Hardy wasn’t inclined to save Pullios a long night – it was a small bonus. ‘No, Your Honor, I don’t have a conflict.’
Pullios got up again. ‘Mr Hardy assembled the files on this case.’
‘That wasn’t this case, Your Honor. Ms Pullios perhaps has them confused because it’s the same victim. Mr Fowler wasn’t the defendant.’
‘I don’t have anything confused, Your Honor. Mr Hardy was all over that file.’
‘If it please the court,’ Hardy said, enjoying this, ‘as Ms Pullios knows full well, she was the People’s attorney of record the last time a defendant was before the court for killing Owen Nash. I was specifically denied an official role.’
Braun’s gavel came down. ‘All right, all right. I’ll read your motion, Ms Pullios. Tomorrow morning.’ She put her glasses back on, seemed to be deciding something.
‘Good work,’ Fowler whispered. ‘What happened to your head?’
Braun continued. ‘Meanwhile, let’s keep to the business at hand, shall we? You’ve got a plea, Mr Fowler?’
Hardy would have preferred to leave Andy to his permanent representation at this time – one of the suits in the jury box – but after the run-in with Pullios, thought it would be better to go ahead.
‘Your Honor, before entering a plea, the defense would like some time, say two weeks, to review the file in this case.’
Pullios started to object again, but Braun tapped her gavel, shaking her head. ‘I don’t think you’ll need two weeks to decide what to plead. We’ll continue this arrangement and take defendant’s plea next week.’
‘Thank you, Your Honor. Now on the matter of bail…’
‘Yes, bail. The state has requested no bail in this case.’
Hardy asked permission to approach the bench. Braun waved both counsel forward.
‘Your Honor,’ Hardy said, ‘isn’t no bail a little unusual?’
‘This is an unusual case, Mr Hardy.’
‘Granted, Judge, but the last time the state brought a person to trial here for killing Owen Nash, we had a risk-of-flight defendant and even she was given bail. There’s no risk of flight here. The judge isn’t going anywhere.’
Pullios started to argue, but Braun responded quietly. ‘Mr Fowler has given us an ample indication of the contempt in which he holds the judicial process. I have no faith that he will appear once, or if, he is released.’
‘Judge, please, you know that’s ridiculous -’
Braun sucked in a breath. ‘You’d better brush up on your etiquette, Mr Hardy. If I hear again that my judgments are ridiculous you’ll spend some ridiculous nights in jail for contempt.’
Hardy studied the floor a moment. ‘I apologize, Your Honor. But I would respectfully ask you to reconsider.’
Walking back to where Fowler stood, Hardy shook his head. ‘Then plead now,’ Fowler whispered. ‘Not guilty.’
Hardy met Fowler’s eyes, feeling embarrassed but having to say it. ‘I don’t know you’re not guilty, Andy -’
‘Enter the plea,’ Fowler snapped. ‘Does your conscience also require you waste the week?’
It was a good point, and Hardy made the plea. The judge canceled the continuance and took Hardy’s plea of not guilty. The case was set for Calendar the next Monday, October 18, at 9:30 A.M., in the same department.
He wasn’t even going to go and request the evidence files from the D.A. What he planned to do was meet Andy upstairs right away and discuss his choice for another attorney. He stood in the hallway with Jane, head throbbing.
‘Hardy! Dismas, excuse me.’ It was Jeff Elliot, smiling his smile. ‘Remember me?’
Jeff leaned on one crutch and Hardy introduced him to Jane. ‘The judge’s daughter? I’d love a minute with you if you could.’
‘Watch this guy.’ It was Hardy’s escape line.
‘Where are you going?’ Jeff asked.
He stopped, half-turned. ‘After a brief career,’ he said, ‘I’m retiring from defense work.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Jeff said. ‘You were great in there.’
‘Thank you. Now if you’ll all excuse me…’
Elizabeth Pullios emerged from the courtroom. She was accompanied by a young male assistant D.A. whom Hardy didn’t know. Pullios touched her assistant’s arm, stopping him, and walked over to Hardy’s group. ‘Locke won’t release any files to you until Braun rules on my motion,’ she said to him. ‘There’s no way you can do this.’
Hardy smiled. ‘I like your red tie,’ he said, ‘it kind of matches your eyes.’
She stared at him. ‘You know, I almost hope I’m overruled,’ she said.
‘Why is that?’ Hardy asked.
‘If you’re doing the defense, it makes the case a slam dunk.’
42
Hardy didn’t go directly upstairs to see Andy Fowler. Instead, he left Jane and Jeff Elliot, then carried his pounding head out to the parking lot under the freeway. It was cold, but the chill suited him.
Pullios thought his involvement would make it a slam dunk, did she? It was tempting to find out.
He forced himself to consider Andy Fowler in a new light. He could help him for a day – some mixture of appeasing Jane, doing a favor for a man who’d done him a few. But this was not to be confused with actually defending him for murder.
He kept telling himself he wasn’t a defense lawyer. There was a different attitude, an orientation he didn’t have. He’d been a cop. He didn’t believe many people got arrested when they hadn’t done something. May Shinn had been an exception.
But to think it could happen twice with the same victim stretched things pretty thin. Hardy hadn’t seen the new evidence they’d gathered on Andy, but it must be pretty damning. Even if every judge, D.A. and police officer in the City and County hated Andy, Chris Locke would never allow Pullios to go for another indictment on Owen Nash if he wasn’t convinced he was going to get a conviction…
Still, there was the decidedly unusual if not unprecedented nature of the investigation. Whatever had gone on since May Shinn’s release seemed to have circumvented the police department.
Glitsky would have told Hardy if they had found anything implicating Andy, as a matter of personal interest if nothing else. And they didn’t replace an experienced homicide investigator like Abe Glitsky with another guy from the homicide team without any notice.
Abe was still in charge of the police investigation and he hadn’t found anything, yet somehow there had been enough new evidence for a grand jury. Well, where had it come from? What had they – whoever ‘they’ were -found, or invented?
The traffic throbbed on the overpass above him. He put his seat back and groaned as his sore ribs tried to find a way to come to rest. He closed his eyes for a minute.
What the hell else was he doing, anyway?
The events of last night, if he was listening, ought to be telling him something.
Okay, he’d gotten fired. Sure, no one else wanted his services. Yes, he’d really screwed up on Frannie. He’d also taken some pretty shabby advantage of Celine, in the steam room.
Celine.
If his own curiosity and the lack of evidence were two strikes for taking up Andy’s defense, then Celine – by herself- was two strikes against it. If he stayed involved, he would have to see her, see her a lot, and now from the wrong side of the case. He would be the man defending her father’s killer. Alleged killer, Dismas, remember that.
Would the distinction matter to her? Probably not. He tried to imagine her behind him in the gallery as he tried to present his case for the defense. How effective could he be with that going on?
But then there was Pullios. And there was Locke and Drysdale. There was the setup that had gotten him fired, set in motion his own personal tailspin. The injustice of that, the score to be settled. If he got Andy off, it would show them, and wouldn’t that be sweet?