The 13th Juror dh-4

by John Lescroart

  The only information Tom had provided, and Hardy had no immediate use for it, was that his father would hit his mother regularly. Hardy had, of course, already seen Phil slap Tom – finding confirmation that he'd also struck Nancy wasn't exactly a revelation, except that it did verify what Lightner had said about the culture of battery getting passed down from generation to generation.

  Hardy was still looking for "other dudes" that Freeman might be able to use, people who had an opportunity, also a motive, to have killed Larry Witt, trying them out on Glitsky, and Tom was next up – after the "hit man" that had killed Simpson Crane in Los Angeles, then the anonymous disgruntled anti-abortion activist.

  "So what about Tom?" Hardy was pushing. Even he didn't give Tom more than about two points out of ten.

  Glitsky roused himself. "Okay, let me get this out of the way and then we can talk about something else? First," as he ticked his fingers, "he didn't ask Jennifer and Larry for a loan, right? Right. So where's your motive? The guy's got no record and there's no immediate catalyst – everybody agrees these people haven't set eyes on each other in a year or so. You expect me to believe he wakes up one morning and says, 'Hey, I think I'll go kill my brother-in-law.' Second, no prints anywhere – in the house, on the gun. You'll kill your case introducing any of this."

  Hardy squinted into the sun. "The problem is, this leaves my client."

  Glitsky was matter-of-fact. "Which could, of course, be why she got herself indicted."

  *****

  The previous Monday Hardy and his brother-in-law Moses had gone salmon fishing off the Marin Coast. They'd caught two each. That night, at Moses' apartment, they'd roasted one for dinner. A second – the sixteen pounder they were going to have that night – they'd put in some of Moses' nearly patented home-made teriyaki sauce to marinate. The other two they filleted, rubbed with rock salt, sugar and cognac, packed with some peppercorns and brown sugar, wrapped in foil and weighted down with bricks in Hardy's refrigerator. The intended to eat gravlax until they didn't want to anymore or died, whichever came first.

  Frannie was leaning against the kitchen counter, drinking club soda in a wine glass. Pico Morales, the curator of the Steinhart Aquarium and one of Hardy's long-time friends, stood with his arm around his wife Angela eating hors-d'oeuvres. The as yet unmarried couple, Moses and his girlfriend Susan Weiss, were nuzzling each other by the back doorway.

  Hardy came in with Abe and introductions went around. He crossed the room and kissed his wife, who turned her face just far enough away from him to deliver the message.

  She was still unhappy.

  Hardy knew why, and even, to some extent, understood it. This week had featured himself in an abrupt career-path detour and it would be a while before the kinks got resolved. So he didn't really blame Frannie – on the other hand, he was fairly exhausted himself from last night's lack of sleep, then a full day of Jennifer Witt. And to top it off, they'd planned this party to eat the salmon before they had to freeze it – Pico and Angela, Moses and Susan, Glitsky and his wife, Flo.

  So he pretended not to notice Frannie's slight, lifted the foil covering from the glass container on the counter and made a face. "Not salmon again." He sighed. "I guess I'll just have a hot dog."

  Hardy loved salmon beyond reason – he took a knife and cut himself a thin slice. "All of you youngsters watching this at home, don't try this yourself." He put the raw slice into his mouth, chewing contentedly. "You know, one of the first labor laws ever enacted prevented employers in Scotland from feeding salmon to their workers seven days a week."

  Susan Weiss couldn't believe that. "Is that true? That was a real law?"

  "Laws are the man's life," Frannie said.

  Perhaps she meant it playfully, and none of the other women seemed to take it wrong, but Glitsky have Hardy a look that was interrupted by the doorbell – it would be Flo.

  Hardy went with Abe to answer it.

  *****

  Moses was regaling everyone – for Susan's benefit – about the time Hardy had saved his life in Vietnam. Embarrassed, Hardy was trying to put a face on it.

  "Come on – this guy is shot in the legs and I'm fifteen feet away."

