A Plague of Secrets

32

It wasn’t as though the media had lost interest in the trial, and today’s testimony sent the scribes and pundits scurrying from the courtroom to their telephones and keyboards to report on the newly revealed allegations of Maya’s infidelity, her subsequent rejection, and the added motivation this would certainly have given her to have murdered Dylan Vogler.

All this was, for example, on the evening news, which Hardy and his partners, over drinks, were watching on the huge TV they’d had installed in tasteful cabinetry on the back wall of the Solarium. Although as soon as the broadcast was done, Hardy hit the remote and turned the television off. “Never mind that none of it happened,” he said, “though I hate to quibble.”

Farrell, drinking espresso, was more or less back to being his old self, reconnected with his girlfriend, Sam, getting his hair cut with some regularity. Since it was after business hours, Phyllis had gone home, so Wes was comfortable enough coming downstairs with his dog and wearing his T-shirt, which today read “Eternity: Smoking or Nonsmoking.”

“You live to quibble,” he said to Hardy. “Quibbling gives meaning to your life, as anyone who knows you will surely attest.”

Gina Roake sipped her Oban, neat. “Are you sure?” she asked. “None of it happened?”

“Okay, when they were in college. But not since. Sorry, but I believe Maya.”

“So Jansey just perjured herself?” Gina asked.

Hardy, in trial mode, took a pull at his bottle of water and nodded. “All over the place.”

“Why?”

Wes chuckled. “I love when you ask that, Gina. Like perjury’s a surprise.”

“I’m not surprised so much as disappointed it keeps happening. And what’s in it for Jansey is, I guess, what I’m getting at.”

“I think, first, mainly,” Hardy replied, “is she’s in no-man’s-land and this is her ticket out. Early on, Stier or Schiff or somebody probably told her something like, ‘We’re not interested in how much you knew about Dylan’s dope business, or what you got out of it, or if you’re still in it. We’re interested in Maya killing him, and if you can help us out on that, we’ll just conveniently forget about the rest.’ So she’s heavily motivated to give them something. And what better than a bunch of stuff Dylan supposedly said to her, which no one can ever check or even refute? It’s perfect. And she probably thinks Maya did it anyway, that is if Jansey didn’t do it herself…”

“You think that’s possible?” Gina asked.

Hardy shrugged. “Somebody did. Jansey’s alibi’s squishy at best. She’s got a new boyfriend already, probably had him before. She’s one of the best bets to have gotten her hands on the gun. But, though I hate to say it, Maya still doesn’t look too bad for it either.”

“Attaboy.” Farrell had a strong and, it must be admitted, oft-justified prejudice that the client was always guilty. “Don’t wimp out on that now.”

“Don’t worry. I’m pretty secure, although I admit there’s a small chance I could still be swayed.”

“By what?” Farrell asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. A new fact or two.”

“Well,” Farrell said, “that’s not going to happen, not at this stage.”

“Actually, it might,” Hardy said. “In fact, maybe it already did.” He told them about Lori Bradford, new to Stier’s witness list. “I’ve already sent Wyatt out to talk to her, see what she’s got to say.”

“What’s in the police reports?” Gina asked.

A rueful grimace. “It seems they never got around to writing it up.”

“You shock me,” Farrell said.

“I know,” Hardy agreed. “It’s rocked my worldview. But the fact remains, she’s got to have something to say or Stier wouldn’t have made such a fuss about getting her on the witness list. Even if he’s not going to call her. He’s hoping I’m going to let her slide too.” He smiled at his two partners. “But I’m afraid I’m going to let him down on that. At least until I know what she’s got, or not.”

Seven-thirty P.M., killing time until Craig Chiurco’s expected arrival, Hardy sat at his desk. As was his habit, he was reviewing his files, hoping something among this amorphous mass of kindling might spark. The files now ran to four thick black three-ring notebooks, into which he’d crammed, in some semblance of order, forensics reports, police reports, interview transcripts such as those he’d used with Jansey in the courtroom today, photographs, private notes of Schiff and Bracco-the endless accretion of litigation.

At last, having reviewed his notes on Jansey’s testimony-forty-seven pages’ worth-for the second time, he closed the binder and leaned back into his chair. Though part of him yearned to recall her to the stand and pick apart individual strands of her testimony that he’d left unaddressed that afternoon-which was, after all, most of it-he also realized that he’d succeeded in doing his main job, which was discrediting her so that all of her testimony was suspect. Besides, he couldn’t ignore his gut feeling, his pure instinct, that there was nothing in her perjured story that, were the truth known, would likely change any juror’s opinion about Maya’s guilt. The basic facts remained-whether Maya had had an affair with him or not, Vogler had been blackmailing her, she’d been paying the blackmail (which meant she was guilty of something), she’d gone down to BBW and over to Levon’s.

Why? Why? Why?

