The 13th Juror (15 page)

18

As he sometimes did, Abe Glitsky arrived unannounced at the front door.  When Frannie opened it for him, he stepped back and whistled.  "My, my, my."  Frannie was wearing a blue skirt and a plain white blouse, low pumps, nylons.  She had touched her cheekbones with subtle highlights they scarcely needed.  Her eyes were malachite set into the alabaster of her skin.  The red hair, softly styled, fell to just below her shoulders.  "Whatever it is," he said, "you'll do."

Frannie curtsied, smiling.  "You don't think it's too much?"

"You panning for gold?  Playing soccer?  Mud-wrestling?"

Frannie looked serious.  "No, I'm meeting somebody."

"I think for meeting somebody you're on safe ground."

They were walking to the kitchen.  It was a smallish railroad-style Victorian house — one long hallway with openings to the living and dining rooms off it to the right, a bathroom to the left.  In the back the house opened up into a pod of rooms — airy skylit kitchen, Hardy and Frannie's bedroom with another bath, Rebecca's room (Hardy's old office) off that to one side, Vincent's nursery to the rear.

Hardy was coming out of the bedroom, a mug of steaming coffee in his hand.  He was wearing the slacks to one of his better suits, a white shirt, a silk Italian tie.

Glitsky stopped in the kitchen doorway.  "I must have the wrong house.  Where are the kids?"

"We're taking a day off," Frannie said.  "Their grandmother came and got them.  I'll be back in a minute.  You want some tea?"  Frannie disappeared into the back room.

Glitsky was getting the hot water.  "Who are you meeting?"

Hardy was still shaken by Nancy DiStephano.  He'd told Frannie about it when he'd gotten home, then sat up alone in the living room, not able to sleep for a long time.

And now here was Abe, dropping in, wanting to know who Frannie was meeting.  Abe wouldn't approve of Frannie going to get acquainted with Jennifer Witt.  If you were smart and in any aspect of law enforcement, you didn't mix your job and your family life.  The problem was that Hardy didn't feel like getting into a defense of why he was going along with Frannie's idea when he knew it wasn't a smart one.  "I thought I'd drop Frannie off downtown and later we'd go someplace nice for lunch.  What brings you around?"

It slid right by — Glitsky wasn't in his investigator mode, when very little got past him.  "I've got to go see this couple about a gun they left laying around for their kid to find and play with."  He tightened his lips, the scar shone white.  He didn't need to say more — Abe was in homicide and homicide meant that somebody wasn't alive anymore.  "It's out this way so I thought I'd stop by here and liven up your morning.  You back with Jennifer Witt?"

Frannie and the three of them talked for twenty minutes while Glitsky finished his tea, Hardy and Frannie another cup of coffee.  Hardy never mentioned the three-minute difference in times between the ATM machine and 911.  By this time, he was convinced that it was evidence in a murder investigation, and if he revealed that it could be part of the defense's case Abe the policeman would be bound to report it to the prosecution.

*     *     *     *     *

"But who are you?" Jennifer, in her red jumpsuit, looked through the Plexiglas window in the public-visiting area at the women's jail.

Frannie was no longer sure about this.  The woman across from her was certainly no threat to anyone at this moment.  Nearly anorexic, with bruises on her face, her hair chopped at different lengths, her eyes skittish.  Here was a woman, Frannie thought, who doesn't trust a living soul.

"I'm… Frannie, her mouth dry, tried to swallow.  "I'm with Mr. Hardy."

"I know.  You've already said that.  That's why I came out here.  But then how come we're not in the visiting room?"

Frannie didn't know — she thought they were in the visitor's room.  She didn't know that this long counter with folding chairs, Plexiglas windows, the telephones to talk through, wasn't where Hardy and Jennifer had their interviews.  "I'm… I guess it's just I'm not an attorney, so this isn't official or anything."  Suddenly she understood why Hardy hadn't come with her to introduce the two of them.  What could he have said?  "Hi, my wife just wanted to come down and check you out to make herself feel better.  She was a little worried you'd get out of jail someday and try to kill me."