  "And things hopping pretty good all around us, am I right?" Moses was exploding mortars and tracer rounds all around him in the air.

  "What am I supposed to do, let you lie there? So I pop up, grab him, drag his sorry ass back in the hole. Whole thing took ten seconds."

  "He left out getting hit himself."

  "Believe me, that wasn't planned. And P.S. – twenty years later, the shoulder's still a pain."

  Moses grinned. "My legs, though, are fine."

  When the telephone rang, Hardy was going to let the answering machine get it, but he recognized David Freeman's voice and got up, excusing himself.

  *****

  "Sorry to interrupt your dinner," Freeman began, "but this is not good news."

  Hardy waited.

  "There was a woman named Rhea Thompson brought in the same day Jennifer got arrested." Freeman's voice was hoarse, guttural. He cleared his throat. "Her bail was five grand and she made it today and walked out of here with her pimp."

  "Okay."

  "Okay yourself. Rhea's about five-four, one-twenty-five, blond hair, blue eyes. Sound familiar? The answer's yes."

  Hardy waited. "So what happened?"

  "So somehow Jennifer's picture got on Rhea's housing card."

  The housing, the Field Arrest card, was the bailiff's ID of choice on the seventh floor. You looked at the picture, you eyeballed the person, they either matched or they didn't. Both Rhea and Jennifer had only been two days in jail – they weren't yet known on sight to many of the guards. Especially the swing-shift guards.

  "What are you saying, David?"

  "I'm saying our client only paid us through Monday because she wasn't planning on sticking around after that. Our little darling has flown the coop."

  "Jennifer escaped? From the seventh floor? You've got to be kidding."

  Freeman sighed. "Would that I were wrong, my son. Would that I were."

  John Lescroart

  Hardy 04 – 13th Juror, The

  Part Two

  Larry granted her forty-five minutes for the run, which was a reasonable length of time. He was a reasonable man, she tried to tell herself. He just didn't want her getting hurt – if she fell while she was running and there wasn't any time limit, she could be lying somewhere, suffering, at the mercy of strangers, and Larry wouldn't know. He'd have no reason to suspect that something could be wrong. This way, if she was late, he'd know – he could be there to help her.

  He loved her. Yes, that was the reason for all the limits.

  Taking Matt to his private school, Laguna Honda, twelve blocks away, was a half-hour, and that allowed for traffic on some days, though not any talking to the other mothers. That way, and it made sense, she couldn't get into trouble saying too much the way some women did. The Witts were who they were in the community because no one had anything bad on them and Larry wasn't going to let anything threaten that – he was protecting all of them that way. Not just her.

  For shopping, just so long as she called him before she left and then again as soon as she got back… before she'd even unpacked the bags… he could be flexible. And she was good at shopping. She could get down to the big Petrini's on Ocean Avenue – they carried everything – and load up a cart and get back home in under an hour.

  Sometimes she cheated. But that was because she was, at her very heart, a bad person. A rebellious person. Larry knew she would cheat, and he gave her rules so that she wouldn't have time and would be tempted. But she still got around the rules, even though she knew they were good for her. That was just who she was.

  Larry loved her in spite of that, in spite of knowing who she really was. She didn't blame him, really, if once in a while he lashed out at her. If it were her she'd probably have killed someone like herself long ago. Sometimes she wanted to kill hers
elf, but that wouldn't be fair to Matt, or to Larry either.

  It was like the time she tried to get away, to take Matt with her. What was that if it wasn't just a cry for help? And Larry heard her – she'd never even told Ken Lightner about that. Who else would have cared enough to follow her all the way to Los Angeles? She didn't blame Larry when he said that if she tried that again he'd kill her. She couldn't leave him. He needed her, he loved her. He didn't mean to that he'd actually kill her. In fact, after they'd come home that time he didn't even hit her for a couple of months. Ned had almost killed her when she'd done the same thing with him. But Larry seemed to happy to have her back.

