Hardy 04 - 13th Juror, The

by John Lescroart

  "They find a concentration of atropine on the front of the right thigh? Which indicates it might have been injected?"

  "Right."

  "All right, we'll grant that, but what's to say Jennifer injected him?"

  Terrell tried the coffee again, ignoring its awesomeness. "He didn't shoot himself up. Atropine doesn't make you high."

  "Okay, but again, so what? Maybe he was trying to kill himself. Maybe he succeeded. What I'm asking is if there's anything I'm missing here, because I don't see why this got charged as a murder."

  Terrell was visibly holding himself back. His face was becoming flushed. "This got charged as a murder 'cause it was a murder. Your Jennifer aced him for the seventy-five grand."

  Hardy tried to keep it loose. "I'm not saying she didn't. I'm just wondering what proof… if you've got any proof that she was the one who gave Ned the shot? I mean, how do you even know she was in the room?"

  "She was in the room. She got him tanked up on booze and coke 'til he passed out, then she bonked him with the needle. Now he's dead, the coroner finds lethal coca-ethylene and forgets about scanning for whatever else might have killed him, like the atropine." He stabbed a finger on the table. "That's what happened, Mr. Hardy. You can bet on it."

  Getting back to "Mr. Hardy" wasn't a good sign, and it wasn't Hardy's intention to alienate the inspector. "I'm not saying it didn't. The DA bought it — they charged it. But it seems to me they had to have more."

  On the defense now, but softening slightly, Terrell the new homicide cop was anxious to show he'd done it right. "There was more, they did get more. I got 'em Harlan Poole, didn't I?"

  "Her lover, the dentist? How'd you get to him?"

  "I saw his name in a couple of statements Jennifer made in Ned's file. So I went and talked to him." Eager to explain his technique, Terrell leaned forward across the table. "The thing about this police work is sometimes, you know, you got to have some intuition. I mean, sometimes you just know what went down, right? So you go on that, tweak things a little, and you get somewhere."

  "And you tweaked Poole?"

  Terrell obviously enjoyed the memory. "Wasn't much of a tweak. The guy's successful, maybe forty-something, wife and three kids. I told him if he cooperated, told us what he knew, we'd try to keep a low profile on him. Guy cracked like a nut."

  "And said what?"

  "Said he missed the atropine one day after Jennifer had been in the office for a little late night nookie. Evidently they did it in or on — that guy and his wife don't do it much that way anymore. Anyway, he didn't put it together until hubby Ned turned up dead, and then he figured Jennifer had done it and it scared the piss out of him, so gradually, he says, he dumped her."

  "Because he thought she'd killed Ned?"

  "Yeah, because she killed Ned."

  Hardy sat back. To grab some time, he lifted his cup and knocked back the dregs, making a face. There was a crucial something missing here. "Let me get this straight," he said. "When Ned turned up dead, Poole concluded that Jennifer had killed him, is that right?"

  Terrell nodded.

  "Well, isn't that a bit of a leap? I mean, he must have had some kind of hit this was on her mind — something? Right?"

  "Sure. She'd talked about it."

  "Talked about killing Ned?" Hardy shook his head. "If Poole got scared off afterward, why didn't he see it coming and dump her before?"

  Terrell was engaged now, thinking it through, elbows on the table. "I guess he didn't see it coming. She didn't talk about it as a plan or anything. I think afterward he just put it together."

  "But why? Why would it even enter his mind?"

  "Because she'd talked about leaving him, about wouldn't it be wonderful if he died, the insurance, all that."

  "Leaving him and wishing he'd die aren't the same as actually killing him."

  "Okay, but she'd tried to leave him before — a couple of times — and he'd come after her and beat the shit out of her."

  Bingo. "Ned beat her, too? Is there any proof of that?"

  "You mean did she report it, anything like that? Get serious."

  This was good stuff, and possibly true, but Hardy was more than half-certain that all of it was inadmissible because it was hearsay, and twice removed hearsay at that — Dr. Poole saying that Jennifer had told him that Ned had beaten her. Nevertheless, it was a psychological bombshell. If it was true that Jennifer had killed Ned because he was beating her — to stop him and to get the insurance she could figure she was entitled to — who wouldn't believe she had done the same with Larry?

