The Hearing

by John Lescroart

  The Beck's fears.

  The constant flow of news and information, even her school curriculum, kept the Beck hyperkinetically aware of and sensitive to every disaster that happened on the planet – a plane crash in Calcutta, a hostage crisis in Balkans, famine and genocide in Rwanda, church burnings in the South. All the world's problems brought home to her own little plate every day.

  This was the backdrop of everyday life, the white noise of her daily existence.

  Hardy had trouble believing that the nature of human beings had changed so completely in one generation. Surely there had always been criminals and perverts, ugliness and evil; it just hadn't felt as if it was everywhere. Perhaps life now for his children was not really much more precarious than when Hardy had been a boy. But now it seemed that nearly every detail of every crime everywhere got into the societal fabric via the front page, television, the Internet – a racial killing in Detroit happened here; an abusive father killing his wife and kids in Miami was here; a massacre at a school in North Dakota might happen here, today.

  The Beck seemed to feel that if she let her guard down for an instant, she would die. Kidnappers lurked in every public bathroom, you got cancer if you caught a whiff of second-hand tobacco smoke, bombs and handguns proliferated in high schools everywhere, you caught AIDS if you even kissed your boyfriend. God forbid you got a sunburn, or forgot to fasten your seatbelt.

  Government warning: Everyone who breathes, dies! Watch out!

  She was trying to sort it all out, one fear at a time. Three out of seven days a week for at least the past year. At bedtime. On school mornings. Whenever something struck her. It was wearing her parents down.

  'She worries,' Frannie repeated.

  'I worry, too,' Hardy replied. 'But I'm old, that's my job. The Beck's a healthy kid whose parents love each other and have enough money. She ought to spend a couple of seconds thinking about that every week or two. The good stuff in the world. There is some left, I hear – sunsets, food, the occasional tasteless joke.'

  'She tries, Dismas. She's doing the best she can.'

  'I know.' Hardy sipped at his cold coffee, let out another lungful of air. 'I really do know. It just breaks my heart.'

  The phrase hung in the room. After a long minute, Frannie squeezed his hand. 'What else?' she asked.

  Hardy paused, then feigned ignorance. 'What else what?'

  'Good try,' she said. 'But not flying. Something else – not the Beck – has been bothering you since you got home last night.'

  Hardy glanced across at his wife. She brushed a stray strand of gleaming red hair from her lovely forehead, offered him a sympathetic look.

  'You're good,' he said.

  She shrugged. 'Part of the job description. So what is it?'

  He sighed a last time and gave in. 'Abe.'

  'That doesn't sound like him at all,' Frannie said after she'd heard the story. 'Do you think it's possible he had a crush on Elaine?'

  The question was unexpected and Hardy considered it carefully, then shook his head no. 'She was engaged. Besides, Abe isn't what I'd call the crush type.'

  'He had a crush on Flo for almost twenty years.'

  'That wasn't a crush, Frannie. They were married.'

  She gave him a pretty pout. 'And the two are mutually exclusive?'

  He took her hand, kissed it, shook his head. 'What I mean is I can't see him carrying some kind of torch. He'd come out with it…'

  Frannie broke a half-smile. 'Abe? We're talking the effervescent and loquacious Lieutenant Glitsky? You want my opinion?'

  'At every turn.'

  'I think if he was attracted to somebody who was somehow off limits – like engaged – wild horses couldn't drag it out of him.'

  Hardy sat up straight. 'You don't think he would even mention it to the involved party?'

  'No. Especially not her. Not unless she gave him some signal that she might be interested. Why do you think Abe hasn't had a date in three years?'

  'Women hate and fear him?'

  'Dismas.'

  'He's a hideous gargoyle?'

  It was no secret that Frannie considered Abe one of the more attractive men on the planet. 'I don't think that's it either.'

  'How about if he hasn't liked anybody enough?'

  'Maybe, but not mostly, I don't think.' She came forward on the couch. 'He hasn't asked anybody out – I'd bet you anything – because he doesn't want to reveal anything going on inside him. It's his protection since Flo.'

