The 13th Juror

1

For forty-three workdays in a row Dismas Hardy had put on his suit and tie and made a point of coming downtown to the office that he had rented. The office was an interim setup, not a commitment. He wasn't quite ready to go to work for a corporate law firm – not yet, at least, not without first seeing if he could work for himself and make a decent living involving the law.

He was beginning to doubt if he could.

His landlord was David Freeman, another attorney who had hung up a shingle to make a go of it – except Freeman had done it. Sixty years old and crustier than San Francisco's famed sourdough bread, the old man had become a legend in the city. His shingle now was a burnished brass plate – David Freeman amp; Associates – riveted to the front of the Freeman Building, a gracious four-story structure on Sutter Street in the heart of the financial district.

Freeman and Hardy had met as adversaries in a murder case a year before. Before it was over, they had begun grudgingly to admire one another for the traits they shared – a certain relentless doggedness, a rogue streak regarding how the law game was played, a passion for details, a personal need for independence. The admiration had gradually turned into friendship.

Over the next months Freeman had courted Hardy, subtly, counseling him on the perils of life in the big corporate firms. Oh sure, the money was great but there was also the tedium of the paperwork, the burden of having to find forty billable hours week after week after week, the dependence on some partner you'd have to kiss up to (who was probably younger than Hardy's forty-one). You lived in a beehive and every decision you made – from where you indented the paragraphs in your briefs to what you were going to plead for your clients – was subject to some committee's approval. Did Hardy want all that?

Why didn't he give his real dream and instincts a chance? Freeman would let him rent an office upstairs, use the library, borrow his receptionist, pay a nominal rent, at least while he made up his mind.

So forty-three days ago Hardy had come in.

He had been in the courtroom at the Hall of Justice four times since. Three of these cases – two referred to him by David – had been DUIs, driving under the influence, where Hardy's involvement had been, at best, tangential. The clients wound up paying their fines and going home. In the fourth case, one of Hardy's acquaintances had a friend, Evan Peterson, with fifteen unpaid parking tickets. Pulled over for gliding through a stop sign, Peterson had been arrested on the spot on the outstanding warrant. Peterson had called for his friend who'd called Hardy and asked if he'd come down to the hall and walk him through the administrative maze, which Hardy had done.

Life on the cutting edge of the law.

It was the middle of the afternoon. At lunchtime he had gone home to see his wife, Frannie, and their two children, Rebecca and Vincent. After lunch, he had run four miles along the beach, through Golden Gate Park, back along the Avenues to his house on 34^th. Then, giving in to his old Catholic guilt – what if a client was pounding on his door and he wasn't there? – he dressed in his suit again and drove back downtown.

Hardy had his feet up, reading. Looking up from the pages, he took a breath, trying to be philosophical about it, telling himself that today was the forty-third day of the rest of his life.

"Mr. Hardy."

Freeman's receptionist, Phyllis, stood at the door to his office. She was a rigid but, Hardy thought, potentially sweet woman in her mid-fifties, smiling hesitantly. Hardy took his feet off his desk, put down his copy of A Year In Provenance – dreams, dreams – and motioned her in.

"You're not busy? I'm not interrupting you?"

He allowed as how he had a few minutes he could spare.

"I just got a call from a woman named Jennifer Witt. Do you know who she is?"

Hardy's feet were suddenly on the floor. Phyllis stepped further into the office. "She was arrested this morning and wanted to talk to David but he's in court." Freeman was always in court. "And none of the associates is here."

Freeman had a small crew of young lawyers working for him and managed to keep them all busy.

"David want me to go down?" Hardy was already up.

"I buzzed him and he just called me back. They were having a recess. He's afraid Mrs. Witt will go to someone else if we don't get a representative down there in a hurry. He asked if you wouldn't mind…"

"Jennifer Witt?" Hardy repeated.

Phyllis nodded. "I think it's maybe a big one," she said.

Coverage of the crime itself had been all over the newspapers and television. It was the kind of grist that was the lifeblood of local news – Larry Witt, a doctor, and his seven-year-old son Matt had been shot to death in their home. The mother had been out excercising. A neighbor had heard shots and dialed 911. When the mother returned from jogging, a policeman had just arrived at the door and had told her to wait downstairs while he went up. He then discovered the carnage.

In the first couple of weeks news reports had advanced the theory that a professional hit man had, for some unknown reason, been hired to wipe out the Witt family. Mrs. Witt had allegedly seen a suspicious man – an Hispanic or African-American – in the vicinity on the morning in question.

Jennifer Lee Witt, the wife, was hot copy on her own. Even the worst likenesses of her, two columns in the Chronicle or frozen as a teaser for the 6:00 p.m. news, crying or in apparent shock, revealed the photogenic face of a young woman just past innocence. The good shots tended to be so captivating that she almost appeared to be posing.

She was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit like all the other prisoners on the seventh floor. Though her blondish hair was cut short, the sides fell slightly forward, partially obscuring her face. She stared at the floor as she walked.

Through the wire glass window Dismas Hardy watched her approach the visitors' room, then turned back and sat at the table and waited until the guard could open the door and present her.

