursday night. The lights were on dim outside his door in the detail. Every inspector on duty had gone out with Thieu for the two searches. Glitsky had studied his coordinates. He knew, generally, where he was going. Now he turned out his own lights, closed his door and sat. He’d said it before to Treya, about how weird it sounded. But he was going to give Elaine a few more minutes, see if his daughter wanted to talk to him, to tell him something.
Sitting at his desk in the dark, unaware of any conscious thought, his mind went to a story he’d heard or read somewhere about a woman who’d been adopted at birth and had never known her mother. Over the course of her life, if something made her so emotionally upset that she couldn’t sleep, she’d developed the habit of getting up, boiling water, and cooking up a plate of plain pasta. After she ate it, she could go back to sleep.
When she was thirty-five, she decided to try and locate her birth mother, and after a difficult search, was eventually successful. She wrote to the woman, introducing herself and asking if they could meet. Her mother had agreed—she could come to her house for a weekend, and they could get to know one another.
The meeting went well, but when it was time for bed, the emotional upheaval of it all kept the daughter awake well into the night. After tossing and turning for half the night in her mother’s guest bedroom, she finally gave up and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Where her mother was fixing a bowl of plain spaghetti for herself! She said she always did that to help her get back to sleep. Would her daughter like some, too?
Glitsky snapped back to where he was. Why had he thought of that?
His damn heart was beating a strong tattoo against his rib cage, but there was no pain as he stood up and turned on the light in his room again. He thought he knew exactly where he was going now, but he wanted to check to make sure.
Yes, there it was. Dead smack in the middle of the parameters he’d just established, and probably half a block outside the circle he’d drawn for the musketeers.
Hardy ate at home, but was back downtown by eight o’clock, in his office. At the Solarium table, all the attorneys—Freeman, Roake, Wu, Ingalls and Rhodin—had gathered and were sharing their information and opinions.
Of the musketeers, the most successful during the day had been Amy Wu. She’d been working on the Abby Oberlin matter, and had discovered that Gene Visser had interviewed several staff members at the Pacific Gardens Senior Health Center in Visitation Valley, where Abby’s mother had been in residence. Though he’d been more subtle than he had with Rich McNeil, he had still managed to intimidate two part-time nurses, as well as the owner of the facility, into believing that their license was in jeopardy if they did not disassociate themselves immediately from the first sign of this particular patient mistreatment lawsuit.
Wu had done well, Hardy told her, but he didn’t think they needed what she’d found anymore. “We’ve got enough tying Visser to Logan at this stage,” he said. “The Cadaver has gotten the message—I’m sure of that. What we need now, it seems to me, is some strong connection to Elaine that will bring Torrey into the picture. Lieutenant Glitsky and Treya might have found a little something for us this morning, but before we discuss that, I’d be happy to entertain any other suggestions anyone might have.”
Wrapped in cigar smoke, huddled down behind his glass of red wine, David Freeman was a contemplative gnome, alone at the far end of the large table. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet during the initial discussions, and now he cleared his throat and sat forward. “We ought not to forget that we are deep, deep in the trees here, people. They’re pretty trees, I admit. They form nice patterns on the forest floor and their leaves are a wonder to behold.”
The younger attorneys caught each other’s eyes, glad that they didn’t sully their evening minds with alcohol. Hardy and Gina Roake shared their own look, but they knew David better, and their expressions didn’t convey the same message. Here came a profound, and probably unwelcome, insight.
His forest-for-the-trees metaphor, subsumed by the legal issue, was forgotten. Freeman took in the faces around the table, focused on Hardy and continued gravely. “You can tie your three boys into the neatest knot you’ve ever seen and drop the whole package at Hill’s bench and you still don’t have nearly enough.”
Ingalls and Rhodin both started to respond, but didn’t get far as Freeman shook his head, summoning silence again to the table. “Ask yourselves this simple question. From the evidence presented in this hearing, disregarding all the hoopla about Torrey, Visser and Logan, did Cole Burgess happen upon a lone woman walking in an alley and kill her for her money and jewelry? Yes or no.” More silence. “Let’s take a straw vote. Gina?”
She considered for a beat, not liking her answer. “Probably.”
“Amy?”
“I don’t want to admit this, but yes, I do think so.”
It went around the table, ending with Hardy, who made it unanimous.
“But why, then,” Ingalls demanded, “is the judge letting all this in? He’s got to see it as connected to the crime, right?”
Hardy, converted, took the answer. “Maybe not even, Jon. He’s giving us rope, that’s all. This is a death penalty case. All the issues have to be on the record. Hill’s going to hold Cole to answer and he’s willing to let us thrash around for a while before he does it. He might also enjoy watching Pratt and Torrey sweat.”
“It’s more than that, I’m afraid, Diz,” Freeman said. “He’s letting you develop an alternate explanation of events so completely that there won’t be any room left for appeal if you lose. He’s letting us lock ourselves in and throw away the key.”
“But these guys,” Rhodin began. “I mean, this whole thing with Cullen’s death. It’s got to mean something.”
