“When will that be?”
“Within two to three months.”
“When will you talk to the people on this list?”
“I’ll start making phone calls today. If I’m lucky, I can begin seeing them on Monday.”
“To take depositions?”
“No. Just informally. If they’re willing to talk to me. Otherwise, yes, I’ll have to subpoena them and question them under oath. You see...”
Lainie glanced up from the typewritten list. A spot of sunlight escaped the snare of leaves above her head, shifted uncertainly in her golden hair. She looked at me expectantly. The wandering eye gave her the forlorn appearance of an abandoned child.
“You see, Folger’s still hoping we’ll plead.”
“Why would we?”
“He’s hoping that after I talk to these people, whoever they are...”
“Well, who are they, that’s what I’d like to know, too.”
“I have no idea. But he’s hoping we’ll recognize the strength of his case and accept his offer.”
“Second-degree murder.”
“Yes. Second degree means without any premeditated design.”
“I just shot Brett on the spur of the moment, right?”
“Well, yes. For second-degree murder, that’s what it would have to be.”
“Heat of passion, right?”
“Well, no. That’s a term used in the section on excusable homicide. That wouldn’t apply here.”
“Especially since I didn’t kill him.”
“I know that.”
“So why would I settle for thirty years in jail?”
“Well, not to exceed thirty.”
“For something I didn’t do.”
“I’m not recommending it.”
“More coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
She leaned over to pour. I watched her.
“Was your girlfriend angry?”
“What?” I said.
“Last night. She seemed angry.”
“Well... no. Angry about what?”
“You and I talking together,” she said, and shrugged. The kimono slid slightly off her shoulder, revealing the narrow strap of her nightgown. She adjusted it at once, put down the coffeepot, and looked across the table at me. “Was she?” she asked. “Angry?”
“No.”
“Someone told me she’s a state attorney.”
“That’s right. A very good one.”
“Do you talk to her about me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I hope not. Milk?”
“Please.”
She poured. I kept watching her.
“Sugar?”
“One.”
She slid the bowl across the table to me.
“Why was she angry?”
“It had nothing to do with you.”
“Then who?”
“I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Then she was angry, right?”
“As I said...”
“You’d rather not discuss it.”
“Right.”
She was jiggling her foot again. Smiling. Jiggling the foot.
“I’d hate to go to the electric chair, you see. Just because...”
“Well, I’ll try to make sure...”
“Just because my attorney’s sleeping with someone,” she said, overriding my voice. “Giving away my secrets to some woman in bed,” she said. Single eyebrow raised over the crooked right eye. Faint smile still on her mouth.
“I don’t know any of your secrets,” I said.
“If you knew them,” she said.
“I don’t care to know them.”
“But you are sleeping with her.”
“Lainie...”
“Aren’t you?”
“Lainie, if my personal relationship with Patricia Demming intrudes in any way upon my performance as your attorney, I’ll immediately withdraw from the case.”
“Your performance as my attorney,” she repeated.
Still smiling.
“Yes. In fact, if you think I’m not representing you properly...”
“But I think you are,” she said.
“Good. I’m happy to hear that.”
“Besides,” she said, “anything between us is privileged, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” I said.
What secrets? I wondered.
“Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
The security guard’s name was Bartholomew Harrod.
If a jury had been present, anything old Bart said would have been instantly and automatically believed. That’s because anyone named after one of the Twelve Apostles could not possibly be lying. Well, Judas Iscariot, maybe. Nowadays, there are women on juries, but back when you and I were young, Maggie, a jury consisted of men only. Put on that jury an Andrew, Bartholomew, James (two of them, no less), John, Thaddeus, Matthias, Philip, Peter, Simon, Thomas, or — well yes, he said modestly — even Matthew, and what you had, folks, was a jury of “twelve good men and true.” Not to mention Paul, who said he’d seen Christ after the resurrection, and was therefore elevated to Apostlehood and later to sainthood.
There was no jury listening to what Bartholomew Harrod was saying at two o’clock on what was still a bright sunny Saturday, the sixteenth day of September. Sitting outdoors around a circular coffee table with a plastic top and wrought-iron legs painted green were Harrod, and me, and Andrew Holmes, the man in my office who would most likely be trying the Commins case if I myself declined that singular ordeal. That made three good men and true, but who was counting Apostles’ names?
I had called Harrod immediately after leaving Lainie’s house. I’d told him I was defending Ms. Commins and had been offered his name by the state attorney, Peter Folger, whom I was sure he knew and who had suggested that I might want to talk to him as soon as possible. I told Harrod that if he agreed to come to my office, or to meet with me wherever he preferred, we could talk informally about what he’d said to the grand jury, and this might save the trouble of my having to cross-examine him later, a blatant lie, but one that sometimes swayed a reluctant witness.
What worked best, however, was the “America the Beautiful” approach, which basically sketched in the premise that everyone in the United States was entitled to a fair trial. In the interests of justice, then — which certainly Mr. Harrod would want for himself if ever, God forbid, he found himself in a similar situation — in the interests of freedom and justice for all, then, I felt certain he would want the defense to know how the grand jury had arrived at its finding, toward which end a knowledge of his testimony would be enormously helpful, in the spirit of justice and fairness.
I told him that he wouldn’t be under oath while we talked, it would all be very informal, although I would appreciate being able to record what he said, just for reference later on. This was another lie, though a smaller one, but neither was anyone under oath while we were talking on the phone. I needed the recording for backup in case we asked him, on the stand and under oath, to repeat anything he might say in our informal discussion. That was why I’d asked Andrew Holmes, no relation, the new partner in the firm of Summerville and Hope, to join me when I spoke to Harrod.
I would have preferred sending either of my two investigators, Warren Chambers or Toots Kiley, to interview and record Harrod. But calls to Warren’s office and home garnered identical messages saying he’d be out of town for the next week or so, and Toots’s machine said only that she was “away from the phone just now” and asked that a message be left at the beep. Which meant that I could not send them independently to do the donkey work and then later testify to the authenticity and genesis of the tape. Which further meant I needed a witness to the taping.