The Second Chair (43 page)

Hardy sat in his reading chair for a couple of minutes, pondering. Then he rose and walked back up through the dining room into the kitchen. In the dark and empty family room, he stopped to gaze at his tropical fish for a moment of centering and peaceful reflection. He turned on the room’s lights, then knocked on his children’s bedroom doors at the same time—perpendicular to each other.

“Just a second!”

“I’m doing homework!”

He knocked again. “I need to see both of you right this minute please.”

The familiar grumblings ensued, but he heard movement from inside both rooms. By the time the first door opened and the Beck appeared, he was standing out in the middle of the family room, hands in his pockets, relaxed and casual. Vincent opened his own door, saw his sister pouting, looked to his dad. Having a hunch what might be coming, he wiped all traces of his own bad attitude from his face. He asked helpfully, “What’s up?”

Hardy gave them a full ten seconds of low-grade glare, then finally spoke in the calmest voice he could muster. “I don’t know if it’s escaped your attention or not, but your mother is upstairs in bed, pretty beat up. And while I realize that the critical schoolwork you’re both working on so diligently is far more important than the job I work at to keep us fed and clothed, I don’t think it’s asking too much for both of you to contribute toward the smooth running of the household when I’m, for example, busy on the telephone. And let me say I’m just a tad disappointed that I have to mention this to people of your ages, to whom it should already be, and I thought was, second nature. But clearly I was wrong.”

He paused for a moment, made eye contact with both of them. “So here’s the deal. Whenever the doorbell or the telephone rings and either your mother or I, or both of us, ask if one or even both of you could please get up and answer it, I don’t want to hear about your homework, and I don’t want to be told to wait even for a second. I want you both to jump and even race to see who can get to it the fastest.

“And whoever does get there first, I expect you to extend to whoever it is the kind of hospitality that you would expect to receive in the home of a civilized person. For example, Vincent, you don’t leave a guest who asks for someone in this house by name standing out on the porch in the cold. And beyond that, if it’s an adult you don’t know, you look him in the eye, shake his hand and introduce yourself. Then you invite whoever it is in and even—I know this can be grueling—engage that person in small talk and make him or her feel comfortable until the member of this household that he requested makes an appearance. Does any of this sound remotely familiar to you? Have we ever talked about this before?”

Rebecca tossed her hair. “If this is just Vincent, Dad, I’ve got homework I need—”

Hardy wheeled on her and cut her off. “As a matter of fact, my dear, it’s not just about Vincent. Your homework is not an automatic pass on the normal duties of citizenship around here. Vincent has homework, too. Believe it or not, even your father has homework from time to time, like tonight. Relatively important homework. Your mother never stops having homework. So homework is not an excuse to opt out of your duties as a citizen in this house. Is that clear?”

She drew a pained, audible breath. It hit Hardy very wrong. “And while we’re on these special moments of politeness, I’d really prefer not to see your theatrical sighs or, Vin, your looks of obvious displeasure. We all live here together. We’ve all got things we need to do. So we respect each other, we cooperate, we use nice manners to each other and to our guests.” He looked from his son to his daughter and back again. “Is there anything about what I’ve just said that either of you don’t understand? Vincent?”

His son was leaning against the doorjamb, downcast. He shook his head no.

“Vincent,” Hardy repeated. “Look at me. In the eyes. Good. Is there something about what I just said that you don’t understand?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s the right answer. Rebecca?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Even better.” Hardy turned as the phone started to ring in the kitchen. “Don’t either of you trouble yourselves,” he said. “I’ll get that.”

“I usually wouldn’t call this late,” Glitsky said, “but your phone was busy last time I called so I figured you might still be up. How’s Frannie?”

“Sleeping, I hope, if she’s not lacing up her track shoes. But that’s not why you called.”

“No.”

“Are you waiting for me to beg?”

“No. You’ll never believe what we think we found out about the Executioner.”

“Don’t tell me he’s a redheaded dwarf.”

“He might be,” Glitsky said. “But he may also be using a silencer.”

“Still on silencers.”

