The 13th Juror dh-4

by John Lescroart

  "Who bought it?"

  Singh had finished his curry. He pushed his plate aside. "These are the people who let me go. The insurance people – PacRim. They paid $40 million in cash."

  Hardy pushed his own plate away. "$40 million."

  Singh was going on. "When it filed with the State for the status change – the fee is to pay the State for your worth – it came to $535,000 dollars. That was the Group's net worth. The offer of $40 million was a great surprise, you see? No one thought the Group had that kind of value."

  Somebody did, Hardy thought. No business suddenly discovered its value had increased from $500,000 to $40 million in less than six months.

  Yet the offering circular had described YBMG's financial future in the most conservative terms. No sale was contemplated – publicly – last Christmas. There had been no potential buyers and the market had been scoured at the time. The circular had been clear on that. The members shouldn't expect any windfall profit; it probably wasn't even worth the members' time to buy the nickel shares. They'd never be worth any more than that.

  The tingling sensation was spreading.

  "If I had been a member, I would have bought," Singh said. "Not many members bought but I would have. And everything now would be different."

  "The members did all right?" Hardy asked. "The ones who bought in?"

  Singh, the accountant, knew the figures. He couldn't help smiling bleakly in admiration. "They offered forty-nine percent to the members, the doctors. That's 140,000 shares at five cents a share. How much you could buy depended on how long you had been with the Group. The most – for any one individual, you see – was 368 shares, which would be a total investment of $18.40."

  Hardy remembered that figure – "less than twenty bucks."

  "I have been over these numbers so many times," Singh said, "and it is still very difficult to believe. Do you know what a nickel share is now worth?"

  "I could do the math."

  Singh smiled his sad gentle smile again. "No need, I have done it. One hundred forty-two dollars and eighty-six cents. Per share."

  Hardy whistled.

  "Fifty-two thousand, five hundred seventy-two dollars and forty-eight cents," Singh said.

  "What's that?"

  "That's what you have now if you bought your three hundred and sixty-eight shares for eighteen dollars and forty cents."

  *****

  "Interesting, if true. But so what?"

  Freeman was on his own turf. Unlike his austere apartment, the surroundings in his office were sumptuous. A twelve-by-eighteen-foot Persian rug covered the center of the dark hardwood floors; fine leaded crystal was on display on the mirrored shelves behind the fully stocked bar; two original Bufanos and a Bateman hung on the sponge-painted walls. The corner room was large – three times the size of Hardy's – with full bookshelves, two full-size couches, several armchairs. There were drapes – not the ubiquitous louvered blinds – on the three sets of windows. Freeman's desk was a five-by-seven-foot expanse of spotless shining rosewood.

  It was six o'clock and Hardy was sitting in one of the armchairs. After his discussion with Ali Singh, he had tried unsuccessfully to reach Donna Bellows again. He had also left a message with Jody Bachman at Crane amp; Crane. Then he had spent an hour or so going over the YBMG offering circular in some detail. In light of what he had discovered with Singh, it didn't read the same way it had.

  "So what?" Hardy replied. "So something, at least."

  Freeman grunted, handed Hardy a cold beer and went back to the bar, rummaging around down behind it.

  "It's a lot of money," Hardy persisted. "It's a hell of a lot of money."

  Freeman came up with a bottle of red wine. "I agree." He was taking the foil off. "But again, so what? So a bunch of doctors made a lot of money. Happens every day."

  "Not a bunch. Only a few. This accountant, Singh, said he didn't think more than fifteen, twenty guys bought in."

  Freeman pulled the cork, sniffed it and laid it on the bar's surface.

  He lifted one of the large-bowled crystal wine glasses from behind him and poured himself a quarter of the bottle, holding it up to the window to check its color, its clarity, its legs.

  Hardy crossed a leg. "Let me know if I'm bothering you, David."

  He sipped at the wine. "Not at all," he said, taking another mouthful, flushing it around his mouth, gargling, finally swallowing. He came around the bar. "The '82 Bordeaux are not overrated. You really ought to try a glass."

