The Hearing

35

In the minutes before Department 20 convened, the Cadaver's chambers vibrated with anger and accusations. Torrey was on his feet, pacing in front of Hill's desk, the day's issue of the Examiner in his hand as a prop. 'Never in my time as a prosecutor have I ever seen this kind of irresponsible slander. I thought I'd seen defense attorneys pull every outrageous stunt in the books, but this-'

'With friends like Dash Logan, I bet you have,' Hardy interjected mildly. He was standing by the door. Both David Freeman and Sharron Pratt claimed pride of place and sat in the armchairs arranged on the rug in front of Hill. The court reporter – since every word uttered in a capital case is on the record – sat with her machine to the judge's right, tapping away.

Torrey turned on his heel, lashing out. 'I'm not talking about Dash Logan! I'm talking about this libelous-'

'So sue me.' Hardy moved forward, toward the judge. 'Your honor, excuse me, but so what? A reporter wrote a factual story that doesn't bear on this case-'

'A factual story, my ass! There's nothing but-'

'Mr Torrey!' Hill boomed. As with Hardy in chambers the day before, the judge projected a much more powerful persona here in his room than he showed on the bench. Again, he was not yet in his robes, and the business suit added to the aura of power. 'I'm goddamned tired of listening to profanity day in and day out, so we won't have any more of it here, all right.'

'I'm sorry, your honor, but-'

Hill held up a finger, spoke sternly with the volume still up. 'No buts. I'm tired of it. That's the end of it.'

Torrey, no place to go, threw a malevolent glance at Hardy, pulled himself to his full height and stiffly walked over to the one window. Sharron Pratt watched him with sympathy, then shifted in her chair and came back to the judge. Her voice all smooth reason. 'What Gabe's saying has merit, though, your honor. Mr Hardy is named as a source in this column. Surely he could have exercised a little restraint in his dealings with the press while this hearing was going on.'

'How many times do I have to say it?' Hardy leaned against the bookshelves, arms crossed and casual, although it was far from how he felt. 'The article doesn't have anything to do with this case, your honor. I had no idea exactly when Mr Elliot was going to run it. And there isn't a word in it that isn't factual.'

Torrey pounced again. 'That's a lie. I never offered you a deal.'

Hardy was mild. 'The article doesn't say you did.'

'Well, it damn well implies it.' Realizing what he'd done, Torrey faced the judge. 'Sorry, your honor.' Hill waved it off.

'That's how you read it, of course,' Hardy replied. 'If the shoe fits…' A shrug.

'All right, gentlemen, that's enough.' Hill arranged some pens on his blotter. 'Ms Pratt, I've given both you and Mr Torrey more than a reasonable opportunity to vent your displeasure at Mr Hardy. But he's right. This article has nothing to do with the case at hand. And we are here in chambers at his request, not yours. Do you mind if we proceed?' He turned to Hardy. 'And what you have does – presumably – bear here. Is that correct?'

'Yes, your honor, it does.' He leaned over and undid the clasp of his briefcase, then extracted several sheets of paper and held them tantalizingly. 'Last night, Lieutenant Glitsky was reviewing some property of Elaine Wager's that had been brought to my office-'

'My Lord! Your honor!' Torrey exploded again, marching forward. 'What does Mr Hardy think he's doing now? By what right does he gain possession of Ms Wager's property? Lieutenant Glitsky has already been placed on disciplinary leave for interfering in this case and cannot serve any kind of search warrant on her or anybody else. This is completely improper, totally beyond the pale.'

Hardy calmly addressed the judge. 'If Mr Torrey could keep his well-pressed shirt on, your honor. There was no search warrant. We asked Ms Wager's fiance if we could take a look through her condominium. He said yes. Simple as that.'

Torrey grunted with displeasure. 'I don't think so.'

Freeman jumped in. 'Why not, Gabe? Why wouldn't he want to help us find some clue as to who might have killed her?'

'We know who killed her,' Torrey snapped.

'No. I don't think we do,' Freeman replied.

Pratt ignored that exchange and leaned forward. 'I have a question for Mr Hardy. You're the one who brought up Lieutenant Glitsky. Is he working for you on this matter?'

Hardy shrugged. 'As you say, he's on leave. He can do what he wants and it appears he wants to know who killed Elaine Wager. Naturally, anything he finds will be made available to you.'

'We already have a police file on that, Mr Hardy. From Lieutenant Glitsky's own department.'

Hardy shrugged. 'Lieutenant Glitsky thinks the police may have made a mistake and that you've painted yourself into a political corner.' He borrowed one of Freeman's smiles.

