The Second Chair (2 page)

For a moment she considered calling North back and making another appointment for tomorrow. After all, the Norths had a benefit tonight—it came back to her now, they always had something going on—and they’d be in a rush. And she really did feel horrible. She wouldn’t be as sharp as she liked. But hell, that was getting to be the norm, wasn’t it? No sleep, no focus.

She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t seem to stop feeling that it didn’t matter anyway.
Of course it mattered,
she told herself. As her old boss David Freeman never tired of saying, the law was a sacred and beautiful thing. And Wu hadn’t dreamt of a career in it for five years, then studied it for three, and now have worked in it for five only to lose her faith and become cynical about it. That wasn’t who she was, not at her core. But it was who she acted like—and felt like—all too often lately.

The truth was—her bad angels kept telling her—that you didn’t really have to be as much on your game as she’d always taken as gospel, since law school. She’d proven that clearly enough in the past four months, when she’d essentially sleepwalked through no fewer than ten court appearances. No one—not even her see-all boss Dismas Hardy—had alluded to any problems with her work. She could mail it in, which was lucky, since that’s what she had been doing.

The clients were always guilty anyway. It wasn’t as though you were trying to get them off, cleanly acquitted. No, what you did was you squeezed a little here, flirted with a DA there, got a tiny bit of a better deal, and everybody was generally happy. That was the business she was in. It was a business, and she’d come to understand how it worked.

Mr. North had said that his son had been charged with murder, and if this were true, it would be her first. But her experience led her to believe that it probably wouldn’t turn out to be a righteous murder, charged as such. If it wasn’t simply confusion with another person, at worst an accident, it was probably some kind of manslaughter. And of course the Norths would want to get an attorney on board. If Wu went over now, at least she would get a feel for the case, some of the salient details. It would give her the weekend to get her hands on some discovery, if it was available yet.

And if she could keep herself straight and productive for two whole days in a row.

The Norths’ home was a beauty near the Embassy Row section of Clay Street in Pacific Heights. Old trees shaded the sidewalks on both sides, and most of the residences hid behind some barrier—a hedge or fence or stucco wall.

At a few minutes past four o’clock, Wu got out of her car to push the button on the green-tinged brass plate built into the faux-adobe post that held the swinging grille gate to the driveway. When she identified herself, she heard a soft click, then a whirr, and the gate swung open.

For all of the security, there was very little actual room between the gate and the house. Wu got inside, then turned left before she came to the garage. The driveway was quite narrow as it passed in front of the house, but widened into a larger circle near the entryway, and this was where she parked, the area deep in shadow. Getting out of her car, she could see blue sky above her through the trees and hear a steady shush of April breeze, but here in this small leafy enclosure, it was still. Briefcase in hand, she drew a breath, closed her eyes for an instant to gather herself, then went around her car, up the steps to the semi-enclosed brick porch, and rang the bell.

Hal North was in his early fifties, a short, wiry man who tended to dress, as he talked, loudly. Today he answered the door in a canary yellow, open-necked shirt that revealed a robust growth of chest hair into which was nestled a thick gold chain; white slacks; penny loafers with no socks. He hadn’t aged one week since Wu had seen him last. He wore his thick black hair short and basically uncombed—the tousled look. His face was not-unattractive, slab-sided with a strong nose and piercing blue eyes that sized Wu up afresh as he crushed her hand. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “You don’t look too sick.” He backed away a step. “You remember Linda.”

“Sure.” Wu stepped over the threshhold and extended her hand. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. North.”

Linda North was at least three inches taller than Hal and in another age would have been called a bombshell. Blond, buxom, thin and long-legged, she had always struck Wu as one of those freak-of-nature women over whom age and experience seem to pass without leaving a scar, a line, a trace. Though Wu knew that she was somewhere close to either side of forty—she’d delivered Andrew when she was just a year out of high school—in her jeans and tennis shoes and men’s T-shirt, with her hair back in a ponytail, she looked about seventeen herself.

