The 13th Juror

by John Lescroart

  “She needs me, Dr. Witt. She called. Is she upstairs?”

  “She doesn’t need you. What do you mean, she called? When? What are you talking about?”

  “She told me she would be here. You were hitting her again. I’m taking her out—”

  “You’re not taking anything. She’s not here.”

  “If I leave I’m calling the police. I’m calling them immediately.”

  “What the hell . . . What do you want?”

  “I want to see Jennifer. I want her out of here. She’s my patient. You should understand that, Doctor.”

  “She’s not here. I told you she’s not here.”

  “I need to see that for myself. I swear to God, I’m calling the police directly. I cannot let her stay here like this—”

  “You want some proof? You need the goddamn grand tour?” Less confident now, he thought.

  Upstairs, at last, in the bedroom.

  “There, satisfied? I told you, she’s out. Now you get the hell out of my house!”

  The gun right where she said he kept it—in the headboard. “I don’t think so.” He didn’t need to think about it. Events were taking over.

  “What are you doing with that? Goddamn it . . .”

  Coming toward him, the noise, the other sound . . . maybe there all along, subliminal . . . water running into a sink? He hadn’t even heard it. No. The noise stopped. That was it. It was the noise stopping. Somebody was in there.

  “Don’t move.” To Witt, stopping him. The blood rushing now.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Who’s in there?”

  Witt yelling over his shoulder. “Matt, stay in there!” Half-turning, trying to fake him—“Don’t come out!”—just as the other gun appeared . . . a blur really . . . in the bathroom doorway. Somebody shooting at him! But no one there. Nothing now but panic. A shadow. Things moving too fast.

  Witt begins to lunge. But something else, too, at the same instant, off to the side, in the bathroom door. In his peripheral vision there is another gun. God! Somebody else is here, a witness. More, a threat.

  He doesn’t have a second. No time for more than a glance at his side. It’s a gun—but something’s wrong, it’s too low to the ground, someone crouching? It pops, the gun pops . . .

  He has no choice, he spins, points, squeezes the trigger just as he sees . . .

  . . . the boy in a crouch stepping out, holding a gun, pointing it? It pops again. It can’t be. It can’t be Matt—he’s at school. It’s a school day and the father is at home alone . . .

  He has to stop! He must! But his hand has already squeezed too far. His gun kicks, exploding in the room with the sound of a bomb, and the bathroom mirror splinters in a haze of sickly bright red.

  No stopping now. Only an instant to move while Witt is struck dumb, immobilized by the explosion, by what he’s seen, his eyes on the splayed body of his son . . .

  A beat while the horror sinks in, but it is enough. Lightner yanks the gun back on Witt, now coming with a choking scream, hands raised. The face, eyes, a wild man closing in.

  Impossible not to fire. Impossible to miss . . .

  The reporters were rushing to telephones and Minicams as Hardy turned back away from the witness stand. In a daze, he was aware of Villars using her gavel and of Powell standing at his table, mute. Of Nancy standing in the gallery. Nancy had confirmed in the call last night that she had sent the toy gun to Matt.

  Lightner slumped in the witness chair. Hardy sat down next to his client, who turned her face against him, crying out of control.

  Powell had Terrell take Lightner into custody on the perjury charge. Villars retired to her chambers alone.

  A half hour later she returned to the bench. Hardy and Jennifer remained at the defense table, holding hands the whole time. Nancy and Tom were in the front row and Freeman had come inside the rail. Powell was across the room, slumped in his hard chair, pretending to study some papers. His face was set.

  Villars’ face was flushed, her mouth a thin line. She looked below her, over her reading glasses, at Hardy and Jennifer, then to Powell.

  She spoke clearly, formally. “This court grants defendant’s motion for a new trial under Penal Code Section 1181.”

  Hardy finally let himself lean back in his chair. Granting the motion for a new trial was a legal formality—Villars was ruling on Hardy’s first motion, and that was all she was doing. It was clear there was not going to be any new trial for Jennifer Witt. As she had maintained all along, she had not killed either her husband or her son and, at last, everyone in the courtroom knew it.

