“You think maybe yeanling could mean ‘octopus’?” Hunt asked.
But before Hardy could do anything about his latest information, he had to be sure that it was true.
He stood in the wide hallway behind Department 25 and waited, depressed as always by the sight of the shackled prisoners belching from the elevators coming down from the jail above him. Maya, over in the new jail behind the Hall of Justice, would be coming in through the back door in her personal little chain gang.
Her saw her now and walked down to meet her. The months of incarceration hadn’t been good to her. She’d asked for a short haircut to minimize the lack of luster brought about by the caustic soap they had in the showers, but the result was just an unkempt, vaguely butch, mop-and now it was even showing signs of gray. Her skin, too, had the familiar jail pallor, although ironically she’d gained perhaps fifteen pounds with the huge servings of high-calorie jail food. And no one would ever mistake the deep creases around her eyes for laugh lines.
He accompanied her into the four-by-eight-foot cage built into the wall and connected to the back entrance to the courtroom, and the metal door clanged as the bailiff closed it behind them. This was where she waited every day, usually all alone, until court was called into session, and this is where they now both sat on the cold concrete ledge that served as a kind of bench.
Braun walked by them, coming back from her lunch, in conversation with one of her judicial colleagues, and she didn’t even glance in their direction.
“She’s an awful person,” Maya said.
“Yes, she is.”
“How does somebody like that get to be a judge?”
“Usually the governor appoints them first. Then they just keep getting elected.”
“So the qualification is they know a governor?”
“And probably either gave him money or helped him get it. Assuming a male governor, of course.”
“And why wouldn’t we?” She plucked at her jail suit. “I’m sorry, I’m just a total bitch today. I shouldn’t be so judgmental. I’m sure she’s trying her best.” She sighed. “And to think that’s so much the life Joel and I bought into before all this began.”
“What’s that?”
“You know. Fund-raising. Benefits. Helping people like her get appointed. I’m beginning to think it’s really not about justice at all. I wonder what we were doing, what we were thinking, all that time.”
“Protecting your interests,” Hardy said. “Your assets. And you wind up with people like Braun, and Glass, for that matter, as your gatekeepers. And they take it damn seriously. Problem is, once you’re perceived of as outside the loop, you’re the enemy. You’re the threat.”
“Joel’s not a threat.” Finally, some color came into her face. “He’s never done a dishonest or illegal thing in his life. And they’re all over him.”
“He’s going to beat it,” Hardy said. “But he’s going to need you beating this thing too.”
She turned her head toward him. “I thought that’s what we were paying you for.”
Hardy had heard this kind of thing before, from both husband and wife, even from Harlen, and he showed some of his growing impatience with it. “As we’ve just been discussing, sometimes money doesn’t get you what you think it should. Sometimes you’ve got to change your vision. Your idea of what you’re all about. Like, for example, are you inside that big wall, protecting your assets, or are you going to just let these people take them?”
“Me! Am I just going to just let these people take them? Like I’ve got any choice in what’s happening here? Or out there?”
Hardy put his back against the wall and turned to meet her eyes. There was no warmth in his expression. “You’ve got all the choice in the world, Maya.”
She just stared over at him, shaking her head. “What are you talking about? I’ve got no choice about anything. Are you out of your mind?”
“Maybe I am, trying to defend you with the wrong theory, the wrong motive, and you sitting there day in and day out watching me do it, letting me do it.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, you do, Maya. I’m talking about the basic fact of this case. Dylan wasn’t blackmailing you because you guys sold drugs in college and, gosh, maybe people would find out. That wasn’t it, was it? Although that’s what you let me build our whole case on.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Two reasons. One, you felt guilty and that you deserved to be punished. And two, you could never tell anybody the truth. Not even your lawyer, because you can’t trust him enough.” Hardy came forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Okay, so enough. Now it’s time. True or false, Maya. Dylan was blackmailing you because of something to do with your aunt’s death, wasn’t he?”
Her body gave slightly. No words came.
“What was it, Maya? Did you know who did the hit-and-run and not tell the police? Did you loan them your car?”
Now Maya’s mouth went loose, her eyes glassy.
“You were there, weren’t you, Maya? In the car with them.” Hardy suddenly felt his own head go light as the probable reality hit him. “No,” he said. “No, you were the driver.”
For a long moment she regarded him as she might her executioner, then all at once a small sound came out of her throat. She hung her head and her shoulders began to heave.
Tears splashed like raindrops onto the floor between her feet.
She’d passed through the sobbing, though the blotched and wet effects of it remained on her face. “What matters is that nobody in the family can know. Which means nobody at all, ’cause whoever knew would tell them.” She let out a shuddering, unsteady breath. “How did you find out?”
“Serendipity,” Hardy said. “My investigator mentioned Tess Granat and you to his girlfriend in the same breath, and there it was. You’ve kept this to yourself all this time?”
“Of course. I had to.” Then, a hand quickly on his leg. “And you can’t tell anyone either. Ever.”
“No. I know that. You don’t have to worry about that.” He hesitated. “But maybe you could, after all.”
Her tortured gaze fell on him. “If you think that,” she said, “you don’t understand my family at all. Or me. Or any of this.”
“What about your husband?”
“Tell him I am a murderer? Tell him the mother of his children is a child killer?”
Hardy straightened, his back stiff up against the cell wall. “You’re being too hard on yourself, Maya. It was a long time ago.”
She shook her head. “It’s yesterday,” she said. “It’s this morning. It’s now, for God’s sake. Don’t you understand? I killed her. My mom’s sister. Kathy’s sister and her unborn child. Everybody’s favorite.”
“It was an accident.”
“I was stoned and drunk. Both. Loaded. It was murder.”
“And you’ll never forgive yourself for it.”
“Why should I? I did it. Would you?”
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth. Maybe after all this time I’d be tempted to start trying.”
“Time hasn’t made it go away.”
“It might if you shared the burden of it. If you told somebody. Maybe you need absolution.”
“I pray for it every day.”
“It’s not going to come without some kind of confession.”
“What? Now you’re a priest?”
“Not even close,” Hardy said. “Just a fellow sinner like yourself. But I was raised a good Catholic. Believe me, I know how the forgiveness thing works.”
“You ever kill anybody?”
Hardy nodded. “I was in Vietnam. I killed a lot of people.” Including not just in Vietnam, he thought, but also the victims of the horrific gunfight he’d been part of here in San Francisco, the after-math of which had dominated his emotional stability and career for the next three or four years. So, yes, he’d killed his share of people. And kept his share of secrets too. A plague of them, he sometimes felt. But Frannie, his children, Glitsky, Roake-they all knew what he’d done, had worked through the consequences together, and that had helped.