Hardy 04 - 13th Juror, The

by John Lescroart

  "And?"

  "No. It was this guy Bachman and a couple of associates."

  "Okay."

  "So Bachman and I have a chat. He seems like a nice guy, cooperative." Hardy remembered that had been his take on Bachman, too. "I ask him if he knows Witt. He says he's heard the name. Then he remembers — you'd called him, Bachman, I mean. He says he forgot to call you back, the message got lost. He writes himself a note this time — I'd expect a call from him if I were you. So we talk for a while about the deal, if Simpson had been involved somehow. Bachman can't think how, and I don't have any more questions, so that's that. I get the impression he doesn't know Witt from Whinola."

  "Did you mention the seventeen million?"

  "Yeah, he said he thought that figure might be pretty exaggerated but he'd look into it. There might have been some slush, as he called it, given as bonuses an so on, and he was pretty sure the members of the Board had a buy-back option, but none of this was a secret."

  "So why are you off the case? Somebody took you off?"

  "Somebody asked, that's all. Yesterday, called me at home."

  "Who?"

  "My deputy chief. But there wasn't any pressure, more like a suggestion — what am I doing messing with a ten-month-old murder when I'm counting four months to pension city? Clear my plate and get out, that's what I ought to do."

  Hardy was staring out at the city's famous skyline across the rooftops in the Avenues. The thought occurred to him: "How did he know you were on it to begin with? Did you tell him?"

  "I asked him the same thing. Evidently it came down from the chief himself, who in turn got an earful from Mr. Kelso."

  "Who's Mr. Kelso?"

  "Oh, that's right, you're not a local. Frank Kelso is one of our illustrious supervisors. Called the chief and wanted to know why we were hassling — that was the word — why we were hassling the pillars of our legal community, and grief-stricken ones at that. I took it he meant the son, Todd."

  A Los Angeles supervisor! My, Hardy thought, but this is heating up. Whatever else he might be doing, he had touched a nerve here. It pumped him up. "So where do we go from here?"

  "Me? I'm afraid I don’t go anywhere. I'm in don't-rock-the-boat mode, Hardy. The brass wants me to leave it, I leave it."

  "They just tell you to forget about a murder?"

  "Every few years, yeah." After a beat, he said seriously, "I asked the same question. You know what the answer was? Did I have anything solid to go on or was I just fishing? So I told him a little about your client, what you'd told me — just the high spots but enough — and he said it sounded like I was fishing. I told him sometimes it pays to fish and he said it wasn't one of those times." Restoffer sighed. "It's all a numbers game here, and I do have five live ones they want cleared up by the time I'm gone."

  Hardy took a moment, then tried again. "You're okay going out with unfinished business like this?" It was a lame attempt at a guilt trip, but Hardy didn't want to let it go.

  Restoffer laughed. "You know how many open cases I'm leaving? You don't want to know, but one more isn't going to make any difference, I can tell you that. There's just no percentage in it for me. You might have some luck with a private eye. I could recommend a couple of guys down here."

  "Floyd, I need a pro. Someone inside." Maybe sugar would work. Restoffer had access and a history no private detective could approach.

  "Can't do it, Hardy. Sorry."

  "Okay, Floyd. Thanks for your help anyway."

  He was about to hang up, waiting for Restoffer to say goodbye. Instead, the inspector said, "Aren't you going to ask me about the good news?"

  "Okay." Hardy played along, although even the bad news was good in a sense — the involvement of supervisors and police chiefs was corroboration that it wasn't all a chimera. Something was getting covered up. "What's the good news?"

  "The good news is that last night I think this whole thing stinks, so I did some research of my own this morning. Downtown we've got lists some guys in White Collars use for whatever they do, you know? It's all public record, although sometimes it's a little hard to get access to. Contributors to various causes, that type of thing. I thought I'd check the list of Supervisor Kelso's contributors against the Yerba Buena Board and see if I found anybody who might feel comfortable leaning on our good supervisor for a favor or two. Guess what?"