“Ellie’s got some coffee going.” Hal was already moving, shooing the women before him down the short hallway from the foyer into the dining room. “Ellie!” He pushed open the door to the adjoining kitchen. “In here, okay?” He turned around, motioning to the women. “Sit, sit. She’ll be right in.” He pulled a chair next to his wife and sat in it, threw a last look at the kitchen door where Ellie would presumably soon appear, then came back to Wu. “Really,” he said, “we appreciate you coming out.”

“We just can’t believe this is happening,” Linda said. “It’s just a total shock. I mean, out of nowhere.”

“You didn’t expect something like this?”

“Never,” Linda said.

“Complete blindside.” Hal was shaking his head, his lips tight. “They kept saying Andrew wasn’t a suspect.”

“They always say that. You know why? So you might not think you need to have a lawyer with him.” She paused. “So I’m assuming you let him talk to the police?”

“Of course,” Linda said. “We thought it would help to be as cooperative as we could.”

The couple exchanged a glance.

“Why don’t we start by you telling me what has happened,” Wu said, “starting from the beginning, the crime.” She turned to Hal. “You said he’s accused of killing his teacher and his girlfriend?”

Linda answered for her husband. “Mike Mooney and Laura Wright. They were in the school play and . . .”

“What school?”

“Sutro.”

Wu wasn’t surprised to hear this. Among the city’s private schools, Sutro was a common choice among people with real money. “Okay, they were in the school play . . .”

“Yes,” Linda said. “Andrew and Laura were the leads, and they’d been rehearsing nights at Mr. Mooney’s house rather than the school. Then, the night it happened, somebody just came and shot them down. Luckily, Andrew had gone out for a walk to memorize his lines and wasn’t there when it happened or he might’ve been shot, too.”

Luckily or too conveniently, Wu thought. But she moved along. “And Andrew got arrested when?”

“They came by about twelve-thirty, one o’clock. School is out for spring break. And they just took him.”

“I was at work,” Hal said, “or I would have tried to slow them down, at least.”

“Then it’s probably better you weren’t here.” Wu was sitting beyond Linda at the table and could see them both at once. “When did the crimes happen?”

“February.” Linda said. “Mid-February.”

Wu’s face showed her confusion.

“What’s the problem?” Hal asked her.

“I guess I don’t understand how two months have gone by and all that time, with the police coming by, neither of you thought Andrew was a suspect?”

“He said he didn’t do it,” Linda said, as though that answered the question. “I know he didn’t. He couldn’t have.”

Ellie came through the door and the conversation stopped while she set out the coffee service. As soon as the door to the kitchen closed back behind her, Wu began again. “Mrs. North, you just said that Andrew couldn’t have done these killings. Why not? Do you mean he physically couldn’t have done them because, for example, he wasn’t there? Does he have an alibi? I mean, beyond the walk he took.”

“But he
did
go for that walk,” Linda said. “There’s no doubt about that. Besides,” she added, “Andrew’s just not that kind of person.”

Wu’s experience was that anyone—if sufficiently motivated—could be driven to kill. And Hal, she’d noticed, had stopped talking, was looking down into his coffee cup. “Mr. North,” she said, “why’d they decide just now, after two months, and after they’d talked to Andrew several times? Did something new come up? Do you have any ideas?”

He raised his eyes to her, made a face. “Well, the gun,” he whispered.

“That’s nothing!” Linda’s eyes flared and her voice snapped. “That’s not even been definitely connected to Andrew.”

Hal, muzzled, shut up and shrugged at Wu, who then spoke gently to Linda. “I don’t believe I’ve heard anything yet about a gun.”

She was prepared to answer. “This was early on, in the first week or so. The police asked Hal if we owned any guns, and Hal told them he had an old registered weapon . . .”

“Nine-millimeter Glock semi-auto,” Hal said.

Again, Linda snapped. “Whatever. And when Hal went to find it, he couldn’t.” She turned to her husband. “But you know you’re always misplacing things. It didn’t mean Andrew took it.”

Wu touched Linda’s arm. “But the police think he did?”

Linda looked at Hal, who answered for her. “They found a casing in his car.”

“So what?” Wu asked “Without the gun, you can’t have a ballistics test.”

“It was just a random piece of junk under the seat,” Linda said. “It might have been there forever. It was nothing.”

Wu tried to look sympathetic. “So the police didn’t specifically refer to that when they came today?”

