The Second Chair

by John Lescroart

  Hardy forced a smile. He didn’t feel remotely friendly. “That was him,” he said. “Not too many people know that. He’s also the patron saint of murderers.”

  Linda tightened, drew herself up. “Andrew isn’t a murderer.”

  “No, ma’am, he isn’t.”

  Hal spoke up. “After all we’ve been through on that score, it’s good to hear somebody say that. So you’re telling me we’ve got a chance?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. We’ve got some tough days ahead, but there’s some reason for guarded hope. There have been some developments in your absence. Besides, of course, this suicide attempt.” He fixed them both with flat eyes.

  Linda read his look. “You probably think we’re horrible to have gone away, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Hardy said. “Maybe I wondered a little.”

  “About what?” Hal stepped protectively in front of his wife. “About what?” he repeated. “Us going south?”

  Hardy said nothing.

  “I asked Andrew and he said he was fine. He knew that we’d had the reservations for months and he was adamant we should just go. It was only for three days. He said he’d be fine. He was getting used to Youth Guidance. We didn’t know he’d do anything like this. How could we have known?”

  “Mrs. North,” Hardy said, “Mr. North. I’m not accusing you of anything. It’s none of my business how you run your lives. For Andrew’s sake, though, it might be helpful if we knew where we could find you if we need to contact you while this is going on, but . . .”

  “He knew where we were.” Hal was growing hot. He turned to Amy. “I was sure he’d have told you.”

  “No, sir. He didn’t.”

  “He can talk to us anytime,” Linda put in. “Both of our kids can. Hal and I, we’re always there for them if they need us.”

  “There you go.” Hal took an aggressive stance between them, but spoke to Wu. “You could have called Alicia at home. You have that number. She could have reached us. Easily.”

  “How did you find out?” Hardy asked. “About this?”

  “I called the YGC to talk to Andrew as soon as we got home this morning. They told me. Then I called Hal and we came straight here.”

  But Hal continued at Wu. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t think to call the house. Alicia could have called and gotten us back here hours ago.”

  Wu matched his gaze, tightened her lip, turned to Hardy, who came to her defense. “Your daughter wasn’t home, sir.”

  “What? Of course she was. We both talked to her.”

  “We did,” Linda said. “She was home. Absolutely. She called us.”

  “On her cellphone?” Hardy asked.

  “Yes, I think so.” Linda looked from Hardy to Wu, then back to Hardy. “You’re saying she could have called from anywhere.”

  “I’m telling you,” Hardy said, “that when they found Andrew in his cell this morning, they called your home first, then sent a squad car by—this is at four a.m., remember—and nobody was there. The first person they could reach with any connection to Andrew was Amy, at her apartment.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Hal said.

  “You check it out,” Hardy replied. “Won’t take you five minutes.”

  “Now you’re calling my daughter a liar.” Hal directed his ire at Hardy. “Hey, you know what? We don’t need to take any more of this crap from you or anybody else.” He turned to Linda, grabbed her by the elbow. “Let’s go. That’s the end of this.”

  But she held back. “I want to know the truth about Alicia.”

  “You just heard it,” Hardy said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Hal snapped. “It’s another ploy to make us feel guilty and ultimately, I’m sure, to pay him more.”

  “Pay me more? Here’s a flash for you, pal, if you haven’t already heard. I’m doing this for free.” Hardy was by now so mad at the man’s blindness and arrogance that he was tempted to throw a punch. Blood pounded in his ears. He felt he had to raise his voice to get above it. “And firing Amy? There’s a brilliant idea! Never mind how Andrew is going to feel if the one person who’s been standing by him since his arrest deserts him, too. You think that’s going to help his state of mind? His self-esteem? Of course, worrying about what Andrew’s feeling isn’t something you do much, is it?”

  Linda stepped in front of her husband. “How can you say that? I love my boy. I do.”

