The Second Chair (49 page)

“Your honor,” he said. “Before we begin argument and witnesses today, I think it will save the court considerable time and trouble if counsel meet in camera for a few minutes.”

Johnson, perhaps sensing shenanigans, considered for a long moment. “We just got out here, Mr. Hardy. I’d like to get a little work done before we take a break.”

“We may not need to do the work, your honor. There is new and pertinent information about this case, critical evidence that will, I believe, be persuasive to the court and perhaps even lead to dismissal of all charges against Mr. Bartlett.”

The courtroom, as always, was nearly empty, but his words still created an audible buzz from the Norths, who sat behind Hardy, and even from the bailiffs, the clerk and the recorder. Brandt, who sat to Hardy’s right, at the prosecution table, pushed his chair back and stared with frank amazement.

Johnson pulled himself up to his full height in his chair behind the bench. “As I mentioned to you at the outset, Mr. Hardy, we’re not here to consider the criminal charges against Mr. Bartlett. The purpose of this hearing, and it’s
only
purpose, is to determine
where
Mr. Bartlett gets tried—here or in adult court. Not
whether.
”

“Of course, your honor, I understand that. Nevertheless, the import of this new information is rather extraordinary and I believe the court will want to have heard it.”

“To save the time that is obviously so important to you?”

“To prevent a grave injustice, your honor. I’m talking perhaps ten minutes, maybe less.”

Johnson wore his reluctance like a shroud, but finally, shaking his head in disgust, he turned to Brandt. “Does the petitioner have any objection?”

“Nothing substantive, your honor.”

“All right. I’ll see counsel in my chambers.” Johnson stood. “Ten minutes.” And he left the courtroom by the back door.

Johnson, his arms crossed over his chest, stood in his robes in the middle of his room, so that when the three lawyers trooped in behind him, there really wasn’t anyplace for them to go. After Brandt closed the door behind them, they stood with their backs to the wall, their faces to the intractable judge. “All right, Mr. Hardy, we’re in chambers. As you can probably tell, I’m not in much of a trifling mood, so let’s hear what’s so important.”

Hardy nodded. “Thank you, your honor. I’ll cut to the chase. Andrew Bartlett didn’t kill Mike Mooney and I have information which I believe rises to the level of proof, and I think you’ll agree.”

But Johnson was already shaking his head no. “I won’t agree because I won’t hear it.”

“Pardon?”

“I can’t imagine, Mr. Hardy, how I could have made it more clear to you that this seven-oh-seven is not about Mr. Bartlett’s guilt or innocence.”

Hardy, striving for equanimity, inclined his head an inch in deference. “Yes, your honor, I understand, but this—”

“You say you understand, and follow it with a ‘but.’ That sounds like an argument coming up. Do you hear yourself?”

“Your honor, forgive me. I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’m trying to present information that you will, I’m sure, find compelling.”

“About your client’s guilt or innocence?”

Hardy knew the wrong answer, and tried to avoid it. “About the circumstances of the crime. Which would make it fall under criteria five.”

“All right, but be careful.” Johnson cocked his head. “We’re getting a little obscure here, Counselor.”

“I’m talking about the person they’re calling the Executioner.”

“What about him?”

Brandt got on the boards. “Excuse me, but wait a minute. This sounds to me like we’re getting back to who committed these murders.”

“It does to me, too,” Johnson said. “Mr. Hardy, you’re not going to imply, I hope, that some unknown serial killer
might
be guilty of the crimes for which your client is charged.”

“Your honor, with respect, it’s not a question of
might.
I was in the Hall of Justice last night with Deputy Chief Glitsky. He identified a defendant in a seventeen-year-old case with connections to Allan Boscacci as well as to all the so-called Executioner victims . . .”

“And you’re saying the victims in this case . . .”

“I’m saying Mike Mooney and Laura Wright were killed by the Executioner, yes.”

“Excuse me,” Brandt said again. “Did I miss something? Have they caught him?”

“No.”

“Has someone confessed?”

Hardy came back to Johnson. “That’s not the point, your honor. Glitsky knows who he is, but hasn’t been able to identify him yet by name.”

Johnson barked a note of derision. “So he’s known but unidentified, whatever that means. It seems we’ve gotten to quite a long throw from whether or not Mr. Bartlett is an adult.”

