The 13th Juror (47 page)

Hardy said he'd find it.  Bachman said he'd see him there.

*     *     *     *     *

He collapsed back down on the bed.  When he closed his eyes he had a sensation of motion, of the room spinning around him.  He forced himself up to a sitting position.

He was forgetting something.  It seemed important, maybe crucial, but he couldn't put his finger on it.  And the effort at thought was so tiring.  Minutes passed.  He started to doze sitting up.  The telephone rang again.

"Are you still sick?"

"I'm still sick."

Frannie's earlier anger had given way to concern.  "Why don't you come home, Dismas?  You ought to see a doctor."

He told her about his scheduled meeting the next day with Bachman.  One way or the other, that would be the end of it.  He had to stay until then.

She stopped pushing.  Okay, if that's what he was going to do.  The kids, she said, were fine.  Rebecca was really missing him — that wasn't a guilt trip, just a fact.  She, Frannie — his wife, remember? — missed him, too.  Would he please try to take care of himself, be careful?

He told her he would.  He didn't have much choice.  He wasn't going anywhere feeling like he did.  Hermetically sealed in his hotel room, he was going to sleep right now for the night.  He'd see her tomorrow.

In the bathroom he took some more aspirin, drank two glasses of water.  His face in the mirror was drawn and sallow.  Everything ached.  He crossed to the window to pull the shade closed.  A purple dusk lay on the city streets.  Further off, Mount Wilson, up on the crest of the San Gabriels, glowed vermilion, diamond glints of the gasping sunlight sparkling out of the rocky brush.  He put an arm up against the window and leaned heavily against it.

Below him in the parking lot a lone man got out of his car, closed the door and went to his trunk.  He took out a small carrying case, looked around the lot, closed the trunk, then quickly, without wasted motion, bypassed the lobby entrance and walked directly underneath into Hardy's wing of the building.

*     *     *     *     *

It was just the way he had felt at home.  Paranoid.  Stupid.

But knowing that didn't help.  Suddenly he knew he had to get out of here.  He had given Jody Bachman his room number, told him he'd be staying in all night.

Jody Bachman, who by Hardy's scenario had hired someone to kill Simpson Crane, Crane's wife, Larry and Matthew Witt.  And now Hardy was the only one standing between him and his seven million dollars…

There wasn't much to pack.  He gathered his old clothes, still wearing his new ones.  There was no one in the hallway when he stepped into it.

The elevator opened and he was facing a thin dark well-dressed man.  The man carried the small carrying case he'd seen earlier, or one very much like it.  Hardy stepped by him into the elevator as the man got out.  He was looking for a room numbers as the door closed.

52

Jody Bachman was twenty minutes late, and if he was surprised to see Hardy sitting alive at the table he had reserved, he showed no sign.

The fever had broken after another twelve hours of heavy sleep in a motel just outside of Glendale.  Hardy, in new loafers, slacks, an indigo sports coat and regimental tie, still hurt.  His muscles still ached.

He had given himself a couple of minutes of feeling like an idiot when he woke up.  But, after all, he
had
woken up and that was some consolation, maybe even justification.  It had probably been fatigue and fever.  Absolutely nothing to it.  But it was done.  He had changed hotels.  In all likelihood it had been foolish and unnecessary.  He could live with that.  Had, in fact.

He knew who Bachman was before he got to the table.  Entering the room as though he owned it, he was one of those southern California ex-surfers whose aging process didn't seem to run on the same battery as that of mere mortals.  He had to be thirty-five or so if he was a partner at Crane, but he looked ten years younger — chiseled cheeks, a cleft in his chin, not a worry line anywhere.  The hair, which would have been peroxide blond fifteen years before, was now a light chestnut and fell forward in a Kennedy lock.  He either used a tanning salon or spent a lot of time at Margaret Morency's pool.

There was no question — it was a power room.  Bachman's first stop was where the mayor of Los Angeles sat at a table for six, at least one of whom Hardy recognized as a prominent and much photographed state legislator.

