John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

There were bad things that happened, sure – like Larry's car – but if those things didn't physically hurt people, the police tended not to get involved. They weren't about to break out the troops tracking down a culprit who had lifted a five-hundred-dollar CD player from a car – they didn't have the manpower – any more than they would investigate a pine cone falling from a tree and breaking your windshield. Practically speaking it just couldn't be a police matter. Hardy loved it – vandalism as a force majeur.

He was having salmon again. Grilled with a light wasabe glaze. A glass of Hafner Chardonnay.

He was worried about Frannie.

Something was going on with her and she wasn't telling him about it. Maybe it was his continued involvement with Jennifer. She shouldn't have expected that one visit was going to change anything. And obviously, going to the jail had been a trauma.

He hated to see her unhappy. Maybe he was spending too much time running around for David, looking for a plausible "other dude." The inherent cynicism in it all was getting to him. David seemed to care almost nothing for the guilt or innocence of Jennifer, just whether he could get his client off. That was what he did for a living, he said. Was he really that cold? Was there a deeper concern behind the so-called professionalism? Hardy couldn't tell, couldn't really read David that well. And he suspected that that was just the way David wanted it. No black or white for Hardy in this case. Not with Jennifer, not with his colleague David, not with anything, which could wear a person down.

The waiter appeared now and asked if the food was satisfactory. Monsieur had not touched the plate. If he would like to order something else, of course…

Well, for today at least, Hardy decided he would not be looking for "other dudes." The crux of the matter in court was whether proof existed that Jennifer was a battered woman. Once that was established, the question of her culpability could be debated. Providing Jennifer cooperated.

Anyway, Hardy couldn't let Freeman shake his belief in some objective truth, in the facts. Something specific did happen, in a certain way and at a certain time. If he had any pretensions of seeing justice done, the first step was to uncover those facts.

He had Ken Lightner's assertions. He had seen the bruises on Jennifer's mother. He had the first wife's, Molly's, admission that Larry Witt had beaten her. He even had Jennifer's acknowledgment that she and Larry had been in "a few fights."

This was ammunition but it wasn't a smoking gun.

Dr. Saul Heffler was one of the doctors from Ken Lightner's list that Lightner had "accidentally" left on the bench for Hardy to find and pick up. Heffler had a practice in a one-story office building on Arguello, halfway from downtown to Hardy's house. The doctor and the lawyer had played a serious game of phone tag during the week and it was time to put an end to that, even if it meant sitting a while in a waiting room.

The gods smiled and a parking spot opened directly in front of the address as Hardy pulled up. He took this as a good omen.

Inside, the receptionist was blessedly free of bureaucratic baggage and informed Hardy that the doctor could probably block out some time in about an hour. Would that be all right?

Hardy walked up to Clement Street, drank a cup of iced espresso at an outside table to ward off the post wine-for-lunch slump, then bought some earrings for Frannie from a sidewalk vendor.

He loved lower Clement Street, had loved it through its incarnations, first as a Russian enclave with piroshki and antique shops, then as an upscale – though not too upscale – Haight

Street with its hippies, haze of incense, and coffeeshops, to now, a bustling Oriental bazaar with tea-smoked ducks hanging in windows and the slightly off yet somehow appealing commingled smells of cooked meat, raw seafood and garbage.

Strolling in the bright sunlight, enjoying the smells and the breeze, he bought a newly steamed pork bao and chewed it happily. There was a bright turquoise children's kimono in a window and he went inside the tiny store, buying it for Rebecca along with a tiny silk shirt for his boy.

He'd make this up to Frannie. Things were going to change. He wasn't sure how, but he wasn't going to let anything – not David, Jennifer, frustration, fear or silence – get between them and keep them apart.

Three minutes after he was back inside Heffler's office and the receptionist told him he could go right in.

Heffler's small but well-lit office had three diplomas and about six hundred mounted fishing flies on the walls. The man was in his mid-fifties with a full head of pepper-and-salt hair, a flat unlined face – a hint of Navajo? – over a lanky, gangling frame. He smiled easily.

Hardy explained the situation. He was, after all, working for Jennifer's defense. He wondered if the doctor would help him verify some background. He showed Heffler Jennifer's signed release allowing her doctor to discuss her medical history. (Hardy had told Jennifer he needed her medical records in connection with what had happened to her in Costa Rica.) He'd be glad to help, the doctor said. What did Hardy want to know? Hardy told him.

"This was four years ago? Five? I can't say I remember her offhand. I'll have Joanie pull the file. We keep the archives in the storeroom. Take two minutes."

They waited, talking fishing. Heffler was leaving the next morning for a six-day wilderness trip to Alaska, going after the huge salmon that ran up there, maybe some Arctic char. Hardy held a hand over his stomach. "Don't say salmon to me. I think I'm hitting my limit."

Joanie came in, handed over the file and left. Heffler opened it and flipped some pages, his face closing down. "You want to believe people. You wonder how much of this you really see."

"You got something?"

"I don't know what you call something. Maybe I should have seen this, suspected something. I don't know."

Hardy waited. Heffler read some more, then closed the file. "She was my patient for seven months, came in without a referral, said she'd just moved here from Florida. First time I saw her she had fallen down the steps in her new house."

"The first time?"

Heffler nodded. He opened the file again. "Three months later she broke her arm skiing. She thought it was just a sprain until she got home, otherwise she would have gotten it set up at Squaw Valley." He turned up a page, scanning. "This one," he said, "maybe I really should have seen this one."

"What's that?"

"Three months after the arm – pretty regular, isn't it – she comes in with this fluke accident. She was cleaning out a closet and the shelf came off, loaded with stuff, slammed down against her back. Her urine had blood in it." He wasn't looking up. "Contusions and bruises over he kidneys, all the way across her back." He closed the file again. "I must have asked her, I can't imagine I didn't."

"And she just said no, simple as that?"

"And got herself another doctor." He took in a deep breath, let it out as a sigh. "I'm ready for a vacation," he said.

"You see a lot of this?"

"A lot? Some, I guess. I see some accidents. People hurt themselves. I can't go to the police every time someone breaks their arm, comes in with a black eye. I wouldn't have a practice left." He picked up the file, opened it, flicked impatiently at the pages. "Here's something."

Stuck to the back of the folder was a yellow post-it pad, and on it was a name and address. "I don't know why this is here."

He buzzed Joanie again and she came back. "Oh, that's just my note to myself when I get a request for records."

Heffler leaned forward, still frowning. "So this might have been the next physician this patient went to."