You’re playing devil’s advocate, Hardy. Andy didn’t do it, the polygraph he’d managed to schedule for the next morning, technically flawed as it might be, should eliminate any last doubts… not that he had many left – Andy resenting, sure, but also quickly agreeing to take the test was in his favor. Wasn’t it?
He had read nearly everything in the file. He thought he was being fairly objective and still had no idea what new evidence Pullios had found to convince her to proceed. Certainly, on the evidence presented in the transcripts he’d been reviewing, she hadn’t put it in before the grand jury. Pullios could have talked herself blue in the face, sweet and convincing as she could be, about what an immoral man Andy was, what a lousy judge, how he didn’t have an alibi, the fact that he’d written Owen Nash’s name in his calendar, he was involved with May Shinn, he’d thrown away his career and reputation, had been secretive and unethical – but, so what? What did all that prove about making him a murderer?
There had to be something else or the case wouldn’t have gotten this far – but winning an indictment wasn’t winning a jury trial. He was getting tired now but thought he’d take another pass at the stuff he thought he was already familiar with. The paper load had grown in one day to three binders and a couple of legal pads.
He scanned Glitsky’s interviews with the two guards at the Marina – not much there. From his own notes he reviewed the previous May Shinn grand-jury testimony of Strout, Abe, Celine and the rest. So there wouldn’t be any surprises, he reviewed the physical-evidence list the prosecution was planning to enter as exhibits. It was, with the additions from Fowler’s calendars and the deletion of the two-million-dollar handwritten will, pretty much as he expected, and there still wasn’t much – the autopsy photos of Owen Nash, the gun, the phone records establishing Andy’s relationship with May, papers on the bail situation.
He closed the binders. Time to sleep on it.
45
There were stacks of papers on May’s kitchen table.
Under David Freeman’s guidance she had been, it seemed, suing most of the western world for what it had done to her – there were lawsuits against the officer who had arrested her, his superiors, the district attorney’s office and the City and County of San Francisco. Freeman was citing a smorgasbord of offenses ranging from false arrest through various civil-rights violations, defamation of character, libel and slander.
Separately, they had been negotiating for the return of the many personal items – clothes, makeup and so forth -that she’d kept stowed aboard the Eloise. Four months after the murder, the boat was still sealed and winter was coming on. There were special things Owen had given her. She and David had made up a list, and David thought she ought to have all of it back – shoes, rain slickers, her beautiful down coat, a Siberian babushka, glass and jade pieces she’d kept in his rolltop, some exercise stuff. She had to laugh at the last one – she hadn’t done a thing with her body since June.
By far, most of the legal work had involved the will. At first she hadn’t cared about the money, or thought she hadn’t. But gradually practicality and principle merged. Why should the estate, which didn’t need it, get it. Or his daughter who had so much anyway? She -May – was the one who had loved him and he had wanted her to have it.
She stood holding her cup of tea, looking down at the stacks of papers, wearing a black-and-red silk kimono cinched at the waist. The mid-October day had come up clear and sunny.
The peace she’d found, or thought she’d found, with Owen, had been shattered by her time in jail, the craziness surrounding her arrest. David Freeman, a dear man, had seen the hopelessness start to rise in her again and wisely had proceeded to involve her with these distractions, the lawsuits.
And for a time it had kept away the nothingness. She had been busy, the way an ant was busy – going round piling up little things until they made a bigger thing. You don’t stop because the busyness was the end in itself. Now there was something new, a written request, not a subpoena, that she appear as a state’s witness against Andy Fowler.
She walked over to her turret and looked down on the street, the people going into the deli, that cute little cable car. She tried to conjure up some image of the way she’d felt, or remembered feeling, with Owen, the unity the two of them had discovered.
But it wasn’t there anymore. She’d had a family that had never loved her, that had been too afraid of life to try living it. Two barren marriages, liaisons without meaning. Day after day, going through motions, hoping for someone she could admire, who could admire her. Then thinking she’d found it and having it all smashed.
And now all those papers. She supposed she owed it to David to keep at them. What did she owe Andy Fowler?
‘Who was that?’
Dorothy woke up happy every morning. The mattress on the floor was lifted onto a sturdy platform with a modern pine headboard. There was floral wallpaper along one wall with some Degas and Monet prints dry-mounted and covered with glass. Einstein still counseled them about mediocre minds. New drapes, a large bright throw rug, a rattan loveseat, end table, coffee table, three modern lamps. It was a different place.
Jeff was even walking better, able to cross from the bar to his bed without his crutches. He didn’t believe it would last forever but he’d take it while it was here. Maybe the Prednisone for his eyes had done something for his legs. There was no predicting these symptoms, so when a little good came along you didn’t question it. He pushed himself back onto the bed.
‘That was Hardy, the attorney I told you about. For the defense this time.’
Gloriously immodest, she lifted her naked body against a reading pillow and pulled him back against her, pulling the blankets over them, rubbing her hands up and down his chest. ‘And what does Mr Hardy want?’
‘Fowler’s taking a polygraph today. He wanted me to know.’
‘Why?’
He leaned his head against her. ‘If he passes it, it’s news. It’s not evidence, but it’s news. And he figures it helps him.’
‘What if he doesn’t pass it?’
That’s news, too. Either way it’s good for me. But Hardy must think he’s going to do okay or he wouldn’t have told me.‘
‘It seems a little risky…’
‘Hardy’s got to take some risk. They both win if Fowler is innocent.’
‘Do you think he is?’
‘Innocent you mean?’
She nodded.
‘Nope.’
The gun.
Pullios and Struler, clever devils.
Hardy knew it would be unwise to file his 995 Penal Code motion for dismissal before he’d gone over every word of the file carefully. Most of it, as he’d noticed last night, was stuff he’d seen before, and the temptation was to skim it.
The discovery process tried to eliminate surprises in the courtroom; the Perry Mason, last-minute, rabbit-from-the-hat conclusions were really the stuff of fiction. Long before anybody went to trial, attorneys for the prosecution had to disclose everything they had in terms of evidence, proposed witnesses, expert testimony. In theory, the point was not to sandbag your opponent (although if you could, it was a nice bonus) but to lay out the evidence and its relevance before a jury.
If Glitsky or somebody else should chance upon some relevant evidence during the trial, then Hardy could introduce it at that time, but that would be a rare event. Most of the time, the parties knew the cards against them – the skill was in how they were played.
Which didn’t mean that Pullios, having given Hardy everything she was supposed to, then had to sit him down and show him how to use it.
So Hardy was being thorough. There was no surprise in the gun being presented as an exhibit – it was, after all, the murder weapon.
What he did not expect was that Andy Fowler’s fingerprints were on the clip.