Hardy held his head in his hands. This was twisted beyond his imagining. "Jennifer suggested I talk to you. If she would have said him, I would have agreed."
"I know that. I told him that, or tried to."
"I didn't mean to put you in this."
She touched his arm again. "No, no, it's not you. This is just what happens."
Hardy raised his eyes. "You should get out of this. You've got to report this."
Nancy DiStephano shook her head. She was still hugging herself, still moving her body to ease the shifting pains. Her look said Hardy didn't know what he was talking about. "Where would I go? What would I do?"
"Go anywhere," he said. "Do anything. But don't live with this."
She kept shaking her head. "But Phil would never let me. Never. He wouldn't even let me see you."
"You could move away."
"I've tried that, but you know, I always come back. It's a tough world out there, Mr. Hardy. Here at least I know somebody cares about me-"
"Someone who cares about you wouldn't do this to you."
"It's not so very often. I understand, he's mostly afraid he'll lose me. I tell him no but he's so jealous… I wouldn't have called you, maybe shouldn't have, but if it could help Jennifer…"
"Did Phil ever do this to her?"
"Jennifer? No. He wouldn't ever lay a hand on her. I think if he did I would have left him and he knew it. He couldn't stand me to leave him. No, all this" – she gestured downward – "this is all between me and him. It has nothing to do with Jennifer."
Hardy stared at the ground, at the sliver of moon – this woman defending the man who had just beaten her. "He's so jealous…"
He tried to clear his head. "So what now, Nancy?"
She shrugged. "I didn't even mean for you to know about this. It's nothing."
"Okay, it's nothing."
"You wanted to talk about Jennifer, if this hadn't happened… I suppose I shouldn't have told Phil and just snuck out to see you. It's really my fault."
The reprise, the repetition, the denial. "It’s really your fault. That's it, huh?" Was it the same for Jennifer?
Nancy nodded, apparently grateful that he seemed to understand. "So we can forget this and just talk about what you wanted before. Can't we just do that?"
Hardy tried. He sucked a lungful of the now-chilled night and tried to organize himself enough to talk to her about Tom. He couldn't.
18
As he sometimes did, Abe Glitsky arrived unannounced at the front door. When Frannie opened it for him, he stepped back and whistled. "My, my, my." Frannie was wearing a blue skirt and a plain white blouse, low pumps, nylons. She had touched her cheekbones with subtle highlights they scarcely needed. Her eyes were malachite set into the alabaster of her skin. The red hair, softly styled, fell to just below her shoulders. "Whatever it is," he said, "you'll do."
Frannie curtsied, smiling. "You don't think it's too much?"
"You panning for gold? Playing soccer? Mud-wrestling?"
Frannie looked serious. "No, I'm meeting somebody."
"I think for meeting somebody you're on safe ground."
They were walking to the kitchen. It was a smallish railroad-style Victorian house – one long hallway with openings to the living and dining rooms off it to the right, a bathroom to the left. In the back the house opened up into a pod of rooms – airy skylit kitchen, Hardy and Frannie's bedroom with another bath, Rebecca's room (Hardy's old office) off that to one side, Vincent's nursery to the rear.
Hardy was coming out of the bedroom, a mug of steaming coffee in his hand. He was wearing the slacks to one of his better suits, a white shirt, a silk Italian tie.
Glitsky stopped in the kitchen doorway. "I must have the wrong house. Where are the kids?"
"We're taking a day off," Frannie said. "Their grandmother came and got them. I'll be back in a minute. You want some tea?" Frannie disappeared into the back room.
Glitsky was getting the hot water. "Who are you meeting?"
Hardy was still shaken by Nancy DiStephano. He'd told Frannie about it when he'd gotten home, then sat up alone in the living room, not able to sleep for a long time.
And now here was Abe, dropping in, wanting to know who Frannie was meeting. Abe wouldn't approve of Frannie going to get acquainted with Jennifer Witt. If you were smart and in any aspect of law enforcement, you didn't mix your job and your family life. The problem was that Hardy didn't feel like getting into a defense of why he was going along with Frannie's idea when he knew it wasn't a smart one. "I thought I'd drop Frannie off downtown and later we'd go someplace nice for lunch. What brings you around?"
It slid right by – Glitsky wasn't in his investigator mode, when very little got past him. "I've got to go see this couple about a gun they left laying around for their kid to find and play with." He tightened his lips, the scar shone white. He didn't need to say more – Abe was in homicide and homicide meant that somebody wasn't alive anymore. "It's out this way so I thought I'd stop by here and liven up your morning. You back with Jennifer Witt?"
Frannie and the three of them talked for twenty minutes while Glitsky finished his tea, Hardy and Frannie another cup of coffee. Hardy never mentioned the three-minute difference in times between the ATM machine and 911. By this time, he was convinced that it was evidence in a murder investigation, and if he revealed that it could be part of the defense's case Abe the policeman would be bound to report it to the prosecution.
"But who are you?" Jennifer, in her red jumpsuit, looked through the Plexiglas window in the public-visiting area at the women's jail.
Frannie was no longer sure about this. The woman across from her was certainly no threat to anyone at this moment. Nearly anorexic, with bruises on her face, her hair chopped at different lengths, her eyes skittish. Here was a woman, Frannie thought, who doesn't trust a living soul.
"I'm… Frannie, her mouth dry, tried to swallow. "I'm with Mr. Hardy."
"I know. You've already said that. That's why I came out here. But then how come we're not in the visiting room?"
Frannie didn't know – she thought they were in the visitor's room. She didn't know that this long counter with folding chairs, Plexiglas windows, the telephones to talk through, wasn't where Hardy and Jennifer had their interviews. "I'm… I guess it's just I'm not an attorney, so this isn't official or anything." Suddenly she understood why Hardy hadn't come with her to introduce the two of them. What could he have said? "Hi, my wife just wanted to come down and check you out to make herself feel better. She was a little worried you'd get out of jail someday and try to kill me."
She felt like a fool and she felt angry.
Dismas has humored her to teach her a lesson – a cruel one that he might have argued her out of.
But then she realized that she wouldn't have let him do that. She could be as strong and bull-headed as anyone. She had decided she was going to meet with Jennifer and, by God, she wasn't going to back down – that had been her position and now she was stuck with it.
Jennifer waited, her eyes now fixed on Frannie. Pained eyes. Frannie suddenly thought of the son Matt. What if this woman hadn't killed anybody? She had lost her son? And then got raped and beat up in a Costa Rican jail?
"I know this is unusual," she said. "I'm Mr. Hardy's wife. Frannie. He's told me what's happened to you and I just wondered if I could do anything to make things easier?"
The city-run Mission Hills Clinic was about midway between the Hall of Justice and the Yerba Buena Medical Group cluster on Mission Street but not particularly close to any hills.