  “Further,” the judge continued, “it is the decision of this court under California Code of Civil Procedure Section 657.6 that the verdict of the jury in The People vs. Jennifer Lee Witt be set aside—it is the judgment of this court that the evidence received is lacking in probative force to establish the proposition of fact to which it is addressed.

  “Mr. Powell, I cannot imagine you would oppose a motion for release of the defendant on her own recognizance at this time.” It was not a question. “Mr. Hardy, would you care to approach?”

  55

  After the trial Hardy had built a new brick border to enclose Frannie’s roses by the fence in his backyard. He had his foot on it now, looking back toward the house. Isaac Glitsky, Abe’s oldest, was taking his job very seriously—he lifted the top of the barbecue, poked the turkey in the thigh with the long fork. “It’s still a little pink,” he said.

  Abe, finally, on Thanksgiving, holding what Hardy thought was his first beer of the year, spoke patiently, gently, the voice nothing like the one he used in his police life. “Just close it up, Ike, it’ll get done.”

  The boy did, then went to join his brothers playing with Hardy’s kids up under the overhang by the house.

  It was unseasonably warm, sunny, with a westerly breeze. Moses and his pregnant bride Susan were expected soon, and Frannie and Flo were inside cutting things up, setting up condiment trays, cooking side dishes.

  Hardy was having what he called the traditional Thanksgiving old-fashioned—bourbon and soda and sugar and bitters and oranges and cherries and God knew what else. He wanted to enjoy it before Moses, the purist, arrived and tried to ruin it for him. He sat on his new low wall, taking in his world.

  “This works,” he said. He smelled the turkey smoke, the newly mown grass. Then: “You’ll never believe who called me yesterday.”

  Glitsky looked over at him. “Orlando Cepeda?”

  Hardy shook his head.

  “Michael Jordan?”

  “Not a sports figure.”

  “I know it wasn’t Clinton. I’m sure he would’ve mentioned it when I talked to him.”

  Hardy sipped his drink. “Jennifer Witt.”

  The warm breeze came up again for a moment. Isaac was back at the barbecue and Abe told him to leave it. “And turn that hat around, son. We’ve talked about that.”

  Isaac was wearing his Giants hat backward. His homicide-inspector father agreed that while it was probably a harmless fashion, he wasn’t going to allow his son to affect even the smallest trademark of gang affiliation. No baggy clothes, Raiders jackets, turned-around baseball caps for Abe Glitsky’s sons.

  Isaac flipped the cap around and Abe shrugged at Hardy. “I’m turning into a conservative. It’s kind of sad.”

  “Let’s see,” he said. “A conservative in San Francisco would still leave you just to the left of Lenin, right?”

  The scar lightened slightly—Abe’s not-quite-beaming smile. “So how’s Mrs. Witt?”

  “She’s rich. Really rich.”

  “This soon. They paid?”

  “They had to. She didn’t do it.”

  The shade from the house had reached them and Glitsky moved down a bit on the brick. “I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  Hardy nodded. “There were no prints at all on the toy gun.”

  “And this means something?”

&
nbsp; “To a trained investigator like yourself, I’d think so.”

  Glitsky gave it a minute. He actually took a sip of his beer. “It was wiped. If some kid had ever played with it, it would have had his prints on it.”

  “See? I knew you’d get it. Anyway, there was so much other stuff, I just missed it. Something, as they say, was nagging at me, but I couldn’t get it into the picture until Lightner slipped up. It should have had some prints, some partial prints, some smudges at least.”

  “But why did Lightner frame Jennifer if he loved her?”

  “He didn’t start out to. He must have convinced himself she wouldn’t get nailed for it. He was so confident he confided to me he was afraid she did it, but only to save herself from Larry. I hear even shrinks can get caught up in believing what they want to believe. Just like ‘real’ people.”

