The Ophelia Cut

by John Lescroart

  “Probably not, I agree. But let’s keep good thoughts. All we need is one.”

  25

  HARDY REMEMBERED THE Big Ugly very well. The man was a formidable opponent. In their first trial, Stier was probably ahead on points when Hardy had an eleventh-hour revelation that blew the case wide open, exposing the real killer, who was not Hardy’s client. Without that truly fortuitous discovery, Hardy would have been licked, and his innocent client would probably still be in jail.

  That was when Stier was relatively new to the DA’s office. Now he had several years under his belt, several big victories, was on his way to becoming a star. He’d lobbied Farrell hard for this assignment, and Wes, still bristling from the unproved and untrue implication that he’d colluded with Glitsky and Hardy to protect McGuire, had taken the opportunity to let the legal and police community know that he was exercising the full might of his office in going after McGuire and naming Stier the prosecutor.

  So great was Stier’s reputation and confident demeanor that, when jury selection was complete, Hardy was left with a nagging unease that he had somehow screwed up. Badly. Against all of what Hardy considered common sense—and Amy agreed with him—Stier had allowed not one father of a daughter onto the panel. He had allowed five.

  Hardy’s initial reaction that he’d outfoxed the fox gave way to a gut-wrenching certainty that he’d missed something substantial. Stier had put an unorthodox strategy in play right at the beginning, and Hardy had no idea what it was, which was deeply disconcerting. All that effort to get a jury he and Amy were reasonably comfortable with, he thought, and now he felt that if he were to do it over again, he’d be wise to do it differently.

  Exactly how, he didn’t know.

  Every working lawyer knew that the thing you wanted to avoid at trial, at all costs, was surprise. And Hardy felt absolutely bushwhacked at the outset.

  Now, however, on Friday morning, he had to put all of those very real concerns and worries out of his mind. The courtroom gallery was again filled to capacity, but no longer with a jury pool. The hard blond wooden chairs contained a horde of local and national reporters and members of the DA’s office, including Wes Farrell, who, when he came in, had pointedly refrained from greeting either of his former law partners, Roake or Hardy, and sat on the prosecution side. Just behind Hardy, Moses’s wife, Susan, sat frozen-faced in the first row, perhaps missing her daughter Brittany who, as a potentail witness, was not allowed in the courtroom. Directly across from Susan, equally grim, sat a woman whom he’d come to learn was Jessup’s mother. Conspicuously not present was Abe Glitsky. Hardy couldn’t afford to think about him right now. That was a whole different subject.

  Moses sat between him and Amy. He’d looked good all week in the suits Susan had brought down for him, had avoided going to sleep in the courtroom, and seemed almost carefree as he waited for the show to begin. He radiated the supernal calm of a man with many options before him.

  And then—it always seemed sudden—everyone in the courtroom rose as Judge Gomez entered and took her seat at the raised bench. The lawyers introduced themselves to the court for the record, and the waiting was well and truly over. Stier had gotten up and was standing in front of the jury, facing them. He had a distinctive, athletic stance, with his arms slightly out in front of him, as though ready to field a ball.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Good morning.

  “I want to thank you for your patience in sitting through jury selection. In a few minutes, I’ll be calling the witnesses whose testimony will prove the charges against this defendant. But to start, I wanted to take a few minutes of your time to give you an outline or preview of what the evidence will show. Hopefully, you will find it useful in understanding why we’re asking certain questions and in helping you organize the information the witnesses will be giving you.

  “This is really a very simple case. The defendant took a club—a shillelagh, actually, a distinctive Irish weapon that sat for years under the counter in the bar that he owned—and he beat a man, Rick Jessup, to death with it. He broke his arm. He fractured his skull. He hit him so hard and so often that the victim is almost unrecognizable in the autopsy photos, which, unfortunately, you will need to look at as the medical examiner explains to you the savagery and viciousness of the attack. He hit him so hard that he left an imprint of the club on Rick Jessup’s head.

