‘How do you plead?’ Barsotti asked.
‘Not guilty, Your Honor.’ Freeman spoke for May. After Freeman’s booming oratorio in the interview room on Saturday, Hardy was struck by the modulation of his voice. He was matter-of-fact, conversational. But there was a fist under the glove. Suddenly, he put on his trial voice. ‘Your Honor, before we continue with this charade I’d like to move to have all charges against my client dismissed due to procedural error.’
‘On a murder charge, Mr Freeman? And already?’
‘Mr Hardy of the district attorney’s office interrogated my client on Saturday morning without informing her -’
‘I object, Your Honor.’ Elizabeth Pullios was up from the D.A.‘s desk, where she’d appeared during the recess. ’Mr Hardy informed Ms Shintaka that she had the right to have an attorney present and Ms Shintaka waived that right. The prosecution has a tape recording of that meeting.‘
‘I think we can establish coercion…’
Barsotti tapped his gavel. He sighed. ‘Mr Freeman,’ he said, ‘save it for the hearing. In the meantime, we’ll move on to bail.’
He adjusted his glasses and double-checked the computer sheet in front of him. The handwritten notation next to the computer line read ‘No bail.’
‘The prosecution asks that no bail be granted?’ he asked Pullios.
‘This is a capital murder case, Your Honor.’
Freeman turned and looked directly at Pullios. ‘You’re not serious.’
Barsotti tapped his gavel again. ‘Mr Freeman, please direct your remarks to the bench.’
‘Excuse me, Your Honor, I am shocked and dismayed by this mention of capital murder. I can see that this is alleged as a special-circumstances case, but I can’t believe that the state is asking for death.’
Pullios stood up. ‘Murder for profit, Your Honor.’
‘I assume you have some evidence to substantiate this claim, Ms Pullios.’
‘We do, Your Honor.’
‘Your Honor, Ms Shintaka poses no threat to society.’
‘No threat? She killed somebody last week!’
The sound of the gavel exploded in the room. ‘Ms Pullios, that’s enough of that. Both of you hold your press conferences outside this courtroom.’
Hardy was impressed. Barsotti might be a bland functionary, but he was in control here.
Freeman had recovered his cool. ‘Your Honor, my client has never before been accused of a crime, much less convicted.’
Pullios wasn’t slowed down by the rebuke. ‘Your Honor, the defendant was attempting to leave the jurisdiction when she was arrested.’
‘Mr Freeman, was your client attempting to flee?’
‘She was going to Japan on business, Your Honor. It’s our contention the arresting officer overreacted. She was intending to come back. There had been no warrant issued. She was going about her normal life, which included a previously planned trip to Japan.’
‘She’d only bought the ticket the day before, Your Honor, and she didn’t buy a return. She’d also packed many personal effects.’
‘And she’d left many more. She wasn’t fleeing the jurisdiction. She was going on a trip. She will gladly surrender her passport to the court. There is no risk of flight here.’
Pullios started to say something more, but Barsotti held up a hand. ‘I’m going to set bail at five hundred thousand dollars.’
Pullios leaned over and whispered to Hardy. ‘Close enough.’
‘A half million dollars is a lot of money, Your Honor.’
‘I believe that’s the point, Mr Freeman. We’ll set the preliminary hearing for -’
‘Your Honor.’ Freeman again.
Even Hardy the novice knew what was next. Although the defendant had an absolute right to a preliminary hearing within ten court days or sixty calendar days of arraignment, no defense lawyer in his right mind would agree to go to prelim that soon, at least until he’d gotten a chance to see what kind of evidence the prosecution had gathered. ‘The defense would request three weeks for discovery and to set.’
‘Will the defendant waive time?’ Which meant that in exchange for this three-week delay, May would give up her right to a preliminary hearing within ten days.
‘Yes, Your Honor.’
Barsotti scratched his chin. ‘Three weeks, hmm.’ He looked down at his desk, moved some papers around. ‘Will counsel approach the bench?’
Pullios, Hardy and Freeman moved around their respective tables and up before the judge. Barsotti’s eyes were milk-watery. The drama hadn’t lasted long. ‘We’re getting ourselves into the beginning of vacation season here. Would there be any objection to, say, the day after Labor Day?’
‘None here, Your Honor,’ Freeman said.
‘Your Honor, Labor Day is over two months away. The defendant has a right to a speedy trial, but the people have no less a right to speedy justice.’
‘I don’t need a lecture, Counselor.’
‘Of course not, Your Honor. But the prosecution is ready to proceed in ten days. Two months is a rather lengthy delay.’
This was not close to true, and everyone knew it. Barsotti looked at Pullios over his glasses. ‘Not for this time of year, it isn’t. We got a full docket, and you know as well as I do it can go six months, a year, before we get a hearing.’ Barsotti clearly didn’t expect to get any argument, and it put his back up. He shuffled some papers, looked down at something on his desk. ‘We’ll schedule the prelim for Wednesday, September sixth, nine-thirty A.M. in this department.
‘Thank you, Your Honor,’ Freeman said.
Pullios had her jaw set. ‘That’d be fine, Your Honor.’
‘That’s all now.’ He brushed all counsel away and looked over to the bailiff. ‘Call the next line,’ he said.
Prelim courtrooms were on the first and second floors. The hallway outside the courtrooms on both floors was about twenty feet wide, the ceilings fifteen feet high, the floors linoleum. But except for the sound of falling pins, it had all the ambience, volume and charm of a low-rent bowling alley.
During the hours court was in session there were seldom less than two hundred people moving to and fro -witnesses, lawyers, clerks, spectators, families and friends. People chatted on the floors against the walls. Mothers breast-fed their babies. Folks ate lunch, kissed, cried, cut deals. On Monday and Thursday mornings, after the janitors had cleaned up, the hallway smelled like the first day of school. By now, seven hours into the workday, it just smelled.
Hardy, Glitsky and Jeff Elliot stood in a knot outside Department 11. All of them were watching Pullios’s rear end as it disappeared around the corner down near the elevators. ‘Good thing justice is blind,’ Glitsky said, ‘or Freeman wouldn’t have a chance.’
‘I don’t know,’ Elliot said. ‘He’s got May.’
‘Yeah, her dress though, that baggy yellow thing doesn’t show it off like old Betsy.’ Hardy liked calling her Betsy. He knew he was going to get used to it and slip someday. He kind of looked forward to it. He pointed at Elliot. ‘That was off the record.’
Jeff was happy to be included again. ‘Of course.’
‘Just making sure.’
‘So what do you think,’ Glitsky asked, ‘Christmas for the trial? Next Easter?’
Hardy said he didn’t know how long Freeman could delay if he wasn’t going to make bail. He wouldn’t want to leave May in jail for a year, awaiting trial.
‘I don’t know. Maybe she’ll make bail,’ Glitsky said.
‘How’s she gonna make bail?’ Elliot asked. ‘Half a million dollars?’
‘How much does David Freeman charge? Half a million dollars? If it goes a year, it could easily come to that.’
‘How’d she get Freeman anyway?’ Hardy asked.
Glitsky shrugged. ‘If we only knew an investigative reporter or something…’