Hardy 05 - Mercy Rule, The (44 page)

‘Yes.’

Salter was frowning and Hardy liked the look of it. When you get a coroner saying you don’t necessarily even have a crime, an overworked judge might find himself wondering why he was presiding over a murder trial.

Hardy thanked the witness, but before he’d gotten back to his table, Soma was up on redirect. ‘Dr Strout,’ he said, ‘you’re not saying that this
was
a suicide, are you?’

‘No.’

‘And why was that?’

Strout shrugged, a drop of impatience finally leaking out. ‘There was just no way to tell, one way or the other.’

*
    
*
    
*
    
*
    
*

Hardy went home for dinner, stayed for most of two hours, kissed his little darlings good-night, then headed downtown again, first to the jail to keep Graham company and discuss the day’s events and their ongoing strategy, then back to his office for a more critical postmortem with David Freeman.

When he got back home at eleven-fifteen, he was ready to collapse and not altogether thrilled to find Sarah Evans at his dining-room table, talking with Frannie over coffee cups. ‘If that’s decaf,’ he said, ‘I’ll have some, though I’m philosophically opposed to the idea of it.’

His wife offered a cheek for a kiss.

In the past months Evans had become Sarah. The midnight phone calls gave way to the occasional meeting here at the house. She and Frannie, close to the same age, had interests in common. Sarah was talking about getting married, having babies; Frannie now about joining the police department. Both wanted all this to happen in the future sometime. They’d had some good discussions. Frannie said, ‘Sarah and I have decided that when the kids are gone, I should be a cop. Not a family counselor after all.’

Hardy pulled up a chair. ‘Good idea, I mean it. Fast times, great benefits. A really swell clientele. You’d enjoy it. But do you want to hear my idea about after the kids are gone?’

‘Okay, what?’

‘You travel the world and go to exotic ports with your retired husband and be his love slave.’

Frannie put a hand over his. ‘The reason I love him,’ she said. ‘It’s that wacky sense of humor.’ Frannie parted his hand. ‘He’s had a long day.’

Mentioning Hardy’s day brought them all back to reality, but especially Sarah. It was why she had come over. As a witness she wasn’t allowed in the courtroom. She’d worked in the field all day and by now was a wreck, needing to know how it had gone. Hardy was honest with her. ‘It’s Soma’s turn. He gets to lay out his case first. Later I show up and slay him.’

Not amused, Sarah sighed. ‘I just don’t feel like I’ve done enough.’

‘You’ve done more on this case than any cop I’ve ever heard of, Sarah.’

‘It still doesn’t feel like enough. If they’ve only got one suspect and that’s Graham, then all Soma’s got to do is make the murder and there’s no other option.’

Hardy knew that this was mostly true, and it wasn’t much comfort to him either. And he didn’t even want to start on his fears about the jury. Putting a good face on it, he kept his tone light. ‘He won’t make the murder.’

‘But, Dismas, it
was
a murder. You and I both think it was a murder.’

‘You do?’ Frannie suddenly asked.

Uh-oh, Hardy thought. He hadn’t consciously been trying to hide anything from Frannie, but neither had he wanted to burden his wife with all the ins and outs of the case. She had her own life she was handling here on the home front, and much more efficiently, he felt, than he was handling many parts of his.

He had outlined for her the general theory of his defense and told her that he honestly believed that Graham hadn’t done it, but not that someone else had.

One of Frannie’s main complaints about her husband being involved with murder trials was the fact that he would be working with someone who had killed someone on purpose and thus had a slightly better-than-average chance of doing it again, perhaps to his attorney and/or attorney’s family.

Now Hardy shrugged. ‘It could have been. We knew that.’

Frannie played with it for a while, then balled a fist and brought it down on the table. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Just shit.’

‘What?’ Sarah asked. ‘Didn’t we know it?’

‘We knew it,’ Hardy assured her. ‘Frannie didn’t.’

Sarah reached a hand over the table. ‘That’s what I’ve been looking for all this time, Fran. Who killed Sal.’

Her flat, stunned gaze went from one of them to the other. She let out a deep breath. ‘I’m going to bed.’ And she was up and out of the room.

Sarah started to rise, to follow her. ‘Let her go,’ Hardy said ‘It’s all right. I’ll talk to her.’

She sat back down, arms crossed. ‘I’m sorry, I thought… I should go.’

‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘I want you to understand that we’ve got an outstanding defense going here. Even David Freeman thinks it’s good, and he’s Mikey as far as I’m concerned. It’s going to work. I believe it will work.’

‘And what if it doesn’t?’

He didn’t answer. There wasn’t an answer.

Sarah had her elbows on the table and blew into her steepled hands. ‘I could just quit my job,’ she said. ‘I could work on it full time.’

Hardy shook his head. ‘You’re better inside.’

‘I’m no good. I haven’t found anything. Sal wasn’t carrying anybody’s money that I can find. Hadn’t for years. Not even a sniff of it. Nobody killed what’s-his-name for his fish business.’

‘Pio,’ Hardy said, hating his damned memory.

‘I should go strong-arm George, Graham’s brother. Shake him down. Find out where he was.’

‘And get fired?’

‘It doesn’t matter. If he did it…’

Hardy reached across the table and touched her elbow. ‘Slow down. Slow down. Take a breath.’ He waited. ‘Listen, this is always the worst, after you’re committed and you don’t know how it’s going to go. You just got to believe you made the right decision, that’s how it’s going to work.’

‘But I can’t just sit here! I can’t!’

‘Graham’s just sitting there.’

This seemed to hit home. She took a breath, let it out heavily. ‘So? What then? I can’t believe we’ve got a righteous suspect with no alibi and nobody’s even—’

‘No, we don’t. Who’s that?’

‘George.’

Hardy shook his head. ‘George is not any kind of suspect. He doesn’t need an alibi. Nobody saw him near Sal’s, ever. There’s no prints, no medical background, no real knowledge of his father’s situation, even. If he was going to kill Sal out of rage, he would have done it differently. If he knew he was going to die soon anyway, why would he do it at all? Besides, he wouldn’t let his brother go to prison for the rest of his life.’

‘I bet he would if it came down to either Graham or him.’

Hardy pondered a moment. ‘Look, Sarah, it wasn’t Graham, right?’

‘Of course.’

‘He really didn’t do it? That’s what you think?’

She stared at him. ‘You do?’

‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t. He didn’t do it, so I’m going on the assumption that they can’t prove he did. That’s the system. I’ve got to believe in it.’ In fact, Hardy had serious doubts about the system, and supposed that Sarah did, too, but this wasn’t the time to air them. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if it makes you feel better, use some police magic and see if you can find out where George went, get some hard evidence: maybe he used a credit card, made a phone call.’

‘I wish Abe—’

Hardy shook his head, stopping her. ‘Abe’s got a suspect in custody. How is he going to justify continuing an investigation?’

Sarah sighed. ‘I know,’ she said at last. ‘I know. It’s just so frustrating.’

‘And you’re on the list for tomorrow, right?’ Meaning the witness list — she would probably be called the next day. ‘You ought to get some sleep. It’ll look better with a little rest.’

She sighed a last time and stood up. ‘Do you want me to go in and talk to Frannie?’

‘That’s all right,’ Hardy said. ‘We’ll work it out.’

*
    
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*
    
*
    
*

Frannie was asleep, lying on her side facing away from his half of the bed. Her breathing was neither regular nor heavy, but she was asleep.

That was her story and she was sticking to it.

28

Hardy’s official workday the next morning carried over the tension from his kitchen. He’d finally fallen asleep after one o’clock and was up at five-thirty, going over his notes, trying to second-guess what would happen in the courtroom that day.

Frannie did not get up to make his coffee.

He was out of the house — he
had
to be out of the house — by seven-thirty, just as the kids and his wife were getting to the breakfast table. Kiss the kids good-bye — all he was doing anymore with them. Eyes from Frannie, no words in front of the children. Tonight maybe.

Then, at the Hall, waiting and waiting for his partner and co-strategist, David Freeman, who hadn’t arrived by the time the bailiffs brought Graham into the holding cell, surfer hair combed back neatly. He was putting on his civilian coat and tie at a few minutes after nine o’clock.

‘Where’s Yoda?’ Graham had christened Freeman after the Star Wars gnome. Hardy thought it a fairly astute characterization.

‘I don’t know. Probably doing a little cold-fusion work, keep his hand in.’ Studied nonchalance. In truth, though, Freeman’s absence left him with a low-voltage sense of unease — a good-luck charm misplaced. As though he needed any more bad vibes. But there was no point harping on it. Other matters pressed.