She felt like a fool and she felt angry.

Dismas has humored her to teach her a lesson — a cruel one that he might have argued her out of.

But then she realized that she wouldn't have let him do that.  She could be as strong and bull-headed as anyone.  She had decided she was going to meet with Jennifer and, by God, she wasn't going to back down — that had been her position and now she was stuck with it.

Jennifer waited, her eyes now fixed on Frannie.  Pained eyes.  Frannie suddenly thought of the son Matt.  What if this woman hadn't killed anybody?  She had lost her son?  And then got raped and beat up in a Costa Rican jail?

"I know this is unusual," she said.  "I'm Mr. Hardy's wife.  Frannie.  He's told me what's happened to you and I just wondered if I could do anything to make things easier?"

*     *     *     *     *

The city-run Mission Hills Clinic was about midway between the Hall of Justice and the Yerba Buena Medical Group cluster on Mission Street but not particularly close to any hills.

Hardy stood across the busy thoroughfare and watched for nearly ten minutes.  Judging from the signs people carried, there were, he decided, two separate picket lines — one protesting the abortions that took place here, the other comprised of public-health workers who were being laid off due to cutbacks in the City budget.  The groups orbited in their own spheres, which warily circled each other, moving from one front door of the building to the next one and then back again.  The dance almost appeared choreographed.

In the months Jennifer had been at large, Hardy had remained subliminally aware of the ongoing escalation of the anti-abortion activists.  Since he'd had his discussion with Glitsky, a City worker in the Sunset Clinic had died when she'd had the bad fortune to be working after hours.  Probably the people who'd left the bomb hadn't intended anyone to be there when it exploded, just trying to make a point, they'd say.  The unlucky worker wasn't any less dead for the good intentions.

A doctor and a nurse had had their homes vandalized — windows broken, threats tied to rocks or tagged — graffiti'd — on stucco.  There had been at least six reports of muggings of public-health workers after they had finished their shifts, although no one was saying whether these were typical late-night random acts of violence or related to the clinics.

Larry Witt had done volunteer work here, performing — Jennifer guessed — between two and five abortions per week.  It was something Jennifer said he believed in — people shouldn't have unwanted babies, the biggest problem the earth faced was overcrowding, a child born to poverty and neglect would most likely stay there.

It was tragic and Hardy believed all of it, but the moral dilemma of when life started and — beyond that — the value of human life itself, wasn't going to go away soon for an Irish
ex
-Catholic.  He strongly believed that people ought to be able to choose, but he also didn't particularly approve of abortion on demand as a form of birth control.  At the very least, he thought, people ought to make a decent effort to remember what they forgot last night.  But people should also make a decent effort to remember not to shoot each other, and that didn't seem to be happening with any great frequency, either.

He crossed the street, feeling overdressed in his suit.  There wasn't another coat and tie on the block.  The people in the picket lines — male and female — wore jeans and T-shirts, 49er and Giants jackets, running shoes, boots and Birkenstocks.  Timing his approach, he crossed both lines and entered the building without incident.

Inside, the clinic was along the lines of what he'd expected and not seen at YBMG — yellowing tile, glaring fluorescence, that old hospital smell.

In the main office lobby he waited in a line for twenty-five minutes and got sent to talk to the secretary to the clinic administrator.  When she returned from her break and discovered that Hardy wanted to talk about abortion records, she told him he could have called and found out hat they released no records whatsoever, and no information on what might be within them.  As Hardy surely could understand, these files were completely confidential.

Frustrated, and with another hour until he was supposed to pick up Frannie, he paused outside in the cavernous main lobby, then followed the signs down a long echoing hallway to OB-GYN.

There were eight young women in the room.  All seemed to be under twenty-years-old, a couple closer to fifteen.  Two sat next to — maybe — their boyfriends, holding hands.  One, crying, was flanked by her parents.  Five sat alone, empty chairs between them — popping gum, flipping through magazines, listening to Walkman.  Bored and unconcerned?  Scared and withdrawn?  It was hard to tell which.

