Wells looked up at the judge, then at Pullios. She nodded, and the judge told her to speak up, answer with words. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And when did you first see this gun?’
The witness thought a minute. ‘Around the beginning of July.’
‘And at that time, when you tested it for fingerprints, can you tell the jury what you found?’
Pullios stood up and objected. ‘Asked and answered, Your Honor.’
Hardy shook his head. ‘I’ll rephrase it. The first time you looked, did you identify the defendant’s fingerprints?’
Wells swallowed. ‘No.’
‘Did you identify any fingerprints at that time?’
‘Yes. May Shinn’s.’
‘May Shinn. The registered owner of the gun. And where were Ms Shinn’s prints?’
‘There were several clear impressions, on the barrel and the grip.’
‘All right. Now after you identified Ms Shinn’s fingerprints, what did you do?’
‘Well, first I verified the comparison – they were what I was looking for.’
‘So, in other words, you went looking for May Shinn’s fingerprints? Isn’t that true?’
‘Yes.’
‘And after the case against Ms Shinn got thrown out, you went looking for Andy Fowler’s fingerprints, and you found them, isn’t that true?’
Pullios objected, but Hardy didn’t want to let this one go. ‘Your Honor, when the case against Mr Fowler gets dropped, does the prosecution plan to go looking for other prints at that time? The defendant’s fingerprints on this gun are critical to the case against him. The jury can’t know too much about how they were identified.’
Pullios wasn’t quitting either. ‘Ms Wells has already testified that they were on the gun.’
That’s true, Mr Hardy. We’re talking about Mr Fowler’s fingerprints, not May Shinn’s. You are arguing evidence that hasn’t been presented in this case. Try not to confuse the jury by referring to what is not properly before it.‘
Hardy felt this was a big loss. He stood a moment, gathering his forces.
‘You still with us, Mr Hardy?’ Chomorro asked.
Hardy had anticipated Chomorro’s antagonism from the bench, but now, at its first appearance, he realized how powerful its influence could be. If Chomorro was allowed to patronize him, the jury would pick up on it and his credibility would suffer. Andy Fowler had been right – this wasn’t an appealable issue. It had been bad strategy.
‘Of course, Your Honor,’ Hardy said mildly. ‘I was waiting for your ruling.’
Chomorro’s face tightened slightly. ‘I thought I’d made that clear. The objection is sustained.’
This time Hardy simply nodded. He spread his hands to the jury and smiled at them. ‘Sorry, my mistake.’ But the message was clear – he was a reasonable man, waiting to make sure he understood the judge’s ruling. There was no antagonism between himself and Chomorro. He went back to Anita Wells. ‘Can you tell us how long a fingerprint can last?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I mean does it go away after a while by itself? Does it evaporate?’
‘No, fingerprints are oil-based. They last until they’re wiped away.’
‘So Mr Fowler’s fingerprints on the clip inside the gun might not have been placed there at any time near to when the gun was found or fired?’
‘That’s true.’
‘Did you find anything indicating it might not be true?’
‘No.’
‘So Mr Fowler’s fingerprints might have been on the gun for as long as a year?’
Pullios stood up. ‘Asked and answered, Your Honor.’
‘I’ll withdraw it,’ Hardy said. ‘No further questions.’
‘It’s early, but I’d put us ahead on points.’ They had their coats off, their ties loosened. From Fowler’s law office high up in Embarcadero One, the city glittered out the window, Christmas lights starting to appear below.
Hardy was not so sure. ‘I wanted to get Shinn in.’ He had wanted to call May as a defense witness from the beginning, but Fowler wouldn’t hear of it. What could she possibly say that could make a difference, he had argued. Fowler hadn’t seen her, after all, in the four months before the murder. To say nothing of the fact that she had turned down Hardy’s several requests for interviews. She remembered him from Visitors Room A, thank you.
The prosecution, they both figured, wouldn’t go near her. She would be understandably hostile to the San Francisco district attorney’s office. So, strangely enough, the other central figure in this case would apparently play no active role in it. Hardy did not like that at all.
Andy had poured himself a neat Scotch from a tumbler on the sideboard and now took a drink of it. He stood and carried the glass over to the window.
Hardy watched his back a minute. ‘You haven’t seen her, Andy?’
May Shinn was still the issue, the looming specter, an unmentionable apparition. The chronology could not have been simpler: a year ago Andy Fowler had been in love with May Shinn; in mid-February she had dumped him for Owen Nash; in July he had sacrificed his career for her; in October he had been arrested for murdering her lover; and in the two months that Hardy had been seeing Fowler every day, he had never, to Hardy’s knowledge, made any effort to contact her.
Fowler’s shoulders sagged. ‘No. What would be the point?’
‘It just seems you might have.’
Fowler gave it a moment, then nodded. ‘I suppose it does.’ He returned to the chair behind his desk and sat heavily into it. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she could help us. There’s no doubt she can hurt us.’
‘How?’
Hardy shrugged. ‘Maybe she knows something. God knows we’ve tried everybody else, and we’ve got nothing resembling a lead for “X”.’
Fowler sipped and stared. ‘No, Diz, I don’t think so.’
Suddenly a frightening thought occurred – Andy was still carrying a torch. Hardy had kept the secret of Shinn’s other clients to himself (excluding Glitsky), but he was coming around to thinking it might do Andy some good to know the truth, to face the truth. If nothing else, it might break him out of his reluctance to use what May might have.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘there were other men…’
Fowler pushed his glass, a quarter turn at a time, in a circle on his desk. ‘What?’
Hardy spent five minutes explaining to Andy – checking the phone records, proving that May had lied to him. Fowler stared into space behind Hardy’s head. ‘Why are you telling me all this now?’
‘Because your life is at stake here, Andy, and I think maybe you’re somehow planning on getting found not guilty, putting this trial behind you and doing nothing to jeopardize what you still think is your relationship with this woman. And if that’s the case, you ought to know what that relationship really was.’
He took a moment. ‘I know what it was. That’s become clear to me. Before you told me this.’
‘Well?’ Hardy asked.
‘Well what?’
‘Maybe you could talk to her, maybe she knows something.’ He paused, waiting for Andy. ‘About “X”, if nothing else.’
The ex-judge, suddenly looking old and tired, leaned his head back against the chair and blew at the ceiling. ‘Don’t you think she would have mentioned that in her own defense last summer?’
‘She never got the chance.’
‘She got plenty of chance. She doesn’t know.’
‘You think.’ He had to drive it home. ‘But you thought she had cut off her other clients for you, remember? She wasn’t supposed to be sleeping with anyone else.’
Fowler pushed his fingers into his eyes. ‘There must be some aphorism here about old fools and young women.’ He pulled his hands away from his face. ‘Okay, okay, do what you’ve got to do.’