Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  Hardy nodded, considered a moment, then decided to speak his mind. “You know,” he said, “I wish you’d taken this case when Andy first asked you.”

  Freeman shook his head. “I don’t think you’ve lost it. It’s not over until the jury comes in.”

  Hardy raised his eyes. “That’s what they say.”

  “Particularly if Andy didn’t kill May. I think they’re reaching if they think he did.”

  “He was there at May’s this morning.” Hardy was testing.

  Freeman shrugged. “I was there two days ago. Does the jury know it? Do they need to know it?”

  Hardy grabbed the nugget. At this point he’d take anything from any source. “Why do you think they’re reaching? I mean beyond wanting a conviction.”

  In their previous four hours of discussion, Hardy thought he had adequately covered the trial ground with Freeman, but he was beginning to realize that Freeman tended to answer only what he had been asked, and Hardy had stuck to Fowler’s actions as they related to the consciousness-of-guilt theory. He had all but ignored May Shinn the person, thinking she had fallen out of the loop. Now he was no longer sure of that.

  “Because May was depressed, she was suicidal. I spent over an hour last night trying to talk her out of killing herself.”

  “Why was she so depressed?”

  “I think that’s obvious, don’t you?”

  “Not just a coat.”

  “Coat? Oh, that? No, that just might have been the last straw, just another reminder that she couldn’t hope for anything anymore. That’s why she first called me, I guess—upset over it being stolen. But the depression itself—that’s been going on since the summer. She was in love with Owen Nash. Believed she was. After he died she lost what she’d put her hopes in. What had kept her going. Then to be put on trial for his murder . . .”

  Hardy shook his head, still testing. “I don’t know what she told you, but she didn’t love Owen Nash.” Or so Farris had said.

  “No. No, you’re wrong there. Why do you say that?”

  “Same as with Fowler. You don’t take money from someone you love, not for sex anyway.”

  “She didn’t take money from Nash, she never did.”

  That stopped Hardy cold. “What?”

  “She never took money from him.”

  “What about the will?”

  “What about it? The will was a will. I think it started out as more of a gesture, but when Owen died . . . I mean, wouldn’t you pursue two million dollars?”

  Hardy’s head was beginning to throb again. He reached for the cup of now cold coffee on the table next to him. Why had he always assumed that Owen was paying May Shinn? Had it been Ken Farris who’d told him that early on? Had Farris been lying?

  “No,” Freeman was going on. “May did love Owen Nash. There’s no doubt about that. And I’ve come to believe he loved her, too. He was wearing her ring when he was found. She was a lovable woman.”

  Clearly true. Look what she’d done to Andy Fowler. May obviously had more substance than he’d given her credit for. But she certainly had deceived Andy Fowler, and he reminded Freeman of this.

  Freeman nodded as if this were old news. “That was before Owen Nash. Before Nash she did whatever was expedient. She told me this. Certain clients, you can become like a confessor to them. Psychologist, devil’s advocate. A dependency develops.”

  Hardy, remembering Celine, didn’t need a reminder of that.

  “In May’s case she and I actually became pretty close. We were doing a lot of work together.” At Hardy’s glance, Freeman went on, “And no, we weren’t sleeping together. Anyway, something very real seems to have happened with May and Owen, who were both pretty cynical to begin with. They changed each other, for the better.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “May dropped her old lovers—Andy Fowler, for example. Could be she might have been able to scam Owen along like she’d done with men before, but she wanted to clear the slate.”

  “And Nash?”

  “I gather it was pretty much the same, except of course he had a wider circle and more responsibilities. It might have taken longer to put into effect—this decision to go public with their intended marriage, for example.”

  Hardy remembered that Farris had said that Owen had “changed” in the last months of his life. Was that the explanation?

  “You really think they were going to get married?”

  “I do, yes, and I’m not too easily conned.”

