Freeman's associate red-hots hung around in the conference room trying to figure out how to salvage something from this disaster. Nobody had any good ideas, although all agreed it was a bitch when your client lied to you, or seriously withheld information from you.
Freeman himself, after an hour-long argument with Jennifer during which she had continued to deny any affair with Lightner, in spite of the fact that they had stayed in the same room in Costa Rica for a week, had said he was going out to dinner alone at the French restaurant below his apartment. He was going to drink a good bottle of wine and then he was going to drink another one.
Once Terrell's testimony opened the dike, the flood swept over Freeman. On redirect, Powell revealed the details of Jennifer's extradition – how they had found her. Then he had called Lightner and gotten it confirmed. Everything, that is, but the affair itself, which Lightner strongly denied.
The jury, however, would draw its own conclusions about that from the facts. They would probably be the same as those drawn by Hardy, Freeman and every other soul in the courtroom – which was that your heterosexual male was not likely to go and stay in a hotel room on a beach in Costa Rica with a world class beauty like Jennifer Witt for a week and not have the physical creep in from time to time. Or to assume that this relationship might not be a preexisting condition from who knew how far back.
After she had broken out of jail, Terrell had played one of his famous hunches. He had figured Jennifer would have to contact someone, and from his earlier investigations he tagged Lightner as the most likely, indeed the only possible, person. Jennifer had no close friends and was estranged from her natural family – there really had been no other choice.
And because it was a capital murder case, because Powell, the candidate, was so strongly in his camp, because Jennifer's escape had infuriated the judiciary, Terrell had somehow squeezed enough juice to get a warrant on the phone company's list of Lightner's outgoing calls.
The outgoing calls to Costa Rica were good enough. Terrell was going to question Lightner in person when – lo and behold – the doctor had gone off to Costa Rica for a week, a much-needed vacation. Terrell had followed him down, laying low, getting enough to come back and start the extradition proceedings.
Hardy would have bet a lot that the money for all this had come from Dean Powell's campaign fund. There was no way that the San Francisco Police Department would pay the freight to fly an officer down to Costa Rica to investigate some alleged hanky-panky.
Hardy realized that he had for too long let himself be diverted by Freeman's theatrics and boundless confidence. This case was far from won – in fact, it might now be lost. It was one thing that Lightner had gone down to Costa Rica, although that was bad enough. But Terrell's testimony that she and Lightner had shared a room! The fact that there had been another man in the picture all along – and who knew for how long? – would work against Jennifer with the jury. Now in their eyes she also had a personal motive for killing Larry – it had not just been the money. She was cheating, too!
Hardy understood what the jury would feel – Jennifer was a woman who did what she wanted, took what she wanted and the world be damned. She would seem exactly the kind of person one would expect to do what she had been accused of.
He knew now that whether or not Freeman chose to address this Costa Rica business in the defense's case- in-chief, they were going to need to distract the jury by presenting their other dudes – someone else who might have had a plausible motive and an opportunity to have killed Larry Witt and the means to have done it. Hardy had his briefcase open, the files on his desk. Forcing himself – he had to start somewhere – he looked up the number of Jody Bachman, the Los Angeles-based attorney for the Yerba Buena Medical Group.
Since it was eight-thirty, after hours, he wasn't surprised to get one of those automated answering devices that asked if you knew your quarry's last name or extension. Dutifully, he punched in the first four letters – B. A. C. H.
The phone rang once.
'Jody Bachman.' A youngish voice, not exactly squeaky but enthusiastic peppy.
'Mr. Bachman, my name is Dismas Hardy. I'm an attorney in San Francisco and left a message for you several weeks ago. I'm following up.' Tardily, he added to himself.
There was a longish pause. 'I didn't call you back?'
Hardy had to smile. They ground down these guys so far in the corporate mills they had to look up to see down. 'You might have,' Hardy admitted. 'I didn't get any message, that's all.'
'I'm sorry. It's been crazy here. Maybe you know.'
They schmoozed for a moment, non-billable lawyer talk about the rat race and working until all hours, then Hardy go to it, saying that Todd Crane recommended talking to Bachman about YBMG. 'Sure, I represent them. If I can help you – but you said this was a murder trial.'
Hardy explained.
'Witt? Witt? I can't say it rings any kind of bell, but I've been awake for four days running now and sometimes I don’t recognize my own name.' He laughed weakly. 'The glamour of the LBO.'
'What's that?' said Hardy, the innocent.
'What? LBO? Leveraged buyout. Where have you been, Mr. Hardy? The wave of the past, or future, depending on your politics. Or your money.'
'Same thing, aren't they?'
'Not exactly but that's often a good guess. So listen, about this Dr. Witt…'
'I'm pretty sure he called your offices last December. I don't know who he would have talked to.'
'Probably me,' Bachman admitted, 'but I really don't remember. I'll have my secretary look it up and get back to you, how's that?'
'That'd be good. Thanks.'
'Sure. No problem.'
'It's the real you at last,' Hardy said to his friend Abe Glitsky, who stood in the doorway to his apartment wearing a clown costume – big floppy feet, white pancake make-up, a cute little red nose. 'Let me guess…'
Glitsky cut him off. 'It's Jacob's birthday party.' He turned back into the apartment, Hardy tagging behind. Flo came up, bussed him on the cheek and asked if he wanted some cake or ice cream. There were about fifteen ten- year-olds in the cramped kitchen, none of them meditating.
'Abe looks good.'
Flo gave him a look. 'You wait. You'll do it too.'
Hardy thought that she was probably right. He couldn't, at this moment, though, imagine himself as a future reincarnation of Bozo the Clown, but he had to admit it was possible. 'Is he going to be done soon?'
'Ten minutes,' Flo said, 'maybe a little more. He just does a little act.'
'I'd love to see it.'
She moved closer to him, a hand on his arm. 'I think you'd cramp his style. You can wait in the boys' room.'
All three of the Glitsky boys had the same bedroom, and it wasn't a big one. Jacob and Isaac shared the bunk bed, and OJ, now almost five, used a little daybed against the opposite wall. Hardy sat on it listening to the laughter from the kitchen a his friend the homicide inspector did his clown tricks. He took the opportunity to rest his head for just a second on the pillow.
'I hate to wake you but my kid needs to go to sleep.'
Hardy looked at his watch. He had crashed for nearly an hour. Glitsky was back in normal clothes, holding out a cup of hot coffee. Hardy took it, sitting up, rubbing a crick in his neck with his free hand. 'I had a dream about you in a clown suit,' he said. 'It was horrible.'
Glitsky shook his head and turned around. Hardy followed him into the kitchen, sat down at the table with his coffee cup. Glitsky poured some boiling water into a cup and started fiddling with the chain at the end of his silver tea strainer. In the back rooms they could hear Flo finishing up with the boys, supervising the washing up, getting
