The 13th Juror

32

I had not choice. He would have killed me, would have hunted me down and killed me. How long do you have to take that before you can do something?

That's what they all say, right? That's what you're thinking? Well, if that's what they all say, maybe there's something to it.

The first year or so we both had jobs, we bought a house, we were going to be like our folks. He wasn't doing much coke yet. If he hit me one time in a fight, he'd be all sweet afterward and we'd make up.

I went home to my mom after the first bad time. You know what she told me? She told me she hoped he stopped but she'd better not tell Dad because he'd get all upset and what could he really do anyway? Except maybe go on over to Ned's and get himself in trouble. Either him or Ned, and either way it would be trouble so I'd be better off in the long run if I could just work it out with Ned and not involve my dad.

That's what wives did, Mom said. They worked it out and tried not to complain, and maybe if I was just a little nicer, maybe Ned wouldn't get so mad. If I wouldn't get so bitchy, you know.

So I did try but the thing was, I couldn't get any control over Ned when he was drinking and doing coke and all that other. He was just plain mean, and even worse after he lost the job with Bill Graham – he was like one of the chief roadies for a couple of years – and then they let him go – guess why? – and he had to go back to little clubs and just got meaner all the time. And of course in those music scenes there was all that coke.

Anyway, I had this girlfriend, Tara, down in LA, and I kind of ran away to stay with her. I made the mistake of calling Ned and telling him I was gone, I wasn't coming back but he shouldn't worry about me. Isn't that great? I didn't want him to worry about me. I just wanted it to be over.

But he didn't want it over. It was a mistake to have called. I never dreamed he'd come after me. Stupid. I know now. He came down and was so weirdly calm. He wasn't stoned or drunk. I think that's what scared me the most.

We let him in. I never thought he'd… well, he just walked up to Tara and didn't say a word and punched her in the stomach as hard as he could. Ned was a big man, you know, six feet, two hundred pounds. Then he stood over her and said he'd kill her if she ever hid me again or helped me or called the police.

And me, too. He'd kill me, too, if I called the police. I believed he would, too. I had no doubt at all. He grabbed me by the hair and the arm and we got to the car and drove back all night and he wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. Then we got home, he hit me because the car was dirty and he made me wash it.

It sounds strange, but during all this time we were trying to live normal lives. I mean, I was working with Harlan, I was his receptionist, thinking someday to be a hygienist – oh, you didn't know that? Yes, that's how that started. I didn't plan it, to be unfaithful. That wasn't who I thought I was. But everything with Ned was falling apart and Harlan was very nice to me. Gentle. So it was easy to keep the relationship hidden. It wasn't like I had to sneak out at night. I mean, we'd just close the doors at lunch.

And then, after we were together, he saw the… he saw what Ned had done and said I should report it, call the cops, do something. I kept telling him Ned hadn't done it. They were accidents, that's all.

Well, you saw Harlan. He thinks you do everything you're supposed to do and things somehow will work out. So finally, I think I'm in love with him – Harlan. I know he's fat now, but in those days he was just big. I've always had this weakness for big men.

Now I decide to wait until Ned isn't drunk or stoned and try to talk to him, tell him I'm unhappy and can't take him beating me anymore and I'm going to leave. I don't mention Harlan, of course. Thank God. I tell him there's no other man, nobody else. It's not that. It's just between him and me that we're not working out.

I kept thinking that if I don't run away, if I'm reasonable, his reaction is going to be different.

Which it was. He sits there in his chair for about an hour and then – real calm again, which should have been a warning – he says he's going to go out for a while and think about things.

By midnight he's not home and I finally fall asleep.

I wake up screaming, but there's a sock or something in my mouth and I can't breathe or make any noise and there's this awful awful pain down… down in me… and Ned's on top of me, holding me down.

The next day I can't move. My insides feel broken, ripped up, I still can't breathe, there's blood on the sheets and my hands are tied to the bed. I see that my closet is open and half the clothes are pulled out, cut into shreds, thrown around the room. On the floor I see the knife – it's a butter knife – he's used the dull end, poking it in me.