“We didn’t have anything else, so I sent out half of homicide to ask around in Twin Peaks. Between the two killings, we talked to twenty-one citizens who were nearby—just like with Boscacci—and nobody heard a thing. Elizabeth Cary’s neighborhood, too. Remember her? Nobody on the whole cul-de-sac, and all of them were home. Nothing.”

“So what are you saying. These were all this Executioner?”

“That’s the working theory. In any event, you get four shots in high-density areas and nobody hears anything, something’s a little funny.”

Hardy didn’t really agree. It was a noisy city, and people were so inured to near-constant aural assault that he thought a gunshot could easily go unremarked. Nevertheless, though he wasn’t ready to mention it to Abe yet, when the time came he might be tempted to call his friend to the stand as a witness in the Andrew Bartlett matter, where the actual sound of the gunshots was the proverbial dog that barked in the nighttime.

Another alternative theory presenting itself, another ball in the air.

But something entirely different struck him. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Did you say Boscacci? What’s this got to do with him? You think this guy shot him, too?”

“I don’t know,” Glitsky said. “But it is tantalizing, don’t you think?”

“That they all might be connected? Sure. But you’ve got to admit, it’s not much to go on—something people
didn’t
hear, especially a shot, which most people think is a backfire if it registers at all. I’ll bet most of ’em didn’t hear tinkling sounds either, and that doesn’t mean Tinker Bell did it.”

“You sound like Treya.”

“There are worse people to sound like.”

“Granted. But it’s not all fairy dust. I called down to the lab again, and asked them to physically check Allan’s slug. The tech couldn’t get a ballistics match with the Twin Peaks slugs—they were too deformed—but he did get to eyeball identical scuff marks on rounds of identical caliber. He couldn’t swear to it in court, maybe, but his bet is it’s the same gun, silenced.”

“Maybe,” Hardy said, “though if he couldn’t swear to it in court, which last time I checked was where we had to do these things . . .” But he didn’t mean to bust Abe’s chops. “Anyway, it does sound like you’re getting somewhere,” he said, “but if you’d told me you’d found something with the other victims about that jury the Cary woman sat on, maybe Allan was the prosecutor on the same case, then I’m thinking you might—”

“That’s it!” Glitsky’s voice crackled with a rare enthusiasm. “What I forgot. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hardy said, but he was talking to a dial tone.

28

T
hough it had suddenly taken on a much higher profile, Hardy’s professional life wasn’t all, or even mostly, Andrew Bartlett. First thing Tuesday morning, he had another appointment with Clarence Jackman, so he didn’t even check in at the office, but drove directly to the Hall of Justice, parked in the All-Day where Boscacci had been shot, and was talking to the DA at 8:30 sharp.

The issue they were discussing was a theory called “provocative act murder,” where the person charged with the crime had not killed the victim. Instead, the theory went, the person charged had done something so “inherently likely to cause a violent response” that they were legally responsible for the murder.

There were two classic examples. The first was when somebody goes in to rob a liquor store, pulls a gun on the proprietor, and the proprietor pulls his own weapon out from behind the counter and shoots, missing the robber but accidentally killing a bystander. The proprietor in this case is completely blameless, where the robber might be charged with provocative act murder. The second example is a scenario where two drug dealers get in a shoot-out, and one of them grabs an innocent person, using that person as a human shield, who is then killed by a shot from the other drug dealer’s gun. In this case, while the second drug dealer might be guilty of murder, too, the person who grabbed the human shield in the first place, though he didn’t fire the lethal shot, could be charged in the death.

In the case Hardy was arguing, his client was Leila Madison, the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy named Jamahl Madison, who’d gone with a gang of four of his homies to rob the apartment of one of their neighbors. Hardy had gotten connected to Leila because she was the cleaning lady of another of his clients. Besides Jamahl, she had three other children under the age of ten, all of whom lived with her own mother in Bayside. It was a horrible, all-too-common situation, now aggravated by Jackman’s initial decision to charge Jamahl as an adult with the provocative act murder of his friend Damon. Jamahl had not shot Damon. In fact, the apartment owner, while the gang was fleeing from the robbery, had taken some shots at all of them, and had wounded Jamahl and killed Damon.

