The Motive

by John Lescroart

  “And why would he want to do that? So he can start again fresh, more aware of your strategy? That’s a reach, Counselor.”

  “That’s not exactly what I’m saying, Your Honor. He wants a mistrial because he can’t take the chance of a not guilty verdict in a case this big. Not if he wants to be DA someday.”

  “My God, Your Honor! I don’t believe . . .”

  Braun held up her hand, stopping Rosen without saying a word. “Mr. Hardy?”

  “What I’m proposing,” Hardy said, “is a hearing on the issue. The court needs to know who talked to whom and when. Particularly Mr. Rosen and Inspector Cuneo, but possibly other witnesses and maybe some reporters as well. At the end of that hearing, defense may ask for a mistrial, but I don’t want to do that until I’ve heard the evidence on prosecutorial misconduct.”

  “And what would this misconduct be specifically?”

  “Breaking the gag order, Your Honor, and perjury.”

  Rosen was beyond fury, Cuneo looked ready to take a swing at Hardy. Braun hated the whole thing.

  Hardy kept talking. “There is no mention anywhere in the record going all the way back to Inspector Cuneo’s grand jury testimony—not in any of his reports, nowhere—that my client made any inappropriate advances to him. I think the court needs to see whether he mentioned these alleged advances to any of his colleagues, or anyone else, previous to the other day, or whether, perhaps after a discussion with Mr. Rosen, he just made up a new story. And then got encouraged to speak to the media to further discredit Deputy Chief Glitsky . . .”

  “Your Honor,” Rosen cut Hardy off. “This is an obscene accusation that will be impossible to prove one way or the other anyway. It’s up to Mr. Hardy to ask for a mistrial. If he doesn’t choose to do that, fine, perhaps we replace some jurors who might have read today’s articles, but then we take our chances out in the courtroom. That’s what trials are about.”

  But Braun was mulling, sullen. “I don’t need you to remind me how to conduct this case, Mr. Rosen.” Now she bit out her words. “It’s your witness who’s caused us this problem because you obviously failed to keep his enthusiasm in check. Meanwhile, on an issue of this magnitude, I won’t be ready to make any kind of ruling on Mr. Hardy’s question until tonight or tomorrow. I’d like to keep this ship afloat if I can, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let it go on and get reversed on appeal. And while we’re talking about appeal, Mr. Hardy, perhaps you’d best tell us the tactical reasons why you will only accept a mistrial with a finding of deliberate misconduct. Seems to me that even without that, you’ve got ample grounds.”

  “That may be, Your Honor,” Hardy said, “but it may also be that Inspector Cuneo’s intemperate comments will work in my client’s favor.”

  This was the crux, and for a second, Braun’s fuse blew. “They shouldn’t work at all, goddamn it.” She whipped on Saunders like a snake. “Strike that last.” Then back to Hardy. “Cuneo’s comments to the press weren’t made in the courtroom under oath. They should have no bearing on this case. None. That’s the issue.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Braun sat back in her chair, stared into the middle distance for a beat, came back to Hardy. “I’m curious. How might these allegations help Mrs. Hanover?”

  “She thinks the conspiracy idea is too far-fetched to believe on the face of it. The jury’s going to think Cuneo’s a press-hungry hot dog.” He brought both other men into his vision. “Which, by the way, he is.”

  Cuneo took a threatening step toward Hardy while Rosen snorted and said, “We’ll see about that.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  But this small exchange riled Braun even further. She straightened her back and raised her voice to a crisp, schoolmarmish rebuke. “You gentlemen will not address each other on the record, but only the court. Is that clear?” Coming forward in her chair, she said, “Just so we’re completely unambiguous here, Mr. Hardy, the defense isn’t requesting a mistrial without a finding of misconduct?”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  “Meanwhile, you’re both prepared to proceed today?”

  Both counsels nodded. The judge nodded, drew in a deep breath and released it. “All right,” she said, rising and walking to where her robes hung. “Time to go back to work.”