I wake up again and he's there, untying me, he's straight again. Helps me get in the bath. I'm scared every second now. He's being calm and says he can make things disappear without a trace. I'll find out it's true, he says.

So I take a sick day – I couldn't have gone in anyway – and then it's the weekend and one of the nights Ned has scored some coke and he wants me to get high with him. We'll have fun, he says. It'll be like old times. What old times? I never used drugs.

Well, I can't do it. I'm so scared, I'm still hurting bad. Ned starts to get upset with me again – I've got to stop that. I can't take it any more, not right them, so I try to be nice, do what he wants, and he wants to have sex.

Can you believe this? I'm pleading with him, saying I hurt real bad, but he says so what, I'm his wife, get on your back. And I do. And I'm not sure at the moment I'm going to die.

But I don't. That was the worst, not dying. You know how many times I wished I had just died then? How many other times? I mean, truly die, not wake up, just be gone from all this? And believe me, once you feel that – like you really want to die – it's not too far to want someone else to be dead. Why does it have to be me?

I wake up sometime early and Ned is lying next to me, not moving. For a long time I watch him, thinking, hoping, he might be dead. I pinch him in the leg and there's no reaction, then he snores or snorts or something. But the idea stays, the germ of it.

A couple of days go by and I'm starting to heal and things look different, the way they do. No one really wants to believe there's no hope, do they? Even though, really, there isn't.

I'm back at work, I'm putting Harlan off with some excuse and suddenly I realize I haven't seen Boots – Boots was my cat – I haven't seen her in days. Sitting at the front desk at Harlan's, then, all of a sudden, I just know, the only way out, what I have to do.

Don't kid yourself, there wasn't any escape. Ned can make things disappear without a trace. He was proving it. I was next.

I arrange it so he thinks we're going to get high. I'm sorry I've been so difficult. I'll be a fun person the way I used to be…

This time it's easy. I give him the shot, take a long hot shower, drive out to the beach and bury the stuff, go to my parents' house for breakfast – just visiting, which I still did back then. When I get back home I call the police, tell them my husband's had an accident.

John Lescroart

Hardy 04 – 13th Juror, The

The tiny airless interview room smelled of sweat and wet wool.

Freeman sat, legs crossed, in the chair that he had pushed back against the wall in the corner away from the door.

Hardy's mouth was dry, his back stiff. He had not moved a muscle in fifteen minutes. He found that he believed every word that she had said, and was struggling to keep his perspective. "You could probably have pled that as a Murder Two," he said, "which would take it out of capital."

Freeman said, "We got a dismissal. That takes it out of capital, too."

"I don't care what the law says." Jennifer brushed her hair away from her face. "I knew him. There was no other way."

"You should have tried calling the police. They could have done something." Hardy, arguing against himself now, realized how lame it sounded.

Jennifer allowed a one-note laugh. "No, they couldn't. Don't you understand? This had been going on for two years and they couldn't have done a damn thing even if they wanted to, even if they believed me."

"Why wouldn't they believe you?"

Because that's not how it really works. You should know better. You think the law's here to protect potential victims? Wrong. What the law does is punish people who've already broken the law. Until somebody's already hurt or killed, they've got no business-"

"But you were hurt. And Ned did break the law, he would have been punished-"

"Jesus, in your dreams." Jennifer looked to Freeman. "Is this guy for real? Does he live in the real world?"

"I live in the real world, Jennifer, and you can't-"

"Oh? Well listen, here's the real world. If I'm lucky, Ned gets no bail – impossible right there – and then gets a year, if that, for a first offense. Meanwhile I've got maybe a year to move, change my name and my life. Then, guess what? – Ned gets out of jail and comes and gets me, wherever I am, and I disappear just like Boots. My cat. Do I have to explain this? Do I have to draw you a picture. I'm the one whose life is ruined, if I stay alive."

Hardy leaned back in the chair and tried to stretch the crick from his neck. In the guards' room through the glass a woman had just come in for the night shift and was shaking out her raincoat, hanging it on a peg by the door, saying something to somebody outside of Hardy's vision.

