Hard Evidence

by John Lescroart

  “He wanted an attorney he knew would present a strong defense.”

  “Did he say Ms. Shinn would need a strong defense?”

  “Yes.”

  “In your opinion, Mr. Freeman, did Mr. Fowler think Ms. Shinn was guilty?”

  “Objection!”

  Hardy rephrased it. “Did Mr. Fowler tell you he thought Ms. Shinn was guilty of murdering Owen Nash?”

  “Yes, he did. He thought so.”

  “You have won acquittals in several murder cases, have you not, Mr. Freeman?”

  “Objection, Your Honor. This isn’t relevant here.”

  Hardy was matter-of-fact. “Your Honor, the prosecution went over Mr. Freeman’s credentials at the beginning of his testimony. I want the jury to be aware of Mr. Freeman’s reputation not just as a defense attorney but as an excellent defense attorney.”

  “All right.” Chomorro, as he often did later in the day, was getting surly. “But let’s move it along.” He had the recorder reread the question, and Freeman answered that yes, he had won several acquittals.

  “In fact, wasn’t it through your efforts that the charges against Ms. Shinn were dropped?”

  “Yes. Largely.”

  “Now let’s see if we can get this straight. Mr. Fowler, knowing your reputation, hired you to represent Ms. Shinn, who was subsequently cleared of the murder charge through your efforts?”

  “Yes, true.”

  “And that reopened the investigation, leading to Mr. Fowler’s own arrest for the same crime?”

  “Objection,” Pullios said. “Calls for a conclusion.”

  “What’s your question, Mr. Hardy?”

  Hardy thought he had made his point by inference, at least. Would a man who was guilty of murder hire an attorney whose past record of successes made it likely he could get the case reopened? The most reasonable explanation for hiring Freeman was that, in fact, Fowler did believe May had been guilty. And, of course, if he thought that, then he wasn’t.

  “I’ll leave it, Your Honor,” he said. Turning back to Freeman, Hardy asked if, at the time he had been hired, he thought there was any chance that May Shinn’s trial would go to Fowler’s courtroom.

  “No, none at all. If I had thought there was at that time, I would not have taken it. But there wasn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, she was in Department Twenty-two. There were seven trial judges available and I was sure that if Andy got the case he’d recuse himself.”

  Pullios was up like a shot, but these were relevant facts and Hardy was able to get Freeman to tell most of the story—how judges were picked for trials, the circuitous route May’s proceedings took before her case came before Fowler. It could not have been foreseen . . .

  Finally, Hardy came to the end of it. “On the day charges were dropped against Ms. Shinn, how many days had she already been on trial? I mean, for example, had you picked a jury? Had the prosecution begun its case?”

  “No. None of that.”

  “Were you aware of any other developments in that case on that day?”

  “Yes. Judge Fowler resigned.”

  “Do you mean he recused himself from the case?”

  “I mean he resigned as a judge, he quit the bench.”

  “And this was how long after the trial had come to his courtroom?”

  “One day.”

  Hardy turned to the jury. “One day,” he repeated.

  Pullios did not have any redirect on Freeman, and neither did she call Maury Carter, the bail bondsman, since facts relating to the bail had been substantially nailed down in Freeman’s testimony. Instead, after Hardy had finished with Freeman, the prosecution rested.

  Hardy had to feel better. Freeman’s testimony, which he had feared would be disastrous, had not been anything of the sort, it seemed. The jury knew the worst of what Andy had done, but at least, Hardy felt, they had gotten it in the least damaging light possible.

  During the recess Hardy argued his 1118.1 motion in Chomorro’s chambers. The judge, to his surprise, seemed to be giving him his full attention and proved it by telling counsel he was going to take the weekend to consider the motion. He would render his decision on the motion for a directed verdict of acquittal on Monday. Meanwhile, however, Hardy should be prepared to begin calling his defense witnesses.