  Because the argument was compelling, the temptation to compare the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Larry and Ned would be overwhelming, and Hardy found himself hoping that Powell and the prosecution would get caught up in the symmetry and pursue it. Because it gave her a sympathetic motive in both cases.

  But he didn't mention this to Terrell. Instead, he told him he thought what he had was pretty good.

  Friends now, or at least amicable adversaries, they stood by the counter waiting for their change, making small talk, Hardy asking if Terrell had ever noticed the funny coincidences that seemed to happen all the time when you got deep into a case.

  "Yeah, I know," Terrell said, "it's weird. Couple of months ago, I'm still in burglary, I get a call out in the Mission and I go down there and I'm checking out a broken window when another window across the alley opens up and some guy yells, 'Hey, Wally!' I look up and it's some guy I played ball with in high school. Amazing, but you're right. It happens all the time."

  Hardy told him about the death of Simpson Crane in Los Angeles. "Is that strange or what? Here I'm at a murder victim's house, I find a phone number and call it, and I get another murder victim."

  That stopped Terrell by the door. Maybe he just wasn't primed yet to go out into the swirling fog, but Hardy didn't think that was it. "How'd you say this guy — Crane? — how'd he get it?"

  "They think it was some union job, a professional hit. Just like Jennifer says with Larry. Hell of a coincidence, huh?"

  Terrell shook his head, almost as though he were trying to clear it, shake this rogue thought out completely. "No, Larry wasn't no hit. There wasn't any hit man. Jennifer did Larry."

  Hardy didn't want to smile when he set the hook. Give this man a theory, Glitsky had said. "Still, you've got to admit, it's interesting."

  Terrell tried to shrug it off. "Sure, but like I said, this shit happens all the time."

  "You're right." Hardy pushed the door open, steeling himself against the cold. "You're right, it does."

  * * * * *

  A seven-year-old Matthew Witt smiled up in full color and perfect focus. Whoever had taken the school photos had done a good job, capturing the personality behind the impish face. Whatever constrictions had worked on Matt in his sterile home, they apparently hadn't defeated him. There was a real smile in the eyes, some kidlike sense of jauntiness — maybe he'd just said something smart to the photographer and was proud of himself. But it wasn't a wise-ass look — it was friendly, open. A nice little boy aiming to please.

  David Freeman was in the shower in his apartment and Hardy slumped deep in an ancient red leather chair near one of the living room windows, trying and failing to tear himself away from Matt. There were lots of other pictures in the folder that he held on his lap, and he had already gone through quite a few when he go to the boy.

  He had black hair, neatly combed and parted except for a cowlick. He was wearing a green-and-white-striped T-shirt with a soft collar, up on one side and down on the other like puppies' ears. There was a gap between his two front teeth. Freckles across the bridge of his nose. Long eyelashes. The beginning of a dimple. The laughing eyes were a deep green.

  Hardy sat back, pulling at the skin on his face, staring without seeing anything out the window into the fog. He didn't know how much time had gone by when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  "There's nothing we can do about that."

  F
reeman, in a frayed terrycloth bathrobe, gave Hardy's shoulder another gentle shake. He was, at times surprisingly, perhaps sympathetic — the tone said so — but ultimately pragmatic. If you couldn't affect anything, if you couldn't act, then by Freeman's definition there was nothing to be done. Hardy didn't agree — it might not produce any tangible result but he thought you could at least grieve.

  Barefoot, unshaven, his wet hair in a gray-and-brown mess, Freeman walked across his living room to the breakfast nook, where on a shining mahogany table he had spread his own working papers, legal pads, binders, boxes of cassette tapes. Currently working a trial, planning for a new one, cleaning up the loose ends and appeals of trials gone by — was this what Hardy's life was going to become? He got a glimpse of it from Frannie's perspective and wondered if by getting involved with David and Jennifer he was making a mistake.

