John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

"It wasn't you, Dismas. I can see now that it wasn't you. It was my life. All of a sudden, I don't know what it was, it all just came back at me. And then I felt so much like I'd failed – I mean, I wasn't happy and I should have been and whose fault is that?"

"I generally blame a consortium of Arab investors."

"So do I, usually, but this time it didn't work, and I couldn't tell you. It wouldn't be fair with your trial coming up and all, and then I began to resent that… that I couldn't tell you, and then I convinced myself that you wouldn't care anyway, that this was just all stupid female stuff that isn't very linear anyway and can't be-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa… what is that? Stupid female stuff? We didn’t invite any stupid females to this party."

"You know what I mean."

"I don't know what you mean. And linear?" He turned up on his elbow, looking down at her. "I don't know what you mean," he repeated. "Really."

Frannie closed her eyes for a breath. "I saw Jennifer."

"I know you did."

"No." She shook her head. "More than once. I snuck out. I left the kids with Erin and went and saw her."

"How many times?"

"I don't know. Three or four."

"At the jail?" He answered himself. "Of course at the jail." Hardy sat all the way up, pulling the sheet around him. Frannie put a hand on his leg.

"The first time… I guess we connected. Then I didn’t think you'd approve, or I didn't want to ask for your okay…"

"Frannie…"

"But then I talked myself into being mad that I felt like I had to clear it with you every time. That didn't seem right, that I had to ask permission."

"She's my client, Frannie." He was shaking his head, trying to fit this in somewhere.

"I know, I know. I should have talked with you, but it… it all seemed to fit in with the other stuff, being so depressed, feeling like I was trapped. Jennifer… well, she listened to me."

"Jennifer listened to you? Jesus." Hardy threw the sheet off and swung his legs off the bed. He walked to the window, not to see The View but because it was the only destination in the room. He stood stock still, then, without turning, whispered, "You talked to Jennifer about you and me? What's she got on us now?"

He heard her voice, small behind him. "It wasn't like that. Don't be mad at me now. Please."

He stood another minute, trying to piece it together. The images out the window – the lights on Union Street far below, the Golden Gate , the Presidio evergreens blurring the western horizon – they were piling up, falling over each other kaleidoscope fashion. Turning back, he sat again on the settee. "This was the secret?"

Frannie was at the edge of the bed. She paused, framing an answer. "All of it was a secret. It was all connected."

Hunched over, Hardy had his hands crossed in front of him, his head down.

"Dismas?" She was off the bed now, on the floor, on her knees in front of him again. He felt her hands on his legs.

"I'm not mad," he said. "Let's get that straight. I'm not mad at you and I'm glad we're talking about this. But did it occur to you that she might be using you?"

"She wasn't. I just told you it wasn't like that. At least I didn't think it was like that-"

He jumped at the difference. "You didn't think it was like that then, but you do now? You think it might have been?"

Frannie got up, grabbed the blanket and drew it around her, then sat on the edge of the bed. "No, I didn't say that." She took a deep breath and reached out again, the space between the bed and the settee. "I wish you wouldn't interrogate me. I want to talk about this, Dismas, but when we get into it like this I feel intimidated. It doesn't work, it doesn't get us anywhere."

"Where do you want us to get to, Frannie?"

"I want us to be able to talk again. I'm trying to tell you how it was."

In the candlelight her face was an amber cameo. He found he couldn't take his eyes off her. He nodded. Her arm was across the space between them, touching his leg, reaching out. He put his hand over hers.

This was not the time to argue, to tell Frannie that Jennifer might have had an agenda far removed from the one she'd led Frannie to believe. He came over next to her, pulling the blanket around both of them. "You're right," he said, kissing her, holding her against him. "I'm sorry. Talk to me."

"She told you Larry beat her?"

"Everybody has beaten her. She couldn't believe you never hit me, or Eddie never hit me. She didn't believe me, I could tell. Like the idea is completely outside her experience."

"It probably is."

They were still huddled together at the edge of the bed. "Let's not ever hit our kids, okay?" Hardy said.

"We don't."

"I know. Let's not start."

Frannie leaned into him. Muffled night sounds came up through the closed window – a truck's brakes squealing as it inched down the north Divisadero escarpment, a girl's carefree laugh from outside one of the clubs on Union.

"I still feel a little like I've abandoned her. Jennifer, I mean. I just… it got feeling wrong somehow."

"Well, I haven't abandoned her, so I guess it's still in the family, right?"

"I know, but-"

"Shh. Look. Maybe just hearing your story – some woman who doesn't get hit – maybe that'll give her hope that it's possible."

"If she believes it."

"And if she doesn't, you seeing her more isn't going to make her, is it?" He held his wife against him, breathing in her scent. The candle sputtered briefly. Hardy looked over and saw a thin rope of wax snake its way down the crystal holder, pooling on the dresser's surface. "I'm not trying to talk you out of anything, you know. If you want to see her some more, just tell me, okay? Let me know."

"I won't." She sighed. "There's some things… it's just too wrong."

"You said that. But if you're not going behind me…"

"No, that's not what's wrong. It's her, really, Jennifer. First I thought we… you know, we were two women… we could talk. But then she cut it off. She was about to tell me something important and then closed up, said I didn’t want to know. I began to wonder if maybe…"

"If maybe she's guilty?"

"Maybe. I couldn't handle that. Except I don't believe she killed Matt, even accidentally, or Larry. Maybe her first husband, I don't know. And if she did, I don't know whether I could handle it. If, I said. But she told me, why did I think she was fighting this thing so hard. The answer is she didn't kill them."

"Although Larry beat and abused her?"

"Please don't cross-examine me, Dismas. She told me Larry beat her. But she also said she didn't kill him, or Matt – not by accident or mistake or any other way or for any other reason."

Hardy looked at her, wondering if she was trying to convince herself. He certainly knew how that felt.

No one seemed to know where the storm came from, but rain slashed almost horizontally in gusts around Bryant Street, the temperature was in the low fifties and the gray paint on the Hall of Justice seemed a bruised and burnished blue as Hardy ran, raincoat flapping, from his parking space to the courthouse steps.

It was 12:42 when he entered the building. He knew they would be at recess, which was how he had planned it. He wasn't going directly to Villars' department anyway.

Freeman and Jennifer were having lunch in an abandoned office back behind the courtrooms.

Hardy nodded at the bailiff standing watch outside the door, then waited, getting his breathing under control from the run through the rain. He watched them through the wire-lined glass window in the door, talking, chatting really, at opposite sides of a pocked old green metal desk. He pushed open the door.

Freeman, his mouth full, raised a hand. "Greetings. We're killing 'em, Diz. Their feet are up, I swear to God."