'So you contend that Lieutenant Glitsky's involvement here is what? Somehow to protect the police department from its own ineptitudes?'

'I'm sure there's a little of that, yes. But mostly something else.'

'Oh, what's that?'

Next to Pratt, Freeman clucked. She'd just asked another question to which she didn't know the answer, and it was always – always – a bad idea.

Hardy looked at Pratt, at Torrey, finally at the judge. 'Your honor, Lieutenant Glitsky is – was – Elaine Wager's father.'

After several seconds of absolutely dead air, Torrey found his voice. 'My God,' he said, incredulous, 'is there no end to it? It appears that Messrs Hardy and Freeman will go to any lengths of fabrication to muddy the waters here. This has got to be the most ridiculous…' Words failing him, he made some dismissive noise, then turned to the judge for commiseration. 'Your honor, please?'

By now, though, Hill was fully engaged. Whatever else was going on here, this was as unusual a set of facts as he'd ever dealt with. If they were facts. He turned to Hardy, ready to strike at the first sign of nonsense. 'I'm very much hoping you have proof of this, counsel.'

'Of course, your honor.' He approached the desk with his papers. 'As I began to say so long ago now, last night Lieutenant Glitsky was looking over some of Elaine's property that had been brought down to my office. Among the items was a key that he recognized as belonging to a public locker.' He kept talking, loath to give anyone a chance to interrupt him again. 'As it turned out, this locker was located in the bus station, and Lieutenant Glitsky opened it.' He held up a hand, stopping Torrey before he could start. 'He is her next of kin, your honor, and not acting as a police officer. There was no question of his needing a warrant. He was perfectly within his rights. In any event, the locker contained many of Elaine's personal items, but also a handwritten letter addressed to Lieutenant Glitsky-'

Torrey could restrain himself no longer. 'Oh, please…'

But Hardy could see that Hill was still with him, and continued, '-a copy of which I have with me. The original is in a safe place and can be made available to the court at short notice. Several references in this letter bear strongly upon this case, your honor, and I wanted to bring them to the court's attention at the earliest possible moment.'

'To what end, Mr Hardy? If this is evidence, present it at the hearing in your case in chief. If it's not, I don't want to hear about it, here or anywhere else.'

'Your honor.' Freeman came slowly up from his chair. 'With respect, I've seen the document and believe it raises issues that address whether or not the District Attorney's office should recuse itself, or you should recuse it, entirely from this case.'

Pratt, under her breath: 'You've got to be joking.'

'Not at all, Sharron.' Freeman turned to her. 'We believe the AG is much more objectively situated to prosecute this case, your honor. There is evidence of personal animus here that-'

'I've heard enough talking,' Hill interrupted. 'We've got a hearing in the real world out there and I'd like to get back to it someday. Mr Hardy, let's see what you've got. You make a motion if you've got one, and I'll make a ruling.'

'Of course I knew the judge wouldn't force them to recuse. The fact that Torrey used to have a personal relationship with her sometime in the past isn't enough, even if we could prove it without hearsay. As his honor astutely noted.' Freeman was in high spirits, trying to bring Cole up to date at the defense table while they waited for Judge Hill to enter the courtroom again after the long adjournment to chambers. 'Besides, we need a written motion, notice to the AG, and a whole lot more than we've got.' David displayed a slight edge of disappointment that Cole had felt he had to ask why they'd requested the DA's dismissal from the case. But it wasn't enough to dull his pleasure in the result. 'And there was no way Pratt was taking herself out of this.'

'OK. And yet you asked them both to do it anyway because…?'

Saddened by the thickness of his slow student, Freeman went into teacher mode. 'Because we needed the judge to see that letter, Cole. We needed him to know as a fact that Glitsky was Elaine's father – that's why him helping your defense, bucking his own police force, is so significant. We also needed him to know that our friend Mr Torrey slept with her. But mostly it goes to his character, which we've been trying to get out for reasons that Mr Hardy might be better able to explain. Because say what you will, Torrey outranked Elaine and in our culture, that smells enough like sexual harassment to make Hill wonder. Also, just between you and me, it didn't hurt for Pratt to hear about his little indiscretion, either.

'Basically,' Freeman's smile was terrible to behold, 'we're just screwing with them, Cole. Screwing with them because they screwed with us. We're showing them this case isn't going to be a political victory lap ending with you on death row.'

And indeed, across the courtroom, the two prosecutors were studiously not talking, sitting as far apart as they could possibly get as they arranged their water glasses and other important items on their table.