“I’m getting there, your honor.”

“You are? You know, Mr. Hardy, I don’t believe you are. Is Mr. Bartlett somehow related to this known but unidentified Executioner?”

“No.”

“May I ask how you can know that one way or the other if you don’t know who the man is?” The judge gathered himself for a moment, then pointed an accusatory finger at Hardy. “This is
exactly
the type of alternative theory hocus-pocus that I warned you against at the outset, and warned you again before we came back here to chambers.”

“But this isn’t hocus-pocus, your honor. You can call Deputy Chief Glitsky and—”

Johnson finally raised his voice. “
I don’t have to call anyone!
If there is strong enough evidence to warrant revisiting the charges against Mr. Bartlett, I’m sure Mr. Brandt will hear about it from the district attorney. Mr. Brandt, have you gotten any calls today on this topic?”

“No, your honor.”

He turned to Hardy. “Then this court is going to assume, Mr. Hardy, that the current charges are still in effect. If Mr. Bartlett is demonstrably innocent of them, I’m sure that Mr. Jackman will drop them and let Mr. Brandt know as soon as he can. But in the meanwhile, until I hear otherwise, Mr. Bartlett is in the middle of an administrative process to determine where he gets tried. That’s all that’s happening here. Enough of this!”

Hardy, in a bit of a fury of his own, took a step forward, moving into the judge’s personal space. “To the contrary, your honor, with all respect. There has not been enough of this. If it’s your decision to refuse to hear what I’ve got to say, then when we get outside I’m going to open up by making a representation to the court and getting it on the record.”

Johnson glared at him. “Talk all you want, Mr. Hardy. Sooner or later you’ll have to stop and we’ll get on with it.”

“If it please the court.” They were all back in the courtroom. Hardy didn’t even sit down, but got back to his table, turned and spoke. “Last night, acting on information received from a classmate of Andrew Bartlett, I spoke to a woman named Catherine Bass, who was at one time the wife of Michael Mooney.” Because proceedings in juvenile court were kept confidential, Hardy could bring up the bare fact of Mooney’s sexuality here if he needed to and still keep it out of the public record. But now he realized with some relief that there was no reason even for that. “She informed me, and subsequently I have verified it as true, that in 1984, Michael Mooney served on a jury here in San Francisco in the case of
People v. Lucas Welding,
a murder case. The prosecutor in that case was Allan Boscacci. Other members of that jury included”—Hardy looked down and checked his notes—“Elizabeth Cary, born Elizabeth Reed, Edith Montrose, Philip Wong, and Morris Tollman. All of these people, the jurors I’ve mentioned and Allan Boscacci, have been murder victims in the past three weeks.”

Next to him, he heard Andrew—his neck brace gone now—whisper to Wu, “Is that true?” Even within the bullpen, he saw the bailiffs exchange glances with each other and then the court recorder. Johnson picked up his gavel, then put it back down. It was the first time that he was hearing all of this in detail, and Hardy hoped that the recitation would make an impression.

“Upon receiving this information, I immediately called San Francisco’s deputy chief of inspectors, Abe Glitsky, and subsequently met him at the Hall of Justice, where he discovered that Lucas Welding, who had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife, had recently won a reversal of his conviction based upon DNA evidence that had not been presented at the original trial. He had been ordered released from prison, but during the course of his appeal, he had developed cancer and ultimately died at the infirmary at the Corcoran Penitentiary before he could be released.”

Hardy stopped, wondering if that was enough. It certainly had been plenty for him and Glitsky. He threw a look over to Brandt, but the prosecutor was sitting slumped in his chair, his head down, his hands clasped on his lap. Johnson himself appeared to be waiting for more, and if that door was open, Hardy thought he should walk through it.

“Deputy Chief Glitsky has assigned several inspectors first to find and protect the other jurors from the Welding case, and second to identify and locate anyone who might have had a relationship with Welding, and whose rage over Welding’s seventeen years of incarceration for a crime he did not commit might have become a motive for the murders of Allan Boscacci and several members of the convicting jury.” He paused to let his words reverberate for a moment, then added. “Including,” he said, “the murder of Michael Mooney.”

