Wu didn't think it was the food, though, that accounted for his pallor and lethargy today. He'd shaved, showered, and combed his hair, but in the jail outfit- blue denims, gray sweatshirt- he showed no sign that yesterday afternoon's depression had lifted at all. If anything, it seemed worse.
He greeted Hardy with a bored and sullen silence. He only shook, no grip, after a pause long enough for Hardy nearly to withdraw his own offered hand. Wu started to explain that Hardy was here because he had more experience with murder cases and…
"You said that yesterday. So we're going to adult trial?"
"Maybe not," Wu said. "We're hoping that this hearing…"
But he cut her off again. "No you're not. Yesterday you said that was hopeless. They get one of the criteria, it's over, right?"
Andrew had stuffed himself into the old school desk. Wu sat at the table. Hardy was standing in the corner, leaning against one of the walls, arms crossed. He spoke matter-of-factly. "You can always go back and admit the petition. I'll bet you I could talk Johnson into accepting that if you wanted to change your mind. You want to do that?"
Andrew kept his eyes on the table in front of him. "That's eight years automatic."
"That's right," Hardy said.
He looked up. "I didn't do this."
"Well, then," Hardy said, "you don't want to do those eight years, do you?"
He didn't answer.
"Which, like it or not," Hardy said, "leaves us with an adult trial, unless we can win this hearing next Tuesday."
He pointed to Wu. "She says we can't do that."
"We've got some problems," Hardy admitted, "but we've also got some strategies. To make them work, though, we're going to need your help. If you think it's even worth it to try."
Andrew shrugged.
Hardy came forward, his voice hardening up, pressing him a little. "You do? You don't? I'm not reading your signals very clearly. You want to try using some words?"
It was clear that Andrew hadn't had too many people talk to him so harshly. "All right," he said finally. "What do you want me to do?"
"Let's start by you telling me about the gun," Hardy said.
"What about it?"
"I'm curious why you brought it to your rehearsal that night."
Andrew didn't have to think about it. "It was just in my backpack. I'd been carrying it around for a few weeks."
"But you took it out that night. At Mr. Mooney's. Isn't that right?"
"Yeah."
"So how did that happen?"
He shrugged. "It was a prop, that's all. We were doing Virginia Woolf, you know. That was the play. And Mike- Mooney- he thought it might add to the tension if we had a gun on stage. It's not really in the script, but he just wanted to see how it would feel."
"So he asked you to bring a gun to rehearsal?"
"No. I had it with me anyway, so I brought it up. It was my idea. I thought it might be cool."
Hardy thought this would be a good time to shake things up. He forced an amused little chuckle, walked up to the table, looked down at Wu. "The boy's good, Amy," he said. "This is some brilliant delivery. I can see where he got the lead in the play."
"What are you talking about?" Andrew asked.
Hardy kept his tone easy. "I'm talking about acting, Andrew. What else?"
"I'm not acting. This is what happened." A pause. "Really."
Hardy nodded, chuckled again, talked to Amy. "Damn," Hardy said. "Impressive. I mean it. I'd be pretty well swayed if I were on a jury."
"Me, too," Wu said. "We put him on the stand, he flies."
Hardy looked down at him. "It's always a big decision whether or not to put a defendant on the stand himself. But we get a world-class performer like yourself, it's a real bonus."
"Why are you saying this? I'm not performing. I'm telling you the truth."
Again, Hardy spoke directly to Wu. "And the award goes to…"
"I'm telling the truth, goddamn it! What are you saying?"
Hardy didn't rise to the challenge. Retreating to his neutral corner, he leaned against the wall again, crossed his arms. "You tell him, Amy."
She took the cue. "Andrew," she said. "Andrew, look at me."
He dragged his pained expression back down to the table.
"Why Mr. Hardy is skeptical is that in 'Perfect Killer,' you tell that same story as the-"
Andrew jumped as if he'd been stung. "How do you know about that? I never…" He shot a look to the corner, where Hardy was the picture of nonchalance. Nothing there. He came back to Wu. "I never even printed that out."
"No," Wu said. "I don't suppose you would have. But it was still on the disk."
Hardy spoke up. "It's pretty standard procedure now, Andrew. The police get a search warrant and dump your computer files, read your e-mail. That's the one thing I'd criticize about your story. The writing was good. It reminded me a little of Holden Caulfield, but you hadn't done your research on the latest tech stuff. Didn't you know they'd served a warrant at your house? Didn't it occur to you that they'd look for everything they could find?"
Andrew slumped at his desk. His arms hung straight down, his head bowed. They let him live with his new reality for a minute or more, a very long time under those circumstances. Finally, he sighed and raised his head. "Look," he said, "I'm not acting. I'm telling you guys the truth. What I made up was that story. I had my guy, my character-"
"Trevor," Wu said.
"Right, Trevor. I had Trevor-"
Hardy cut in. "Andrew," he said. "That's the most incriminating document I've ever read and I've been in this game a long time. No judge in the world is going to let you off if he gets a look at that, which he will. How many other stories like that are in your computer?"
"None just like that."
"Thank God," Wu said. "What in the world were you thinking, Andrew?"
Unbowed, he snapped back. "I was thinking about writing a story. You know, fiction?"
"We know all about fiction," Hardy said. He hadn't moved from his spot in the corner by the door. "But this just… Well, it isn't fiction. I flat don't believe it."
"You can believe what you want. Haven't you ever read Crime and Punishment? Or John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure?"
"I've read them both," Wu said. "What about them?"
"Well, I had just read Debt to Pleasure earlier in the year, when I was starting to have some problems with Laura." His eyes went back and forth between his attorneys. "When we first started rehearsing with Mike, she… well, like Julie in the story, she was just all impressed with him, that she'd gotten the part, all that. It got to me. We actually broke up about it."
"That wasn't in the story," Hardy said. "The breakup."
"No," Andrew said. "That's because I made up the story. Have I already mentioned that? I thought I had."
Hardy's mouth grinned, but his eyes didn't. "I don't know who convinced you that sarcasm was a powerful debating tool, Andrew. But whoever it was didn't do you a service. I understand that you made up your story. It's not that tough a concept to grasp. But you have to admit that there's a lot of it that seems pretty closely based on your own experience. Now, do you want to tell us about that, or not?"
Andrew tried stewing for a moment. He turned to Wu, who might show some sympathy, for support, but she stonewalled him. At last, he spoke. "When I wrote it, I was jealous of Mike with Laura. I was going for a weird-guy feel like Lanchester did."
"You got that," Wu said. She turned to Hardy. "The Debt to Pleasure again."