  Choosing an armchair, placing the glass on a marble-topped end table, he sat down. Hardy defiantly pulled at his beer.

  Freeman sat forward. "I would love to put something together here, Dismas, believe me. I'm not seeing it."

  Hardy sat back, trying to formulate his position. It would be good practice if he had to present it to Villars, or a jury. Maybe it wasn't as clear as it seemed to him. "Let's be generous. Say a maximum of fifty doctors bought the stock. There are about four hundred doctors in the Group."

  Freeman waited, hearing him out, sipping his wine. "Okay?"

  "Okay, so from my perspective, and I admit it's almost a year later, the cover letter looks like an outright deception."

  "A year ago you hadn't started your first trial," Freeman reminded him. "You didn't work here. You didn't have two children. You'd never met Jennifer Witt, and Larry and Matt Witt were alive." He swirled more wine. "A lot can happen in a year. Perspectives change."

  "I think the reason Larry got in touch with his lawyer, and then this guy down in LA, was because he thought something was fishy – back then, and he was calling them on it."

  "Calling who?"

  "The Board, the attorneys, I don't know. Whoever drew up this thing, whoever concocted the scam."

  The bushy eyebrows went up. "Now it's a scam?"

  Now Freeman sat all the way back into his chair. "Don't hang your hopes on the way you want something to be, Dismas."

  "I don't think I'm doing that."

  Freeman shook his head. "You want it to be a scam because if it is a scam – and you can prove it – then, maybe, you can help Jennifer with it. Although how you plan to do even that eludes me." He leaned forward again. "All you can do this round is get the death penalty mitigated. She's already guilty. You can't get her retried."

  "If I can get Villars-"

  "You're talking about Joan Villars, the Superior Court judge, I presume? Get serious. The woman's about as flexible as concrete. You're not going to convince Villars to do anything."

  "So let me try to convince you."

  Freeman sat back again. "I've been listening. I think you said fifty doctors bought stock. Continue."

  "The reason the other three hundred and fifty did not was because of the wording of this cover-letter and the offering circular. Together, they made this dumb nickel investment sound like a waste of time. Then they sent it out to their doctors during the holidays, when only a few of the guys would be likely to take the time to read it, and limited the option period to about three weeks."

  "I'm with you so far. Did Larry buy or not buy?"

  "Larry smelled a rat."

  "And then?"

  "And then he threatened to blow the whistle on this multi-million-dollar scam. That was the call to LA."

  Fingers pressed to his eyes, Freeman sighed. "I was afraid that's where you were going."

  Hardy had been talked out of enough good ideas by David Freeman over the past weeks. He was not in his most receptive mode. "David, the managing partner in the LA firm handling this was shot to death within a month of Larry Witt."

  Freeman tipped his glass. "You said that. I fail to see, though, how any of this is going to mitigate Jennifer's sentence, even if you could get Villars to listen to it, which you can't. You're saying now, I take it, that there was in fact some mysterious hit man, the existence of whom, by the way, the defense – that's us – never hinted at during the trial, and of whom there is no physical evidence."

  "That doesn't mean
he doesn't exist."

  "Do you think he does? You think Jennifer is telling the truth?"

  Hardy said he still didn't entirely think that, but the jury might. "I'll let them decide."

  "Villars won't let you introduce the theory. And if she'd be inclined to, which she won't, Powell will object and win unless you've got some shred of evidence, which doesn't exist, no doubt because this didn't happen this way."

  "Which leaves Jennifer hanging," Hardy said.

  Freeman noisily sipped the rest of his wine. "It always has," he muttered.

  *****

  But he wasn't going to take any more of Freeman's advice, even if it was right. He still had four days, and he thought if he did succeed in finding that shred of evidence Freeman had talked about, he could get Villars at least to listen.

  After all, this was a capital case. This was life and death, not some moot-court discussion, not petty politics. If he got something real, he had to believe she would listen to it.

