The 13th Juror (19 page)

It was the middle of the week, the middle of the afternoon, and he got right through.  Introducing himself, he was struck by the immediate chill that came over the deeply pitched voice.

"Perhaps it wasn't clear at the time, Mr. Hardy, but not only doesn't this firm take many criminal cases, I personally don't want anything to do with Mrs. Witt, so I'm not inclined to be of much help.  I'm sorry."

"Did you know her?  Personally?"  He had to keep her talking or she was gone, and he did have something he wanted to get to.

"I never met the woman.  I never want to.  Now I'm sorry, but if you'll excuse—"

"Please, if I might — one quick question.  Can you tell me anything about Crane & Crane?  Any connection to Dr. Witt?"

Silence, the decision being made.  Hardy knew that he and Ms. Bellows weren't adversaries in any real sense.  She might have felt a loyalty — or more than that — to her client Larry Witt, but good lawyers at least tried to observe the professional courtesies with one another.  Hardy was counting on that.  He heard her sigh, going ahead with this distasteful discussion.

"All right, I'm sorry, Mr. Hardy.  I liked Larry Witt.  I read the papers and I'm afraid I believe that his wife killed him and their boy."

"From what you've read in the papers?"

"That, yes, and some other things."

"What other things?"

Another pause, considering, rejecting?  "Let's get back to the one question, shall we?"

Though there might be a wide vein of information here, Hardy knew he'd have to let it go if he wanted to find out about Crane & Crane.  He'd spent the better part of a frustrating yesterday and all of this morning chasing down the chimeras of "other dudes" — Melissa Roman's parents, Witt's first wife Molly, a Dr. Heffler from Dr. Lightner's form.  He had not so much as spoken to any of them.  Now he had Donna Bellows on the telephone and he'd take whatever she was willing to give.

"Crane & Crane.  Some connection to Larry."

"That name is familiar in the sense that I believe I've heard it, that's all."

"It's a Los Angeles firm."

"That may be it.  You say Larry and—?"

"I don't know.  He called them a few days before he died."

"Before he was killed, you mean.  He didn't just die.  He was killed."  He listened to her breathe for a moment.  "I was Larry's financial advisor.  With respect to Crane, he may have mentioned them in some context.  This would have been about six months ago?  Whatever it was, if anything, it couldn't have been too important.  I really don't remember, but I can check."

"Would you mind?"

"Frankly, I do mind, Mr. Hardy.  I don't like my clients being shot to death.  It really bothers me.  And I don't want to help their killers get free.  But I'll look into it.  I said I would and I will."

Hardy thanked her.

"I'll call you," she said, and hung up.

*     *     *     *     *

"Date night" was a free-form event.  The traditional and sacred Wednesday ritual had taken them — before the children had been born — as far afield as Los Angeles or Reno or Santa Fe on the spur of the moment.  Date nights had been known to continue for several days, Hardy calling in to the Shamrock to have his shifts covered while he and Frannie gambled or perused art galleries or decided to take the ferry out of Long Beach over to Santa Catalina, the island of romance.

Tonight they were on another ferry chugging across the bay to Sausalito.  Out near Alcatraz the water was choppy, the wind high, the sun lost in a bank of fog that was rolling over and around the Golden Gate Bridge.  The temperature was in the fifties.

"Ah, summertime."  Frannie watched Dismas suck the bracing air.  They stood at the front rail on the upper deck, blown and sprayed.  "Nothing like the middle of July to get rid of the winter blahs."

Frannie leaned into the rail, holding onto it with both hands.  "Maybe that's it," she said.  "The winter blahs."  She looked up at her husband, her smile as lost as the sunlight.  He put an arm around her, bringing her inside his heavy coat, and she leaned into him.

"You all right?"

She considered whether she should tell him, how much she should tell him.  She felt like she was sneaking out, cheating on him.  But she didn't want to get into it, not just now.  It would become a discussion, the theme for the night, and she didn't need that.  She didn't need to clear everything with Dismas.  She loved him, but she had her own life, her own feelings.