As Bachman worked the room, winding his way back to the window seat, Hardy sipped his club soda.  There was no smog.  Los Angeles south of downtown sprawled over some warehouses, then expanded to a horizon of oil derricks, rail yards, power lines, freeways, gypsum quarries.  It was a view for those who favored expanse over anything pleasant to look at — there were no bridges, islands, bodies of water, distinctive buildings, hills or green patches.  Maybe Bachman didn't yet rate the better window tables, where the mayor and the congressman and whomever they ate with could glimpse the ocean, the glittering and verdant west side, the San Gabriels.

"Sorry I'm late.  Jody Bachman."  Bachman mouthed another greeting to someone he had missed on his first pass through the room, then — finally — sat.  "I can't seem to catch up."  He laughed.  "It never ends.  You having a drink?"

Hardy tipped the glass.  "Club soda."

"Me, too.  How guys have a martini or even a beer in the middle of the day…"  He shook his head.  "It wipes me out.  I might as well take a sleeping pill.  So what can I do for you?"

"I'm trying to get to the end of something myself.  My client got sentenced to death on Friday."

Bachman, sipping his water, stopped it halfway to his mouth.  "Jesus," he said, putting the glass down, "that's a different breed of law."

"It's not exactly boardrooms and bylaws."

"Death, huh?  Witt's wife, right?"

"That's right.  Jennifer."

Bachman whistled soundlessly.  The waiter arrived.  He wore a tuxedo and placed a glass of what looked like cranberry juice on the table.  "Just the special, Klaus, for me.  Whatever it is."  He included Hardy.

"Sounds fine."  When Klaus was gone, he said, "I'm trying to get the judge to lower it to life."

"I thought you appealed.  Forever."

"Eventually," Hardy said.  "If it comes to that."  He didn’t intend to explain the protocol.  "Jennifer says she's innocent and" — Hardy allowed a bemused grin for Bachman's benefit — "I'm still tempted to believe her.  So what I've got to do is give the judge some doubt.  Doesn't have to be much…"

"And you think Witt's call to me…"

"I don't know, Mr. Bachman.  It's the only unturned stone at this point."

Another power broker passed the table, giving Bachman a friendly shake of the shoulder.  He nodded absently, then sat back in his chair, reaching for his juice.  "If this is your best bet…"  He took in the view for a minute.  "After we talked, I tried to check the logs last night but I couldn't get into the computer until this morning."

Hardy waited.

Bachman reached into his coat pocket and extracted two pages, stapled and folded.  He opened them, handing them across to Hardy.  "I went ahead and copied my original timesheet on the back — sometimes they get my writing wrong."

The first page was a section of typed summary of Bachman's billable time.  On December 23, beginning at 6:10 p.m., he had billed .20 to YBMG.  Under desc./svs. was typed" Tcon w/Witt.  ???."

Bachman translated.  "It was just a call to answer some questions.  I guess I got about ten or so and Witt was one of them."

"Do you remember what his question was?"

"Not a clue.  I billed it to the Group, so it must have been something to do with the offering, but it's gone.  Sorry."

Hardy looked again at the bill.  "But the call lasted twenty minutes?  Isn't that a long time to have no memory of at all?"

For the first time Bachman showed an edge of pique — the pleasant smile faded for an instant.  He pursed his lips, then drank some juice.  By the time he put the glass down he had recovered.  "You've got it wrong.  .20 isn't 20 minutes.  In its wisdom, the firm's billing is done in tenths of an hour.  Two tenths is twelve minutes."  He leaned forward, confiding in Hardy.  "And even one second more than six minutes counts as twelve — we round off.  The call itself might easily have been less than five minutes…"  His smile held no warmth now.  "But I really don't remember.  What more can I say?"

Hardy flipped to the original timesheet on the back.  Whatever had been written after "Tcon w/Witt" — about two line worth — had been scratched out.

"I know."  Bachman, seeing Hardy on that page, answered before Hardy could put the question.  "And the answer is I don't know.  Maybe my pen ran, maybe I just wrote an unnecessarily long description.  They ask us to keep it simple.  You should meet my secretary — she flays me if I get redundant or wordy."