  Hardy knew that his wife was mostly right on this. Since Flo had died, he'd spent hours with Glitsky, both socially and professionally, and knew that his friend wasn't exactly the poster boy for celebrating the inner child. The walls were high and thick. But Frannie hadn't gotten it all, and Hardy's expression grew serious. 'I think he's scared, all right, but not about having somebody see who he is. I think he's afraid that if he starts with somebody he might get to care about her. That might turn into caring a lot. And then he might lose it all again.'

  Frannie put her hand back over his. 'That was your demon, Dismas,' she said softly, 'maybe it's not Abe's.'

  Hardy's first son, Michael, had died in infancy. The event had plunged him into divorce with his first wife, Jane, and then a decade of lethargy in a haze induced by Guinness, during which he eked out an empty existence on his bartender wages at the Little Shamrock. His passion for his work and for justice – for sunsets and food and sexual love, too – had dried up. And then, somehow – the precise mechanism of it was still a mystery to him – Frannie had gotten through to him, and he'd begun to feel again, to be able to handle feeling.

  Now he tightened down his mouth, looked over at her. 'Maybe that's why I recognize it, though. With Abe. How did we get on this anyway?' he asked.

  'Abe dating. His possible crush on Elaine.'

  Hardy gave it another minute. 'Whatever it was, it was serious. He wanted the kid to suffer. It was personal.'

  'So what are you going to do now?'

  'About Abe?'

  'I don't suppose you'll have to do anything about Abe. He's got a way of taking care of himself. I was thinking about the boy. What's left for you to do? Are you in this?'

  After a minute of consideration Hardy said, 'Let's say I'm not comfortable with the idea of defending the person who killed Elaine. I liked her. If Cole did it, I'll turn Dorothy onto somebody else, tell her I've got a conflict of interest.'

  'You just said "if Cole did it".'

  'He did, Frannie. He's confessed. That's usually a tip-off.'

  'But you're going to want to find out a little more, aren't you? Make sure.'

  Hardy's reluctance showed like a fresh bruise. His expression changed two or three times until it rested on a grimace. 'Probably, knowing me,' he admitted, 'although there's no such thing as sure. It just feels a little pat up to now, that's all. I'd want to talk to him at least, get his side of it. But if it seems like he did do it – strung out and screwed up or not – I'll let David or somebody else take him. I wouldn't want to be involved in defending him.'

  'But what if-'

  Hardy held up a hand. 'Let's not go there. Not yet, OK.'

  'Abe would be pretty unhappy, though, wouldn't he, if you did?'

  He nodded somberly. 'You know, my love, sometimes you show a remarkable talent for understatement.'

  It surprised Hardy, but neither Jeff nor Dorothy Elliot had any real problem with his decision not to represent Cole. They even said they thought it was a smart one. As they talked, it came out that the boy had done a pretty good job of alienating everybody in the family.

  When he'd first begun having 'problems', Jeff and Dorothy had tried to be understanding and supportive in his struggle. Cole told them that he'd come out to San Francisco because there wasn't any real empathy regarding his situation in the Midwest. He was trying but people just didn't understand.

  So the Elliots invited him to stay with them and their children until he got settled in. In the next month, Jeff 'lost' a wa
tch and they had a daytime break-in where the burglar got away with most of Dorothy's jewelry. Dinners became upsetting for the children when Uncle Cole's place would be set and he wouldn't show up. On top of that, Cole had two minor traffic accidents while he was driving Dorothy's car, both of them the other driver's fault – except that in both cases the other car had fled. Finally, when one of the girl's piggy banks that had held four hundred dollars turned up missing, they'd told Cole he had to go and not come back.

  So they understood Hardy's decision. He was a friend to have gone to the jail in an emergency and make sure he got into the detox. They didn't expect him to do anything else.

  But for his own peace of mind, Hardy did want to eyeball the man and get to the bottom of this confession. What had Cole said? Glitsky's behavior had stuck in his craw as well. It wasn't that he thought that Cole might be innocent, but the fact that everyone was treating him as though it had already been proven that bothered the lawyer in Hardy.