Jansey was undoubtedly lying, but lying for all of her own, probably very good, reasons. In the end he believed that nothing she said was going to make any real difference.

Hardy got up, walked first over to the window where he looked down on Sutter Street, then came around to another recessed cabinet on the wall across from his desk, this one holding his dartboard. He opened the doors of the cabinet and slid them back into wherever they went, then grabbed his tungsten beauties from their slots and retreated to the dark cherrywood throw line in his polished white oak hardwood floor.

Twenty. Double twenty. Five.

From the board to the line.

One. Five. Twenty. Then one, one, five. Another four or five lost rounds-terrible, atypical shooting-before he finally rang up twenty, twenty, twenty.

Okay.

Leaving those darts where they’d landed, he lifted himself back onto the desk.

Chiurco, again in his coat and tie, sat in a wing chair across from Hardy in the more informal of the two seating arrangements in the office. He seemed nervous, so Hardy did the initial lifting. “So. Levon Preslee.”

“Okay.”

“Remind me. How did his name come up in the first place?”

“Wyatt had put me on Dylan’s old robbery conviction. He thought there might be some tie-in to whatever he was using to blackmail Maya. Or, even better, we might turn up somebody else who wanted to kill him.”

“So how’d you get to Preslee?”

“I just did a Web search. I found Vogler. That gave me the robbery in 1997. And there’s his codefendant, Levon. So I run him on the Web and find out he’s working for ACT. You’re not going to believe this, but he’s also listed in the phone book. I figure he works in the theater, he’s probably home during the day, so I drove out there. I didn’t even know that Wyatt had run across him, too, until I heard about that from you guys.”

“You didn’t call him first?”

“No, sir. I thought in case he wasn’t right with all this stuff, I might get better answers if I caught him off guard.”

“So then what?”

“Then I get into his lobby, and there’s this woman standing there at the door.”

“How’d you know it was Maya? Had you met her before?”

“No, but she’s our client. I saw her picture in the paper. It was her.”

“As it turns out, you’re right.”

“But anyway, I didn’t know what she was doing there, or what I should do, so I just stood there for a minute.”

“Then what?”

“Well, she told me he wasn’t home, and walked out past me. Mr. Hardy, honest to God, I think she was jiggling the doorknob like she was trying to get in, but I got there a split second too late, and I can’t be absolutely positive. But really, that’s what I think I saw.”

“Well, then, if that’s the best you can do for us, then that’s what we’re going to go with. At least it’s something. If I call you to testify, don’t try to improve it. That’s what you’ve got to say. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Okay, then. So write it up just like that and sign it, because if I decide to call you, I’ll need to give the discovery to the DA.”

“Cool.”

“Okay, then. Have a good night.”

“You too.”

“She’s an old lady,” Wyatt Hunt said, “but I don’t know where they got senile.”

Hardy had remembered to call home and tell Frannie he didn’t know when he’d be in-common enough during trials-but at the same time he’d remembered that he’d also forgotten to eat. So when Hunt had checked in after his meeting with Lori Bradford, saying he was at his own office just around the corner on Grant, Chinatown’s main street, preparing to go out to grab some Chinese, Hardy invited himself along.

Now they sat on high stools, sharing a tiny two-top in the front window, the only two customers, eating shrimp and pork and no sign of souvlaki lo mein à la Lou the Greek’s. A good thing.

“So what’s her story?”

Hardy chewed and listened while Hunt laid it out. For all of its simplicity the implications, Hardy realized, might be enormous-nothing less than a complete restructuring of the theory of the case. More importantly, there was no set of facts he could imagine that would be consistent with Maya having been involved in this two-shot scenario.

“No,” he told Hunt, “think about it. There’s only one shot from the supposed murder weapon, right? Right. So what did she do, shoot once-at what? Dylan? Some kind of warning shot? Unlikely. But the main thing is if there’s that second shot from the one gun, the magazine would have been light two bullets, and it wasn’t, just one. And to get back to that one, she would have had to reload. And that’s just plain absurd.”

“Stier’s going to say it didn’t happen, period. He’ll even use your own argument of no evidence. No second casing, no second slug, no nothing. It didn’t happen. It was a backfire.”

“Yeah. Right. I know. But let’s pretend for a minute.”

“All right. So what do you see?”

“Got to be two guns.”

“Two?”

Hardy, into it, put down his chopsticks. “Whoever came to shoot Dylan had his own gun and knew Dylan carried, so he stuck him up at gunpoint for the other gun first.”

“Why? Why didn’t he just shoot him, bang?”

“He knew him. Maybe first he thought they could talk it out, whatever their differences were. Maybe Dylan tried to stall him somehow.”

“So they had a meeting planned? With Maya too?”

Hardy shook his head. “I don’t have that one figured yet. How would this woman, the one you saw tonight-”

“Lori.”

