“He was obeying his client’s wishes about the abuse, the same thing you’d do.” Hardy wasn’t about to listen to Lightner criticize anybody. His own judgment, after all, was a long way from exemplary.
“But the fact remains, he lost. And Jennifer loses.” He held up a hand. “My point is that he could have called several witnesses—myself included—who might at least have planted the seed. Did you visit any of Jennifer’s past physicians?” At Hardy’s nod, he continued. “Okay, then you know there was abuse. And there were more people, people I’ve talked to—her own mother, for example. An abused person as well, as you may know. Even Helga has seen Jennifer come in here, staggering with the pain, limping. It was a classic situation—Larry Witt was literally beating her to death.”
“But Jennifer told Freeman—she ordered him—not to get into that.”
“He should have overridden her. He was her lawyer. His job was to clear her, not allow her to be convicted. She is a victim, Mr. Hardy.”
Hardy raised his voice. “She would have fired him, don’t you understand that?”
Lightner sat back, his face working. “And why is that?”
“If she admits she was beaten, to her it’s the same as admitting she killed Larry. And if she killed Larry, that’s admitting she killed Matt.”
“She doesn’t have to admit anything, does she?” Lightner said. “You can call all these people as witnesses, can’t you? Get them to talk about what they’ve seen with Jennifer. Maybe nothing overtly even about Larry. I could come on as an expert witness—I’ve done it before. This kind of denial is common. I wouldn’t have to talk specifically about things Jennifer told me. I’d just discuss the syndrome, and then let the jury make the connection.”
“That she killed Larry because he beat her?”
“They’ve already convicted her—it can’t hurt her any worse and it might help. Show the jury what she’s been through. It might, if nothing else, move them to some sympathy. This woman has done nothing but suffer her whole life. Maybe you can end the cycle.” Lightner shook his head. “God, this is a travesty.”
“Yes, it is,” Hardy said.
Lightner walked him out to his car. As Hardy opened the door, Lightner reached into his wallet and took out a card. “I expect to talk to her today, as I’ve been doing, but I want you to feel free to call me anytime if you feel I can help you, if I can come in with you and perhaps try to convince her to agree with a defense, anything at all. I’m always here.”
“You don’t go home?”
Lightner’s face lit in a brittle smile. “My ex-wife and children have the home. I’ve a space behind the office”—he motioned back to the building—“bedroom, kitchen and whatever I was able to keep. But it’s all right, I’m getting along. Shrinks have a notoriously high divorce rate. We’re often better with other people’s lives than our own.”
“Mr. Hardy?” It was Phyllis on the intercom. “There’s an Emmett Kelly down here to see you.”
Hardy pushed his files away, smiling. “Send him up.”
A minute later Abe Glitsky’s form filled the doorway. “I couldn’t resist,” he said. He walked across the room and looked down onto Sutter Street, then turned back and plumped himself halfway over the couch, laying his head against the armrest. “I think I’ll take the afternoon off, get in a nap. Naps are rare among the ranks of homicide inspectors. I should do a study.”
“You should,” Hardy agreed. “But in the meanwhile . . . ”
Glitsky sat up. “In the meanwhile I have made an ass of myself yet again in your behalf, although I realized on Friday the horse got out of the barn. I thought I’d make sure it all got covered, so I went out to see the Romans, told them we were finishing up some paperwork.”
“And you found out . . . ?”
Glitsky grinned his horrible grin, the scar through his lips stretched white, the eyes with no mirth in them. “I found out that they have no idea what either or both of them were doing on the Monday after Christmas last year, which is the worst possible news for you.”
“Why is that?”
“Because”—Glitsky held up a finger, lecturing—“if they had spent any time being guilty and thinking up an alibi, I believe they would have remembered it and trotted it out. That’s what guilty folks do. As it was, they just looked at each other.” Glitsky stood. “They had no clue, Diz. There’s nothing there.”
By this time it was getting to be no surprise. “Well, at least I feel like I’ve covered the bases.” Then, remembering the other thing he’d been meaning to put to his friend, he said, “You filed a report on that visit to the bank we made, didn’t you? The three-minute thing.”
Glitsky had gone over to the dartboard and was coming back to Hardy’s desk, having pulled out Hardy’s near-perfect round. “Sure. I was on duty. I thought Terrell could use it. Why?”
Hardy shrugged. “Just following up.”
Glitsky threw and the first dart hit the wall a foot below the board. “These are heavy,” he said. “My kids’ darts don’t throw like these.”
“Twenty grams.” Hardy grimaced at the hollow sound, at the hole in the wall. Another dart flew, smacking the wallboard high and wide of the target. “They’re made out of tungsten. They’re pretty good darts.”
Glitsky fired the last one. It grazed the bottom of the board before sticking, again, in the wall. The inspector headed for the door, stopping when he got there. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think they might be broke.” Then he was gone.
He was almost through the first, and had another four working days—Villars had given everyone a week off before the penalty phase was to begin. Hardy was grateful for the prep time, but the probable reason for it galled him—Powell was in the stretch run for his election and it seemed Villars was cutting him some slack.
He couldn’t, of course, prove it, but that didn’t make him any less suspicious.