The receptionist at the window was a cheerful and cooperative young black man with a neatly trimmed beard and Afro.  He wore a white smock with a Gay Pride tag that said "Sam."  Hardy handed him a card, introducing himself, asking if Sam might direct him to someone who could tell him a little about Dr. Witt.

"You can ask me.  I remember him pretty well.  Too bad what happened."

Hardy agreed, saying that's what he was trying to get clear on.

"I thought his wife did it."

"That's what they're saying."

"You think she didn't?"

"She says she didn't, so I'm just turning over rocks — maybe find a snake."

"Here?  At the clinic?"

"Seems like a lot of angry people out there on the sidewalk."

Sam waved that off.  "The pro-lifers?  No, forget them.  Those people
live
there on the street."

"People have been killed, Sam, beat up leaving work at these clinics."

Sam kept up a confident smile.  "What about grocery checkers or bus drivers?  They get beat up too.  Welcome to life in the big city."

Hardy tried another tack.  "All right, maybe it was personal.  Someone on the staff?  I don't know.  Maybe Dr. Witt had a run-in with somebody?"

"No way, no way.  This isn't a social club here.  These volunteer docs come in and put in their time and leave.  And Witt more than most.  Nobody's billing anybody here — no reason to hang out."  He gestured at the waiting area behind Hardy, lowering his voice.  "This is not fun city west."

Hardy recognized the gospel when he heard it.  He pointed at his card lying on the window ledge between them.  "If you do think of something personal — anything at all — would you mind giving me a call?"

*     *     *     *     *

Hardy watched his wife walk from the back of the restaurant, noticed the heads at the bar turning.  One of the problems he had had when he was starting to fall in love with her had been her looks — they were too good.  He knew it was easy to get fooled by a pretty face.  It had happened to him before.

And even though he had known Frannie since she was a young girl — Moses' kid sister — once he started connecting with her, letting himself really
see
her, he made himself put on the brakes.  Not for too long, but enough to persuade himself that at least most of what he loved about her wasn't on the outside.  He had to admit, though, that even after three years, a lot of it still was.

The waiter was there, holding her chair out for her.  The little amenities.

"What are you smiling at?"

"I'm shallow.  I have no depth.  I wonder if our relationship is purely physical."

Frannie daintily popped a bite of calamari into her mouth.  They were by the window at Mooses', looking out through the sunshine onto Washington Square.  "Well, some of it, anyway."

They hadn't discussed it, but they had both felt they needed to go someplace nice — light, upscale, carefree — to wash away the tastes of their mornings.

She reached across the table and touched a finger to Hardy's cheek, trailing it along his jawline.  Picking up her glass, she swirled the Chardonnay, staring into it.  "Wine two days in a row.  You think Vincent will be all right?"  Their son was living on breastmilk and a few squashed bananas.

Hardy told her he didn't think Vincent would notice.  It wasn't as if she was out pounding herself into the ground with alcohol.

"I know.  Sometimes I just worry."  She put the glass down, scratched at the tablecloth.  But she wasn't really worried about Vincent — it was something else and Hardy was fairly certain he knew what it was.

"Pretty bad?"

She nodded.  "You look around here, and you see all these people being so happy, and then back there, in the jail… it kind of makes you wonder what's the real world."

Hardy covered her hand with his own.

"I mean, how isolated are we?" she asked.

The waiter lifted the empty plate from the middle of the table.  He removed some non-existent crumbs from the starched linen tablecloth with a small rolling hand-brush.  Someone began playing classical music — expertly — at the piano by the bar.

19

By Friday Hardy felt that he'd covered a lot of territory and uncovered very little.  Freeman had been his usual unenthusiastic self about the ATM, although he did admit — grudgingly — that it might be helpful at some point.

Freeman's attitude made Hardy decide that there was a real disadvantage in believing your client was guilty.  He was trying to keep his own mind open.  He had verified Lightner's opinion — about the battery passing through generations — with several other published and unpublished authorities.  Their explanations were all consistent — Jennifer had seen her mother beaten at home.  Her mother took it and took it, possibly without complaint to the children.  So that behavior became Jennifer's expectation of married life — if it wasn't there, things just wouldn't feel right.  Intimacy couldn't begin.

