Hardy 04 - 13th Juror, The

by John Lescroart

  In sunlight the feeling of sheltered enclave was even stronger. Hardy got out of his car and stood looking at Jennifer's home, two lots from the park, from the south side of the street. To the west, the Pacific glittered, and just north, Sutro Tower stretched its rusted arms to the sky. Hardy thought some of the two- and three-story houses could sit comfortably on Embassy Row — landscaped and majestic, these were the homes of people who might not miss three hundred thousand dollars if it disappeared slowly enough.

  The Witt's hedge — at perhaps three feet — wasn't as tall as some of the others, though it was as well kept as any. A white picket fence fronted it. The gate to the fence was shut, but the hedge turned ninety degrees up both sides of the straight brick path to the front door.

  Hardy had to remind himself that until two days ago Jennifer had lived here, coming and going, apparently unaware that the grand jury was deciding that there was sufficient evidence to indict her for murder. It was an unsettling thought.

  But no more unsettling than when he turned the key. A dog from somewhere nearby barked and kept barking. Hardy stood waiting for its owner to come and quiet it down, check to see what had set it off. That didn't happen. In fact, nothing happened, and the barking continued. Hardy could have been a burglar with a sledge hammer instead of a lawyer with a key and no one — apparently — would have questioned him.

  And this was the block that had produced two eyewitnesses for the time of the murder and more of the FedEx delivery truck? Hardy thought Terrell must be one persuasive interrogator.

  Inside, after another minute, the barking stopped.

  The house was white. The foyer was of white Italian marble with pink striations. Soft furnishings were modern and white, tables and racks were black cast-iron. Everything sat on light champagne wall-to-wall carpeting. On the walls Hardy recognized one of the Mapplethorpe's that had caused the stir, along with a print of Goya's Mother Eating Her Child. Up close, he studied a couple of other prints or originals that he wouldn't have hung in a locked darkroom, much less in the living room of a home with a child.

  On his yellow pad he made a note to make sure David Freeman kept the media out of here. He had to assume the stuff reflected Larry's tastes, not hers.

  Downstairs everything was spotless, antiseptic. The kitchen — a black-and-white checkerboard tile and black-and-white fixtures — looked as though it had never been used. Copper pots gleamed from their hanging cast-iron rack over the island stove.

  The silence hung heavily — Hardy found himself walking on the balls of his feet as he moved through the other downstairs rooms. The dining room with its black lacquer table and six chairs. A library with mostly medical books. No novels, a lot of history and biography. There was a tiny sitting room with a fireplace and a loveseat with a magazine stand end-table. But there were no magazines. A guest bedroom. Hardy pulled down the quilt on the bed, there was no sheet under it.

  He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Jennifer had been living here? There was no sign of life. He jotted another note to ask her if she had stayed somewhere else during the past months. And if so, where?

  A month after he and Frannie had moved in together he had bought her one of those little tiles at the Ghirardelli Art Fair that read: A CLEAN HOUSE IS A SIGN OF A WASTED LIFE. That tile hung proudly in their kitchen. He didn't need to think he needed to search for where Jennifer kept hers.

  Upstairs was more of the same. To the left was what must have been Matt's bedroom, the bed now made, toys neatly arranged. The evening sun was going down, bathing the room in an orange glow. Off this was a full bath, sea-horse stencils on the wall — minimal as it was, so far it was the only sign of any comfort in the house.

  Hardy passed the stairway again, stopping to look down at the living and dining rooms below him. White. Black. Mirrors and metal and a growing dusk. Whatever else he had to do, he wanted to be done and out of here in a hurry.

  The master bedroom was a surprise. The yellow police tape was still there, no longer in place across the door but lying on the rug. He stepped over it and walked to the middle of the room.

  After the police department's technicians had finished with their forensics and the cleaners had repaired the damage, Hardy was suddenly certain that Jennifer had not set foot in this room. There were folded sheets and blankets on the bed's bare mattress, towels on the cabinet by the bathroom door, balls of dust in the corners.