Hardy looked around behind him, lowered his voice. ‘You talk to Sarah this morning? She came by my house last night. She wants to go after your brother.’

‘I know. We talked about it.’ Graham’s massive hands were making confetti from the edges of a yellow legal pad. ‘I don’t think it’s a bad idea.’

‘You don’t? You did last time I asked.’ In the early days, when Hardy was gearing up for his ‘some other dude did it’ defense, he’d questioned Graham about George’s motives and opportunities. Graham had laughed at him; there was no chance his brother could have been involved. Now he was singing a different tune.

Graham looked as though he’d eaten some bad cheese. ‘Maybe I’m finally getting pissed off. I’ve been thinking about me, you know, my situation here’ — he motioned toward the door to the courtroom — ‘all this. But you know what?’

The eyes seemed to reach all the way into his soul. This was no act, or if it was, it was one Hardy hadn’t seen before in nearly five months of daily contact.

‘What?’ Hardy asked. ‘But quiet, okay?’ He raised his eyes, suddenly aware of voices from the courtroom, from the jury box, which was haphazardly filling up.

Graham leaned in toward him. ‘Somebody did kill Sal, Diz. That’s the thing. With all this concentration on getting me off, we kind of pushed that under the rug. Now I think about it, I want the son of a bitch, I don’t care if it’s Georgie.’

‘And you think it is?’

‘I’d like to make sure it isn’t, let’s put it that way. You know what I think? You know how I told you if Leland pays you, he gets something for it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What he’s getting here is keeping you off his favored son.’

Maybe on more sleep, with Freeman at his side and his wife not mad at him, Hardy would have reacted more coolly. But he felt a rush of blood, heard a pounding of it in his ears. He clipped it out. ‘I hope I’m not hearing you say you think I’m in Leland’s pocket.’

‘Easy, Diz. I don’t think you meant to be.’

‘I’m just too stupid to see it, right?’

Part of it, of course — suddenly clear — was that it could have been true, and Hardy in fact hadn’t seen it. By paying Hardy’s bills for Graham’s defense, Leland Taylor had effectively defused any investigations Hardy might have otherwise considered pursuing within the Taylor family.

Graham shrugged. ‘It’s an obvious stone and it’s unturned.’

‘There’s no way to turn it.’ Hardy’s voice echoed in the holding cell. ‘Glitsky won’t look at it. Sarah risks her job if she…’ He shook his head. ‘You know this. There’s no way.’

Graham remained calm. For one of the very first times Hardy got a glimpse of the legal mind that had gotten his client his federal clerkship. ‘There’s no way without alienating Leland, that’s true. And he’s set us up so we won’t. It’s subtle and it’s sweet, and that’s the way my stepfather works.’

‘You think he’s protecting George?’

Another shrug. ‘I know from Mom that he doesn’t know where George was. I know it worries the shit out of him. And Leland thinks a couple of other things.’

‘Like what?’

‘One, there’s bettable odds you’re going to get me off, so there’s no real risk anyway, just a few more months of my already wasted life. I’m a pawn he’ll risk losing to save his bishop.’

‘What’s the other one?’

‘Sal’s death wasn’t any great loss. He was old and feeble and a pain in the ass. If Georgie killed him, it wasn’t like a
real
murder. More like putting down a dog. Sal was a nonentity when he was alive. He didn’t count, not to Leland. And he would be dead anyway in a couple of months. What does it matter?’

Hardy sat back in his chair, ran a hand through his hair — shades of Dean Powell.

‘Tell him,’ Graham said. ‘See what he does.’

‘Tell who?’

‘Leland. Tell him you’re going to be looking into George’s alibi. See if he cuts off the money or, even better, offers you more if you don’t. Then at least we’ll know.’

‘We won’t know about George.’

‘But we’ll know for sure why Leland’s in. This is money, after all, thicker than blood. Georgie’s the heir apparent to the bank. If he killed Sal — hell, any scandal… good-bye line of succession.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Hardy said. He dug his thumbs into his eyes, a wave of exhaustion washing over him. He suddenly wondered if he wouldn’t be wise to plead some kind of personal crisis —toothache, migraine, chest pains — and ask Salter for a one-day continuance.

But this was only day two of the marathon that was the trial proper. It was unimaginable, but he knew he’d be more fatigued than this before it was over. If he was going to beg a day off — highly frowned upon — it should at least be when the danger of dropping dead from exhaustion was a real possibility.