The 13th Juror dh-4

by John Lescroart

  Hardy believed that at some point, adults in society had to take responsibility for what they were, for who they'd become. If as grown-ups, they'd turned into killers, they didn't deserve any breaks. Adios, you had your chance and you blew it.

  It was a tragedy all around, there was no denying that. It was a tragedy that children got atrociously bad starts in life, that people turned out bad. But it was the world. It was a worse wrong, a worse tragedy, to keep giving bad people the opportunity to do truly bad things again and again.

  But what about someone like Jennifer, who had two husbands who beat her? Whose life had been a living hell? Where did she fit in?

  41

  The next morning, as he was gathering his things, getting ready to go to the jail to see Jennifer, the telephone rang.

  "Mr. Hardy? This is Donna Bellows with Goldberg Mullen amp; Roake." As soon as she said the name Hardy recognized the sultry voice. Ms. Bellows, the lawyer who had referred Jennifer to Freeman, was another lead he probably hadn't followed up enough, another unreturned call that he hadn't pursued. He said hello somewhat warily.

  "I found out about the verdict over the weekend and I was out of town yesterday, but I realized I never called you back. I'm sorry. I suppose it's too late now anyway.

  "It's never too late if you've got something," Hardy said. "I'm sure David Freeman's working on the appeal right now."

  "Well, I don't think I have anything."

  Hardy waited. Finally he said, "Whatever you do have, I'll take. I did find out that Crane amp; Crane was YBMG's law firm, although what that means about Larry Witt…"

  Bellows sighed over the telephone. "That's what I found, too, where I had heard the name." Again Hardy waited. "I've had a busy few moths, and I've had two secretaries quit on me, and my files are a mess, so I came in a couple of weeks ago and tried to get some of this cleaned up. It should have been filed with Larry's stuff but it wasn't. In any event, I can't imagine it's of any importance-"

  "What is it?"

  "It's an offering circular. Larry had sent it around to me with some questions but I'd been on vacation over Christmas."

  "Maybe that's why he called Crane – to answer the questions."

  "He did call them? Directly?"

  "Once. From his home, anyway."

  "Well, okay, but by the time I saw it, Larry was dead. I'm afraid that between my reaction to that and my other pressing business, I just laid the circular aside. Larry's questions were moot by then anyway. But it sounds like you got your answer."

  Remembering how foolish he had felt asking Jody Bachman what an LBO was. Hardy hesitated a moment but then went ahead. The way to stay ignorant was not ask questions. He admitted that he didn't really know what an offering circular was.

  "It's pretty much what it says – it's a brochure outlining a stock offering. In this case, YBMG was reorganizing to change their not-for-profit status. I guess Larry had some questions, so he came to me, then when I wasn't here he went to the horse's mouth."

  "He wrote the word 'no' under their phone number."

  "He probably decided he wasn't going to invest. It doesn't look like it was much of a deal, anyway."

  So that was that.

  Hardy, being thorough now, asked if Ms. Bellows would send him a copy of the circular so that he could look it over. She said she would messenger it over that afternoon.

  *****

  She was dressed in her reds. Her hair was all over the place. The guards let her in and she stood, arms crossed, leaning back against the closed door. She had asked Hardy to bring her a pack of cigarettes, and he shook out one and gave it to her. San Francisco County Jail was officially a smoke-free environment. This created a cottage industry among the prisoners who smuggled in cigarettes and sold them the way they sold cocaine, marijuana, and heroin. Hardy just couldn't believe they'd bust Jennifer, convicted of murder and up for the death penalty, for having a smoke in the attorney's conference room.

  Her eyes squinted against the smoke, drilled into him. "Now what?" she said.

  "Now I think we talk about how Larry beat you."

  She squinted some more, seemed to shrink into herself. "And that's why I killed him?"

  Hardy nodded. "That's our best shot. It always was. He took a step toward her but she stared him back. "How are you holding up?" he asked gently.

  She laughed briefly, more like a bark, then coughed, choking on the smoke from her cigarette. The small room was filling with smoke. "I'm real good," she said. "Real good. I love being here." Tears filled her eyes, overflowed onto her face. She left them there.

  Hardy again tried to move forward, but she held out her hand. "You stay away." She turned a shoulder into the door and stood there, shaking, her body heaving, trying to control the sobs. The cigarette fell to the ground at her feet. "This isn't me…" After all the other scenes, this was not an act. She was talking to herself. "I can't have got to here."

  Hardy didn't know what to say. Or do. He had some of the same reaction – that this wasn't real, they couldn't have gotten to here. Yet here they were.

  One of the women guards looked in through the window, leaning over slightly with no expression at all. The two people in the room, one crying and one standing, might as well have been part of the furniture. The guard ignored the cigarette smoke.

  There was no point in pushing. Hardy took one of the chairs, pulled it around backward and straddled it. He crossed his arms over the back of the chair and waited.

  Eventually she had to sit down. She turned her chair to the side, resting an arm across the table. "I don't know why he needed to do that."

  "Who?"

  "Larry." She nodded. "I always tried to be a good wife, a good mother. But I know who I am. I guess Larry knew it too, maybe better than I did. He was trying to protect me from myself, I think, keep me from making mistakes… And he wasn't mean like Ned was. Even when he was mad he wasn't mean about it – it was more like it was his job to do."

  "To keep you in line?"

  "It wasn't every day, you know. Most days, sometimes for a couple of weeks, nothing would happen. But then it would just get to me – this, this feeling that if I didn't do something, something for myself, I'd go crazy. A couple of times I think I did go crazy. Threw things, tore up the house. The anger just took over. Do you know what I'm talking about at all? I realize it sounds pretty strange."

  "But you couldn't leave him?"

  She hit her fist on the table. "I didn't even want to leave him. I loved Larry and… oh, God, I loved Matt. It wasn't the way it was with Ned. Not at all. I really hoped we would work it out, someday."

  This was, Hardy thought, the straightest – and saddest – talk he'd ever gotten out of her, but if it was going to do them any good he had to get more. "I'm sorry to ask this, Jennifer, but what about Ken Lightner?"

  It was as though she expected it, nodding to herself. "I talked to him. He told me about your lying to him about me saying we'd slept together. But I'm not going to pretend I don't feel something strong for Ken. I do." She stared straight ahead for a long moment. "But no," she said at last, "I wasn't going to leave Larry and Matt for him. We talked about it. It was okay. I wanted to, at first especially. But that was just more of the same behavior – Ken said I should break the cycle, don't do the wrong thing to begin with. That way I wouldn't feel like I deserved to be punished."

  "What about him? How do you think he feels about you?"

  She shrugged. "He thinks I'm attractive. He told me that, so I wouldn't think he was rejecting me." Her hands were crossed in her lap, her head down, her voice almost inaudible. "Men find me attractive, but once they get to know me, they don't like me so much."

  "He's sticking with you all through this," Hardy said. "That counts."

  "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 c
razy 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 deja vu? Or deja deja 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 were 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 influence 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 pre-sentencing 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 on 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 suing 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 still 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 tha
t 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 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 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…"