  Of course, this did beg the question of whether or not anything real in fact existed, but Hardy had nothing else – he had to assume it did. Somewhere.

  43

  The next day he interviewed three doctors at YBMG, two of whom had not invested and one who had. The first two felt understandably snake-bit, but neither one saw a grand conspiracy at work in his bad fortune. The Group had done well and they both wished they had been more a part of it, but it was like the lottery. Who would have predicted the windfall? It was a fluke, and they'd been given their chance.

  The lucky one, Dr. Seidl, was a younger member of the Group, only entitled to ninety-two shares. Paying his monthly bills in December, he had sent in his $4.60 and promptly forgot about it. Last month, when he received his payout of $13,143.12, he thought it was very nice, but after taxes it was a little under ten grand, and after all his credit cards he was back to square one. It sure beat a swan dive into a dry swimming pool, but it wasn't really going to change his life.

  Hardy was starting to think it was going to be hard to sustain his conspiracy theory, even to himself, if he didn't find somebody who had made a bundle, and theoretically, at least, would have had reason to shut up a whistle blower if that's what Larry Witt had been.

  In the afternoon he went to the library and looked up the members of the YBMG Board in the business reference section, but the names were all unfamiliar. He did learn that the corporation as an entity was scheduled to hold fifty-one percent of the stock, and the doctors forty-nine percent, if all of them bought in. He wondered if there was a provision for outstanding, unbought doctor stock, some kind of secondary buy-in, but he saw no mention of it in the published prospectus.

  He did some figuring, realizing that if only ten percent of the doctors bought their stock, then there appeared to be a little over 125,000 shares out there somewhere – unclaimed – with a value of something like $17 million.

  *****

  On Friday morning, he was in his office, talking on the phone to the Los Angeles Police Department. He still had discovered no evidence connection between YBMG's business dealings and Dr. Larry Witt. He had talked to Jennifer again last night, pressing her, but she could recall nothing Larry said or might have said regarding the proposed buy-out. Hardy was tempted to tell her to make something up just so he could get it in front of somebody, but he restrained himself.

  Then it struck him – there had been an investigation. He knew that policmen got sensitive about their unsolved backlogs – their skull cases, they called them – but he might be able to drum up a little enthusiasm – tie the old crime to another one?

  "Restoffer. Homicide."

  It was an older voice but not a tired one. And Hardy had gotten through the huge bureaucracy faster that he'd have thought possible. Maybe it meant something.

  Hardy introduced himself, trying to talk fast and still be as clear as he could be – he was a defense attorney in San Francisco and maybe had discovered a possible link between his client and the murder of Simpson Crane.

  There was a longish pause. "What'd you say your name was?"

  Hardy told him. Another pause. "Just a minute. Hang on, would you?"

  When Restoffer came back on, there was less background noise. "You said you were in San Francisco?"

  "That's right."

  "I'm listening."

  Hardy went through it, more slowly this time, filling in the blanks. When he'd finished, Restoffer said, "That's pretty tenuous, Mr. Hardy."

  The inspector was right, of course, and Hardy admitted it. Simpson Crane ran the law firm that represented the medical group of which Larry Witt had been a member. Crane himself hadn't been YBMG's lawyer, or Witt's. For that matter, even Jody Bachman hadn't been Witt's lawyer.

  Hardy knew better than to push. It was the quickest way to turn a cop off – a citizen, especially a defense lawyer, lobbying for an unsupported theory. The facts were either going to intrigue Restoffer or not. "Well," Hardy said, "I just thought I should report it to somebody, get it off my chest."

  It was Restoffer's cue to hang up if he was going to, but he stayed on. "We're pretty sure it was union muscle but we couldn't find any kind of trail. They did it right…"

  "Same up here. Except they've convicted my client – Witt's wife – of killing him for the insurance."

  "They've convicted her already?"

