What about the significance and believability of the gun in the drawer? He could call Pullios and Chomorro right now and say that he, personally, had discovered a crucial bit of evidence that would demand a retrial because he could not be a witness for his own client. He would testify that the gun had not been in the drawer on Wednesday night. But proving it to a new jury would, again, be difficult. It was still possible, he had to admit, that the gun had slid forward or backward with every opening of the drawer. He could simply have overlooked it – missed it in his haste. And even if he did establish the gun’s absence, did that necessarily mean the prosecution would have the burden of proving that Andy Fowler had somehow acquired a key to the Eloise? Playing Glitsky, he came up with five reasons in five minutes why they wouldn’t.
He got up and fed his fish. He knew what he knew -the gun had been brought back to the Eloise on Thursday morning by the jealous woman who had killed her past lover, Owen Nash. She had done it to get it out of her own possession and to shift the blame to May, and on both counts the strategy had worked.
He had to hit and hit again the fact that the burden of proof was always on the prosecution. They had to prove Fowler had killed Nash – it wasn’t Hardy’s job to prove he hadn’t. What he had to do was keep the jury clear on that point. Pullios had to prove Andy’s guilt. Even if the jury thought Andy was guilty of something to some degree, he had to make the point to the jury that they weren’t to determine whether or not Andy was innocent, but rather whether the prosecution, by the evidence presented, had proved him guilty. And if not, then -although he might not be innocent – he was legally not guilty.
Innocent did not mean exactly the same thing as not guilty. It was, in this case, a crucial distinction.
Back at his desk, he pushed some buttons, then exchanged a few words with Ken Farris about the terrible weather. ‘You still at it?’ Farris asked.
‘No rest for the weary,’ Hardy said. ‘A point occurs to me, if you don’t mind helping the defense.’
‘I can go half a yard,’ Farris said, ‘though I’d prefer not to think of it as assisting the defense.’ He paused briefly. ‘Dismas, let me ask you something -I get a feeling this is more than just a job for you. You don’t think Fowler did it, do you? You wouldn’t do this as an exercise in the law.’
Hardy had been through it all before. ‘Fowler didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I’m also trying to find out who did.’
A pause, then, ‘Why do they keep putting us through this? Getting the wrong people?’
Hardy knew it was a long story – Nash’s fame, Pullios’s ambition, Fowler’s duplicity. Suspicion and prejudice and all of the above. But Farris had asked it rhetorically and Hardy passed it by. ‘Did Owen give the key to the Eloise to any of his girlfriends?’ he asked.
‘I doubt it. The Eloise was his baby, you know. He’d have people aboard, but not without him.’
‘Did he have any other long-standing girlfriends, mistresses, whatever – besides May?’ He had to, Hardy was thinking.
‘A few weeks, once in a while a month, that was about it. He paid them off, they went their way.’
‘Do you remember him talking about any of them being bitter, angry, rejected, anything at all like that?’
‘No. I’m sorry, but there just wasn’t that much made of it, or, I should say, them. They came and went like the seasons.’ He laughed dryly. ‘No, scratch that, more like the courses of a meal. That was the big difference with May – she was around awhile.’
‘And no one else was?’
‘No. Except Celine, of course.’
Hardy sat riveted to his chair. He felt the blood draining out of his face. The rain beat on his window. Darkness was settling in. ‘Did Celine have a key to the Eloise?’ he asked, keeping his voice calm.
‘Hey, I was kidding about that. Really, a bad joke.’
‘Does she have a key?’
‘Well, I think she does, she used to. But she didn’t -’
‘I know that.’ Hardy forced himself to slow down, to speak calmly. ‘Just another something to think about. Keeping track of these keys, that’s all. But do me a favor, would you?’
‘Sure.’
‘She’s mad enough at me about all this, defending the man on trial for her father’s murder. Would you try not to mention this key business to her if you see her?’
‘Yeah, okay, no problem.’
When he hung up, he didn’t move for several minutes.
The house wasn’t there, nor was his office, nor the rain, nor the darkness outside.
The night Celine had come by for the first time she had quickly left after seeing him in his green jogging suit, the same kind Owen Nash had been wearing on the day he had been shot. Was seeing him like seeing her father’s ghost? She’d reacted, at least for a moment, as though she had… ‘You just suddenly reminded me so much of my father…’
So rethink that visit. How could he have reminded her of her father, with that intensity, if she hadn’t seen him in the same outfit, if she hadn’t been with him on that last day? Of course, she might have seen him other times in his jogging clothes… except that wasn’t very likely. They didn’t live together, they didn’t jog together.
Strout… he had mentioned in the case of May Shinn – though Hardy knew it was true anyway – that standard operating procedure at the morgue was to bag the victim’s clothes. Celine had seen Nash at the coroner’s… but he’d been naked.
Certainly the jogging suit was a better explanation of her extreme reaction than just seeing him in domestic bliss with wife and child. If he hadn’t been so convinced she was in love with him, would he have ever believed her explanation for her reaction? Dismas, the lady-killer. He shook his head in disgust.
But why?
Money? Greed? Well, it was true she stood to benefit with May gone, more than anyone except perhaps Ken Farris, but since she already had more than she needed he’d quickly discounted that potential motive, not to mention that he never considered her a suspect anyway.
He wasn’t happy with it. The more you got, the more you wanted? Money, the alleged root of all evil? Including murder? What about her reaction to May’s death – ‘At least she won’t get the money.’ Greed – one of the seven deadly sins. And greed didn’t presuppose poverty or exclude the wealthy. There had to be more.
It was rocking him. He was aware, sitting back now in his chair, that his stomach had tightened. He consciously unclenched his fists. He knew he was right, but wasn’t sure why. One thing was sure, as the killer she had acted plausibly, smartly – played on his male ego, let him think she was fixed on him in his role as her father’s avenger while May was a suspect. How better to keep him from suspecting her than to fabricate and build their own illicit relationship, to use his libido, as insurance? He was such a fool.
But Glitsky had looked into this. Celine had been in Santa Cruz, she couldn’t have been out on the Eloise.
Hardy thought he had read and reread each of the binders on his desk, but he hadn’t – Abe’s reports following up on alibis for Ken and Celine sat there within their tabs. He had listened to Abe telling him about the two weight lifters who lived with one of their mothers, about Celine spending the weekend remodeling their Victorian house. Now he read Abe’s synopsis of the telephone interview he had conducted.