The Hearing

by John Lescroart

'Funny how I've got all the excuses down pat.'

  'It's like you practiced them.'

  'Plus, there was always tomorrow. I could always just decide it was time. Maybe if I'd known that she knew…' He shook his head regretfully. 'How stupid we are.'

  She let a moment go by. 'Can I ask you a question?'

  'No.' At her reaction – a fractional clouding of her brow – he realized he'd hurt her somehow. He reached out his hand, touched hers on the railing, then withdrew it quickly. 'I'm kidding. I'm a great kidder, famous for it, in fact.' He met her eyes. 'You can ask me anything you want.'

  'Your son mentioned you were on leave, but when you came by to interview me-'

  'That was before.' He recounted enough of the story to give her the idea.

  'They're not going to fire you, are they?'

  'Unlikely. Maybe knock me down a grade, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Back to doing cases. Or transfer me out of homicide, which would be worse.'

  'But you were investigating Elaine.'

  'That was because it was Elaine. Normally I don't get involved with investigations.' A bitter chuckle. 'Which is for the best if the hash I made of this is any indication. They're all probably right. He just made a bad confession, but there isn't any doubt. He did it.'

  'But you're not sure.'

  Again, her eyes drew him. 'No, not that exactly.' Then, 'No. Not as sure as I want to be. In a lot of ways I just… I can't accept it.' He shook his head, stopped.

  'What?' The eyes pleaded with him. 'What?'

  And he gave in. 'This will sound strange, even downright weird, but it's as though she's finally talking to me, telling me there has to be a better reason than a chance encounter with some junkie. And after all the denial I've had with her up to now, I just can't make myself ignore it.' A pause. 'Dumb, I know.'

  She pondered a moment. 'Why did you come to me first?'

  A shrug. 'As opposed to who else?'

  'I don't know. Maybe Jonas? Her fiance?'

  'I would have gotten to him. But you were close by. I talked to Clarence Jackman and he told me that if she was involved in something squirrelly with her work or any of her projects, you'd probably know about it.'

  A rueful expression. 'Probably.'

  'But you said there was nothing.'

  Treya shook her head. 'That was that first day. I was so furious at you, at who you were, that I wasn't going to help you, period. No matter what you were asking. I didn't believe you were working for Elaine's interests.'

  'I was. I am.'

  'I see that now.'

  'And? Was she working on something?'

  'Honestly, I don't know. Nothing's jumping up at me.' She gave him a hopeful smile. 'But at least now I'm disposed to look.'

  'There's progress,' Glitsky said. 'But before you even start that, why did you mention her fiance? Were they having problems?'

  Treya made a face, hesitated. 'Maybe you should talk to him?'

  'I intend to, but you're here now.' He waited.

  Finally, she came to the decision. 'Well, a couple of things.' She told him about the argument in the Rand and Jackman conference room on the day of the arraignment, how Jonas had been so adamantly opposed to any discussion of the validity of Cole's confession. 'He just didn't want to go there at all.'

  'And this meant what?'

  She shrugged. 'I don't know. I thought it was pretty understandable myself. But other people thought it was funny. They said if Cole didn't do it, shouldn't Jonas want to find Elaine's killer? Whoever it might be? Of course, this was a room full of lawyers and law students, so we're not talking about a typical cross-section of humanity.'

  'Or humanity at all.'

  'Well…' But she acknowledged his point with a nod. 'Still, everybody seemed to think he should have cared more somehow.'

  Glitsky pondered that a moment. 'What's the second thing?' he asked.

  'Well, this is more…' She hesitated. 'He told me she was leaving him.'

  'Did you already know that?'

  'No.'

  A questioning look. 'Wouldn't that be odd, you not knowing? Her not telling you?'

  'I thought so. Maybe she hadn't finally decided. Maybe she was too embarrassed to admit it to me.'

  'Why would that be?'

  'Maybe because when she was first getting together with Jonas, we were kind of conspirators together – Elaine and I – to keep anybody from finding out. Then, after that, when they were together, Jonas changed a little.'

  'Changed how?'

