"He probably decided he wasn't going to invest. It doesn't look like it was much of a deal, anyway."
So that was that.
Hardy, being thorough now, asked if Ms. Bellows would send him a copy of the circular so that he could look it over. She said she would messenger it over that afternoon.
She was dressed in her reds. Her hair was all over the place. The guards let her in and she stood, arms crossed, leaning back against the closed door. She had asked Hardy to bring her a pack of cigarettes, and he shook out one and gave it to her. San Francisco County Jail was officially a smoke-free environment. This created a cottage industry among the prisoners who smuggled in cigarettes and sold them the way they sold cocaine, marijuana, and heroin. Hardy just couldn't believe they'd bust Jennifer, convicted of murder and up for the death penalty, for having a smoke in the attorney's conference room.
Her eyes squinted against the smoke, drilled into him. "Now what?" she said.
"Now I think we talk about how Larry beat you."
She squinted some more, seemed to shrink into herself. "And that's why I killed him?"
Hardy nodded. "That's our best shot. It always was. He took a step toward her but she stared him back. "How are you holding up?" he asked gently.
She laughed briefly, more like a bark, then coughed, choking on the smoke from her cigarette. The small room was filling with smoke. "I'm real good," she said. "Real good. I love being here." Tears filled her eyes, overflowed onto her face. She left them there.
Hardy again tried to move forward, but she held out her hand. "You stay away." She turned a shoulder into the door and stood there, shaking, her body heaving, trying to control the sobs. The cigarette fell to the ground at her feet. "This isn't me…" After all the other scenes, this was not an act. She was talking to herself. "I can't have got to here."
Hardy didn't know what to say. Or do. He had some of the same reaction – that this wasn't real, they couldn't have gotten to here. Yet here they were.
One of the women guards looked in through the window, leaning over slightly with no expression at all. The two people in the room, one crying and one standing, might as well have been part of the furniture. The guard ignored the cigarette smoke.
There was no point in pushing. Hardy took one of the chairs, pulled it around backward and straddled it. He crossed his arms over the back of the chair and waited.
Eventually she had to sit down. She turned her chair to the side, resting an arm across the table. "I don't know why he needed to do that."
"Who?"
"Larry." She nodded. "I always tried to be a good wife, a good mother. But I know who I am. I guess Larry knew it too, maybe better than I did. He was trying to protect me from myself, I think, keep me from making mistakes… And he wasn't mean like Ned was. Even when he was mad he wasn't mean about it – it was more like it was his job to do."
"To keep you in line?"
"It wasn't every day, you know. Most days, sometimes for a couple of weeks, nothing would happen. But then it would just get to me – this, this feeling that if I didn't do something, something for myself, I'd go crazy. A couple of times I think I did go crazy. Threw things, tore up the house. The anger just took over. Do you know what I'm talking about at all? I realize it sounds pretty strange."
"But you couldn't leave him?"
She hit her fist on the table. "I didn't even want to leave him. I loved Larry and… oh, God, I loved Matt. It wasn't the way it was with Ned. Not at all. I really hoped we would work it out, someday."
This was, Hardy thought, the straightest – and saddest – talk he'd ever gotten out of her, but if it was going to do them any good he had to get more. "I'm sorry to ask this, Jennifer, but what about Ken Lightner?"
It was as though she expected it, nodding to herself. "I talked to him. He told me about your lying to him about me saying we'd slept together. But I'm not going to pretend I don't feel something strong for Ken. I do." She stared straight ahead for a long moment. "But no," she said at last, "I wasn't going to leave Larry and Matt for him. We talked about it. It was okay. I wanted to, at first especially. But that was just more of the same behavior – Ken said I should break the cycle, don't do the wrong thing to begin with. That way I wouldn't feel like I deserved to be punished."
"What about him? How do you think he feels about you?"
She shrugged. "He thinks I'm attractive. He told me that, so I wouldn't think he was rejecting me." Her hands were crossed in her lap, her head down, her voice almost inaudible. "Men find me attractive, but once they get to know me, they don't like me so much."
"He's sticking with you all through this," Hardy said. "That counts."
"I guess."
Hardy took a breath – this was the moment. "If we can talk about this, talk about Ken, lay to rest the talk about your having an affair, say exactly what you've just said to me, how you just snapped and did some crazy things – I think we might have a chance."
She just looked at him.
He spoke quietly. "We can get another shrink – or even Ken if you want – to argue for leniency based on the stress you were under."
Now shaking her head.
"What?"
"No," she said. "I told Ken. No."
Hardy stopped. What did she mean, no?
"That's again saying I killed them, isn't it? I'd be saying I just snapped one morning and killed them." Her body had straightened, her head was up now, eyes getting life back into them. "As soon as I say that, then there really is no hope."
Was this deja vu? Or deja deja vu? Hardy had been through this a million times. If she didn’t have something new to say, the jury was going to vote the death sentence. Didn't she see that?
"I'm not going to tell anybody, ever, that I killed Larry!"
Hardy met her eyes, defiant and hard. He noticed she didn't include Matt, and before hadn't named him. "Them," she said. She could say Larry, but not Matt. She might let people – Ned or Larry – control her up to a point, but when she moved out from that control it was on her own.
It occurred to him too that she had changed over the past year – maybe she'd decided not only that she wasn't going to take it anymore with Larry but with any other men as well. She'd just gotten assertive, cured of the submissive streak that had allowed her to accept being beaten.
If she were getting better Hardy was glad for her. Still, he thought, strategically it couldn't have come at a worse time.
What was he going to argue in front of the jury? What could he say that might influence them at least to spare her life?
Since he was in the building anyway he thought he would drop by Dean Powell's office on the third floor, see if he was putting in his time at his desk while he campaigned.
He was. Sitting alone, reading what looked to be a police report, Powell started at Hardy's knock. After the surprise, the genial candidate appeared. "Hardy! Come on in, take a load off." Half out of his chair, hand extended, he could afford to be gracious. After all, he had won. "How's Freeman? Not taking it too hard, I trust. I ought to give him a call, congratulate him on a good fight."
Hardy closed the door behind him. He leaned back against it, not moving toward the seat in front of the desk. "Dean," he began, "I want to be straight with you a minute. Off the record, is that all right?"
The smile remained, but Powell's expression went a little sideways. He sat back down. "Sure, Mr. Hardy."
"Dismas is okay if Dean is."
The smile flickered back. Hardy hadn't had much luck reading Powell. He couldn't really blame himself. Powell was in an unusual predicament – on the one hand he wanted votes so badly that it was almost painful to watch. On the other, the two men's relationship was adversarial. It must be awkward, Hardy thought, to feel like your adversary might wind up voting for you, to want your adversary to vote for you, even to like you.