Freeman hadn’t been to the office either, which was just as well. He was sick to death of Freeman and his histrionics. He was also sick of himself, of his waffling—every chance he’d got, he’d backed off in the face of the older man’s resolve and personality. Half a dozen times he should have just stood his ground. Said this was what was what and take it or leave it. But partly he’d wanted to believe that Freeman was right and would prevail. Partly because if Freeman won he wouldn’t have the burden of trying to save Jennifer’s life. He had wanted so badly to get out from under the responsibility that he’d convinced himself that Freeman’s strategies would likely work.
He had been whipping himself over his own deficiencies. Time and again he had driven from Olympia Way down to Haight Street, trying to find a shortcut that would undermine his argument about Jennifer getting to the bank.
But through it all ran a common thread. He had believed—he had never questioned—that Jennifer had run where she said she had. At least she had run on paved streets. He had dutifully consulted his map. No, he’d convinced himself there was no flaw. Even if Jennifer had taken a slightly shorter route, as long as she stayed on the streets she could not have made it to the bank and also killed Larry.
Now he realized he had ignored the UCSF medical center, about ten square blocks of campus and buildings at the base of Mount Sutro between Jennifer’s home and her bank. He had seen it, of course—he knew it was there. But he had never gotten out of his car and walked through it. On the map, it looked impenetrable, a dense maze of impassable structures. The huge medical buildings gave the impression of a fortress, not a park anyone could simply stroll through. It did have a wall—why did he think it was solid, without gates? Why didn’t he get out and stroll through and look?
Because he was too clever for his own good, and Freeman’s and, most important, Jennifer’s. All his careful calculations about time and distance and how Jennifer couldn’t possibly have made it to the bank and accessed her account when she did and still get back home in time to commit the crimes didn’t really signify what he had been convinced they
did. He had set Freeman up for Powell’s devastating rebuttal. And that, in his opinion, even more than Freeman’s ego and tactical blunders, had cost them the verdict.
Hardy had always, in theory at least, considered himself more or less in the death-penalty camp. He didn’t pretend it was a deterrent. What it did do, though, was eliminate the possibility that the person who was executed was going to kill another innocent citizen—either when they got out on parole or, if they were doing life without parole, during their life behind bars.
He had favored what he called the mosquito argument—if you killed a mosquito that bit you, you at least guaranteed that that particular mosquito wasn’t going to bite you again. Other mosquitoes didn’t have to know about it and tell each other and get deterred—if another one bit you, you killed that one too. That way, at least you had less mosquitoes in the population.
But he knew Jennifer. She was not a mosquito. He understood why she had done what she had done if she had done it. And he didn’t think she should get the death penalty for that.
Here, he knew, at least generally speaking, he was getting on shaky ground. Every murderer had somebody who knew him—or her. Somebody who understood that they’d had a lousy childhood or whatever it was that had made them believe it was somehow okay to kill as an expression of rage or frustration. The flip side to that, of course, was that the victims also had people who had loved them, whose lives were ruined and hearts broken. What about them?
To say nothing of the victims themselves. They didn’t ask to be victims, did they? They had done nothing wrong and now they were dead, and generally that’s where Hardy drew the line—the people who made innocent people dead deserved to die.
Hardy believed that at some point, adults in society had to take responsibility for what they were, for who they’d become. If as grown-ups, they’d turned into killers, they didn’t deserve any breaks. Adios, you had your chance and you blew it.
It was a tragedy all around, there was no denying that. It was a tragedy that children got atrociously bad starts in life, that people turned out bad. But it was the world. It was a worse wrong, a worse tragedy, to keep giving bad people the opportunity to do truly bad things again and again.
But what about someone like Jennifer, who had two husbands who beat her? Whose life had been a living hell? Where did she fit in?
41
The next morning, as he was gathering his things, getting ready to go to the jail to see Jennifer, the telephone rang.
“Mr. Hardy? This is Donna Bellows with Goldberg Mullen & Roake.” As soon as she said the name Hardy recognized the sultry voice. Ms. Bellows, the lawyer who had referred Jennifer to Freeman, was another lead he probably hadn’t followed up enough, another unreturned call that he hadn’t pursued. He said hello somewhat warily.
“I found out about the verdict over the weekend and I was out of town yesterday, but I realized I never called you back. I’m sorry. I suppose it’s too late now anyway.”
“It’s never too late if you’ve got something,” Hardy said. “I’m sure David Freeman’s working on the appeal right now.”
“Well, I don’t think I have anything.”
Hardy waited. Finally he said, “Whatever you do have, I’ll take. I did find out that Crane & Crane was YBMG’s law firm, although what that means about Larry Witt . . . ”
Bellows sighed over the telephone. “That’s what I found, too, where I had heard the name.” Again Hardy waited. “I’ve had a busy few months, and I’ve had two secretaries quit on me, and my files are a mess, so I came in a couple of weeks ago and tried to get some of this cleaned up. It should have been filed with Larry’s stuff but it wasn’t. In any event, I can’t imagine it’s of any importance—”
“What is it?”
“It’s an offering circular. Larry had sent it around to me with some questions but I’d been on vacation over Christmas.”