  Braun herself had a very tough morning, and it didn’t measurably improve her already charming disposition. After reiterating her gag order to the participants on the record in front of the disgruntled media assembled in the gallery, she then nearly set off a riot among several members of the jury when she announced her decision that they would be sequestered for the remainder of the trial until they had reached a verdict or announced they were unable to do so. Hardy had to like the suggestion that a hung jury was a possibility. Every little bit helps. She wound up dismissing three of them—those who had admitted reading any part of the article, though she retained the juror who had only read the headline—and substituted them with two men and one woman, none of whom had read the article, thus exhausting all the alternate jurors.

  Braun didn’t want to inadvertently inform the remaining jurors who hadn’t read the article what it was about, but she cautioned them again that the deliberations and conclusions they would eventually reach in this case must be based only on statements given under oath in the courtroom and evidence submitted to the court.

  They must disregard anything they heard on the news or read in the newspaper before, and must not read or listen to anything new. And to that end, she would be allowing neither television access nor newspaper delivery to the jurors for the duration.

  And this really nearly sparked a mutiny among the panel. Several days without a television! What would they do? How could they live? One panel member, DeWayne Podesta, even asked for and received permission to speak to the court as a representative of the whole jury, and he argued that the jurors were good citizens doing their civic duty, and didn’t the Constitution forbid cruel and unusual punishment? And if so—Podesta really thought it did—certainly deprivation of television qualified.

  Eventually, Braun restored order to the courtroom. But the machinations, cautions, pronouncements and simple business consumed the whole wretched morning. When they resumed in the afternoon, Braun announced, they would begin with Hardy’s cross-examination of Sergeant Cuneo.

  Until then—she slammed her gavel—court was adjourned.

  Glitsky and Treya were having opposite reactions to the boulder that had settled on each of their respective hearts with the concern over their baby’s life. In Treya’s case, it might have had something to do with the physical exertions of the birth itself. She had been sleeping nearly around the clock since they’d brought Zachary home, only waking up to feed him and for a couple of hours last night when the Hardys and Nat had been by. Glitsky, on the other hand, hadn’t slept for more than a few hours.

  Now it was nearly ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning, and he’d been awake since first light, finally having dozed off sometime a little after two twenty, or at least that was the last time he remembered looking at the bedroom clock. Rita, their nanny/house-sitter, God bless her, had made herself available and was back with Rachel now, and the two of them were watching the television down the kids’ hallway, the sound a barely audible drone. Their cardiology appointment with Zachary was in three hours, and sitting at the kitchen table, a cold mug of tea untouched in front of him, Glitsky stared at the clock and wondered how long he should let his wife sleep. If she needed another hour, maybe more, he was inclined to let her take it.

  In the four or so hours since he’d gotten out of bed, Glitsky had of course read the morning paper and made calls to Jeff Elliot at the Chronicle, to the mayor, to Hardy at his office and to his own office. The first three had not yet called him back at his private home number. His voice mail at work was clogged with reporters and even a few colleagues—including, he was happy to see, Chief of Police Frank Batiste offering his encouragement and support. But for the mos
t part, nothing that happened outside the walls of his home was having much of an impact on him. Nothing was as important, even remotely as important, as the immediate health of his son.

  The stark and terrible reality from his perspective, all the hopeful talk of “best-case scenario” notwithstanding, was that the boy likely faced open-heart surgery in the next few days or weeks, as soon as he was old and stable enough to possibly survive it. That possibility hung over him and Treya like a thick cloud of dread.

  They might still lose their baby.

  The thought was paralyzing and at the same time acted like a narcotic, a numbing agent that worked as a barrier to whatever reaction the events in the real world might otherwise have caused—whether anger or hurt or betrayal. Clearly, the city was getting itself worked up over this alleged conspiracy between himself, Kathy West, Dismas Hardy and Catherine Hanover, but Glitsky felt no sense of urgency to refute any of it, or even to respond to the half dozen requests from reporters in various media. It was as if it were all happening somewhere else, already on television perhaps. Just another story that would fade when all the facts had come out because it simply wasn’t true.