  He didn't need certainty beyond a reasonable doubt. He was ready to cast Cole off in a heartbeat, but he couldn't let go completely until he'd at least totally satisfied himself that the man had actually killed Elaine.

  Then let him be damned. Hardy wouldn't care.

  5

  In the women's room at Rand and Jackman Law Associates on Montgomery Street, Treya Ghent tried to fix her eyes, but she knew it was a losing fight. Between the horrible, senseless murder of her dear friend and boss Elaine Wager and the unrelenting demands of her wonderful but high-maintenance fourteen-year-old daughter Raney, she had averaged less than three hours of sleep for the past four nights.

  She was at work this morning because she didn't want to use up any more sick days frivolously. She needed to keep a bank so that she would be available if her daughter absolutely needed to have her stay home to care for a real illness, or to counsel her during a real crisis. And Treya didn't kid herself. Raney was a teenager – she was desperately going to need her mother from time to time in the next couple of years, just as Treya had needed her own mom. And thank God Raney – like Treya had been – was the kind of child who would ask.

  Certainly she wasn't going to waste any of those precious sick days on herself- she hadn't missed a day of work for anything related to herself in six years. They paid her to be here and contribute and she wasn't going to let her employers down. They counted on her.

  But the eyes were going to betray the fact that this morning at least she was a functional zombie, and she hated to have anyone, much less Clarence Jackman, the firm's managing partner, see that. When she'd gotten the summons that Jackman wanted to see her in his office, she'd been sobbing quietly in her little cubicle.

  And why not? How could somebody have killed Elaine? It had wrenched her heart when she'd first learned of it, and the pain hadn't let up much since. Elaine had been a friend and confidante; they often joked that they were sisters separated at birth. She and her boss had been the same age – thirty-three. Both were smart, neither of them entirely black or white. Intuitively, they both understood that the sometimes vast differences between their social standing, their jobs and their prospects were merely the products of background, education and – that greatest of all variables – luck.

  She threw a last splash of cold water over her eyes, blinked hard, and patted them dry with a paper towel. She'd kept Mr Jackman waiting long enough, too long really. Staring at herself in the mirror for one last second, she willed a tiny spark of life into her tired eyes, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin. 'OK, girl,' she whispered firmly to herself. 'No whining.'

  Sixty-three-year-old Clarence Jackman was a power player. The company he'd founded with Aaron Rand thirty years ago was the most successful majority-black law firm west of Chicago. Though Rand and Jackman represented perhaps fifteen per cent of the Bay Area's minority-owned businesses, the rest of their receivables came from a mix of premier entities without any reference to ethnicities. The firm's client roster included banks, hotels, construction firms, HMOs, several Silicon Valley companies, dozens of sports and entertainment celebrities, and hundreds of other lower profile but high-income individuals and corporations. Imposing nearly to the point of intimidation, Jackman had been a star fullback at USC in the sixties. He carried nearly two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle on his six-foot, three-inch frame. He favored Italian suits, double-breasted in browns and greens, white shirts, conservative ties. Intensely black-hued, with an oversized head capped now in tightly trimmed gray knots, just two months ago he'd had a middle-aged applicant for the firm's CFO position walk out of the job interview before a word had been spoken while Jackman looked him over to see if he could take it.

  Understandably, Jackman had not risen to his current eminence by having a soft heart. The law business was competitive enough if you weren't black. If you were, it could be startlingly brutal. Rand and Jackman had known this at the start. They'd felt that they had to build their firm on the assumption that if things ever went wrong with a client or a case, they would never under any circumstances get the benefit of the doubt. They could afford no mistakes. They had to be the best. Not just the best black – the best, period.

  And so, perhaps ironically, the firm was much more a meritocracy than most of its competitors. The younger associates worked endless hours like – well – slaves, so that they could become partners and keep working even harder. Mental or physical weakness, excuses, moral lapses, failure – all were grounds for termination.

