The Hearing

Curtis Rhodin was a methodical man. He had known Elaine only slightly – she was older and a partner at Rand and Jackman and light years from him on many levels – and it felt strange to be going through her things, but he knew what he was supposed to do, and he was going to do it.

She had a lot of dresses, thirty pairs of shoes. There was a smaller, built-in set of drawers in her closet containing sweaters, blouses, exercise clothes. At the bottom of the lowest one, under a pile of sweatshirts, he found a smallish, flat white box. Taking it out and opening it up, he recognized it for what it was – Elaine's collection of meaningless memorabilia from her past.

Rhodin smiled to himself. He had a similar stash himself, although his was a cigar box in which he kept twenty or thirty stupid items that he just couldn't bring himself to discard – a jade rock he got diving off Big Sur, a guitar pick from a B.B. King concert he'd gone to in college, his first pocket-knife, a diamond tie tack in case they ever came back in style, a signed Willie Mays rookie year baseball card. Junk. But priceless junk.

Elaine's box wasn't all that different really, considering she was a woman. There were several pins for various political campaigns – her mother's, Chris Locke's, Sharron Pratt's. A man's college ring. A garter. A.38 caliber bullet. A packet of business cards with a rubber band around them. Many coins from different foreign countries. He closed the box back up – this was coming back with him.

A framed picture of Elaine's mother rested on top of her dresser next to the lamp. In the drawers, he found underwear, socks, foldables. Condoms. The top right drawer, however, contained nothing at all, and this straightened Rhodin up in surprise. He walked across to the office and asked Walsh if he could come in for a minute. Sighing, putting down his magazine, the doctor labored up and followed him. 'Do you know what she kept in this drawer?' Curtis asked.

Walsh looked, shrugged. 'I guess not much. Did you just take something out of it?'

'No, it was like this. Was it always like this?'

Another shrug. 'I don't know. I didn't go through her drawers.'

'No, of course not,' Rhodin said, 'but there was nothing at all in this one. That seems a little odd, doesn't it?'

'I don't know,' Walsh repeated. 'I didn't take anything out of it.'

'But it sure seemed like he might have.' He was back now at Freeman's office, in the Solarium reporting to Treya and Amy. He'd eventually left Tiburon with a cardboard box now about a quarter filled with what he'd collected from the office and the rest of the house, including a copy of the Koran and, of course, the white memento box. On a whim, at the last moment, he'd also thrown in the framed photograph of Loretta Wager. But it was the empty drawer that had captured his interest. 'Any of you guys have a completely empty dresser drawer?'

'Drawers don't get empty,' Amy said. 'They get full about ten minutes after you move in someplace. Then too full. It's a law of nature. He must have cleaned it out.'

Treya disagreed. 'He would never have done that and left it empty knowing we were coming to look through her things. He would have put something back in before we got there.'

Rhodin had his own suggestion. 'Maybe he didn't really imagine that it would make any impression? I mean, it was just an empty drawer. Doesn't mean anything.'

'No,' Treya was sure of it. 'If he emptied it, he would have remembered and it would have seemed significant.'

'Then she emptied it,' Amy said, 'Elaine.'

They were all with their thoughts a moment. Treya finally spoke up. 'If she was leaving him, if they'd had a fight and she walked out one night, she might have just taken a handful of underwear.'

'I've got another one,' Rhodin said. 'In the bathroom, she had a couple of months' worth of birth control pills, but in her dresser she had maybe a dozen condoms.'

Amy had an answer for that. 'So she really didn't want to get pregnant.'

'Or she wasn't being faithful,' Rhodin said.

Treya looked at both of them. 'Or she knew he wasn't.'

'Dash Logan?'

The lawyer looked up from the newspaper he was reading, which happened to be the Democrat. Jupiter was beginning to hop in the long slide of a Friday afternoon, but he was sitting alone in his usual back booth, a bowl of pretzels on the table next to him, a half full glass of beer growing warm at his elbow. The look on his face was welcoming, untroubled. 'You got me.' He ran his eyes down the man who'd addressed him, extended his hand. 'And you'd be Mr Hardy, I presume. Dismas? Was that the name, Dismas?'

'Still is.' Hardy took the hand – a firm grip – and slid in across from him. 'You are one tough man to get a hold of.'

Logan nodded sympathetically. 'I hear that a lot. Sorry. I must be having some kind of mid-life crisis or something. My motivation's just gone in the toilet. I got your calls, though.'

'That's nice. I was starting to think the phone's weren't working.'

'Didn't I say you could always get me here?'

'Yes, you did.'

'Well, then.' He flashed a smile. It seemed genuine enough. Hardy didn't have to remind himself, though, that the greatest con men oozed sincerity – it was their stock in trade. 'Hey, listen, let me buy you a beer for your trouble. If it's any consolation, I would have called you Monday, but I figure now, Friday afternoon, nobody's in when you call them anyway. It'll wait for the weekend, right?' He raised a hand, flagging the bartender. 'Wally, a couple of cold ones, see voo play. What do you drink, Dismas?'

Hardy made an apologetic gesture. 'I've got to stick with water. I see a client at five.'

'And they wouldn't want their lawyer to have a drink in the afternoon? I hear you. Wally? Just one. And some of that stuff fish fuck in.' A grin back at Hardy. 'You know, I'll tell you, that's why I stopped working out of my office.'

'Why's that, Dash?'

'Why? 'Cause when clients come to an office, they see the trappings, you know? You've got the secretary and the law library and the phones and all that shit – which is just what it is, shit – and they get so they expect the rest of the package that goes with it. Hey, thanks, Wally. Here's looking at you, Dismas.' He held up his new glass of beer and touched Hardy's glass. 'So anyway, I'm not that guy. Used to try to be, but it didn't work. So people would come in with these expectations and I'd dash 'em. They wanted a different kind of lawyer and God knows there's enough of 'em. But if they want me – and a lot of folks do – they can come down and meet me here and they know what they're getting. No frills, maybe, but no bullshit either. And most of 'em, end of the day, they go away happy. So,' his limpid blue eyes fixed Hardy over the rim of his beer glass, 'I'm assuming you've reconsidered on settling with McNeil.'

'Actually, not.' Hardy sat back and enjoyed Dash's reaction, the quick snap in the mellow facade – a blink of an eye – then the impressive return to how he'd been. 'I'm here on another matter entirely. Do you know a kid named Cullen Alsop?'

Logan appeared to think about it. 'Some cop – Banks, I think his name was – was asking about him in here the day before yesterday. OD, wasn't it?'

'Yeah. Looks like.'

'So this boy Alsop,' Logan asked, 'was he your client?'

'No,' Hardy said. 'My client's Cole Burgess.' If the name registered, Logan didn't show it. 'Elaine Wager?'

His face fell. 'Oh, Elaine.' Logan had sympathy down pat. He clucked. 'Such a shame about her.'

'It was,' Hardy agreed. 'Though I'd understood the two of you had had some problems.'

'No, noth-' The smile. 'You don't mean that special master thing? That was nothing to do with Elaine.'

'Really? I heard she might have taken it that way.'

He shook his head back and forth. 'No. That was all for the benefit of the cops. They call me down here-'