  His client had not said a word to him the entire afternoon. When the judge came out and adjourned court for the week, he only muttered, “See you Monday,” and went back to join his daughter.

  Hardy gathered his papers.

  58

  At ten past five it was already dark as he went out toward the parking lot. A storm was coming in and a wind had risen, steady and cold, Alaska written all over it.

  Hardy put down his heavy briefcase and stood by the entrance to the morgue, looking through a hole in the plywood into the construction site where the new jail was slowly rising. A steady trickle of workers getting off passed behind him, and he envied their snatches of conversation, of laughter, plans for the night, for the weekend. He turned up his suit collar against the wind, feeling alone and desolate.

  “Hey, Hardy! Dismas! Is that you? Knocking off early? Glad I caught up with you.” It was Ken Farris, walking against the tide flowing from the building. “I got your messages but couldn’t get away, thought I’d try to catch you after court. You adjourned already? Is it over?”

  What Farris had said was true—he normally could have expected to find Hardy in the courtroom at this time, but his arrival just now struck Hardy as a little convenient. He could just have called back. Hardy said as much.

  “Ah, you know the office. You get to the end of the week, any excuse to get out early. This is on my way home anyway. So how’s it going? What can I do for you? This about May Shinn?”

  Hardy looked at him levelly. “I guess it’s about a lot if you’ve got some time. You feel like a drink?”

  Farris seemed to rein himself in. “Sure,” he said. “Something wrong?”

  “Well, let’s say all’s not right.”

  They walked back through the Hall and crossed the street. Lou’s, crowded and noisy, was hung with yards of red and green tinsel, lit by Christmas bulbs. With all the seats taken, they stood at the bar. Hardy called for a Bass Ale, Farris ordered a Beefeater martini extra dry. Lou, behind the bar, caught Hardy’s eye. “He new?”

  Hardy introduced them, and Lou said, dryly, that all their martinis were extra dry—no vermouth. Farris said he’d take whatever Lou poured, which was the right answer—he got some ice, several ounces of gin, a couple of olives.

  “Hell of a place,” he said, taking it in. He clinked his glass against Hardy’s. “Okay, what’s happening?”

  “The prosecution’s rested. I start calling my defense witnesses on Monday.”

  “You’re not asking me to be a witness for Andy Fowler, are you?”

  “No. Why do you ask? You think he killed Owen?”

  Farris sipped his gin. “Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed May too. I don’t care what they say.”

  “No, Mr. Farris. May killed herself. If they had found anything that connected to Fowler he’d have been long since charged with it. And they were looking.” But Hardy didn’t like it, because if Farris still genuinely entertainedthe thought, maybe the jury did, too, in spite of Chomorro’s instructions. He’d better not forget that. “About May . . . when we first talked, you told me Owen had been paying her?”

  “Right. He paid all of them. So?”

  “Do you know for a fact that he was paying her? Did he specifically tell you he was?” Farris appeared to be giving it thought. Hardy continued, “You told me Nash had changed the last few months. I was wondering, might that have been one of the changes.”

  Farris seemed somewhere inside himself. Finally he said, scarcely loud enough to be heard over the din, “Owen went with call girls, prostitutes, call them what you will. It was just his nature. It was who he was. And that’s who, what, May was.
”

  “Well, maybe not,” Hardy said. “That’s what I’m getting at.”

  Which seemed to anger Farris. “Goddamn it, that’s never been in dispute.”

  Hardy sipped his ale. “It’s in dispute now. May’s lawyer—you’ve met him, Freeman—he says the two of them actually loved each other.”

  Farris was shaking his head. “That’s got to be bullshit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he just didn’t, that’s why. This is Owen Nash we’re talking about. He wasn’t going to go marry some whore. Why are you digging all this up?”

  “Because I don’t believe Andy Fowler killed anybody. Why is it so upsetting to you if Owen loved May Shinn?”