  "You found one."

  Hardy could almost see him nod. "Margaret Morency. San Marino old money and lots of it."

  "She called Kelso?"

  "I can't prove it, but it's a safe bet."

  "Can you go to your deputy chief and tell him about it? Seems like this takes it out of the fishing department."

  "Not enough, Hardy." Restoffer was off the case and he was clear about that — he wasn't going to jeopardize his retirement with his last months on the job. Hardy was grateful, taking what he could get — at least the man was helping. "This only looks like something if you're already disposed to see it," Restoffer was saying. "I've got nothing hard at all, nothing to connect the dots."

  "Do you know anything about this Morency woman?"

  "Nothing. She's probably on ten boards — that's what these people do, isn't it? Sit on boards, keep the money in the family, take a small stipend — say, my salary — for their efforts. And the rich stay rich. Hey, listen to me. I'm four months from life by a lake in Montana in a cabin that's paid for. Get out of this zoo for good, so what am I bitching about?"

  "Sounds great."

  "It will be, believe me. The first year I don't think I'll do anything but paint. I haven't painted since I was a kid. I used to love it, then I ran out of time to do it."

  "I used to make things out of wood," Hardy said. "No nails."

  There was a silence, then: "Life, huh?" Restoffer said. "Anyway, I thought I'd give you what I found, see if you get lucky."

  "Well, I appreciate it, Floyd, I really do."

  "Listen, if you get so you're closing in on this one, I'm here."

  "Got you."

  "Later."

  44

  Hardy climbed the Hall of Justice steps. It had turned cold overnight and the morning sun shone bleakly, as though through a gauze, just enough to cast its long shadows.

  He had never believed he would miss David Freeman, but the schlumpy, gruff, arrogant presence would have been welcome now. He entered the building, passed the metal detector and went downstairs to the cafeteria, not yet mobbed as it would be later. He ordered a cup of coffee, went to a table and opened his briefcase, taking out a fresh yellow legal pad and a black pen.

  It was 7:40 and the penalty phase was to begin at 9:30.

  He had wrestled with his options for an hour before talking to Floyd Restoffer, and in the end had decided that time had simply run out to pursue things on his own down in Los Angeles. If it absolutely came to that, he would, but meanwhile he had a defense to conduct — Jennifer Witt would be sentenced to death unless he had some reasonably effective argument that she should not be.

  And, of course, he couldn't use his best one.

  But the penalty phase of the trial gave him more leeway than Freeman had had. The guilt phase was interested in the weight of evidence, in proof, in determination of the facts. By contrast, the penalty phase explicitly contemplated — indeed mandated — the introduction of factors that might persuade a jury of the defendant's mitigating human qualities. So Hardy could bring up those things about Jennifer — her life as a wife with her husband, what a good mother she had been. He could talk about her childhood, her friends, even her pets. His problem was that over the past week, at the rate of a couple of hours with Jennifer every day, he hadn't discovered much more about her life than he'd already known, and he suspected that not much of Jennifer's life story — the part he could tell — was going to move the jury to empathy.

  Larry Witt had not allowed her to make or keep any friends, and she had acquiesced. She wasn't even allowed to be involved in Matt's school life. She didn't visit her pa
rents or her brother. There were no pets. Those few times they went out to dinner, or to one of Larry's social engagements, she played the role of an aloof beauty, the wife as a trophy.

  She insisted on denying the terrible reality that she had been found guilty. Hardy hammered over and over the fact that from the jury's perspective she was a multiple murderer. This was a hard truth but it was the truth. She avoided it, as she had so many other hard truths in her life.

  Finally, they did reach a compromise of sorts. Hardy could bring up what he saw as humanizing issues, in effect pleading for her life as though she were in fact guilty, so long as he left out any reference to Larry beating her. In return, Hardy must continue to bring up alternative theories for the killings; she was not letting go of her idea that this possibility — that someone else had done it — would at least plant enough doubt to keep the jury from voting the death sentence. And no matter her situation and Hardy's dose of reality, she still seemed to cling to the hope that somehow the real killer would be found and she would be entirely cleared.