So, Hardy thought, Larry had been beating Jennifer.  Without a doubt, so had her first husband Ned.  According to Lightner's theory she would have had a difficult time marrying either of them if they hadn't gotten at least a little tough with her during courtship — they wouldn't have felt like husband material.

Whether or not it could be proved in a court of law, Terrell's scenario of Jennifer injecting Ned with atropine was plausible.  And — Hardy had to believe — if she killed Ned, it was a possibility that she killed Larry, too.

Next was, if Jennifer
did
kill both men, at least she had a good reason, though Hardy had a hard time with
any
kind of premeditated murder.;  Jennifer, on her part, still hadn't budged an inch on her denial of abuse, which continued to infuriate David Freeman, signed affidavit or no.

Freeman was afraid he would lose and that the decision would be upheld on appeal.  But he was hamstrung — he couldn't bring up BWS at all.  If he did he was all but admitting that Jennifer did it and even process of saying why, in spite of all her denials.

Hardy had finally located brother Tom at a construction site near the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park.  Struck out during the day, Hardy returned to the site after work hours wearing dirty jeans and carrying two six-packs of Mickey's Big Mouth and got him to talk for twenty minutes.

Hardy verified what the mother, Nancy, had said — Jennifer and Larry did not visit the family since a few months after the wedding.  Tom had been seventeen at the time.  Hardy could see that it had hurt the boy back then, although now the man covered it with bluster.

The last time Tom himself had seen the Witts had been Christmas Eve.  No one had mentioned that before and Hardy asked why not.

Tom had shrugged it off.  Why would anybody care?  He'd gone by his parents' home during the afternoon, had a few beers, and his mother had started moaning about Jennifer and the grandchild she never saw.  She'd bought Matt this great present and he wasn't even going to come over to see it.

Tom had gotten pissed off.  He drove his motorcycle over to Olympia, intending — he said — to kick a little ass, but by the time he got there, he figured there wouldn't be any point.  He wasn't going to change them.  He'd dropped off his own Christmas present — a whiffle ball and bat — with his nephew, said Merry Christmas to his sister, told her she really ought to go by their parents so Matt could get his present from his grandmother, then left.

And, he added — no surprise, they didn't come.

But here, Hardy thought, might have been the catalyst Glitsky had been talking about.  Out of the blue, Tom might not wake up one morning and say, "I think I'll go kill my brother-in-law," but he sure as hell might do it three days after being snubbed during the holidays, touching off years of resentment.

*     *     *     *     *

Walter Terrell sat in with them while they went through the physical evidence, and stood over them in the evidence lockup while Hardy and Freeman checked off the computer list with the items that came out of the bags.

There was Larry's blood-stained shirt.  All the other clothes.  The stuff that had been in pockets — Larry had a comb, a small Swiss Army knife, keys, some coins including a quarter painted with red nail polish.

"Larry hung out in bars?"  This didn't fit Hardy's profile so far.

Terrell shook his head.  "No sign of it."

"That's a bar quarter."  Freeman and Terrell both looked at him blankly.  "For the juke box," he explained.  "You paint your quarters red, you feed the box, you don't get charged when they come collect."

Freeman was unimpressed.  "So he went out for a drink on Christmas Eve.  Maybe.  I've had quarters like that turn up in my pocket.  Means nothing."

But pickings had been so slim that Hardy wanted to keep grabbing.  "Two days before he gets killed,
anything
he did means something."

Freeman didn't respond.  He had already moved the pile of coins to the side, going on to what looked like a bag full of trash.  "What's this stuff?"  Forensics had picked the room clean and bagged whatever might have interest — in this case the contents of the bedroom waste-basket — used Kleenexes, used Christmas ribbon and wrapping paper, the kind of plastic bag they wrapped shirts in at the dry-cleaners.  "This is evidence?"

Terrell pushed another bag toward Freeman, answered wearily.  "You know the drill, sir.  It's here if you want to use it.  It's your decision what's important."