  “Because I knew Owen and that wasn’t him!”

  Hardy stepped back, taking a beat. Both men went to their drinks. Hardy leaned forward again. “Listen, Ken, you’ve just spent six months contesting the validity of the will. It’s no wonder you’re committed to your position. I’m just asking if you’ve got any proof Owen was paying her—his own admission to you, canceled checks, whatever. You’re the one who’d told me he’d changed with her. Was a for-hire deal with a whore going to change him? Wasn’t he wearing her ring when he was shot?”

  “We don’t know that. Someone could have put it on him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hardy kept at it. “It doesn’t make any sense: He put it on himself. He was planning on telling you sometime, possibly soon. I think he had decided to marry the woman, just as she had said.

  Ken Farris was down to an olive. “Jesus,” he said, “I just . . .” He shook his head.

  “You just assumed, didn’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t he have told me? He told me everything.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it snuck up on him. But it’s all pretty consistent if you put it together—we’ve got the change in behavior, the settling down, leaving her number with you for emergencies, the will, the ring. If you buy the premise, then May wasn’t lying about anything. Which is why I called you. I needed to verify that.”

  Lou, unasked, had slid another round under their elbows. Farris didn’t seem to notice. He picked up the new drink and knocked off a third of it. “There were no checks,” he said finally. “Of course, cash . . . You know, I don’t think we ever talked about whether he paid her—it never came up.” A retreat? A cover?

  The bad news, Hardy thought, was that Farris maybe, probably hadn’t been lying . . . maybe he’d honestly believed an untruth and passed it along as a fact, which wasn’t nearly the same thing, and it left a hole where there had at least been the chance of another suspect besides Hardy’s client.

  Large drops of rain fell in sheets, splattering on his windshield. He found a parking place half a block down the street from his house and turned off the engine, thinking he would wait for a break in the storm. Could this be the beginning of the end of the drought? Now in its seventh year, and Hardy knew a lot of people in San Francisco who believed it would never end, that this was the new California of the greenhouse effect, the precursor of a future world of ozone depletion, skin cancers, AIDS and acid rain.

  This cleansing Pacific downpour soothed him somehow. He sat back in his seat, eyes closed, listening to the steady tattoo of the drops on the roof.

  There was still an unanswered question with May— the coat—maybe it would lead somewhere. And then on Monday Chomorro might decide to grant his 1118.1 motion and that would be the end of the trial, and he felt sure, the end of his relationship with both his ex-wife and her father. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  Whatever, if he got Andy off on the murder charge, which is what he’d been hired to do, he’d take whatever fallout developed.

  But he also knew the trial coming to an early end was a very long shot. And it still nagged that the truth, if there was a truth, continued to elude him. He could get Andy off, he could flap his arms and fly to the moon if he wanted, but until he found out who did put two bullets into Owen Nash, he knew he wouldn’t feel he’d accomplished what he’d really set out to do.

  If nothing else, he would still have to live with the fact that he was only ninety-seven percent certain that Nash’s killer had not been the man he had labored to set free.

  59

  It had rained hard all night, awakening Hardy and Frannie several times with peals of thunder, a sound almost unknown in San Francisco. Sometime in the middle of the night Hardy got up to Rebecca’s cries and brought her to sleep between them in their bed.

  Up alone at dawn, he put on his running shoes, shorts, and a T-shirt, and headed out around the park in the rain. After a shower he made himself a breakfast of hash, eggs, toast and coffee, and ate reading the paper, occasionally looking up into the gray clouds through the kitchen skylight.

  Jeff Elliot was not featured on the front page or anywhere else. The day-to-day workings of the trial were not exactly grist for the media mill. He knew Jeff would be around when the jury retired to deliberate, maybe sit in for the closing arguments, but that the mundane world of the courtroom was no match for the exploits of Arnold Mousenegger. Journalistic priorities. Mice over men.

