The Hearing

They turned together and walked through the family room back to the kitchen, where Hardy took his seat in front of his coffee. Frannie silently moved some dishes to the sink, wiped a surface or two with a dishcloth. Finally, some psychic energy shifted and Frannie came over and sat down with him. She smiled wearily, reached a hand over and put it on her husband's. 'Hi.'

A reflexive sigh, Hardy's own weariness breaking through. 'Wow.'

His wife nodded. 'I know. She is trying, you know.'

'Yep.'

'It's not some scam to get our attention. She really does worry.'

He nodded, never doubting it for a moment. This morning, once again, his daughter had been afraid to go to school, and they'd done their parental tag team, trying to calm her myriad fears, for nearly an hour, while their son Vincent grabbed his English muffin and disappeared into his bedroom so he wouldn't have to deal with it.

The Beck's fears.

The constant flow of news and information, even her school curriculum, kept the Beck hyperkinetically aware of and sensitive to every disaster that happened on the planet – a plane crash in Calcutta, a hostage crisis in Balkans, famine and genocide in Rwanda, church burnings in the South. All the world's problems brought home to her own little plate every day.

This was the backdrop of everyday life, the white noise of her daily existence.

Hardy had trouble believing that the nature of human beings had changed so completely in one generation. Surely there had always been criminals and perverts, ugliness and evil; it just hadn't felt as if it was everywhere. Perhaps life now for his children was not really much more precarious than when Hardy had been a boy. But now it seemed that nearly every detail of every crime everywhere got into the societal fabric via the front page, television, the Internet – a racial killing in Detroit happened here; an abusive father killing his wife and kids in Miami was here; a massacre at a school in North Dakota might happen here, today.

The Beck seemed to feel that if she let her guard down for an instant, she would die. Kidnappers lurked in every public bathroom, you got cancer if you caught a whiff of second-hand tobacco smoke, bombs and handguns proliferated in high schools everywhere, you caught AIDS if you even kissed your boyfriend. God forbid you got a sunburn, or forgot to fasten your seatbelt.

Government warning: Everyone who breathes, dies! Watch out!

She was trying to sort it all out, one fear at a time. Three out of seven days a week for at least the past year. At bedtime. On school mornings. Whenever something struck her. It was wearing her parents down.

'She worries,' Frannie repeated.

'I worry, too,' Hardy replied. 'But I'm old, that's my job. The Beck's a healthy kid whose parents love each other and have enough money. She ought to spend a couple of seconds thinking about that every week or two. The good stuff in the world. There is some left, I hear – sunsets, food, the occasional tasteless joke.'

'She tries, Dismas. She's doing the best she can.'

'I know.' Hardy sipped at his cold coffee, let out another lungful of air. 'I really do know. It just breaks my heart.'

The phrase hung in the room. After a long minute, Frannie squeezed his hand. 'What else?' she asked.

Hardy paused, then feigned ignorance. 'What else what?'

'Good try,' she said. 'But not flying. Something else – not the Beck – has been bothering you since you got home last night.'

Hardy glanced across at his wife. She brushed a stray strand of gleaming red hair from her lovely forehead, offered him a sympathetic look.

'You're good,' he said.

She shrugged. 'Part of the job description. So what is it?'

He sighed a last time and gave in. 'Abe.'

'That doesn't sound like him at all,' Frannie said after she'd heard the story. 'Do you think it's possible he had a crush on Elaine?'

The question was unexpected and Hardy considered it carefully, then shook his head no. 'She was engaged. Besides, Abe isn't what I'd call the crush type.'

'He had a crush on Flo for almost twenty years.'

'That wasn't a crush, Frannie. They were married.'

She gave him a pretty pout. 'And the two are mutually exclusive?'

He took her hand, kissed it, shook his head. 'What I mean is I can't see him carrying some kind of torch. He'd come out with it…'

Frannie broke a half-smile. 'Abe? We're talking the effervescent and loquacious Lieutenant Glitsky? You want my opinion?'

'At every turn.'

'I think if he was attracted to somebody who was somehow off limits – like engaged – wild horses couldn't drag it out of him.'

Hardy sat up straight. 'You don't think he would even mention it to the involved party?'

'No. Especially not her. Not unless she gave him some signal that she might be interested. Why do you think Abe hasn't had a date in three years?'

'Women hate and fear him?'

'Dismas.'

'He's a hideous gargoyle?'

It was no secret that Frannie considered Abe one of the more attractive men on the planet. 'I don't think that's it either.'

'How about if he hasn't liked anybody enough?'

'Maybe, but not mostly, I don't think.' She came forward on the couch. 'He hasn't asked anybody out – I'd bet you anything – because he doesn't want to reveal anything going on inside him. It's his protection since Flo.'

Hardy knew that his wife was mostly right on this. Since Flo had died, he'd spent hours with Glitsky, both socially and professionally, and knew that his friend wasn't exactly the poster boy for celebrating the inner child. The walls were high and thick. But Frannie hadn't gotten it all, and Hardy's expression grew serious. 'I think he's scared, all right, but not about having somebody see who he is. I think he's afraid that if he starts with somebody he might get to care about her. That might turn into caring a lot. And then he might lose it all again.'

Frannie put her hand back over his. 'That was your demon, Dismas,' she said softly, 'maybe it's not Abe's.'

Hardy's first son, Michael, had died in infancy. The event had plunged him into divorce with his first wife, Jane, and then a decade of lethargy in a haze induced by Guinness, during which he eked out an empty existence on his bartender wages at the Little Shamrock. His passion for his work and for justice – for sunsets and food and sexual love, too – had dried up. And then, somehow – the precise mechanism of it was still a mystery to him – Frannie had gotten through to him, and he'd begun to feel again, to be able to handle feeling.

Now he tightened down his mouth, looked over at her. 'Maybe that's why I recognize it, though. With Abe. How did we get on this anyway?' he asked.

'Abe dating. His possible crush on Elaine.'

Hardy gave it another minute. 'Whatever it was, it was serious. He wanted the kid to suffer. It was personal.'

'So what are you going to do now?'

'About Abe?'

'I don't suppose you'll have to do anything about Abe. He's got a way of taking care of himself. I was thinking about the boy. What's left for you to do? Are you in this?'

After a minute of consideration Hardy said, 'Let's say I'm not comfortable with the idea of defending the person who killed Elaine. I liked her. If Cole did it, I'll turn Dorothy onto somebody else, tell her I've got a conflict of interest.'

'You just said "if Cole did it".'

'He did, Frannie. He's confessed. That's usually a tip-off.'

'But you're going to want to find out a little more, aren't you? Make sure.'

Hardy's reluctance showed like a fresh bruise. His expression changed two or three times until it rested on a grimace. 'Probably, knowing me,' he admitted, 'although there's no such thing as sure. It just feels a little pat up to now, that's all. I'd want to talk to him at least, get his side of it. But if it seems like he did do it – strung out and screwed up or not – I'll let David or somebody else take him. I wouldn't want to be involved in defending him.'