  “After the attack, the defendant threw the club away. The fact that it went missing right after the murder is itself significant evidence that it was the weapon involved. Even more significant is testimony you will hear from an expert who will tell you that a photograph of this defendant, taken in his own bar, shows him with the club, and that it is the same club used to kill Rick Jessup.

  “I’m not going to take the time now to tell you everything that every witness will say. If I did that, my opening statement would be as long as the trial. I do want to let you know that witnesses will tell you they are certain—absolutely certain—that they saw the defendant with that club in his hands, walking down the street from Mr. Jessup’s apartment just about the time he was murdered. Even more compelling, the crime lab found Mr. Jessup’s blood in his car, on his jacket, and on a pair of the defendant’s shoes in a closet in his home.”

  Hardy struggled to keep all emotion out of his face. Amy gently and slowly put a hand on McGuire’s arm. This moment was unavoidable, and it was a truly bad one if Hardy was going to argue that Moses hadn’t committed the murder, which would be the defense position. The discovery of the blood would have sealed the arrest even if there had been no other evidence.

  Stier went on, “Why would the defendant do something like this? Why would anybody do something like this? Simple revenge.”

  Stier continued, outlining Brittany’s relationship with Jessup, her alleged assault, McGuire’s first attack on Jessup, and finally, the accusation of rape that had sent Brittany’s father into a homicidal rage.

  It was clear. It was clean. It was compelling.

  Hardy hated every word of it.

  Stier continued to roll along. “Ladies and gentlemen. Vigilante justice is not justice. This defendant took the life of another human being under circumstances that the law defines as murder. When you’ve heard this evidence and the instructions that the court will give you as to how to evaluate it, that is the verdict I will ask for and the verdict your oaths will compel you to return. Thank you.”

  HARDY OFTEN LET fate decide his actions. He thought it kept him flexible, better able to roll with the punches, on top of his game.

  Driving west on Lake, he decided that if a parking spot presented itself anywhere within reasonable walking distance to Glitsky’s, he would stop and check in. It had been nearly a month, a long time for them.

  A space appeared at the very corner.

  A minute later, he had walked down half of the dead-end block and up the twelve steps to Glitsky’s front door. He rang the bell, waited, rang again. This couldn’t be right, he was thinking. The parking place was too perfect. Glitsky had to be home. What else would he be doing? Although, to be fair, maybe Hardy should have called. But where was the spontaneity in that?

  A long sigh later, he was halfway down the stairs when he heard the door open behind him. He stopped and turned, saw his friend barefoot in jeans and a plain white T-shirt with maybe a three-day growth of gray stubble. Hardy didn’t remember the last time he’d seen Glitsky in blue jeans and was sure he’d never seen him in a T-shirt. Or unshaved. “I’m looking for an Abe Glitsky. Old, feeble, often in the way.”

  Glitsky nodded. “I’ll see if he’s in.”

  “ALL IN ALL, I’d say it went okay,” Hardy said. He was drinking iced tea, sitting on the couch in his friend’s living room, while Glitsky, just awakened from a nap, had lowered himself down and sat Indian-style on the floor. The lieutenant—the ex-lieutenant, technically—was at a low ebb, and to keep both of their spirits up, Hardy was regaling his pal with the highlights of his opening statement, such
as they were. “Ugly had left out a few little details that seemed to resonate, so I hammered them pretty hard. Like when Mose beat the shit out of Jessup the first time.”

  “That was one of the good moments?”

  “In the sense that it provides an alternative answer to what is otherwise unanswerable. Blood on the shoes. Blood on the jacket. Blood in the car. Deal breakers, if we don’t have the earlier fight.”

  “Which, if I’m not mistaken, nobody witnessed.”

  “Picky, picky. At least it gives them something else to think about.”

  “If I were on the jury, I’d think about how Moses is a hothead who goes and beats people up.”

  “He got it all out of his system.”

  “Real good,” Glitsky said. “Not. They ever find the shillelagh?”