Hardy stared at the scratching for another useless moment.  He'd love to get his hands on the original, see if some expert could get something to come up.  But even then, what?  Whatever Bachman had originally written, it couldn't have been so incriminating that, by itself, it would help Jennifer now.

He looked up.  Bachman was studying him.  "You know, I'm happy to help you if I can, and I  think I've been pretty forthcoming.  But I have to wonder when this YBMG inquisition is going to stop.  It gets old.  I mean, is this what happens when you close a deal?  Everybody wants a piece of it."

"I don't want a piece of it."

"Well, I know, that's not what I meant.  But all these questions…"

"I've got a young woman who's got a good chance of getting executed unless I can prove somebody else killed her husband.  To me, I'm sorry, but that's worth a couple of questions."

Klaus returned with lunch — an avocado stuffed with baby shrimp, three pieces of high-end lettuce, a wedge of pumpernickel bread.

Bachman pushed the lettuce around.  "That's understandable," he said.  "But what does Dr. Witt's phone call to me have to do with his death?  You're not suggesting that somebody with YBMG killed him, are you?"

"I didn't know.  It was a question that wasn't answered.  I knew that Witt had called you, and his lawyer in San Francisco told me he was upset about the circular.  I wondered if he threatened you somehow—"

"And then I killed him?  For what?  You just can't be serious."

"Hypothetically, if you're interested, I can explain it."  The shrimp, all two ounces of them, were sweet.

Hardy thought it would be instructive to watch Bachman's reaction.  He ran it all down to him — from the phone call to Simpson Crane to Restoffer being called off.

When he had fininshed, Bachman nodded, his smile a distant memory.  "A lot of lawyers are writing novels these days, Mr. Hardy.  Maybe you ought to try your hand at it."

Hardy spread his palms.  "This is non-fiction."

"Yes, and so is the fact that nobody is hiding anything here.  Everything is completely out in the open."

"Simpson Crane let you trade out your hours for stock?"

This stopped him, momentarily.  "Sure."

"Your firm does that often?  Takes that kind of risk?"

This had moved nicely from the hypothetical.  Bachman rubbed a hand over his upper lip.  Maybe he was starting to sweat.  "Hey, in these times you take whatever business you can get.  It's a buyer's market out there."

"And Simpson had no problem with that?"

Thinking fast, Bachman said, "Of course not.  Simpson and I were friends.  I wouldn't have done anything to hurt Simpson."  Hardy realized he had never directly accused him of that.  "We talked about it, of course.  At length.  We figured there was a more than reasonable chance of downstream recovery.  Which, I might add, has materialized.  The firm has made two million dollars on my time.  It took a risk, sure, but I'd say it was worth it.  Wouldn't you?"

Bachman's hand seemed unsteady as he picked up his water glass.

Hardy nodded.  "What about the other five million?"

He stopped the glass midway to his mouth, then drank, nearly slamming it back down.  "There is no other five million."

Finally, Hardy felt he had forced Bachman into an outright lie.  Time to call him on it.  "Clarence Stone said the Group paid you fifty thousand shareds.  That's seven million dollars.  If two went to your firm, where's the other five?"

Bachman swallowed.  "That was a personal bonus," he said.

"You just said there wasn't any other five million."

"I mean for the
firm
.  To the firm."

"So there is another five million?"

"How was everything?  Are you gentlemen finished?"  It was Klaus.  "Perhaps a little dessert?  Some cappacino, espresso?  We've got a marvelous
tiramisu
."

Bachman had pushed himself back from the table.  "Nothing," he said.  It was a dismissal. Klaus did not even look at Hardy.

The interruption had given Bachman enough time.  He had not gotten to where he was by giving in to panic.  This was another hurdle, an obstacle to overcome.  "Yes, I made a bundle," he said.  "And the last time I looked,
that
was not a crime."

Hardy leaned forward, trying to regain his momentum.  "Witt threatened to call all the other doctors, didn't he?  He would've blown the deal."

