John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

The reason: David Freeman did not want partners. Not for nothing had he named his firm David Freeman amp; Associates. It wasn't about to change.

He didn't like to delegate. No, Phyllis knew it was more than that. He was incapable of delegating. Which was why, she thought, this situation with Dismas Hardy was a little unusual – Hardy was doing work that Freeman had always done himself. Freeman even seemed relatively pleased with Hardy's results. This was so out of character that it worried Phyllis. She wondered if David were sick. If he would tell her if he was.

Not that she had anything against Hardy. There was a good feeling around him. He was nice-looking in a craggy way, not too lean. Sometimes maybe a bit too quick with the humorous phrase for her taste, but God knew she'd seen enough humorless attorneys pass through these halls. It was refreshing to have one who seemed not to take himself so seriously.

Freeman had instructed her to let Hardy come in when he needed to talk, confer, even visit. Of course, technically he wasn’t an associate, not one of the howlers. He wasn't even "of counsel." He just rented a room.

He came and went rather haphazardly and was beginning to show some sign of trusting her, which, of course, he could do, although she'd been somewhat resentful at the beginning when David had suggested he share her as his own secretary. But that had been working out, too. He was up on the fourth floor, connected to her by intercom that he rarely used.

Still, it was a change giving him information before she'd cleared it with David. Now her boss – Freeman would always be her boss – was at trial and her was Dismas Hardy, casually asking how Jennifer got referred to the firm. She had thought he already knew. Well, it wasn't a big issue – he had just come up the stairs from somewhere, snapped his finger and came back, stopping at her desk.

Jennifer Witt was David's client, there was no mistake about that, even though she remembered it was near Hardy's first month or so in the office when she'd buzzed him after she'd beeped David in court and he'd told her to get Hardy down there to meet Jennifer in jail. But if Phyllis had learned anything in thirty-two years in this business, it was that information was the coin of the realm, and its dissemination – almost always – was strictly need-to-know.

"It just occurred to me," Hardy was saying, "that here I've been learning all I can about this woman and I don't even know how we got involved with her. I mean, she thought I was David when I first met her, so she didn't know him either, am I right?"

Phyllis smiled, adjusting her glasses. "Didn't you ask her?"

He leaned comfortably against the partition separating her desk from the open hallway. "If I recall, she said something about her husband's lawyers, but I didn't know who they were."

"She couldn't tell you?"

"She could if I went over to the Hall, paid four dollars for a parking space, rode the slowest elevator in America up seven flights, got patted down and admitted by the guard into the women's jail, waited fifteen minutes for them to get Jennifer, and then asked her." He knew he was charming her and, more strangely, she knew it and didn't mind. Now he grinned openly. "You're stonewalling me, Phyylis. I can't tell."

The referral had come from Donna Bellows, a member of the firm of Goldberg Mullen amp; Roake. Hardy called her from his office, two flights up from Phyllis.

It was the middle of the week, the middle of the afternoon, and he got right through. Introducing himself, he was struck by the immediate chill that came over the deeply pitched voice.

"Perhaps it wasn't clear at the time, Mr. Hardy, but not only doesn't this firm take many criminal cases, I personally don't want anything to do with Mrs. Witt, so I'm not inclined to be of much help. I'm sorry."

"Did you know her? Personally?" He had to keep her talking or she was gone, and he did have something he wanted to get to.

"I never met the woman. I never want to. Now I'm sorry, but if you'll excuse-"

"Please, if I might – one quick question. Can you tell me anything about Crane amp; Crane? Any connection to Dr. Witt?"

Silence, the decision being made. Hardy knew that he and Ms. Bellows weren't adversaries in any real sense. She might have felt a loyalty – or more than that – to her client Larry Witt, but good lawyers at least tried to observe the professional courtesies with one another. Hardy was counting on that. He heard her sigh, going ahead with this distasteful discussion.

"All right, I'm sorry, Mr. Hardy. I liked Larry Witt. I read the papers and I'm afraid I believe that his wife killed him and their boy."

"From what you've read in the papers?"

"That, yes, and some other things."

"What other things?"

Another pause, considering, rejecting? "Let's get back to the one question, shall we?"

Though there might be a wide vein of information here, Hardy knew he'd have to let it go if he wanted to find out about Crane amp; Crane. He'd spent the better part of a frustrating yesterday and all of this morning chasing down the chimeras of "other dudes" – Melissa Roman's parents, Witt's first wife Molly, a Dr. Heffler from Dr. Lightner's form. He had not so much as spoken to any of them. Now he had Donna Bellows on the telephone and he'd take whatever she was willing to give.

"Crane amp; Crane. Some connection to Larry."

"That name is familiar in the sense that I believe I've heard it, that's all."

"It's a Los Angeles firm."

"That may be it. You say Larry and-?"

"I don't know. He called them a few days before he died."

"Before he was killed, you mean. He didn't just die. He was killed." He listened to her breathe for a moment. "I was Larry's financial advisor. With respect to Crane, he may have mentioned them in some context. This would have been about six months ago? Whatever it was, if anything, it couldn't have been too important. I really don't remember, but I can check."

"Would you mind?"

"Frankly, I do mind, Mr. Hardy. I don't like my clients being shot to death. It really bothers me. And I don't want to help their killers get free. But I'll look into it. I said I would and I will."

Hardy thanked her.

"I'll call you," she said, and hung up.

"Date night" was a free-form event. The traditional and sacred Wednesday ritual had taken them – before the children had been born – as far afield as Los Angeles or Reno or Santa Fe on the spur of the moment. Date nights had been known to continue for several days, Hardy calling in to the Shamrock to have his shifts covered while he and Frannie gambled or perused art galleries or decided to take the ferry out of Long Beach over to Santa Catalina, the island of romance.

Tonight they were on another ferry chugging across the bay to Sausalito. Out near Alcatraz the water was choppy, the wind high, the sun lost in a bank of fog that was rolling over and around the Golden Gate Bridge. The temperature was in the fifties.

"Ah, summertime." Frannie watched Dismas suck the bracing air. They stood at the front rail on the upper deck, blown and sprayed. "Nothing like the middle of July to get rid of the winter blahs."

Frannie leaned into the rail, holding onto it with both hands. "Maybe that's it," she said. "The winter blahs." She looked up at her husband, her smile as lost as the sunlight. He put an arm around her, bringing her inside his heavy coat, and she leaned into him.

"You all right?"

She considered whether she should tell him, how much she should tell him. She felt like she was sneaking out, cheating on him. But she didn't want to get into it, not just now. It would become a discussion, the theme for the night, and she didn't need that. She didn't need to clear everything with Dismas. She loved him, but she had her own life, her own feelings.