The Hearing

5

In the women's room at Rand and Jackman Law Associates on Montgomery Street, Treya Ghent tried to fix her eyes, but she knew it was a losing fight. Between the horrible, senseless murder of her dear friend and boss Elaine Wager and the unrelenting demands of her wonderful but high-maintenance fourteen-year-old daughter Raney, she had averaged less than three hours of sleep for the past four nights.

She was at work this morning because she didn't want to use up any more sick days frivolously. She needed to keep a bank so that she would be available if her daughter absolutely needed to have her stay home to care for a real illness, or to counsel her during a real crisis. And Treya didn't kid herself. Raney was a teenager – she was desperately going to need her mother from time to time in the next couple of years, just as Treya had needed her own mom. And thank God Raney – like Treya had been – was the kind of child who would ask.

Certainly she wasn't going to waste any of those precious sick days on herself- she hadn't missed a day of work for anything related to herself in six years. They paid her to be here and contribute and she wasn't going to let her employers down. They counted on her.

But the eyes were going to betray the fact that this morning at least she was a functional zombie, and she hated to have anyone, much less Clarence Jackman, the firm's managing partner, see that. When she'd gotten the summons that Jackman wanted to see her in his office, she'd been sobbing quietly in her little cubicle.

And why not? How could somebody have killed Elaine? It had wrenched her heart when she'd first learned of it, and the pain hadn't let up much since. Elaine had been a friend and confidante; they often joked that they were sisters separated at birth. She and her boss had been the same age – thirty-three. Both were smart, neither of them entirely black or white. Intuitively, they both understood that the sometimes vast differences between their social standing, their jobs and their prospects were merely the products of background, education and – that greatest of all variables – luck.

She threw a last splash of cold water over her eyes, blinked hard, and patted them dry with a paper towel. She'd kept Mr Jackman waiting long enough, too long really. Staring at herself in the mirror for one last second, she willed a tiny spark of life into her tired eyes, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin. 'OK, girl,' she whispered firmly to herself. 'No whining.'

Sixty-three-year-old Clarence Jackman was a power player. The company he'd founded with Aaron Rand thirty years ago was the most successful majority-black law firm west of Chicago. Though Rand and Jackman represented perhaps fifteen per cent of the Bay Area's minority-owned businesses, the rest of their receivables came from a mix of premier entities without any reference to ethnicities. The firm's client roster included banks, hotels, construction firms, HMOs, several Silicon Valley companies, dozens of sports and entertainment celebrities, and hundreds of other lower profile but high-income individuals and corporations. Imposing nearly to the point of intimidation, Jackman had been a star fullback at USC in the sixties. He carried nearly two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle on his six-foot, three-inch frame. He favored Italian suits, double-breasted in browns and greens, white shirts, conservative ties. Intensely black-hued, with an oversized head capped now in tightly trimmed gray knots, just two months ago he'd had a middle-aged applicant for the firm's CFO position walk out of the job interview before a word had been spoken while Jackman looked him over to see if he could take it.

Understandably, Jackman had not risen to his current eminence by having a soft heart. The law business was competitive enough if you weren't black. If you were, it could be startlingly brutal. Rand and Jackman had known this at the start. They'd felt that they had to build their firm on the assumption that if things ever went wrong with a client or a case, they would never under any circumstances get the benefit of the doubt. They could afford no mistakes. They had to be the best. Not just the best black – the best, period.

And so, perhaps ironically, the firm was much more a meritocracy than most of its competitors. The younger associates worked endless hours like – well – slaves, so that they could become partners and keep working even harder. Mental or physical weakness, excuses, moral lapses, failure – all were grounds for termination.

Jackman, unhampered by any laws mandating sensitivity to race issues, ran what he thought was a good, old-fashioned firm. When he and Aaron had first started out, they'd set the tone immediately, getting rid of deadwood on sight. And soon enough the word got out and the stars came calling from the good law schools and from other firms – the diligent, the brilliant, the ambitious. Workers all. Here his attorneys could accomplish great things, could kick some real ass and make real money without anyone wondering whether they'd been hired to meet some quota or kept on because they couldn't be fired.

Now, saddened on many levels by the murder of one of his true stars, Elaine Wager, Clarence Jackman was going to have to deliver one of the tough messages to one of the good people. He had seated himself behind his desk – always an effective tool for reinforcing emotional distance – and was shuffling papers as the door opened. He kept at it for a few more seconds, then looked up. 'Ah, Ms Ghent. Thanks for coming up.'

'You're welcome.' She was standing in a classic military at-ease position by the empire chair that he'd placed in front of his desk.

'Please. Have a seat.'

Nodding briskly, all business, she thanked him and took the chair, sitting ramrod straight and managing to do it without appearing stiff or nervous. She looked at him expectantly, then surprised him by speaking up first. 'What can I do for you, sir?'