There was the sound of the key and Hardy stood.

"Mrs. Witt?"

"Mr. Freeman?" Tentatively, she had her hand out.

"No."

Disoriented, she now pulled in her hand and stepped backward. Hardy thought she looked about ready to break down. He spoke quickly. "I work with Mr. Freeman." Not strictly true. "He's stuck in court."

She didn't move. "What do you lawyers do, just pass people around? I called my husband's attorneys and they said they couldn't help me but David Freeman could. He's the best, they said."

"He's very good."

"So I agreed they could call him, fine, and next thing you know her you are. I'd never heard of Mr. Freeman. I've never heard of you. I can't believe I'm arrested. For Larry's murder, and my son Matt's for God's sake. They can't think I killed my little boy." At the mention of the son's name, her lip began to tremble. She turned away, hand to her face. "I am not going to cry."

Hardy nodded to the guard, who stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. It was a small room, five-by-eight, with a pitted desk and three metal chairs taking up most of it. The window faced the office for the women's side of the jail. Two uniformed female guards moved in and out of the picture to their cluttered desks, up, out somewhere, then back in. The women's common tank was just around the corner. When the door had been open, noises exploded every minute or so. Clangs, sobs, voices. Now the door filtered most of the sound.

Hardy waited for Jennifer Witt's breathing to slow down. Finally she turned back to him. He was sitting with one leg over the corner of the table. "You can have Mr. Freeman if you'd like but he won't be available for a while. This is a grand-jury indictment. There is not going to be any bail."

"You mean I have to stay here? God… how long?" She was struggling with the effort to get words out. Suddenly she hung her head and sat down.

Hardy felt like an intruder. He let an eternal minute pass.

She took in a deep sigh as though she'd been holding her breath. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I just didn't want to get in any more trouble and I thought I should have a lawyer."

"Okay." Hardy had come off the desk and went to sit across the table from her.

"Not that it matters."

"It might," Hardy said.

She wasn't going to fight about whether having a lawyer was a good thing or not. Wearily, she shook her head. "I keep thinking something's going to help, something's going to make it better."

Hardy started to say that the right representation could make all the difference. But her gaze was a blank. He wasn't getting through. "Mrs. Witt?"

She wasn't there. Or rather, as far as she was concerned, Hardy wasn't there. She shook her head from side to side. Eventually, a pendulum winding down, she stopped. "No," she said. "I mean Matt. My baby."

Hardy took in a breath himself and held it a moment. He, too, had lost a son. Over the years he had gotten better at keeping it out of the front of his mind. But he would never forget, never even approach forgetting.

Looking at this woman – frail now in the jail's jumpsuit – he found himself feeling a strong connection. It was unguarded and maybe unprofessional, but there'd be no harm in letting the legalities wait a few minutes. God knew, once they began they'd go on long enough. "How long has it been?" he asked.

She pulled at a strand of her hair. "I can't accept it." Her voice was hoarse now, her eyes distant. "Nothing seems real anymore, you know?" She gestured around the tiny airless room. "This place. I feel like I'm sleepwalking in a nightmare… I want to wake up… I want Matt back…" She swallowed, seemed almost to gulp at the air. "God, I don't know. What can you do? What do you care?"

"I do care, Mrs. Witt."

She took that in without a blink, not a sigh, not a glance at him. Inside herself again.

Hardy looked down at his hands, linked on the table between them. Jennifer Witt wasn't worried about her lawyers and their games, about her bail and her baggy yellow jumpsuit. She'd lost her son and nobody was going to bring him back. She was right. Nothing Hardy could do would make that better.

There was a square of light from an outside window over one of the guard's desks. It had moved nearly a foot since Jennifer had been brought in.

She had begun to open up, to listen. The details of Hardy's proxy representation accepted for the moment, they were finally getting down to it. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in jail, did she?

"Not for something I didn't do, Mr. Hardy."

"Okay. But let me ask you, what did you mean when you said you deserved it? Deserved what? "

In a reaction that struck Hardy as pathetic, she ducked away, as if she were going to be hit. "Nothing, anything… this…"

"What?"

"I shouldn't have let it happen. I wasn't there. Maybe if I'd been there…" She shook her head again.

"What did happen? Why do the police think you did this?" Hardy wanted to hear her version. Never imagining he'd have any part in it, he'd followed the news of the crime casually as it appeared in the papers or on television, just another of the many stories of domestic woe that came and went to help sell soap or hamburgers or newspapers.

"I don't know. I don't understand. When they came to arrest me I asked them-"

"And what did they say?"

She shrugged, apparently mystified. "They got to talking about my rights, warned me about anything I said, that I could have a lawyer, that kind of thing."

"But you saw this was coming? You must have-"

She stopped him, interrupting with a dry noise that sounded bitter when it came out. "I haven't thought about anything, don't you understand that? I've been trying just to get through the days."

