John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

Jennifer nodded. "Yes. Sometimes I think the trick is to just keep running so you don't have to stop and think about it. Once you stop, then…"

Taking a long moment, Frannie leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "Today I was sitting rocking, feeding Vincent, and all at once I'm crying. Really sobbing. Now why would that come over me when I look at my life and I'm fine? I'm happy day to day, Dismas and I are good. I love the kids. I don't get it."

"You miss your first husband, Eddie?"

"A little. But I'm used to him being gone. I know he's not coming back. It's not that. It's more that I haven't sorted things. Haven't even thought about it, and here I am in a marriage with two kids and this is my life and sometimes I don't even know how I got here."

Jennifer scratched at the pitted counter on her side of the glass. "Talk about not knowing how you got somewhere."

Frannie forced a smile. "Look at me, talking to you here. I've got no business doing any complaining, seeing where you are."

"It’s okay," Jennifer said. "It's okay. I won't be here forever. Either way – at least I'm out of this place."

"I don't know how you're handling it."

Jennifer took a minute, swallowed, then forced her own smile. "It isn't like I've got much choice… He treats you right, does he? He doesn't hurt you?"

The segue here was unclear. "Who?"

"Your husband."

"Dismas?" Frannie shifted her weight on the hard wooden chair. "No, I mean, yes, he treats me very right. He'd never hurt me. He loves me."

Jennifer gave her a look that seemed to ask what that had to do with it. But she said, "Did Eddie?"

"Hurt me? No, never."

Jennifer leaned back in the chair, ran both hands through her cropped hair. "It must be me," she said. "I've always believed it was me."

"What was you? What?"

Jennifer sat forward now, hunched. Slowly she lifted her hand and placed it against the glass. Frannie brought up hers, almost imagining she could feel the heat from Jennifer's skin. "Why they always hit me."

On the third floor, Dean Powell was listening to another Assistant DA analyze the merits of an aggravated assault.

The people who worked at the Hall of Justice spoke in a kind of code. San Francisco had a well-deserved reputation as the most politically correct of cities, and you could get yourself fired or worse if you labored for the City and inadvertently happened to use a word that had not been officially sanctioned – or had been officially proscribed – by some group or other.

The members of the police department and the District Attorney's office were among the most sensitive to irregularities in this area, and so had developed the most sophisticated code for use among themselves. Visitors could spend half a day in the Hall, people chatting all around, and be a hundred-and-eighty degrees off on what they thought they had heard.

Dean Powell, running for State Attorney General, still had to function as a prosecutor, and especially between now and November he was careful not to use too much of the code himself. Nevertheless, he didn't need a translator.

"If you ask me," Tony Feeney was telling him, "we got a stone BDI here. Professional women, some dispute over funding. Both of them Canadians. In my opinion, she'll go sideways like she has the three other times."

Feeney was another Assistant District Attorney, in Powell's office getting the more experienced man's take on whether he should even bother charging Mr. Duncan J. Dunlap for aggravated assault on his live-in girlfriend Byna Lewes – a "professional woman."

BDI was the code for a case in which the defendant believed and usually loudly proclaimed to police that the woman he had just savagely beaten or killed had brought the attack on herself. BDI stood for Bitch Deserved It. In this case Dunlap thought Lewes was holding out on him and might be about to choose another pimp. Feeney thought Lewes would "go sideways," which meant she'd refuse to testify or, even better, change her testimony on the stand. And, by the way, both parties were African-Americans, called "Canadians" by members of law enforcement to avoid offending anyone in earshot.

Byna Lewes had promised to testify against Mr. Dunlap on the three previous occasions when he'd beaten her, and each time she had relented, saying he was truly sorry (this time) and he really loved her. He just needed some help. Maybe the City could help pay for his counseling.

Powell crossed his hands behind his head. "You ever wonder why we keep doing this?"

Feeney had no response. He sat across from Powell, hoping he'd be remembered if Powell got lucky and took up residence in Sacramento.

"How badly was she hurt?" Feeney opened the folder, starting to take out the pictures. But Powell held out a hand, palm up. "Just describe it, Tony. How bad?"

The Polaroids had been taken by the arresting officer in Byna's hospital room shortly after the attack, before she'd been bandaged. Her left eye was swollen shut, her nose looked broken, there was blood in her hair and over her ear. Feeney went to the police report and saw she'd also had her arm dislocated. "Not bad," he said, about average.

"We charging it?"

Powell was getting to the meat of the issue. If Byna – the victim – would cooperate in the case against Mr. Dunlap, then he would be charged and the matter would proceed. If, on the other hand, the victim chose not to assist the prosecution, would not appear and testify – which in these cases was very common – then the case would fall apart.

"Well, it's a little iffy, is the problem. On picture night here" – Feeney gestured to the file – "Ms. Lewes had had enough, she was coming down as soon as she got out of the hospital and filing charges and put that bad man away."

"So what happened? He come see her?"

"He would have, but he was in jail at the time. But naturally, the minute he's out on bail, he buys her roses, candy, says he's sorry. Only this time she's not sure she believes him, but she's so afraid of him she doesn't want to testify."

"Logical. Good reasoning."

Feeney held up one finger. "But," he said, "she says if we give her a subpoena she'll testify."

"What a citizen! This is a beautiful story. And you're asking me what I'd do?"

"I know what you'd do, Dean. I'm just wondering how you'd explain it. We got a third offense, we've got a witness who says she'll testify. How do you just drop it?"

"You don’t drop it, Tony. You file it, hold her hand every day, and try not to feel too bad when she doesn't show up for the trial."

David Freeman's office was up one flight or ornate, scroll-bannistered stairs in the front corner of the old building on Sutter Street. Below him, the ground floor was comprised of the comfortable reception area, a conference room that faced a brick and ivy inner courtyard and a small law library. Four years before, Freeman had redecorated and put in a lot of glass down below, giving the place an open feel.

At the head of the stairs, outside Freeman's lair, Phyllis Wells kept the howlers at bay, the howlers being their own code name for associate attorneys.

Phyllis had been with David for thirty-two years and in that time had seen associates come and go – enter the practice as eager law school graduates hoping to ride the coattails of the brilliant David Freeman to fame and glory, carve a reputation in the city and perhaps beyond, become a partner in a reasonable six or seven years. Most didn't last two.

Not one had hung on to become a partner. They worked their twelve-hour days and nights and weekends and wrote briefs and even got trial experience and then moved on, either to their own practices, to one of the big downtown firms or out of the law altogether.