For Frannie, seeing Jennifer Witt was somehow bringing things to the surface and that, she felt, was good.  Once she recognized what she was dealing with, she'd be better equipped to handle things.  Questioning how you felt wasn't necessarily threatening to her and Dismas, or to the kids.  She loved them all — her husband and her children.  It wasn't that.

It was what she started to say to Jennifer — that there was just so much that she hadn't been able to take time for.  She was losing sight of who she was, of who Frannie Rose McGuire Cochran (and now Hardy) had turned into and how it had all happened.  And how she felt about it.

Was she just some adjunct to whatever man she was with, the bearer of their babies?  She didn't really feel that with Dismas.  She hadn't felt that way with Eddie.  She and Eddie had been living an adventure.  Eddie had been about to start graduate school when he'd been killed.  They'd been saving money for everything, discovering new places, each other.

Then, suddenly, no warning, and Eddie was gone.  And there was Dismas.  Not in Eddie's old space, but close to it.  And now, two years — five minutes? — later, she was a stay-at-home mother, with no money worries, where Dismas already knew all the good restaurants and the great places, where Dismas had already made the discoveries and so many of the decisions.

Like living in this old house — which, of course, they'd decided to do together.  It made so much more sense.  And she did love the house.  But that wasn't it — the point was that even though she'd changed it to her tastes — brightened it up, painted, rearranged, added a room — it was still his house, Dismas' house, not really their house.

All of their friends, too, were his friends and their wives.  Abe, Flo, Pico, Angela.  Even Moses — her own brother — even Moses had been Hardy's friend long before she'd been in the picture.  Not that she didn't like these people — she did, but she hadn't found them on her own.

What about her old friends?  The people she and Eddie had known?  Didn't they count?  Why weren't they part of her new life anymore.  Was it the kids, or Dismas, or herself?

She knew Dismas wouldn't approve of the extra visits to Jennifer.  The original idea had been simply to set her mind at ease about the kind of person Jennifer was.

But now something else was happening, and it was important, tapping into a vein of her own that hadn't been mined in a couple of years.  Maybe by talking about things with Jennifer — why she continued to let both of her husbands beat her, for example — Frannie could help her change, see the way things were supposed to work.  It seemed worthwhile, even if Dismas didn't know about it.

She was sure he had some secrets from her.  You didn't have to tell your spouse every thought and word and deed in your life.

And seeing Jennifer was doing her some good.  She was Frannie's own friend, confidant, and Dismas didn't need to know about it.  She could choose her own friends, make decisions for herself in her own life.  Later, she'd tell him.  Maybe after he and Freeman got Jennifer off.  After the trial.

She was her own person, but somehow she'd let the predictable in her daily life devalue her.  She even found herself wondering whether Dismas would keep loving her, why he loved her in the first place, all the while telling herself she deserved to be loved.  You're a great girl.  Wonderful, sensitive, cool — if you don't love yourself how can you love anybody else?  How can anybody love you?

The ferry had entered the lee of Sausalito and the chop had flattened.  Dismas tightened his arm around her.  "Hello?"

It really didn't have anything to do with loving him.  She loved him, his face and his body and the easy way he did things.  It was just that she needed a little more of herself in her life.

"I'm here."  She kissed his cheek.

23

"Molly."

Freeman's living room on Friday morning, and Hardy was sitting back in one of the leather chairs, Freeman in his maroon bathrobe checking off answers, making notes in pencil at the kitchen table.

"Molly wasn't here in December.  She hadn't even heard he'd died, or she'd even a better actress than our client."

"How'd she take it?"

"I think it would depress me if the news of my death was greeted so warmly."

Freeman raised his bushy eyebrows, a question.

Hardy continued.  "She hated his guts, even after lo these many years.  He used to beat her, too."

Again the eyebrows went up.  "But he didn't beat Jennifer."