Brandt was sitting up straight now. Johnson was taking some notes at the podium. When he was finished, he looked up. His eyes went first to Brandt, then to the gallery, where Hal and Linda were whispering, then finally back to the defense table. “Thank you, Mr. Hardy. Your representation is noted for the record. Is that the substance of it?”

“Yes, your honor.”

“All right, then, let’s move on. Do you have another witness for this seven-oh-seven proceeding?”

“Wait a minute.” Andrew’s voice was still fairly hoarse, but carried in the courtroom. “If you know that somebody else killed Mooney . . .”

Behind him, Hardy heard the Norths and he turned. Hal was on his feet. “That ought to be the end of this,” he was saying. Both bailiffs—Nelson and Cottrell—stood quickly and moved out from their positions on either wall.

“But this is nuts,” Andrew was saying to Wu. “It proves what I’ve been saying from the beginning.” He got to his feet and spoke up to the court in general, back to his mother. “It’s what I’ve been telling you guys all along . . .”

Johnson gaveled him quiet. A sharp, loud
crack.
“I’ll have order in this courtroom. Mr. North, sit down. Mr. Hardy, Ms. Wu, I’m warning you, get your client under control.” Both bailiffs stopped in their tracks for a moment, then Cottrell, with a warning glare at Wu and Hardy, walked out through the bullpen gate and into the gallery.

Hardy turned and watched Cottrell as he continued back past the Norths and positioned himself by the back door.

Wu stood up. “But, your honor, surely the import of Mr. Hardy’s—”

Johnson brought down his gavel again. “Ms. Wu. I said that’s enough.”

Shaking her head in frustation and anger, Wu shared a look with Hardy, put her hand on Andrew’s arm to calm him, and sat back down. Hardy was still on his feet. “Your honor,” he said, “it’s obvious to everyone in this courtroom that Andrew Bartlett did not kill Mike Mooney.”

Brandt was up across the room. “Your honor, if it please the court. It’s not obvious to me. I’ve got an eyewitness and a great deal of evidence that says he did. And what about the other victim in this case, Laura Wright? Andrew Bartlett’s girlfriend? Does defense counsel contend that she was on this Mr. Welding’s bad luck jury, too?”

Hardy spoke to the judge. “Your honor, she was killed because she happened to be there and Mooney’s killer did not want to leave a witness.”

Johnson used his gavel again, then waited while the courtroom went to complete silence. Finally, he drew a long breath. “Mr. Hardy, I reject your conclusion that your representation rises to the level of proof in the matter before this court. I’ll admit that it does rise to the level of coincidence, and the court does not find that compelling. Also, it doesn’t change the essential fact of the gravity of the offense—Mr. Mooney and Ms. Wright were murdered. The district attorney has not withdrawn the charges against Mr. Bartlett, nor has he conveyed the gravemen of your most recent information to the court or to Mr. Brandt. As I’ve already mentioned several times, this seven-oh-seven is about whether Mr. Bartlett is a juvenile or an adult and that’s all it’s about.”

“But, your honor—”

Crack!
“Mr. Hardy, your representation is noted for the record. What do you expect me to do, drop the charges?”

“I don’t think that would be unreasonable, your honor, given the enormity of what you’re calling the coincidence. Mr. Mooney and Ms. Wright were both killed by someone connected to Lucas Welding, and there’s no such connection with Andrew Bartlett.”

“I understand that that’s your theory, Mr. Hardy. Now do you have another witness, or is it time that I make a ruling?”

Hardy bit the inside of his mouth hard. Looking down to his right at Andrew, he whispered, “Hang in there,” then came back to the judge and said, “We’d like to call Anna Salarco, your honor.”

“All right.” Johnson looked to his left—Cottrell’s standard position in the courtroom—and frowned. He turned in the other direction. “Officer Nelson, would you please go out to the hallway and call the witness? Anna Salarco. And while you’re out there, if you see Officer Cottrell, would you ask him if he’d care to join us again in the courtroom?”

There followed some minutes of confusion. Hardy had told Anna Salarco that they’d call her as a witness as soon as the court was called to session, but then they’d all had the meeting in chambers and Hardy’s representation to the court. In the interim, evidently, both of the Salarcos had left the hallway to go to the bathroom. Maybe Bailiff Cottrell had gone looking for them. In any event, Cottrell was still missing from the courtroom when Anna Salarco finally, and nervously, took the witness stand.