  What was true was that they were taking Zachary to the doctor’s at one o’clock to check his progress, or lack thereof. That, as far as Glitsky was concerned, was the whole world.

  He went to the darkened bedroom for the fifth or sixth time this morning. Zachary was still swaddled, sleeping peacefully. Treya, completely covered in blankets, didn’t so much as stir. Coming back into the light, he went out to the living room and stood at the windows, looking down at the street. He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn all day yesterday.

  Hands in his pockets, he stood and listened to the faraway drone of the children’s channel on the television down the hall, and watched the rain fall and fall.

  When Glitsky first pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket, its origin and significance eluded him for a second or two. On it was a woman’s handwriting, in pencil, barely legible. Then it came back to him. Ruth Guthrie. She’d written down the name of the store where Missy D’Amiens had worked, and her bank and account number. Last night, Hardy had said that he doubted that Missy D’Amiens was going to matter in the trial, and with this morning’s blowup in the paper over the conspiracy nonsense, it appeared that the case was moving in an entirely new direction, one that would further remove either of the victims from the center of attention. To say nothing of the missing ring, which seemed a much more promising avenue of inquiry.

  Still, Glitsky had discovered something they hadn’t known before yesterday, and after all the time he’d spent on the investigation so far, that was provocative in its own right. He could follow it up in five minutes and get the last niggling tidbit off his plate, at least to his own satisfaction. God knew, he’d worked every other angle of this case trying to break Cuneo’s lock on the apparent facts and he’d come up empty. A quick phone call or two would close the circle on D’Amiens, and then at least he would have been thorough, even if, as Hardy said and Glitsky believed, it was probably unimportant.

  So he sat on the couch, picked up the phone and punched up information. Not identifying himself as a police officer, he finally got to the human resources office at the housing goods warehouse store and said he was an employer checking the reference of a woman who’d applied to work for him.

  Replying that she was only allowed to verify the dates of employment, the woman went on to explain that she wasn’t allowed to comment on the quality of the previous employee’s work, or attendance, or anything else. “We have to be very aware of the potential for lawsuits,” she said. “If we say anything, you wouldn’t believe, it comes back to bite us.”

  “That’s all right,” Glitsky said. “I understand that. I’m just verifying the dates of employment.”

  “All right. The name please.”

  “Michelle D’Amiens. It says on her résumé that she calls herself Missy.”

  There was a short silence; then the woman spoke again. “Did she say she worked at this store? This location?”

  “Yes.” Glitsky read off the address. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I have personally approved the hiring of everybody who’s worked here for the past six years, and I don’t recognize that name. I’ll check my files, of course, if you’ll hold on. But does she say she worked here for a long while?”

  Glitsky knew roughly when she’d moved into Ruth Guthrie’s duplex, and he took a stab. “A couple of years, starting three years ago.”

  “So she just left, like a year ago?” Now the officious voice reeked with skepticism. “Just one moment please.”

  “Yes.”

  A minute later she was back. “I’m afraid it’s not good news,” she said. “Nobody by the name of Michelle or Missy D’Amiens has ever worked here.”

  Some part of Hardy thought it was the stuff of comedy—Podesta’s notion that asking someone to live without a television for a few days was cruel and unusual punishment would stick with him for a while—but somehow he failed to find any of it amusing. Too much was at stake. He had too little time.

  Abandoning Catherine to the holding cell and another jailhouse lunch, he ducked out the back door of the Hall and took a cab to his office on Sutter Street. On the ride over, he’d considered calling Glitsky—he’d even punched in the first few numbers of his pager—but then stopped when he remembered that his friend was bringing his son in to the doctor for tests today. He wasn’t going to be available to do legwork, and legwork was what Hardy needed.