  Hardy forced himself to some semblance of calm. “You know, Mrs. North, I’m sure you do. But doesn’t last night tell you that maybe he’s not getting the message? That maybe he feels alone and deserted in the world?”

  “That’s not because of us,” Hal said. “Our kids have had everything they need their whole lives, every opportunity.” He looked to his wife, took her hand, came at Hardy. “You keep wanting to bring this back to me and Linda. We are not at fault here. This is all because of Andrew—the lies he told, how he acted, who he is. He’s always been such a difficult kid. This is not me and Linda. We have been damn good parents.”

  This, Hardy realized, would never go anywhere productive. “Look,” he said, “I’ve got two kids myself. Teenagers. I know what you’re talking about. My wife and I get a chance for time alone, we take it, too. But I might suggest—and this is true with me and my wife and maybe every other set of parents on the planet—that maybe you’re not as in touch with your son’s feelings as you think you are. He did, after all, just try to take his own life.”

  After a short and tense moment, Linda broke the silence. “I’m going back in to him,” she said, “for when he comes out of it. Come on, Hal. Are you coming?”

  With a surly look back at both Wu and Hardy, and no comment, Hal took her hand, and together they turned back toward Andrew’s room.

  27

  . . . And people wonder where they go wrong raising children,” Frannie said. She was already chafing at the bedrest edict, and against her doctor’s orders had been planning on coming downstairs to dinner. But Hardy had finessed her by bringing up the fettucine alfredo and serving her in the bedroom. Now he sat next to the bed, eating his own pasta from a television table.

  “I don’t know if Hal and Linda wonder about that so much,” Hardy said. “Ask them and they’ll tell you. They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re great parents. They’ve worked hard and now just want to have some fun.”

  “You can’t argue with the basic concept.”

  “Okay, but getting it even a little bit right takes some energy. You check up on them from time to time, get in their faces when they need it; once in a while, God forbid, you say no. You make sure they know they’re loved all the time, even when you hate ’em.”

  “Especially when you hate them.”

  “That, too. See, it’s not that complex.”

  “Although I’ve heard you say more than once that raising the little darlings is the hardest thing in the world.”

  “That’s because I only speak in revealed truth.” Hardy went back to his food.

  Frannie fell pensive. Time passed. Then: “Maybe they just got tired. The Norths.”

  Hardy put his fork down. “Who doesn’t? But you’re still in their lives a little. Not that some percentage of them wouldn’t make it if you left, even a large percentage. But somebody like Andrew who’s already got obvious issues, it might occur to you he’s at risk, wouldn’t you think?” He shook his head, forked some pasta, chewed thoughtfully. “One of the kids I talked to at Sutro today was this girl, Jeri, pierced everywhere you could stick a needle, tattoos—the look, you know? Not my first choice for fashion consultant, but a really good kid. Solid, grounded, helpful. She was in the play with Andrew.”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, when she walked in, she was the one who fit the poster child image of troubled youth. But you hear her talking about Andrew or Laura, these kids who look like they’ve got everything, and she’s got the answer. She calls them gone parents. Even if they’re
right in the house, they’re gone. And Hal and Linda aren’t even in the house all that much.”

  Frannie reached over and put a hand on Hardy’s tray table. “So what happens now? With Andrew, I mean?”

  “Well, they’re sending him back up the hill in the morning. Meanwhile, it looks like Amy’s on tomorrow.”

  Frannie took a breath and let an involuntary moan escape. Closing her eyes, she let herself back down onto her pillows. “And what about you?”

  “No. What about you? That didn’t sound too good.”

  “I’m a little sore, that’s all.”

  “That’s all. You didn’t by any chance forget to take your pain medicine, did you?”

  She shook her head as far as the neck brace let her. “It’s not that bad. I don’t want to be drugged up.”

  “If you weren’t already so hurt, I’d whup you upside the head.” Hardy got up and went into the bathroom, found her medicine and brought it back. “Here. Take these, would you? Give yourself a break. Tomorrow you can get up and suffer all day if you want.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Clear dishes, check on kids, take the rest of the night off.”