Bachman's smile returned.  "If you're going to be making those kinds of accusations, Mr. Hardy, you'd better have some proof.  There are libel and slander laws in this state that could make you a poor man in a heartbeat.  You should know that."

"Who did you hire?"

Bachman shook his head, not amused.  "I didn't, Mr. Hardy.  But if I did, would I be so foolish as to leave a trail?  Do you think I might have written the person a check?  Now, if you'll excuse me" — he pushed his chair back, standing — "I've got a one o'clock I'm running late for."  He nodded one last time, caught Klaus' eye and told him to put lunch on his bill.

53

Whatever he found out or thought he had uncovered in Los Angeles, the unpalatable truth remained that he still couldn't prove a goddamned word of it.  In the plane he scribbled notes on courses of action he ought to take — he would call the FBI and try to have them pursue their RICO investigation into Simpson's death.  He thought it might be possible to trace a withdrawal of funds from one of Bachman's accounts if he could get some federal agent interested in his theory.

A big if.

Another possible avenue was getting through to Todd Crane, Simpson's son, now the managing partner.  Maybe he'd be interested to learn that Jody Bachman had turned over to them only fifteen thousand or so of the fifty thousand shares he had earned.

Or did Todd already know it?  Maybe he was plain thrilled and delighted with two million against seventy-five thousand in billables.  It was, Hardy realized, only his personal fantasy — unverifiable, as fantasies tended to be — that Bachman would have traded
all
of his fifty thousand shares against his time.  Who said he would have to do that?

If those two approaches failed, maybe Restoffer…?  No, not realistic — Restoffer was out of it.

It was down to Judge Villars, sitting as the thirteenth juror — down to what he could make her believe.

His own theories didn't matter.  He couldn't prove them.  They weren't going to do Jennifer any good.  He had to go another way.  He had to be lawyer and make an argument out of whole cloth if need be, even if he hated what he had to do.

But — to be fair — it
wasn't
whole cloth.  At least he'd be starting with one truth, the one that had been denied throughout and yet had remained constant — Jennifer had been battered.

Overriding Jennifer's objections — he wouldn't even ask her again — he was going to lay it out for Villars — Jennifer's intractability, the Freeman affidavit, the defense decisions.

The irony did not escape him.  He could not use anything he knew about Jody Bachman and YBMG.  And what he could introduce probably had no direct bearing on what had happened in the Witt's bedroom on December 28.

The plane nosed down over the Bay.  It was almost four o'clock and he was to face Villars tomorrow morning at nine-thirty.

He was down to his last dart.

*     *     *     *     *

"Of course, I'll do anything."

Dr. Lightner sat framed by the glass in his office.  His secretary had gone home.  The eucalyptus grove behind him was dark, in shadow.

"Good.  I want you to tell the judge about Larry beating her."

Lightner sat forward, ramrod stiff at the proposal.

Hardy leaned forward, almost pleading now.  "I know what I'm asking, Doctor, but it's really Jennifer's only hope.  You've stood by her so long in all this."

But standing by someone and revealing their privileged communications were very different matters.

After a couple of seconds Lightner stood up.  He turned his back to Hardy and looked out into the grove.  "I can't believe it's come to this."

Hardy came up next to him.  "After Larry died, when you were seeing her, she never…?"

Lightner was already shaking his head.  "She wouldn't talk about it."

He felt a sudden sinking in his gut, a vertigo.  For an instant he thought it was the flu again.  Unbidden, the awful thought reoccurred — had she done it after all? 
Stop it.

Lightner walked back to the window, put an arm against the door jamb, looking out.  "This is priest and confession, isn't it?"

Hardy couldn't put a lighter face on it.  "Yes, it is."

"Betray the privilege.  Betray her trust."

"Save her life."

Lightner turned and faced Hardy, the ruddy face pale and drawn under the beard.  "What about the doctors I gave you?  Couldn't they help?"

"What are they going to say?  Where is there proof?"  At this stage statements about her bruises and abrasions weren't enough.  He needed her therapist's confirmation.

