Hardy didn't like these questions, mostly because he'd asked them so recently to himself. Jennifer's acting, posing, brains and plotting ability were not insignificant. He didn't, of course, want to argue mercy for someone who didn't deserve any, and on the off-chance that Jennifer was guilty of these things, she didn't deserve a break today or any other day.
But, turning into a good lawyer, he had at least developed an answer he hoped would work in a penalty phase. 'If she killed her husband, I can argue that he beat her, which he apparently did.'
'You know that?'
'I think so. Though she more or less denies it.'
'Well, that's heartening. Very strong.'
'Boy, this is fun.'
'That's 'cause I'm a fun guy to be with. One minute, nothing's happening, then whammo, suddenly it's fun city.' They were in their new Honda Accord – the jeep-like Suzuki Samurai a sacrifice to small children – cruising down Haight Street at ten o'clock at night. He took her hand. She gently removed it.
'Almost done,' he said. It was an apology.
From Hiro's they had decided to go back to the Shamrock to spend some time with Moses. Frannie has been missing her brother, hadn't seen him in a week.
But first…
David Freeman did not like to use private investigators, preferring to do his legwork himself. And with his current trial taking much of his time, he had asked Hardy to check out a few details relating to Jennifer Witt.
So before they went down to the Shamrock, Hardy suggested that he and Frannie swing by the house Jennifer, Larry and Matt had lived in, just to get the feel of it. His copy of the folder was still in his car, so they looked up the address on Twin Peaks and it took them nearly twenty minutes to find it – Olympia Way. Then, since it was right on the way, Hardy said he might as well measure the distance from the house to Jennifer's bank, where she had taken money out of her ATM.
Unfortunately, there were four banks on the revitalized old hippy thoroughfare and all of them had ATMs. So Hardy was writing down mileages while Frannie commented on the good time they had been having for the past forty-five minutes.
The bank on Haight closest to the Witt house was just over a mile from their front door. The furthest, all the way down near the border of Golden Gate Park, was about two miles. Hardy had no idea if these facts would ever prove to be important, but felt more comfortable having them. He liked to operate under the general principle that facts made a difference, even if you didn't always know, precisely, what that difference was.
'Good. Now that we know that,' Frannie exclaimed when he had written down the last numbers, 'I'll be able to sleep tonight.'
8
Hardy's own crack-of-dawn was literally that. The telephone next to his bed rang at five-forty as the thinnest line of pink began to show out his bedroom window. He got it on the first ring.
'This is Walter Terrell. Wake you up? Sorry. Abe Glitsky asked me to give you a call. What can I do for you?'
Hardy heard the young voice, noting the penchant some cops had for getting to you when you weren't ready for them. He bet that Terrell wasn't really that surprised that he'd woken him up, nor sorry. Five-forty was a little early for anybody except fishermen and most folks seemed to know that. Even Hardy's kids still slept.
But he had him now, and this might be the only time, so he swung out of bed and padded into the kitchen with the phone. 'I thought we might be able to get together, talk a little about Jennifer Witt.'
There was a pause. Perhaps Glitsky hadn't told Terrell exactly who Hardy was. Or his relationship to Jennifer. But one thing was sure – Terrell knew Hardy wasn't with the DA's office.
'You doing her defense?' Terrell asked finally.
'Keenan counsel.' Hardy was pouring leftover coffee into a mug and pushing buttons on the microwave. 'Penalty phase.'
'Yeah, I saw it was going capital. You guys got yourself a bitch. The case, I mean. The perp, too, actually.'
Hardy bit back his automatic response of 'alleged' perp. Hardy recalled when he had walked a beat – start saying 'alleged' to cops about people they had arrested, pretty soon you'd find you weren't friends anymore. He wanted to keep Terrell on his side.
'Well, this perp's maybe got a decent defense, but she doesn't want to use it. I mean, it seems her husband had been beating her.'
This evidently didn't change Terrell's world view. 'So?'
'You knew that?'
Hardy almost thought he could hear a shrug. 'Guys beat their wives, most of them don't get killed.'
'What I'm saying' – Hardy pulled his coffee mug from the microwave, put in sugar, stirred – 'is she could take the battered-wife defense and have a better chance of getting off, and yet she won't.'
Terrell was silent. To him, these were legal shenanigans. His job was to deliver someone to the DA if there was evidence they'd committed a crime. What the DA's office did after that was not his problem. Finally he asked, 'So, what did you want to see me about? I assume you've read the file.'
'Sure.'
Terrell kept up the slow response. 'The file's the official record. I'm in it. Does it say anything about beating?'
'It said they were fighting.' Hardy felt rudderless, struggling to get his brain moving.
'Well, there you go. Anything else? I got a big morning.'
'Did you find anything on this hit man?'
The voice dripped scorn. 'That's right, the hit man. City's crawling with them. No. I didn't mention him for the same reason I didn't mention the motorboat.'
'What motorboat?'
'The one that wasn't there, just like the fucking hit man. There was a lot of things I didn't put in – space aliens, for example. If you read the report, the hit man's there in her statement. Hell, she's got to have something if it's her story somebody else did it. What's she gonna say?'
'It’s so lame you'd think-'
'No. It's just lame, all right, but that doesn't mean she didn't make it up all the same. Perps make up dumb lies every day.'
'But Mrs. Witt doesn't seem dumb, does she?'
'No,' Terrell agreed, 'no, I don't think she's dumb. At least it aint an NHI – that's something, huh?'
NHI was shorthand for 'No humans involved' – cases involving the scum of the earth – dope dealers, career criminals, sub-humans of all sorts.
Terrell was still on the line. 'But you know, we sent people to a lot of doors and asked and nobody saw a thing except the FedEx truck at 9:30 and the neighbor who saw Jennifer after the shots. After the two shots.'
'What about the driver of the FedEx truck?'
'This is all in the file. What about the FedEx guy? You think he's some kind of hit man took the driving job as cover for a day?'
'No, I-'
'Well, as we like to do, we checked him, too. He's been with them for a couple of years, probably still is.'
'No, what I wondered is if he saw Mrs. Witt in the house when he made his delivery. What was he delivering, by the way?'
