home. The mother had been out excercising. A neighbor had heard shots and dialed 911. When the mother returned from jogging, a policeman had just arrived at the door and had told her to wait downstairs while he went up. He then discovered the carnage.
In the first couple of weeks news reports had advanced the theory that a professional hit man had, for some unknown reason, been hired to wipe out the Witt family. Mrs. Witt had allegedly seen a suspicious man – an Hispanic or African-American – in the vicinity on the morning in question.
Jennifer Lee Witt, the wife, was hot copy on her own. Even the worst likenesses of her, two columns in the Chronicle or frozen as a teaser for the 6:00 p.m. news, crying or in apparent shock, revealed the photogenic face of a young woman just past innocence. The good shots tended to be so captivating that she almost appeared to be posing.
She was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit like all the other prisoners on the seventh floor. Though her blondish hair was cut short, the sides fell slightly forward, partially obscuring her face. She stared at the floor as she walked.
Through the wire glass window Dismas Hardy watched her approach the visitors' room, then turned back and sat at the table and waited until the guard could open the door and present her.
There was the sound of the key and Hardy stood.
'Mrs. Witt?'
'Mr. Freeman?' Tentatively, she had her hand out.
'No.'
Disoriented, she now pulled in her hand and stepped backward. Hardy thought she looked about ready to break down. He spoke quickly. 'I work with Mr. Freeman.' Not strictly true. 'He's stuck in court.'
She didn't move. 'What do you lawyers do, just pass people around? I called my husband's attorneys and they said they couldn't help me but David Freeman could. He's the best, they said.'
'He's very good.'
'So I agreed they could call him, fine, and next thing you know her you are. I'd never heard of Mr. Freeman. I've never heard of you. I can't believe I'm arrested. For Larry's murder, and my son Matt's for God's sake. They can't think I killed my little boy.' At the mention of the son's name, her lip began to tremble. She turned away, hand to her face. 'I am not going to cry.'
Hardy nodded to the guard, who stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. It was a small room, five-by-eight, with a pitted desk and three metal chairs taking up most of it. The window faced the office for the women's side of the jail. Two uniformed female guards moved in and out of the picture to their cluttered desks, up, out somewhere, then back in. The women's common tank was just around the corner. When the door had been open, noises exploded every minute or so. Clangs, sobs, voices. Now the door filtered most of the sound.
Hardy waited for Jennifer Witt's breathing to slow down. Finally she turned back to him. He was sitting with one leg over the corner of the table. 'You can have Mr. Freeman if you'd like but he won't be available for a while. This is a grand-jury indictment. There is not going to be any bail.'
'You mean I have to stay here? God… how long?' She was struggling with the effort to get words out. Suddenly she hung her head and sat down.
Hardy felt like an intruder. He let an eternal minute pass.
She took in a deep sigh as though she'd been holding her breath. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I just didn't want to get in any more trouble and I thought I should have a lawyer.'
'Okay.' Hardy had come off the desk and went to sit across the table from her.
'Not that it matters.'
'It might,' Hardy said.
She wasn't going to fight about whether having a lawyer was a good thing or not. Wearily, she shook her head. 'I keep thinking something's going to help, something's going to make it better.'
Hardy started to say that the right representation could make all the difference. But her gaze was a blank. He wasn't getting through. 'Mrs. Witt?'
She wasn't there. Or rather, as far as she was concerned, Hardy wasn't there. She shook her head from side to side. Eventually, a pendulum winding down, she stopped. 'No,' she said. 'I mean Matt. My baby.'
Hardy took in a breath himself and held it a moment. He, too, had lost a son. Over the years he had gotten better at keeping it out of the front of his mind. But he would never forget, never even approach forgetting.
Looking at this woman – frail now in the jail's jumpsuit – he found himself feeling a strong connection. It was unguarded and maybe unprofessional, but there'd be no harm in letting the legalities wait a few minutes. God knew, once they began they'd go on long enough. 'How long has it been?' he asked.
She pulled at a strand of her hair. 'I can't accept it.' Her voice was hoarse now, her eyes distant. 'Nothing seems real anymore, you know?' She gestured around the tiny airless room. 'This place. I feel like I'm sleepwalking in a nightmare… I want to wake up… I want Matt back…' She swallowed, seemed almost to gulp at the air. 'God, I don't know. What can you do? What do you care?'
'I do care, Mrs. Witt.'
She took that in without a blink, not a sigh, not a glance at him. Inside herself again.
Hardy looked down at his hands, linked on the table between them. Jennifer Witt wasn't worried about her lawyers and their games, about her bail and her baggy yellow jumpsuit. She'd lost her son and nobody was going to bring him back. She was right. Nothing Hardy could do would make that better.
There was a square of light from an outside window over one of the guard's desks. It had moved nearly a foot since Jennifer had been brought in.
She had begun to open up, to listen. The details of Hardy's proxy representation accepted for the moment, they were finally getting down to it. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in jail, did she?
'Not for something I didn't do, Mr. Hardy.'
'Okay. But let me ask you, what did you mean when you said you deserved it? Deserved what? '
In a reaction that struck Hardy as pathetic, she ducked away, as if she were going to be hit. 'Nothing, anything… this…'
'What?'
'I shouldn't have let it happen. I wasn't there. Maybe if I'd been there…' She shook her head again.
'What did happen? Why do the police think you did this?' Hardy wanted to hear her version. Never imagining he'd have any part in it, he'd followed the news of the crime casually as it appeared in the papers or on television, just another of the many stories of domestic woe that came and went to help sell soap or hamburgers or newspapers.
'I don't know. I don't understand. When they came to arrest me I asked them-'
'And what did they say?'
She shrugged, apparently mystified. 'They got to talking about my rights, warned me about anything I said, that I could have a lawyer, that kind of thing.'
'But you saw this was coming? You must have-'
She stopped him, interrupting with a dry noise that sounded bitter when it came out. 'I haven't thought about anything, don't you understand that? I've been trying just to get through the days.'
Hardy knew what she meant. She scraped a fingernail over the tabletop, staring at the yellowing strip of varnish that lifted and flaked away. Again, she swallowed – as though keeping herself from breaking down. But her voice – the tone of it – sounded almost matter-of-fact, if weary. He was sure the coloring was protective. Well, she would have to try to soften it if her case ever went to trial, if she ever testified. She would come across as too cool. Even cold.
But that, if at all, was a long way off.
'I was just getting used to the awfulness of it. I mean, okay, there might have been somebody who was robbing the house or had some problem with Larry – I don't know what. And Larry gets shot. Larry, Jesus… But
