55
The door to the visitor’s room opened. It was after ten-thirty and Hardy looked up, half-expecting to see Strout coming in to tell him that May had in fact been murdered, that the knife wounds were inconsistent with what could be self-inflicted. Instead, he looked into the basset face of David Freeman, who asked politely if he could sit down.
‘Ah, Mr Hardy. Just came to pay my respects,’ he said. In the past months Hardy had had two interviews with Freeman in his office regarding the testimony he was going to give for the prosecution. Nominally adversarial, the two men both had maverick streaks, which they recognized in each other and which Hardy felt formed a bond of sorts that, at this point, was still unacknowledged. ‘Strout still in with her?’ Freeman asked.
Hardy nodded, considered a moment, then decided to speak his mind. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I wish you’d taken this case when Andy first asked you.’
Freeman shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’ve lost it. It’s not over until the jury comes in.’
Hardy raised his eyes. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘Particularly if Andy didn’t kill May. I think they’re reaching if they think he did.’
‘He was there at May’s this morning.’ Hardy was testing.
Freeman shrugged. ‘I was there two days ago. Does the jury know it? Do they need to know it?’
Hardy grabbed the nugget. At this point he’d take anything from any source. ‘Why do you think they’re reaching? I mean beyond wanting a conviction.’
In their previous four hours of discussions, Hardy thought he had adequately covered the trial ground with Freeman, but he was beginning to realize that Freeman tended to answer only what he had been asked, and Hardy had stuck to Fowler’s actions as they related to the consciousness-of-guilt theory. He had all but ignored May Shinn the person, thinking she had fallen out of the loop. Now he was no longer sure of that.
‘Because May was depressed, she was suicidal. I spent over an hour last night trying to talk her out of killing herself.’
‘Why was she so depressed?’
‘I think that’s obvious, don’t you?’
‘Not just a coat.’
‘Coat? Oh, that? No, that just might have been the last straw, just another reminder that she couldn’t hope for anything anymore. That’s why she first called me, I guess – upset over it being stolen. But the depression itself -that’s been going on since the summer. She was in love with Owen Nash. Believed she was. After he died she lost what she’d put her hopes in. What had kept her going. Then to be put on trial for his murder…“
Hardy shook his head, still testing. ‘I don’t know what she told you, but she didn’t love Owen Nash.’ Or so Farris had said.
‘No. No, you’re wrong there. Why do you say that?’
‘Same as with Fowler. You don’t take money from someone you love, not for sex anyway.’
‘She didn’t take money from Nash, she never did.’
That stopped Hardy cold. ‘What?’
‘She never took money from him.’
‘What about the will?’
‘What about it? The will was a will. I think it started out as more of a gesture, but when Owen died… I mean, wouldn’t you pursue two million dollars?’
Hardy’s head was beginning to throb again. He reached for the cup of now cold coffee on the table next to him. Why had he always assumed that Owen was paying May Shinn? Had it been Ken Farris who’d told him that early on? Had Farris been lying?
‘No,’ Freeman was going on. ‘May did love Owen Nash. There’s no doubt about that. And I’ve come to believe he told her he loved her, too. He was wearing her ring when he was found. She was a lovable woman.’
Clearly true. Look what she’d done to Andy Fowler. May obviously had more substance than he’d given her credit for. But she certainly had deceived Andy Fowler, and he reminded Freeman of this.
Freeman nodded as if this were old news. ‘That was before Owen Nash. Before Nash she did whatever was expedient. She told me this. Certain clients, you can become like a confessor to them. Psychologist, devil’s advocate. A dependency develops.’
Hardy, remembering Celine, didn’t need a reminder of that.
‘In May’s case she and I actually became pretty close. We were doing a lot of work together.’ At Hardy’s glance, Freeman went on, ‘And no, we weren’t sleeping together. Anyway, something very real seems to have happened with May and Owen, who were both pretty cynical to begin with. They changed each other, for the better.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘May dropped her old lovers – Andy Fowler, for example. Could be she might have been able to scam Owen along like she’d done with men before, but she wanted to clear the slate.’
‘And Nash?’
‘I gather it was pretty much the same, except of course he had a wider circle and more responsibilities. It might have taken longer to put into effect – this decision to go public with their intended marriage, for example.’
Hardy remembered that Farris had said that Owen had ‘changed’ in the last months of his life. Was that the explanation?
‘You really think they were going to get married?’
‘I do, yes, and I’m not too easily conned.’
Hardy had never seriously considered that. And why, more than anything, was that? Because Ken Farris had told him May and Owen were definitely breaking up. It brought him up short, wondering what else he’d overlooked or ignored.
His good friend, and very competent investigator, Abe Glitsky, had supposedly checked the alibi of Ken Farris, but now the thought occurred that in this one area, Pullios may have been right. Abe might have been so burned by the false arrest of May that his heart wasn’t into pursuing the leads in this case as he otherwise might have. He had, after all, not followed up the unidentified fingerprint on the murder weapon – while Struler had done so. He hadn’t discovered the private eye, Emmet Turkel. Hardy found himself wondering if Abe had actually flown to Taos or only made a few phone calls.
Owen Nash’s death had left Ken Farris in sole charge of a $150 million empire, unencumbered now by a controlling eccentric. Might not that be worth killing for?
‘Something ring a bell?’ Freeman asked mildly.
‘Maybe.’
They heard footsteps and were both standing by the time Strout opened the door. ‘Y’all want to come in?’ he said.
The body lay covered on a gurney in the chilled room. Strout led the way and pulled back the sheet from over her face. It struck Hardy how young she had been. Her face, without makeup or expression, was one of a young girl, sleeping.
Freeman moved closer to the gurney, traced a finger along the line of May’s jaw, lifted the sheet further and looked down at her body, grimacing. Strout and Hardy backed away.
‘Where are her clothes?’ Hardy asked.
‘Bagged and gone. They’re checking for fabrics, hairs, stains, SOP. A waste of time.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there is no doubt this woman killed herself.’
Hardy felt the fatigue leave in a rush. The clock up over the freezers said it was past eleven, and suddenly his client had at least been proclaimed innocent of committing this murder – because, in fact, it wasn’t a murder.
Somehow he felt the case had turned. Fowler hadn’t killed May. It made no rational difference in this case about Nash, and yet it seemed to matter a great deal. In everything Andy Fowler had done, Hardy saw evidence of confusion, concern for his reputation, a misdirected vision that he could somehow plug eleven holes with ten fingers.
But what he didn’t see – suddenly and with clarity -was a murderer. Andy did impulsive things and then made up foolish stories to cover up how foolish he had been; he was a man out of his depth with his emotions.