John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

He was alongside the woman, slowing down and honking his horn, motioning for her to pull over. She flipped him off, stole a glance at her watch and kept going.

Hardy slowed, rolled down his passenger window and gunned it up to her again, honking. "I need help," he called out to her. Driving ahead another hundred yards, he pulled to the curb, throwing open his door and getting out. He held his hands wide, spread out at shoulder height, offering no threat. The woman slowed abruptly, stopping fifty feet up the street. The rain started coming in sheets.

"What?" she gasped. "Can't you see I'm trying to run?" Hardy tooka step toward her and she put her hand to her hip. "I've got mace here on my belt and I'll use it."

"I need to ask you a question."

A car passed going the other direction, slowed to look, then sped up the street.

"A question?" She shook her head in disbelief. "Who the hell are you? Leave me alone."

Hardy wished he could try the old badge trick but he didn't carry it as a matter of course. It was at home, there if he decided he might need to use it.

"I'm going by," the woman said. "You'd better leave me some room." She was, in fact, holding what looked like a spray can in her hand and Hardy had no doubt she'd use it.

He had to talk fast, find some lever. She was coming toward him cautiously. "You ever hear of Jennifer Witt? I'm her lawyer."

"Good for you. I'm a runner."

She turned it on, going by the other side of his car. There wasn't so much as a glance back as she flew down the street, around a curve and out of his sight.

Back in his car, Hardy consoled himself that it was probably nothing anyway. But then, three blocks later, he realized the truth of what he'd just done – he thought he might have stumbled on a nugget of truth in one of Jennifer's explanations – so he hadn't given up on her.

Jennifer had said she always started out walking for a couple of blocks when she left her house to go jogging. She had insisted that was her routine, and she followed it on the morning of December 28. And somebody else, with a resemblance to her, came running by her house just as some shots were fired. That person stopped, saw nothing, and continued running, right from Jennifer's gate. And was identified as Jennifer by the State's star eyewitness. Anthony Alvarez.

It almost gave him real hope.

Glitsky called after dinner and told them they should turn on the news because David Freeman was on.

Moses and his new wife Susan were over, and everyone was at the front of the house. While Hardy turned on the set, Moses plopped himself on the sofa. "That guy gets more air than a hot-air balloon," he said. Turning around, Hardy said that David Freeman was a hot-air balloon. When it suited him.

The man himself appeared on the screen. Unshaven, hang-dog, his tie askew over his wrinkled shirt, with sleeves partially rolled up – here was a man who'd been working all night and all day on behalf of his client. He was sitting on the edge of the desk in his office, his lawbooks visible behind him – and the sound came up. "… victory but, to be quite candid, I expected it. I have fought from the original arraignment to have this case dismissed for lack of evidence, and, of course, the judge's ruling here corroborates what I've maintained all along – Jennifer Witt is innocent. She did not do these things."

Hardy and Frannie, now sharing their own secret about Ned, exchanged a glance. "He is some piece of work," Hardy whispered.

The young female reporter spoke earnestly into the camera. "And, obviously buoyed by yesterday's victory, Mr. Freeman had some even stonger charges to make."

This was edited tape, and again the sound bite picked up in mid-sentence. Freeman was answering another question. "… there's the political motive. I hate to bring this up, but it's true – Dean Powell is running for Attorney General on a pro-death-penalty ticket. At the same time, you can't have a death penalty just for black men. He needs a case like this, and he needs it right now. If Jennifer Witt hadn't come along he would have had to invent her." Freeman hung his head, genuinely saddened by the flawed nature of humankind. "Unfortunately," he said, "that's essentially what he did."

Suddenly they were back in the newsroom and the anchorwoman was saying to his partner, "Those are some pretty strong accusations, Shel, and we'll be following that trial every day here on Channel 5."

"That's right, Jack." Shel beamed at the camera, filling the screen. "Want to know what happens when three sisters fight over the family dog?"

"Slick segue, Shel," Frannie intoned.

Moses, leaning forward on the couch, shushed his sister, speaking to the TV. "Yeah, three sisters and the family dog. I want to know what happens, I do."

Shel was continuing. "Sounds like a case for Solomon, doesn't it, and it's developing right now down in Daly City. That's up next. Don't go away."

Hardy was up, also talking to the tube, turning it off. "Sorry, Shel, got to go."

Moses jumped up. "Come on, Diz. I'm dying to know about the sisters and their dog."

Susan hit him on the leg. "Pervert."

"How can you do that? Turn of Shel?"

Hardy was moving back to his chair. "Years of training and therapy have helped me here. Why do I get the feeling that Jennifer's trial is going to be getting nasty?"

"It's that amazing sixth sense you have." Frannie rubbed a hand over his arm. "It must have been an awful slow news day."

Susan was smiling and relaxed, leaning against Moses on the couch. "He's your partner, Dismas?"

"Cute, isn't he?"

Moses, cut adrift, moaned that he wanted to know more about the girls and their dog.

"They ate it," Frannie said.

Susan nodded. "Cut it up into little pieces. Fried the ears and served them with Roquefort dressing."

Hardy stood up. "I'd like to go on the record here by saying how nice it is to be among people who are so in tune with the big issues. I'm going to get dessert."

Because of the afternoon nap he'd taken, he wasn't tired. Moses and Susan went home at a little after ten, and Frannie, who would have Vincent's first feeding at one, said she thought she would turn in.

Hardy added a log to the fire in the front room and sat in his chair with a copy of John McPhee's Oranges. He'd barely begun when the telephone rang. He grabbed it halfway through the first ring.

It was Glitsky saying his man Freeman was a star. "Trial by television. It's what makes this country great."

"That and concentrated orange juice." Hardy explained the McPhee connection, knowing that Glitsky, like himself, had a weakness for the obscure fact. "But I sense you didn't call to talk about citrus."

"Normally I would," Abe said, "except I thought you'd want to be the first to know about something else."

Hardy silently counted to five. A log popped in the fire. "I love this game," he said.

"I called the Detail on an unrelated matter about ten minutes ago. They were interviewing a guy down there named Marko something. Ring a bell?"

"No. Should it?"

"I don't know. I thought you might have run across it in your travels. He's saying he killed Larry Witt."

Marko Mellon had not begun watching the news report on Jennifer Witt during the Freeman section, as Hardy and company had. He had watched from the start, when they showed her picture – the one the stations and newspapers had used before she had been charged with the murders – smiling, vivacious.

Marko, a twenty-five-year-old Syrian exchange student at San Francisco State who had been following the trial in a fairly dedicated fashion up to this point, was familiar with, Hardy thought, a surprising amount of facts about the case, so much so that it took police inspectors – one of whom was Walter Terrell – nearly five hours to determine he could not possibly have killed Larry Witt.