In spite of the message he was about to deliver, Jackman found himself almost enjoying the moment. This was a woman with presence. A slight puffiness around her eyes in no way detracted from her appearance. If she was wearing any make-up, it was very subtle – she sat about ten feet from Jackman and he saw no sign of any, not even lipstick. Her face was handsome – Jackman decided that if she made it up it would be close to beautiful, which was probably why she didn't bother. It had an angular, almost exotic cast – some hint of Asian bloodline in the racial mix. Conservatively dressed in a honey-colored silk blouse and knee-length skirt, she still managed to project a powerful physicality. There was no sign of any extra weight on her, but she wasn't petite. She came across, more than anything, as strong.

These impressions coalesced in the seconds it took for Jackman to frame his response. His own expression was grave, his body language sympathetic as he came forward, his arms on his desk. 'Well, first,' he began in his deep, soothing voice, 'I wanted to see how you're holding up in the wake of… Elaine.'

'I've tried to do most of my crying at home.' He admired the self-deprecating way she phrased it, meeting his eye. 'I haven't always been successful.'

'It's a tragedy,' Jackman declared. 'A terrible tragedy.'

'Yes, sir, it is.' She inhaled deeply and waited. Jackman might be both sympathetic and sincere, but he hadn't called her up here to share condolences.

It didn't take any time at all for the managing partner to get to it. Jackman pulled himself up straight in his chair and cleared his throat. 'On another note, a bit unpleasant, I'm afraid, I wanted to make sure that your situation over the next few weeks isn't any cause for awkwardness.' He paused. 'I understand that you worked for Elaine pretty much exclusively.'

Treya nodded in acknowledgment. Jackman, of course, wasn't guessing. He knew that Treya and Elaine had evolved a working relationship that was unique in the firm. All of the other paralegals 'floated' between loosely-defined teams of three to five attorneys, taking assignments from any of them. Treya, on the other hand, got all of her hours assisting Elaine. Though it was an unusual arrangement, Jackman had allowed it to continue because it had worked. Elaine had been a workhorse with a case and business load of incredible diversity, and Treya was organized and efficient enough to keep up with her.

But now, the arrangement loomed as a liability. Jackman drove home the point. 'I assume that over the next six weeks you'll be helping out with the distribution of Elaine's caseload and that should keep your utilization high.'

'I was thinking the same thing.'

'Good. Beyond that, I'd like to recommend, if I may, that during that transition you also begin taking assignments from some of the other attorneys if they are offered to you.'

'Yes, sir. I was hoping to do just that, too.'

'Splendid.' Jackman didn't have to issue the warning any more clearly. Left unspoken was the hard truth that if Treya could not find enough work with one of the teams to keep her fully utilized, Jackman wouldn't be able to justify keeping her on. 'You've been with the firm quite a while now, haven't you?'

'Almost seven years. I came with Elaine when she moved over from the city.'

Jackman had his fingers intertwined on the desk. He was rolling his thumbs ponderously. Something was going on in his brain, though his face didn't show it. 'Well,' he said with resignation, 'your good work hasn't gone unnoticed.' He paused again, offered an avuncular smile. 'Let's call it a soft six weeks, shall we? If you need a little extra time, please come up and see me.'

'I will,' she said.

The discussion was over, though they both sat unmoving for a long moment. Then, as though on cue, they both nodded, and Treya stood. She said 'Thank you' without inflection and headed for the door.

As she walked down the hallway back to her cubicle, the knife kept turning in her stomach. Whatever sympathetic spin Jackman might put on it, she knew the reality behind his words – she had just been politely, regretfully, fired if she couldn't find another attorney in the firm who'd want to use her.

Six soft weeks.

She knew that Jackman meant he might give her seven weeks, maybe as many as nine if he let her continue to work through her two weeks' notice.

My God, she was thinking, what am I going to do?

Six weeks!

She knew that there was little chance that she would get anywhere near full utilization in that amount of time. First, her fellow paralegals were under the same pressure as she was to keep working. Non-attorney staff at Rand and Jackman would 'bank' their overtime so that they could apply the hours to their utilization during slack periods -though technically illegal in California, the firm winked at the common practice. Too many weeks of low utilization -the exact number was unknown but low – you were gone. And everyone at the firm knew it.

Beyond that Treya was aware that her special relationship with Elaine had been a source of jealousy among her peers. She had done nothing purposeful to make this happen. She was unfailingly polite and friendly. She bent over backwards to tell the truth. But there was no denying that she enjoyed a slightly exalted status that some of the other paralegals resented. A few lawyers might have harbored even more negative thoughts – Treya was a mere paralegal who on some level must have thought she was equal to someone who'd passed the bar. A ridiculous notion if ever there was one.