And again, as had been his habit lately, Hardy wasn’t planning to take the case to trial. He was facilitating. Though his heart didn’t go out to poor Jamahl, it did to the boy’s mother, and he’d taken five hundred dollars, donated by Leila’s boss, to see if he could persuade Jackman that in this case, provocative act murder wasn’t the right call.

“. . . if he were even, say, seventeen, Clarence. But the boy’s only fourteen. He’s gotten his own stupid ass shot already and lost his best friend. I’ve got to believe that’s going to make an impression that maybe it’s not a good idea to rob people.”

Jackman, behind his desk, seemed to be enjoying the exchange. “So would thirty or forty in the can, Diz. Time he gets out, I’ll bet he’s lost his taste for it entirely.” He spread his hands on his desk. “My question to you is do you honestly think he’s going to change, ever?”

Hardy shook his head. “You ever meet a kid that didn’t, Clarence? Age fourteen to forever. He might. He gets the right counselors at YGC, somebody catches a spark with him, he comes out in a few years and he’s a stand-up human being. But the real question, the legal question, is the provocative act.”

Jackman ran a finger under his shirt collar. Now, his deep voice an almost inaudible rumble, he chuckled. “If you break into somebody’s home, you forfeit quite a few of your inalienable rights.”

“Granted. But Mr. Parensich”—the robbery victim who’d actually shot Damon and Jamahl—“was never really in danger. The boys didn’t even have guns. They didn’t even know he was home.”

“That’s what they say, so it’s just more bad luck for them. And let’s remember, there were five of them.” He held up his hand. “
Cinco.
This is a substantial amount of gang throw-weight, and you know it. Even if this guy was only fourteen. I believe Mr. Parensich felt legitimately threatened.”

“I don’t doubt it, but these kids didn’t act up that much. They were already fleeing when Parensich fired at them. Self-defense or not, they’re the ones that took the shots. Let’s call it square.”

“If you’re suggesting it, let me just say that no way am I going to charge Parensich,” Jackman said. “Somebody’s got to stand up for the victims in these situations.”

Hardy actually broke a grin. “That’s a lovely campaign moment, Clarence, but you can’t say that running away is inherently likely to cause a violent response, and that’s what the boys were doing, hightailing it.” Hardy paused, considered, concluded. “Parensich’s response was legal, but unnecessary, so the murder can’t go under provocative act. That’s all there is to it.”

Jackman had been listening carefully, rolling a pencil under a finger on his desk. “So how do I get the message out to these people, Diz? You break into some guy’s house, you don’t understand somebody’s likely to get hurt? The tragedy here isn’t your boy and his mother, but Damon, who was also fourteen and who won’t be getting any older. If these dumb fuck kids, pardon me, wouldn’t have decided to knock over Parensich, Damon’s still walking around. It’s such a goddamn waste.”

“I hear you, Clarence. I really do. But you’re punishing Jamahl in any event. He’s going to YA on the robbery. That’s appropriate. But you won’t win hearts or minds by a reach of a charge like this. You’ll just seem unfair and vindictive. Jamahl’s only fourteen, Clarence. As you say, he’s still walking around, so he’s still got a chance. Slim, but real. You don’t want to take that away from him on this. And,” Hardy was getting to the bottom line, “you and I both know there’s no way you’ll get any jury in this town to convict him, so why waste the time? You’re just pissed off.”

“I am pissed off.”

“That’s fine. But take it out on somebody’s who’s earned it. This one just ain’t right, and you know it.” Hardy found himself surprised that he’d used these words. He hadn’t thought that way in quite some time.

Jackman rolled the pencil some more. By all indications, he was making his decision on Jamahl, but when he finally spoke, it wasn’t about that. “I hear through the grapevine that you’re working with your associate on Bartlett. That the hearing is this morning, if I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s right. It should start in about an hour.”

“I’m taking your presence on the team to mean that some kind of reason is going to prevail up there.”

“Well, we’re playing the cards we got dealt, Clarence, if that’s what you mean. Amy should never have tried to make the deal with Allan, that goes without question. But not because she didn’t deliver.”

“No, then why not?”

“Because I’m more than halfway to convinced he’s not guilty.”