"What about her?"
"Well, when she walked in, she was the one who fit the poster child image of troubled youth. But you hear her talking about Andrew or Laura, these kids who look like they've got everything, and she's got the answer. She calls them gone parents. Even if they're right in the house, they're gone. And Hal and Linda aren't even in the house all that much."
Frannie reached over and put a hand on Hardy's tray table. "So what happens now? With Andrew, I mean?"
"Well, they're sending him back up the hill in the morning. Meanwhile, it looks like Amy's on tomorrow."
Frannie took a breath and let an involuntary moan escape. Closing her eyes, she let herself back down onto her pillows. "And what about you?"
"No. What about you? That didn't sound too good."
"I'm a little sore, that's all."
"That's all. You didn't by any chance forget to take your pain medicine, did you?"
She shook her head as far as the neck brace let her. "It's not that bad. I don't want to be drugged up."
"If you weren't already so hurt, I'd whup you upside the head." Hardy got up and went into the bathroom, found her medicine and brought it back. "Here. Take these, would you? Give yourself a break. Tomorrow you can get up and suffer all day if you want."
"What are you going to do?"
"Clear dishes, check on kids, take the rest of the night off."
"On the day before a hearing? You're kidding."
"Yep," he said.
"So what? Really?"
"Really? I don't know exactly. I've got some phone calls. I've got to find something that might help this kid. Especially after what he tried last night." He leaned over and she put a hand behind his neck, held him in the kiss for an extra second. When he straightened up, he said, "On the other hand, I could close the door and get these silly dishes off the bed, although with your medical condition we'd have to cut back on the usual acrobatics."
"It's a nice offer, but with the concussion and all, I really do have a headache." She offered him a weak smile. "I hate to say that."
"It's fine. I really do have stuff to do anyway." He sat down on the side of the bed. "But for the record, that was a nice kiss."
"Thank you. I thought so, too. You know why?"
"Why what?"
"Why suddenly I thought a good kiss was in order."
Hardy shrugged. "I thought it was just the usual animal magnetism."
"That, too," she said. "But also I'm liking this guy who showed up again recently. Caring for his clients, interacting with his kids. All that sensitive stuff." She touched his hand. "Really," she said. "If he wanted to stick around, that wouldn't be so bad."
"He's thinking about it," Hardy said. "No commitments, though."
"No, of course not. No pressure, either. But just so he knows."
Hardy leaned over and kissed her another good long one. "He'll take it under advisement," he said.
As a matter of course and of habit, Hardy had left his card- home and business numbers- with all of today's interview subjects. He had also asked for their own numbers and told all of them that he might need to call them as witnesses for Andrew, but this really didn't seem too likely at the moment. None of them had given him a shred of evidence, and without that no judge would let him introduce even the most compelling alternative theory of the murders. Hardy had to have something real, and he had nothing at all, not even a reasonable conjecture of his own.
This last fact, considering that he'd come very close to actually believing in Andrew's innocence, was the most galling. If someone else had killed Mooney and Laura Wright, he had no idea who it might have been, or what reason they might have had. Perhaps the most frustrating element was that Hardy now believed that Juan Salarco- or, more precisely, Anna Salarco- had actually seen the murderer as he fled from the scene and turned to look back at the house.
But because of the promises of the police for some kind of intercession on his behalf with the INS- promises Hardy knew to be empty- Salarco couldn't admit that he'd made a mistake on the identification. Maybe he didn't even accept that fact himself. Maybe all Anglos looked pretty much the same to him, especially young ones wearing cowled sweatshirts.
He was just finishing up a telephone discussion with Kevin Brolin, the psychologist who'd treated Andrew for his anger problems when he'd been younger, and whom Hardy wanted to testify the next day on the second criterion, Andrew's rehabilitation potential. Brolin had been called by the Norths before they'd even flown home after the suicide attempt, and Hardy had talked to him earlier that evening at the hospital right after his little contretemps with Hal and Linda. Brolin seemed knowledgeable and sympathetic and, more importantly, convinced that Andrew had resolved the problems with his temper- in Brolin's opinion, he was not a candidate for physical violence. He'd learned to channel that negative energy into creative outlets, such as writing and acting. Brolin even understood that he'd stopped eating meat out of compassion for the suffering of food animals.
Hardy didn't tell him about Andrew's jailhouse conversion on the vegetarian issue. Nor was he particularly convinced by Brolin's professional opinion about Andrew's current commitment to a nonviolent life. In Hardy's own experience, he'd known people who had directed their "negative energy" toward creative outlets, and who were still capable of heinous acts of violence. The two were not mutually exclusive. But if as a psychologist and expert witness- at a thousand dollars per court day- Brolin thought they were, and was willing to say so, that was all right with Hardy. It might not convince the judge, but Brolin would certainly make a damn strong argument that would be hard to refute, especially if Jason Brandt had not thought to present a rebuttal witness to testify to the opposite.
Hardy was still on the kitchen phone when the front doorbell rang. He checked the wall clock. It was 9:40. "Anybody want to get that?" he called out.
"In a second!" Vincent called from his room.
Rebecca gave her constant refrain. "I'm doing homework!"
The doorbell rang again. Hardy said, "Excuse me a minute, Doctor, would you?" Covering the mouthpiece. "Now!" he called out, "as in right now!"
"Beck!" Vincent yelled.
"I'm doing homework, I said." Her final answer. She wasn't budging.
"So am I! It's not fair!" Hardy heard a slam from Vincent's room- a book being thrown down in a fit of pique?- then a chair perhaps knocked over. Anger anger everywhere. His son went running by down the hallway. Hardy came back to the phone. "You work with children all day?" he asked. "How do you do it?"
"I'm a very, very old forty-five," Brolin said.
From the front door. "Dad! Somebody for you."
Covering the phone again. "Tell him I'll be a minute."
Hardy heard Vincent's steps coming back up through the house, then passing through the kitchen. His put-upon fourteen-year-old son didn't so much as favor him with a glance.
Hardy cut it off as quickly as he could with Brolin, told him he'd see him at the YGC the next morning and walked up through the dining room to the front of the house. No one waited in the living room and the front door was still closed. Was it possible, he wondered, that Vincent had left the caller to cool his heels outside and closed the door on him? Surely between him and Frannie, he thought, they'd covered, at least once, some of the basic etiquette involved in answering the goddamned front door?
But evidently not.
A shadow moved behind the glass and Hardy opened the door.
The young man looked familiar. Recently familiar, but Hardy couldn't quite place him. "Mr. Hardy," he said. Then, reading Hardy's uncertainty: "Steven Randell, from Sutro?"