No one was going to throw her a bone, and several people she could mention might even be glad to see her laid low.

So unless a miracle occurred, and she had long since stopped counting on them, she was going to be unemployed before springtime. She couldn't let that happen, not to herself and not to Raney. She had to whip her resume into shape, get out there at lunchtime and start interviewing.

If only Elaine… oh, poor Elaine…

Blinking back the unexpected new flash flood of tears, Treya hurried the last few steps to her cubicle. She would be damned if she'd let anyone see her crying. If she could just make it back to the safety of her workstation, she could get herself back under control.

These sudden attacks of crying had to stop. Before the beginning of this week, Treya couldn't remember the last time she had cried. It must have been just after Tom's death, when Raney was two. Twelve years, so long ago.

Tom.

She couldn't let herself think about him, not now, about what they could have had if… It would all be so different now if it hadn't been for the stupid red light, the stupid truck…

Her awful, awful luck…

The floodgates threatened to open. Nearly bursting with the effort to hold back tears, she finally turned the corner into her cubicle.

A hard-looking man was leaning against her desk, his arms crossed, impatience etched on his face. He had a hatchet nose and a scar through his lips. Treya Ghent?' he said brusquely, straightening up and holding out a badge. 'I'm Lieutenant Glitsky, homicide. I'd like to talk to you about Elaine Wager.'

She collapsed into tears.

'I thought you'd already arrested somebody.'

Nearly ten minutes had passed, during which time Glitsky waited at the workstation, allowing Treya to go to the bathroom to regain her composure. Now she was back with him, her emotions clamped down. If anything, she exuded a kind of cold fury he'd seen before, which he interpreted as self-loathing and anger that she'd lost control.

She sat at her desk and he'd pulled a chair around from someplace and straddled it backwards. So they were at about eye level in the small cubicle. 'We do have someone in custody, yes.'

'So what does that have to do with me? Or with anything else that might have happened here?'

More hostility. This woman, spooked by the police visit, shattered by a recent murder, didn't want to talk about it. It should just all go away.

'You're right. It may have nothing to do with anybody or anything here,' he replied in his professional tone.

'What could there be? It was some bum, wasn't it? She didn't know him.'

Glitsky's lips tightened. 'We're trying to make sure of that.'

'Didn't I read that he confessed?'

'You may have.' The leak on that development hadn't made Glitsky's day, and his face showed it.

'Well? That ought to settle that, don't you think?'

Glitsky crossed his arms on the back of the chair and purposefully looked away. Bringing his eyes back to her, he waited yet another moment. Finally, when he thought she was about to begin squirming, he spoke quietly. 'It's my understanding that you and Elaine were close.'

The question deflected some of the anger. Treya bit at her lower lip, then nodded. 'Yes.'

'Then it would seem to me that you'd want to cooperate in any way you could with the investigation into her death.'

'I do, but-'

Glitsky cut her off. 'Sometimes people confess to things they didn't do.'

'Did that happen here?'

'No.' The lieutenant drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'But even with a righteous confession, we still need to collect all the evidence we can.'

'Why?'

' Because when the killer gets a lawyer, which he will, he'll change his mind and plead not guilty.'

'After he's confessed?'

'It happens. In fact, it always happens. What has he got to lose?'

Treya sat back in her chair, digesting this. 'Then what about the confession?'

A grim smile. 'Oh, the argument will be that it was invalid. It was coerced somehow. Or the police beat it out of him. Or his memory was impaired. Maybe it was a dream, or he just mixed up what had happened.'

'Mixed up that he killed somebody?'

'Yeah. You'd think you'd remember something like that, but you'd be surprised how many people don't after saying they did.'

Abe and Treya's eyes locked in some kind of shared understanding across the small space between them. Not for long, though. Both of them, realizing it, looked away. 'So,' Treya said, 'you need evidence. Of what?'

This was difficult for Glitsky to explain, for the truth was that he was grasping at straws. It was bad enough that Elaine was dead, but to admit that she'd died in such a senseless attack was almost too much for Abe to bear. She couldn't have lived her interesting and committed life, done all she'd done, touched so many people, only to have it all wiped away in a completely random moment as though she were no more important than a bug.

Although, of course, that's exactly what did happen. But with his own daughter?

He couldn't fit it anywhere, couldn't live with it. At least until he knew more – about Elaine, about her killer, the intersection where some meaning could be attached to it.

It was important. It was stupid and made no sense. He had to do it.

Again, he met the woman's eyes. 'If, for example, Elaine worked at all with the Free Clinic or Legal Aid, if she had any professional contact with junkies…'

'Then she might have met with the man?'