  A shrug. She didn't like these revelations, but they seemed relevant. 'A little more impatient.' Then she added, 'Like I was the help, not a friend anymore.' Another small pause. 'If I ever had been. Anyway, Elaine saw he hurt my feelings, and she tried to smooth it over a few times, make excuses for him. So then if she was thinking about leaving him after all… I could see where she'd feel embarrassed with me.'

  'But Jonas told you?' Glitsky asked with an air of disappointment.

  'Yes. Why does that bother you?'

  A shake of the head. 'Because if it was a motive for murder…'

  'A motive for murder? You mean Jonas?' She shook her head in surprise or disbelief.

  'That's who we're talking about, right? Her fiance.'

  'I know, but I never thought he killed her.'

  'You may be right,' Glitsky said. 'At least if she was leaving him and that was his motive for killing her, I can't see him telling anybody about it.'

  She came forward on her chair. 'Except if he thought I already knew. Then his not mentioning it would be significant, right? So he had to say something about it to cover himself.'

  Glitsky allowed himself a smile. 'Not a bad point.'

  Suddenly, her eyes opened wider in surprise. 'Are you wearing contact lenses?' she asked.

  'No.'

  She was staring at him. 'You've got blue eyes,' she said.

  'I do? You're kidding me.'

  'I'm not. It's not all that common for a black man to have blue eyes.'

  'It's not all that uncommon when the black man's father has them. Actually, I like to think of them as the color of cold blue steel. That's a good color for a cop's eyes, don't you think? Ice in the veins, steel blue eyes…' He narrowed his gaze, fixed her with one of his hard looks. 'How can you be smiling right now?' he asked. 'That look strikes terror into the hearts of hardened criminals.'

  'It's terrifying,' she admitted. 'It's very good. If I didn't know you were putting it on for show, I'd be very scared at this moment, Lieutenant.'

  He relaxed the scowl. 'By the way, you can call me Abe,' he said.

  'Al. The song is "You Can Call Me Al", not Abe.'

  'The cop is Abe, not Al.'

  The loudspeaker came on announcing the end of visiting hours. Treya looked at her watch, frowned. 'Did you say you were getting out on Thursday? I could have a good look at Elaine's files by then, now that I know what I'm looking for.'

  'Thursday's the plan. If all goes well tomorrow.'

  'What's tomorrow?'

  He shrugged it off. 'Just some tests, make sure my arteries are working. So should we make an appointment, say Thursday, your lunchtime, your office?'

  She stood up. 'That sounds good. I'll be ready.'

  'If I get hung up here for some reason, I'll call and leave a message.'

  She was just saying goodbye when a thought struck her. She got her wallet and a pen from her purse. Withdrawing a business card, she wrote on it, handed it to him. 'Save you from having to look it up. And that's my home number, if you need anything else.'

  He used the card as a bookmark. Thanks. While you've got your pen out…' He gave her his telephone number as well and she wrote it on another card.

  'OK, then…' She shrugged awkwardly. She lifted a hand slightly, Abe did the same, and she turned to go.

  As she reached the door, Glitsky called after her. 'Treya.' She stopped and turned. 'Thanks for coming back. And for the flowers.'

  'You're welcome.' S
he pointed to the bedside table. 'Enjoy your book. Goodnight, Abe.'

  21

  An excellent French restaurant, the Rue Charmaine, occupied the ground floor of David Freeman's apartment building. Freeman sometimes ate there as often as four times a week, after which he'd walk up the flight of stairs to his own spacious one-bedroom flat. Last night, he'd had dinner there with a forty-year-old female attorney named Gina Roake. They'd shared an extraordinary bottle of Romanee-Conti, talked law and politics, law and the theater, law and the recently-concluded football season. After dinner, Gina had asked if David would mind her staying over, and he said he thought that would be very nice.

  Now, just after dawn, Freeman was whistling tunelessly, puttering about his cluttered kitchen in an ancient and threadbare maroon bathrobe and his lounging slippers. Normally, his battered and pitted kitchen table sagged with documents, law books, and files on his cases, but this morning he'd cleared all that away, covered the wood with a white linen tablecloth, and laid out a formal coffee service – sugar, cream, butter, jams and jellies, and a still warm and crusty morning baguette from the Rue Charmaine's morning delivery.