  After breakfast he leaned over to kiss his wife and baby. He wore jeans and work boots, his old Greek sailor’s hat over a heavy white fisherman’s sweater. He hoped that this day, of all days, José decided to get to work on time.

  It was still steadily pouring as Hardy turned into the Marina parking lot on a day possibly much like the one on which Owen Nash had gone out for the last time. There were only two other cars in the lot; Hardy got within fifty feet of the guard station, opened his car door, grabbed his smaller briefcase and sprinted.

  José, at the desk beyond the counter, put down his issue of Sports Illustrated and stood up. He recognized Hardy right away.

  “I bet you’re getting a little bored with this, but I’ve got a couple of questions for you,” Hardy said. He took off his hat and put it on the counter next to the briefcase.

  José seemed to be an easygoing guy. It was a miserable morning with no one else around. He was happy with the interruption.

  “I was going over your statement yesterday, José.” Hardy snapped open the briefcase and was getting out some of the paper. “And there’s something I didn’t understand.”

  José nodded, leaning over the counter, looking at the inch-thick pile of type. He grinned. “I say all that?”

  “Well, between your interview with Sergeant Glitsky and your trial testimony—”

  “My girlfriend, she say I’m too quiet, I never talk. I should show her these.”

  “I could make you a copy if you want,” Hardy said. “Meanwhile, let me ask you, see here, when you were first talking to Sergeant Glitsky . . .” Hardy opened the transcript to the page he had highlighted and turned it around for José to see. “At the end of the interview you said you’d seen May Shinn here at the Marina on Thursday morning.”

  José was frowning, looking at the page. “Sí,” he said uncertainly. “Tom and me, we talk about that after we see she kill herself, right?”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Well, you know after the trial, we talk about that day.”

  “The Thursday?”

  “Sí. Only I see her in the morning, you know?”

  “I know, José. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” He pointed down to the transcript. “You see this part? Where you say she was going away from you?”

  “Sí.”

  “So how could you be sure it was May?”

  “Well, I see her a lot. También, that thing she wear on her head, and that coat. Nobody else with a coat like that one.”

  Hardy tried to keep his voice flat. “What was the thing she was wearing on her head?”

  “I don’t know how you call it. Like a fur hat.”

  “And the coat?”

  “Well, you know, the coat like some,” he searched for the word, “like some paintin
g. Muchos colores.”

  “Okay, José, let me ask you this, and I’ve got all day if you want to think about it—did you at any time see May’s face?”

  “No. I don’t have to think. She was, like, way down there.” He gestured down the street. “She don’t have a car, I think. Least I never see her drive a car. She always before come down with Señor Nash.”

  “She never came down alone, maybe a little early to wait for him, let herself aboard?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not that I remember. Maybe Tom, he know something else.”

  “Maybe.” Hardy, trying different combinations, had to look back down at the questions he had prepared. This time he did not want to leave anything out. “José, do you remember what time you got into work that morning, that Thursday?”

  José straightened up nervously. “The shift begin at six-thirty.”

  Hardy gave him a conspiratorial look. “I know that, José. But I’m talking about that specific day. I won’t tell a soul, I promise.” He was hoping he wouldn’t have to make José himself tell the world on the stand, but he wasn’t promising that.

  José shrugged. “I think a little late. Tom talk to me about it that day, I remember. Somebody come by the day before, asking about it, too. So I stop after that.”

  Hardy smiled at him. “You were safe,” he said, “that was me. But that day . . . ?”

  José grinned back. “Pretty bad,” he said. “Maybe eight, eight-thirty.” The rain pounded at the glass all around them. “But I really stop being tarde back then, you know? This morning, even, no one going out, I’m here.”

  He was close to Green’s, a place he favored for lunch for their breads and coffees and the sculpted wood and the view of the water. He had never been there this early in the morning, and they weren’t yet open for business, but they took pity on him standing out in the rain and let him sit at the bar and have a cup of coffee.