Freeman pulled the bag nearer and slid the gun out onto the table.  He picked it up, checked its serial number against the prosecution's proposed exhibit list, smelled the barrel.  He checked the fingerprint report and his eyebrows went up.  "They didn't find her prints on the gun?"

"The clip."  This wasn't any surprise to Terrell.  He pulled another bag and pushed it to them.  "She wiped the gun."

"
Somebody
wiped the gun."  Freeman gave him the bad eye.

And Terrell shrugged.  "If you say so."  It was getting late on a Friday afternoon, and the room in the basement of the Hall of Justice didn't have the best ventilation.

Freeman tipped up the bag, expecting the clip to fall out.  Instead they were all looking at another gun.  "What the hell is this?  Where's this on the list?"

Terrell read from the list.  "Bag 37, Dumpster contents.  Want to see the egg cartons we found with it?"

"Yeah, but what the hell is it?" Freeman repeated.  "Why is it here?"

Terrell was holding up his hands.  "It was there.  Now it's here.  How should I know?"

"But it's a gun."

Terrell reached over and picked it up.  He put on his official voice.  "Sir!  Please, calm down."

"I'm calm enough!"  Freeman sat back in his chair.  "All right, son, I'm calm."

Terrell explained.  "It's a toy gun.  It's a good toy gun, but it's plastic.  See?  That's all.  As far as I know it's got nothing to do with the evidence in this case."

"Then why is it here?"  Hardy could play the straight man if it came to it.  The questions were obvious enough.

"It's here because they found it in the same dumpster as the other gun, the murder weapon.  I thought at the time it might be worth holding onto."

"The same dumpster?"

Terrell nodded.  "They both clunked out onto the street.  Guy who found 'em, when he saw the real gun, gave us a call."

"The garbage man?" Hardy asked.

"Right."

"How does this connect?"  Freeman was still sitting back, trying to get a take on it.

"It doesn't, that's what I'm trying to tell you.  I just had a theory and thought I'd run with it.  You never know."

Hardy knew this was Terrell's MO.  "What was your theory?"

"I don't know.  The perp comes in with this gun — looks real, doesn't it? — maybe he's doing a burglary, keeps it to threaten people.  He gets to the bedroom, sees the real gun, gets surprised by Larry and the boy, panics,
boom boom
.  This was before I fingered Jennifer."

"Did they print that gun, the toy?"

"Sure.  Nothing, though.  Anyway, I figured they
had
to be connected, right?  But I was wrong.  Besides, the guy tells me guns are the number-one toy you find in the garbage sector."

"Garbage sector…?"

"His words.  Parents don't want their kids to grow up violent, so some relative sends them a gun for Christmas or something, they toss it.  Second is Barbie dolls.  You believe that?  Who'd throw away a Barbie doll, brand new?"

"Can we stick to the gun?"  Freeman was leaning forward now, interested.

Terrell shrugged.  "Hey, you want it, you can have it.  Here, check it out."

He handed it to Freeman, who gave it the once over, then passed it to Hardy.  "What do you think?"

"It's a toy gun in a dumpster."

Freeman mulled it a few more seconds.  "Anything else in this dumpster you bagged that isn't connected to anything, Wally?  You want to waste more of our time."  Freeman was picking at the bags, lifting them, dropping them.  "We got trash, we got toy guns…"  He shook his head.  "Christ.  How 'bout we get to see the clip?"

*     *     *     *     *

Afterward, Hardy went up to homicide and finagled Glitsky into a stop at Lou the Greek's.  Freeman had gone to wherever it was he went on Friday nights — Jennifer was calendared for Monday morning and Hardy thought he was probably up to some behind-the-scenes shenanigans with somebody.

Now Hardy was trying to convince Abe that Hawaii was where the Glitskys ought to go for vacation, Glitsky saying that Hardy must be out of touch with what policemen made nowadays if he thought Abe, Flo and their three children could spend fourteen days at a Kampgrounds of America site, much less soaking up rays on Maui.  He concluded by saying he thought they'd probably go to Santa Cruz for the weekend, maybe the Russian River, spend the rest of the vacation painting the apartment.  "If we can afford the paint."