  Then he looked down at Matt. God… if Jennifer had killed him, even by accident, even if he'd just gotten in the way…

  But what if it wasn't that, what if Jennifer were telling the truth? Then someone else was out there. Someone who needed to die and was walking around, letting Jennifer go through this hell, leaving Matt unavenged.

  Hardy did believe in vengeance — in severe, purposeful vengeance. It was what had drawn him into police work, then into the prosecution business in the first place. But, and this way he knew he was becoming a lawyer, he now believed that before the vengeance he — personally — had to eliminate any reasonable doubt.

  And this was what drove him now — not to sell his soul as a mouthpiece for some prosecution or defense posture, for some legal opinion, not to argue because he could prevail, but to uncover the truth of the matter, however it came out.

  He put Matt's picture face down and went to the next one.

  * * * * *

  Freeman lived on the corner of Taylor and Pine, one steep block down from the peak of Nob Hill, a floor above one of the oldest and best French restaurants in the City. Freeman kept his own personal wine cellar in the restaurant and averaged perhaps ten meals there every month.

  His own apartment was modest in size and conveniences — two bedrooms, living room, kitchen with eating nook. In spite of his income, the place resisted any not to modern technology. Freeman still used a rotary wall-mounted telephone in the kitchen, and whenever he played his classical music, which was the only kind he listened to, it was on long-playing 33a rpm records that he'd bought with his then brand new stereo system in the early sixties. The couches and chairs in the living room were comfortable, cracked old red leather; the coffee and end tables were of some dark wood with lion's claw feet. The lamps all had shades, and most of them were three-way.

  His current trial had been continued — put on hold — until the following Monday because the prosecuting attorney had a toothache and needed to see the dentist. So he'd left a message at Sutter Street that Hardy should come up — it was only a six-block walk — to discuss some Jennifer Witt matters before the weekend.

  * * * * *

  The crime-scene shots had been in the file, of course, and Hardy knew there were people who turned to look at them first, before they did any reading. He wasn't one of them.

  There were twenty-seven pictures of the room where the murders had been committed as the photo team had found it, although many were shots of essentially the same thing from a slightly different perspective. These photographs were, as usual, competently done. By design, they didn't strive for artful composition, but the focus was perfect, the color sharp, the angles inclusive.

  There were also eight shots each of Larry and Matt, of the bodies and their wounds on the autopsy table.

  Hardy and Freeman, separately, had gone through them all one by one. It was quiet work.

  When they finished they spread out an even dozen of the crime-scene photos for a closer inspection together.

  Both father and son had been shot one time each with a .38 caliber automatic. The bullets, in common with the five that had been discovered in the clip later, had hollow points, common enough among people who had bought their weapons for home defense. Sometimes the argument went, you only got one shot off, and that shot needed to do as much damage as possible.

  By this criteria, the bullets had done their job, Larry had been shot through the heart. The slug, at that close range, had exited through his back, and the core of the original bullet had imbedded itself in the drywall. There was a close-up of that section of the wall, and Hardy was surprised he had missed it completely while he'd been there, but then, he had not by that time been in his most objective state of mind.

  The force of the shot had apparently knocked Larry backward onto the end of the bed, where he had rolled off onto the floor. He had come to rest on his right side, his life gone before he had hit the carpet, judging from the fact that there was no smearing of the bloodstains beneath him.

  Neither Hardy nor Freeman wanted to view the pictures of Matt, who had been hit in the head. He evidently had been standing by the bathroom door. Last night, the bathroom had seemed antiseptic, but in these pictures the bathroom mirror was a shattered spider web, the walls dotted with red.

  Putting the pictures aside, they moved on to the ATM, the discussion Hardy had had with Lightner, his tour of the Witt home, the Crane coincidence and Terrell's view of the Ned Hollis murder. Freeman, pacing the kitchen in his bathrobe, took it all in. He did not seem displeased. When Hardy had finished he acknowledged that he had been busy. "This isn't as bad as it looked yesterday. Of course, it may look worse tomorrow."

