But Gina wanted to be ready to pounce if any hint of these weaknesses made their way into the trial. As it stood now, the prosecution's case looked like it was all going to come down to Bethany Robley's testimony. In all, Gina was somewhat heartened-Bethany had never seen Stuart that night and, better yet, had never even said she had. So it came down to the car, and from what she'd seen in discovery, she'd never mentioned Stuart's personalized ghoti license plate.
But as it happened, Wyatt Hunt called Gina's cell phone to report in on his morning interviews soon after she got outside the Hall of Justice and into the continuing drizzle, and it looked as though Gina's immediate implementation of plan B was going to have to wait as well. Here was Gina's chance to go down the Peninsula and personally meet up with William Blair, and she wasn't about to pass it up.
So Hunt picked her up out in front of the Hall in his MINI Cooper at a few minutes after three, and as they swung around the Hall and back onto the freeway going south, he said, "I thought this hearing was going to run all day. What happened?"
"Mayhem." She gave him the short version. "I've never seen anything like it."
Wyatt shifted into the freeway traffic, enjoying the story. Like most other of his fellow professionals in the field of criminal justice, Hunt found that his sympathy over any one person's individual misfortune- Stuart's, Bethany's, Juhle's-usually got subsumed in the pure joy of the absurdist theater of it all. "I wish I'd been there. A cane?"
"Big ol' cane." In retrospect, Gina was beginning to see the humor in it herself. "Pretty soon now they're going to have to rig the Hall with cane detectors."
"I can see it," Hunt agreed. "First no metal, then no cell phones with cameras, now no canes. I bet shoes are next." Wyatt put on his announcer's voice. "Coming soon to a jurisdiction near you, the Naked Courtroom. For security reasons, you must leave all your clothes at the door."
"And people think trials are ugly now."
They drove on in a companionable silence. The windshield wipers slashed back and forth, the drizzle picking up into something approximating real rain. After a minute, Wyatt looked over at her. "So did Devin get to talk before they called it off?"
"He did, but I'm thinking about now he's wishing he didn't. His version of things started out good, but it was all spin."
"I told him that too."
"He should have listened to you."
"Always, though he rarely does. It's tragic, really. I'll have to go over to his place and make fun of him."
But Gina shook her head. "I'd give it a couple of days, Wyatt. Seriously. It wasn't pretty. Not for him, anyway." After a small hesitation, she said, "So how'd your morning go?"
"Good. McAfee's still in play. And even though Mike Pinkert's basically got the same alibi as McAfee-in bed, except he was there with his wife-I believe him. Unless my gut is completely useless, he's just not in it."
"You don't believe McAfee?"
"Not completely. And I still like his motive more than anybody else's. Tonight I'm going to talk to the people in his condo building, see if anybody saw him go out or come in around eleven. Meanwhile, I've got to say that Pinkert's pretty much out of contention. Oh, and while we're on it, so's your Mr. Conley."
"He's not my Mr. Conley, Wyatt. He's everyone's Mr. Conley, maybe soon everybody's Senator Conley. He's alibied up?"
"Greenpeace fund-raiser with like five hundred people at the Marina Yacht Club. Unless he's got a body double. Some politicians do, you know."
Another thought that struck Gina as funny. "Not Jedd, I don't think," she said. "So, do you know where we're going now?"
"PII, right?" He pointed at the terminal screen in his dashboard. "I got it on the navigation system before I picked you up."
"Of course you did," Gina said.
Hunt nodded. "We aim to please."
Bill Blair wasn't in at first, and Gina thought that was instructive in itself.
Then Wyatt said to his secretary: "That's a shame, because Ms. Roake had some questions for Mr. Blair on the Kelley Rusnak matter. Kelley was supposed to be Ms. Roake's witness in the Caryn Dryden murder hearing. Anyway, she'd like to keep this private and hoped to give him a chance to answer a few questions. But if he's not around, she'll have to take her questions to Jeff. That's Jeff Elliott of the Chronicle. And see if he can get some answers for her. So if Mr. Blair's not here, I guess he'll just have to read the paper tomorrow and respond to that."
Though she was a woman, the secretary reminded Gina of the William H. Macy character in Fargo. Smiling miserably at both of them, she swallowed a couple of times, then said, "Let me just run and check to see if maybe he's gotten back when I wasn't at my desk."
Gina almost said, "Yah, shure," in that great Frances McDormand Norwegian accent, but stopped herself in the nick of time. "That'd be nice," she said. "Thanks."
Less than two minutes later, they were making their introductions to Mr. Blair, a short heavy man of about forty-five, with small eyes and colorless hair combed into a very short pageboy.
His corner office seemed almost to sulk behind its tinted windows on this gray afternoon. Fluorescent lighting overhead gave the room an impersonal feel that wasn't much mitigated by the view of the enormous parking lot outside, the lack of even mass-produced "art" on the two remaining walls. A massive light oak desk was piled high with neat stacks of papers and documents-a small sign of order perhaps hiding a larger chaos? A couple of self-consciously modern chrome-and-leather chairs sat on industrial carpet facing his work space, and Blair indicated that his guests take them, then went to his own chair behind the desk and sat down.
Gina wasted no more time. "Mr. Blair," she began, "thank you for seeing us without an appointment, but time is short. Kelley Rus-nak was going to be a witness for me in Stuart Gorman's hearing on the murder of his wife, which is going on in San Francisco this week. Kelley met with Stuart down here about two weeks ago. She told him she might be in some kind of danger because of her involvement with the Dryden Socket."
"Nobody murdered Kelley. Apparently she killed herself."
"Apparently," Gina said. "Did you know Kelley well?"
Her reply, and then the following question, both seemed to surprise him. "We're a small company, but no, not really more than anyone else. Less than some. She wasn't management, after all."
"I noticed, though, that you gave the statement about her death. Is that the company policy?"
"Well, fortunately, until lately we haven't had to have a policy on that. In this case, we needed a statement for the paper, so I ginned one up. I'm afraid I don't really see anything particularly sinister about that." With one hand, he moved one of the piles of paper to a new location about a quarter inch from where it had been. "I told all this to Mr. Elliott this morning. You're trying to muddy the waters surrounding your client. Laudable in an attorney, I suppose, but actually fairly tedious for the rest of us."
So, Gina thought, the gloves were coming off early. She gave him a saccharine smile. "Be that as it may, the reason Mr. Elliott was interested in the story had little or nothing to do with my client, but with the cover-up around the Dryden Socket that both Caryn and Kelley were trying to expose."
He shook his head, his lips tight. "There is no cover-up, Ms. Roake. I don't know how these rumors get started, but there is no problem with the Dryden Socket. It's a remarkable device that marks a major improvement in the technology of hip replacement. The FDA will be issuing its formal approval any day now, and we're gearing up for tremendous worldwide demand. If we thought the product was harmful, do you imagine, one, that the FDA would give its approval and two, that we'd be so foolish as to go ahead with increased production, with all the lawsuits that a faulty product would entail?"