  He didn't know if he imagined the remains of the bloodstains — it was getting darker so he flipped on the overhead light. It went out with a pop. There were other lights on night tables on either side of the recessed headboard to the bed, and quickly — jumpy — he got to one of them and hit the button. That was better. He walked around the bed and turned on the second one. Leaning down, he checked the white rug, running his hand over what might have been a stain. As part of him had known, nothing came up, yet it strangely relieved him.

  Hardy stood, more steady than he'd been. Turning on the adjoining bathroom's light, he looked in. Again, no sign that anyone had been in there since it had been cleaned. Turning off the lights by the bed, he stopped at the hallway door for at last glance into the shadowy room where the murders had occurred.

  At the end of the hallway there was another door, the last room on the left. The overhead light, which stayed on this time, revealed an impersonal study with credenza, files, a short bookshelf filled with medical and business periodicals. The centerpiece of the room was a neatly organized black tabletop desk with a new leather-bound green blotter. Hardy sat at it.

  Evidently no one had been in here either. The dust was thick on the tabletop. Hardy wondered if the police had inventoried this room, realizing there may have been no need to. Jennifer, he remembered, had provided the damning inventory, "forgetting" that the gun was missing.

  (And, of course, if she hadn't ever gone back into that bedroom, she might have been able to assume it hadn't been missing. This could be vital. He had to ask her, and he scribbled some more.)

  Sitting, the sun all but gone now through the louvered window over the desk, Hardy tried to imagine what living here must have been like. The degree of control and discipline everywhere palpable was, he thought, the kind of environment that could have produced internal, and external, paroxysms, convulsions. There just wasn't any place for release, even a gradual release. When emotions got too tightly wound here, they wouldn't unwind, they'd explode.

  He had jotted his last notes on his yellow pad on the desk blotter, and as he stared at the rim of the ocean he realized he'd been picking at the blotter with his left hand. In the upper left corner, under the triangle of leather, a scrap of paper protruded. He pulled it out.

  It was a piece of lined paper from a pocket-sized spiral notebook. The side was frayed where it had been torn off, which seemed a little out of character for Larry Witt — those irregularities in the edge, Hardy was beginning to suppose, should have been intolerable to him. He would have cut them off with the precise little scissors on his Swiss Army knife.

  He smiled scornfully at his imagination. There was something more immediate at hand — on the paper was the date "December 23" and the single word "No!!!" which, in addition to the three exclamation points, was underlined twice and circled. And under that was a telephone number with a 213 area code — downtown Los Angeles.

  Hardy dialed the number.

  "Law offices."

  Naturally, he thought. He identified himself and asked to speak to the office manager. His watch read five-fifty on a Thursday night, but law firms never slept — there was no hesitation. The receptionist said that Ms. Klein would be right with him.

  It wasn't immediate but soon enough. Either Ms. Klein had had an extremely bad day or she was someone Hardy wouldn't want to party with. "I'm sorry," she was saying, "the message wasn't very clear. You are?"

  Hardy explained again — that he was representing a client in the Bay Area and among the papers in her house had been a document on which he'd found the phone n
umber he'd called. He wondered what the connection might be. The firm was? He figured that he could play her game as well as anyone.

  "Crane & Crane. And your client is?"

  "Jennifer Witt."

  Ms. Klein paused. "Well, the name isn't familiar to me." A tired laugh: "But that doesn't mean anything."

  "How about the name Larry Witt? He was her husband. Maybe one of your attorneys would know? Your managing partner? Could I…"

  Abruptly, her voice seemed to break. "No. No, you can't!" Another pause, so long that Hardy thought she might have hung up.

  "Ms. Klein?"

  "Oh, oh, I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse me, please, I'm just to myself. This past week… I shouldn't even be saying this…"

  "Is everything all right?"

  "No, Mr…. Hardy, is it? No, everything is not all right."

  "I'm sorry," Hardy said. The tension in these big corporate law firms must be as bad as the rumors, he thought. "I'll try back later."

  "No, later won't do either. I mean…" Now a sob broke. "I'm so sorry, I mean, Mr. Simpson won't be back later. He's, he was the managing partner. He's dead. He was killed."