  “No. But they’ve got some witness who’s analyzed the picture—you know, from the Wall of Shame at the Shamrock. There’s Mose brandishing the damn thing, big as life, terrific detail, and this witness is going to say that the trauma pattern on Jessup’s head is pretty much a dead match. Then I’m going to eat his lunch.”

  “What’s your argument?”

  “He didn’t do it. Plain and simple. And that means somebody else did.”

  “You got any idea who?”

  “Several. Liam Goodman, Jon Lo, a random hit man. We haven’t had a lot of time, but Mr. Jessup wasn’t everything he’s been painted as. He was involved in quite a bit of squirrelly stuff, and some of that might have proved embarrassing to people with money or power or both.”

  “Liam Goodman the supervisor?”

  Hardy made an extravagant gesture of possibility.

  “Do you believe any of this?”

  “Some days, some of it. Almost never all of it at once. We’re a work in progress at the moment, and here we are in the thick of it. I need more of everything—theories, distractions, exculpatory evidence. Everything.” Hardy drank some tea. “So how’s retirement suiting you? I ask ’cause I’m thinking about it myself.”

  “Not really?”

  “No, not really. That was by way of jest.”

  Glitsky thought for a moment. “It’s somewhat overrated. You’d hate it.”

  “You?”

  “Pretty much. Time and then more time. Kids at school all day, Treya at her job. I’ve never been much of a TV guy.”

  “Books,” Hardy said. “They can take up a lot of time. You’re a voracious reader, are you not?”

  “To a point. More than, say, three hours every day, it gets a little old. And if you say ‘golf’ next, this interview will be over. I’m good,” Glitsky said. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “I had a reason to ask you about this retirement of yours. Get you out and about a little, which it looks like you could use.”

  Glitsky leaned back against his reading chair. “I’m listening.”

  “How would you feel about being a witness? In this case. For me.”

  Glitsky’s mouth dropped open an inch in surprise. “As if I’m not already in low enough esteem among my former colleagues.”

  “They haven’t treated you very well, have they? What do you owe them?”

  “Nothing, but still . . . What would you want me to say?”

  Hardy shrugged. “Just talk a bit about how you thought the investigation got pushed through so fast because it was so high-profile, because Goodman was pushing Lapeer for action and she caved to the pressure and went outside of due process. As soon as they got the rape motive, they made up their mind that it was Moses and stopped looking for anybody else.”

  “Diz. Who cares what I think about any of this? Why is the judge going to let me say any of it?”

  “Because I want to argue that there was pressure on the inspectors to arrest Moses, and they put undue pressure on witnesses, deliberately or no, to tailor testimony and make the IDs. This whole case is tainted by the politics.”

  “They had three IDs and blood work, Diz. What do you want?”

  “I want the jury to think that the cops—specifically Lapeer—didn’t look at anybody else. Some other dude did it, Abe, and the cops let him get away in their haste to round up the most obvious suspect.”

  “And so it was.” Glitsky scratched at his stubble, grew pensive. “But I bring any of that up, and it leads . . . you know where it leads.”

  “Sure. Our friendship, such as it is, and the blatant collusion among all of us. Which is so much crap. It simply never happened, as you and I well know.”

  “Right, but the appearance—”

  “Never mind that. It’s totally bogus.” After a pause, Hardy went on. “Look, Abe, this is also an opportunity for you to face all those rumors head-on, put them all behind you for good. Here you are, forced out of the job you loved and were good at.”

  “Not good enough, evidently.”

  “Bullshit. On top of that, the way it happened, your reputation took a pretty good hit as well.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “That’s what I’m doing. So you get up on the stand, under oath, and you say the chief overreacted. If they go there, you swear you never called me to tell me how close they were to arresting Moses. The truth, by the way. Oh, and here’s another little something. The Ramey warrant that cut you out of the decision? It also went around Wes and his office. That is, the very office now prosecuting the case.”

  “Blood, DNA, eyewitnesses,” Glitsky said.