  “On the day before a hearing? You’re kidding.”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “So what? Really?”

  “Really? I don’t know exactly. I’ve got some phone calls. I’ve got to find something that might help this kid. Especially after what he tried last night.” He leaned over and she put a hand behind his neck, held him in the kiss for an extra second. When he straightened up, he said, “On the other hand, I could close the door and get these silly dishes off the bed, although with your medical condition we’d have to cut back on the usual acrobatics.”

  “It’s a nice offer, but with the concussion and all, I really do have a headache.” She offered him a weak smile. “I hate to say that.”

  “It’s fine. I really do have stuff to do anyway.” He sat down on the side of the bed. “But for the record, that was a nice kiss.”

  “Thank you. I thought so, too. You know why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why suddenly I thought a good kiss was in order.”

  Hardy shrugged. “I thought it was just the usual animal magnetism.”

  “That, too,” she said. “But also I’m liking this guy who showed up again recently. Caring for his clients, interacting with his kids. All that sensitive stuff.” She touched his hand. “Really,” she said. “If he wanted to stick around, that wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “He’s thinking about it,” Hardy said. “No commitments, though.”

  “No, of course not. No pressure, either. But just so he knows.”

  Hardy leaned over and kissed her another good long one. “He’ll take it under advisement,” he said.

  As a matter of course and of habit, Hardy had left his card—home and business numbers—with all of today’s interview subjects. He had also asked for their own numbers and told all of them that he might need to call them as witnesses for Andrew, but this really didn’t seem too likely at the moment. None of them had given him a shred of evidence, and without that no judge would let him introduce even the most compelling alternative theory of the murders. Hardy had to have something real, and he had nothing at all, not even a reasonable conjecture of his own.

  This last fact, considering that he’d come very close to actually believing in Andrew’s innocence, was the most galling. If someone else had killed Mooney and Laura Wright, he had no idea who it might have been, or what reason they might have had. Perhaps the most frustrating element was that Hardy now believed that Juan Salarco—or, more precisely, Anna Salarco—had actually seen the murderer as he fled from the scene and turned to look back at the house.

  But because of the promises of the police for some kind of intercession on his behalf with the INS—promises Hardy knew to be empty—Salarco couldn’t admit that he’d made a mistake on the identification. Maybe he didn’t even accept that fact himself. Maybe all Anglos looked pretty much the same to him, especially young ones wearing cowled sweatshirts.

  He was just finishing up a telephone discussion with Kevin Brolin, the psychologist who’d treated Andrew for his anger problems when he’d been younger, and whom Hardy wanted to testify the next day on the second criterion, Andrew’s rehabilitation potential. Brolin had been called by the Norths before they’d even flown home after the suicide attempt, and Hardy had talked to him earlier that evening at the hospital right after his little contretemps with Hal and Linda. Brolin seemed knowledgeable and sympathetic and, more importantly, convinced that Andrew had resolved the problems with his temper—in Brolin’s opinion, he was not a candidate for physical violence. He’d learned to channel that negative energy into creative outlets, such as writing and acting. Brolin even understood that he’d stopped eating meat out of compassion for the suffering of food animals.

  Hardy didn’t tell him about Andrew’s jailhouse conversion on the vegetarian issue. Nor was he particularly convinced by Brolin’s professional opinion about Andrew’s current commitment to a nonviolent life. In Hardy’s own experience, he’d known people who had directed their “negative energy” toward creative outlets, and who were still capable of heinous acts of violence. The two were not mutually exclusive. But if as a psychologist and expert witness—at a thousand dollars per court day—Brolin thought they were, and was willing to say so, that was all right with Hardy. It might not convince the judge, but Brolin would certainly make a damn strong argument that would be hard to refute, especially if Jason Brandt had not thought to present a rebuttal witness to testify to the opposite.

