"None of that's going to be her defense."
Hardy was packing the reports away into his thick briefcase. He was going to do what he was going to do, and didn't want to argue about it. "No, I know. But it might give you something to point at in your histrionic way. Keep the jury juggling the possibilities."
"The possibilities?"
"Of who else might have killed Larry."
Freeman nodded. "Yes, but we don't have to prove, or even show, that somebody else killed Larry. Mr. Powell's got to prove that Jennifer did."
"If she never went into the bedroom to take inventory, it eliminates one of their major contentions."
"Only if we can prove it. We can assert it, but you can't prove a negative, and the assertion gets us nothing."
"It might get us some doubt. You get enough doubts…"
Freeman was wearing his dour face. "Well," he said, "we're a long way from trial. Whatever we find out might be useful at this stage. Certainly this Terrell thing, that was helpful. If Powell falls for it."
Hardy snapped his briefcase shut. "He's already charged the murder. He won't back out now. He's committed."
Freeman wasn't so confident about that. Not yet. "He must have something else. That's what I'd like to find out. He must know he can't win on what he's shown us so far"… He stared for a moment out his kitchen window. "In any event, we'll know soon enough. Meanwhile, I'll take a look at what they've actually given us. And don't misunderstand, your idea isn't bad – I've used it before myself – the old 'soddit' defense."
"Some Other Dude Did It?"
Freeman nodded. "That's the one. Find some other dudes to point at."
Hardy stood up, grateful to be moving again. "You know, it is possible she's telling a lot of the truth."
"Oh, I'm sure she is." Freeman scratched his stubble. "It’s really very difficult not to let at least some truth out even if you're trying to dissemble." Freeman paused, added straight-faced, "I said if…"
13
"So Larry worked at an abortion clinic. So what?" Glitsky was barely listening, leaning back in the car seat next to Hardy. They were going home. "Hey, guess what?" he said. "It's Friday night. The weeks' over."
But Hardy wasn't letting it go. "So how many deaths and threats do we have so far this year against abortion-clinic workers?"
Glitsky kept his eyes closed. "I don't know. You tell me."
"Okay, I will. I happened to check this afternoon. Four in the city since December."
Glitsky opened his eyes. Homicides were his territory, and this fact surprised him. "Deaths?"
"Deaths and threats, combined."
"How many deaths, Hardy?"
"One."
Glitsky grunted, closed his eyes again.
"And Larry Witt would make two."
"It would if he'd been killed by a disgruntled anti-abortion activist instead of his wife."
Hardy kept driving west. The fog had lifted and the wind had stilled and it was a lovely Friday night, a postcard sunset coloring the sky before them. "You don't see it, huh?"
"Not if I'm on a jury. 'Course I'm a cop so I don't think like a juror, but what are you going to point at? You need something besides 'Ladies and Gentlemen, did you know that Dr. Witt performed abortions on Wednesdays and Saturdays?' You know how mad that makes some people? What are they supposed to do with that? You don't have anybody."
"Okay, how about Tom? The brother?"
Hardy had interviewed Tom after he saw Jennifer in the morning. Tom had, obviously, hated Larry. He wasn't particularly fond of Jennifer, either. He had no idea where he'd been the morning of December 28 – he hadn’t been working so he was probably hanging at his apartment. He had never tried to borrow any money from either Jennifer or Larry. "Or Matt either," he'd volunteered with a sneer.
The only information Tom had provided, and Hardy had no immediate use for it, was that his father would hit his mother regularly. Hardy had, of course, already seen Phil slap Tom – finding confirmation that he'd also struck Nancy wasn't exactly a revelation, except that it did verify what Lightner had said about the culture of battery getting passed down from generation to generation.
Hardy was still looking for "other dudes" that Freeman might be able to use, people who had an opportunity, also a motive, to have killed Larry Witt, trying them out on Glitsky, and Tom was next up – after the "hit man" that had killed Simpson Crane in Los Angeles, then the anonymous disgruntled anti-abortion activist.
"So what about Tom?" Hardy was pushing. Even he didn't give Tom more than about two points out of ten.
Glitsky roused himself. "Okay, let me get this out of the way and then we can talk about something else? First," as he ticked his fingers, "he didn't ask Jennifer and Larry for a loan, right? Right. So where's your motive? The guy's got no record and there's no immediate catalyst – everybody agrees these people haven't set eyes on each other in a year or so. You expect me to believe he wakes up one morning and says, 'Hey, I think I'll go kill my brother-in-law.' Second, no prints anywhere – in the house, on the gun. You'll kill your case introducing any of this."
Hardy squinted into the sun. "The problem is, this leaves my client."
Glitsky was matter-of-fact. "Which could, of course, be why she got herself indicted."
The previous Monday Hardy and his brother-in-law Moses had gone salmon fishing off the Marin Coast. They'd caught two each. That night, at Moses' apartment, they'd roasted one for dinner. A second – the sixteen pounder they were going to have that night – they'd put in some of Moses' nearly patented home-made teriyaki sauce to marinate. The other two they filleted, rubbed with rock salt, sugar and cognac, packed with some peppercorns and brown sugar, wrapped in foil and weighted down with bricks in Hardy's refrigerator. The intended to eat gravlax until they didn't want to anymore or died, whichever came first.
Frannie was leaning against the kitchen counter, drinking club soda in a wine glass. Pico Morales, the curator of the Steinhart Aquarium and one of Hardy's long-time friends, stood with his arm around his wife Angela eating hors-d'oeuvres. The as yet unmarried couple, Moses and his girlfriend Susan Weiss, were nuzzling each other by the back doorway.
Hardy came in with Abe and introductions went around. He crossed the room and kissed his wife, who turned her face just far enough away from him to deliver the message.
She was still unhappy.
Hardy knew why, and even, to some extent, understood it. This week had featured himself in an abrupt career-path detour and it would be a while before the kinks got resolved. So he didn't really blame Frannie – on the other hand, he was fairly exhausted himself from last night's lack of sleep, then a full day of Jennifer Witt. And to top it off, they'd planned this party to eat the salmon before they had to freeze it – Pico and Angela, Moses and Susan, Glitsky and his wife, Flo.
So he pretended not to notice Frannie's slight, lifted the foil covering from the glass container on the counter and made a face. "Not salmon again." He sighed. "I guess I'll just have a hot dog."
Hardy loved salmon beyond reason – he took a knife and cut himself a thin slice. "All of you youngsters watching this at home, don't try this yourself." He put the raw slice into his mouth, chewing contentedly. "You know, one of the first labor laws ever enacted prevented employers in Scotland from feeding salmon to their workers seven days a week."
Susan Weiss couldn't believe that. "Is that true? That was a real law?"