'But the most important reason, by far, really wasn't any of that. Since we really don't have a shred of evidence that somebody else in fact killed Elaine, the next best thing is to prove that Elaine's life was at least troubled and complicated. She had man trouble, work trouble, law trouble. Personal issues. She might have been killed by an unlucky random event like a mugger, that's true, but now it's definitely in his mind, and very strongly, that she wasn't your average Jane Doe walking back to her office on a Sunday night. With so much going wrong in her life, so much obvious angst that she was actually leaving the country on the next day, what would you think?'

'I'd think it's a pretty big coincidence that she got killed that night.'

'Right. It makes the odds a lot better that one of these people had a reason to kill her.' He shrugged. 'To tell the truth though, Cole, I don't want to bring you down, but none of it proves anything really. Certainly, it doesn't prove that you didn't do it and that's the whole point here. But it's got to give the judge some pause at least, and that in turn will maybe give us a little more stage to dance on and that, my friend, that's the name of the game.'

Glitsky the cop had his own jobs this morning.

His vision had shifted since he'd read his daughter's letter, and suddenly Hardy's theory of the previous night played to all the unrelated variables. Elaine had discovered something. Someone she trusted had recently made her lose all faith in the law. She had once slept with Gabe Torrey. She was in the middle of an investigation involving Dash Logan, who hung with Visser, who'd been with Cullen Alsop.

This was no longer a universe of possibilities. They were no longer searching the city for an anonymous trigger man. Glitsky could concentrate his efforts on limited targets. Hardy's theory might yet prove unfounded, but before he would abandon it now, Abe was going to test its limits.

Neither comfortable nor welcome at the Hall of Justice, he set himself up in the Solarium. Everyone on the team, with the addition of Jan Falk, had checked in by seven thirty. He'd passed around the letter, told the story. By eight, Amy Wu was off with Gina Roake to interview the various witnesses who'd come forward in the Abby Oberlin will contest. If Gene Visser had threatened any of these people…

Curtis Rhodin had a good friend in the Attorney General's office. Hardy and Freeman thought that Curtis could talk to his pal and bring him up to speed with the confluence of all these events. Elaine had been looking at Logan's files when she'd been killed. The AG's office didn't have even a remotely good relationship with the DA anyway. Based on Torrey's relationship to the murder victim, it might be disposed to believe that Logan's files held evidence of a DA cover-up of some kind that had somehow resulted in a murder. It was all nebulous and unfounded, but it was also provocative and a capital murder, and these traits tended to get a judge's attention. They were hoping for a search warrant on Logan's office – and this time not a warrant directed at a few folks who happened to be Logan's clients, but at Logan's whole practice. At Logan himself. This was a long shot since they had no active case – but at the very least, it might shake up the principals and force one of them to do something rash.

Jon Ingalls was going to find both Visser and Logan and serve subpoenas on them so that they would be in the courtroom if Hardy got to where he needed to call them. Then, accompanied by Treya and maybe Glitsky after he finished some phone calls, Ingalls was going to check with more restaurants and hotels. Glitsky was convinced that somebody must have seen Elaine that night. He didn't believe she'd been walking alone through a deserted downtown at 1 a.m. She'd been walking with her killer.

But Glitsky, Hardy and Freeman were all in accord that their best shot, not only of finding any evidence, but of introducing this entire line of inquiry at the hearing, lay in the Cullen Alsop/Ridley Banks/Gene Visser/Jan Falk connection, whatever that might be. Falk was going over to court with Hardy and Freeman, a critical link should they need him. He hated Torrey and the whole DA apparatus and was on their side, an invaluable police witness who was hostile to the prosecution.

But hating wasn't going to be enough, and Glitsky was on the phone to Paul Thieu now, pitching his idea. Copies of the lab and crime scene reports on Cullen Alsop that Thieu had managed to get were in front of him. 'Right,' he was saying. 'I' know that. But the lab wasn't looking for any specific print, were they?'

'Abe.' Thieu kept his tone reasonable. He wanted to help because he liked and respected Glitsky, but he had to keep an extremely low profile or his own position would be threatened. And going to the lab on a murder case to which he was not assigned and asking for a rush re-analysis of their data wasn't low profile. It would get around the building. 'What am I supposed to ask them? It was a room in a flophouse. I read the report, too. They didn't clean the place too often. There were dozens of good prints. The maids, past tenants, you name it. They're not going to run every print in the room.'

'But on the bag itself? Paul, I'm reading it right in front of me. There was another print that wasn't Cullen's. One.'

