John Lescroart - Hard Evidence

Hardy shook his head. ‘No, it was way before then. Right about when the morning guard was coming on. Say seven-thirty.’

‘He said he saw somebody?’

‘More than that, he said he saw May .’

‘On the Eloise ?’

‘No. Walking away.’

‘Close up? Positive ID?’

‘Neither.’ Hardy, saying it, realized what it meant.

Freeman said, ‘Well, to answer your original question, May told me she went down to the Eloise one time, Thursday afternoon, to see if she could get the gun.’

A thought occurred to Hardy. ‘Maybe she knew Fowler’s prints were on it and she was going down to protect him.’

Freeman shook his head impatiently. ‘She wasn’t protecting Fowler. He didn’t matter to her anymore, much as it might pain him to hear it… I wouldn’t bring up that particular point on cross… You got something here, don’t you?’

‘If I do, I don’t know what it is. Yesterday, when I hadn’t believed May, everything seemed tight. Today’ -Hardy lifted his shoulders – ‘I don’t know. The board tilted and I’ve got a new angle and now some of the pieces don’t fit. I’m trying to decide which angle’s the right one.’

The right one is the one that gets your client off.‘

‘That May wasn’t lying?’

But to Freeman, that had already been asked and answered. He moved closer to Hardy. ‘In any event, I hope you’ve written your eleven-eighteen?’

He was referring to Section 1118.1 of the California Penal Code, a motion for directed verdict of acquittal, by which the judge directed the jury to return a verdict to acquit. True, this section was almost automatically invoked by defense attorneys after the prosecution rested in every trial, but especially in cases such as this one in which the evidence might be deemed insufficient to sustain a conviction. Just as automatically, the motion was nearly always denied, but Freeman was making it clear that in this case he believed it had a chance.

Hardy said he was filing the motion but didn’t hold out much hope for it.

Neither did Freeman, it seemed. ‘Chomorro doesn’t have the experience. This is his first big trial, he’s got to leave it for the jury.’ Having said that, he raised his hands palms up. ‘But the law is a wonderful thing, and you just never know.’

Hardy had another twenty minutes before court reconvened. He went upstairs to the fourth floor, found Glitsky alone in the Homicide room chewing on his damned ice and hunched over his desk reading. He looked up now. ‘You were wrong,’ he said.

Hardy pulled a chair up against his desk. ‘I’m listening.’

‘There was no coat.’ Glitsky shoved the paper he was reading at Hardy. ‘Check it out. Anybody comes in while you’re looking, be smart, right? This sheet here,’ he said, putting a finger on it, ‘is the inventory – down to the rubberbands in the desk, Diz, it’s complete – of the master suite on the Eloise . This other one is the list Struler got from May, all of her stuff. What she wanted returned to her in exchange for testifying.’

‘Why didn’t they just subpoena her?’

Glitsky chewed some ice, swallowed. ‘I guess they thought this would make her more agreeable.’ He shook his head. ‘But guess what?’

Hardy was scanning the list. ‘Yeah?’ he said absently.

‘Hey, you know this happens all the time. You get somebody suing the City and thinks they can get an extra fur coat or something out of the deal. Put it on the list, say we stole it, it was there. But’ – he hit the sheet again -‘surprise. It wasn’t there. It’s why we make our Day One inventories.’

This was going backward again. Hardy wasn’t going to entertain it. ‘May didn’t lie, Abe, that’s where we’re at.’ He understood Glitsky being upset with May Shinn. She had, after all, named him personally in her suit for false arrest. And hadn’t she lied to him about not going to Japan? Hadn’t that been what moved him to arrest her?

‘Okay, all of the above,’ Hardy said, ‘but she thought this coat was there. She called David Freeman about it, mentioned it to Fowler when he came by. She jumped all over Struler.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Wouldn’t I what?’

‘If you had a scam like this, wouldn’t you play it up?’

Hardy couldn’t agree. He was going to run with the idea of May telling the truth until he got to a wall. This might not make sense in the face of it, but it wasn’t yet a wall. Still, Glitsky was on his side and he wanted to keep him there. ‘Maybe,’ he conceded, ‘but either way this helps -’

‘It doesn’t help me. Everywhere I look there’s more of nothing. You find anything about Farris?’

‘No. I got a call in. Speaking of which…’He grabbed Glitsky’s telephone and pushed some buttons. ‘Lunch break,’ he told Frannie. ‘Any calls?’ When he hung up he shook his head.‘Nothing.’

‘He out of town or what?’

Hardy shrugged. ‘Probably just busy. Plus I’m not on his side anymore, remember? I’m defending Nash’s killer. Now if you wanted -’

‘No way. I’ve already done him up and down. If you get a line on some physical evidence I’ll see what I can do, but… Now you’ve got Shinn telling the truth and Farris lying for no apparent reason, neither of which I think I buy. I know Farris didn’t kill Nash. He was in Taos. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

Hardy didn’t argue – he knew better than to push any further. ‘All right, maybe he’ll call me back. If something pops, though, I’m going to call you.’

Glitsky finished chewing his ice, loudly. ‘That knowledge gives meaning to my life,’ he said.

‘Can I have these?’ Hardy asked, gathering the inventories.

‘Not only can you have them,’ Glitsky replied, ‘you must have them. I had to wait all morning for the office to empty out so I could make you some copies.’

Hardy tapped his palm against Glitsky’s cheek. ‘You’re such a sweet guy,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever change.’

Glitsky growled. ‘I wasn’t planning to.’

Fowler and Jane were sitting at the defense table when Hardy entered the courtroom at one-twenty. Celine was already at her spot on the aisle in the second bench. He found himself slowing down coming abreast of her, then forced himself along through the swinging doors.

Fowler didn’t look much better. Hardy pulled up his chair and placed a hand on his back. ‘You holding up?’ Jane, on the other side of her father, gave Hardy a worried look. He forced a show of enthusiasm. ‘We’ve got a couple of interesting developments.’

‘I’m a fool, Diz, been one all along.’ Physically, Andy’s eyes looked better. The redness had gone down, the black bagginess under them had receded. But the expression in them – or rather the lack of it – was almost more unsettling. ‘She never cared a damn at all, did she?’

Why beat around about it? ‘No,’ Hardy said. ‘No, I guess she didn’t, Andy.’ Jane frosted him from across her father but he ignored it. ‘Now how about you stop having to suffer for what she’s done to you? She’s gone. Didn’t you tell Jane once you just had to treat it as though it was a friend that died? Well, now that’s what it is.’

‘She lied to me.’

Hardy was getting tired of the explanation – to himself as well – that May lied as the answer for everything. ‘Did she? Or did you lie to yourself?’

Jane fairly hissed at him. ‘Dismas!’

‘You know, Andy,’ he pressed on, ‘maybe you just needed more, that was all. She gave you what you were paying for, which was a fantasy. And you’re a guy, Judge, who can make things happen, maybe even make your fantasy come true. You weren’t like the other guys, the lesser types whose lives passed through your hands every day -’