John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

Hardy walked through the open room of the Homicide Detail, poured himself a cup of old coffee, pulled up a chair and waited. After a moment or so, he sipped loudly. Abe looked up. Then back down with no change of expression. "The element of surprise," he said, "in the right hands, can be a powerful weapon."

Hardy sipped again, more loudly than before. Glitsky raised his head and chewed some ice with his mouth open. One of the homicide detectives walked by behind Hardy and stopped. "I'd give it to Glitsky on points," he said. "Those are real attractive sounds."

Hardy swallowed his coffee and brought the file up, laying it on the desk. "What do you know about Jennifer Witt?"

After a last look down at the papers in front of him, Abe closed the folder. "I wasn't doing anything."

Hardy smiled. "You've told me many times that nothing you do when you're in the office is important, isn't that a fact?"

Glitsky ran a finger around his expressive mouth, caressed the scar that ran top-to-bottom between his lips. "I like the way you say 'isn't that a fact?' instead of 'isn't that true?' like the rest of humanity would. It's very lawyerlike. Witt isn't my collar. You representing her? Of course you are," Abe answered himself.

"Not completely true."

"Forty percent true?"

Hardy pretended to be thinking about the answer. "She's David Freeman's but he's in court. He asked me to go make her feel better."

"Which, of course, you did."

Hardy shrugged. "It's a modest talent."

Glitsky seemed to want to follow it up, find out how his friend got even this much involved with this particular client, but he resisted the temptation. He'd no doubt get it sometime. He took the folder over his desk and flipped some pages. "Terrell made the arrest." He craned his neck, checking the room. "Terrell here?" he called out.

"Who's Terrell? Do I know him?"

"OFO," somebody answered.

"OFO?"

"Secret police code which I'm not allowed to reveal under penalty of death." He leaned forward, whispering, "Out fucking off." He went back to the report. "You've seen Terrell around. White guy, brown hair, mustache."

"Oh, yeah, him. When I was at school, there was a guy like that."

Glitsky himself was half-Jewish, half-African-American. He stood six feet some, weighed two hundred something and had blue eyes surrounded by a light brown face.

"Terrell's okay," Glitsky said.

"But…"

"I didn't say anything. I said he was okay."

"I heard a 'but'."

Abe chewed more ice, then spoke quietly. "If God's in the details, Wally and God aren't that close." He leaned back, spoke in a more conversational tone. "He's a big picture guy, only here in homicide, what, a year? Gets and idea, a theory, a vision – I don't know – but it seems to keep him running."

"Isn't that what all you guys do?"

"No. What most of us do is talk to people, collect evidence, maybe some picture starts to form. Wally's a little heavy into motive, and motive only takes you so far. I mean, any victim worth a second look, there's five people with motive to have done him. Wally finds a couple of motives and starts digging around them rather than the other way round."

"So why's he still here?"

"He's been lucky. Twice he's hauled in perps with nothing – Frank wrote him up a reprimand, the second one was so sloppy – and both times, guess what, it turns out he was right. So what are you gonna do, bust him? It'll catch up to him."

Hardy tapped the file. "It might have here."

Abe glanced down, turned a few pages, shook his head. "Doubt it," he said. "Jennifer Witt was righteously arrested. See here? Police reports, witnesses, physical evidence. Plus, as you might have noticed, the public has been introduced to her. She seems like a swell person."

"I thought it might be helpful to talk to Terrell."

Glitsky raised an eyebrow. "I don't know if you remember, but if you're in defense mode, my colleagues here won't tend to view you as an ally."

"Maybe you could vouch for me – you know, character, judgment, taste, generally refined nature. Sometimes everything doesn't make it to the file."

"You shock me." Closing the file, he pushed it back across the desk. "I'll see what I can do, but as always-"

Hardy beat him to it. "Don't hold my breath."

Glitsky nodded. "Words of sublime wisdom," he said.

Although Hardy was not yet legally entitled to it, Art Drysdale had done Hardy the favor of arranging for him to pick up the discovery on the Witt murders, which was basically a copy of the DA's file on the case.

Drysdale, it turned out, had been half-wrong and half-right when he said that Jennifer Witt had left out a few tiny things. Right about leaving out some things, wrong about them being tiny.

They included the testimony of an eyewitness, Anthony Alvarez, a retired fireman with a drawerful of decorations. Sixty-four years old, he lived with his invalid wife directly across the street from the Witts and had heard two shots. If there had only been one, he might have thought it was a backfire and not even bothered to look. As it was, he didn't really suspect shots even after he heard them – it had been more of a curiosity, that kind of noise. He'd gone to the window and seen Jennifer Witt in front of the gate to her house, looking back toward her door. His initial thought was that she had stopped, was wondering about the noises herself. She stayed there a couple of seconds, then began running.

There was also another witness, the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Barbieto, who'd also heard the shots and had been the one who had called the police. Larry and Jennifer Witt had been fighting for weeks, she said. Their son was an unhappy little thing. He cried all the time. The night before, that morning, "You should have heard them on Christmas" (three days before) – it seemed they nearly ruined the Barbieto's family dinner.

Hardy was taking a shotgun approach to his first reading of the file, and had turned right away to the tab marked "Civilian Witnesses." Apparently there were eyewitnesses. From a defense point of view, eyewitnesses were not particularly heartening.

He was sitting on the side of the steps outside the Hall of Justice at 7^th and Bryant. The day was cool and sunny with a light breeze that would probably kick into a gale by five o'clock. Now, though, it was pleasant, even with the bus exhaust and the fast-food wrappers beginning to swirl on the steps.

He turned back to the arresting officer's report. Inspector Terrell had begun to suspect Jennifer after she had provided him with an inventory of items that might have been missing from her home and had omitted the murder weapon. She had carefully searched the house and reported nothing missing. This was before their gun had been found under the dumpster.

After that, Terrell had questioned Jennifer about this oversight and Jennifer had said she must have simply overlooked it, blocked it somehow. Hardy didn't remember this fact from any of the news reports, and it wasn't a good one to find now. He closed the file.

"Hardy."

He squinted up into the sun and stood up. A tall man, slightly older than Hardy himself, hovered over him in a light charcoal suit, his hand extended.

Hardy stood and took the hand.

"Just saw you sitting here, Diz. Rumor has it you're defending Jennifer Witt."

"You know rumors, Dean. They never quite get it right." He explained his stand-in status, helping out his landlord, the famous defense attorney David Freeman.

Dean Powell showed a mouthful of teeth. He had a glorious mane of white hair, ruddy skin and an impressive posture. Hardy hadn't wanted to go see Powell earlier and didn't feel particularly prepared to chat with him now. But here he was, smiling and talking.

"Art wanted to warn me early that you had the case. So I'd take it more seriously." Some more teeth to flavor the compliment. "But it's Freeman, huh?" His face clouded briefly. Powell might be nice Hardy and stroke him about what a good job he'd do, but the mention of Freeman moved things up a big notch. Freeman didn't lose too often.