"And why is that?" Hardy turned and pointed now at his client. "Because Jennifer Witt was a remarkably good mother. No one contends or even suggests that she was not. She loved her son. She has been devastated by his death. She did not concoct any plan that – however remotely – might have put her son in danger. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the plain truth."
Hardy glanced at Villars, waiting for Powell to object again and this time be sustained. Bit it did not come. He had kept it vague enough and, after all, this was just an introduction. Letting out a breath, he decided this was about as good as he was going to get at this stage. He thanked the jury and sat down.
It was six-thirty and Hardy was sitting at the bar of the Little Shamrock, working on a Black amp; Tan, a mixture of ale and stout. Moses and Hardy (back in his full-time bartender days) took pride in how they made the drink, separating the two brews cleanly, stout on top. But the new kid, Alan, had not gotten the knack, so that the fresh drink tasted old, flat. Maybe it was just the way the day had gone, how Hardy felt.
After the full day of the trial, the emotional drain of finally getting up and beginning to work, Hardy didn't think going home with his edge on would be wise. The shift in personal mode from near-adversary to ally was not a toggle switch, and he had called Frannie explaining he need some unwind time – if she could handle it, if she wasn't too burned on the kids.
That early on a Monday, there were only five other people at the bar, two couples at tables near the dart board and a really lovely young woman up by the window talking to Alan. Hardy spun his pint slowly on the smooth wood before him. Willie Nelson was singing Paul Simon on the jukebox, about the many times he'd been mistaken, the many times confused. Hardy understood that.
The young man behind the bar brought a new attitude to the Shamrock. Moses called it the "look of the nineties" – short hair, shaved face, dress shirt and slacks. Moses said they were getting a lot more single female customers than they had had with Hardy behind the rail, to which Hardy had replied that maybe that was true, but probably they were shallower people, into the good looks thing. He – Hardy – was into substance, character, depth, real stuff. Moses said the real stuff was all right, but it didn't sell as much booze. Besides, Moses said, since Susan, he'd been into the good-looks thing himself. Times changed.
The woman by the window said something and Alan laughed. Swirling, checking on Hardy's progress with his drink, he was smiling as though no one had ever lied to him. Maybe that was it, Hardy thought – I'm in a business where most everybody lies. It's expected.
He took a last sip for politeness sake, pushed a few bills into the gutter, raised a hand saying good-bye. A stranger in his own bar.
It was just getting to dusk, and there was one light on in the DiStephano house, in the front left window. No cars in the drive.
Hardy parked down a half-block. He put the folded-up subpoena form in his shirt pocket.
Going up the walkway, heart pounding, he wondered how Frannie would feel about this segment of his unwind time.
He walked a few more steps onto the lawn. Through the lighted window he saw Nancy moving about in the kitchen. On the porch, he stopped to listen. There was no conversation. If Phil was home he would bull his way through, or try.
He rang the doorbell.
The overhead light flicked on. She stood inside the screen. "Hello," she said. She looked around behind him, up and down the street.
"Phil isn't home?"
Shaking her head no, she opened the screen door. "He's on a call." Again, Hardy was struck by how young she looked – Jennifer had gotten her good bones from her mother. He thought those bones had played a big role in getting their men – perhaps it wasn't the blessing it was cracked up to be.
"I wanted to come and ask you if you'd like to talk about your daughter. On the witness stand."
"Talk about Jennifer? What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to talk about how much you love her."
Nancy swallowed, her eyes wide. "I do love her," she said.
"I know you do. I want you to tell that to the jury."
"Why?"
"Because it might help save her life. Because it's something they can see, something human."
Her eyes became hooded, haunted. Jennifer got that way often enough, too; Hardy thought it was whenever either of them thought they were about to do something that would get them hit.
He pressed the point. "I need you, Nancy. Jennifer needs you. The DA is pulling people out of the woodwork and they're painting a very bad picture of Jennifer."
"I know, I watch TV." She scanned the street again, then stood silent volunteering nothing.
"What is it?"
"It's him." Hardy had met women before who referred to the current man in their lives, always, without preamble, as "him." And it always chilled him.
"Phil would want you to save his daughter's life, Nancy. Don't tell me he wouldn't want that."
"This whole thing…" she began, then stopped again. "He hates it. He hates that everybody knows it's his daughter on trial."
"He's worried about how that affects him?"
"He's not just worried, he's furious. He said he wishes we never had her. He won't even let me talk about it, about her."
"Nancy, how's he going to feel if they execute her? How are you going to feel?"
The plea in her eyes was clear – don't ask me such a question. She loved her daughter and was scared to death of her husband. If he had to bet on it, she hoped more than anything at this moment that he would just go away.
But he didn't drive out there just to go away. He took the paper from his breast pocket. "This is a subpoena for you to appear, Nancy. I need you to be there. I need somebody to say that Jennifer loved her son, that she herself has something to offer, that she is at least worth saving. She the jury that somebody cares."
Nancy held the paper close to her.
"Nancy, how old are you?" Hardy asked suddenly.
She tried to smile but it came out broken. "Forty-eight," she said.
"It's not too late," he said.
She clutched the subpoena form against her, in a fist held tight against her stomach. She sighed, almost shuddering. Any trace of even a broken down smile was gone. "Yes, I'm afraid it is," she said.
In the middle of the night, the telephone rang. It was Freeman. "You heard yet? Anybody call you?"
Hardy blinked tying to focus the clock. Four-thirty.
"No, David, nobody's called me."
"Well, they called me. Jennifer's mother just tried to kill her old man."
45
They were both at Shriner's Hospital – Phil under the knife in emergency surgery, Nancy in a guarded, private room. Hardy was down there before six, before the sun was up, before any other lawyers or the media.
"She's going to be all right. Him I don't know."
The inspector, Sean Manion, had had a long night, but he worked out of Park Station; he had known Hardy from the Shamrock and they got along. They were standing in the hallway outside Nancy's room now. She had been sedated and was not going to be giving interviews to anybody for a while.
"What happened?"
Manion was strung tight. He was shorter than Hardy by half a head, with a pock-marked face, a reconstructed cleft pallet, a monk's tonsured hairline. Perpetually hunched, hands in his pockets, chewing gum, he talked in a rapid staccato. "Guy beat her once too often, I guess. She grabbed a knife and stuck him. Four times, I think. No, five."