The 13th Juror

21

Hardy was feeling better about his office – the dart board was in place, moved in and nailed up over the weekend. It was early afternoon and he was getting back into the groove, throwing some "20 Down," trying to hit all the numbers on the board in descending order, ending with a bull's-eye. In his glory days Hardy had often done it in under ten rounds – thirty darts – and his all-time record was twenty-four. Now he'd already thrown eight rounds and was hung up on "11," which was normally his easiest shot, his "in and out" number in a wide range of money games.

Freeman entered without knocking. Hardy missed again.

"This is not billable," Freeman said.

"I'm thinking," Hardy replied. "Thinking counts."

The older man closed the door, then walked over and sat on a corner of Hardy's desk. "I'm thinking, too. I'm thinking that we get a trial in two months so Dean Powell can get free ink in time to get elected, and I can't object because my client wont' let me."

Hardy pegged another dart, finally hitting the "11." He held a last dart and threw it randomly – or thought it was random until it smacked into the middle of the "10." He was getting it back.

"And then," Freeman was continuing, "I come in to check on the progress made by my hand-chosen ace investigator and he is throwing darts. Am I the only one that feels some pressure here? I think that's a fair question. Two months for a capital case. It's unheard of."

It's been five months since the original arraignment."

"So what? Who knew she was going to get found in Costa Rica? Does Thomasino think we were preparing for trial all that time? Whose side are you on, anyway?"

"As always, I'm on the side of justice and truth, but it's not going to trial in two months. It's just beginning jury selection."

Freeman, of course, knew this, but Jennifer's trial was going to begin more quickly than he wanted it to and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Hands jammed into his pockets, he stood near the window and studied buildings across the street. "I need a lever. Christ, Diz, I need something."

"Just this morning didn't I hear you tell some reporters that this thing was such a turkey it wouldn't even make it to trial?"

"You could write a book on what I've told reporters. You'd be surprised."

"I doubt it."

"I've had it work. Some rookie Assistant DA reads in the papers that I've got this blockbuster secret evidence that'll blow the trial wide open and next day I'm down at the Hall pleading a manslaughter on what should have been a righteous Murder Two. But in this case…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "In this case, we've got Jennifer and Jennifer's weapon and Jennifer's presumed motives. We're very much going to need somebody else to point at."

"The famous other dude." Hardy came around his desk and flipped through some pages of his yellow pad. "That's all I've been doing, David. The problem is, there hasn't been what you'd call a run on them. In the meantime, maybe it'll ease your mind to know I'm not just shooting darts to pass the time. I have an appointment on another matter. Actually the appointment was for about fifteen minutes ago, but Mr. Frankl is late."

At the window, Freeman half-turned. "Who's Frankl?"

"My DUI. Wants to go to trial."

"The guy with the 1.6?" In California, a blood alcohol level of. 08 got you convicted for drunk driving. If that fact was undisputed you were guilty.

Hardy nodded. "He says he's thought up a defense."

"To a DUI? I'd like to hear it. It could make us rich."

The telephone buzzed on Hardy's desk. "That's him now. I'll keep you informed."

Freeman was at the door, going out, when Hardy picked it up. But it wasn't Mr. Frankl. It was Sam Bronkman from the Mission Hills Clinic and he had just remembered something personal regarding Larry Witt that Hardy might be interested in.

Late in the day Hardy parked in the long shadow of the Mission Hills Clinic. The evening breeze whipped at his jacket as he got out of his car and prepared to cross the picket lines again. Same people, same building, same wind.

There was no one in the darkened waiting room at OB-GYN, and the blinds behind the window at the reception area had been pulled. Hardy felt all his muscles go tight, almost turned to walk out, then made himself knock on the glass. He was here. Might as well make sure.

There was a slit in the blinds and they blinked open. Sam smiled, waved, pointed at the door to the inner offices and closed the blinds down again. Hardy crossed the room.

The door cracked and Sam's head appeared, a turtle poking out of its shell. Grabbing Hardy's arm, he pulled him through. "All clear," he said. "You wouldn't believe. We close at four-thirty. People come here at five, expect to waltz right in. Keep the desk open and you're here all night."

Sam, chattering, led the way to an employee's lounge – plastic yellow chairs, white metal tables, vending machines, a microwave. It was an inside room with no windows, and it was empty. They sat at one of the tables.

"I should have remembered when you were here last time, especially when you mentioned the personal stuff, but" – Sam snapped his fingers in the air – "the brain, sometimes it goes on hold. One minute you're there, the next" – the hands described a mushroom cloud – "woosh, nobody home."

"That's all right, Sam. I really appreciate you calling, whenever you remembered, and you did remember something?"

Sam nodded elaborately. "Over the weekend. Did you read that article about that senator who wouldn't let his daughter have the abortion? Well, anyway… I was at Jason's – he's my friend, Jason – and I was reading it and suddenly, it was like, I don't know, a vision or something, just" – again the hands fluttered – "whammo, there it was."

