The Dismas Hardy Novels

by John Lescroart

  “That’s bullshit. Fuck him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hal’s scowl deepened, his voice suddenly harsh. “And I thought the plea change was part of your strategy all along. Now here we are sandbagged again. What’s that about?”

  Wu, expecting something like this, had prepared her reply. “It’s about Allan Boscacci getting shot, sir. The whole thing would have rolled off his back I’m sure, but now we’ve got Clarence Jackman himself with his shorts in a twist. He’s just asserting his authority. Anyway, I’m going to appeal the date, but my boss says it’s not likely to change.”

  “Your boss?”

  She nodded. “Dismas Hardy, you might have heard of him. He’s good. And this is really very good news. If the hearing goes ahead on this accelerated time frame, he’s going to come aboard to help out.”

  “And I pay extra for that?”

  “No. The firm covers his time and expenses. We didn’t make this problem with the DA, but we don’t think it’s right to ask you to pay for it, either. I’ll be putting in a lot of hours, though. Just to let you know. We may be looking at another retainer payment, especially if Andrew goes up to adult.”

  “Which we’re going to fight.”

  “Tooth and nail. Yes, sir. But on the assumption that the seven-oh-seven is going ahead as scheduled on Tuesday, I wanted to bring you and Linda up to speed on how it’s structured so we can be prepared how to proceed.”

  “Jesus,” Hal said. “It never ends.” He threw a glance over his shoulder—all the work awaiting him behind one of those doors—then came back to Wu. “Maybe we want to sit down.” They did. “All right,” he said. “Shoot.”

  Over the next twenty minutes or so, Wu gave him the short course.

  For all of its apparent complexity, a 707 proceeding concerned itself with only one question: is the minor “amenable to treatment” as a juvenile? From the perspective of the courts and the justice system, this determination was critical. Despite the insistence by some that one of the goals of adult incarceration should be rehabilitation of the inmate for an ultimate return to society, in practice, adult jail and prison time was essentially punishment. By contrast, the juvenile system’s ethic took on a far more hopeful and optimistic cast. Though incarceration was part of the process, the goal was primarily to rehabilitate, not punish, the minor.

  If you were in the juvenile system, the bureaucracy contemplated your eventual redemption. You still had a chance to turn out all right, to be a good citizen and a productive member of society, your youthful sins forgiven. So the system provided not just the stick of incarceration, but the carrots of education, psychological and career counseling, job training and a host of other social welfare programs. Because of these programs and treatments, each minor in the juvenile system would typically interact with an assortment of counselors, educators and social workers, and not just his warden and guards.

  But this vast, bureaucratic apparatus of hope was not to be wasted on those it could not help, who were not “amenable to treatment.” These were juveniles who, by virtue of their callousness, cruelty, history and crimes, must in justice be viewed as adults. Society would rightfully treat them as incorrigible and not squander its limited resources in a doomed and hopeless bid to try and rehabilitate them. And further, these lost causes wouldn’t be permitted to contaminate the salvageable kids by their sophisticated and fixed criminality.

  But first, the courts needed an objective formula to identify those who might be helped, and those who must be abandoned.

  To that end, for violent crimes, five criteria for amenability had evolved. If in the court’s judgment the minor failed the test for any one of these criteria, then that person would be found not amenable to treatment in the juvenile system and handed up to Superior Court to be tried as an adult. These criteria were (1) degree of the minor’s criminal sophistication, (2) the likelihood of the minor’s rehabilitation prior to the expiration of the juvenile court’s jurisdiction (i.e., the minor’s twenty-fifth birthday), (3) the minor’s previous delinquent history, (4) the success of previous attempts by the juvenile system to rehabilitate the minor and (5) the circumstances and gravity of the offense for which the minor has been charged.

  “Okay,” North said. “So what’s all that mean?”

  “It means we’re going to have to talk—you and me and Linda—about which if any of these criteria apply to Andrew. I mean, we’ve got a pretty good idea about number five, the gravity of the offense. It’s murder, so it’s serious. But we fight that one when we get to it. Meanwhile, I’ve got to know about all the others, so that if any of them seem to apply to him, we work up a defense, or at least an explanation for the court.”

  North was frowning deeply, sitting all the way back in the couch, his hands in his lap, his legs straight out and crossed at the ankles. “Haven’t we already done that? Remember that second day at the house, I think it was. When you wanted to know all about the blowups, and we talked about his shrink and all that?”

  “Sure. I remember. But this is getting down much more to the nuts and bolts. Individual events. Reasons he shouldn’t really be considered an adult.”

  “Character issues?”

  “Right.”

  He turned his head to face her. “But didn’t you say the other day that we didn’t want to bring up character? Once we did that, then the prosecution could introduce their own stuff and jump all over us?”

  “You were listening.” Wu didn’t seem very happy about it.

  “Damn straight. I’m a good listener. So now you’re saying we need character?”

  “Maybe it’s a bit of a risk. Certainly it’s a different situation. But the bottom line is we need to defeat all the criteria. Every one of them, or Andrew goes up.”

