A: No. I remember. He’s standing out on the bowsprit, laughing real loud. That’s when I look up. I remember.
Q: And she’s alone. May is alone, under power?
A: Si.
Q: And have you seen her since?
A: Steering the boat?
Q: No. Anytime.
A: Si.
Q: When was that?
A: I don’t know. Last week sometime. I remember, ‘cause, you know, you guys…
Q: Sure, but do you remember when? What was she doing?
A: I don’t know. She was out there, on the street. Walking back to her car, maybe, I don’t know. I see her going away.
Q: And you’re sure it was May?
A: Si. It was her.
Q: Are you certain what day it was? It could be very important.
[Pause.]
A: I think it was Thursday. Oh sure. It must have been. I remember, I got the note from Tom he’d locked the boat, which was Wednesday, right? So I go check it. It’s still locked. Thursday, I’m sure, si, Thursday.
26
‘I need to see you.’
Hardy felt his palms get hot. He leaned back in his chair at his desk. Without thought, he reached for his paperweight, cradled the phone in his neck, started passing the jade from hand to hand. There was no mistaking Celine’s husky voice. ‘Ken says you don’t think May did it.’
‘I’m sorry I gave him that impression. I do think May did it. I just don’t think it’s going to be easy to prove.’
‘What do you need?’
‘What do you mean, what do I need?’
‘I mean, what could make it more obvious?’
‘It’s obvious enough to me, Celine, but our job is to sell that to a jury -’
‘Your job,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s not our job. It’s your job.’
‘Yes, right.’
She was breathing heavily, even over the phone. She might as well have been in the room with him. It could be she was still worked up, just off the phone from Farris. There was no avoiding it, the principals – the victim’s circle – tended to talk among themselves.
‘What more do you need?’ she repeated.
Hardy temporized. ‘We’ve got more since I talked to Ken. We’ve got ballistics now. May’s gun did kill your father.’
‘Well, of course it did. We’ve known that all along.’
He didn’t know how to tell her they hadn’t known it, they’d just assumed it. That the assumption turned out right was fine for them but it hadn’t made the theory any more or less true before the ballistics report came in. ‘And her prints are on it. And no one else’s.’ Silence. ‘Celine?’
‘I need to see you. I need your help. I’m worried. I’m afraid. She’s out on bail. What if she comes after me?’
‘Why would she do that, Celine?’
‘Why did she kill my father? To keep me from testifying? I don’t know, but she might.’
‘So far as I know, Celine, we’re not having you testify, at least not about that.’
‘But I know she was on the boat.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘My father told me he was going out with her.’
‘That’s not evidence.’
He heard her breathing again, almost labored. ‘It is evidence, he told me.’
‘Your father might have intended to go out on Saturday with May, but that doesn’t mean he was actually out with her.’
‘But he was.’
How do you argue with this? he thought. The woman is struggling with her grief, frightened, frustrated by the system’s slow routine – he couldn’t really expect a Descartes here.
‘Celine, listen.’ He filled a couple of minutes with Glitsky’s saga of Tremaine Wilson, how the first witness had known he was in the car, holding a gun, using the gun. But he hadn’t actually seen his face. He knew it was Tremaine, he’d recognized him, ski-mask and all, but there was no way to even bring that evidence to a jury because it wasn’t evidence. It was assumption. It wasn’t until the next witness showed up and could connect the car, the murder weapon and – undoubtedly – Tremaine, that they’d been able to make an arrest. ‘It’s a little the same thing here, Celine.’
She was unimpressed with the analogy. She didn’t want an analogy. ‘I need to see you,’ she said for the third time.
She was fixating on him. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need any of it, common though it might be. His reaction to her was too unprofessional. Maybe on some level she knew that, was reacting to it, using it in her own desperation. ‘I’m here all day. My door’s always open -’
‘Not in your office.’
‘My office is where I work, Celine.’
‘That bar, the last time, that wasn’t your office.’
Hardy was starting to know how people got to be tightasses. It really was true that you gave people an inch and they took a mile – they expected a mile. You didn’t give ‘em the full mile and they felt betrayed.
Her voice softened, suddenly without the hint of a demand. ‘Dismas, please. Would you please see me?’
He sighed. He might know how people evolved into tightasses, but that didn’t mean he wanted to become one himself. ‘Where’s a good place? Where are you now?’
It was three-thirty now and she was just going to change and then work out. She would be at Hardbodies! near Broadway and Van Ness until around six. If he pushed it a little, he could tell himself it was right on his way home.
Jeff didn’t have a private room, but he had the window, and the other bed was empty, so it was just as good. He was at the Kaiser Hospital near Masonic, and his window looked north, the red spires of the Golden Gate poking through the cloud barrier beyond the green swath of the Presidio. Closer in, the fog had lifted and the sun was bathing the little boxes along the avenues.
Jeff Elliot wouldn’t have cared if there had been a monsoon blowing out there over a slag heap – at least he could see it.
His vision, coaxed by the Prednisone, had begun to slide back, furtive as a thief, sometime early in the morning, a dim, lighter shadow amid all the darkness.
He was afraid to believe it. This disease didn’t give back. It took away, and kept what it took. First his legs. Now his sight? And besides, there really wasn’t anything to see. Some shapes, but dark.
He could press his hands into his eyes and hold the pressure for a minute, and there would be little explosions of light – purple, green, white – that seemed to take place inside his brain. He didn’t know if real blind people experienced that. The stimulus, though, didn’t come from outside light. He was sure of that. Could it be his optic nerve was still working?
By morning there was no doubt. At least he wouldn’t, thank God, be stone-blind. And all during the day, between naps, it had gotten better, until now he could see. Not perfectly, still fuzzy, but enough.
Dorothy Burgess – from Maury’s office – had been in before she’d gone to work that morning just to see if he was all right, bringing flowers. Now she was coming through the door again – visitors’ hours – smiling, concerned, the most lovely sight he had ever seen.
She sat down. ‘How are you feeling?’
He pushed himself up, half sitting now. ‘Much better. I can see you.’
He hadn’t called his parents back in Wisconsin. He didn’t want to worry them. He thought he’d call them when the attack was over, when they could assess the latest damage. After he’d been admitted last night, he’d made a call to the Chronicle, but nobody from there had been in to visit.
He didn’t know what to say to Dorothy. Before the MS, he hadn’t done much dating to speak of, and since losing the use of his legs, his confidence in that area had dipped to zero. He’d concentrated on his career. But he was doing all right – he wasn’t asking for anything more.
If you were crippled, you couldn’t expect women to be crawling all over you, except the pity-groupies, and he didn’t want any part of them. He knew he was probably the last mid-twenties virgin in San Francisco, if not the known world, and it was okay. He could live with it. At least he was alive. You had to keep your priorities straight.