  So, based on the YBMG material, and in the face of David Freeman's warnings, Hardy spent half the night arranging and, he hoped, buttressing the argument that a hit man had killed Larry, and the reasons he had for doing so. To that end he had subpoenaed Ali Singh.

  Trying to portray Jennifer as a model of sweetness and light proved to be somewhat more difficult. She just wasn't the girl next door and had never pretended to be. A difficult, moody child, she had grown up a difficult, moody adult — haughty, cool, secretive, self-destructive. That was too often her persona, showing rarely what was beneath it. The jury could not properly consider many of the things she had done since the arrest, but Hardy believed that one way or another they knew as much as he did, and would be unlikely to be able to forget it.

  Here was what the jury was working with, Hardy noted down: After killing her husband and son, Jennifer had gone out for a jog, setting up an alibi — her stop at the ATM — that almost had sold them. Then by a clever ruse she had broken out of jail, remained at large for three months, during which she continued an affair with her psychiatrist (so much for the loving wife).

  Though the judge had instructed the jury that there was insufficient evidence to convict Jennifer of murdering her first husband, Hardy doubted any member of the jury didn't think she had. They'd no doubt remember that, too, when the time came.

  Yes, she was pretty. To some of the men she might even be beautiful, but even that, Hardy suspected, played against her — she seemed by her appearance of aloofness to think she was above it all, including the law. More tears would have helped, but Jennifer fought tears.

  It had taken Hardy almost a whole day to hammer out the jury instructions that Villars would give after argument, just before the jury got the case.

  * * * * *

  "Ladies and gentlemen. Good morning."

  Powell stood in the at-ease position about twelve feet in front of the judge's bench, eight feet from the jury box, facing them. His voice was low, his tone relaxed — though it carried well enough. It looked as though he was going to be keeping out the theatrics, reasoning that the jury might well have had enough of them.

  Another problem was that Powell's lead in the polls had jumped over the weekend — he was now leading his nearest opponent by seven points and seemed to be heading for election on the first ballot. Hardy had a feeling some members of the jury were aware of this, and if that were the case, it was more bad luck for Jennifer. Powell's authority and stature would tend to increase if the jury saw him as the Attorney General of the State of California rather than as just another working stiff prosecutor. But this, again, was something Hardy could do nothing about.

  Powell continued: "Around these United States of ours, a murder is committed about once every two hours, every hour of the day, every day of the week, every week of the year. Until only a few years ago the death penalty was a relatively common punishment for a person convicted of murder, as well as for so-called lesser crimes such as rape, and even some types of armed robbery.

  "That has changed now in our so-called enlightened age and we live in a society and a state that sanctions the death penalty for only the most heinous of crimes — murders involving special circumstances, which include, as Judge Villars has told you, multiple murders, lying in wait, murder for financial gain, murder of a police officer."

  "You have found Jennifer Witt guilty of murder, and guilty of two of the special circumstances I have just referred to — murder for financial gain and multiple murder. That is no longer in dispute. In this phase of the trial, I am going to be showing you why the State of California is asking for the death penalty."

  "First, in the strictly legal sense, the laws of this state have decreed that the nature of these crimes compels the ultimate punishment. But, of course, there is an even larger issue here, and that is the nature of the murderer, a nature so devoid of mercy and feeling that she could — and did — cold-bloodedly plan and execute the murder not only of her husband, but of her own flesh and blood, her only son."

  Hardy as well as Powell knew that this was the baldest of opening statement rhetoric, but it was powerful and legally accurate. While no one had ever before in these proceedings claimed that the murder of Matthew Witt had been anything but accidental, his death by gunshot had occurred in direct consequence of and during the commission of another "cold-blooded" crime. Any person planning the first crime would have to see, inherent in it, the possibility of the second. That, at least, was the prosecution's point. In that sense, legally, the two crimes were of the same magnitude, or sufficiently close so that Hardy decided he couldn't object and be sustained.