“Right. How would she be on the stand?”

“Pretty good, I’d say. Sincere and smart. Knew exact times for the shots and remembered the day and date even after all this time. She’s no dummy, Diz.”

“So. What is it? Did Stier just not believe her? I mean, why leave her out up front instead of trying to find some way to explain her story? And, PS, it’s pretty easily explained, as you’ve already done about a minute ago.”

“He might not have known about her.”

“Till when?” Then Hardy pointed a finger, recalling the tense lunchtime gathering at Lou’s with Glitsky and Jackman and the inspectors. “Maybe lunchtime today, huh?”

“The thought crossed my mind, to be honest.”

“This could do it,” Hardy said. “For the verdict, I mean.”

Hunt popped a shrimp. “It might,” he said, then cocked his head with a question. “Is there something else? Besides the verdict?”

“There’s who really did it, Wyatt. If it wasn’t Maya. And if there were two guns…”

The idea set back Hunt in his chair. “Well, now,” he said, and stared out the window into the misty street. “An innocent client? Wes swears that never happens in real life.”

“I know. He’ll be devastated, but he’s been wrong before.”

After a minute, Hunt came forward again, elbows on the table. “But so, on the other thing, I’ve been dying to know what you found out.”

“What other thing?”

“Tess Granat? The hit-and-run? I Googled it after lunch.”

“Thank God for Google,” Hardy said, really wishing that Hunt hadn’t brought this up again. “Everything that’s ever happened, there it is.”

“Except Dylan Vogler. His early life, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that except for the few days right after he got shot, I think our friend Dylan might be the only human being Google hasn’t found and chronicled.”

“You looked?”

“Diz. Google’s half my life, maybe three quarters. It’s where you look first. Which brings us back to Tess Granat, who was very real and very chronicled. So what’d you find out?”

Hardy picked up his tea and blew on it. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? She wouldn’t say, or what? Even if she wasn’t involved, she must have known all about it.”

Hardy could see there wasn’t anything to do but come clean. “It was a privileged conversation, Wyatt. I can’t talk about it.”

Hunt broke a smile. “Diz. Dude. I’m your investigator. I’m covered by the privilege.”

“Well, just because I can tell you doesn’t mean I should. And don’t think it doesn’t break my heart.” Hardy put his cup down, moved on. “But, listen, I don’t know if we’re going to need that anyway. This Lori Bradford, as I said, might do it all by herself. We’ve got to get her subpoenaed.”

“As our witness?”

“Absolutely. And ASAP, I think.”

Hunt took a small notebook from his jacket pocket and made a note. “I’ll have Craig come by your office for it in the morning.”

“That’ll work,” Hardy said. “I’ll make one out first thing and leave it with Phyllis. Give the boy some meaningful labor, work through his problems.”

“Well, I’m hoping he’s over them. Kids, you know. Love.”

“I’ve heard of ’em both,” Hardy said.

“Anyway, if Craig doesn’t show, I will. Don’t worry. And I got Lori on tape tonight, anyhow, for what that’s worth. It’s back at the office, locked up.”

“Excellent.” Hardy put away the last bite of pork and looked at his watch. Quarter to ten. Blowing out heavily, he shook his head. “Sometimes I think I’m getting too old for these things anymore.”

“Trials?”

“Not just trials. Murder trials.”

“I thought they were the fun part, when lawyers felt most alive.”

Hardy gave him a look. “Uh-huh. Only in the sense that when you’re suffering, at least you know you’re alive.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There you go,” Hardy said.

But suddenly, Hardy realized as he was driving home that the confluence of the two new facts he’d only discovered today-the two-shot scenario at the alley behind BBW, and Maya’s involvement with the death of Tess Granat-had, much against his will and inclination, pushed him not just over the line into doubt about his client’s guilt, but into a near certainty that she might in fact be innocent.

The key element regarding Tess Granat, which he and Hunt had hinted about at lunch today, was simple and yet profound. Dylan Vogler had known about the accident and had been blackmailing Maya about it since he’d gotten out of prison. Hardy could believe-and in fact had believed-that his client had all the motive in the world to have killed Dylan. She’d also had means and opportunity.

What had changed in the Tess Granat scenario, which had the rather significant advantage of being true, was that to Hardy’s mind, it completely eliminated Levon Preslee from the picture. He’d already gotten his one favor, his job, from Maya, and maybe even through Dylan. But that had evidently been enough. That job had worked for him, for a new start on a different life. And in any event, that favor, or whatever it was, had been years before. There was no record or even sniff of a record that Maya had seen or spoken to him in eight years before she suddenly went over to his apartment on the day he was killed.

Again-why?

Because Levon had called her?

In just the same way that Dylan had called her?

Or had someone else called her? Either or both times?

Someone who was connected to both Dylan and to Levon in the present, and who might have had dealings with them in the past as well?

Paco.