Hardy knew what she meant. She scraped a fingernail over the tabletop, staring at the yellowing strip of varnish that lifted and flaked away. Again, she swallowed – as though keeping herself from breaking down. But her voice – the tone of it – sounded almost matter-of-fact, if weary. He was sure the coloring was protective. Well, she would have to try to soften it if her case ever went to trial, if she ever testified. She would come across as too cool. Even cold.

But that, if at all, was a long way off.

"I was just getting used to the awfulness of it. I mean, okay, there might have been somebody who was robbing the house or had some problem with Larry – I don't know what. And Larry gets shot. Larry, Jesus… But Matt…?"

She was losing the fight with her tears.

Hardy was with her. "The papers always said Matt must have been an accident, he walked in at a bad time, something like that."

She nodded. "That's what I've been thinking about, Mr. Hardy. If only he hadn't been there, if it had been a school day, if Matt hadn't walked in or said something or whatever it was he did… Or if I had stayed home, could I have protected him?" She bit her lip, hit the table with her small fist. "That's what I've been thinking about, not the goddamn reasons somebody might have thought it was me. And that's all I've been thinking about." A tear hit the table and she wiped at it with her hand. "Goddamn it," she said. "Goddamn it."

Again sounding tough.

"It's okay," Hardy said, meaning the language, the loss of control.

"Nothing's okay."

Hardy sat back in the hard chair. She was right. And he believed her.

Eventually she came up with something.

"I guess maybe they thought it was the insurance, but it wasn't-"

"How much insurance?"

"Well, Larry… he was a doctor, and you know… maybe you don't, but doctors are crazy about insurance. They have to be, with malpractice and all. Anyway, Larry was insured for two-and-a-half-million dollars."

Hardy took that in. "Double for violent or accidental death?"

Jennifer nodded. "Larry wanted to be sure that… if he died he could have the house paid off and give me and Matt security. It didn't seem too much when we got it and Larry could afford it. But now they think I killed" – she paused, fought it again – "killed for the money which is ridiculous. We had enough money. I mean, Larry made six figures."

"But you'd have more if he wasn't in the picture?" Testing. He felt he had to.

"Yes, but…" She reached out to touch his sleeve. "I guess that's the other thing. We were fighting."

She shrugged. Her mouth parted, closed again. "I'd been seeing a psychiatrist, and Larry… anyway, we'd had some fights but we hadn't even gotten to talking about a separation. Neither of us wanted that. We had Matt."

"How long had you been married?"

"Eight years."

Hardy had taken out his pad but mostly he was listening, waiting for a false note. Now he stopped her, realizing they'd been avoiding the main issue. "They didn't arrest you because you had a couple of fights with your husband, Mrs. Witt. There has to be something tying you more directly to the crime or there's no case. They tell you what that might be?"

She was biting down on her lower lip. "It must have been the gun, but the inspector asked me about that when they found it and I told them I didn't know anything about it."

"What about the gun?"

"It was Larry's gun… he was shot with his own gun. But at first they didn't know it was our gun, it wasn't found in the house."

"I don't understand."

"We kept it in the headboard, but they found it like two weeks later. The inspector said somebody found it under a dumpster and it had my fingerprints on it. I told him of course it had my fingerprints on it, I pick it up to dust inside the headboard every couple of weeks."

Hardy let his silence answer.

She shook her head. "I'd been out jogging. We live, lived-" She made a fist and hit the table. "You know what I'm trying to say."

"You're doing fine," he said. "Just tell me what happened."

Jennifer stared at her hand, the balled up fist. She covered it with her other hand and brought it back toward her. "The house is on Twin Peaks, you know, pretty far up. It was morning, maybe nine-thirty or ten o'clock. Larry lets me… I mean I usually run three times a week. When I got home there was a police car in front of the house, and the man was standing by the front door, which I remember thinking was strange because if he had knocked why wouldn't Larry or Matt have opened it, right?"

"Right."

"But he was just standing there, so I opened the gate and asked if I could help him and he said he'd gotten a call about some shots. First some yelling and then some shots."

"Did you have a fight that morning? You and Larry?"

She seemed to duck again and Hardy found himself getting a little impatient with it. But her hand came back to his sleeve, tacitly asking for his indulgence. "How long had you been gone?" he asked.

"When? Oh, an hour. I had to be back within the hour." Seeing Hardy's reaction, she pushed on. "Larry worried if I wasn't home. He knew where I ran and how long it should take, so that… the hour thing… it was like a rule."

"Okay, let's go on. The policeman is waiting at your door."

"So I asked him if he'd knocked and he said yes but there wasn't any answer and I told him there had to be. I mean, I was sure Larry hadn't left. It was the week after Christmas, his first week off since last summer. Anyway, by now I'm starting to get worried. But maybe Larry's in the shower, or Matt is so they can't hear or something, right? But there's still no answer, so I take out my key and we go in and I'm calling 'Larry' and 'Matt' and I start to go upstairs, but this policeman tells me to wait and I go to the couch. Then he's at the top of the stairs saying 'Don't come up, stay right there now.' And I know. God, then I know."

Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. Finally she gave up the effort. She sat with her hands crossed in front of her, tears rolling off her cheeks and puddling on the table.