  Freeman paused and smiled appreciatively as the strains of Mahler's Fifth began to emanate from his living room at a barely audible volume. A moment later, Gina made her appearance, combing out her still-damp hair, delightfully filling out the still plush bathrobe he'd once purchased from the Bel Air Hotel.

  'You look lovely,' he said.

  She crossed the few steps over and leaned up to kiss him. Then she withdrew to arm's length, smiling up at him. 'I feel lovely,' she said.

  'For a moment there, I had this awful feeling that you were going to tell me I looked lovely too.'

  She laughed. 'Actually…'

  He wagged a finger. 'I don't think we want to go there. Come, sit down, coffee's hot.'

  He poured for her, then for himself. When they were settled, Freeman took his first sip, nodded approvingly, and put down his spoon. 'All right,' he said, 'if you still want to talk about it, I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be.' The previous night during their dinner, in one of their law discussions, Gina was talking about one of her cases, and suddenly – atypically – Freeman had stopped her, saying he'd prefer not to ruin such a fine evening by talking about Dash Logan.

  Now he made a face. 'This is the second time he's come up in the past two weeks. Or maybe I should say crawled out from under his rock or wherever it is that he lives. I'm taking this as a bad sign for our profession.' He sighed. 'So what's the case again? Last night my mind was on other things.'

  She smiled at the compliment, then briefly sketched in to the point where he'd stopped her last night on the Oberlin proceeding. The District Attorney was bringing criminal charges against Gina's client, Abby, who had taken care of her mother for the past several years, and who had inherited the vast percentage of an eight million dollar estate. It was obvious, Gina said, that Jim the no-good brother was behind the charges, and simply was extorting his sister for a portion of the take.

  Freeman listened, chewing absent-mindedly on a crust of baguette. 'So let me get this straight – the DA is filing charges. What are they alleging?'

  'I gather elder abuse all the way to manslaughter. They haven't filed them yet.'

  This brought a frown. 'Why not, if they've built the case?'

  'I don't know for sure. I think Gabe Torrey might just be dragging his feet.' Her tone conveyed some skepticism. 'He said he didn't want to try this case, although elderly abuse is high on Pratt's agenda. Apparently he didn't like Jim, the brother.'

  Freeman nodded impatiently. He'd heard the name once and of course didn't need to be reminded. 'So what's like got to do with it? Your client committed a crime, or she didn't.'

  'She didn't, David.'

  He held up his bread hand. 'I'm not saying she did, Gina. I'm saying that's got to be Torrey's position.'

  But she was shaking her head. 'And evidently it will be. He will green light the investigation and get to the charges pretty soon, but he wanted to give me a chance to settle, maybe save Abby some grief.'

  Freeman had stopped chewing, stopped all movement. His eyes bored into emptiness somewhere between himself and Gina. 'My Lord,' he said.

  'What?'

  He answered her with another question. 'And if memory serves, this humanitarian brother Jim is our connection to Dash Logan?'

  'He's his lawyer.'

  A nod. 'Right, and already on board, n'est-ce pas? You see anything wrong with this picture, Gina?'

  She stalled, sipping some coffee, finally shook her head. 'To this point, not really.' She leaned forward. 'Except it felt funny somehow. It's why I brought it up to you.'

  'I'll tell you why it felt funny. Because the DA doesn't do that.'

  But she didn't agree. 'I think Gabe did it on his own. My take was that Gabe was trying to do the right thing off the record.'

  'The right thing?'

  'It does happen.'

  'Not as often as you think, Gina. Not as often as you think.'

  'Well, maybe this time, though.'

  But he kept at it. 'And this right thing, this time, would be to make your client give away a million of her dollars?'

  'That wasn't exactly the spin he put on it. He was talking about saving her half a million, a couple of years of hassle, and a lot of trouble.'

  'And he just happened to find this particular case out of the blue, out of the hundreds the DA is prosecuting? And felt sorry for your client, whom his office is about to charge?'

  Gina fidgeted with the crumbs on her plate. 'Maybe that's why it made me uncomfortable.'