Hardy kept a straight face.  "That's our defense, right?  He didn’t' beat her.  So she says."

"Never laid a hand on her."

Hardy had finally spoken to Larry Witt's first wife, Molly.  She was now a guidance counselor living and working in Fargo, North Dakota.  She had not remarried and had not seen or heard from Dr. Witt in five years.  "I guess we could have somebody double-check, see if she was in North Dakota over Christmas, but I'd bet she was.  The news of Larry's death absolutely made her day."

Freeman put down his pencil, staring out the window.  "Let's stop a minute, Diz.  What kind of son-of-a-bitch was this guy?"

Crossing his legs, sitting back, Hardy took a minute.  "By all accounts, he was a model citizen, total professional, concerned father, great provider.  He just happened to beat his wives."

"You really believe that?"

"You don't?"

"I don't know why Jennifer couldn't cop to it.  Even if the legislature doesn't go for it, there's a good chance a jury would walk her, and no chance she'd get the death penalty.  Powell wouldn't even ask."

Freeman was referring, Hardy knew, to the fact that the California Assembly had recently failed to pass an amendment that would have codified Battered-Woman Syndrome as a legitimate mitigation for murder.  Since the courts were often accepting it anyway, the precedent was established and it was a moot question, but the legislature's action — or lack of it — was a definite setback for proponents of the defense.  "I simply can't understand her resistance to it."

Hardy could go through all of Lighter's explanations, but it all came back to Jennifer's contention that if she admitted Larry beat her, then she had a reason to kill him that a jury might well convict on.

"But that's just it," Freeman continued, "they'd be just as likely — hell, more likely — to let her go!"  He stood up, stretched, sat back down.  "But you believe he did beat her?"

"Yes, absolutely.  He was a control freak.  She got out of line, he whacked her around."

"And she really felt she couldn't leave?  She had to stay there and take it?"

"That's the profile, David.  It's sad but it's true.  He'd track her down if she left.  He'd take the kid.  He'd kill her if she tried.  All of the above."

"So she killed him first.  It worked with Ned, it ought to fly with Larry, right?"

Hardy shrugged.  "She says not."

"Well."  The pencil beat a tattoo on the table.  "I must say, in all my years doing this, I haven't seen too many cases this pure.  I'd like to watch her play poker, see if she bluffs."

"Maybe she's a Vulcan."

"What's that mean?"

It amazed Hardy.  Was it possible that David Freeman had never seen "Star Trek," didn't know that Vulcans never bluff?  Looking around the apartment, he realized it was probably so.  There was no sign of a television.  "Never mind, David.  It's a long story.  You want to keep going here?"

The tattooing stopped.  "We'd better."

*     *     *     *     *

From Freeman's apartment, Hardy walked up the street a block and treated himself to lunch, alone, at the Stanford Court — he wanted an hour to think.

There had been no police report on the alleged break in of Larry Witt's car by Melissa Roman's parents or anybody else.  Dr. Witt hadn't reported it, a fact which hadn't surprised Abe Glitsky, who had explained that the populace was beginning to understand that there was no such thing as a non-violent crime in San Francisco anymore.

There were bad things that happened, sure — like Larry's car — but if those things didn't physically hurt people, the police tended not to get involved.  They weren't about to break out the troops tracking down  a culprit who had lifted a five-hundred-dollar CD player from a car — they didn't have the manpower — any more than they would investigate a pine cone falling from a tree and breaking your windshield.  Practically speaking it just couldn't be a police matter.  Hardy loved it — vandalism as a
force majeur
.

He was having salmon again.  Grilled with a light wasabe glaze.  A glass of Hafner Chardonnay.

He was worried about Frannie.

Something was going on with her and she wasn't telling him about it.  Maybe it was his continued involvement with Jennifer.  She shouldn't have expected that one visit was going to change anything.  And obviously, going to the jail had been a trauma.

