The telephone rang on his desk and he grabbed at it.
‘Mr Hardy. This is Judge Chomorro.’
And I’m the Queen of Spain, Hardy thought.
But it was the judge’s voice, no mistake. What was he doing calling Hardy at home over the weekend during a trial? This being his first murder trial, Hardy wasn’t certain what to make of it – was a call from a judge to a defense attorney a relatively common practice or another example of Chomorro’s own inexperience? There was nothing to do but hear him out.
He said hello and listened while the judge told him that he had called to give him fair and decent warning that he had decided to deny Hardy’s 1118.1 motion, that the evidence was going to the jury for their verdict. Pullios had also been informed.
‘By the way,’ Chomorro said, ‘again in the interests of total fairness for the defense’ – or covering your ass in an appeal, Hardy thought – ‘I want you to be prepared for the prosecution to object to your argument on the investigation procedure leading to the indictment of Mr Fowler.’ He paused a moment. ‘And I am of a mind to sustain those objections.’
Hardy tried to get out an objection now. ‘I understand we’d covered that in pretrial, Your Honor.’
‘Well, I’ve given it a lot of thought since then, especially since yesterday, going over your eleven-eighteen, and I fail to see any direct relevance to the evidence that’s been presented. Ms Pullios may have moved too quickly on Ms Shinn, but there was ample evidence to indict Mr Fowler in the first place, and certainly enough for a jury to decide to convict. We’ll leave it up to them.’
‘Your Honor, you realize that was the main thrust of my defense.’
‘Frankly, that’s one of the reasons for this courtesy call. I wanted to give you some time to prepare. Talk to your client – he can tell you there was nothing technically improper about his indictment. A trial is supposed to weigh evidence. If you want to impugn the system, you’re of course free to appeal, as I presume you will if you lose.’
Hardy could imagine Drysdale or Locke or both of them having had a chat with Chomorro the previous night or this morning, reminding him ‘a trial is supposed to weigh evidence.’ Right out of the textbook.
Here was the reason for Chomorro’s unorthodox call. He’d talked to somebody and been told that his ruling on the law regarding Hardy’s defense would – perhaps -provide grounds for a prosecutorial appeal. No, Chomorro wasn’t going to screw up his first murder trial. It was a straightforward procedure. Evidence was presented and the jury decided. That was how he was going to play it.
No way he felt he could ask Glitsky. It was a fishing expedition, and Hardy knew it, and Abe had his own work to do. He wouldn’t run off on what he’d consider a hunch of Hardy’s to double-check his own work. Hardy couldn’t blame him.
Frannie called at six-thirty, an half hour late. He hadn’t noticed and swore at himself. ‘How are you? he asked. ’How’s the Beck?‘
Her voice seemed small and far away. He told her he was still working and she said that she’d known that. Erin, Rebecca’s grandmother, had invited her to stay for dinner, maybe even overnight if the rain didn’t let up. He’d be at it until the wee hours anyway. She didn’t think he’d mind. Did he?
He didn’t mind, he said. How could he? This had been his doing and he was going to have to fix it.
He told her he loved her, would miss her but understood. He was getting to the end of it.
Jeff Elliot owed him one. He was an investigative reporter, and if there was something to discover in Santa Cruz, Hardy hoped he was the guy to find it. He only had to sell him on the idea.
‘In this weather? Are you kidding me?’
‘It’s probably going to be beautiful there tomorrow.’
‘Hardy, read the papers, will you? This is supposed to go on all weekend.’
‘Jeff, it’ll be an adventure. Take your girlfriend, go down there and have a little vacation, on me. What’s a little rain among lovers?’
He got himself a large can of Foster’s Lager and a handful of nuts and walked through the long and suddenly lonely house. Wind howled between the buildings, the rain fell without letup, the worst storm in years.
He turned on the Christmas-tree lights, planted his beer and nuts on the reading table next to his reclining chair and put a match under the kindling in the fire.
Sam Cooke played in his mind – Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody. Forget that. He had brought up his binders and was going to go through them again.
His own notes. He’d taken so many notes he thought his wrist was going to fall off. Every time he had spoken to Pullios, Drysdale, Glitsky, Farris, Celine (while it had still been strictly professional), he had jotted down at least the gist of the conversations if they concerned this case. Random thoughts, theories of Moses and Frannie, of Pico and his old officemates.
At a little after ten-thirty he got up for another beer, after which he was going to hang it up for the night and get some sleep. He had just gotten to the time Ken Farris had come downtown, ostensibly to verify Owen’s handwriting on the will. Hardy remembered that they had gotten into how the system worked too slowly – Farris knew May had been on the Eloise... Celine had told him. Hardy had dutifully noted it, then written ‘hearsay’ in the margin and had, if not forgotten it, at least dropped it from his active consideration.
Celine had also told Hardy that May had planned to go out on the Eloise with Owen. They’d been walking back from their first meeting; he remembered it, now, distinctly.
May, however, had denied it, and May, it turned out, was telling the truth.
So Celine had lied… except he still couldn’t prove it. Opening the refrigerator, he stopped. He slammed the door closed and nearly ran back up through the house to his binders.
It took only a minute. It had been when Pullios had him question Celine in front of the grand jury, trying for the indictment on May Shinn. Celine had testified that on Tuesday morning, June 16, she had called her father at his office, wanting to make sure he hadn’t made any plans for that weekend that included her. He had said no, that he and May were going out alone on the Eloise.
Okay, Celine’s version was in the record. But it was still hearsay. It was also a lie, but how to prove -?
Farris’s office.
Where there was a beep every twenty seconds and everything was on tape?
61
Hardy slept fitfully, waking before dawn.
Rain continued to fall, but more gently now, in a thick drizzle. He showered and dressed and sat drinking coffee, staring at the clock on the wall, wondering what would be a reasonable time to call Ken Farris again. Reasonable or not, he wanted to call him before he had time to leave the house.
He went back to the binders and read over the testimony, wanting to make sure – although he knew it – that it hadn’t been fatigue. He had asked Celine when she had called her father.
‘Sometime in the morning. It was the Tuesday, I believe.’
‘The sixteenth?’
‘If that was the Tuesday, yes. He was at his office down in South San Francisco…’
He held out until seven-fifteen, about the longest ninety minutes of his life. Farris didn’t appear to appreciate his restraint.
‘What the hell, Hardy? What time is it?’
He told him, apologizing, explaining, keeping him on the line. ‘I’ve got a real lead,’ he concluded. ‘I don’t want to put you through all this again, give you another suspect to worry about, but I think I’ve found a place to finally get some physical evidence.’ He told him his conjecture about the tapes. ‘Please tell me you’ve still got them.’