Hardy had seen this coming. He might have objected on relevance with some chance of being sustained this time, but he had a use in mind for the information.
Becker answered. "Yes, a woman saw that I was in a command position and she approached me and told me that she was related to the man who owned the burning house."
"Do you recognize that woman in this courtroom?"
"I do."
"Would you point her out for the jury, please?" "Yes." He held out his hand. "Right there, at the table."
"Let the record show that Inspector Becker has identified the defendant, Catherine Hanover." Rosen gave his little bow. "Thank you, sir." Turning to Hardy. "Your witness."
"Inspector Becker," Hardy said. "In your testimony, you used the word 'sifted' when you talked about recovering evidence from the scene of the fire. What did you mean by that?"
In spite of the time he'd already been on the stand, Becker remained fresh and enthusiastic. "Well, it's not a very high-tech procedure, but what we do is kind of sweep up and bag everything around a body and then try to identify everything that was at the scene, down to pretty small items."
"And you used this technique after the Hanover fire?"
"Yes, we did."
"Were you looking for anything specific?"
"To some extent, yes. I hoped to find the bullet casings, for example."
Hardy feigned surprise. "You mean you could locate and sift out something that small?"
"Sure, and even smaller than that. By the time we're through, we're pretty much down to ash and nothing else."
"And did you in fact find the bullet casings?"
"Yes."
"Two of them?"
"Yes."
"Were there any fingerprints or any other identifying marks on either of the casings?" "Yes. Mr. Hanover's."
"Mr. Hanover's?" Hardy said. "Not Catherine Hanover's?"
"No."
"What about the gun itself? Were there fingerprints on the gun?"
"Yes. Mr. Hanover's and some others."
"Some others? How many others?"
"It's hard to say. There was nothing to compare them with. It might have been one person, or maybe two or more."
"But did you try to compare them to Catherine Hanover's fingerprints?" "Yes. Of course." "And did you get a match?"
"No. And the other stuff in the house was all burned up."
"In other words, Inspector Becker, there is no physical evidence to indicate that Catherine Hanover had ever touched either the gun that has been identified as the murder weapon or the bullets that were used on the victims? Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"No evidence she was ever even near the gun at any time? Ever?" "None."
"In fact, Inspector, isn't it true that in your careful sifting of all the evidence found in the house after the fire, you did not discover any physical evidence that linked Catherine Hanover either to these murders or, for that matter, to the fire itself?"
Becker answered with a professional calm. "Yes, that's true."
Hardy took the cue and half turned to face the jury. "Yes," he repeated, driving the answer home. But he came right back to Becker. "I'd like to ask you a few questions now about the first time you saw Catherine Hanover on the night of the fire. Did you question her?"
"Not really. She came up to me and said she was related to the home's owner. That was about it. There was really nothing to question her about at that time."
"Nothing to question her about. Did anyone else join the two of you at about this time?"
"Yes. Sergeant Inspector Cuneo arrived from the homicide department, which we'd called as soon as we discovered the bodies."
"And did Inspector Cuneo question Mrs. Hanover?"
"A little bit. Yes."
"Just a little bit?"
"A few minutes. As I said, there was no real reason to question her."
"Yes, you did say that. And yet Inspector Cuneo chose to question her?"
"Your Honor!" Rosen said. "Objection. Where's this going? Sergeant Cuneo was a homicide inspector called to a crime scene. He can talk to anybody he wants for any reason."
"I assume," Braun said stiffly, "that your objection, then, is for relevance. In which case, I'll overrule it."
Hardy took a beat. He'd gotten in the inference he'd wanted-that Cuneo basically just wanted to chat up Catherine, and now he was almost finished. "Inspector Becker, on that first night that he'd seen her, did Sergeant Cuneo express to you any thoughts about Catherine Hanover's physical appearance?"
As a bonus, Rosen reacted, snorting, objecting again.
Braun spoke sharply. "Overruled. Inspector, you may answer the question. Do you need Mr. Hardy to repeat it?"
Hardy, with a second chance to put it in front of the jury, wasted no time. "Did Sergeant Cuneo express to you any thoughts about Catherine Hanover's physical appearance?"
"Yes, he did." "What did he say?"
"He said she was a damn fine-looking woman." "Those were his exact words?" "Pretty close."
When Hardy got back to his table, Catherine leaned over and urgently whispered to him, "What about the ring?"
"What ring?"
"Missy's. Paul gave her an enormous rock. If they swept up everything in the room down small enough to find a bullet casing, they must have found the ring, too.
Right?"
"Maybe it was still on her finger."
"Oh, okay. You're right. I'd just assumed…"
"No. It's worth asking," Hardy said, although he couldn't have elucidated exactly why he thought so. "I'll go back and ask Strout."
"Mr. Hardy." Braun stared down over her lenses. "If we're not keeping you…"
"No. Sorry, Your Honor."
Braun shifted her gaze to the other table. "Mr. Rosen, call your next witness."
Rosen got to his feet. "The people call Sergeant Inspector Daniel Cuneo."
Hardy put a hand over his client's hand on the defense table, gave what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. "Get ready," he whispered. "This is where it gets ugly."
20
Glitsky's prayers were answered. It appeared that it was "only" a hole in Zachary's heart after all. It was so small that the doctor thought it might eventually close up on its own, although Glitsky and Treya shouldn't count on that since it was equally possible that it might not. But whether it eventually closed up on its own or not, Zachary's condition required no further immediate medical intervention, and neither doctor-Gavelin nor Trueblood-suggested an increased stay in the hospital for either mother or child.
So Paganucci had come out to the hospital with Glitsky's car, and Abe and Treya were back to their duplex by noon, both of them completely wrung out with the stress and uncertainty of the previous twenty-four hours. Neither had slept for more than an hour or two. And they were nowhere near out of the woods yet with their boy. There was still some likelihood that he'd need open
heart surgery in the very near term-the doctors and his parents would have to keep a close eye on his overall development, heart size, energy level, skin color-turning bluish would be a bad sign, for example. But what had seemed a bad-odds bet yesterday-that Zachary might be the one child in eight born with this condition able to live a normal life without surgery-now seemed at least possible, and that was something to hang on to, albeit precariously. At least it was not the probable death sentence of aortic stenosis.
Rachel was staying another day with her grandfather Nat. By pretending that he was going to take a much-needed nap with her, Glitsky got Treya to lie down in the bedroom with Zachary blessedly sleeping in the crib beside her. Within minutes she, too, was asleep.
Glitsky got out of bed, went into the kitchen, turned in a full circle, then walked down the hallway by Rachel's room. He checked the back door to make sure it was locked, deadbolt in place, and came back out to the living room. Outside, a bleak drizzle dotted his picture window, but he went to it anyway and stared unseeing at the view of his cul-de-sac below. Eventually, he found himself back in the kitchen. Apparently he'd eaten some crackers and cheese-the crumbs littered the table in front of him. He scooped them into his hand, dropped them in the sink, and punched the message light on his telephone.