Pullios wasn’t quitting either. ‘Ms Wells has already testified that they were on the gun.’
That’s true, Mr Hardy. We’re talking about Mr Fowler’s fingerprints, not May Shinn’s. You are arguing evidence that hasn’t been presented in this case. Try not to confuse the jury by referring to what is not properly before it.‘
Hardy felt this was a big loss. He stood a moment, gathering his forces.
‘You still with us, Mr Hardy?’ Chomorro asked.
Hardy had anticipated Chomorro’s antagonism from the bench, but now, at its first appearance, he realized how powerful its influence could be. If Chomorro was allowed to patronize him, the jury would pick up on it and his credibility would suffer. Andy Fowler had been right – this wasn’t an appealable issue. It had been bad strategy.
‘Of course, Your Honor,’ Hardy said mildly. ‘I was waiting for your ruling.’
Chomorro’s face tightened slightly. ‘I thought I’d made that clear. The objection is sustained.’
This time Hardy simply nodded. He spread his hands to the jury and smiled at them. ‘Sorry, my mistake.’ But the message was clear – he was a reasonable man, waiting to make sure he understood the judge’s ruling. There was no antagonism between himself and Chomorro. He went back to Anita Wells. ‘Can you tell us how long a fingerprint can last?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I mean does it go away after a while by itself? Does it evaporate?’
‘No, fingerprints are oil-based. They last until they’re wiped away.’
‘So Mr Fowler’s fingerprints on the clip inside the gun might not have been placed there at any time near to when the gun was found or fired?’
‘That’s true.’
‘Did you find anything indicating it might not be true?’
‘No.’
‘So Mr Fowler’s fingerprints might have been on the gun for as long as a year?’
Pullios stood up. ‘Asked and answered, Your Honor.’
‘I’ll withdraw it,’ Hardy said. ‘No further questions.’
‘It’s early, but I’d put us ahead on points.’ They had their coats off, their ties loosened. From Fowler’s law office high up in Embarcadero One, the city glittered out the window, Christmas lights starting to appear below.
Hardy was not so sure. ‘I wanted to get Shinn in.’ He had wanted to call May as a defense witness from the beginning, but Fowler wouldn’t hear of it. What could she possibly say that could make a difference, he had argued. Fowler hadn’t seen her, after all, in the four months before the murder. To say nothing of the fact that she had turned down Hardy’s several requests for interviews. She remembered him from Visitors Room A, thank you.
The prosecution, they both figured, wouldn’t go near her. She would be understandably hostile to the San Francisco district attorney’s office. So, strangely enough, the other central figure in this case would apparently play no active role in it. Hardy did not like that at all.
Andy had poured himself a neat Scotch from a tumbler on the sideboard and now took a drink of it. He stood and carried the glass over to the window.
Hardy watched his back a minute. ‘You haven’t seen her, Andy?’
May Shinn was still the issue, the looming specter, an unmentionable apparition. The chronology could not have been simpler: a year ago Andy Fowler had been in love with May Shinn; in mid-February she had dumped him for Owen Nash; in July he had sacrificed his career for her; in October he had been arrested for murdering her lover; and in the two months that Hardy had been seeing Fowler every day, he had never, to Hardy’s knowledge, made any effort to contact her.
Fowler’s shoulders sagged. ‘No. What would be the point?’
‘It just seems you might have.’
Fowler gave it a moment, then nodded. ‘I suppose it does.’ He returned to the chair behind his desk and sat heavily into it. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she could help us. There’s no doubt she can hurt us.’
‘How?’
Hardy shrugged. ‘Maybe she knows something. God knows we’ve tried everybody else, and we’ve got nothing resembling a lead for “X”.’
Fowler sipped and stared. ‘No, Diz, I don’t think so.’
Suddenly a frightening thought occurred – Andy was still carrying a torch. Hardy had kept the secret of Shinn’s other clients to himself (excluding Glitsky), but he was coming around to thinking it might do Andy some good to know the truth, to face the truth. If nothing else, it might break him out of his reluctance to use what May might have.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘there were other men…’
Fowler pushed his glass, a quarter turn at a time, in a circle on his desk. ‘What?’
Hardy spent five minutes explaining to Andy – checking the phone records, proving that May had lied to him. Fowler stared into space behind Hardy’s head. ‘Why are you telling me all this now?’
‘Because your life is at stake here, Andy, and I think maybe you’re somehow planning on getting found not guilty, putting this trial behind you and doing nothing to jeopardize what you still think is your relationship with this woman. And if that’s the case, you ought to know what that relationship really was.’
He took a moment. ‘I know what it was. That’s become clear to me. Before you told me this.’
‘Well?’ Hardy asked.
‘Well what?’
‘Maybe you could talk to her, maybe she knows something.’ He paused, waiting for Andy. ‘About “X”, if nothing else.’
The ex-judge, suddenly looking old and tired, leaned his head back against the chair and blew at the ceiling. ‘Don’t you think she would have mentioned that in her own defense last summer?’
‘She never got the chance.’
‘She got plenty of chance. She doesn’t know.’
‘You think.’ He had to drive it home. ‘But you thought she had cut off her other clients for you, remember? She wasn’t supposed to be sleeping with anyone else.’
Fowler pushed his fingers into his eyes. ‘There must be some aphorism here about old fools and young women.’ He pulled his hands away from his face. ‘Okay, okay, do what you’ve got to do.’
When Hardy got home at eleven the house was asleep.
There was a Redi Delivery Service box on his front porch when he walked up and he opened it in his office – the dailies. Only death-penalty defendants, who got them free, and people as rich as Andy Fowler, who could afford them, got daily transcripts. One hundred eighty-eight typed pages of today’s transcripts that he ought to review before tomorrow. Maybe someone had said something at the trial today he hadn’t heard, or listened to carefully enough.
He saw Frannie’s note by the telephone. Elizabeth Pullios had called with the message that the prosecution was adding May Shinn to their witness list ‘re Fowler knowledge gun on boat.’
Shinn again. What did that woman really know?
Was this only the second day? He couldn’t imagine ever getting to sleep. He’d already tried twice, once a little after midnight, then again around two. Now the clock by his bed read 3:15 and he’d just had a rush of adrenaline, remembering how he’d been so unsuspecting of Strout’s testimony and then there had been a snake in it.
He recognized in a flash what had awakened him -Tom and José. He’d noted their presence both in the courtroom and on the witness list and, as he’d done with Strout, had reviewed and reviewed and finally reached the conclusion that neither of the Marina guards had anything damaging to say about Andy Fowler.
What had jolted him awake was the realization that he was wrong again – he had to be wrong. Pullios wouldn’t call them to pass the time of day. There must be something there and he hadn’t seen it.
Wearily, he threw back the covers and padded barefoot to his office.
52
‘We talked to her last night,’ Pullios said. ‘I think she’s tired of all this.’