Hardy 03 - Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  Freeman kept himself in check. This was the natural question. ‘She didn’t kill anyone, Mr Strauss.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. Thanks for the call.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Freeman sat back with his hands crossed behind his head. So the alibi wouldn’t hold up. It was no great surprise.

  27

  The grand jury convened at ten A.M., Thursday, July 2, 1992. It was Hardy’s first appearance there. He wore a brand-new dark suit with nearly-invisible maroon pinstripes, a maroon silk tie, black shoes. When Pullios saw him outside the grand-jury room door, she whistled, looked him up and down. ‘You’ll do.’

  Hardy thought she didn’t look so bad herself in a tailored red suit of conservative cut. Instead of a briefcase, she carried a black sling purse.

  ‘No notes?’

  She tapped her temple. ‘Right here.’

  At her knock, the door was opened by a uniformed policeman. This was light years from the bustling informality of one of the Municipal or Superior Court courtrooms.

  The grand jury was a deck so heavily stacked in favor of the prosecution that Hardy thought a case could be made against its constitutionality. The fact that no one had brought such an appeal was probably a reflection of the reality that nobody representing the accused was allowed in the room. He thought the prosecution winning on an indictment before the grand jury was kind of like a Buick winning the Buick Economy Run.

  Hardy sat next to Pullios at the prosecution desk and studied the faces of the twenty jurors arranged in three ascending rows behind long tables.

  He couldn’t remember ever having seen such a balanced jury of twelve. These twenty were comprised of ten men and ten women. Three of them — two women and a man — were probably over sixty. Four more — two and two— were, he guessed, under twenty-five. There were six blacks, two Orientals, he thought two Hispanics. Most were decently dressed — sports coats and a few ties for the men, dresses or skirts for the women. But one of the white guys looked like a biker — short sleeves, tattoos on his forearms, long unkempt hair. One woman was knitting. Three people were reading paperbacks and one of the young women appeared to be reading a comic book.

  The room wasn’t large. It smelled like coffee. At what would have been the defense table — if there had been one— was a large box full of donuts and sweet rolls that about half the jurors had dipped into.

  The grand jury wasn’t chosen like a regular jury — if a trial jury was a time commitment and minor inconvenience for the average taxpayer, selection to the grand jury was more like a vocation. You sat one day a week for six months, essentially cloistered, and the only kinds of crimes you discussed were felonies. And if you mentioned anything about the proceedings outside of this room, you were committing a felony yourself. There were stories —impossible to verify — that D.A.s had come in and said, ‘Off the record, I don’t believe our eyewitness either. We’ve got no credible evidence at this time. But I’ve been doing homicides now for twenty years and I tell you unequivocally that John Doe, on the afternoon of whatever it is, did kill four Jane Does. Now we’ve got to get this guy off the street before he kills someone else. And he will, ladies and gentlemen, he will. You can count on it. I will stake my reputation and career upon a conviction, but we’ve got to get this man indicted and behind bars and we’ve got to do it now.’ Of course they were only stories. Whatever, the grand jury was a cornerstone of the criminal system, and it behooved prosecutors to take it seriously, which Elizabeth did, in spite of her ‘ham sandwich’ rhetoric. She stood up, greeted the jurors pleasantly and began her attack.

  ‘Ladies and gentleman of the jury, this morning the people of the State of California present the most serious charge in the matter of the capital murder of Owen Nash. You may have read in the newspapers something about this case, and specifically you may be aware that the defendant, May Shintaka, has already been scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Municipal Court in this jurisdiction. However, the delay proposed by the Municipal Court is, in the opinion of the district attorney, terribly excessive. No doubt many of you are aware of the legal axiom that justice delayed is justice denied. It is the contention of the people in this instance that the proposed delay would in fact constitute a denial of justice for this most heinous crime — the crime of cold-blooded, premeditated murder for financial gain, a crime that calls for the death penalty in the State of California.’

  Pullios paused and walked stone-faced back toward Hardy, to where he sat at the table. She picked up a glass of water, took a small sip. Her eyes were bright — she was flying. Immediately she was back to business. Hardy couldn’t help but admire the show.

  ‘So in a sense,’ she said, ‘the indictment the people seek today is simply an administrative strategem to move the trial for this crime to Superior Court, where it can be heard in a timely fashion. But in a greater sense, an indictment before this body will reinforce the state’s contention that, based on real and true evidence, there is indeed just cause for issuance of a warrant for the arrest of May Shintaka and a compelling need for a fair and speedy trial in pursuance of the interests of the people of this state.’

  Hardy thought it was getting a little thick, but he also realized that Elizabeth Pullios, looking like she did and fired up as she was, could probably read the telephone book to these people and keep their attention. She went on to describe the witnesses she would call: Glitsky, Strout, the cab driver, the ballistics expert, the two guards from the Marina, a handwriting analyst. Then she got to Celine Nash. Hardy remembered the other giant lapse in evidentiary rules before the grand jury — hearsay was technically inadmissible, but there was no judge or defense lawyer there to keep it out.