  And he was right about her family, too. They proved on that first visit or two that they didn't like Larry, or her either anymore. They were just jealous. Larry said he felt bad about that but it was one of those things you really couldn't do anything about. You didn't change people, she should know that. And she knew she wasn't going to change her mother and father. And especially not Tom. Nothing was going to change Tom – he was just plain nasty and mean.

  Well, there wasn't any reason to put up with that. She and Larry hadn't asked for that, not from any of them. They'd given her family every chance in the world, and they just stayed who they were. They thought Larry hated them and had poisoned her toward them. But that wasn't true. Maybe she'd seen things a little more clearly after Larry had helped her with the connections, helped her hear the between-the-lines insults about her "airs" or their "culture." No, they were, sad to say, just jealous people like they'd always been, and there wasn't any reason to see them and get everyone upset.

  The things with the banking and with Ken… Dr. Lightner… she was just scared. She'd always been scared. Life was scary. People changed or the life you were in suddenly went sour and sometimes you couldn't see it coming or do anything about it, but she wanted to understand it a little more so she'd gone – okay, sneaked off – to Ken. And he knew more about her than Larry – knew about Ned, in fact – and he still cared about her. She believed that, that Ken really cared. She wasn't just a patient with him. Of course, now…

  Well, she didn't have to think too much about that. That was just another thing.

  And the bank. It wasn't that Larry wouldn't give her the money if she'd asked. But it was hard getting surprises for him if she had to tell him what she was spending the money on. Well, at least that was how it had started. The account. It was easy asking the checker at Petrini's to just ring up an extra twenty dollars in cash, then fifty, then two hundred. Shopping was just her job and Larry didn't check the receipts.

  She opened accounts as Mrs. Ned Hollis, using her dead husband's social security number and was careful to see that all the taxes were paid. That had been a close one the first year. And then after that she got the post office box and the form got sent there, and it hadn't ever been a problem.

  Besides, you never did know. What if Larry somehow lost all his money? Or really got sued for malpractice like he was always talking about? The she could imagine his surprise and happiness when she told him she had all this extra money that had saved them. She'd been doing it to save them all, the family.

  She thought about it sometimes, why she'd gone away that time. Besides the call for help, she'd wanted to protect her face and Larry had started to hit her face.

  For a while Ken had made her see it differently – she thought that might have been it. For a while he'd had her believing that Larry hadn't been good for her, that she was her own power and all she had to do was, as he put it, assert it, walk away from Larry and take Matt with her. California law, he said, would give her custody.

  But Ken didn't know – how could he know? She just felt… worthless without Larry. And the beatings… it wasn't Larry, it was her. Couldn't she bring the beatings on? By behaving badly? Oh, the beatings hurt, but they also were what made her feel she was in control of something. Larry gave her that, didn't he? Well, didn't he?

  It was like the time she was planning the party for Matt's fifth birthday. Larry was even letting them have kids come over from Matt's class, which he normally didn't like because – it wasn't their fault but kids just had no respect for property. Larry said the way to avoid things getting ruined was you didn't let kids get the opportunity. If something got ruined because of a kid, it was the parents' fault – you could bet on that. Like supposing you let a bull loose in a china shop – well, who's going to blame the bull? Is it the bull's fault? Of course not, Larry said.

  Anyway, back to the party. Telling Ken about it when he asked if she was worried Larry would ruin the party by getting mad when the kids were there. She had said, "Look, this isn't an out-of-control situation, Ken. You're always talking about control. Well, I'm in control here." And she'd been right because she knew that Larry had been getting the really tense way he got before he exploded. So three days before – it was a Wednesday and the party was Saturday – she had dinner late, and Matt wasn't ready for bed when Larry got home so he had to help with that after a long tiring day with patients. And then she'd worn this cheap K-mart robe that she knew he hated. And when he complained she said something back at him, so she'd brought it on and he hit her pretty bad a few times.

