cars in the drive.
Hardy parked down a half-block. He put the folded-up subpoena form in his shirt pocket.
Going up the walkway, heart pounding, he wondered how Frannie would feel about this segment of his unwind time.
He walked a few more steps onto the lawn. Through the lighted window he saw Nancy moving about in the kitchen. On the porch, he stopped to listen. There was no conversation. If Phil was home he would bull his way through, or try.
He rang the doorbell.
The overhead light flicked on. She stood inside the screen. 'Hello,' she said. She looked around behind him, up and down the street.
'Phil isn't home?'
Shaking her head no, she opened the screen door. 'He's on a call.' Again, Hardy was struck by how young she looked – Jennifer had gotten her good bones from her mother. He thought those bones had played a big role in getting their men – perhaps it wasn't the blessing it was cracked up to be.
'I wanted to come and ask you if you'd like to talk about your daughter. On the witness stand.'
'Talk about Jennifer? What do you want me to say?'
'I want you to talk about how much you love her.'
Nancy swallowed, her eyes wide. 'I do love her,' she said.
'I know you do. I want you to tell that to the jury.'
'Why?'
'Because it might help save her life. Because it's something they can see, something human.'
Her eyes became hooded, haunted. Jennifer got that way often enough, too; Hardy thought it was whenever either of them thought they were about to do something that would get them hit.
He pressed the point. 'I need you, Nancy. Jennifer needs you. The DA is pulling people out of the woodwork and they're painting a very bad picture of Jennifer.'
'I know, I watch TV.' She scanned the street again, then stood silent volunteering nothing.
'What is it?'
'It's him.' Hardy had met women before who referred to the current man in their lives, always, without preamble, as 'him.' And it always chilled him.
'Phil would want you to save his daughter's life, Nancy. Don't tell me he wouldn't want that.'
'This whole thing…' she began, then stopped again. 'He hates it. He hates that everybody knows it's his daughter on trial.'
'He's worried about how that affects him?'
'He's not just worried, he's furious. He said he wishes we never had her. He won't even let me talk about it, about her.'
'Nancy, how's he going to feel if they execute her? How are you going to feel?'
The plea in her eyes was clear – don't ask me such a question. She loved her daughter and was scared to death of her husband. If he had to bet on it, she hoped more than anything at this moment that he would just go away.
But he didn't drive out there just to go away. He took the paper from his breast pocket. 'This is a subpoena for you to appear, Nancy. I need you to be there. I need somebody to say that Jennifer loved her son, that she herself has something to offer, that she is at least worth saving. She the jury that somebody cares.'
Nancy held the paper close to her.
'Nancy, how old are you?' Hardy asked suddenly.
She tried to smile but it came out broken. 'Forty-eight,' she said.
'It's not too late,' he said.
She clutched the subpoena form against her, in a fist held tight against her stomach. She sighed, almost shuddering. Any trace of even a broken down smile was gone. 'Yes, I'm afraid it is,' she said.
In the middle of the night, the telephone rang. It was Freeman. 'You heard yet? Anybody call you?'
Hardy blinked tying to focus the clock. Four-thirty.
'No, David, nobody's called me.'
'Well, they called me. Jennifer's mother just tried to kill her old man.'
45
They were both at Shriner's Hospital – Phil under the knife in emergency surgery, Nancy in a guarded, private room. Hardy was down there before six, before the sun was up, before any other lawyers or the media.
'She's going to be all right. Him I don't know.'
The inspector, Sean Manion, had had a long night, but he worked out of Park Station; he had known Hardy from the Shamrock and they got along. They were standing in the hallway outside Nancy's room now. She had been sedated and was not going to be giving interviews to anybody for a while.
'What happened?'
Manion was strung tight. He was shorter than Hardy by half a head, with a pock-marked face, a reconstructed cleft pallet, a monk's tonsured hairline. Perpetually hunched, hands in his pockets, chewing gum, he talked in a rapid staccato. 'Guy beat her once too often, I guess. She grabbed a knife and stuck him. Four times, I think. No, five.'
'How bad?'
'Three on the arms. Standard slash, but a couple of belly whacks. Could have knicked his heart; they weren't sure last I checked. Guy lost a ton of blood. She called us, you know. After.'
'You gonna charge her?'
Manion chomped his gum. 'I don't know. Ask the DA. I doubt it. With what?'
'Attempted murder?'
Manion snorted. 'Nah, shit, this was self-defense. You ought to see her. Son of a bitch ought to die. If he lives, anybody gets charged with anything, ought to be him.'
'Sean, did you call David Freeman on this?'
'Who?'
'Never mind. Maybe she did before you got there.' Hardy motioned back toward the room. 'She's out, though, huh?'
Manion nodded. 'Dreamland. Check her around noon.'
'Can't,' Hardy said. 'I'm in trial.'
'Lucky you.' The inspector spread his hands. 'Well, there you go. She'll still be here tonight. She's not going anywhere, I'll tell you that. Not today.'
'That bad?'
Manion bobbed his head. 'Pretty bad. But hey, she's alive. It could be worse.'
Hardy knew he had caused it. If he hadn't gotten the idea in the first place, if he hadn't gone down with the subpoena, if he hadn't tried to talk Nancy into testifying… Then she and Phil had gotten into it and now they were both in the hospital.
From his lack of a night's sleep, he should have been exhausted, but when he entered the small interrogation room on the seventh floor at a little after eight, the adrenalin rush hadn't let up. He felt like he'd had a half-gallon of espresso.
Jennifer had not yet dressed for court. She was escorted in wearing her red jumpsuit. 'So what's today's