  “He should have stolen something,” Abe said. “Made it look like a botched burglary.”

  “Of course, with your years of experience, that’s easy for you to say. In any event, Jennifer getting arrested screwed up everything. He hoped with Larry gone, she’d eventually marry him, her rod and her staff and her comforter. He said the obsession neurosis, whatever, was hers. It seems it was the other way around. He also didn’t figure on Matt being home. Christmas vacation. He forgot about the boy.”

  “Why did he come just then?”

  “I asked Jennifer the same thing. How did he know? She had called him when Larry started beating her up that morning. I suppose she blames herself for that, too. Anyway, obviously he’d been thinking about it. Jennifer at some point had told him about the gun, where it was. And now he thought with Larry gone . . . Anyway, Jennifer told me she called him when she ran upstairs in the middle of the fight. He told her to get out. He must have figured it was the right time, told his trusty secretary he was in conference, closed the door and walked out through the patio. It’s not ten minutes to Jennifer’s house from his office.”

  Glitsky drank again. “And Terrell gave him his alibi.”

  Hardy nodded. “I’m sure he’ll work out fine in his new position.” Terrell’s job change to the DA’s office had been finalized the previous week. “Lightner’s secretary said he was there all morning and that’s what Terrell wanted to hear . . .”

  “It fit his theory.”

  “Except now the secretary isn’t so sure. Funny, huh?”

  “Hysterical. Unprecedented. And Lightner’s going down?”

  “It looks like it. He gets to have his own trial, anyway.”

  “He should have split when they charged her.”

  Hardy gave him the eye. “How could he without pointing the finger directly at himself? No, he thought he had an alibi. He had to stay around to watch Jennifer’s defense. He couldn’t leave me alone. He had to push the battered-wife defense. It was the only way to get Jennifer off that didn’t put it back on him. And if that didn’t work, well, everything had been for nothing. And remember, he really was, and is, obsessed with her.”

  “But her husband did beat her, didn’t he?”

  Hardy nodded. “But Jennifer was always telling the truth about that—she didn’t kill him period. She might have been full of guilt and other hang-ups, but she’d be damned if she’d put up a defense for something she didn’t do. Her big problem was getting people, including her lawyers, to believe her.”

  The back door opened and Moses McGuire started down the steps. Hardy polished off his drink, chewed the cherry and dropped the orange slice into the dirt behind him, covering it. He and Glitsky stood up.

  “Ike, want to check the bird?” Abe said.

  Moses was shaking hands, his Scotch in the other hand. “This is my first one. You guys ahead of me? What are you drinking, Diz?”

  Hardy held up his empty glass. “Bushmills, straight up, no ice.”

  “My man,” Moses said. Then, turning to Glitsky, “So how’s the murder business? Still booming?”

  On Saturday, December 11, Hardy’s wash-out “other dude,” Jody Bachman, and Margaret Morency exchanged vows in a ceremony at Ms. Morency’s estate in San Marino. As one of the biggest society weddings of the year, the event made the “Living Section” of the Sunday Chronicle.

  Over three hundred guests had been in attendance. Among the stars and celebrities listed, Hardy noted both the mayor and the police chief of Los Angeles. Frank Kelso was also there, along with a host of other supervisors, state legislators, civic leaders, philanthropists.

  Jody and Margaret smiled out at Hardy from the photograph. On Jody’s right was Todd Crane, his best man, managing partner of Crane & Crane.

  The couple was planning an extended honeymoon in the South of France.

  It was a small house—three bedrooms, two baths—on a cul-de-sac in Belmont, twenty-two miles south of San Francisco. The people who had lived there before had kept it up beautifully—in the backyard the grass was trimmed and green. Just off the new deck some stone benches surrounded a small fountain. On the periphery, the fence was bordered by fruit trees—two bearing oranges, a lemon, a cherry and two plums, though now in the middle of January the cherry and plum trees were bare, leafless.

