hold their hand until bedtime and make sure they get tucked in. Give me a break, Diz.'
Hardy knew Drysdale was right – of course there had been no reason for him to have talked to Jennifer Witt. But Hardy couldn't let it go. 'She didn't even do it by mistake, Art.'
Baseballs were getting juggled again, a bad sign. 'That's why there are trials, my man. Figure out what really happened.'
'But you've charged her.'
Again, reluctantly, Drysdale stopped his routine. 'Traditionally that precedes an arrest. You want, you can have a copy of the discovery on Larry Witt and Matt Witt. Read it yourself.'
'You want to tell me about it?'
Art Drysdale, his old mentor, the man who had hired him back to the DA's office a year before, said, 'I'd like to, Diz, but it's not my case. I don't know much about it.'
Baloney. Art Drysdale knew the nuts and bolts of every case of any import that got charged, especially any murder case. 'It's Dean Powell's case. You know where his office is, don't you?'
In other words, bye-bye, and don't stop back on your way out. You're on the other side now. See you around.'
Hardy decided he would rather not talk to Dean Powell, not yet. Instead, he went upstairs to homicide, hoping to run into Sergeant Inspector Abe Glitsky. Hardy and Abe had started out together as policemen walking a beat. While Hardy had gone on to law school, then to the DA's office, Abe had progressed through the SFPD for almost ten years until he made it to homicide, the place he called home. If Drysdale no longer was any kind of inside source, Hardy had no doubts about Abe, who was sitting at his desk, looking down at some papers and chewing ice out of a styrofoam cup.
Hardy walked through the open room of the Homicide Detail, poured himself a cup of old coffee, pulled up a chair and waited. After a moment or so, he sipped loudly. Abe looked up. Then back down with no change of expression. 'The element of surprise,' he said, 'in the right hands, can be a powerful weapon.'
Hardy sipped again, more loudly than before. Glitsky raised his head and chewed some ice with his mouth open. One of the homicide detectives walked by behind Hardy and stopped. 'I'd give it to Glitsky on points,' he said. 'Those are real attractive sounds.'
Hardy swallowed his coffee and brought the file up, laying it on the desk. 'What do you know about Jennifer Witt?'
After a last look down at the papers in front of him, Abe closed the folder. 'I wasn't doing anything.'
Hardy smiled. 'You've told me many times that nothing you do when you're in the office is important, isn't that a fact?'
Glitsky ran a finger around his expressive mouth, caressed the scar that ran top-to-bottom between his lips. 'I like the way you say 'isn't that a fact?' instead of 'isn't that true?' like the rest of humanity would. It's very lawyerlike. Witt isn't my collar. You representing her? Of course you are,' Abe answered himself.
'Not completely true.'
'Forty percent true?'
Hardy pretended to be thinking about the answer. 'She's David Freeman's but he's in court. He asked me to go make her feel better.'
'Which, of course, you did.'
Hardy shrugged. 'It's a modest talent.'
Glitsky seemed to want to follow it up, find out how his friend got even this much involved with this particular client, but he resisted the temptation. He'd no doubt get it sometime. He took the folder over his desk and flipped some pages. 'Terrell made the arrest.' He craned his neck, checking the room. 'Terrell here?' he called out.
'Who's Terrell? Do I know him?'
'OFO,' somebody answered.
'OFO?'
'Secret police code which I'm not allowed to reveal under penalty of death.' He leaned forward, whispering, 'Out fucking off.' He went back to the report. 'You've seen Terrell around. White guy, brown hair, mustache.'
'Oh, yeah, him. When I was at school, there was a guy like that.'
Glitsky himself was half-Jewish, half-African-American. He stood six feet some, weighed two hundred something and had blue eyes surrounded by a light brown face.
'Terrell's okay,' Glitsky said.
'But…'
'I didn't say anything. I said he was okay.'
'I heard a 'but'.'
Abe chewed more ice, then spoke quietly. 'If God's in the details, Wally and God aren't that close.' He leaned back, spoke in a more conversational tone. 'He's a big picture guy, only here in homicide, what, a year? Gets and idea, a theory, a vision – I don't know – but it seems to keep him running.'
'Isn't that what all you guys do?'
'No. What most of us do is talk to people, collect evidence, maybe some picture starts to form. Wally's a little heavy into motive, and motive only takes you so far. I mean, any victim worth a second look, there's five people with motive to have done him. Wally finds a couple of motives and starts digging around them rather than the other way round.'
'So why's he still here?'
'He's been lucky. Twice he's hauled in perps with nothing – Frank wrote him up a reprimand, the second one was so sloppy – and both times, guess what, it turns out he was right. So what are you gonna do, bust him? It'll catch up to him.'
Hardy tapped the file. 'It might have here.'
Abe glanced down, turned a few pages, shook his head. 'Doubt it,' he said. 'Jennifer Witt was righteously arrested. See here? Police reports, witnesses, physical evidence. Plus, as you might have noticed, the public has been introduced to her. She seems like a swell person.'
'I thought it might be helpful to talk to Terrell.'
Glitsky raised an eyebrow. 'I don't know if you remember, but if you're in defense mode, my colleagues here won't tend to view you as an ally.'
'Maybe you could vouch for me – you know, character, judgment, taste, generally refined nature. Sometimes everything doesn't make it to the file.'
'You shock me.' Closing the file, he pushed it back across the desk. 'I'll see what I can do, but as always-'
Hardy beat him to it. 'Don't hold my breath.'
Glitsky nodded. 'Words of sublime wisdom,' he said.
Although Hardy was not yet legally entitled to it, Art Drysdale had done Hardy the favor of arranging for him to pick up the discovery on the Witt murders, which was basically a copy of the DA's file on the case.
Drysdale, it turned out, had been half-wrong and half-right when he said that Jennifer Witt had left out a few tiny things. Right about leaving out some things, wrong about them being tiny.
They included the testimony of an eyewitness, Anthony Alvarez, a retired fireman with a drawerful of decorations. Sixty-four years old, he lived with his invalid wife directly across the street from the Witts and had heard two shots. If there had only been one, he might have thought it was a backfire and not even bothered to look. As it was, he didn't really suspect shots even after he heard them – it had been more of a curiosity, that kind of noise. He'd gone to the window and seen Jennifer Witt in front of the gate to her house, looking back toward her door. His initial thought was that she had stopped, was wondering about the noises herself. She stayed there a couple of seconds, then began running.
There was also another witness, the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Barbieto, who'd also heard the shots and had