  Mesmerized, Hardy listened as the facts trickled out. Mr. Simpson was Simpson Crane, lately managing partner of Crane & Crane. About a week ago he and his wife were gunned down at their home in Pacific Palisades. Simpson Crane had been an anti-labor attorney and he had been negotiating some contracts. The suspicion was, she said, that organized labor had hired someone to kill Crane, but the police didn't have many leads and said it was mostly a theory. Simpson's son, Todd, was now running the firm for the time being, but, as Hardy could imagine, it was a very difficult time.

  By the time Hardy hung up it was full dark outside. He folded the sheet of paper and put it in his wallet. Leaving the light on in the study, he made his way into the hall and down the stairway, across the marble of the foyer and, blessedly, at last, outside.

  "Jesus," he whispered.

  * * * * *

  Driving home, partly to escape the feeling of unease that had clung to him at the Witt's, Hardy allowed himself to be disgusted that he had used the word "document" to describe the piece of spiral notebook paper than now resided in his wallet. He distinctly remembered the first time he'd come on the word "document" in his law studies. The verbiage, the pretension, the self-conscious importance — in short, everything about the definition struck him as so ludicrous, so plain stupid that he had memorized it (the alphabetical order made it easier), vowing never to become a lawyer who would use it:

  "Documents" is used herein in the broadest sense and includes all written, printed, typed, graphic or otherwise recorded matter, however produced or reproduced, including non-identical copies, preliminary, intermediate, and final drafts, writings, records, and recordings of every kind and description, whether inscribed by hand or by mechanical, electronic, microfilm, photographic or other means, as well as phonic (such as tape recordings) or visual reproductions of all statements, conversations or events, and including without limitation, abstracts; address books; advertising material; agreements; analyses of any kind; appointment books; brochures; calendars; charts; circulars; computer cards; contracts; correspondence; data books; desk calendars; diagrams; diaries; directories; discs; drawings of any type; estimates; evaluations; financial statement or calculations; graphs; guidelines; house organs or publications; instructions; inter-office or intra-office communications; invoices; job descriptions; ledgers; letters; licenses; lists; manuals; maps; memoranda of any type; microfilm; minutes; movies; notes; notebooks; opinions; organization charts; pamphlets; permits; photographs; pictures; plans; projections; promotional materials; publications; purchase orders; schedules; specifications; standards; statistical analyses; stenographers' notebooks; studies of any kind; summaries; tabulations; tapes; telegrams; teletype messages; videotapes; vouchers; and working drawings, papers and files.

  And a partridge in a pear tree.

  And now this piece of paper with a date, a phone number and the word "No!!!" written on it had come out of his mouth, like water through a sieve, without an editing thought, as a "document."

  It didn't thrill him.

  * * * * *

  Rhea, the woman who resembled Jennifer Witt, had been yelling and swearing into the telephone at her Jimmy for so long that, finally, when the guard had come in and taken the phone from her, hanging it up, she just shook her head and walked silently back to her cell. Jennifer, in the next cell, propped herself on an elbow on her cot.

  "That didn't sound too good."

  "That shit!" After the thirty-second break, Rhea was getting her vocabulary back. "That cocksucker Jimmer says I've got to wait another few days, maybe a week in here! Maybe a week! Shit! If he's fucking somebody else I'll kill the son of a bitch."

  "What did he say?" Jennifer hoped her calm would be contagious. That language was all right when everybody was laughing, teasing, being together. But when you mixed anger in, it reminded her of too many other times — with Larry, with others, with what came next. Even hearing Rhea like this, she was getting cramps in her stomach. She curled her legs up, trying to get comfortable on the stained mattress, trying to keep the cramp from seizing. "About bail?"

  "That shit!" Rhea picked up the plastic cup that held her plastic utensils and her disposable razor blade and her toothbrush and threw it against the bars.

  "Rhea, stop! Please stop."

  She did stop raving, stopped swearing. But when she did it left her standing at the edge of her cell, where she crumbled to the floor, crying quietly.