"Things a little tight?"

Glitsky chewed the ice from his tea.  "Things were a little tight before my voluntary five percent pay cut."

"You got that?"

"Everybody who makes over fifty grand.  And now, after a mere nineteen years on the force, when I have finally graduated to that lofty height, they whack me for getting there."

Abe swirled his glass in its condensation on the table, stared at the window.  "Just the other day I was saying to Flo — 'Hey, hon, why don't I volunteer to work two hours free every week next year?'  She thought it was a great idea since we don't need any money to live anyway."  He drank some tea.  "You know what I did?  I went in to Frank" — this was Frank Batiste, Glitsky's lieutenant — "and asked him for a $2,001 pay cut, save the city some money."

"And what'd Frank say?"

"He said he wouldn't — it wouldn't look cooperative.  I tell him I'm making $52,000 — take away the five percent, I'm down to $49,400.  My two grand and a buck idea puts me at $49,999.  All things considered, I'd rather have the extra $500."

"I would have done it."

Glitsky shook his head.  "No, you wouldn't.  You know why?  Because the difference is fifty bucks a month, which after taxes is maybe thirty-five — call it two burgers a week.  And for that you get a rep for being difficult.  After nineteen years!  And guess what happens to difficult guys?  Here's a hint, eighty-five didn't get to take their voluntary cut — they got pinked."

"Eighty-five?"  The number was higher than Hardy would have thought.  How could the city lay off cops?  This was almost five percent of the force.  "Eighty-five?"

"Sure.  What do we need cops for?"

"Or health workers."  Hardy mentioned the picket lines at the Mission Hills Clinic.

"But guess what?  The mayor's still got his driver.  You wouldn't want the mayor driving his own car around, would you?  What would people say?  How would it look?"

Hardy drank some beer.  "Well, at least he's got his priorities straight.  If it were me, I'd definitely do the same thing — lay off the police and keep my driver."

"I'm going to look into setting up my own security business," Glitsky said.  His eye caught something behind Hardy.  "And here comes my first recruit."

Terrell slid in beside him, across from Hardy.  "First recruit for what?"

"Glitsky Home Security.  Armed response in minutes."

Terrell took a pull from one of the bottles of Bud he'd brought over.  "We get to shoot people, no Miranda?  Catch 'em and put 'em down?"

"Yep.  And get paid for it."

Terrell was bobbing his head.  "I like it.  I'm in."  He had another swig, focused on Hardy.  "Your partner might be famous, but whew!"

"That's why he's famous — he's that way."  He looked at Glitsky.  "Freeman."

"What way?" Glitsky asked.

"What way?" Hardy repeated mildly to Terrell.  "You can speak freely to Inspector Glitsky."

"I got an idea bagged that might or might not be evidence and the guy goes ballistic on me.  I tell him he can use it or not.  Hey, I had a theory that might have worked — so?  It didn't, big deal."

Lou's was getting crowded, louder.  Hardy elbowed his way to the bar and bought another round.  When he returned, Terrell was in the middle of something that sounded familiar.

"… the Crane thing was at least worth looking into, but it turned out to be nothing, too."

"What did?" Hardy slid in, passed the round — two more bottles for Terrell, another iced tea for Glitsky.

"I was just telling Glitsky about that other thing, the guy in LA you called from the Witt house."

"Crane.  The guy who was murdered."

"Yeah, Crane.  Just talking about how theories sometimes pay off, sometimes not."

"Most times not."  No argument, just stating a fact, Abe was already chewing the ice in his fresh drink.

It drove Hardy crazy, but he preferred not to change the subject if Terrell had discovered a link with Simpson Crane and was going to talk about it.  But he couldn't resist the urge to get in a dig.  "Why'd you follow that up?  You've already got yourself a suspect."

Terrell didn't take any offense.  Instead, he smiled disarmingly.  "Hey, I love my work.  You called it — it was one of those coincidences.  You check it out, what do you lose?  You can't tie up a murder too tight, am I right or not?"