He hated to see her unhappy.  Maybe he was spending too much time running around for David, looking for a plausible "other dude."  The inherent cynicism in it all was getting to him.  David seemed to care almost nothing for the guilt or innocence of Jennifer, just whether he could get his client off.  That was what he did for a living, he said.  Was he really that cold?  Was there a deeper concern behind the so-called professionalism?  Hardy couldn't tell, couldn't really read David that well.  And he suspected that that was just the way David wanted it.  No black or white for Hardy in this case.  Not with Jennifer, not with his colleague David, not with anything, which could wear a person down.

The waiter appeared now and asked if the food was satisfactory.  Monsieur had not touched the plate.  If he would like to order something else, of course…

Well, for today at least, Hardy decided he would not be looking for "other dudes."  The crux of the matter in court was whether proof existed that Jennifer was a battered woman.  Once that was established, the question of her culpability could be debated.  Providing Jennifer cooperated.

Anyway, Hardy couldn't let Freeman shake his belief in some objective truth, in the facts.  Something specific did happen, in a certain way and at a certain time.  If he had any pretensions of seeing justice done, the first step was to uncover those facts.

He had Ken Lightner's assertions.  He had seen the bruises on Jennifer's mother.  He had the first wife's, Molly's, admission that Larry Witt had beaten her.  He even had Jennifer's acknowledgment that she and Larry had been in "a few fights."

This was ammunition but it wasn't a smoking gun.

*     *     *     *     *

Dr. Saul Heffler was one of the doctors from Ken Lightner's list that Lightner had "accidentally" left on the bench for Hardy to find and pick up.  Heffler had a practice in a one-story office building on Arguello, halfway from downtown to Hardy's house.  The doctor and the lawyer had played a serious game of phone tag during the week and it was time to put an end to that, even if it meant sitting a while in a waiting room.

The gods smiled and a parking spot opened directly in front of the address as Hardy pulled up.  He took this as a good omen.

Inside, the receptionist was blessedly free of bureaucratic baggage and informed Hardy that the doctor could probably block out some time in about an hour.  Would that be all right?

Hardy walked up to Clement Street, drank a cup of iced espresso at an outside table to ward off the post wine-for-lunch slump, then bought some earrings for Frannie from a sidewalk vendor.

He loved lower Clement Street, had loved it through its incarnations, first as a Russian enclave with piroshki and antique shops, then as an upscale — though not
too
upscale — Haight
Street with its hippies, haze of incense, and coffeeshops, to now, a bustling Oriental bazaar with tea-smoked ducks hanging in windows and the slightly off yet somehow appealing commingled smells of cooked meat, raw seafood and garbage.

Strolling in the bright sunlight, enjoying the smells and the breeze, he bought a newly steamed pork bao and chewed it happily.  There was a bright turquoise children's kimono in a window and he went inside the tiny store, buying it for Rebecca along with a tiny silk shirt for his boy.

He'd make this up to Frannie.  Things were going to change.  He wasn't sure how, but he wasn't going to let anything — not David, Jennifer, frustration, fear or silence — get between them and keep them apart.

Three minutes after he was back inside Heffler's office and the receptionist told him he could go right in.

*     *     *     *     *

Heffler's small but well-lit office had three diplomas and about six hundred mounted fishing flies on the walls.  The man was in his mid-fifties with a full head of pepper-and-salt hair, a flat unlined face — a hint of Navajo? — over a lanky, gangling frame.  He smiled easily.

Hardy explained the situation.  He was, after all, working for Jennifer's defense.  He wondered if the doctor would help him verify some background.  He showed Heffler Jennifer's signed release allowing her doctor to discuss her medical history.  (Hardy had told Jennifer he needed her medical records in connection with what had happened to her in Costa Rica.)  He'd be glad to help, the doctor said.  What did Hardy want to know?  Hardy told him.

"This was four years ago?  Five?  I can't say I remember her offhand.  I'll have Joanie pull the file.  We keep the archives in the storeroom.  Take two minutes."