  But then – the good part – he was all fine for the party, and there wasn't any scene, and she'd controlled… another Ken word… when it would all happen. So to say that as long as she stayed with Larry she didn't have any power – well, Ken just didn't see it, or maybe he just couldn't understand it.

  But okay, the hitting was getting worse. More frequent. That was a problem. It wasn't as easy to cover – she'd have the bruises on her face now, instead of just her stomach and her legs like before. Lately, more and more, it had been on the face, and that really did bother her. Her face was who she was.

  When she'd been a girl she stared at her face in the mirror for hours, getting the expressions right, the way she looked when she said certain things. Now they were all second nature – the sort of pout and the frown and the quick smile.

  So Larry hitting her face – that had to stop. It really had to. Last time it had gotten to that, that was when she'd gone away, run away, if she were being honest, and Larry had come and gotten her. He'd do that again, no doubt about it. He'd even said he'd kill her if she tried.

  Like, he said, if she were with another man – same thing, he'd kill her.

  Would he really? Maybe he would. He was strong, he did get out of control. An accident could happen. A bad accident. So she had to do something – talk to him, maybe, right afterward. That's when he listened the best. She'd just tell him he had to stop hitting her face.

  Ken was right about this one – here she wasn't in control. She even hated Larry now, sometimes. Really hated him and knew it, admitted it to herself. That part was scary.

  Or if it ever spilled over onto Matt. If Matt was there while Larry got crazy. She wouldn't let Larry hit Matt, even if he just got in the way, between them or something. If he did that, if that happened…

  Whatever happened to her, come right down to it, she deserved it. Why else would it happen? But Matt was different. He didn't bring things on. He was a trusting and honest little boy. She wouldn't ever let Larry hurt him.

  Except how could she stop him? That was the question – if it ever started, how could she stop him?

  14

  On Saturday, July 10, Hardy was bouncing six-month-old Vincent on his knee, singing to him at near the top of his lungs. He was forty feet above the ground, perched on the three-foot parapet that surrounded the roof of Moses McGuire's apartment house.

  Moses was taking it easy lately. When he finally gave up on the idea that Hardy was going to get tired of the law and come back to bartending at the Shamrock he hired a new guy, Alan Blanchard, to take over Hardy's old shifts, and this gave him lots of time to pursue his other interests, which for several months now could be summarized by two words: Susan Weiss.

  It was early afternoon, the sun shone in a blue sky, there was a slight
warm breeze from the east, and Susan was sitting next to Hardy on the parapet. She was an intense dark-haired cellist with the San Francisco Symphony. She wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail and looked about Frannie's age, although she was eight years older. She wore a tank top, shorts and sandals.

  Moses was with his sister at the Weber turning ribs. Hardy passed his boy to Susan, who started cooing into his face. Frannie took it all in. Her glance finally came to rest on Susan. "Don't let her hold too many babies. That's how it starts."

  Moses tugged at his bottle of Sam Adams. "How she looks is how it starts," he said, "then the other things happen."

  "Well, the other things can produce babies. I have it on good authority."

  Uncharacteristically, Moses took a moment to answer. "I tell you, Fran, she makes me think about it."

  This didn't make Frannie unhappy – she liked Susan and had to admit she was lovely, although Moses was in his mid-forties. But she had to know. "Are you serious?"

  Moses trotted out his usual bartender answer: "No, I'm Alpha Centauri – Sirius is the Dog Star."

  Frannie basted his arm with some barbecue sauce, then looked gravely at her big brother. "This isn't an engagement party, is it?"

  "It's not even a party." Moses was licking the sauce off. "It's just a lunch."

  Hardy and Susan stood. Susan was holding Vincent to her, rocking him as she walked. Frannie heard her humming tonelessly. "I warned you," she said quietly to Moses.

  "Of what?" Hardy had his arm around his wife.

  "You weren't even supposed to hear that. I wasn't even talking to you."

  Hardy kissed her ear. "Well, which was it?"

  Moses butted in. "She thinks Susan's going to want a baby of her own just because she's holding one."