  North sighed heavily, cast his gaze out to the view. “I’ll talk to Linda. Maybe between us we can come up with something. You got those things, the criteria, written down?”

  “Yes. Right here.”

  “Okay. Leave them with me, and if we can come up with something concrete you don’t already know, we’ll get back to you. How’s that?”

  Wu arrived before her client did in the cold and tiny room—the scratched table, the ancient chairs, the antiseptic old-school smell. Suddenly, she noticed the bars of sunlight high on the opposite wall, and she realized that she’d been awake only for a little over three hours total today, and the daylight was already nearly gone.

  And wouldn’t her father have been proud of her for that? For wasting the day? Or the past weeks? She rested her head in her hands as a fresh wave of nausea and revulsion rolled and broke over her. An unconscious moan escaped.

  “Are you all right?”

  She hadn’t heard the key, hadn’t been aware that the door had opened. Now Bailiff Cottrell—the young one with the old eyes—stood in the entrance, holding a restraining hand up for Andrew, waiting for a sign that the interview was still on. It wasn’t immediately forthcoming, so he asked, “Are we good here, ma’am?” Eventually she nodded, and the bailiff lowered his hand, let her client come in, closed the door.

  Andrew warily kept his eyes on her as he pulled his chair over, sat on the front inch of the seat. “Are you mad at me?” he asked.

  Wu’s mouth was dry, her face clammy. She closed her eyes for an instant, ran her hand over her forehead. “No. I’m not mad at you, Andrew.”

  “I thought you would be because I didn’t do what you wanted me to.” He had his hands clasped together between his knees. “But I couldn’t say I did it.”

  “I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry about it now. It’s done. The thing we have to do now is prevail at this hearing, get you mandated in the juvenile system so you stay here.”

  “But I thought that was already over with.” Confusion played itself all over his features. “I mean, that’s what everybody is so mad about, right?”

  “Not really. They’re mad that now they have to go through the hassle of trying to move you back up to
adult court.”

  “So you’re saying your deal, even though I didn’t agree to it, got me another chance anyway?”

  “Yeah.”

  Suddenly, the look of confusion cleared. Her client tentatively smiled. “Well, then, if your job is my defense, how could it have been wrong? Maybe the guy you made the deal with wasn’t as careful as he needed to be, either. You ever think of that? Maybe it wasn’t all your fault?”

  Wu wouldn’t think ill of the dead, especially not today. But Andrew’s rationale released some small bit of the tension she felt. “Well,” she said, “at least some of it was my fault. But that’s very nice of you to say, and I could use a little nice.” For the first time with Andrew, she felt something like a connection.

  But there was still the business, the five criteria for amenability to the juvenile system. After she had painstakingly gone through the list for him, she sat back with her arms crossed over her chest. “We need to talk about each of these individually, Andrew,” she said. “If the court finds you not amenable on any one of them, you go up.”

  “Any one?”

  “That’s the rule. And I’m afraid we’ve got less than a week to prepare.”

  “But these criteria.” Andrew scratched at the tabletop. “Most of them don’t apply to me at all. I don’t even know what they mean by criminal sophistication, or if I can be rehabilitated. Rehabilitated from what?”

  “Your violent criminal past.”

  He looked a question at her. “I don’t have one.”

  “I know. But I don’t think sophistication is the problem. Neither is rehab.”

  “But gravity is.”

  Everyone seemed to understand that one immediately. “Yes.”

  He gestured around the small room. “If it helps me get out of here . . . but I was saying, even on gravity, if I didn’t do it . . .” He raised his eyes, hopeful.

  But she didn’t want to raise those hopes. She came forward and reached across the table, a hand over his forearm. “This hearing isn’t about whether you did it, Andrew. I need you to understand that. It’s only about whether you go up as an adult or not. They’re going to pretty much assume the gravity criteria.”

  “And they only need the one?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “So I’m going to lose?”

  “We may lose, yes. For now. But we’ll get a real chance in adult court.”

  “We ought to just go straight there, then. If this hearing is just a formality.”

  “No,” she said. “We’ve got to try. Anything that keeps you down here even for on extra minute is what we want to do.” In his eyes, she saw real worry—perhaps he was starting to realize where his refusal to admit had left him. Left them both. “So we’ve got to talk about some real issues, Andrew. My partner, Mr. Hardy? He’s got a few ideas about gravity. We’re not just going to give that to them. But the other criteria, we don’t want any surprises with those either.”

  “I don’t know what they’d be.”

  “No. I don’t either, but that’s why they call them surprises.”

  He started with some marginal enthusiasm as they discussed possible witnesses for the various criteria—the psychologist he’d seen for anger management, his school counselor, one of the probation officers up here. But before they’d gone too far, the enormity of what he was facing seemed to drag him down.

  His focus wavered, then abandoned him entirely, and Wu—not at peak performance levels herself—found it difficult to humor him. From her perspective, his primary emotion was sorrow for himself. He stopped every few sentences, stared straight ahead or down at the table. He fought back tears a couple of times.

  “Why should we bother doing this?” he’d say. “We’re never going to win.”

  Or: “I’m such a loser. This isn’t going to make any difference.”