They waited, talking fishing.  Heffler was leaving the next morning for a six-day wilderness trip to Alaska, going after the huge salmon that ran up there, maybe some Arctic char.  Hardy held a hand over his stomach.  "Don't say salmon to me.  I think I'm hitting my limit."

Joanie came in, handed over the file and left.  Heffler opened it and flipped some pages, his face closing down.  "You want to believe people.  You wonder how much of this you really see."

"You got something?"

"I don't know what you call something.  Maybe I should have seen this, suspected something.  I don't know."

Hardy waited.  Heffler read some more, then closed the file.  "She was my patient for seven months, came in without a referral, said she'd just moved here from Florida.  First time I saw her she had fallen down the steps in her new house."

"The first time?"

Heffler nodded.  He opened the file again.  "Three months later she broke her arm skiing.  She thought it was just a sprain until she got home, otherwise she would have gotten it set up at Squaw Valley."  He turned up a page, scanning.  "This one," he said, "maybe I really should have seen this one."

"What's that?"

"Three months after the arm — pretty regular, isn't it — she comes in with this fluke accident.  She was cleaning out a closet and the shelf came off, loaded with stuff, slammed down against her back.  Her urine had blood in it."  He wasn't looking up.  "Contusions and bruises over he kidneys, all the way across her back."  He closed the file again.  "I must have asked her, I can't imagine I didn't."

"And she just said no, simple as that?"

"And got herself another doctor."  He took in a deep breath, let it out as a sigh.  "I'm ready for a vacation," he said.

"You see a lot of this?"

"A lot?  Some, I guess.  I see some accidents.  People hurt themselves.  I can't go to the police every time someone breaks their arm, comes in with a black eye.  I wouldn't have a practice left."  He picked up the file, opened it, flicked impatiently at the pages.  "Here's something."

Stuck to the back of the folder was a yellow post-it pad, and on it was a name and address.  "I don't know why this is here."

He buzzed Joanie again and she came back.  "Oh, that's just my note to myself when I get a request for records."

Heffler leaned forward, still frowning.  "So this might have been the next physician this patient went to."

Joanie was as bright and cheerful as Heffler had been before this had begun.  "It might be. I'd assume so, wouldn't you?"

*     *     *     *     *

"I told her I wouldn't treat her unless she let me inform the police.  She ought to get some counseling.  I saw her the one time and I knew right away."

Hardy was sitting in the waiting room of Dr. Helena Zamora's office.  Now it was closing time.  A tightly strung woman about Hardy's age, Zamora let him in but politely told him she had a dinner appointment in forty-five minutes and could spare him no more than ten.  He outlined what he had learned at Dr. Heffler's and what he was trying to find.

"She came in," Dr. Zamora said, "with a large round bruise under one of her breasts an some cock-and-bull about tripping against a knob at the top of her bannister.  I got suspicious, checked her sign-in form, sent for her records.  Then I called her and never heard from her again."

She pulled her glasses up and balanced them on top of her forehead.  "Common story, too common.  Does that help you?"

Hardy said it did and thanked her.

Dr. Zamora took her glasses all the way off.  "She finally killed the animal that was doing this, did she?"

"She's charged with it."

"Good for her."

*     *     *     *     *

From a phone booth in a gas station at 19
^th
and Kirkham, Hardy called Jennifer at the jail.

In San Francisco it is a myth that prisoners get one phone call.  The common areas in the jail have pay telephones on the walls and whenever the inmates want to, they can use them.  There had even been significant calling-card fraud that had been traced to both floors of the jail, a thriving black market in phone numbers and the "pins" that go with them.

"Jennifer.  Hardy.  I've got a quick question.  Have you ever lived in Florida?"

There was a longish wait.  "This is not a trick question, Jennifer.  Have you ever lived in Florida, that's all?"

"No, why?"

"No reason.  Just checking something.  Talk to you later."