What Andy had not done was plan the cold-blooded killing of another man. Somebody else had done that -someone cold, efficient and organized, with neither remorse nor emotion. In fact, the murderer of Owen Nash was close to the polar opposite of Andy Fowler.
Jeff Elliot knew that in the old days, six months ago, before he met Dorothy, he would have been waiting at the morgue until the results came in on the postmortem so he could have a chance to make the morning edition. But tonight he had written his piece, proofed and filed it and headed home.
Other stories around the Hall of Justice were getting attention now – one concerned a cat the D.A.s had bought to control the influx of mice that had started to show up in the building in the wake of the construction for the new jail. The cat had been named Arnold Mousenegger and had already gotten several graphs in the Chronicle, a ‘quote of the day’ from Chris Locke (‘Arnold is a budgetary godsend. We couldn’t afford to exterminate the whole building.’) and an appearance on Channel 5. Hot stuff.
And Owen Nash was still as dead as he’d ever been. Andy Fowler was in jail and wasn’t about to get out to kill anybody else tonight. The trial proceeded at its own pace.
Jeff’s work would keep until the morning.
Dorothy had been asleep but got up to greet him when he opened the door. She poured them both glasses of domestic white wine while, sitting on the bed, he took his clothes off. The telephone rang and without thinking he picked it up.
‘Jeff, this is Dismas Hardy and I’m doing you a favor.’
‘You still awake? Don’t you have a trial in the morning?’
‘Good lawyers never sleep, and I wanted you to be the first to know, on the record, that Strout has ruled May Shinn a suicide. Andy Fowler did not kill her. Nobody killed her. She killed herself.’
‘Department of redundancy department,’ Jeff said. ‘Suicide means she killed herself.’
Hardy thanked him sincerely for the lesson in grammar. Dorothy came over and placed the wineglass on the table next to the phone. She sat next to him and rubbed his shoulders.
‘Is this solid?’Jeff asked.
‘Horse’s mouth, the horse being Strout. I’m still at the morgue. I thought you’d like to know.’
Jeff hesitated a moment – it meant he wasn’t going to sleep for a few more hours. ‘I’ve already filed the first edition.’
‘Hey,’ Hardy said, ‘it’s not even midnight. Don’t you guys just stop the presses, rip out the front page?’
‘Maybe if Arnold Mousenegger had four confirmed kills in one day.’
Everybody knew about Arnold. ‘By the way,’ Hardy asked, ‘you still willing to dig a little if I can find a likely hole?’
‘By the way, huh?’
‘It just occurred to me.’
‘I’m sure it did. But yeah, I guess so. What is it?’
‘I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.’
When Jeff hung up, he took a sip of his wine and kissed Dorothy. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘when news breaks…’
She kissed him back. ‘When you win the Pulitzer,’ she said, ‘I’ll forgive you for this.’
‘Dismas, you’ve got to get some sleep.’ Frannie looked very pregnant, standing in his office doorway. ‘What time is it?’
Hardy stretched, afraid to check his watch. ‘Time is for wimps,’ he said.
She came behind his desk and put her arms around him, leaning into his back. ‘How will you be able to think tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow’s Friday,’ he said.
‘Good. Actually today is Friday. Does that mean anything?’
‘It means tomorrow I can catch up on some sleep. Tonight I’ve got to catch up on these dailies’ – he held up a thick pile of typed pages – ’two days’ worth. I took last night off, remember?‘ He rested his head back against her. ’Remember?‘
She messed his hair. ‘I remember very well. But still…’
‘Andy Fowler didn’t kill May,’ he said. ‘She killed herself, just like it looked.’
Frannie straightened up. ‘Well, that’s good, I guess.’
‘It’s good, though why the idiot went to May’s house -’
She shushed him. ‘Don’t get going,’ she said. ‘Do your reading, come to bed. Now.’
‘A few more pages. Promise.’
The first thing he had to do in the morning was call Ken Farris and get some answers. If he didn’t like the answers he would call Jeff Elliot back, maybe even hire his own Emmet Turkel and do a number on a weekend in Taos last June.
He also had to remember the questions. They kept flitting in and out, and he found himself making a list while he tried to read the dailies from two days before, which now seemed like two months. With all that had happened since they’d testified, he barely remembered Tom Waddell and José Ochorio, much less what they’d said or why it might be relevant.
The yellow pad with his notes said: ‘Nash paying May? Records?’ On another line, the words: ‘Specifics of O.N. changes? How was he different?’ Then: ‘Breaking up? Why ring?’
The notion that May had been honest throughout put a very different light on everything that had happened. Hardy started another pad, intending to begin with the assumption that May and Owen had, in fact, loved each other. He would go through his first file folders – the ones he’d copied so long ago – over the weekend and review every word she’d said.
He wrote a few words on the May pad, then jumped to the dailies. He had to turn back to see who was talking, Tom or José. He reminded himself – Tom was the afternoon guy, the kid he’d met that first day. He grabbed the early folder, opening it to Glitsky’s interrogations of them both, intending to start over, get a fresh grip on the facts. Again.
He hadn’t slept in twenty hours. Now he was reading about José seeing May Shinn leaving the boat on Thursday, but José was the morning guy, so he couldn’t have seen May on Thursday morning, it must have been Wednesday, which made no sense because May said she’d gone to the boat on Thursday, so Hardy – quick – went back to the pad with the May questions.
He looked back. Oh, it must have been Tom, after all, who’d said it. One of the folders was open to Tom.
Frannie was right – you couldn’t work if you couldn’t think, and Hardy’s brain had just shifted to OFF. Enough. He couldn’t keep it all straight.
56
What seemed like only seconds later, he was in bed, the telephone was ringing in his ear and it had gotten light.
‘Wake you up?’ Glitsky asked brightly.
Hardy looked at the clock: 6:10. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I was just sorting my socks. I like to get it done before the weekend.’
‘This is what time real working people get up,’ Glitsky said. ‘Besides, I thought you might have hung around downtown to find out what Strout decided.’
‘Strout decided May Shinn killed herself.’ He started to tell Abe about last night, a little of his talk with Freeman. Frannie came in with a cup of hot coffee, and Hardy, still talking, swung himself up to sit on the side of the bed. ‘So Freeman says they were really planning to get married,’ he concluded. ‘How does that grab you?’
Glitsky was silent a long moment. ‘Nash was wearing the ring, wasn’t he?’
‘Right there on his finger.’
‘And he wasn’t wearing it the last time Farris saw him?’
‘If Farris wasn’t lying.’ Hardy went on to describe a few of the inconsistencies he’d come across in the last twelve hours. ‘So what do you think?’
‘It’s something to think about,’ Abe said, ‘especially if you’re convinced Farris lied.’
Hardy, fully awake, sipped his coffee. ‘This whole business has made me be not positive of anything, Abe. First, I’m not positive May was in love with Owen or vice-versa. The difference is, now I’m willing to consider it, and once I do that, it opens this other can of worms.’