  Powell stopped and turned his whole body toward Hardy and the defense table. Jennifer, now on Hardy's left — she had been on his right throughout the guilt phase — seemed to jut out her chin and stare straight back at Powell. Hardy had his hand over her wrist — she was shaking. He squeezed to signal her — it wouldn't help her to get involved in this visual exchange of defiance, a game of chicken.

  But the references to her son Matt earlier in the trial had been few and glancing — this was an escalation, and Jennifer was taking it hard. She pulled her hand from under Hardy's.

  "You're such an asshole," she said out loud, unable to restrain herself.

  The courtroom exploded.

  Powell stood there open-mouthed, but no doubt pleased. Let her hang herself. Villars was calling for order, pounding her gavel. Behind Hardy, the gallery was humming. He put his arm around his client, pulling her to him and telling her to shut up right now.

  Over the din Villars was trying to be heard but to little avail. Jennifer was starting to stand up, about to say something else. Hardy squeezed her arm again, trying to keep her down, to save her. "Ow." Turning on him. "You're hurting me. Let me go." She wriggled her arm free, now facing the judge, now the jury. A fury, cornered and suddenly mute. The two bailiffs were closing in on the defense table.

  Hardy leaped up, reaching for her and at the same time trying to motion to the bailiffs that they didn't need to interfere. His voice quiet, hands outstretched, he kept repeating, "It's okay, it's all right…" Except, of course, it wasn't. She was killing herself.

  Villars stood at the bench, her gavel forgotten. Behind Hardy someone said Jennifer's name and she turned. Ken Lightner had gotten to the front of the gallery and Jennifer went into his arms across the railing separating them. Protectively, his big hands caressing the top of her head, as a parent might do to comfort a child, he held her.

  The bailiffs, rooted where they had stopped, waited. The crisis had lasted less than a few moments and appeared to be over. Villars sat down. Powell appeared bemused. The judge tapped her gavel and called for a recess, then ordered Hardy to see her in her chambers.

  * * * * *

  Villars' usually gray visage was almost crimson. Powell did not say a word.

  "She won't do it again, Your Honor—"

  "Damn right she won't
do it again!" The judge spoke quietly, standing behind her desk, hands down on it, leaning on them. "If I don't gag her and she does do it again, Mr. Hardy, I'll hold you responsible. You won't sleep at home for a week."

  Hardy, expecting a rebuke, was brought up short by Villars' tone — more personal than he'd expected. He decided it would be a good time to bring it out into the open if something was there.

  "Do you have a problem with me personally, Your Honor?"

  "I have a problem with your client disrupting my courtroom. That's my problem. You got a problem with that?"

  "I don't think that's it," Hardy said.

  Villars straightened up. "What?" She squinted at him. "What did you say?"

  "I said I don't think that's it."

  The judge's eyes narrowed. Her voice came out raspy, choked with anger. "My courtroom is a goddamn model of fairness, Mr. Hardy. Justice is hard enough to come by, so I bend over backwards to go by the rules and try to be evenhanded, and I resent the hell out of anybody suggesting that I don't."

  "I haven't said it got into your courtroom, Your Honor. But I noticed you fined David Freeman for contempt and now you're threatening me with the same thing or time in jail."

  "I'd do the same thing to Mr. Powell, don't flatter yourself." She glanced at the prosecutor, who was doing his wallpaper imitation. "Nobody gets to yell obscenities in my courtroom. Nobody, Freeman go out of line, as he does often. It's not a personal thing with me, as you seem to think. The main reason I'm not going to gag your client is that it would further prejudice the jury against her. Beyond what she's done all on her own. Nevertheless, you have guaranteed her behavior and if she goes over the edge again I'll take appropriate steps. Against her and against you. Clear?"

  "Perfectly."

  She continued to glare at him.

  "Your Honor," he added.

  * * * * *