“Maybe that’s why he called Crane—to answer the questions.”
“He did call them? Directly?”
“Once. From his home, anyway.”
“Well, okay, but by the time I saw it, Larry was dead. I’m afraid that between my reaction to that and my other pressing business, I just laid the circular aside. Larry’s questions were moot by then anyway. But it sounds like you got your answer.”
Remembering how foolish he had felt asking Jody Bachman what an LBO was, Hardy hesitated a moment but then went ahead. The way to stay ignorant was not ask questions. He admitted that he didn’t really know what an offering circular was.
“It’s pretty much what it says—it’s a brochure outlining a stock offering. In this case, YBMG was reorganizing to change their not-for-profit status. I guess Larry had some questions, so he came to me, then when I wasn’t here he went to the horse’s mouth.”
“He wrote the word ‘no’ under their phone number.”
“He probably decided he wasn’t going to invest. It doesn’t look like it was much of a deal, anyway.”
So that was that.
Hardy, being thorough now, asked if Ms. Bellows would send him a copy of the circular so that he could look it over. She said she would messenger it over that afternoon.
She was dressed in her reds. Her hair was all over the place. The guards let her in and she stood, arms crossed, leaning back against the closed door. She had asked Hardy to bring her a pack of cigarettes, and he shook out one and gave it to her. San Francisco County Jail was officially a smoke-free environment. This created a cottage industry among the prisoners who smuggled in cigarettes and sold them the way they sold cocaine, marijuana, and heroin. Hardy just couldn’t believe they’d bust Jennifer, convicted of murder and up for the death penalty, for having a smoke in the attorneys’ conference room.
Her eyes squinted against the smoke, drilled into him. “Now what?” she said.
“Now I think we talk about how Larry beat you.”
She squinted some more, seemed to shrink into herself. “And that’s why I killed him?”
Hardy nodded. “That’s our best shot. It always was.” He took a step toward her but she stared him back. “How are you holding up?” he asked gently.
She laughed briefly, more like a bark, then coughed, choking on the smoke from her cigarette. The small room was filling with smoke. “I’m real good,” she said. “Real good. I love being here.” Tears filled her eyes, overflowed onto her face. She left them there.
Hardy again tried to move forward, but she held out her hand. “You stay away.” She turned a shoulder into the door and stood there, shaking, her body heaving, trying to control the sobs. The cigarette fell to the ground at her feet. “This isn’t me . . . ” After all the other scenes, this was not an act. She was talking to herself. “I can’t have got to here.”
Hardy didn’t know what to say. Or do. He had some of the same reaction—that this wasn’t real, they couldn’t have gotten to here. Yet here they were.
One of the women guards looked in through the window, leaning over slightly with no expression at all. The two people in the room, one crying and one standing, might as well have been part of the furniture. The guard ignored the cigarette smoke.
There was no point in pushing. Hardy took one of the chairs, pulled it around backward and straddled it. He crossed his arms over the back of the chair and waited.
Eventually she had to sit down. She turned her chair to the side, resting an arm across the table. “I don’t know why he needed to do that.”
“Who?”
“Larry.” She nodded. “I always tried to be a good wife, a good mother. But I know who I am. I guess Larry knew it too, maybe better than I did. He was trying to protect me from myself, I think, keep me from making mistakes . . . And he wasn’t mean like Ned was. Even when he was mad he wasn’t mean about it—it was more like it was his job to do.”
“To keep you in line?”
“It wasn’t every day, you know. Most days, sometimes for a couple of weeks, nothing would happen. But then it would j
ust get to me—this, this feeling that if I didn’t do something, something for myself, I’d go crazy. A couple of times I think I did go crazy. Threw things, tore up the house. The anger just took over. Do you know what I’m talking about at all? I realize it sounds pretty strange.”
“But you couldn’t leave him?”
She hit her fist on the table. “I didn’t even want to leave him. I loved Larry and . . . oh, God, I loved Matt. It wasn’t the way it was with Ned. Not at all. I really hoped we would work it out, someday.”
This was, Hardy thought, the straightest—and saddest—talk he’d ever gotten out of her, but if it was going to do them any good he had to get more. “I’m sorry to ask this, Jennifer, but what about Ken Lightner?”
It was as though she expected it, nodding to herself. “I talked to him. He told me about your lying to him about me saying we’d slept together. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel something strong for Ken. I do.” She stared straight ahead for a long moment. “But no,” she said at last, “I wasn’t going to leave Larry and Matt for him. We talked about it. It was okay. I wanted to, at first especially. But that was just more of the same behavior—Ken made me see that. Doing something I knew was wrong so I’d get punished. Ken said I should break the cycle, don’t do the wrong thing to begin with. That way I wouldn’t feel like I deserved to be punished.”
“What about him? How do you think he feels about you?”
She shrugged. “He thinks I’m attractive. He told me that, so I wouldn’t think he was rejecting me.” Her hands were crossed in her lap, her head down, her voice almost inaudible. “Men find me attractive, but once they get to know me, they don’t like me so much.”
“He’s sticking with you all through this,” Hardy said. “That counts.”
The 13th Juror Page 38