  Or: “It’d be better for everybody if I just killed myself, wouldn’t it?”

  That last one stopped Wu. “Why would you want to do that, Andrew? What good would that do?”

  “It’d end all this stupidity. If they’re going to put me away anyway.”

  Wu scratched at the table, summoning her patience. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”

  “It won’t work, though, will it?”

  “Not if we don’t try.”

  But even to her, the words sounded condescending, the kind of adult pablum he’d been forced to eat a hundred times. “Or even if we do,” he said.

  She tried to keep him on track, but it was a long, uphill slog until they finally summoned him for dinner. After he left, she felt she had no reserve of strength and remained sitting, elbows on the table, on her papers and notes. She rested her head on her palms, the heels of them pressing into her eyes.

  She heard a knock. “Excuse me? Ms. Wu?” Bailiff Cottrell, come to close up the room, stared down at her from the doorway. She must have nearly let herself doze off. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look well. Can I get you something? Some water?”

  Moving slowly, she leaned back in her chair. “How about a head transplant? And maybe a new body to go with it.”

  “You couldn’t get a better face,” he said, “and you definitely don’t need a new body.”

  At the moment, she felt about as attractive as a garbage truck, and she almost laughed at the compliment. But he was, she thought, just trying to be nice. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting while I just sat here. It’s been a long day.” She started gathering the papers and folders she’d spread out over the table.

  “Ms. Wu, let me help you,” he said.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got it. And you can call me Amy.”

  “Ray, if you didn’t remember,” he said, then stood waiting at the door while she finished up, throwing everything into her heavy lawyer’s briefcase, snapping it closed. When she stood, then leaned over to pick the briefcase up, he said, “That thing must weigh a ton. At least let me take that.”

  Exhausted, her head still pounding from her hangover, she finally nodded. “That would be nice.”

  He stepped into the room, picked up the briefcase, gave her some support with a hand under her elbow. “You’re sure you’re okay to walk?”

  In fact, she had some question about that, but she took a step and then another and in a minute they were outside in the hall and then at the main entrance to the cabins. Cottrell accompanied her outside to the razor-wire gate and opened it for her. They stopped there and he put down her briefcase. Turning to say good-bye, she looked up at him. Their eyes met for an instant, and she thought she caught a glimpse of that earlier wariness she had noticed in the courtroom. Again, his eyes seemed old and somehow empty, but—it was as though he had a switch he could throw—suddenly a bit of life came into them. “Your client seems pretty down,” he said.

  She blew out heavily. “I don’t blame him,” she said. “He’s screwing himself.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I dealt him an eight-year top and he turned it down. Now he’s looking at LWOP.”

  “They’re moving him to adult?”

  “Not yet, but it’s probable. I’m trying to get him to help me, but he doesn’t seem to know the word ‘cooperate.’ ”

  “Maybe he’s just scared.”

  “I’m sure he is. And he should be. Oh, God!” She brought a hand up to her head, squeezed at her temples. With her other hand, she grabbed the side of the gate for support. Cottrell stepped up, grabbed both of her shoulders. “You look like you’re going to faint. Maybe you want to sit down.”

  She nodded and leaned into him. He put his arm around her and walked her back toward the cabins.

  From the lobby of the admin building, down the hill Jason Brandt saw the bailiff carrying her briefcase, walking with her to the gate, where they stopped and spent a minute talking. He didn’t want her to see him, at least not until she was alone, and so he remained where he was
, pretty much out of sight.

  Wu hadn’t left his thoughts since the night they’d spent together, and now Brandt was unable to take his eyes off her. He had wanted to get to know her since the first time he’d seen her, back right after his law school days. But one or the other of them had always had other relationships going or big cases and she’d more or less slipped from his consciousness until she showed up in his courtroom last week, when finally—he’d thought—there had been no impediment.

  Then he really believed that running into her at the Balboa had been a sign. There had been real chemistry between them that night, something uncommon and, he believed, maybe even a little magical. As a general rule, he didn’t do one-night stands. The encounter, like it or not, had seemed as though it meant something. Maybe something important.

  Then, this morning, thinking for a moment that because she had been near Boscacci when he’d been shot that she, too, might have been physically hurt, made him realize that he’d been way too harsh with her the other morning. Okay, she’d made a mistake by not telling him right away that Bartlett’s case wasn’t really settled, but maybe it had been innocent after all, something he’d never really given her a chance to assert. Maybe they’d just started talking at the Balboa and in all the personal stuff they’d shared, including the sex, the professional business between them had receded into the background. It certainly had for him.

  So he didn’t want this antagonism between them to go on any longer. He wanted to apologize for his overreaction, at least see what she had to say to that. And just now, when he’d first seen her coming out of the cabins, he thought he’d take the opportunity to talk to her. One way or another, he thought that the Bartlett matter was going to be over in a few weeks at the most, at least as far as Wu and he were concerned. If Bartlett went to adult court, they wouldn’t be adversaries in the same courtroom anymore. Maybe they could pick up where they’d left off. If he could get her to talk to him.

  Although if she had gone off on him as ballistic as he had with her, he wasn’t sure if he would talk to her.