  How could Celine not have mentioned to him yesterday that she was testifying today? Well, they hadn’t had much time to get to it before she went off on him. It could have been that the initial reason she called him was nerves over this appearance today, testifying against Shinn. She’d even said something about it.

  Hardy found himself unhappy in a hurry, wishing he’d reviewed the witness list before they’d come down here —he still did have a lot to learn. Pullios had been doing her homework while Hardy pursued his own agenda. They were going to nail May Shinn six ways from Sunday.

  * * * * *

  Then, at lunch, Pullios told him she wanted him to take Celine Nash.

  ‘No way, Elizabeth. She’s mad at me.’ He explained and she thought it over for a moment, then overruled him. ‘No, you’re better. Just get her confidence back.’

  ‘You’ve already got her confidence.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’ve never met her personally, but Sergeant Glitsky tells me she’s stunning.’

  ‘I guess.’

  Pullios shook her head. ‘Then it’s not a good match. The jurors will see something between us. It might even be there.’

  ‘What’s to see? What are they looking for?’

  ‘This will maybe sound arrogant, but it’s true that people don’t identify with two attractive women on the same side. Right now I’ve got the jury on my side — our side. If Celine comes in, human nature is going to tell the jurors that we — she and I — are natural enemies. Somebody’s credibility is going to suffer. Whoever’s, it’s bad for our side. If you question her there’s no conflict. It’s only natural she’d want to cooperate, especially looking all spiffy like you do today.’

  Hardy shrugged.

  Pullios put her straw in her mouth and sucked up some iced tea. ‘You’d better believe those jurors are a fairly good representation of the average man, or average woman. I couldn’t care less if I sound enlightened or liberated or anything else. I’m playing to win, and I’m telling you that if I depose Celine Nash it’s a weak move. We can probably afford a weak move, okay, but it’s a bad tactic. You don’t give anything away. Even to grand juries. You still take your best chance every time. And you’re our best chance with Celine.’

  She
whispered she was sorry — more mouthed it — as soon as she sat down. She was elegant in cool blue. She’d put on extra eyeshadow, and Hardy wondered if she’d slept last night. Or cried.

  It wasn’t supposed to be lengthy. All he was supposed to do was nail down what Owen had said to her about going out with May on the day he was killed.

  It had been the Tuesday before — the sixteenth, in the morning. She had called him at his office. Celine had intended to go away the upcoming weekend and wanted to make sure her father hadn’t made plans that included her.

  ‘Don’t you think thirty-nine’s a little old to be at his beck and call?’

  ‘I wasn’t at his beck and call. My father didn’t control me!’

  He put that out of his mind. That was last night. This was today. He had a limited role and he’d better keep to it. ‘And Ms Nash, tell us what your father said regarding the day in question, June twentieth.’

  She kept trying to catch his eye, give him a look that promised forgiveness, but he kept himself focused on individual jurors. He would look at her as she answered questions.

  ‘He said he was planning on going over to the Farralons on Saturday with his girlfriend, with May.’

  ‘Had he told you of such plans in the past?’

  ‘Yes, all the time.’

  ‘And in your experience, did your father tend to follow through on these types of things?’

  This was shooting fish in a barrel. He kept expecting to hear somebody object to the nature and thrust of his questions, but since there was neither a defense attorney nor a judge in the room he could ask what he liked.

  ‘Always. If Daddy said he was going to do something he did it.’

  ‘All right, but just for the sake of argument, what if, for example, Ms Shinn had gotten sick Saturday morning?’

  ‘Daddy would have done something else. He wouldn’t have wasted a day. He wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have gone out alone, perhaps, since he’d already made those plans?’

  Celine gave it a moment, chewing on her thumbnail. ‘No, I don’t think so. He wasn’t a solitary man. Besides, we know he didn’t go out alone, don’t we?’

  ‘You’re right, Ms Nash, we do. Indeed we do.’

  * * * * *

  It took until three-thirty, but they got the indictment.

  There was no immediate flurry of activity. The bail was still in effect. There would be no immediate arrest of May Shinn, but the fur would really begin to fly when David Freeman got the news, which would be very soon.

  Meanwhile, Hardy packed his briefcase, hoping that Celine Nash had decided not to wait around until the jury adjourned.

  Celine fell in beside him just outside the door.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. She linked an arm through his and he felt the heat of her body where they came together.

  ‘It’s okay, people get upset. It happens.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen.’

  ‘It’s all right, forget it. We’ll just move ahead on the trial. It ought to go pretty quickly now.’

  He had stopped walking, waiting by the elevators. She was standing too close and his heart was beating enough that he felt it. ‘What do you want me to do, Celine?’

  ‘I just don’t want you to be mad at me.’

  ‘I’m not mad at you. I was out of line, it wasn’t exactly professional.’

  ‘I don’t care about professional.’

  ‘That’s our relationship,’ he said, clearly as he could say it. Then, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does, it does matter. Do you know what it is to be completely alone?’

  Not a professional question.

  The elevators opened, jammed as usual. Hardy got in, Celine cramming next to him, thigh to thigh, arm in his. He smelled the powder she used, the same powder she’d left on him as she’d greeted him with a kiss at Hardbodies! last night — that he’d scrubbed off in the Shamrock before Frannie had come in for date night. He didn’t press the button for his floor and they rode it all the way down to the street level in silence, everyone else chattering away.