  Jackman, unhampered by any laws mandating sensitivity to race issues, ran what he thought was a good, old-fashioned firm. When he and Aaron had first started out, they'd set the tone immediately, getting rid of deadwood on sight. And soon enough the word got out and the stars came calling from the good law schools and from other firms – the diligent, the brilliant, the ambitious. Workers all. Here his attorneys could accomplish great things, could kick some real ass and make real money without anyone wondering whether they'd been hired to meet some quota or kept on because they couldn't be fired.

  Now, saddened on many levels by the murder of one of his true stars, Elaine Wager, Clarence Jackman was going to have to deliver one of the tough messages to one of the good people. He had seated himself behind his desk – always an effective tool for reinforcing emotional distance – and was shuffling papers as the door opened. He kept at it for a few more seconds, then looked up. 'Ah, Ms Ghent. Thanks for coming up.'

  'You're welcome.' She was standing in a classic military at-ease position by the empire chair that he'd placed in front of his desk.

  'Please. Have a seat.'

  Nodding briskly, all business, she thanked him and took the chair, sitting ramrod straight and managing to do it without appearing stiff or nervous. She looked at him expectantly, then surprised him by speaking up first. 'What can I do for you, sir?'

  In spite of the message he was about to deliver, Jackman found himself almost enjoying the moment. This was a woman with presence. A slight puffiness around her eyes in no way detracted from her appearance. If she was wearing any make-up, it was very subtle – she sat about ten feet from Jackman and he saw no sign of any, not even lipstick. Her face was handsome – Jackman decided that if she made it up it would be close to beautiful, which was probably why she didn't bother. It had an angular, almost exotic cast – some hint of Asian bloodline in the racial mix. Conservatively dressed in a honey-colored silk blouse and knee-length skirt, she still managed to project a powerful physicality. There was no sign of any extra weight on her, but she wasn't petite. She came across, more than anything, as strong.

  These impressions coalesced in the seconds it took for Jackman to frame his response. His own expression was grave, his body language sympathetic as he came forward, his arms on his desk. 'Well, first,' he began in his deep, soothing voice, 'I wanted to see how you're holding up in the wake of… Elaine.'

  'I've tried to do most of my crying at home.' He admired the self-deprecating way she phrased it, meeting his eye. 'I haven't al
ways been successful.'

  'It's a tragedy,' Jackman declared. 'A terrible tragedy.'

  'Yes, sir, it is.' She inhaled deeply and waited. Jackman might be both sympathetic and sincere, but he hadn't called her up here to share condolences.

  It didn't take any time at all for the managing partner to get to it. Jackman pulled himself up straight in his chair and cleared his throat. 'On another note, a bit unpleasant, I'm afraid, I wanted to make sure that your situation over the next few weeks isn't any cause for awkwardness.' He paused. 'I understand that you worked for Elaine pretty much exclusively.'

  Treya nodded in acknowledgment. Jackman, of course, wasn't guessing. He knew that Treya and Elaine had evolved a working relationship that was unique in the firm. All of the other paralegals 'floated' between loosely-defined teams of three to five attorneys, taking assignments from any of them. Treya, on the other hand, got all of her hours assisting Elaine. Though it was an unusual arrangement, Jackman had allowed it to continue because it had worked. Elaine had been a workhorse with a case and business load of incredible diversity, and Treya was organized and efficient enough to keep up with her.

  But now, the arrangement loomed as a liability. Jackman drove home the point. 'I assume that over the next six weeks you'll be helping out with the distribution of Elaine's caseload and that should keep your utilization high.'

  'I was thinking the same thing.'

  'Good. Beyond that, I'd like to recommend, if I may, that during that transition you also begin taking assignments from some of the other attorneys if they are offered to you.'

  'Yes, sir. I was hoping to do just that, too.'

  'Splendid.' Jackman didn't have to issue the warning any more clearly. Left unspoken was the hard truth that if Treya could not find enough work with one of the teams to keep her fully utilized, Jackman wouldn't be able to justify keeping her on. 'You've been with the firm quite a while now, haven't you?'

  'Almost seven years. I came with Elaine when she moved over from the city.'