  Hardy was still on the kitchen phone when the front doorbell rang. He checked the wall clock. It was 9:40. “Anybody want to get that?” he called out.

  “In a second!” Vincent called from his room.

  Rebecca gave her constant refrain. “I’m doing homework!”

  The doorbell rang again. Hardy said, “Excuse me a minute, Doctor, would you?” Covering the mouthpiece. “Now!” he called out, “as in right now!”

  “Beck!” Vincent yelled.

  “I’m doing homework, I said.” Her final answer. She wasn’t budging.

  “So am I! It’s not fair!” Hardy heard a slam from Vincent’s room—a book being thrown down in a fit of pique?—then a chair perhaps knocked over. Anger anger everywhere. His son went running by down the hallway. Hardy came back to the phone. “You work with children all day?” he asked. “How do you do it?”

  “I’m a very, very old forty-five,” Brolin said.

  From the front door. “Dad! Somebody for you.”

  Covering the phone again. “Tell him I’ll be a minute.”

  Hardy heard Vincent’s steps coming back up through the house, then passing through the kitchen. His put-upon fourteen-year-old son didn’t so much as favor him with a glance.

  Hardy cut it off as quickly as he could with Brolin, told him he’d see him at the YGC the next morning and walked up through the dining room to the front of the house. No one waited in the living room and the front door was still closed. Was it possible, he wondered, that Vincent had left the caller to cool his heels outside and closed the door on him? Surely between him and Frannie, he thought, they’d covered, at least once, some of the basic etiquette involved in answering the goddamned front door?

  But evidently not.

  A shadow moved behind the glass and Hardy opened the door.

  The young man looked familiar. Recently familiar, but Hardy couldn’t quite place him. “Mr. Hardy,” he said. Then, reading Hardy’s uncertainty: “Steven Randell, from Sutro?”

  “Sure, sure. Sorry. Didn’t my son invite you in?”

  “He said you’d just be a minute.”

  Hardy sighed, backed up a step, opened the door all the way, summoned him inside and closed the door behind him. “You want to come in? Can I get you anything? Something hot to drink, maybe?”

  “No, that’s okay, thanks.
”

  He went to the window seat. Neatly groomed and as tall as Hardy, with brown hair and a good complexion, closely shaved, he hailed from the opposite fashion camp as his costar Jeri. He wore tan cargo pants and a black leather coat over a blue work shirt. During the session they’d had earlier in the day at Sutro, he hadn’t volunteered much, his position being that he hadn’t known either Andrew or Laura very well. But if Andrew had killed Mr. Mooney, Steve hoped that he’d be punished for it. Hardy had given him his by now pro forma song and dance about Andrew’s innocence, but had gotten the impression that it had rolled off. But, obviously now, if he was here, something had stuck.

  “You mind if I ask you how you knew where I live?” Hardy asked.

  Randell shrugged at the no-brainer. “I had your phone number. I just got directions to here on the web.”

  “You can do that?”

  Another shrug. Had Hardy climbed the evolutionary ladder all the way up to Cro-Magnon? “Sure,” he said. “You can find anything on the web.”

  Hardy wanted to ask him how he’d found this particular and unnerving bit of information, and if there was a way he could remove it from the public domain, but he guessed it would be impossible now. Besides, the young man hadn’t come here to talk about cyberspace.

  “So what can I do for you, Steven?” he said.

  He sat straight up, rather stiffly, his hands folded in his lap. The window seat was really more of a bench with cushions. There was nothing to lean back against, no real way to get comfortable. And now that they were down to the nub, Randell seemed suddenly reticent, even confused. “Um . . .” Wrestling with it.

  Hardy helped him out. “Did something we talked about earlier come back to you?”

  “Something like that.”

  Hardy waited through another lengthy silence. In the street out front, a couple of cars passed, and from up on Geary came the wail of a siren. City noises. Finally: “Steven.”