"I don't know, from my perspective, I'd say Matt's life is pretty ruined. Even if Larry was beating you-"

"I've told you, Larry wasn't beating me," she said, glaring at him.

Hardy slammed the table with the flat of his palm. "Oh, cut the shit, Jennifer!" He was standing now. The chair tipped, crashed to the floor behind him. "I know for certain that Larry was beating you. I know the doctors you went to see and I know the lies you told them."

He picked up his briefcase and grabbed for the chair to set it upright. Freeman still hadn't said a word.

"I did not kill my son-"

"Good for you."

"I didn't kill Larry, either."

"Or if you did, I'm sure you had a good reason."

"I didn't, goddamn it, I didn't kill them. I have no idea who did."

Suddenly she was in his face, coming at him, arms flailing. He tried to back away but in the constrained place there was nowhere to go. The back of his knees hit the chair behind him and he lost his balance, falling over.

Somehow Freeman had gotten between them and maneuvered Jennifer back down into her seat, giving the high sign that everything was all right to the guards through the window. Hardy was pulling himself up, and Freeman, who was aware that he stood blocking the exit, said that in his experience every trial worth its salt produced at least one good display of honest emotion. "I think we can all get through this," he said. "It's to all our advantage."

John Lescroart

Hardy 04 – 13th Juror, The

It had been a tense five minutes, but they were all seated again, clustered around the table. Hardy had agreed to talk, to listen. Now he stared at his partner. "You don't care what, in fact, happened, David. You've made that point a hundred times."

"No, that's not strictly true. What I said was that, legally, it doesn't matter what the facts are if they can't be proven. Personally, though, I care. I care a great deal. It's why I'm a lawyer. Which is telling you more than you deserve to know. I could ruin my reputation."

Hardy turned to Jennifer. "Here's a quick-quiz question. Did Larry beat you or not?"

"Yes." Finally.

"A lot?"

She nodded. "But if I admitted that, especially with what happened with Ned, no jury would believe I didn't kill Larry, too."

This was the issue. Jennifer had killed Ned because he beat her. Larry, too, had beaten her, and she was contending, insisting, that she had not killed him.

"I had to lie," she said. "Once it came out that they both hit me…"

"What's to make me think you're not lying now?"

"I'm not lying now. I'm telling you."

"All you're doing is telling me another version. Whatever flies this week."

"Diz." Freeman put a hand on his sleeve. "Please. Look at it strategically. She's free on Ned. We're halfway there. She certainly didn't kill her own boy. Accident or not. She wasn't any part of that. I think you and I both believe that."

"I don't know what I believe anymore, David."

Jennifer put her hand on his other arm. "I did what I did with Ned almost ten years ago." She was talking quietly, almost whispering, not trying to look at him to persuade with her eyes, which he took as a good sign. "If I had a choice, as you say I did, well then at least you should believe that I didn't think I had a choice. I was scared for my own life and I didn't know what to do – I thought there was no other way out."

"With Larry, it hadn't gotten to that yet. Maybe it would have, I don't know. I wanted to think not. It's why I started seeing Ken Lightner, trying to make the family work. I'm screwed up, I admit, I bring things on myself. Even Ken tells me I'm too much a victim. I was trying to change… And then somebody… somebody kills Larry, and my son, and out of the blue I'm arrested for it. And suddenly I'm supposed to trust my whole life to two men who I didn't even know six months ago? No way. Men haven't been so good to me, you might have noticed, so I made my own plan and stuck with it."

Hardy crossed his arms. "I did notice one other thing, though. You managed to tell David here the truth."

Freeman cut in. "I sandbagged her, Diz. That's how I work. It came out."

"And you didn't tell me."

"That was my decision, not hers. Okay, it was a mistake on my part, bad judgment. I should have included you, but I didn't think you'd need to know until the penalty phase, if then."

"Need to know, huh?" It had become dark outside through the guardroom window. Friday night. The weekend lay ahead, with time to decide what he was going to do. Hardy let out a long breath. He turned to Jennifer. "If you have any other secrets, Jennifer, now would be a good time to talk about them."

But the veil had come down again, her passion spent. "Just find out who killed my baby, would you? Can you do that?"