John Lescroart - The 13th Juror

He and Freeman were standing nose-to-nose just inside the door to what they had taken to calling their suite. The windows were sealed shut and the heat either was working too hard or the air conditioner wasn't working hard enough. In any case, the temperature was at least ninety degrees.

"On what? I'll bring up a couple of other dudes with Terrell and sit my weary ass back down."

"I know that's what you want to do. What I'm saying is, don't do it. Terrell's got something he's dying to leak out. You hurt Powell on Alvarez and he knows it and still he's a Cheshire cat out there, and I don't think it's faked."

"Everything Powell does is faked."

"Unlike your own sincere self, right?"

Freeman let it go. "Goddamn, it 's hot as hell in here. What do you want me to do, just dismiss Terrell? Stop right here?"

"How could it hurt?"

The look Hardy got in response wasn't flattering, but he didn't care. He was convinced that they had closed to within a length of a good chance of acquittal after the testimony of Barbieto and Alvarez. After all, they were talking reasonable doubt here, not certainty, and Hardy thought they had it.

Further, even though Gage and Terrell hadn't gotten them any points, neither had they put too many on the boards for Powell. That, though, could change in an instant. One false move now could turn the momentum of the entire trial. It was a time to be conservative in the literal sense – conserve what you've already got. Don't let the other side score.

This, however, had never been David Freeman's style. "You ask me how it could hurt? It isn't presenting the best defense for our client, that's how. Terrell's on the record as implying nobody else in the world had a reason to kill Larry Witt. He's built it on our client's saying Witt had no enemies. You want to let that to by? You don't think that's important?"

"Sure it's important, but we can get to it next week-"

"We can introduce it now. Get the jury primed to accept the details later."

Hardy saw that he wasn't going to convince his partner, which was no surprise. Well, perhaps he was wrong; it was, after all, just a feeling. Maybe Terrell's presence put hunches into his gut. Anyway, he'd tried to warn David, satisfy his conscience, put his two cents in. And, as in the rest of the world, two cents were essentially worthless.

Freeman pulled open the door and went out into the blessedly cool corridor.

"Inspector Terrell, we were talking about Larry Witt's lack of enemies, I believe. You looked into Mrs. Witt's assertion that he had no enemies, is that right?"

"That's part of any homicide investigation, finding out who had a motive to kill the deceased."

Freeman, still flushed from the heat of the suite, glanced down at the yellow pad he was holding. "And were your efforts to uncover enemies for Dr. Witt successful?"

Terrell's opinion about who might be Larry Witt's enemies – in fact, this whole line of inquiry – as speculative, argumentative and irrelevant, but Powell didn't appear to want to object.

Terrell was in no hurry. He pushed his back against the chair, stretching, lifted his shoulders, let them fall. "In what sense?"

Freeman looked to the jury. Surely a cooperative witness could understand this question. But he bravely pressed on. "In the sense that you found people who might have had a motive to kill Dr. Witt?"

"Might have, perhaps."

"And in your thorough investigation, did any of these people become suspects?"

"No."

"No? Why not?"

Terrell explained patiently: "Because at the time there wasn't any evidence linking anyone else to the crime."

A good answer. But Freeman had at least gotten the concession that "perhaps" there had been other people with motives. Hardy thought he should take that and sit down. But again it wasn't to be. His heart sinking, Hardy recalled Malraux's dictum that character is fate. Was Freeman pressing on to his fate – to Jennifer's?

"At the time, you say. You mean that since the defendant has been in custody you've come upon such evidence?"

Freeman turned to the jury, including them in his reaction. "Linking another person to the crime?"

"Yes." Terrell making Freeman pull it out. Hardy was silently begging his partner to stop, sit down, call it off. But it was already too late. Now it would have to play out.

"And still you've kept Mrs. Witt in jail? Even though there was another suspect?" Again that inclusion of the jury.

"I didn't say there was another suspect. In fact, this individual only strengthened Mrs. Witt's motive. There was nothing that tied him to the crime scene."

Jennifer gripped Hardy's arm.

Terrell could hold it no longer. Without being asked, he declared: "Mrs. Witt was having an affair. She was sleeping with her psychiatrist."

It was speculation, it was obviously based on hearsay. It was totally inadmissible, but David had asked for it and he got it. He didn't bother to object. The damage was done.

It was the battle of the anchors, each channel outdoing the other trying to bring out dirt on Dr. Ken Lightner, alleged lover of Jennifer Witt. They weren't having a lot of luck.

Even though it was date night, Hardy called and told Frannie he was sorry but he wasn't coming home. She could find out why by watching the television. He had a lot of catching up to do.

After he left the Hall of Justice he went back to the office and watched some television himself. A few of Freeman's associate red-hots hung around in the conference room trying to figure out how to salvage something from this disaster. Nobody had any good ideas, although all agreed it was a bitch when your client lied to you, or seriously withheld information from you.

Freeman himself, after an hour-long argument with Jennifer during which she had continued to deny any affair with Lightner, in spite of the fact that they had stayed in the same room in Costa Rica for a week, had said he was going out to dinner alone at the French restaurant below his apartment. He was going to drink a good bottle of wine and then he was going to drink another one.

Once Terrell's testimony opened the dike, the flood swept over Freeman. On redirect, Powell revealed the details of Jennifer's extradition – how they had found her. Then he had called Lightner and gotten it confirmed. Everything, that is, but the affair itself, which Lightner strongly denied.

The jury, however, would draw its own conclusions about that from the facts. They would probably be the same as those drawn by Hardy, Freeman and every other soul in the courtroom – which was that your heterosexual male was not likely to go and stay in a hotel room on a beach in Costa Rica with a world class beauty like Jennifer Witt for a week and not have the physical creep in from time to time. Or to assume that this relationship might not be a preexisting condition from who knew how far back.

After she had broken out of jail, Terrell had played one of his famous hunches. He had figured Jennifer would have to contact someone, and from his earlier investigations he tagged Lightner as the most likely, indeed the only possible, person. Jennifer had no close friends and was estranged from her natural family – there really had been no other choice.

And because it was a capital murder case, because Powell, the candidate, was so strongly in his camp, because Jennifer's escape had infuriated the judiciary, Terrell had somehow squeezed enough juice to get a warrant on the phone company's list of Lightner's outgoing calls.

The outgoing calls to Costa Rica were good enough. Terrell was going to question Lightner in person when – lo and behold – the doctor had gone off to Costa Rica for a week, a much-needed vacation. Terrell had followed him down, laying low, getting enough to come back and start the extradition proceedings.