But facts were facts – Andy Fowler had hired him to defend May Shinn. Freeman had told Andy flat out, in Fowler’s own chambers, that in his opinion he had no option but to recuse himself from the case now that it had turned up in his courtroom. He had arranged with Maury Carter for the bail.
In Freeman’s long career, he had told Hardy, he had never seen a judge do anything like what Andy Fowler had done. Of course, he wasn’t going to put it like that on the stand, but Fowler’s actions had been so incredible to Freeman that they beggared description.
However, last night he had also indicated to Hardy that Hardy hadn’t lost the case yet. And that had been before they’d been certain May had killed herself, when things had looked even worse. Was he perhaps planning some emphasis in his testimony to make it less damning than it seemed on the face of it?
Chomorro decided that Andy Fowler could be readmitted to bail, and now the subdued ex-judge and his daughter made clear they did not want to be with his attorney and went off to lunch by themselves. Which at the moment suited Hardy just fine.
57
‘Did you get a chronology of May for the whole week?’ Hardy asked Freeman.
‘Of course.’
Hardy and Freeman were talking in the hallway. It would not do for the two of them to spend an hour lunching at Lou’s just before Freeman went on the stand for Pullios, so Hardy took advantage of what camouflage there might be out in the open halls.
‘Do you remember her going to the Eloise?’
Freeman looked like he had slept in the clothes he had worn at the morgue the previous night. ‘Yes. Not a smart move.’
‘Why did she tell you she did it?’
‘They’re not going to ask me about this, you know. Pullios is going to want to know about Judge Fowler hiring me, not about May Shinn.’
Hardy didn’t want to push, but neither did he intend to back down. ‘It’s for me, not Pullios. I want to know about May Shinn,’ he said.
‘All right, but I’m not sure why it matters when, if or why May Shinn went to the Eloise. I’ll tell you what she told me, okay?’ His eyes searched the hallway, perhaps looking for members of the prosecution team, then he came back to Hardy. ‘She read about herself, linked to Nash, in the Chronicle on Thursday morning – the first day it was speculated that the mystery hand might be Nash’s. She was afraid that they’d try to find something to tie her to him – a very justified fear, as it turned out. She knew her gun was on the Eloise and she decided she’d come down and remove it before the investigation heated up. But when she went there it was the middle of the day and she realized she’d be recognized, even worse, somehow be connected to what had happened. So she would come back later when it was dark or when no one was around, but by that time the police had closed it off.’
Hardy stood with his arms folded, filtering, thinking. ‘How did she know she could get aboard? Did she have a key?’
‘Good.’ It was as though Freeman had been through all of this before, was checking Hardy on his thought processes. ‘No. She did not have a key. That was one of the other things that stopped her. Aside from the recognition factor.’
‘We’re assuming everything she said was true, now, isn’t that right?’
‘I believed her. Two things. One, it wasn’t unknown for Nash to forget to lock up. And two, if he’d been killed on board – which in fact he had been – perhaps the killer didn’t have a key or forgot to lock up. May thought that was likely.’
More than that, Hardy thought, it was true. The Eloise had not been locked on Wednesday night when he had gotten to it. ‘All right,’ Hardy said, ‘so here is my question. Did May tell you she also came down early Thursday morning?’
‘No. Why would she have done that?’
‘Same reasons.’
‘Well, then why would she have come back?’
‘I don’t know.’
Freeman paced away a step or two. He recalled something else. ‘How early? That whole week she was a wreck. Once she finally got to sleep, she sometimes slept until noon.’
Hardy shook his head. ‘No, it was way before then. Right about when the morning guard was coming on. Say seven-thirty.’
‘He said he saw somebody?’
‘More than that, he said he saw May.’
‘On the Eloise?’
‘No. Walking away.’
‘Close up? Positive ID?’
‘Neither.’ Hardy, saying it, realized what it meant.
Freeman said, ‘Well, to answer your original question, May told me she went down to the Eloise one time, Thursday afternoon, to see if she could get the gun.’
A thought occurred to Hardy. ‘Maybe she knew Fowler’s prints were on it and she was going down to protect him.’
Freeman shook his head impatiently. ‘She wasn’t protecting Fowler. He didn’t matter to her anymore, much as it might pain him to hear it… I wouldn’t bring up that particular point on cross… You got something here, don’t you?’
‘If I do, I don’t know what it is. Yesterday, when I hadn’t believed May, everything seemed tight. Today’ -Hardy lifted his shoulders – ‘I don’t know. The board tilted and I’ve got a new angle and now some of the pieces don’t fit. I’m trying to decide which angle’s the right one.’
The right one is the one that gets your client off.‘
‘That May wasn’t lying?’
But to Freeman, that had already been asked and answered. He moved closer to Hardy. ‘In any event, I hope you’ve written your eleven-eighteen?’
He was referring to Section 1118.1 of the California Penal Code, a motion for directed verdict of acquittal, by which the judge directed the jury to return a verdict to acquit. True, this section was almost automatically invoked by defense attorneys after the prosecution rested in every trial, but especially in cases such as this one in which the evidence might be deemed insufficient to sustain a conviction. Just as automatically, the motion was nearly always denied, but Freeman was making it clear that in this case he believed it had a chance.
Hardy said he was filing the motion but didn’t hold out much hope for it.
Neither did Freeman, it seemed. ‘Chomorro doesn’t have the experience. This is his first big trial, he’s got to leave it for the jury.’ Having said that, he raised his hands palms up. ‘But the law is a wonderful thing, and you just never know.’
Hardy had another twenty minutes before court reconvened. He went upstairs to the fourth floor, found Glitsky alone in the Homicide room chewing on his damned ice and hunched over his desk reading. He looked up now. ‘You were wrong,’ he said.
Hardy pulled a chair up against his desk. ‘I’m listening.’
‘There was no coat.’ Glitsky shoved the paper he was reading at Hardy. ‘Check it out. Anybody comes in while you’re looking, be smart, right? This sheet here,’ he said, putting a finger on it, ‘is the inventory – down to the rubberbands in the desk, Diz, it’s complete – of the master suite on the Eloise. This other one is the list Struler got from May, all of her stuff. What she wanted returned to her in exchange for testifying.’
‘Why didn’t they just subpoena her?’
Glitsky chewed some ice, swallowed. ‘I guess they thought this would make her more agreeable.’ He shook his head. ‘But guess what?’
Hardy was scanning the list. ‘Yeah?’ he said absently.
‘Hey, you know this happens all the time. You get somebody suing the City and thinks they can get an extra fur coat or something out of the deal. Put it on the list, say we stole it, it was there. But’ – he hit the sheet again -‘surprise. It wasn’t there. It’s why we make our Day One inventories.’