  Hardy had never seriously considered that. And why, more than anything, was that? Because Ken Farris had told him May and Owen were definitely breaking up. It brought him up short, wondering what else he’d overlooked or ignored.

  His good friend, and very competent investigator, Abe Glitsky, had supposedly checked the alibi of Ken Farris, but now the thought occurred that in this one area, Pullios may have been right. Abe might have been so burned by the false arrest of May that his heart wasn’t into pursuing the leads in this case as he otherwise might have. He had, after all, not followed up the unidentified fingerprint on the murder weapon—while Struler had done so. He hadn’t discovered the private eye, Emmet Turkel. Hardy found himself wondering if Abe had actually flown to Taos or only made a few phone calls.

  Owen Nash’s death had left Ken Farris in sole charge of a $150 million empire, unencumbered now by a controlling eccentric. Might not that be worth killing for?

  “Something ring a bell?” Freeman asked mildly.

  “Maybe.”

  They heard footsteps and were both standing by the time Strout opened the door. “Y’all want to come in?” he said.

  The body lay covered on a gurney in the chilled room. Strout led the way and pulled back the sheet from over her face. It struck Hardy how young she had been. Her face, without makeup or expression, was one of a young girl, sleeping.

  Freeman moved closer to the gurney, traced a finger along the line of May’s jaw, lifted the sheet further and looked down at her body, grimacing. Strout and Hardy backed away.

  “Where are her clothes?” Hardy asked.

  “Bagged and gone. They’re checking for fabrics, hairs, stains. SOP. A waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there is no doubt this woman killed herself.”

  Hardy felt the fatigue leave in a rush. The clock up over the freezers said it was past eleven, and suddenly his client had at least been proclaimed innocent of committing this murder—because, in fact, it wasn’t a murder.

  Somehow he felt the case had turned. Fowler hadn’t killed May. It made no rational difference in this case about Nash, and yet it seemed to matter a great deal. In everything Andy Fowler had done, Hardy saw evidence of confusion, concern for his reputation, a misdirected vision that he could somehow plug eleven holes with ten fingers.

  But what he didn’t see—suddenly and with clarity— was a murderer. Andy did impulsive things and then made up foolish stories to cover up how foolish he had been; he was a man out of his depth with his emotions.

  What Andy had not done was plan the cold-blooded killing of another man. Somebody else had done that— someone cold, efficient and organized, with neither remorse nor emotion. In fact, the murderer of Owen Nash was close to the polar opposite of Andy Fowler.

  Jeff Elliot knew that in the old days, six months ago, before he met Dorothy, he would have been waiting at the morgue until the results came in on the postmortem so he could have a chance to make the morning edition. But tonight he had written his piece, proofed and filed it and headed home.

  Other stories around the Hall of Justice were getting attention now—one concerned a cat the D.A.s had bought to control the influx of mice that had started to show up in the building in the wake of the construction for the new jail. The cat had been named Arnold Mousenegger and had already gotten several graphs in the Chronicle, a “quote of the day” from Chris Locke (“Arnold is a budgetary godsend. We couldn’t afford to exterminate the whole buil
ding”) and an appearance on Channel 5. Hot stuff.

  And Owen Nash was still as dead as he’d ever been. Andy Fowler was in jail and wasn’t about to get out to kill anybody else tonight. The trial proceeded at its own pace. Jeff’s work would keep until the morning.

  Dorothy had been asleep but got up to greet him when he opened the door. She poured them both glasses of domestic white wine while, sitting on the bed, he took his clothes off. The telephone rang and without thinking he picked it up.

  “Jeff, this is Dismas Hardy and I’m doing you a favor.”

  “You still awake? Don’t you have a trial in the morning?”

  “Good lawyers never sleep, and I wanted you to be the first to know, on the record, that Strout has ruled May Shinn a suicide. Andy Fowler did not kill her. Nobody killed her. She killed herself.”

  “Department of redundancy department,” Jeff said. “Suicide means she killed herself.”

