‘I mean he resigned as a judge, he quit the bench.’
‘And this was how long after the trial had come to his courtroom?’
‘One day.’
Hardy turned to the jury. ‘One day,’ he repeated.
Pullios did not have any redirect on Freeman, and neither did she call Maury Carter, the bail bondsman, since facts relating to the bail had been substantially nailed down in Freeman’s testimony. Instead, after Hardy had finished with Freeman, the prosecution rested.
Hardy had to feel better. Freeman’s testimony, which he had feared would be disastrous, had not been anything of the sort, it seemed. The jury knew the worst of what Andy had done, but at least, Hardy felt, they had gotten it in the least damaging light possible.
During the recess Hardy argued his 1118.1 motion in Chomorro’s chambers. The judge, to his surprise, seemed to be giving him his full attention and proved it by telling counsel he was going to take the weekend to consider the motion. He would render his decision on the motion for a directed verdict of acquittal on Monday. Meanwhile, however, Hardy should be prepared to begin calling his defense witnesses.
His client had not said a word to him the entire afternoon. When the judge came out and adjourned court for the week, he only muttered, ‘See you Monday,’ and went back to join his daughter.
Hardy gathered his papers.
58
At ten past five it was already dark as he went out toward the parking lot. A storm was coming in and a wind had risen, steady and cold, Alaska written all over it.
Hardy put down his heavy briefcase and stood by the entrance to the morgue, looking through a hole in the plywood into the construction site where the new jail was slowly rising. A steady trickle of workers getting off passed behind him, and he envied their snatches of conversation, of laughter, plans for the night, for the weekend. He turned up his suit collar against the wind, feeling alone and desolate.
‘Hey, Hardy! Dismas! Is that you? Knocking off early? Glad I caught up with you.’ It was Ken Farris, walking against the tide flowing from the building. ‘I got your messages but couldn’t get away, thought I’d try to catch you after court. You adjourned already? Is it over?’
What Farris had said was true – he normally could have expected to find Hardy in the courtroom at this time, but his arrival just now struck Hardy as a little convenient. He could just have called back. Hardy said as much.
‘Ah, you know the office. You get to the end of the week, any excuse to get out early. This is on my way home anyway. So how’s it going? What can I do for you? This about May Shinn?’
Hardy looked at him levelly. ‘I guess it’s about a lot if you’ve got some time. You feel like a drink?’
Farris seemed to rein himself in. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Something wrong?’
‘Well, let’s say all’s not right.’
They walked back through the Hall and crossed the street. Lou’s, crowded and noisy, was hung with yards of red and green tinsel, lit by Christmas bulbs. With all the seats taken, they stood at the bar. Hardy called for a Bass Ale, Farris ordered a Beefeater martini extra dry. Lou, behind the bar, caught Hardy’s eye. ‘He new?’
Hardy introduced them, and Lou said, dryly, that all their martinis were extra dry – no vermouth. Farris said he’d take whatever Lou poured, which was the right answer – he got some ice, several ounces of gin, a couple of olives.
‘Hell of a place,’ he said, taking it in. He clinked the glass against Hardy’s. ‘Okay, what’s happening?’
‘The prosecution’s rested. I start calling my defense witnesses on Monday.’
‘You’re not asking me to be a witness for Andy Fowler, are you?’
‘No. Why do you ask? You think he killed Owen?’
Farris sipped his gin. ‘Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed May too. I don’t care what they say.’
‘No. May killed herself. If they had found anything that connected to Fowler he’d have been long since charged with it. And they were looking.’ But Hardy didn’t like it, because if Farris still genuinely entertained the thought, maybe the jury did, too, in spite of Chomorro’s instructions. He’d better not forget that. ‘About May… when we first talked, you told me Owen had been paying her?’
‘Right. He paid all of them. So?’
‘Do you know for a fact that he was paying her? Did he specifically tell you he was?’ Farris appeared to be giving it thought. Hardy continued, ‘You told me Nash had changed the last few months. I was wondering, might that have been one of the changes.’
Farris seemed somewhere inside himself. Finally he said, scarcely loud enough to be heard over the din, ‘Owen went with call girls, prostitutes, call them what you will. It was just his nature. It was who he was. And that’s who, what, May was.’
‘Well, maybe not,’ Hardy said, ‘that’s what I’m getting at.’
Which seemed to anger Farris. ‘Goddamn it, that’s never been in dispute.’
Hardy sipped his ale. ‘It’s in dispute now. May’s lawyer – you’ve met him, Freeman – he says the two of them actually loved each other.’
Farris was shaking his head. ‘That’s got to be bullshit.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he just didn’t, that’s why. This is Owen Nash we’re talking about. He wasn’t going to marry some whore. Why are you digging all this up?’
‘Because I don’t believe Andy Fowler killed anybody. Why is it so upsetting to you if Owen loved May Shinn?’
‘Because I knew Owen and that wasn’t him!’
Hardy stepped back, taking a beat. Both men went to their drinks. Hardy leaned forward again. ‘Listen, Ken, you’ve just spent six months contesting the validity of the will. It’s no wonder you’re committed to your position. I’m just asking if you’ve got any proof Owen was paying her – his own admission to you, canceled checks, whatever. You’re the one who’d told me he’d changed with her. Was a for-hire deal with a whore going to change him? Wasn’t he wearing her ring when he was shot?’
‘We don’t know that. Someone could have put it on him.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
Hardy kept at it. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. He put it on himself. He was planning on telling you sometime, possibly soon. I think he had decided to marry the woman, just as he had said.’
Ken Farris was down to an olive. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I just…’ He shook his head.
‘You just assumed, didn’t you?’
‘Why wouldn’t he have told me? He told me everything.’
‘Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it snuck up on him. But it’s all pretty consistent if you put it together – we’ve got the change in behavior, the settling down, leaving her number with you for emergencies, the will, the ring. If you buy the premise, then May wasn’t lying about anything. Which is why I called you. I needed to verify that.’
Lou, unasked, had slid another round under their elbows. Farris didn’t seem to notice. He picked up the new drink and knocked off a third of it. ‘There were no checks,’ he said finally. ‘Of course, cash… You know, I don’t think we ever talked about whether he paid her – it never came up.’ A retreat? A cover?
The bad news, Hardy thought, was that Farris maybe, probably hadn’t been lying… maybe he’d honestly believed an untruth and passed it along as a fact, which wasn’t nearly the same thing, and it left a hole where there had at least been the chance of another suspect besides Hardy’s client.
Large drops of rain fell in sheets, splattering on his windshield. He found a parking place half a block down the street from his house and turned off the engine, thinking he would wait for a break in the storm. Could this be the beginning of the end of the drought? Now in its seventh year, and Hardy knew a lot of people in San Francisco who believed it would never end, that this was the new California of the greenhouse effect, the precursor of a future world of ozone depletion, skin cancers, AIDS and acid rain.