John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

Hardy knew that David Freeman had no love for most reporters but was careful not to let them see it – they could be helpful in a trial with political overtones. Candidate Dean Powell wasn't going to let a photo opportunity pass without getting whatever possible mileage out of it, so the two attorneys – one on either side of the courtroom – were now chatting amiably with reporters.

Powell was coming across as considerably more sincere than he had four months ago – perhaps he'd gotten some coaching. The hand gestures didn't seem as rehearsed. He moved a step closer to his own personal knot of reporters. "Look," he lowered his voice, speaking from the heart, "I'm in favor of the death penalty. And we've got special circumstances here that, if proven, warrant the death penalty – hell, that cry out for it. Show me a little remorse, an admission of guilt, even a cry for mercy, the District Attorney can be responsive to that. Defendants aren't numbers to me – they're people, living and breathing human beings. This trial isn't part of my campaign to Get Tough, California." He leaned a leg casually over the corner of the table on the prosecution side of the courtroom. "This is a gamble by the defendant – she thought she could commit murder for money and get away with it. She was wrong. Terribly wrong. I am not bloodthirsty, but if she is found guilty, we're going to ask for the extreme penalty. That's justice, and she'll have brought it on herself."

Freeman had his own group. "This is, unfortunately, all too typical of the ways things get done. The very fact that all you folks are here shows how out of line it is already. Nobody's talking about the weight of evidence, which is light – fatally light. It never would have gotten this far except it's likely to keep some names in the newspaper more than they would be otherwise. I doubt it will even get to trial after I file my motion to dismiss."

"You don't think it'll get to trial?" This was from a woman with a microphone.

Freeman shook his head. "I doubt it."

Another hand, another microphone. "But the grand jury indicted her."

Freeman smiled. "The grand jury tends to indict whomever the District Attorney asks it to."

"But she escaped from jail, didn't she? She ran away?"

"She's resourceful and she's innocent, and she doesn't trust a system that's already gotten it this wrong. I think in her place I would've broken out, too, if I could have figured out how to do it."

Powell was standing now, a hand in a pocket, smiling his smile. Freeman, serious and indignant at the system's injustice, was warming up for when the judge came in. Everybody had an agenda.

Hardy walked back up the middle aisle and out into the hallway. They still had twenty minutes.

Looking through some papers, his briefcase beside him, Ken Lightner was sitting on the wooden bench in the hall across from Department 22. Hardy sat next to him. "I want to apologize to you. It seems you were right."

Lightner put the papers down. "About what? Not that I wouldn't take just about anything right now."

"About Jennifer's mother, her father beating her."

The psychiatrist nodded, shuffling his papers. This, obviously, was old news to him.

"You're disappointed?"

"I thought you might have found something a little closer to home, something with Jennifer herself."

Hardy shook his head. "Jennifer isn't giving anything away. Especially after this escape fiasco. Freeman's pulling out his hair, what he's got left."

"I'm pulling out mine, too. She's made me stop talking about it, which given where she is tends to limit our conversations. How are we not supposed to talk about it?"

"What, exactly?"

"The truth. Larry beating her. Abusing her. Her defense. What she's going through. To say nothing of all this madness over the last months. How is she supposed to deal with all that?" Lightner pushed his hair back with his fingers.

"You've seen her, then?"

"I've seen her. I try to visit her almost every day."

"That must cut some hell into your practice."

Hardy hadn't meant to be accusatory, but Lightner's back went right up. "I take care of my patients, Mr. Hardy. I care about them. I try to be there for them when they need me. As I assume you do with your clients."

Hardy took the rebuke. Lightner had a point. Sometimes you didn't punch the clock. "You want to accept a second apology in five mintes? That didn't come out the way it was supposed to."

Lightner shrugged it off. "It's all right. I'm under a good deal of stress myself. I don't mean to snap back at everybody but I don't know what to do about this, about Jennifer. Her irrational guilts, her self-destructiveness… it's making me question my own judgment, whether I can do her any good."

"What do you think would help her?"

"I don't know right now. I don't know. The problem is I can't get her to talk about, even acknowledge, her real problem."

"So what have you been talking about every day?"

Lightner's expression said he knew how it must sound under the circumstances. "We talk about her self-esteem, Mr. Hardy. How she's finally growing up, taking responsibility for herself. About her future."

"Her future?"

"I know, I know, we don't have to go into it." Lightner had put his papers down, was rubbing his hands together. He raised his eyes to Hardy. "But that's what she wants to talk about. How she's finally getting things straight. She says she knows she can probably get out of this altogether by blaming Larry but she's just not going to do it. It wasn't his fault."

"Beating on her wasn't his fault? What about her saying she didn't do it, and a defense of battered woman syndrome would be an admission?"

Lightner nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid so. Things like that are deeply ingrained." He stood up, taking his briefcase, asking where the men's room was, if he had time before Calendar came on.

He had disappeared around the corner before Hardy realized that he had left a couple of his papers on the bench. Glancing down at Jennifer Witt's name, highlighted in yellow, Hardy picked them up.

This first page was an initial patient's sign-in form from Lightner's practice, filled in four years before, giving an overview of medical history, previous physicians, allergies, surgical background and so on. Hardy thought a minute, folded the paper, and put it in his inside coat pocket.

Jennifer in her red jumpsuit, handcuffs and leg irons, was the first computer number, or "line," called.

Something was up. Judge Oscar Thomasino wasn't interested in the computer printout on his desk before him – his eyes followed Jennifer as she limped from the bailiff's entrance on the judge's left until she got to the podium in the center of the courtroom where she stood flanked by her two personal bailiffs.

Freeman was waiting for her, though there was a near-tangible air of friction between them. Jennifer glanced behind Freeman's back to where Hardy sat at the defense table. She nodded to him, her eyes grateful, or at least welcoming, though he couldn't say why that should be so – he hadn't seen her in a week.

He also wasn't exactly sure why he'd come today – this was the second arraignment for Jennifer and she certainly wasn't going to change her plea. Maybe, he told Frannie lightly, he missed being in a courtroom. Now he wondered if there hadn't been a germ of truth there.

This was supposed to be a more or less pro forma administrative procedure that would determine the date that Jennifer's trial would start or, more precisely, when it would relocate to its eventual Department. Once the presiding trial judge and the courtroom were assigned, which would be at another calendaring Monday like this one, the trial itself might not start for another six months to a year.