John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

For Frannie, seeing Jennifer Witt was somehow bringing things to the surface and that, she felt, was good. Once she recognized what she was dealing with, she'd be better equipped to handle things. Questioning how you felt wasn't necessarily threatening to her and Dismas, or to the kids. She loved them all – her husband and her children. It wasn't that.

It was what she started to say to Jennifer – that there was just so much that she hadn't been able to take time for. She was losing sight of who she was, of who Frannie Rose McGuire Cochran (and now Hardy) had turned into and how it had all happened. And how she felt about it.

Was she just some adjunct to whatever man she was with, the bearer of their babies? She didn't really feel that with Dismas. She hadn't felt that way with Eddie. She and Eddie had been living an adventure. Eddie had been about to start graduate school when he'd been killed. They'd been saving money for everything, discovering new places, each other.

Then, suddenly, no warning, and Eddie was gone. And there was Dismas. Not in Eddie's old space, but close to it. And now, two years – five minutes? – later, she was a stay-at-home mother, with no money worries, where Dismas already knew all the good restaurants and the great places, where Dismas had already made the discoveries and so many of the decisions.

Like living in this old house – which, of course, they'd decided to do together. It made so much more sense. And she did love the house. But that wasn't it – the point was that even though she'd changed it to her tastes – brightened it up, painted, rearranged, added a room – it was still his house, Dismas' house, not really their house.

All of their friends, too, were his friends and their wives. Abe, Flo, Pico, Angela. Even Moses – her own brother – even Moses had been Hardy's friend long before she'd been in the picture. Not that she didn't like these people – she did, but she hadn't found them on her own.

What about her old friends? The people she and Eddie had known? Didn't they count? Why weren't they part of her new life anymore. Was it the kids, or Dismas, or herself?

She knew Dismas wouldn't approve of the extra visits to Jennifer. The original idea had been simply to set her mind at ease about the kind of person Jennifer was.

But now something else was happening, and it was important, tapping into a vein of her own that hadn't been mined in a couple of years. Maybe by talking about things with Jennifer – why she continued to let both of her husbands beat her, for example – Frannie could help her change, see the way things were supposed to work. It seemed worthwhile, even if Dismas didn't know about it.

She was sure he had some secrets from her. You didn't have to tell your spouse every thought and word and deed in your life.

And seeing Jennifer was doing her some good. She was Frannie's own friend, confidant, and Dismas didn't need to know about it. She could choose her own friends, make decisions for herself in her own life. Later, she'd tell him. Maybe after he and Freeman got Jennifer off. After the trial.

She was her own person, but somehow she'd let the predictable in her daily life devalue her. She even found herself wondering whether Dismas would keep loving her, why he loved her in the first place, all the while telling herself she deserved to be loved. You're a great girl. Wonderful, sensitive, cool – if you don't love yourself how can you love anybody else? How can anybody love you?

The ferry had entered the lee of Sausalito and the chop had flattened. Dismas tightened his arm around her. "Hello?"

It really didn't have anything to do with loving him. She loved him, his face and his body and the easy way he did things. It was just that she needed a little more of herself in her life.

"I'm here." She kissed his cheek.

"Molly."

Freeman's living room on Friday morning, and Hardy was sitting back in one of the leather chairs, Freeman in his maroon bathrobe checking off answers, making notes in pencil at the kitchen table.

"Molly wasn't here in December. She hadn't even heard he'd died, or she'd even a better actress than our client."

"How'd she take it?"

"I think it would depress me if the news of my death was greeted so warmly."

Freeman raised his bushy eyebrows, a question.

Hardy continued. "She hated his guts, even after lo these many years. He used to beat her, too."

Again the eyebrows went up. "But he didn't beat Jennifer."

Hardy kept a straight face. "That's our defense, right? He didn’t' beat her. So she says."

"Never laid a hand on her."

Hardy had finally spoken to Larry Witt's first wife, Molly. She was now a guidance counselor living and working in Fargo, North Dakota. She had not remarried and had not seen or heard from Dr. Witt in five years. "I guess we could have somebody double-check, see if she was in North Dakota over Christmas, but I'd bet she was. The news of Larry's death absolutely made her day."

Freeman put down his pencil, staring out the window. "Let's stop a minute, Diz. What kind of son-of-a-bitch was this guy?"

Crossing his legs, sitting back, Hardy took a minute. "By all accounts, he was a model citizen, total professional, concerned father, great provider. He just happened to beat his wives."

"You really believe that?"

"You don't?"

"I don't know why Jennifer couldn't cop to it. Even if the legislature doesn't go for it, there's a good chance a jury would walk her, and no chance she'd get the death penalty. Powell wouldn't even ask."

Freeman was referring, Hardy knew, to the fact that the California Assembly had recently failed to pass an amendment that would have codified Battered-Woman Syndrome as a legitimate mitigation for murder. Since the courts were often accepting it anyway, the precedent was established and it was a moot question, but the legislature's action – or lack of it – was a definite setback for proponents of the defense. "I simply can't understand her resistance to it."

Hardy could go through all of Lighter's explanations, but it all came back to Jennifer's contention that if she admitted Larry beat her, then she had a reason to kill him that a jury might well convict on.

"But that's just it," Freeman continued, "they'd be just as likely – hell, more likely – to let her go!" He stood up, stretched, sat back down. "But you believe he did beat her?"

"Yes, absolutely. He was a control freak. She got out of line, he whacked her around."

"And she really felt she couldn't leave? She had to stay there and take it?"

"That's the profile, David. It's sad but it's true. He'd track her down if she left. He'd take the kid. He'd kill her if she tried. All of the above."

"So she killed him first. It worked with Ned, it ought to fly with Larry, right?"

Hardy shrugged. "She says not."

"Well." The pencil beat a tattoo on the table. "I must say, in all my years doing this, I haven't seen too many cases this pure. I'd like to watch her play poker, see if she bluffs."

"Maybe she's a Vulcan."

"What's that mean?"

It amazed Hardy. Was it possible that David Freeman had never seen "Star Trek," didn't know that Vulcans never bluff? Looking around the apartment, he realized it was probably so. There was no sign of a television. "Never mind, David. It's a long story. You want to keep going here?"

The tattooing stopped. "We'd better."

From Freeman's apartment, Hardy walked up the street a block and treated himself to lunch, alone, at the Stanford Court – he wanted an hour to think.

There had been no police report on the alleged break in of Larry Witt's car by Melissa Roman's parents or anybody else. Dr. Witt hadn't reported it, a fact which hadn't surprised Abe Glitsky, who had explained that the populace was beginning to understand that there was no such thing as a non-violent crime in San Francisco anymore.