  Hardy, impatient now, shook him off. “All explainable. Plausibly explainable. And two out of three discovered after the arrest. The point is that it puts Stier in the absolutely impossible position of defending his office and his boss for their vigorous prosecution while the record shows that Lapeer believed Farrell was colluding with both of us enough that she couldn’t trust him to be in on Mose’s arrest.” Hardy broke a grin. “I might even call Wes. The DA testifying for the defense! Isn’t that fucking great? Pardon my French. I could go down in legal history. Make Wes swear to the same thing as you. The alleged collusion never happened. We all know each other, sure, but we’re professionals. We’ve all been on the opposite sides of cases before. Welcome to the big city. I really like this. Hell, I love this.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “I’m not. If nothing else, it gets the truth about you out there. You won’t have to spend the rest of your pathetic life hiding out here in your living room, avoiding your former colleagues, to say nothing of the other blandishments of city life.”

  “That’s not—”

  Hardy held up a restraining hand. “Please. Find a mirror. Look at yourself. You tell me.”

  An uncomfortable silence gathered.

  Glitsky made a brief pass at the glare, but it didn’t take. In any event, Hardy had seen it too often to be cowed. Seconds ticked on. Glitsky took a breath. “When Lapeer called me in, she alluded to the other thing, too.”

  “What about it?”

  “Everything about it. The rumor.”

  “So what? It’s a rumor. Spread mostly by people who got passed over for promotion because you were better at your job than they were at theirs. This just in—rumors get spread by jealous people who don’t like you. Absent evidence, rational people consider the source and discount the rumors.” Hardy sat back, sipped his tea. “Abe, it’s been almost seven years. If there were any evidence—and I mean the smallest scintilla of evidence—don’t you think something would have happened by now? You know what? There is no evidence. There is never going to be any evidence. Moses got rid of all of it in the deep blue sea, and only he knows exactly where.

  “So what do we need to do? We need to get Moses off on this thing so he doesn’t get drunk on pruno in jail and start talking about things he should leave alone. Meanwhile, your testimony discredits Lapeer, weakens Stier and the whole prosecution side, restores your reputation, and gives the jury a passel of other theories they’ll need to consider.”

  “I’d hate to go up against you in court,” Glitsky said. “You can wear a guy ou
t.”

  “I love that part. It’s why God put me here.”

  “What was she thinking?” Glitsky asked.

  A FEW MINUTES later, Hardy came back in after a pit stop and, as Glitsky was rinsing their glasses in the kitchen sink, started in again without preamble. “There’s one other thing.”

  “There always is.”

  “This is more in the line of a personal favor.”

  “The other one wasn’t? Testifying for the defense? Do you have any idea—?”

  Hardy waved him off. “We’ve gone over that. Your testifying restores the order of the universe. Hence, it’s universal. This other thing is a mere bagatelle.”

  Glitsky threw his eyes to the ceiling. “Lord spare us.” Then, back across to Hardy, “What?”

  “There’s another sideline player. Nothing to do with this case that I know of. You met him at my house once. You might remember. Tony Solaia.”

  “Sure. He’s a player in this how, if he’s not in the case?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t need the favor. You remember how you thought he seemed like a cop, how he talked, carried himself? It turns out you were right. He supposedly worked Vice in Manhattan.”

  “That’s hard-core cop. And now he’s a bartender? That’s not the traditional career arc. How’d it happen? Did he burn out?”

  “Apparently, he’s a protected witness. Big federal case. Human trafficking, sexual slavery. Huge money.”

  “How did you find out?”

  Hardy made a face. “He told the Beck in a moment of sensitivity and confidence just before he dumped her for her cousin Brittany.”

  Glitsky was drying his hands with a dish towel. He stopped, cocked his head, mute.

  Hardy went on. “He’s taken over Mose’s shifts at the Shamrock these past months. He and Brittany are at least going steady, maybe a lot more. I don’t know if you know, but she’s my goddaughter as well as my niece, and I feel a little responsible for her. Hell, a lot responsible for her, although maybe I shouldn’t. She’s a grown-up, after all. But after all she’s gone through and is still going through with this trial . . .” Hardy sighed. “At least I don’t want her to get caught up with some guy who may not be what he says he is.”