“No. They just said he was under arrest. They had enough evidence, they said. Something about a lineup,” she added.

“He stood in a lineup? You let him do that? Who was trying to identify him?”

Hal North bristled. “I don’t know. Some witness. Someone identifying Andrew, obviously.”

“And wrongly,” Linda said.

“Although,” Wu phrased it gently, “as you say, he was there at Mooney’s place. So someone might have seen him. Yes?”

“Yes, but . . .” Linda slapped at the table.

Hal reached out and put a hand over hers. “Look,” he said to Wu, “we’re not sure why any of this is happening. We don’t think Andrew did this.”

Linda slapped the table again. “We
know
he didn’t do this.”

“Okay, okay, that’s what I meant,” Hal said. He turned to Wu. “But they must have built a pretty impressive case against him if they got all the way to arresting him, wouldn’t you think?”

Wu more than thought it. They had a case, and—since Andrew was the son of a wealthy and prominent man—it was probably a strong one. A gun in the house, a casing in Andrew’s car, a positive lineup identification. What she had here, she was beginning to believe, was a young man who’d made an awful mistake.

“What are you thinking?” Hal asked her abruptly.

“Nothing,” Wu said. “It’s too soon. I don’t know anything yet.”

“You know he’s innocent,” Linda said. “We know that.”

“Of course,” Wu said. “Other than that, though.”

By Sunday afternoon, when she met with Hal North again, Wu knew that they had a substantial problem. She also thought she had a solution.

This time it was just she and Hal in the large, bright, and high-ceilinged living room. Hal sat in the middle of a loveseat while Wu perched on a couch.

Linda had gone to visit Andrew and would be gone for at least two hours.

Wu had been lucky to get a couple of folders of discovery on Andrew’s case from the DA’s office before close of business on Friday. She had spent all day Saturday going over what the police had assembled. It looked very, very bad.

“What’s so bad?” North asked.

Wu sat all the way forward on the couch, hunched over in tension. Her folders rested unopened on the coffee table in front of her. “Where do you want to start? It could be almost anywhere. They’ve got a good case.”

“It looks like he did it?”

“Do you know anything beyond what we talked about on Friday?”

North shrugged. “I figured the gun was a problem, but I didn’t know how they’d tied that to him. They didn’t find it, did they?”

“No. Still no weapon, but there’s plenty in here”—she tapped the folders—“to prove to me that he had the gun with him that night. You want me to go over it piece by piece?”

North waved impatiently. “I don’t need it. If you’re convinced, it’ll be good enough for a jury.” He slammed a palm against the side of his seat. “I
knew
he took it, goddamn it. I knew he was lying to me.” Smoldering, North sat forward with his shoulders hunched, his elbows resting on his knees, head down. Finally, he looked up at Wu. “What about the lineup?”

“The man upstairs saw him leave just after the shots. Positive ID.”

North slumped again, shook his head from side to side wearily, came back up to face her. “So he did it.” Not a question.

“Well, maybe he wasn’t taking that walk to rehearse his lines, let’s say that.”

“Jesus. This is going to kill Linda.”

“She really believes him?”

“We’re talking faith here, not reason. I thought that alibi story was like the ultimate in lame myself, but once Andrew came up with it, he had to stick to it. I just wish he would have invented something else, almost anything else.” North shook himself all over, then straightened his back and threw Wu a determined, pugnacious look. “Okay, Counselor, what do we do now?”

Wu was ready for the question, and suddenly glad that Linda wasn’t here. Hal would play much more into her plan that she’d reluctantly come to believe was the boy’s best hope—albeit a defeatist and cynical one because it was based on the absolute fact of Andrew’s guilt.

As a good lawyer with a difficult case before her—hell, as a good
person
—she knew she should have been consumed with getting Andrew off. That was in many ways the definition of what her job was all about. Give her client the best defense the law allowed. And myriad defenses—insanity, psychiatric, diminished capacity, some form of self-defense or manslaughter—were always available, a veritable smorgasbord of reasons that homicide could be if not forgiven entirely, then mitigated. But all of those defenses and strategies involved huge expense for her client’s family, a year or more of her life’s commitment, and tremendous risk to her client should she fail, or even not completely succeed.