“No, you have it exactly right. Flint was tied up, not Mr. Hanna. We’re sitting in the sergeant’s office and he’s telling me this. He wants to have you brought in for a discussion. Then he gets a phone call from the police forensics lab in Sacramento. I was right there, Nina. He almost fell off his chair.”
“Why?”
“It’s about our client, Nina. Are you ready?”
“Go ahead,” Nina said.
“The fingerprint report came in on the gun Meredith gave you. The one used in the robbery.”
“And?”
“There was a surprise.”
“Which was?”
“Mr. Hanna’s fingerprint was on the barrel. Along with Flint’s and Meredith’s.”
Nina said, puzzled, “Dave handled the gun? When could he have done that?”
“Yes, when?” Wish said. “You see?”
“Slow down,” Sandy said. “I’m still thinking about bruises.”
Nina swung her legs down. She put her hands on the desk. “Dave touched the gun.”
“Yes.”
“He came running down after his wife was shot and touched the gun.”
Sandy objected, “But Meredith saw him coming down. That’s when she picked up the gun, when she saw him on the staircase, yelling.”
“If she’s telling the truth, he couldn’t have touched it-”
Wish said, “You see? Unless he had already been down there-”
“And he was going back up the stairs?”
“Not coming down to get help?” Sandy said.
“Going back up, after he touched the gun,” Nina said. “I don’t like what I’m thinking.” The shock made it hard to think clearly. “No possible mistake about the fingerprint?” she said.
“No. It was from his hunting license.”
“He saw the attempted robbery from the balcony, with his wife,” Nina said. “He saw Elliott rush Flint and knock the gun out of his hand. There was an interval between the first two shots and the third shot.”
“The students and Flint-they must have all run away after the second shot,” Wish said.
“What are you saying, Willis?” Sandy demanded. “You’re not saying our client fired the third shot?”
“What do you think, Mom?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nina?” Wish said.
“Let’s say he came running down the stairs and saw the gun on the ground. He picked it up and saw his wife. He shot her. He might have heard Meredith coming. He only had seconds, Wish! He should have wiped the gun, or kept it.”
“But he didn’t have time to think. He only had time to run halfway up again and pretend he was coming down for the first time when she saw him.”
“He just didn’t have time to deal with the gun,” Nina said.
“There you go,” Wish said.
“I don’t believe it,” Sandy said. “Why would he kill his wife? She was pregnant!”
“Yes. She was thirty-eight and she taught school and she was going to have a baby,” Nina said. “His baby.”
“I just don’t believe it.”
“Hang on.” Nina held up a hand. She struggled with a feeling so intense she couldn’t speak for a minute.
Betrayal. To be betrayed like this by her own client hurt. She breathed in and out, trying to think.
Sandy was still saying it couldn’t be true, but Wish just stared at Nina as she tried to encompass the enormity of Hanna’s lies.
Finally she said, “Remember what Jimmy Bova told me at the Ace High? Flint attacked him because he thought Bova might have shot Sarah. But Bova convinced him he didn’t.”
Sandy’s eyes narrowed into an expression Nina didn’t recognize. Her face changed. Her nose stood out prominently, nostrils wide. Her lips became a thin line.
“I’m starting to believe it,” she said. “Because the next man Flint went to see, the very next day, was-”
“Our client,” Wish said. “He started in on Mr. Hanna, but then the police came after Roger Freeman called 911 and Mr. Hanna must have gotten the gun away from him. Mr. Hanna tied Flint up, not the other way around.”
“But Flint was making Mr. Hanna talk on the phone,” Sandy said, “wasn’t he?” and an expression Nina did recognize, of horror and rage, came into her face. Nina felt it, too. The hidden variable had revealed itself like some cold demon riding through a dark sky, trailing misery and bloodshed.
“Hanna had good luck and bad luck,” Nina said. “He did struggle with Flint, and he got the gun away from him. I imagine the police were just arriving. He didn’t know what to do at first, so he did nothing.”
“And outside, everyone believed it was a hostage situation,” Wish said.
Sandy said, “He was safe that whole time? I don’t want to believe it, because then that man is so cruel. Cruel!”
“Letting Roger and everyone worry,” Wish said. “And he was fine, he was just trying to figure out how to keep Flint from talking.”
“Cruel,” Sandy repeated, shaking her head. Nina closed her eyes and thought back to the awful moments in Placerville when Dave was talking to her on the phone, pretending to relay Flint’s statements.
It was Dave, cruel Dave, who had told her it was all her fault.
When it was really Dave’s fault, Dave who killed his wife and tried to hide his secret, Dave who obstructed Nina’s efforts to find Sarah’s killer.
But Dave couldn’t know then that the robber whose gun he picked up and used wasn’t a random robber, wasn’t some punk off the streets of downtown Reno.
Lee Flint didn’t know who had killed the woman whose death he was being blamed for. He watched and waited for two years while the police investigation fizzled and the civil case wheezed toward dismissal. Then, when Nina came in, he started his own investigation. And he started covering his tracks, eliminating witnesses.
“Hanna piggybacked on Lee Flint’s robbery,” Nina said. “Flint got blamed for Sarah’s murder. He hadn’t killed her. But he couldn’t afford to be caught. To stop the investigation from leading to his robbery, he decided to kill Silke and Raj-”
“And you, too, and Elliott. Flint thought Chelsi was you,” Wish said. “We’re lucky you’re still with us.”
“So Dave Hanna killed his wife,” Sandy said. “I’m gonna believe it. I’m gonna go down to Placerville and kill him myself for killing his wife and lying to us and making you feel like you pulled the trigger on those people.” Her face had turned purple. She stood up.
“Mom?”
“Break his scrawny little neck.” She went into the outer office and Nina and Wish started to follow her. “Feed him to my horses. Don’t try to stop me.” She was putting on her coat.
Nina said, “Sandy, take your coat off, please. Dave’s incredibly dangerous. Do you guys realize he must have shot Flint there at the end, while Flint was tied up and probably gagged?”
“It’s sickening,” Wish said. “He’s sickening. Cheney told me not to talk to Hanna. I think he’ll be arrested within a few hours. What do we do, Nina?”
“He’s still our client, even though he’s a lying, murdering sack,” Nina said. She was trembling with rage.
“Do we warn him?” Wish asked. “Should I go down to Placerville and try to help him?”
“You mean kill him,” Sandy said. “Don’t you?”
She still stood at the door in her coat. Nina thought of all the hours Sandy had put in to help Hanna, the deadlines, the phone calls, the hours in Placerville worrying for him. She and Wish had also been betrayed. Wish walked over to her and put his arm around her and said gently, “Mom, come on back here and sit down.”
Nina said, “Wish, call Roger Freeman and ask him to come up here. Use some pretext. I don’t want him in Hanna’s house when the arrest goes down. Sandy, draw up a Withdrawal of Attorney in the Hanna case. Make copies and date it today.”
“We’re abandoning him?” Wish said.
“We signed on to help him sue the man who killed his wife,” Nina said. “He had to sue, or it would seem as though he didn’t care. But the whole case is a lie. There is no case.”
“Where are you going?” Nina was pulling her hiking boots on.