  After a minute or two Jennifer uncurled herself from her cot and went to the side of her cell. "He couldn't get bail?"

  Rhea shook her head quietly, back and forth. "He said it would be a couple of days at the most. Now he says without me his income is down and it's taking longer. How do you like that? Without me his income is down!" She lapsed again into quiet tears.

  "How much would it take?" Jennifer asked.

  The crying slowed, went to sniffles, stopped. "What?"

  "How much did you say your bail was? Five thousand?"

  She nodded. "Why?"

  Jennifer sat on the floor, knees up, arms wrapped around them. She had already learned a lot about the working of the jail. Clara knew a lot, so did Mercedes. If you had the stomach and the money for it, if you were desperate enough, guards could be bribed, things could be done. It had happened before, many times.

  "I don't know for sure," Jennifer said, "but maybe I can help him get it." She spoke as quietly as she could, venturing a glance over to Rhea. If anyone else heard her, she wanted to be able to deny having said anything. But Rhea was listening, her mouth half open, disbelieving. "Of course you'd have to help me if you could."

  12

  Halfway out from Van Ness to the beach, Miz Carter's Mudhouse had been a landmark on California Street for half a century. The "mud" was coffee, sometimes thick as Turkish, and before espresso caught on with the yuppies in the late seventies the Mudhouse was the best place for java in the western half of the city. Miz Carter's daughter, Louanne, still made her mud the old way, loose ground beans stirred into boiling water, then strained as it was poured. The stuff could jolt you right up.

  Which Hardy needed. He and Frannie had been awakened no fewer than six times by their two young darlings doing their tag-team number, Rebecca with an ear infection and low-grade fever, Vincent wanting to be fed. It was fun, but all and all, the Hardy's agreed they'd had better times.

  Glitsky's description of Walter Terrell — white guy, brown hair, mustache — wasn't exactly on the money. He was swarthier, Mediterranean somehow, not like the guy Hardy had been thinking about from school. Hardy had put his briefcase on the table to identify himself, and Terrell came and slid in across from him.

  He was younger than Hardy had expected, maybe thiry-two or thereabouts. At forty-one, Hardy didn't feel old, but it was disconcerting that so many people he worked with were starting to be so much youn
ger, and that he noticed it.

  Terrell wore new Reeboks, a worn pair of Levi's and an ironed dress shirt with thin maroon stripes under his Member's Only jacket that fit him neatly. In spite of Glitsky's feelings about Terrell and his theories, the guy must have put together some kind of record if he'd already made Homicide.

  After he'd had his coffee poured, Terrell took a sip and shuddered, adding sugar like there was no tomorrow. "What kind of name is Dismas?" He tried the mud again. He kept stirring.

  Hardy explained for the thousandth time that Dismas had been the name of the good thief on Calvary. He did not mention that he was also the patron saint of murderers. "Only thing I can figure, my folks wanted to punish me for some reason. When I think they could have named me Bill, or Jack…"

  Terrell's face cracked. "Yeah, I know, anything but Sue." Trying his coffee again, he finally put his spoon down. "This stuff's awesome," he said. "People drink this every day?"

  "Every day."

  "Awesome." He motioned to Hardy's briefcase. "So'd you check out Ned?" Hardy nodded. He'd gone over the coroner's exhumation report on Edward (Ned) Hollis last night after they'd put the kids down, further endearing him to his wife, who after a day with no adult company had more or less expected him to share the evening with her.

  The smile and the aw-shucks manner weren't entirely convincing. This was one smart cop. He could be as friendly as you please, but he wasn’t going to be sandbagged by any smarty-pants defense attorney, even if he happened to be a friend of Abe Glitsky.

  But Hardy merely nodded again. There was no battle to be won here. "I'm trying to get a handle on Ned, I suppose. Jennifer doesn't seem to have much to say about him. They found the atropine?"

  Terrell pointed a finger at the briefcase. "That what it says?"

  'Yeah, but so what?"

  It was the first time Hardy had surprised him. "What do you mean, so what?"