Thieu's frustration came through the wires. 'It wasn't computer quality, Abe, and it didn't match anybody who was around or lived nearby when the police arrived. No match.'

'I know. But if a print was clear enough, it could be run against the database.' This was the state computer file of people with criminal records, against which the lab compared crime scene fingerprints. It was a useful database that could produce matches quickly and cheaply. But you needed a nice, clean print. The print on the bag was partial and blurry. Enough for a skilled and trained human to compare, but not for the computer.'

'You're telling me you want to do a hand search with this? It'll take a month and-'

'No. A single comparison. Visser. That's all.'

This wasn't that difficult a request. Visser was a private investigator and a former policeman. His fingerprints would be on file. Thieu was sure he could find a set of them somewhere, possibly even in the homicide detail itself, and run them to the lab for comparison within a half hour, although how long they'd take to get to it…

'Don't ask,' Glitsky commanded. Tell.'

In the courtroom, Hardy was taking all the time he could with the death of Cullen Alsop. On the stand was Saul Westbrook, the young public defender.

'So Mr Alsop was in jail for six days before he informed you that he'd struck a deal with the District Attorney with regard to this information about the murder weapon. Is that right?'

'Yes.'

'And during those six days, did you have an opportunity to meet with him?'

Westbrook looked into his lap and consulted some notes he'd brought with him. 'I met with him twice, once here in the Hall of Justice, and then again the next day, in the afternoon, at the jail.'

'And were these long discussions?'

'The first one, here at court, wasn't too long. We talked about his plea, his parole situation, logistics.'

'And how about the second one, at the jail? Was that longer?'

Again, the young man consulted his notes. 'Yes. We talked for a little under an hour.'

'And during that discussion, did the name of the defendant in this case, Cole Burgess, come up?'

'Yes it did. The two men were acquaintances. Cullen heard he'd been arrested for murder and wanted to know if I knew anything about it.'

'And what did you tell him?'

'Only what I'd read. That it didn't look too good for him.'

'Did he mention a gun at all?'

'No.'

'And yet, Mr Westbrook, just four days later, you met Mr Alsop again after his plea bargaining arrangement with the District Attorney's office. At that time, did you mention this oversight to him? That he hadn't mentioned the gun to you before?'

'Yes I did.'

'And what was his response?'

'He said that he thought it might be incriminating if he told me he'd ever had the gun. He didn't want to get involved with a murder charge.'

'But obviously, sometime in the intervening four days, he decided that it would be all right to disclose this information after all, is that true?'

'Well, apparently that was what he decided.'

'But he never discussed this legal matter with you, his own attorney?'

'No, he did not.'

Hardy walked back to his table and got himself a sip of water. This wasn't going anywhere. He'd been hoping something would occur to Westbrook on the stand that would shake things up a little, but he'd gotten to here and the well was dry. Hardy caught Freeman's eye and after only the slightest hesitation, David nodded. Hardy turned back to the bench. 'Your honor, my associate has a question or two for this witness if it please the court.'

Hill didn't like it, but then again, he didn't like anything. 'Mr Hardy, you know the rules – one witness, one lawyer. And this is your witness.'

'Yes, your honor. And if you wish I'll have Mr Freeman write his questions out for me to ask Mr Westbrook, but in the interests of time…'

Exasperation was Hill's middle name. 'Once, Mr Hardy,' he said wearily. 'Just once, only once, as in never again once. Mr Freeman, you may proceed.'

Freeman stood at the defense table. He spoke with an exaggerated calm. 'Mr Westbrook. You've just testified that Mr Alsop never discussed this rather significant legal matter with you, is that right?'

'Yes, sir.'

And suddenly Freeman's head came up and he exploded. 'WELL WHY NOT?' He came around the table, charging. 'Did you ever ask your client who he talked to about this urgent matter? Weren't you concerned that he just decided on his own to subject himself to the possibility of being charged with murder?'

'Objection!' The attack had come out of nowhere and caught Torrey flat-footed, so it took him a moment to respond, and now he stammered out, 'Hearsay and speculation.'

But Freeman was on his horse, galloping. His voice still boomed. 'Everything about Cullen Alsop's deal with the District Attorney, his release from jail and his death is supremely relevant.'

The courtroom hung in silence. Freeman had his hands on his hips facing the judge. He was completely out of line and totally confident, and Hill bought it. 'Objection overruled,' he said.

Freeman bobbed his head curtly, thanked the judge, then turned and pointed to the naive, sweet, stunned Westbrook. 'You met your client after he made his deal, did you not?'