  Hardy thanked him sincerely for the lesson in grammar. Dorothy came over and placed the wineglass on the table next to the phone. She sat next to him and rubbed his shoulders.

  “Is this solid?” Jeff asked.

  “Horse’s mouth, the horse being Strout. I’m still at the morgue. I thought you’d like to know.”

  Jeff hesitated a moment—it meant he wasn’t going to sleep for a few more hours. “I’ve already filed the first edition.”

  “Hey,” Hardy said, “it’s not even midnight. Don’t you guys just stop the presses, rip out the front page?”

  “Maybe if Arnold Mousenegger had four confirmed kills in one day.”

  Everybody knew about Arnold. “By the way,” Hardy asked, “you still willing to dig a little if I can find a likely hole?”

  “By the way, huh?”

  “It just occurred to me.”

  “I’m sure it did. But yeah, I guess so. What is it?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”

  When Jeff hung up, he took a sip of his wine and kissed Dorothy. “Sorry,” he said, “when news breaks . . .”

  She kissed him back. “When you win the Pulitzer,” she said, “I’ll forgive you for this.”

  “Dismas, you’ve got to get some sleep.” Frannie looked very pregnant, standing in his office doorway. “What time is it?”

  Hardy stretched, afraid to check his watch. “Time is for wimps,” he said.

  She came behind his desk and put her arms around him, leaning into his back. “How will you be able to think tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday,” he said.

  “Good. Actually today is Friday. Does that mean anything?”

  “It means tomorrow I can catch up on some sleep. Tonight I’ve got to catch up on these dailies”—he held up a thick pile of typed pages—“two days’ worth. I took last night off, remember?” He rested his head back against her. “Remember?”

  She messed his hair. “I remember very well. But still . . .”

  “Andy Fowler didn’t kill May,” he said. “She killed herself, just like it looked.”

  Frannie straightened up. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”

  “It’s good, though why the idiot went to May’s house—”

  She shushed him. “Don’t get going,” she said. “Do your reading, come to bed. Now.”

  “A few more pages. Promise.”

  The first thing he had to do in the morning was call Ken Farris and get some answers. If he didn’t like the answers he would call Jeff Elliot back, maybe even hire his own Emmet Turkel and do a number on a weekend in Taos last June.

  He also had to remember the questions. They kept flitting in and out, and he found himself making a list while he tried to read the dailies from two days before, which now seemed like two months. With all that had happened since they’d testified, he barely remembered Tom Waddell and José Ochorio, much less what they’d said or why it might be relevant.

  The yellow pad with his notes said: “Nash paying May? Records?” On another line, the words: “Specifics of O.N. changes? How was he different?” Then: “Breaking up? Why ring?”

  The notion that May had been honest throughout put a very different light on everything that had happened. Hardy started another pad, intending to begin with the assumption that May and Owen had, in fact, loved each other. He would go through his first file folders—the ones he’d copied so long ago—over the weekend and review every word she’d said.

  He wrote a few words on the May pad, then jumped to the dailies. He had to turn back to see who was talking, Tom or José. He reminded himself—Tom was the afternoon guy, the kid he’d met that first day. He grabbed the early folder, opening it to Glitsky’s interrogations of them both, intending to start over, get a fresh grip on the facts. Again.

  He hadn’t slept in twenty hours. Now he was reading about José seeing May Shinn leaving the boat on Thursday, but José was the morning guy, so he couldn’t have seen May on Thursday morning, it must have been Wednesday, which made no sense because May said she’d gone to the boat on Thursday, so Hardy—quick—went back to the pad with the May questions.

  He looked back. Oh, it must have been Tom, after all, who’d said it. One of the folders was open to Tom.

  Frannie was right—you couldn’t work if you couldn’t think, and Hardy’s brain had just shifted to OFF. Enough. He couldn’t keep it all straight.

  56

  What seemed like only seconds later, he was in bed, the telephone was ringing in his ear and it had gotten light.