  Jennifer Witt had gotten up at dawn and run three miles down Ralston and back up behind the college. She had not had a cigarette since the trial. Sitting in the breakfast nook, the window open a crack, she drank coffee and ate a plain croissant from the good bakery down the street. It was an overcast day, but still, outside, she could hear the sounds of birds and the fountain.

  It was the first day of the spring semester and she had showered and gotten dressed by eight. Her first class was at nine. She did not have to declare her major for two years, but she knew it was going to be psychology. She wanted, finally, to understand herself, and thought that might be a good place to start.

  When she finished she put her dishes in the sink. Wrapping a sweater around her shoulders, she walked back into the house and pushed open a door.

  Her mother was still sleeping. She crossed the room and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m off,” she said. “You want to meet for lunch?”

  Her mother had been sleeping a lot since they had moved. Now she stretched and put an arm around her daughter’s neck. “You have lunch,” Nancy said, “make some friends. Stay at school.”

  “What about you?”

  Her mother pulled herself up. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “But I do.” Jennifer sat on the bed and her mother smoothed her daughter’s hair.

  “This is the best it’s ever been,” Nancy said. “For me, at least.”

  Jennifer nodded. Her hand rested on her mother’s. “I know. I guess I just never wanted to get here this way.”

  Nancy smiled. “At least we’re here. I think it’s where we take it that matters now.”

  “I know that.” She squeezed her mother’s hand and stood up. “I know. It’s just kind of hard.”

  Nancy didn’t let go of her. She looked up. “Okay, how about if, just today, I come down and have lunch? One time. Get you over the hump. Get me out of the house, too. I think I’m getting ready for that. Maybe I’ll even call Tom.”

  Jennifer thought about that. “That’d be good, Mom. I’d like that.”

  The last school color picture of Matt was blown up to eight-by-ten and framed on a small table by the front door. On her way out, Jennifer stopped, as she always did. This time, she picked it up, holding it in front of her. A gap-toothed Matt smiled at her. She kissed the glass.

  Putting the frame back in its place, she opened the door, took in a deep breath and walked out into the morning.

  Read on for a preview of John Lescroart’s

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  BETRAYAL

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  “Mr. Hardy?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Mr. Hardy, this is Oscar Thomasino.”

  “Your Honor, how are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. Am I bothering you at an inopportune time?”

&nbs
p; “No, but whatever, it’s no bother. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, admittedly this is a little unusual, but you and I have known each other for a long time, and I wondered if I could presume slightly upon our professional relationship.”

  This was unusual, if not to say unprecedented, but Hardy nevertheless kept his tone neutral. “Certainly, Your Honor. Anything I can do, if it’s within my power.” A Superior Court judge asking an attorney for a favor was a rare enough opportunity, and Hardy wasn’t going to let it pass him by.

  “Well, I’m sure it is,” Thomasino said. “Did you know Charles Bowen—Charlie?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’d remember him. Flashy dresser, bright red hair, big beard.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. He a lawyer?”

  “Yes—he was, anyway. He disappeared six months ago.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “If I knew that, he wouldn’t be disappeared, would he? He’d be someplace.”

  “Everybody’s someplace, Your Honor. It’s one of the two main rules. Everybody loves somebody sometime, and you’ve got to be someplace.”

  During the short pause that ensued, Hardy came to realize that he’d overstepped. His tendency to crack wise was going to be the end of him yet. But Thomasino eventually recovered to some extent, even reverting to his own stab at not-quite-cozy informality. “Thanks, Diz,” he said. “I’ll try to keep those in mind. Meanwhile, Charlie Bowen.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes, well . . . the point is that he was a sole practitioner. No firm, no partners, but a reasonably robust caseload.”

  “Good for him.”

  “True, but his disappearance hasn’t been good for the court. Or for his wife and daughter either, to tell you the truth. She’s hired her own lawyer to file a presumption of death claim, which between you and me has very little chance of getting recognized, in spite of the fact that it would be convenient for the court.”

  “Why’s that?”