Freeman nodded, acknowledging the point. “Sure, it means something. It means that these three guys are all slightly to very dishonest allies and may have tried to cheat to win this case, which in turn is politically important to Torrey’s boss. Okay, so they overstepped their bounds. Does that mean that they purposely gave Cullen pure heroin so that he could inadvertently kill himself? What happened to Ridley Banks? I mean, what are we trying to get at here? And, most important, does any of it mean that Cole probably didn’t kill Elaine? I don’t think so. The judge is going to want to let a jury decide and a trial court won’t allow hearsay, which means we’ve got nothing at all.”
And to this simple truth, there was no rebuttal. Hardy rose to his feet and began pacing. “So what are you saying, David? Are you suggesting we stop trying to make the connections?”
“No. We still need those.”
Gina Roake asked, “Then what?”
Freeman removed his dead cigar long enough to take an appreciative sip of his wine. “We must be crystal clear in our minds that this is not some clever and ultimately empty legal strategy. Let’s clearly acknowledge what we’re doing here, and make no mistake about the gravity of it.”
Amy Wu spoke up. “We had better be accusing somebody else of murdering Elaine, is that what you’re saying?”
Freeman nodded. “Otherwise it’s just what Pratt called it. A smoke screen.”
Hardy stopped walking and fixed his gaze on the old man. Gina was bobbing her head in agreement. Jon Ingalls flashed a look around the table, then said what he obviously believed they all were thinking. “Visser.”
“We don’t know that. Not yet,” Freeman corrected him gently. “It might just as well have been Logan. Or even Torrey.”
“No offense, Mr. Freeman, but I can’t see that,” Curtis Rhodin offered. “Either one of them
would have used Visser if they had wet work, don’t you think?”
He shrugged. “If Logan was coked up, if Torrey was cornered. Who knows? And again, it might have been none of them.” They were waiting to hear more. “The point is that even if Dismas succeeds brilliantly in tying up our connections between these three men—and I have no doubt he’ll do just that—all it gives us, at best, is a possible motive.”
“It gives us means, too, David, doesn’t it?” Gina put in. “Any of them could have gotten their hands on the gun, couldn’t they? After all, they’re all in the criminal business one way or another. They’re going to have access to guns.”
“Okay,” Freeman conceded, “maybe. But if they were playing cards together—or if they say they were—until two o’clock on that night, we lose. If they see where Dismas is going with this and talk together tonight, for example . . .” He let his voice trail off.
Jon Ingalls pushed his chair back from the table. “You’re saying we need to know if they had alibis.”
“I’m saying,” Freeman amplified, “that we’d be damn negligent if we got this far and lost sight of what we’re really trying to do, which is provide an alternative to our client as Elaine’s killer. Not a theory, a person. Nothing less is going to do it.”
“How are we going to do that”—Curtis Rhodin checked his watch—“in three or four hours?”
“I don’t know,” Freeman conceded. “I admit there’s precious little time and it’s really police work that they probably haven’t done. But if we don’t have that information, we’re looking at ugly surprises just about when we think we’ve won.”
After a moment, Amy Wu shook herself and sat up straight, smiling. “Okay,” she said. “How do we do this? Where do we go?”
After the musketeers had broken off and left on their various assignments, Freeman, Gina Roake and Hardy had stayed on for over an hour to discuss the possible meaning of the blank entries in Logan’s check register. Hardy thought it completely in keeping with Logan’s character that his office still seemed to use a low-tech, one-write system approach to its check-writing and bookkeeping. Before computers had come into his life, Hardy had used the same kind of system himself, so he was familiar with it. You wrote your check and tore it off. Under it, a light blue NCR-paper copy of the check, was your receipt. And finally, under the copy, the check was automatically entered in the ledger. The blank lines could have been anything really—voided checks, a ditzy secretary inserting a piece of paper between the ledger and the checks, a purposeful hiding of records. The last was Hardy’s favorite notion, but there was simply no way to tell.
The musketeer assignments were desperate and dangerous, but necessary. The very cute Amy Wu was going with Jon Ingalls as her invisible chaperon to spend some time at Jupiter, where, according to the bartender when they’d phoned, Dash Logan was currently having a few drinks. He looked to be in for the long haul tonight.
From the Solarium, Curtis Rhodin had called the home of his friend at the A.G.’s office—they’d been unsuccessful getting a judge to issue any kind of warrant on Logan’s office that morning, and both had been frustrated, aching for another chance. This was it. They would take an investigator—three of them together would ensure their safety, they hoped—and call on Visser first at his office and then at his home address. When they found him, they would ask him what he had to say about his movements on the night of Elaine’s murder.
The same drill would not work on Torrey, not that Freeman, Roake or Hardy really considered that the chief A.D.A. could have pulled the trigger on Elaine. They all agreed that he would have used Visser. But why would Torrey even see them? Certainly, he would blow off Curtis, his friend and their investigator. And even if they did get in and pushed him for his alibi, he’d tell them to get lost—he wouldn’t miss the message. His guard would be raised even higher.
