So much for his motion for judicial review of the evidence. With the latest, Hardy realized there was at least enough evidence against Andy Fowler to warrant a trial.
‘How could that happen? How could no one have seen that before? That puts him on the boat, and if he was on the boat, no jury in the world will believe he didn’t kill him.’
Hardy had caught Glitsky on the phone at his desk before he started driving downtown and now they were eating hamburgers far from the Hall of Justice. Glitsky understandably didn’t want to be seen being buddy-buddy with a defense attorney. Friends or no friends, a new reality had kicked in.
Glitsky chewed ice, which he did every chance he got. It drove Hardy crazy. ‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean, not necessarily? The gun was on the boat and Fowler’s fingerprints were on the gun.’
‘They could have been on the gun before it got to the boat.’
‘Well, that’s damn sure going to be my argument, but it doesn’t exactly strengthen my case. How could he not tell me about that? How could he not know?’
Glitsky had a bite of burger. ‘He lied.’
‘Thanks.’
Abe swallowed, took a drink of Coke, chewed ice. ‘You’re welcome.’
‘How did we miss them last time, the prints?’
Abe rubbed his face. Two ways, maybe. One, nobody looked at the clip. Shinn’s prints were on the barrel, she was the suspect, end of search. Two‘ – Abe held up two fingers – ’they got a print they couldn’t match. Then, once they knew they were looking for Fowler, they ran it against his.‘
‘That would have come up long ago.’
‘Nope. His prints weren’t in the right databank. We run a print we find on the gun through known criminals and nothing comes up, what are we supposed to do, check every fingerprint file in the universe?’ Glitsky shrugged. ‘It hurts me to say it, but these things sometimes slip through the cracks.’
Hardy swore.
Glitsky nodded again. ‘Probably some combination of both.’
‘Abe, I forced myself to play devil’s advocate, but the truth is, I can’t believe he did it. That, he wouldn’t lie about -’
After a moment’s baleful stare, Glitsky rubbed a finger into his ear as though he’d heard something wrong. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I thought I heard you say a perp wouldn’t lie to you?’
This is not any old perp, Abe. This is my ex-father-in-law. I know him.‘ Or at least he thought he did. ’A Superior Court judge, for Christ’s sake.‘
Abe reached over and grabbed the rest of Hardy’s burger. ‘I can tell you’re not going to eat this… You said you’ve got a polygraph for today, right. That’ll tell you. Maybe. And maybe not.’ Abe smiled his awful smile.
The polygraph technician – Ron Reynolds, a tall, thin man in a gray suit, white shirt, blue-and-black tie – was waiting for him in the second-floor visitor’s lounge of his office near the Civic Center.
After introductions they got right down to business.
‘Are you going to stipulate for admissibility?’ Reynolds asked.
‘I’m not doing it for admissibility. I’m doing it for me.’
This wasn’t the first time Reynolds had heard an attorney say that. Occasionally, though not so very often, they wanted to believe their clients.
Hardy went on. ‘Also, though, I thought the fact my client was willing to take the test might have a positive effect on the jury.’
‘If you can get that admitted, which I doubt.’
‘Well, I can try.’ Hardy took out a pad of notes and they started to go over them. He had twenty-odd ‘yes’ and ’no‘ questions Fowler could answer that related to Owen Nash and May Shinn. Reynolds had ten-or-so more for what he called calibration.
‘You’ll go over all of these with him before the test? No surprises, right.’
‘Sure. Are you planning on being there?’
‘Outside. Close by.’
Reynolds thought that was the right answer. ‘It’s better without interruptions,’ he said.
But before he had Andy Fowler take the test, Hardy needed some answers of his own.
They were again in Visitors Room A. The guard was still holding the judge by the arm when Hardy, who’d been pacing by the table, started. ‘You want to tell me how your fingerprints got on the inside of the murder weapon, on the clip?’
Fowler stopped dead. The guard didn’t move, either.
Hardy stared at his client for a moment, then recovered. He pointedly thanked the guard and waited until he withdrew and closed the door behind him.
Andy had recovered. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Don’t give me that, Andy.’
‘My fingerprints?’
Hardy was angry. Every day brought him more into the case, more committed to getting Andy off, but that was mostly because he kept telling himself that the judge was innocent. He’d told himself that he would only stay with Andy’s defense if he had a reasonable certainty that he wasn’t guilty. Of course, no one but the murderer, Andy or not, would ever be one-hundred-percent sure of what had happened on the Eloise, but Hardy wasn’t a hired gun. He wouldn’t have gone on, he wouldn’t go on, if he knew Andy had done it.
Fowler swore softly behind him, and Hardy turned around.
‘I loaded the gun for her, Diz. This is unbelievable. It was months ago. It never even occurred to me, Diz, I swear to God.’
‘You loaded the gun for her?’
He nodded. ‘She was afraid to touch the thing. One of her earlier – someone had given it to her and she’d never even loaded it. It was in the headboard of her bed. I told her there was no point in keeping a gun for protection if it wasn’t loaded so I loaded it.’
‘It wasn’t on the headboard of her bed, Andy. It was on the Eloise.’
‘She told me she didn’t want it in the house. She hated it. I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take a gun registered to another person.’
‘Because you were a judge and didn’t want to break any laws?’
Fowler tried to smile. ‘Before my little problem with the Shinn trial, that’s how I was, Diz.’
Hardy slammed the table between them. ‘Goddamn it, Andy! That wasn’t a “little problem” at the Shinn trial. That’s the whole reason we’re here.’
‘I understand that, Diz.’ Said quietly.
‘Well, then, how do you expect me to sell a jury on the idea that you were such a paragon of virtue that you wouldn’t take May’s gun to your house when six months later…?’ He checked himself; yelling at his client wasn’t going to do either of them any good. He turned away.
‘It’s a good point, Dismas, but it happens to be the truth.’
‘So maybe when May started seeing Nash he didn’t have your scruples and let her store the gun on his boat?’ Hardy was back at the window. Andy Fowler had an answer for everything, all right, but it was easier to listen without having to see what he was doing with his face.
He felt for a moment like he was in Gone With the Wind. He’d think about it tomorrow. For today, at least he had an explanation for this latest revelation – tomorrow he’d decide if he could believe it.
They’d gone over the polygraph questions one at a time. Fowler advised Hardy to try and get Pullios to stipulate to the admissibility of the results of the test. He told him that if, before either of them knew how it came out, Hardy offered to permit her to use the results, no matter what they were, she might agree to let them be entered as evidence.
Of course, she might not. Andy’s suggestion did have the effect of moving Hardy back toward thinking his client might be telling the truth, but of course Andy would know that. Circles within circles.
In any event, Hardy didn’t hold out much hope Pullios would go for it. Sticking with polygraph inadmissibility was the smarter course from her perspective – she’d figure her case didn’t need it, and a good showing on the polygraph by Fowler could only hurt her.