  'Because you have good instincts, that's why.' Freeman stood up, walked over to the window, looked down onto the street. 'So the next step is Gabe tells you to call this guy's lawyer, is that it?'

  'Essentially.' She saw his reaction. 'What? That seemed to make sense. It still does.'

  'How's that?'

  'I'm a lawyer. I'm not going to talk to the brother. I'm going to go through channels, through his counsel.'

  'How do you know he has one? How does Torrey know he has one?'

  'He's talked to the guy, remember? That's how. He probably mentioned it.'

  Freeman had paced back to the stove. He leaned back against it, arms crossed. 'OK, ask yourself this. A guy thinks a crime has been committed, he goes to the police, right? Right. Then the crime gets charged, and he's working exclusively with the DA's office, with the prosecutors. Are you with me here?'

  Catching on, Gina nodded. 'He's already got an office-full of lawyers working for him, who also happen to work for the DA.'

  'Exactly,' Freeman said. 'The DA's office. So what does he need his own lawyer for? I mean, handling the same case. He's not a defendant so he doesn't need a defense attorney. Hell, he's not even a plaintiff in a civil case. He's just a guy reporting a crime. He goes to the DA. He doesn't need his own attorney.'

  'Well.' The light was coming on, but Gina still couldn't quite see. 'People have lawyers, David. Abby – my client – she told me they'd been fighting over the will.'

  'She and her brother, or you and her brother's lawyer?'

  'Well, no. The first.'

  'But now dear old Jim's got a lawyer who's ready to settle.' Freeman had switched into his justly-famous flamboyant courtroom mode. He took a couple of steps forward, toward the table. His voice took on a note of urgency. 'And then Torrey says old Jim will withdraw the accusation he made. Torrey tells you he knows this. He holds it out to you as pretty much guaranteed, a done deal. Well, answer me this: how can he possibly know that unless he's talked to Jim's lawyer, who – I might add – shouldn't even be in the picture around these criminal charges? And who happens to be the most unsavory person practicing law in the great state of California?'

  Freeman grabbed his breakfast napkin and wiped it across his forehead, leaving a couple of damp crumbs in its wake. Then he sat down with a satisfied expression, returned to his normal voice, spoke as thoug
h to himself. 'God, I wish just once he'd try something like this on me.' He looked across the table. 'Do me one favor, please?'

  'Of course, if I can. What?'

  'Don't settle. Don't talk to Logan. See what Torrey does next.'

  She thought about this for a long moment. 'But what if he files the charges? He's holding all the cards here, David. If the investigation even begins, my client loses.'

  'Did she do what they're alleging? Did she commit this crime?'

  'No.'

  He leaned back in his chair, pulled at his bushy eyebrows, scratched the corner of his mouth. 'Well, people hate me for saying this…'

  'I won't hate you.'

  He touched her hand. 'If I were you, what I'd do is trust in the wisdom and fairness of the law.'

  She studied his face, saw he was completely sincere. 'A person could get to like you a lot,' she said. Then, a cloud crossing her visage, 'About settling… I'll try to hold out.'

  Just after eight in the morning, she stopped him as he was crossing the lobby on his way to the staircase and his own office. 'Mr Hardy.'

  He stopped on a dime, turned ninety degrees to his left, marched across to her station and looked her in the eyes. 'Phyllis, my love. How are we this fine morning?'

  'Very well, thank you. If you're free, Mr Freeman would like to see you in his office right away.'

  'Well, that makes this both of our lucky days. I wanted to see him, too, but I didn't know if you'd let me.'

  'Anytime you need to, Mr Hardy. You know that.'

  'As long as I have an appointment.'

  'Those are Mr Freeman's rules, not mine.'

  'Well, thank you, Phyllis.'

  'You're welcome.'

  As he closed Freeman's door behind him, Hardy was grinning. 'I've got it.'

  Chewing on the nub of a pencil, the old man sat at a desk completely littered with case files. He looked up. 'Got what?'

  'The automated voice on all those phone message menus. You know the ones.' He put on a voice. '"For security and training purposes, and to help us serve you better, this call may be monitored for your convenience." I especially love the convenience part. But that voice.'

  Freeman put the pencil down. 'What about it?'