'Yes, sir, I did.'

Freeman moved up close to the witness box, and pressed his attack. 'Why didn't you ask him about it?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't? I think you do, sir.' The words flew out staccato fashion. 'You knew that this deal stunk, didn't you? That it would come back and bite him. Didn't you?'

Flustered, unsure of exactly what the question meant, Westbrook stammered. 'Well…'

Torrey was up, yelling, 'Objection!'

As though he'd proved an important point, Freeman spread his arms in triumph. 'Yes,' he said. 'And now it has. No further questions.'

'I don't know what you did just then, David,' Hardy said, 'but it sure was fun to watch.' The court was in a recess after Westbrook stepped down. They hadn't left their table, although Cole had gone back with the bailiff to use the bathroom, so they were alone. Freeman didn't show any sign of glee over his performance. He lowered his voice. 'We need a fact here pretty soon or we're dead. If I were Hill, capital case or not, I would have called it already and our boy's going to trial.'

Hardy turned around and surveyed the courtroom behind him. No Glitsky or Treya. No Logan, either. He thought he'd recognize Visser if he saw him, and didn't. The musketeers were out on their errands. He drew little circles on the legal pad in front of him. He thought he knew so much about this case, but for the life of him he couldn't figure a way to get his vital information in front of Hill. 'We've got to start talking about these tenuous connections and hope the judge stays interested.'

Freeman shook his head, disagreeing. 'Nope. We need facts,' he repeated. 'Now.'

Hardy stopped scribbling. 'Is Ridley Banks part of this yet, his connection to Cullen? Both of them either dead or missing. Those are facts.'

Unconvinced, the old man clucked. 'Slim pickin's,' he said.

But until Glitsky or someone else hit some pay dirt, it was all they had.

Jan Falk was obviously a surprise both to the prosecution and to the judge. After he'd been sworn in and had described his position as an undercover narcotics officer, Hill stopped Hardy and beckoned him up before the bench. 'Mr Hardy, as far as I can tell, your last witness brought nothing of any substance to this party. Now I have been granting you extraordinary latitude up until now, and will continue to do so because of the gravity of this case, but I'm not going to tolerate any more fishing expeditions. If you've got something to get out of this witness, it had better become damn clear what it is in a short period of time, or I'll dismiss him. Am I making myself clear?'

Hardy swallowed, although his mouth was sand. 'Yes, your honor.'

Treya opened the top left-hand drawer in her old cubicle at Rand and Jackman. It seemed so long since she'd worked there. Her face fell. 'I know, I know, I know I didn't lose it. I'm just so tired, my brain's not working.'

Glitsky put a hand on her shoulder. 'Didn't you get much sleep?'

She turned in the chair and laid a gentle palm against his face. 'Stop.'

He kissed her, then straightened up and sat against the edge of her desk. 'All right,' he said. 'Let's go back to where you were when she gave it to you.'

'I was in her office.'

'Where we've been looking at files all this time?'

'Yes.' Elaine got up abruptly. Glitsky followed her across the hall into the now familiar room, where she went and stood by a low file cabinet. 'This was where I was. She was carrying her leather shoulder briefcase and came in and…' She closed her eyes, trying to bring it back.

Glitsky, content to watch the subtle changes in her face, let her be.

'I was holding – that's it – I had a stack of files I was holding and she threw the briefcase on the desk and took out a manila folder and handed it to me while we were talking. Her meeting. She had to run.'

'So it was with your other files?'

She nodded. 'But I was going home too. It was almost dinner time.' She took a breath, closed her eyes. 'And first thing next morning I heard about her, and then everything else…'

'You never filed it.'

They crossed back to her cubicle, and she sat again, thinking. Suddenly she spun the seat and slid the chair across the small space to a horizontal bank of metal file cabinets. Opening the bottom tray, she sighed with relief. 'Here we go.' Reaching down, she pulled out a loose bundle of folders, perhaps twenty of them. She opened the top folder, sighed again, and handed it to Abe. 'This is the one after she got back from Logan's. It looks like a business ledger, a check register,' she said.

Glitsky was flipping through the xeroxed pages, twenty or thirty of them. At one of the pages, he stopped, a puzzled look on his face. 'It's missing some entries here,' he said, flipping to the following page. 'A couple more here. What do you think that's all about?'

She took the pages and studied them. 'I'm not sure. Voided checks, maybe,' she said. 'What do you think?'

'I think it's funny,' Abe said. 'A little bit funny.'