Freeman, though, wanted to be thorough, and he had an idea. He believed he’d be able to bait Torrey into giving something away the next morning before court went into session.
It was closing in on ten-thirty and Hardy sat alone in the glass room.
The ledger sheets from Dash Logan’s office lay fanned in front of him. They had been important enough for Elaine Wager to have copied them separately and carried them away with her—illegally. Her special master mandate was specific about her duties in searching a lawyer’s office. She had two and only two options on how to treat documents such as these that she reviewed in a search. She determined whether they fell into the categories specifically described in the affidavit. If they did, she gave it to the cops or, if the lawyer claimed a privilege, she took it to a judge. If they did not, she left them alone. And never, ever discussed them with anyone, not even a judge. It was that simple.
And yet she had risked her license and quite possibly her life to copy and remove what Hardy had in front of him.
Why? Why?
Freeman had left a few inches of wine in his bottle. Hardy got up, thinking he’d go see what tonight’s choice had been. He went and sat in the chair David had been using. But he didn’t reach for the wine right away. Just to his right, on the seat next to him, was the cardboard box full of Elaine’s personal items.
On the top of it, facedown, was a framed something. He lifted it up. It was the picture of her mother, Loretta, that Treya had put up on the table when they’d first brought all the stuff down here. The other morning, Abe had asked the gang at the table if anybody minded if he put it back in the box. He didn’t want to look at her face all day while he worked, and Hardy thought he understood pretty well why that was.
Still holding the frame, his fingers absently moving up and down the cardboard backing that held the photograph in place, he stared at the familiar visage of the senator, well-known public figure. Like her daughter, a beauty; and like her daughter, dead.
Hardy sighed wearily. Maybe his daughter was right after all to be frightened of everything. Maybe there was no security. A snatch from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” flitted across his mind. “. . . neither joy, nor love, nor light,/Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain . . .”
He placed the photograph carefully on the table and reached for the wine bottle. Groth Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, 1990. He swirled and sniffed, then tipped the bottle up to his lips and tasted it, thinking it was no wonder David could keep up his good attitude most of the time.
Abruptly, he stood. Carrying the bottle out with him, he crossed the lobby and walked down the hallway to the coffee room, where he turned on the light and took a wineglass from the cabinet. This stuff was too outrageously good to swill. He poured, put the bottle down, and suddenly the wine had vanished from his mind, driven away by a cascade of realizations.
He checked his watch.
It was too late now to call Judge Thomasino, but he could stop by his chambers first thing in the morning. The evidence locker, on the other hand, would be open all night. If he busted his hump, he could get down there, verify what he realized he had to know, and still—maybe—make it home to get the five hours’ sleep he needed to survive another day.
Stopping back at the Solarium to turn off the lights, he saw that he’d left Loretta’s picture on the table. Abe would see it first thing when he came by for the morning briefing, but Hardy didn’t even have the energy to walk around the table and put it back into the box. Abe was a big boy. He’d be able to handle it.
38
“Mr. Torrey, excuse me.”
An hour before court would be called into session, Torrey sat in his office behind the Desk, reading the second part of Jeff Elliot’s article on Abby Oberlin in yesterday afternoon’s Examiner. David Freeman had pulled his forty years of familiarity and rank on the clerk who controlled access to the D.A.’s offices, and so achieved the element of surprise, which showed all over Torrey’s face. Jerking the paper down when he saw who was interrupting him, he made an effort at quick recovery, but it wasn’t fast enough. He inclined his head, his manner curt. “Mr. Free
man.” A pause. “Did we have an appointment?”
“No, sir. This is a courtesy call.”
Torrey coughed up a dry, humorless chuckle. “I could use a little of that.” He indicated the newspaper. “Have you read this latest scurrilous slander? Well, who am I talking to? Of course you have, if you didn’t help write it.”
Freeman lifted his shoulders theatrically. He moved a step further into the room and waited.
Torrey set the newspaper down on the Desk. “But I guess appealing to your sense of fair play is whistling in the wind, isn’t it?” Then, suddenly: “How did you get in here?”
“I had an appointment on another matter with one of your staff. Since I was here . . .” Another noncommittal shrug. “And for the record, I did not write a word of that article, nor did I contribute to it, although of course I’m aware of its contents. Mr. Hardy shares office space in my building, after all.” Freeman waved the topic away. “But that’s not why I’m here. Mr. Hardy’s not my problem, though our mutual client is.” He clarified it. “I’m talking about Cole Burgess.”
“What about him?”
The old man closed the distance between him and the Desk, though he remained standing. “Look, it’s not rocket science to see the direction that Mr. Hardy is going with this hearing. The whole proceeding has become a personal and professional attack on you. If I’m reading Judge Hill correctly, and I am, he’s inclined to let it continue. What happens to you isn’t my concern, either.”
“All right. What’s your point?”
“My point is this: Mr. Hardy’s going to continue in the same vein over the course of today’s testimony. He’s going to be probing the relationships you have with Mr. Visser and Mr. Logan.”