  He got out of the cab in front of his office, stood still a moment, then abruptly turned and entered the garage. Next to the managing partner’s spot, the elevator allowed him to bypass the main lobby. And Phyllis. And Norma, his office manager. And any and everyone else who would clamor for his attention or, in the wake of the article, for simple news of what was going on. Instead, he could ride straight to the third floor, where his partner Wes Farrell had his office.

  “I’m afraid I can’t, Diz. I’m busy, I really am.”

  Farrell didn’t look busy. When Hardy had barged into his office after a perfunctory single knock at the door, Wes was in one of his milder trademark T-shirts—“Don’t Use No Negatives”—and shooting a yellow Nerf ball at the basket he’d mounted on his wall.

  “What are you busy doing? That’s a fair question under the circumstances.”

  “Some people shoot darts to meditate. Your humble servant here shoots hoops.”

  “You’re meditating?”

  “Fiercely. I’m surprised you have to ask.”

  “Wes, listen to me.” Hardy sat down on the overstuffed sofa. “I need to know what Catherine Hanover’s mother-in-law—her name’s Theresa—was doing on the day and night Paul got killed.”

  “Why don’t you just call and ask her?”

  “I don’t want anybody to ask her directly. I’d prefer she didn’t know I was interested in that. She’s a prosecution witness and . . .”

  “Wait a minute—your client’s mother-in-law is testifying for the prosecution?”

  Hardy nodded. “Sweet, isn’t it? I don’t know if Rosen actually plans to call her, but she’s on his list.”

  “Against somebody in her own family?”

  “Just the hated daughter-in-law.”

  “Jesus. And I thought my mother-in-law was bad.”

  “You don’t have a mother-in-law, Wes. You and Sam aren’t married.”

  “No, my first one. We weren’t exactly close, but even so, I don’t think she would have testified against me to put me in the slammer for life. What’s she going to say, this Theresa?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I haven’t talked to her personally. When I saw her name on the list, I asked Catherine and she said Theresa and she just never got along about anything. She wasn’t good enough for Will. She ought to get a job and help support the family. She was too strict with the kids. You name it.”

  “Wait a minute. Whose kids
are we talking about?”

  “Catherine’s. Her own kids.”

  “What did Theresa have to do with them?”

  “Evidently a lot. She expected to be a hands-on grandma. If you can believe it, she came close to suing them over grandparents’ visitation rights.”

  “One of those, huh?”

  “At least. The woman’s a piece of work. And of course she’s pretending to be a reluctant witness. Rosen or Cuneo just happened to ask her if she’d ever heard Catherine threaten Missy or Paul, and it just so happened she did. It was the truth. So what could she say? If they called her as a witness, she had to tell the truth, didn’t she?”

  “It’s a sacred thing,” Wes said.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Hardy replied. “But the real truth is that Theresa wants Catherine out of her life, out of her son’s life, out of her grandkids’ lives. And if a few words about Catherine’s motive in front of a jury can help get that done, she’s on board for it.”

  Farrell plopped into one of his stuffed chairs. “Okay, where would I come in? If I did, not saying I will.”

  “You make an appointment to see her as my representative. You’re helping me out with the trial and wanted to get some sense of her testimony before she got to the stand.”

  “I thought you said you knew what she was going to say.”

  “I do. But tell her you want to hear it from her, and maybe coach her a little. Maybe we can throw the prosecution a curve ball. You know that she needs to tell the truth, of course, but if there’s any way she can somehow help Catherine’s defense, she’d want to do that, too, wouldn’t she?”

  “And why exactly, when she asks, didn’t you get around to talking to her before this?”

  “Tell her I really didn’t think she’d get called. And still don’t, but Rosen had talked about some motive witnesses, and I thought just to be safe . . . you get the idea.”

  “So what are you really trying to get at?”