'Try living with these guys.'
Ronnie retrieved his round – two twenties and a five – drew a line through the '182' on the chalkboard and without a pause, without even seeming to look at the board, scribbled in '137.' Even dumb dart throwers got good at subtraction – and Ronnie was a computer.
Hardy stepped to the line. 'Could be just bad luck. They didn't know she was even going to be charged. So now they're just waiting to see what happens.'
Triple-twenty, a good start. He took a sip of the stout.
'You know,' Ronnie said, 'I just thought of something – what if one of them was trying to kill her, too – I mean kill all three of them – and she just didn't happen to be home?'
Hardy stopped, his dart poised.
Ronnie was into it. 'Do you know who's the beneficiary if the whole family's wiped out at once?' Hardy's dart sailed, a second triple-twenty. Three in a row – a '180' round – was worth a free drink in any bar in the city. 'Give me a break,' Ronnie said. Then: 'Did he have any other family? The husband? Who might have inherited anything?'
'I don't know,' Hardy said. 'It's a good question.'
He threw the third dart, which kissed the flights of the other two but landed a millimeter above them in the '20' but outside the triple ring.
'Not a bad round,' Ronnie said.
'Not bad.'
25
'That man was the devil.'
Penny Roman, mother of Melissa, who had died from the botched abortion attempt, believed it. She was not old but somehow conveyed age – her hair was frosted to a flat glaze, her make-up heavy. She wore a calico print grannie dress with a frilly collar that had probably been designed for a teenager and the effect, as she walked in her flip-flops, carrying a tray with coffee and mugs, was nearly-grotesque.
'Now, Pen.' Her husband Cecil sported a clipped graying mustache, a pencil in his ear, over-the-counter reading glasses, green slacks. 'He might have been in the hands of the devil, doing the work of the devil…'
'He was the devil.'
Cecil shrugged at Hardy. 'It's been very hard. You can't imagine.'
'I'm sorry.'
He was almost sorrier that he'd come out here, by Mission Dolores, to the thousand-square-foot house with the feeling of doors and windows that never opened. Jesus and Mary peered down from three framed prints in the small room where they all sat, cramped and airless, Hardy and Cecil on the chintz-covered sofa and Penny on the from half of a wing-back chair. An oversized, ornately framed picture of their daughter Melissa smiled at Hardy from the end table. Cecil wheeled up a little metal portable stand for the coffee tray and their cups.
The Romans were an unturned stone that he had discussed with Freeman, who had upbraided him for his scruples about whether or not the Romans had actually ever dreamed of hurting Larry Witt. The question was: Could he point at them? Could they, however tangentially, deflect the prosecution's case?
He also didn't love the idea that he was here on this Tuesday morning under false pretenses, keeping the appointment he had made with them yesterday after telling them he was a policeman. If Terrell or Glitsky couldn't or wouldn't do it…
When he had been an Assistant District Attorney Hardy had gone shopping one day in South San Francisco at the badge store. Badges were neither sanctioned nor forbidden by the office – everyone realized that sometimes they came in handy, especially with people whose English might not be perfect and who were used to looking at badges, who knew essentially what they meant even if some of the nuances were missing.
So he had been Officer Hardy on the phone, and now he had a badge. They had let him right in.
'This is just routine, especially after this much time. We keep trying to catch up. Someday, maybe.' Hardy smiled ingratiatingly, sipped his coffee and opened the manila folder he had brought with him. The folder did not contain a police report on the reported vandalism to Dr. Witt's car. Instead, Hardy had borrowed for the morning his own copy of the police report on his client Mr. Frankl – the man who had thought – erroneously as it had turned out – that he had a defense for DUI. The Romans did not notice the deception.
'What does he say about us?'
Cecil was trying to see something he recognized in the folder. Hardy moved it away. 'Frankly, he accuses you of breaking into his car, stealing his radio…'
'That's ridiculous!' Penny spilled coffee over into her saucer. 'He's a liar, too.'
'He's not anything anymore, ma'am. He's dead.'
'Yes, I know that. Of course.' Her lips tightened, trying to hold it in and failing. 'And I'm glad he is.'
'Now, Pen.' Cecil reached his left hand across the table and laid it on his wife's knee. 'We have to be Christians here. Hate the sin but love the sinner.'
'I can't, I can't do it.'
Cecil patted the knee absently. His attention back at Hardy, his hand stayed where it was and it made him sit crookedly. 'Dr. Witt was a sinner, Officer. But that doesn't mean we broke into his car.' He gestured around the room. 'Do we look like the… like we steal radios out of cars? Why would we? What would it prove? Would it bring our daughter back?'
Hardy was beginning to think it was pretty likely that, in fact, they hadn't broken into Dr. Witt's car. If anyone had. He jotted a reminder to ask Jennifer.
'You say Dr. Witt was a sinner, though. Did you know him personally?'
Hardy saw the tendons of Cecil's left hand rise up. He was squeezing his wife's knee hard. There was no reaction from her – Cecil's calm was chilling. 'Dr. Witt was an abortionist, Officer. He killed our daughter.'
They went through it, as Hardy knew they would have to. Penny began to cry, silently, unmoving. To them both, it was a seamless tale of evil's cause and effect – their daughter's unfortunate lust, her sin, not accepting God's will and bringing to fruit the life she had created, allowing Witt to turn the blade on her baby, finally casting her lot with the abortionists, the killers and – as Cecil and Penny had known would happen – they wound up killing her.
Hardy closed the folder.
'He deserved what he got.' Penny couldn't hold herself in any longer. Cecil's hand tightened again. 'We read about it in the papers, naturally. The Lord takes care of His own.'
'I think someone else took care of Dr. Witt,' Hardy said.
'He wasn't the Lord's, Officer. He was the devil. He was the last instrument of Melissa's torture. We never even saw his car. I don't know what kind of car he had.' Penny began crying. 'We didn't know anything about him. Now he's coming back from the dead to punish us some more.'
Hardy was standing up, wanting out of there. 'No, ma'am, he's not. He's not going to punish you. I'm closing this file and we're going to forget all about it. I believe you.'
Gradually, the fire went out. Penny sat back, deflated, managing a weak 'thank you.'
Cecil walked with him to the door, took a couple of steps outside. It was another clear morning, with a light breeze. The Sutro Tower sparkled in the sun a mile away. Cecil stared at it for a long moment. 'It does get meted out, you know. Punishment.'
'We hope so.' Hardy the cop, playing the role.
'I'm talking about him, about Dr. Witt.'
Hardy waited.
'You know, after he killed Melissa, before he was killed himself, I knew he was living in his fine house, making all kinds of money, profiting form his sins…'
Hardy wondered if Cecil knew that Witt had volunteered for his work at the Mission Hills Clinic. But this wasn't the time to tell him.
'And I know that's the way in this world. Sinners prosper. But once in a while we see proof. We see some
