victims? Wrong. What the law does is punish people who've already broken the law. Until somebody's already hurt or killed, they've got no business-'
'But you were hurt. And Ned did break the law, he would have been punished-'
'Jesus, in your dreams.' Jennifer looked to Freeman. 'Is this guy for real? Does he live in the real world?'
'I live in the real world, Jennifer, and you can't-'
'Oh? Well listen, here's the real world. If I'm lucky, Ned gets no bail – impossible right there – and then gets a year, if that, for a first offense. Meanwhile I've got maybe a year to move, change my name and my life. Then, guess what? – Ned gets out of jail and comes and gets me, wherever I am, and I disappear just like Boots. My cat. Do I have to explain this? Do I have to draw you a picture. I'm the one whose life is ruined, if I stay alive.'
Hardy leaned back in the chair and tried to stretch the crick from his neck. In the guards' room through the glass a woman had just come in for the night shift and was shaking out her raincoat, hanging it on a peg by the door, saying something to somebody outside of Hardy's vision.
'I don't know, from my perspective, I'd say Matt's life is pretty ruined. Even if Larry was beating you-'
'I've told you, Larry wasn't beating me,' she said, glaring at him.
Hardy slammed the table with the flat of his palm. 'Oh, cut the shit, Jennifer!' He was standing now. The chair tipped, crashed to the floor behind him. 'I know for certain that Larry was beating you. I know the doctors you went to see and I know the lies you told them.'
He picked up his briefcase and grabbed for the chair to set it upright. Freeman still hadn't said a word.
'I did not kill my son-'
'Good for you.'
'I didn't kill Larry, either.'
'Or if you did, I'm sure you had a good reason.'
'I didn't, goddamn it, I didn't kill them. I have no idea who did.'
Suddenly she was in his face, coming at him, arms flailing. He tried to back away but in the constrained place there was nowhere to go. The back of his knees hit the chair behind him and he lost his balance, falling over.
Somehow Freeman had gotten between them and maneuvered Jennifer back down into her seat, giving the high sign that everything was all right to the guards through the window. Hardy was pulling himself up, and Freeman, who was aware that he stood blocking the exit, said that in his experience every trial worth its salt produced at least one good display of honest emotion. 'I think we can all get through this,' he said. 'It's to all our advantage.'
John Lescroart
Hardy 04 – 13th Juror, The
It had been a tense five minutes, but they were all seated again, clustered around the table. Hardy had agreed to talk, to listen. Now he stared at his partner. 'You don't care what, in fact, happened, David. You've made that point a hundred times.'
'No, that's not strictly true. What I said was that, legally, it doesn't matter what the facts are if they can't be proven. Personally, though, I care. I care a great deal. It's why I'm a lawyer. Which is telling you more than you deserve to know. I could ruin my reputation.'
Hardy turned to Jennifer. 'Here's a quick-quiz question. Did Larry beat you or not?'
'Yes.' Finally.
'A lot?'
She nodded. 'But if I admitted that, especially with what happened with Ned, no jury would believe I didn't kill Larry, too.'
This was the issue. Jennifer had killed Ned because he beat her. Larry, too, had beaten her, and she was contending, insisting, that she had not killed him.
'I had to lie,' she said. 'Once it came out that they both hit me…'
'What's to make me think you're not lying now?'
'I'm not lying now. I'm telling you.'
'All you're doing is telling me another version. Whatever flies this week.'
'Diz.' Freeman put a hand on his sleeve. 'Please. Look at it strategically. She's free on Ned. We're halfway there. She certainly didn't kill her own boy. Accident or not. She wasn't any part of that. I think you and I both believe that.'
'I don't know what I believe anymore, David.'
Jennifer put her hand on his other arm. 'I did what I did with Ned almost ten years ago.' She was talking quietly, almost whispering, not trying to look at him to persuade with her eyes, which he took as a good sign. 'If I had a choice, as you say I did, well then at least you should believe that I didn't think I had a choice. I was scared for my own life and I didn't know what to do – I thought there was no other way out.'
'With Larry, it hadn't gotten to that yet. Maybe it would have, I don't know. I wanted to think not. It's why I started seeing Ken Lightner, trying to make the family work. I'm screwed up, I admit, I bring things on myself. Even Ken tells me I'm too much a victim. I was trying to change… And then somebody… somebody kills Larry, and my son, and out of the blue I'm arrested for it. And suddenly I'm supposed to trust my whole life to two men who I didn't even know six months ago? No way. Men haven't been so good to me, you might have noticed, so I made my own plan and stuck with it.'
Hardy crossed his arms. 'I did notice one other thing, though. You managed to tell David here the truth.'
Freeman cut in. 'I sandbagged her, Diz. That's how I work. It came out.'
'And you didn't tell me.'
'That was my decision, not hers. Okay, it was a mistake on my part, bad judgment. I should have included you, but I didn't think you'd need to know until the penalty phase, if then.'
'Need to know, huh?' It had become dark outside through the guardroom window. Friday night. The weekend lay ahead, with time to decide what he was going to do. Hardy let out a long breath. He turned to Jennifer. 'If you have any other secrets, Jennifer, now would be a good time to talk about them.'
But the veil had come down again, her passion spent. 'Just find out who killed my baby, would you? Can you do that?'
33
He didn't know what he was doing, driving in the morning rain out California to Miz Carter's, then changing his mind, turning down through Golden Gate Park, avoiding the tree limbs that littered Kennedy Drive, knocked down by the force of the storm. He didn't really know where he was going. Maybe his brain had shut down from lack of sleep.
It all had come down to whether he believed her. This time. Even though he knew she had lied to him – about damn near everything – from the beginning. Could he still believe her?
He thought he did. That was what had kept him awake, tossing next to Frannie until the cloud's gray became visible out their bedroom window.
He had told Frannie that Jennifer's story was flawed, but the truth was that he found it credible. He'd been around and around on it, and every time it came up more logically sound.
Jennifer had to kill Ned. From her perspective, it was pure self-defense. She truly believed he was going to kill her, and why wouldn't she?
She'd tried to run away and he'd tracked her down. Then she'd told him she was going to leave and he'd beaten her almost to death, violated her with the blunt end of a kitchen knife, killed her cat as an obvious, classic threat, and threatened her with her own death if she did anything to stop the rampage.
He had read everything Lightner had given him, plus twenty or thirty other articles and briefs on the subject.