Lightner turned back toward the grove, opened the door and stepped outside.  Hardy followed, and they walked a hundred feet over the duff.

"What do you think happened that morning?"

Lightner let out a long breath.  There were muffled sounds of traffic on 19
^th
Avenue.  The doctor stared through the trees.  "I think it was pretty much the way she told it, except she left out the physical part."

"The physical part?"

"Larry hitting her."

"He hit her that morning?"

Lightner turned to him.  "Let's say I saw the bruises the next time I saw her, which was two days later.  I think he hit Matt too.  I'm not saying he did, I'm saying it could have happened—"

"Matt didn't have any bruises."

Lightner shook his head, unable to get it out.  "Matt's head…" he began.  And Hardy saw what he meant.  If Larry had struck Matt in the head, the bullet would have destroyed any sign of it.  It evoked his own delirious scenario of a few nights before.

"I don't know what happened," Lightner repeated.

"What do you
think
happened, Doctor?  This is Jennifer's life here.  I've got to make Villars see it."

Lightner was trying to walk a line, trying to stay on the angel's side of privilege.  "All right, this is what I believe happened."

Lightner faced him, the last low rays of the sun striking the red in his beard.  Worn down by the tension, by the moral and professional dilemma, at last he appeared to have made up his mind.  "She was leaving him, taking Matt with her.  That was the fight.  He had beaten her, badly, on Christmas Eve.  She called and told me."

"And what did you do?"

"I told her to leave, to get out.  She said she was afraid Larry would kill her.  She told me about the gun.  It was in the headboard.  He would use it.  I told her to take it and get out.  Obviously she didn’t."

"Then what?"

"On Monday it started again."  And he began to develop a scenario with chilling plausibility.  Hardy could scarcely breathe as he listened.  "He hits her and she says she's really going, leaving for good.  She starts yelling for Matt, who is nowhere to be found.  Maybe he's hiding somewhere.  In any event, suddenly Larry, who's been after her, apparently decides he has had enough.  He runs upstairs.  Knowing what he's doing — going for the gun — Jennifer starts running up after him to get him to stop, to plead — anything.  By now she is screaming, hysterical, just like that woman from next door said.

"But Larry isn't in the bedroom.  And the gun is.  She grabs it, hears a noise behind her, turns.  There is another gun!  Coming out of the bathroom door — he's gone in there.  She fires.  It's Matt.  She had hit Matt, who had been hiding in the bathroom all this time with his new Christmas present.  A toy gun from his grandparents.

"And then suddenly Larry is out, rushing her, his hands raised to strike.  She fires once, point blank…"  Blinking now, as though coming back to himself from a place removed, Lightner turned to Hardy.  "It was over," he said.  "Later she tried to cover up.  But she had no choice.  Larry would have killed her…"

Hardy stood a long moment.  The sound of traffic was gone.  The sun was down, a chill coming up off the leaves.  It was a great defense, if it were true.

"
That's
how I
believe
it may have happened.  Larry went upstairs for the gun.  There was no premeditation.  All Jennifer wanted to do was get out, get away from him.  She should have done it long ago.  It was self-defense, I'm convinced…"

"Will you testify to that tomorrow?  If I have an affidavit for you, will you sign it?"

"To what?  There's no evidence there.  Even I know that."

Hardy knew it, too.  But he needed Lightner there, needed his story, a story but a highly educated one, for his own ends.  "Let me worry about that.  My question is, can I count on you?  Will you at least tell the judge what you have just told me?"

Slowly, sighing with the weight of it, Lightner nodded at last.  "All right.  If she'll let me."

*     *     *     *     *

Rebecca had missed her daddy.

He was lying on the rug in front of the fireplace snuggling with her.  She hadn't let him get up, wrestling him back down to the ground, both of them laughing and talking their own language.  Rebecca had given Hardy ten minutes of unsullied joy with her repertoire of kisses — rabbit kisses, nose to nose; butterfly kisses, eyelashes against Hardy's cheek; heart kisses, which Rebecca had invented herself, where she kissed her hand, held it to her heart, then pressed it to Hardy's and held it there.

