John Lescroart - Betrayal

Sue reached out and put a hand on Maggie's arm. She spoke with a surprising gentleness. "Maybe because it wasn't, in fact, true, Maggie. Maybe Washburn's just playing on our gullibility, figuring we'll want to believe that this young man, Evan, who'd had such a terrible time in Iraq, that somehow his injuries there are to blame for the fact that he can't say he didn't kill Nolan. If it wasn't for all the Iraq stuff, would you have any doubt about what really happened? Would his story have made any sense at all? That's what I finally came to see. It just doesn't. I wish it did, but it doesn't."

"He came to beat him up," Cannoe said, "and wound up staying to kill him. If that's not what you see, Maggie, and you don't think you can ever say otherwise, I'll call for the bailiff and tell him we're hung. You want me to do that?"

Ellersby looked around the table at all of her intelligent, well-meaning fellow citizens. None of them cold-blooded, none out for vengeance. All of them had given nearly a month out of their lives to see that justice was done, that the system worked. And for her part, she knew that she had been irrationally swayed by the power of Washburn's simple argument in closing that he was too smart and too experienced to ever allow a ridiculous defense like Evan's "I don't remember" to be the centerpiece of his case, except that it was the truth.

That's why they had gone with that defense, because it was the truth.

And Maggie Ellersby's mind's eye could picture Evan passed out in his apartment, not from alcohol, but from his brain injury-not in a blackout but in a true state of unconsciousness, knocked out from the beating he'd taken.

But there was no evidence that that was what had happened. None at all. And what if Washburn, as another one of her colleagues on the jury had pointed out early on, was nothing more than a man who was paid to tell lies on behalf of his clients? That's what all lawyers were, right? She flashed on the O. J. Simpson case, the Dan White "Twinkie Defense" case in San Francisco. If she was the lone holdout, and her vote to acquit wasn't based on any evidence she could name, how would she be able to explain herself to her husband and her friends?

How could she live with herself?

"Maggie?" Sue softly queezed her arm again.

"Do you want me to call the bailiff?" Cannoe asked.

Ellersby looked up to the ceiling, said a quick prayer for Evan Scholler's soul, and brought her eyes back down to the table. "No," she said. "I think we need to do one more ballot."

Dismas Hardy's windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the downpour. They thwacked as fast as they could go, but this latest in a series of March squalls reduced his visibility to near zero. He could barely make out the first gate until he was at it. He loved his little two-seater Honda convertible with the top down in the summer and fall, but it wasn't made for this kind of weather. The plastic back window had long since gone opaque and even with the defrost fan blasting, the inside surfaces of the door windows were fogged over too. He pushed the button to lower his driver's window so he could present his identification to the guard and the rain misted in over his face.

Behind him, someone honked, then honked again. His rearview mirror was useless; he couldn't see his side mirrors, either, through the condensation on the windows. The rain pounded down on the cloth roof. He was inside a drum. Blinded, cocooned, he had to lower his window another few inches so he and the guard could see each other. Opening the window allowed more water in, enough to soak through the fabric of his suit in seconds.

Another blast from the impatient prick behind him. Hell, Hardy was already wet; he had half a mind to jump out and confront the guy, pull him out of his ride, deck him, dump him into the churning brown stream that ran over the road's gutters.

Instead, he squinted out to see the guard, flashed his driver's license, and spoke so he could be heard over the rain. "Dismas Hardy, to visit one of your inmates, Evan Scholler."

The guard, all but invisible through the downpour, spoke loudly, too, from his semienclosed space, "I'll have to see your ID better than that, please, sir. Sorry."

Seething, Hardy handed it out. Waited. He had time to decide that if the car behind him honked once more, he would go take the driver out, but then his wallet was back at the window and he heard a crisp "Thank you, sir. Ahead to your right after the next gate."

And he rolled up his window and let the clutch out simultaneously.

When he'd left the city a couple of hours ago, the sky had been light gray, but it hadn't even been drizzling. So he didn't have an umbrella or a raincoat with him.

After he found his spot in the parking lot, he turned off the motor and parked to wait out the worst of the squall. Regain some of his composure. Whoever had been behind him-some delivery guy maybe-didn't follow him to this lot. He thought it was probably just as well.

Composure was an issue. Even before the rain, Hardy's physical reaction to the scheduled visit to the prison had caught him off-guard. It had been a while since he'd had a client in prison, and he was out of practice. He kept having to reach for a breath, his palms were sweaty, an unaccustomed emptiness had hollowed out his lower rib cage. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back and drew in a long breath through his mouth, which he then exhaled with a certain deliberation. He did it again. And again.

When at last the drumming of the rain stopped, he opened his eyes. Now, suddenly, it was just a light drizzle. Seizing the moment, he opened the car door and stepped out onto the asphalt.

HARDY HAD SEEN pictures of Evan Scholler in the newspapers, caught some glimpses of him on the TV news as the trial had gone on, so he thought he'd recognize him on sight. But when the guard first opened the door to the very small room to bring the inmate in, Hardy took a quick glance and decided that this couldn't be his man; the guard must have gotten it wrong and this shackled guy must be going to see another attorney in a different room.

For one thing, Evan was younger, just thirty-one now; this inmate looked at least forty. Further, in photos and on television, Evan was far better-looking, with a stronger chin, lighter hair, a better complexion, smaller in the gut and bigger across the shoulders. This guy here was big, casually buffed, physically intimidating, especially wearing a flat-affect expression that made his thin mouth look mean, even cruel. At first glance, this guy looked like a stone killer.

But the guard, checking the slip of paper in his hand, said, "Dismas Hardy?" A nod. "Here's your mope."

Evan took the slur without reaction. He stood at attention, but relaxed in the pose, seemingly uninterested in what, if anything, happened next. He looked Hardy up and down as he might a side of beef hanging in a cooler.

"You can take the shackles off," Hardy said.

For the obvious reason, guards in prison did not carry guns on their persons, so in any one-on-one encounter such as this delivery, shackles on prisoners tended to be the norm. Hardy knew several attorneys who visited their clients here and most of them were happy to let the shackles stay put. A shackled convict was a controllable convict, and with many of these inmates, you couldn't be too careful.

The guard hestitated for an instant, then shrugged. "Your call." With practiced precision, he unlocked the handcuffs from the chain that was threaded through the Levi's belt loops encircling Evan's waist. The cuffs still dangled from the waist chain at his sides.

Now, though, his hands free, Evan rubbed at his wrists.

The room was four feet wide by about seven feet long. A heavy, solid, industrial gray metal desk squatted against Hardy's right wall and stuck out two-thirds of the way across the space; in a pinch it could serve as a first-line barrier in the event of a surprise attack. Folding chairs sat on either side of it. Hardy had a door with a wire-glass window in it behind him and another door just like that facing him. The guard who'd let him in had cautioned him to stay on his side of the desk, "just to be safe." He'd also pointed out the small button low in the wall in Hardy's side that could be pressed in the event of any trouble.