  "Last week. My problem is she's got no defense, other than saying she didn't do it. She says she saw somebody walking up the street. Maybe it was some kind of hit man, so I've been trying to find a reason for a hit man to want to kill Witt. This might be it."

  There was a long silence. "I've got four months before I retire," Restoffer said. "I'd love to close out these two. Crane was a prominent guy. So was his wife. But I've got five live cases right now. When am I supposed to fit this in?"

  That was his problem, and Hardy let him wrestle with it.

  "You got a paper trail, anything at all?"

  All Hardy had was the offering circular and the prospectus from the library, which he'd fax down if Restoffer needed it.

  "How much money we talking about?"

  "I figure about seventeen million dollars."

  "Seventeen million?"

  "You think that could motivate somebody to do something serious?"

  Restoffer grunted. "Seventeen dollars does it down here, sometimes seventeen cents." The line hummed, empty and open. "Okay," he said, "why don't you send your stuff down? I'll take a look at it."

  Now it was Hardy's turn to hang up, but much as he wanted Restoffer's help, he didn't want to mislead him. It was full-disclosure time. "Inspector…" he began.

  "Floyd," Restoffer said.

  "Okay, Floyd, there is one other thing you ought to know that argues against this hit man theory. It might make the whole exercise not worth your time. l"

  "I'm listening."

  "I don't know what the practice is with professional killers – if they do this. But Witt was shot with his own gun."

  The silence hung. Hardy thought he heard Restoffer let out a deep breath. "So was Crane," he said. "Send down your stuff."

  *****

  At least some things seemed to be falling together, even the details that did not appear to have particular relevance. For example, the FedEx package.

  While Hardy was filling out his subpoena form to call Ali Singh as a witness for the defense, it had come back to him that the FedEx invoice had been entered as an exhibit, and all he had to do was look up who had sent the package.

  He had done that, and seeing that it had come from Nancy DiStephano, he had remembered – putting things together – that Tom had gone over to Jennifer's house the week before the killings to deliver his own present, but that Nancy was going to wait to deliver hers in person when the Witts came to visit on Christmas. So what had happened was that after the Witts had blown off the family visit, Nancy had sent her present to her grandson Matt by Federal Express. What the gift had been didn't matter – it had obviously vanished into th
e gaping and insatiable mouth of Christmas presents, into the mountain of Matt's new toys.

  But, like Restoffer's cooperation, and though it was not what he'd call hot evidence, the information gave Hardy some small consolation. The unanswered questions had been distracting, and there weren't many left now.

  There seemed something fishy in the YBMG takeover. Hardy's theory was a long way from completely developed and even further from proven, but what he was beginning to suspect drew him like a moth to a candle. Hell, any possibility did. Suppose that both Larry Witt and Simpson Crane had, for different reasons and by differing paths, somehow threatened to expose and undermine an extremely lucrative and shady business transaction. So whoever was behind it had these two obstacles to eliminate – Simpson and Larry – before the deal could proceed. Someone was hired to do the dirty work, and the murder of Simpson Crane (and his wife, who just happened to be there) looked like some kind of radical union hit, while the murder of Larry Witt (and his son, who just happened to be there) got laid off on his wife. It was at least a tantalizing parallel.

  *****

  Sunday morning, frying eggs and bacon in his metal pan. Frannie in her bathrobe reading the paper in the sunny kitchen. Rebecca and Vincent enjoying the special treat of sitting next to each other, Rebecca the big girl helping her mommy, feeding the baby, getting fully twenty percent of the squashed banana into Vincent's mouth.

  Hardy taking it all in out of the corner of his eye, one of the life moments that he'd committed himself to recognizing, savoring. From the front of the house came the strains of the Grand Canyon Suite – more Freeman influence. He walked a couple of steps across the kitchen and planted a kiss on Frannie's forehead.

  "Um," she said, kissing the air distractedly near his face.

  And the telephone rang. It always did.

  "Don't get it," Hardy said. He was standing right next to it and was fighting the temptation pretty well.