Hardy smiled. "There what was, Sam?"

"Dr. Witt. The same thing."

"Dr. Witt had a daughter?"

"No. No way." Sam reached over and slapped Hardy's arm. "No, listen, the personal thing, the connection, is this – there was this girl, Melissa Roman, whose parents told her she couldn't have an abortion, forbade it, you know." He rolled his eyes. "Smart, right? These people, I'll never understand…" A deep sigh. "Anyway, she tried one on herself – an abortion – and it didn't turn out so good."

"What happened?"

"What else?" The hands again, including the universe. "She winds up here. Dr. Witt's the pro with female plumbing and he's a volunteer. He calls for an ambulance right away. But before it even gets here she's dead."

"The parents blamed Witt?"

Sam nodded. "You got to. They're not going to blame themselves, right? So they need somebody and Melissa's already dead – kind of unfair to take it out on her, wouldn't you say? – so they pick Witt. They decide he's somehow responsible for the abortion that killed their daughter."

The logic of that couldn't stand much scrutiny, but Hardy supposed it rang true for the bereaved Romans. Hardy was leaning forward now. "How'd they pick on him? When did all this happen?"

Sam nodded, pleased with himself. "I looked that up today. It was right before Thanksgiving of last year."

"Which was a month before Witt was killed."

"Right."

"What did they do? Threaten to sue him? What?"

Sam's palms were up again, laying out the whole truth. "I don't know everything. I know Roman came down twice – we had to get security on the scene the second time. Then, right after that, Dr. Witt said he might just quit volunteering, it was too much. Somebody broke his car windows and he was sure it was Roman."

"Did he report that?"

"I don't know."

This was something Hardy could legitimately bring up to Terrell, or even Glitsky. Here was a crime that happened to a murder victim within a month of his death.

If Larry had reported it.

"The other stuff," Sam was saying, "if Roman was suing him or the clinic, I don't know. I haven't heard about that, but I'll tell you something…"

Hardy waited.

"How about this? If you're planning to kill somebody, you don't also sue him, do you? Maybe that's why I never heard of anything. Otherwise, why wouldn't he just sue the clinic?"

Interesting question.

His house was empty when he got home and he felt the emptiness trying to settle on him, heavy and cold as the city's familiar fog.

He had lived the better part of ten years alone in this house before he had gotten together with Frannie, and the associations weren't all good – he missed almost nothing from that lost decade. The house, back then, had been smaller (without the nursery), darker (without the skylights), colder. Just plain colder somehow.

He would get hoem from bartending or a ball game and go to his office in the back, which was now Rebecca's pastel bedroom. He'd take a bottled Guinness from the refrigerator and sit at his desk in the light from his green banker's lamp and read, or shoot darts, or clean his (now unused) pipes, or whittle something. He'd light a coal fire in the grate.

Everything he did he had done all by himself, even when he was with other people. He hadn't thought he was lonely. He wasn't lonely, he was just alone. And, he now knew, there was a difference.

Frannie hadn't mentioned going out and he'd talked to her after he'd seen Jennifer in the morning. It was possible she'd gone to the market, although they'd just spent a domestic weekend, including a trip to the grocery store on Saturday.

He didn't know where they were and, against any kind of sense, it worried him. On the drive home he'd been thinking about Jennifer and Larry and the Romans and the medical background sheet Lightner had – intentionally? – left for him to pick up.

All those thoughts were now gone. He looked down and out the window in Vincent's room, wondering if, even with the July evening chill, they might be in the backyard. They weren't. He fed the tropical fish in his bedroom, looked at his watch, started to call the Shamrock and decided not, checked the time again. He didn't know. There was no note.

He wasn't going to sit around waiting, letting the old emptiness fill him up. It was something he'd put behind him, and its sudden reappearance spooked him. Were the kids all right? Had Frannie run out quickly to the emergency room, not even having time to jot something on a pad? He walked from the kitchen to the front door down the hallway and back through the inside rooms, telling himself he wasn't looking for drops of blood on the floor.

In his bedroom he shucked his suit and put on shorts, a sweatshirt, tennis shoes. He had a four-mile circle he ran from his house, out to the beach, across Golden Gate Park, along Lincoln back to the Shamrock at 9^th Avenue, then home. It took him about forty-five minutes.

He looked at his watch. He'd be home by seven. He wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table under a salt shaker. At least Frannie would know where he'd gone.

In the kitchen, Frannie greeted him with a kiss. She was stirring her white clam spaghetti sauce and humming. Rebecca was pouring water from a watering can, getting almost half of it into the different-sized pans she'd arranged on the floor. Vincent was in his baby seat next to her. The windows were steamed with the boiling water. The sun was still up. In his house there was nothing empty or spooky or sinister.

Hardy went in to shower, berating himself for his paranoia, wondering how he got to be so old.