It was past the children's bedtime, dark out, lights off inside, but the family was together again.  The fire crackled.  Vincent fell asleep and Frannie laid him down on the couch.  She came down to the floor and rested her head on Hardy's stomach.  Rebecca lay heavily across his chest — her breathing became regular.

*     *     *     *     *

"Are you coming to bed?  Isn't tomorrow it?"

"In a minute."

"Dismas."  Her eyes were soft, worried.  She crossed over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.  "Hon, it's eleven o'clock."

Hardy sat behind the manual typewriter at the kitchen table, his forehead in his hands, sick with exhaustion, his brain a buzzsaw.  He could not stop thinking.  He had been writing for three hours.  First, touching up Lightner's carefully worded affidavit.  Then he had reviewed his motion under California Penal Code Section 190.4(e) to modify the sentence down to life without parole, which was within the judge's absolute discretion.

The second brief was trickier because he knew he could not hope to prevail unless he had legitimate grounds to demand a new trial.  To this end he had two arguments:  The first one was that the packaging of the Ned Hollis murder count with those of Larry and Matt had fatally prejudiced the jury as a matter of law.

True, both Freeman and Jennifer had personally waived this issue on the record, but that could be dealt with.  Hardy argued that no
competent
lawyer could have ever declined a mistrial under those circumstances, and that Jennifer's acquiescence was the result of incompetent advice.

(He knew Freeman wouldn't bat an eye at such a tactic, and in fact would have pointed it out to him if Hardy hadn't thought of it himself.  The idea was to keep your client alive, not to stroke egos.)

This was a reasonable point, although — again — Villars had already ruled on it and was unlikely to change her mind.

His second argument was his last best hope — evidence on Jennifer as a battered wife had been suppressed… and Hardy knew that here, legally, things got shaky because who, after all, suppressed the evidence but Jennifer herself?  He would need to try to explain why.

He was trying to bring up an argument for life in prison rather than death, under guidelines outlined in the penal code.  The argument, technically, at this point could only be used in mitigation, not in overturning the guilty verdict.  It was probably inadmissible under the other section as grounds for a new trial.

If he dared hope for a new trial, then Villars would have to make the connection, and the leap.  And she would have to go out on a judicial limb to do it.  He had no idea if she would.

But he had no choice — his eggs had to go into this basket — he had to rely on Villars being interested in justice, in the truth, as she thought she was.  She had told him she agonized over the death penalty, that the responsibility staggered her.  But even so, he would be asking her to reverse herself on rulings she had already made during the trials.  If she wavered at all here, Powell would scream.  And Powell was going to be the state's Attorney General.  He would not be a good enemy for Villars to acquire just now…

Part of Hardy knew that he was kidding himself.  He knew that, in practice, reversals at this stage didn't happen.  The final administrative motions might be dressed up as the defendant's last stand, but their true intent was to give the judge a chance to save herself from the stigma or reversible error.  Only on paper
might
this last hurdle have an effect on fairer application of the death penalty — in practice, historically, it rarely made any difference.

*     *     *     *     *

After he had gone over his motions, he spent the rest of the night triple-checking the evidence folders and reviewing the interviews from the beginning.  His notes on Tom DiStephano.  What the physicians had told him about Jennifer's "accidents", her bruises.  Freeman's affidavit about Jennifer's forbidding the battered-wife defense.  The abortions.  The dentist Harlan Poole's first testimony.

And thank God he had spoken up back then, insisted it go on the record.

He thought that Villars would give him an opportunity — he would probably be allowed to start.  But his leeway would be severely constrained — if it wasn't on the record she wasn't going to let him bring anything up for the first time tomorrow, that was for sure.

Frannie kissed the top of his head and went to the bedroom.  He noticed the light going off.  She had wisely given up on him for tonight.

He stood up and grabbed the telephone, pulling it around the corner into the work area off the kitchen.  He closed the connecting door behind him.

A phone rang five times before a weary voice answered.

"Nancy, I'm sorry to wake you up, but there's one last thing I need to know."