"What? Oh, yeah." Kroll laughed out of all context. "Following up on poor Matt Creed. Did you know Matt?"
"No. Afraid not."
"Good kid. A real tragedy."
"Yeah," Hardy said. "I'm aware of the case."
"Oh, that's right. Sorry."
"No need to be. It wasn't my client. He didn't do it."
"No. Of course not. You going down now to explain about that to Gerson?"
Hardy forced a cold grin. "Something like that."
"Well, good luck."
"Thanks."
Hardy started for homicide as Kroll and Panos walked toward the elevators. He heard their talking resume in modulated tones. Suddenly, Kroll's voice pierced the silence again. "Oh, Diz!"
Hardy turned.
"On the other matter." He walked a little back the way he'd come, lowered his voice. "I don't know if you've heard. Your witness LaBonte?"
"Aretha? What about her?"
He moved two or three steps closer, started to talk, stopped, started again. "I just heard about it from Gerson. You know they hauled her in for hooking again yesterday." He hung his head for an instant. When he looked up, he met Hardy's gaze. "I know you're getting a lot of bad news this week, Diz, and I hate to add to it, but I guess she couldn't take the life anymore. Sometime last night she hanged herself in her cell."
Hardy never intended to go to homicide anyway, so deciding to climb to Glitsky's floor by the inside stairs wasn't much of a change of plans. But he didn't go up them right away.
When the hallway door closed behind him, he turned around and sat heavily on the second step. He leaned over, feeling sick, elbows on his knees, his pounding head resting on the heel of his one good hand.
Hardy hadn't been Aretha's criminal defense attorney because, frankly, she couldn't afford him. She was a professional girl who got busted two or three times a year. Nevertheless, in the past six months, he'd come to know Aretha fairly well. She was twenty-four years old, black, functionally illiterate. The fact that she did not have a pimp contributed to the continuing difficulties in her life because she had no street protection, but she did have a steady boyfriend, Damoan. Quiet and polite, although unkempt and gang-dressed, Damoan often accompanied her to depositions and court appearances. It seemed to Hardy that the couple was happy with each other, unlikely as that might seem.
With Freeman, Hardy had spent several hours with her, coaching her, taking her statements. But also having coffee, joking, driving someplace or another. He'd come to know her as an honest, uncomplicated person with a surprisingly sunny disposition and outlook. Things-sometimes terrible things-seemed to roll right off her. She'd probably spent two hundred nights of her life in jail. She'd told Hardy, and he believed her, that she viewed the experience as a neutral one. On the one hand, it gave her some time off; on the other, it was a hassle and an inconvenience.
Kroll's statement that she must have "grown tired of the life" didn't wash with anything Hardy knew about the woman. She hadn't begun to lose her looks yet. Sephia's plant on her notwithstanding, she didn't use hard drugs. Unless she and Damoan had broken up, and he'd seen them apparently happy together within the past week, she was as unlikely a candidate for suicide as Hardy could imagine.
He opened his eyes and raised his head, slowly got to his feet. He turned around, looked at the stairs, wondered if he could muster the strength to climb them.
When Hardy first came in, Glitsky brought him a glass of water and four aspirin. Now the door to the office was closed. Glitsky sat behind his desk, scowling, tugging absently at a rubber band. "She must have, though." "I can't accept it. Somebody got to her."
"In her cell? Not as easy as it sounds, Diz." He snapped the band a few times. "But don't get me wrong. I'm not ruling it out entirely." After a minute, he added, "Maybe you were right keeping Holiday outside."
"It wasn't my decision," Hardy said, "but I'd advise against it now. Not that I've had a chance."
"You haven't talked to him?"
"Not since Friday. I don't even know where he is."
Glitsky pulled the rubber band apart and sighted through it.
"You can give me that look all you want," Hardy said, "but it's a true story. He's gone to ground."
"All right, let's say I believe you. I'm still having trouble with Panos somehow connected to the jail."
"Maybe he passes the word through homicide."
Glitsky snorted. "Now you are dreaming."
Hardy lifted his shoulders and immediately regretted it. He didn't care if Glitsky couldn't see how it might happen. Something had happened. Aretha LaBonte was dead in jail and he didn't believe she killed herself. And that left only one other option. "You can laugh," Hardy said, "but I just saw them down there."
The laughing, if that's what the snort had been, stopped. "Who? Down where?"
"Roy Panos. Downstairs. One floor down."
"In homicide?"
"With my close friend Dick Kroll. Evidently checking up on the Creed investigation."
Glitsky sat up straight. "What were they checking on, the shoes?"
"What about the shoes?"
It didn't take Glitsky long to tell it.
"So you're saying Terry didn't shoot Creed after all."
"He still might have. Half a shoe size is close."
"Going up, okay, but not going down. If the shoe don't fit, you gotta acquit."
Glitsky frowned at the reference. "Please," he said, "spare me. But my question is: Does Panos even know about that? Thieu hasn't even told Gerson yet."
Hardy reached for his paper cup and sipped some water. He realized that the aspirin had begun to kick in. Only slightly, but he'd take it. "If it's any help, I got the impression that they weren't there about Creed anyway. Kroll just said the first plausible thing that came to mind."
"Okay. And this means what?"
"I don't know. Maybe nothing. But maybe they're all pals, sharing information."
Glitsky was back with his rubber band, his face set. "So Panos would know what evidence they still needed? Which would tell him what to plant and where to put it?"
"You said it, not me."
"It's just what I warned Gerson about."
"When was that?"
"When this whole thing started, back with Silverman. Right after Wade gave the inspectors his list of suspects."
A short silence settled; then Hardy said, "Somebody's got to tell him. Gerson."
"He doesn't want to know. At least not from me."
"How about Clarence?"
"How about him?"
"He's not going to want to try this thing if the evidence is bogus. You'd be doing him a favor. Plus, he'd listen to you, as opposed to someone else in this room."
"Why wouldn't he listen to you?"
Hardy didn't think he needed to give the complete explanation. "It's my client, Abe," he said. "Think about it. You're an objective third party."
Glitsky knocked, got Jackman's "Yes" and opened the door. The DA, reading something at his desk and perhaps thinking it was Treya, looked up in mild, pleasant expectancy. But as soon as he saw Glitsky, his expression hardened by a degree. His eyes went down, then came back up. Flat, controlled. He smiled in a perfunctory way.
Feeling something in the gaze, Glitsky stopped halfway to the desk. "Sorry to bother you, Clarence, but Treya said you might be free, and this is important."
The smile stayed in place. Jackman gestured at the papers spread around his desk. "Freedom's relative, Abe, and everything is important. The job is important. What can I do for you?"
"How do you get along with Barry Gerson?"
Jackman took a beat. "You mean professionally? About the same as I did with you when you had his job. Why?"
"Because he's being used. He's going to be badly embarrassed. Somebody's got to get the message to him, and it can't be me."