  "I'm glad you said that last part. You wouldn't want it to look better two days in a row."

  Freeman ignored him. "Still, our work is cut out for us. I had Phyllis wire the money over to our account, by the way. The initial retainer. It went through."

  "Did you think it wouldn't?"

  "Tell you the truth, like many other things about Jennifer, I just wasn't sure."

  Hardy decided he wouldn't push it. "I thought I'd go talk to Jennifer again this morning, get some kind of line on Larry's work and her family that they never visited. I also want to find out about the last couple of months. That house showed no sign of anybody living there. I'd like to know if she ever went into the murder room after they cleaned it out."

  "None of that's going to be her defense."

  Hardy was packing the reports away into his thick briefcase. He was going to do what he was going to do, and didn't want to argue about it. "No, I know. But it might give you something to point at in your histrionic way. Keep the jury juggling the possibilities."

  "The possibilities?"

  "Of who else might have killed Larry."

  Freeman nodded. "Yes, but we don't have to prove, or even show, that somebody else killed Larry. Mr. Powell's got to prove that Jennifer did."

  "If she never went into the bedroom to take inventory, it eliminates one of their major contentions."

  "Only if we can prove it. We can assert it, but you can't prove a negative, and the assertion gets us nothing."

  "It might get us some doubt. You get enough doubts…"

  Freeman was wearing his dour face. "Well," he said, "we're a long way from trial. Whatever we find out might be useful at this stage. Certainly this Terrell thing, that was helpful. If Powell falls for it."

  Hardy snapped his briefcase shut. "He's already charged the murder. He won't back out now. He's committed."

  Freeman wasn't so confident about that. Not yet. "He must have something else. That's what I'd like to find out. He must know he can't win on what he's shown us so far" … He stared for a moment out his kitchen window. "In any event, we'll know soon enough. Meanwhile, I'll take a look at what they've actually given us. And don't misunderstand, your idea isn't bad — I've used it before myself — the old 'soddit' defense."

  "Some Other Dude Did It?"

  Freeman nodded. "That's the one. Find some other dudes to point at."

  Hardy stood up, grateful to be moving again. "You know, it is possible s
he's telling a lot of the truth."

  "Oh, I'm sure she is." Freeman scratched his stubble. "It’s really very difficult not to let at least some truth out even if you're trying to dissemble." Freeman paused, added straight-faced, "I said if…"

  13

  "So Larry worked at an abortion clinic. So what?" Glitsky was barely listening, leaning back in the car seat next to Hardy. They were going home. "Hey, guess what?" he said. "It's Friday night. The weeks' over."

  But Hardy wasn't letting it go. "So how many deaths and threats do we have so far this year against abortion-clinic workers?"

  Glitsky kept his eyes closed. "I don't know. You tell me."

  "Okay, I will. I happened to check this afternoon. Four in the city since December."

  Glitsky opened his eyes. Homicides were his territory, and this fact surprised him. "Deaths?"

  "Deaths and threats, combined."

  "How many deaths, Hardy?"

  "One."

  Glitsky grunted, closed his eyes again.

  "And Larry Witt would make two."

  "It would if he'd been killed by a disgruntled anti-abortion activist instead of his wife."

  Hardy kept driving west. The fog had lifted and the wind had stilled and it was a lovely Friday night, a postcard sunset coloring the sky before them. "You don't see it, huh?"

  "Not if I'm on a jury. 'Course I'm a cop so I don't think like a juror, but what are you going to point at? You need something besides 'Ladies and Gentlemen, did you know that Dr. Witt performed abortions on Wednesdays and Saturdays?' You know how mad that makes some people? What are they supposed to do with that? You don't have anybody."

  "Okay, how about Tom? The brother?"

  Hardy had interviewed Tom after he saw Jennifer in the morning. Tom had, obviously, hated Larry. He wasn't particularly fond of Jennifer, either. He had no idea where he'd been the morning of December 28 — he hadn’t been working so he was probably hanging at his apartment. He had never tried to borrow any money from either Jennifer or Larry. "Or Matt either," he'd volunteered with a sneer.