  They went outside the front doors, turned east on Bryant, away from the bright sun. A cool wind was up off the Bay. They went two blocks before Hardy said he did know what it was to be alone.

  Celine took that with no response. Then: ‘You must think I’m crazy.’

  He grinned tightly. ‘People do crazy things. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re crazy.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’

  Hardy walked a couple more steps. ‘I don’t know, maybe it does.’

  * * * * *

  It was a little Cuban coffee shop, unnamed, dark as a cave. The table was of finished plywood — there were seven such tables, four with people at them. A Spanish television station whispered from the back corner. The good smell had stopped their walk and brought them inside. They were drinking café con leche made with heated Carnation evaporated milk, sweet.

  If you walked in and saw them sitting across from one another, aside from knowing they didn’t belong here in their Anglo clothes and complexions, you would assume many true things about them. Though they didn’t know each other very well, there was a powerful attraction between them. They had to control it by putting the table between them. They weren’t lovers; if they were they’d have moved together. Well, maybe they were in the middle of a fight, but they weren’t acting angry. No, the first call was right. They were getting to something.

  The man was leaning forward, hands clenched around the wide, deep coffee cup. He was more than leaning, in fact, more like hunched over, rapt, mesmerized?

  She seemed more controlled, but there were giveaways, invitations. She sat sideways to him, very well put together. Her dark suit was muted but a lot of her excellent legs showed, tightly crossed and curled back under her chair. She held her cup lightly in one hand —her other extended out, subtle enough, toward him, there if he wanted it, if he dared take it.

  She was doing most of the talking. You would think this might be the day they would do it. From here they’d go to one of their places, or maybe a motel. You could feel it, even halfway across the room.

  28

  After Dorothy had gone, Jeff Elliot called Parker Whitelaw at the Chronicle and told him his sight had returned —he’d be back at work the next day.

  This wasn’t completely true, but Parker wouldn’t have to know it. Most people were ignorant about how MS worked. They could see the results — the weakened limbs, weight loss, lack of coordination — but they had no clue about the way the disease progressed. Jeff thought this was just as well. It was actually to his advantage if Parker thought that whatever had laid him up for a day had now completely passed and he could go back to being the ace reporter he’d been before.

  In reality, his sight was still very poor. Yesterday, which had begun in total blackness, had heartened him as some sight, then quite a bit, had returned. But, testing it, he found the left eye still all but worthless, the brown smudge blotting all but its extreme periphery. The right eye was a little better — the range of vision was wider, though all of it was fuzzy. But he thought that he could get by. He didn’t particularly think it would be wise to try and drive, but he could fake the rest.

  The doctor had told him that since there had been some almost immediate remission in the total blindness, there was a small chance he could expect gradual improvement with continual steroid treatment. He might even regain normal sight. Maybe.

  This morning he called Maury Carter’s office and told Dorothy he really had to go in to work, but he would like to see her tonight as they’d planned.

  ‘Well, how are you getting to work?’

  ‘I’ll just take a cab.’

  She wouldn’t hear of him taking a cab. She told him she could take some time off — ‘Maury feels terrible about this, too. He’s a nice man underneath’ — and be down there by lunchtime. Would he please wait for he
r?

  ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘Of course, I don’t. Who said I did?’

  They let him take a shower and shave. He still had his clothes from two days before, but they were okay, better by far than the gown. Dorothy was there by twelve-thirty and pushed him in a wheelchair out to her car. The morning fog out in the Avenues hadn’t burned off, and the daylight glared. She put his crutches in the trunk and he got himself settled on the passenger side in the front seat. His legs weren’t completely dead yet.

  They had sandwiches at Tommy’s Joynt and he got to the office close to four. She left him at the Chronicle’s front door and said she’d be back at six, he’d better be there. She’d kissed him again.

  He had a message from an Elizabeth Pullios at the district attorney’s office and the memo line said it was regarding Owen Nash. It brought everything back — the bail question, Hardy and Glitsky, Freeman’s strategy. He hoped he hadn’t missed much in his day away. He returned the call to Pullios and scanned the last two days’ newspapers, turning up his desk light, squinting at the blurry print. After the little blurb on page nine that May had made bail, the story disappeared.

  Of course they’d dropped it. Nothing had happened. The court’s decision to schedule the prelim at the end of the summer had taken the wind out of those sails. It was frustrating. Unless he found something about the Freeman/Shinn connection he was going to have to get himself another story, another scoop.

  He loved being on a hot story. It changed his whole view of the job, the world. People cared about him, asked his opinion, included him in their jokes. He wasn’t just that crippled guy anymore.

  The phone rang and it was Pullios — she didn’t know if he’d heard from Hardy or anyone else, but the grand jury had just indicted May Shinn. The case was going to Superior Court. She just thought he’d like to know.

  The grand-jury story was written and submitted. Parker had come by, impressed by the line on the grand jury. Parker said it was good to see a reporter hustling, working his connections. It might be old-fashioned reporting, but it got the best results. By the way, how were the eyes?