  “Wake you up?” Glitsky asked brightly.

  Hardy looked at the clock: 6:10. “No,” he said, “I was just sorting my socks. I like to get it done before the weekend.”

  “This is what time real working people get up,” Glitsky said. “Besides, I thought you might have hung around downtown to find out what Strout decided.”

  “Strout decided May Shinn killed herself.” He started to tell Abe about last night, a little of his talk with Freeman. Frannie came in with a cup of hot coffee, and Hardy, still talking, swung himself up to sit on the side of the bed. “So Freeman says they were really planning to get married,” he concluded. “How does that grab you?”

  Glitsky was silent a long moment. “Nash was wearing the ring, wasn’t he?”

  “Right there on his finger.”

  “And he wasn’t wearing it the last time Farris saw him?”

  “If Farris wasn’t lying.” Hardy went on to describe a few of the inconsistencies he’d come across in the last twelve hours. “So what do you think?”

  “It’s something to think about,” Abe said, “especially if you’re convinced Farris lied.”

  Hardy, fully awake, sipped his coffee. “This whole business has made me be not positive of anything, Abe. First, I’m not positive May was in love with Owen or vice versa. The difference is, now I’m willing to consider it, and once I do that, it opens this other can of worms.”

  “Preconceptions are my favorite.”

  “Yeah, they’re a good time.” Hardy was still on his earlier problem. “I guess the only thing I’m positive of is that, if May didn’t lie, then I’ve got myself a passel of rethinking to do over the weekend.”

  “Well, you know,” Abe said, “I’m busy, but I’m here.”

  It was an offer Hardy knew didn’t come easy. But Abe had his own reasons, too. As had happened with Hardy months before, when Pullios took his case away, it rankled.

  Hardy thought a minute. It had to be something Abe—the police—had access to and he didn’t. “You could find out who took the coat,” he said. “I mean, maybe they took something else. One of your guys . . .”

  No response.

  “Hey, Abe, you there?”

  “Sure. I thought you were talking to Frannie.”

  “No, Abe, I was talking to you.”

  “You were talking to me about a coat?”

  Hardy caught up to where Abe must be, then ran it down to him. Abe could check over the inventory on the Eloise, find if a member of the depart
ment had taken May’s coat, apply a little pressure, find out if some evidence had been misplaced.

  “Diz,” Abe said, “our guys don’t steal from crime scenes. I mean, if they do, we’ve got to go to Internal Affairs. But they don’t.”

  Hardy drank more coffee. “It’s someplace to look. See if something jumps out at you. Maybe, although of course I’d never suggest you do this, you could have an off-the-record chat with the guys who were there.”

  “Taking the inventory of what was on the Eloise?”

  “Right.”

  “I could never do that.”

  “I know,” Hardy said. “And as I said, I’d never ask.”

  Hardy had tried Farris at his home and gotten his answering machine. At his office he got another answering machine and left a message, hearing a couple of beeps as he did so. There was a concept, he thought. Recording the answering machine recording. Department of redundancy department indeed.

  He felt like a receptionist. As soon as he’d finished leaving his message at Owen Industries for Farris to call him at home and leave a number where he could be reached, his telephone rang again.

  “Grand Central Station,” he said, picking up.

  “What are we going to do about clothes?” It was Jane. She told Hardy that they’d taken her father’s suit for the lab tests, and what was he going to wear to court today? Hardy told her to swing by her father’s house, get him a decent change and meet him downtown at eight-fifteen, enough time to change and try to determine where they would try to go today with what he figured would be by now the most hostile jury in the history of jurisprudence, angry at having been locked up themselves. Since Jeff Elliot’s article had made the morning edition, like the rest of the world, Jane knew for certain now that her father hadn’t killed May.

  This time, when he hung up, Frannie poked her head in his office. “In keeping with your popularity this morning,” she said, “your daughter would appreciate a short audience.”