Pullios hung on him for a beat, then turned to the jury. ‘He promised he’d get to him within a month,’ she repeated. Then, to Hardy, ‘Your witness.’
‘Mr Smythe,’ Hardy said. ‘To your knowledge, did Mr Fowler ever meet Mr Nash face to face?’
‘No.’
‘Did Mr Fowler ever tell you he had made an appointment with Mr Nash to discuss anything, aboard the Eloise or anywhere else?’
‘No, he did not.’
‘Did you have occasion to talk to Mr Fowler between May sixteenth and June twentieth, the day Owen Nash died?’
‘Oh, yes. We talked almost every day.’
‘You talked almost every day. Do you recall if Mr Nash’s name came up between May sixteenth and June twentieth?’
‘Well, the one discussion I told Ms Pullios about.’
‘And after that?’
‘No.’
‘No, you don’t recall, or no, it didn’t come up?’
‘I don’t recall it coming up.’
‘If he had made an appointment with Mr Nash, don’t you think he would have told you -?’
‘Objection!’ Pullios said. ‘Speculation.’
It was sustained as Hardy had known it would be, but that was okay with him.
He continued. ‘I’d like to clarify this. On May sixteenth Mr Fowler – despite having an invitation – did not go to the Eloise?’
‘That’s true.’
‘At no time during the following month did he mention either making an appointment with Owen Nash or going to the Eloise?’
‘Right.’
‘So if I may summarize the facts elicited in your testimony, Mr Smythe, to your personal knowledge, Mr Fowler never met Mr Nash and never boarded the Eloise.’
‘That’s correct. Not to my knowledge.’
‘Is it a fact, Mr Smythe, that Mr Fowler promised, as you said, that he would “get to” Owen Nash within a month of May sixteenth?’
Smythe frowned. ‘Yes, he did say that.’
‘So the fact is that he told you he was going to do it. It is not a fact that he actually did it? In fact, you are aware of no evidence at all that he did do it. Isn’t that true?’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
Pullios had narrowed down her witness list to David Freeman and Maury Carter, the bail bondsman. After lunch she was obviously going to close things up for the prosecution with the character issue, leaving the jury with the impression that Andy’s consciousness of his guilt over the murder was the only possible explanation for his actions. Chomorro had made it clear he was going to allow all the testimony in this vein.
Hardy looked forward to having Freeman on the stand. Although his testimony would get into evidence the bare facts of Andy’s unethical behavior, as a lifetime defense lawyer he would be instinctively opposed to Pullios. Hardy had, of course, talked with him several times during the two months he had been preparing for the trial and in those discussions Freeman had seemed genuinely distressed by his upcoming role as a prosecution witness.
But facts were facts – Andy Fowler had hired him to defend May Shinn. Freeman had told Andy flat out, in Fowler’s own chambers, that in his opinion he had no option but to recuse himself from the case now that it had turned up in his courtroom. He had arranged with Maury Carter for the bail.
In Freeman’s long career, he had told Hardy, he had never seen a judge do anything like what Andy Fowler had done. Of course, he wasn’t going to put it like that on the stand, but Fowler’s actions had been so incredible to Freeman that they beggared description.
However, last night he had also indicated to Hardy that Hardy hadn’t lost the case yet. And that had been before they’d been certain May had killed herself, when things had looked even worse. Was he perhaps planning some emphasis in his testimony to make it less damning than it seemed on the face of it?
Chomorro decided that Andy Fowler could be readmitted to bail, and now the subdued ex-judge and his daughter made clear they did not want to be with his attorney and went off to lunch by themselves. Which at the moment suited Hardy just fine.
57
‘Did you get a chronology of May for the whole week?’ Hardy asked Freeman.
‘Of course.’
Hardy and Freeman were talking in the hallway. It would not do for the two of them to spend an hour lunching at Lou’s just before Freeman went on the stand for Pullios, so Hardy took advantage of what camouflage there might be out in the open halls.
‘Do you remember her going to the Eloise?’
Freeman looked like he had slept in the clothes he had worn at the morgue the previous night. ‘Yes. Not a smart move.’
‘Why did she tell you she did it?’
‘They’re not going to ask me about this, you know. Pullios is going to want to know about Judge Fowler hiring me, not about May Shinn.’
Hardy didn’t want to push, but neither did he intend to back down. ‘It’s for me, not Pullios. I want to know about May Shinn,’ he said.
‘All right, but I’m not sure why it matters when, if or why May Shinn went to the Eloise. I’ll tell you what she told me, okay?’ His eyes searched the hallway, perhaps looking for members of the prosecution team, then he came back to Hardy. ‘She read about herself, linked to Nash, in the Chronicle on Thursday morning – the first day it was speculated that the mystery hand might be Nash’s. She was afraid that they’d try to find something to tie her to him – a very justified fear, as it turned out. She knew her gun was on the Eloise and she decided she’d come down and remove it before the investigation heated up. But when she went there it was the middle of the day and she realized she’d be recognized, even worse, somehow be connected to what had happened. So she would come back later when it was dark or when no one was around, but by that time the police had closed it off.’
Hardy stood with his arms folded, filtering, thinking. ‘How did she know she could get aboard? Did she have a key?’
‘Good.’ It was as though Freeman had been through all of this before, was checking Hardy on his thought processes. ‘No. She did not have a key. That was one of the other things that stopped her. Aside from the recognition factor.’
‘We’re assuming everything she said was true, now, isn’t that right?’
‘I believed her. Two things. One, it wasn’t unknown for Nash to forget to lock up. And two, if he’d been killed on board – which in fact he had been – perhaps the killer didn’t have a key or forgot to lock up. May thought that was likely.’
More than that, Hardy thought, it was true. The Eloise had not been locked on Wednesday night when he had gotten to it. ‘All right,’ Hardy said, ‘so here is my question. Did May tell you she also came down early Thursday morning?’
‘No. Why would she have done that?’
‘Same reasons.’
‘Well, then why would she have come back?’
‘I don’t know.’
Freeman paced away a step or two. He recalled something else. ‘How early? That whole week she was a wreck. Once she finally got to sleep, she sometimes slept until noon.’
Hardy shook his head. ‘No, it was way before then. Right about when the morning guard was coming on. Say seven-thirty.’
‘He said he saw somebody?’
‘More than that, he said he saw May.’
‘On the Eloise?’
‘No. Walking away.’