Glitsky made a face. 'The point is, if Elaine volunteered with any of these people…'

Treya was shaking her head. 'She did volunteer, do some pro bono work, but not on the streets. She considered those people lost for the most part. If they were going to get back, it was going to have to be on their own. They weren't her issue.'

'So what was?'

'Students. People who were trying to do something with their lives. So she taught moot court at Hastings, for example. She didn't have much patience for professional victims – she always wanted to yell at people to not let themselves get in that habit.' Treya's eyes briefly flickered bright with a rogue memory. 'One of her great expressions was that there were only two kinds of people – victims and warriors.'

'I like that,' Abe said. 'But maybe Cole Burgess hung out with some students.'

'Law students? I don't think so.' Another shake of the head. 'I don't remember ever hearing the name.'

'All right.'

Treya bit at her lower lip again and Glitsky found himself watching her. The swollen, nearly pouting mouth.

'When was the last time you saw her?'

The question startled her. 'Why do you want to know that? You can't think I was…' She was staring, doe-eyed, in disbelief.

'I don't think anything.' Glitsky hadn't meant to spook her. He softened his voice. 'I'm trying to start somewhere, get a time line of her last hours. It's really routine.'

'Isn't that what the police always say when they suspect somebody? That it's routine?'

Glitsky's mouth turned up a fraction of an inch, another humanizing touch. 'Actually, they do, you're right. But I'm not doing that now.'

She sighed heavily. 'Sunday afternoon. Here.' At Glitsky's expression, she felt the need to explain and pressed on. 'I'm often in on weekends, and she was doing some special master work.'

Glitsky nodded in understanding. This wasn't unusual. A special master was an attorney appointed by the court to help serve a search warrant on material that might be privileged – doctor's records, lawyer's files, psychiatrist's tapes – and deliver whatever was not privileged in the requested records to the court. If the person who had the records was uncooperative, the master would do the actual searching and separate out what lawfully could be seized from the private records of other clients and patients, whose right to privacy was therefore protected from the police.

'And Elaine came back here when she was done with that?'

'Yes.'

'What time was that?'

Treya's face showed her concentration. 'I'm not sure, exactly. It was just turning dark, so maybe five thirty. I was finishing up.'

'And what did she come back here for?'

'Just to leave me some files. Then she was going out for a meeting and then home.'

Glitsky was leaning forward now. This was an unexpected bonus. Treya had talked to Elaine on the last day of her life, within hours in fact of her death. 'Did she say who she was meeting, or where?'

'No. I've tried to remember for myself. But she never said. I'm sure. She just said she had a meeting and she'd see me tomorrow. She was always going to meetings.'

'And she didn't seem upset? Did she act as if anything was bothering her?'

Treya hesitated, met Glitsky's eyes again. 'It's so hard to say now, knowing what happened. Everything has a different feel. You wonder if you saw something or not.'

'But you think you did?'

She shook her head. 'I'm not sure. If she'd come in on Monday, smiling and happy, I never would have given it a thought. I know I didn't think about it when I got home Sunday night. I just thought she was over-booked, like she gets. Got.' The tense shift bothered her, and she stopped.

'It's OK.' Glitsky had to fight the urge to reach over and touch her, offer her some comfort. Instead, he sat back, no threat and no push, and let her find the thread again. 'It's OK,' he repeated.

'I know, I know.' Her look was grateful, and she held it on him for an instant. Then she nodded and sighed. 'Now I'd say that yes, something might have been bothering her. She seemed a little… detached.' Treya hastened to protect her boss. 'But she'd get that way sometimes. She always had a lot on her mind, on her plate.'

Suddenly Treya's expressive face took on a different look – a sudden impatience with all this, an almost angry frustration.

'What are you thinking?' Glitsky asked.

'I'm thinking she didn't know her killer. This is stupid. Her murder wasn't connected to anything. Nobody she knew could have wanted to kill her.' She raised her eyes, a challenge with some barb in it that he didn't quite understand. 'You had to know her.'

'I did,' Glitsky replied. 'I thought she was fantastic.'

'She never mentioned you as a friend.' Suddenly the barb in her voice was pronounced, unmistakable – all of her protective instincts on display from out of nowhere.

'Well, no, not exactly a friend. I knew her when she worked at the Hall.'

'I knew that. I knew who you were. I was there then too, as a clerk.'

Glitsky had no response to this, although Treya seemed in some way to hold it against him. He attempted to get beyond it. 'In any event, that's another reason why I'd like to know what she might have been working on. I've got kind of a personal interest as well.'

But if he thought this admission would ally him with Treya, he was mistaken. 'So you've kept up on her career since she'd left the Hall?'

He answered guardedly. 'A little bit, yes.'

'In a kind of a hands-off way.'

Glitsky raised his shoulders awkwardly. 'I guess you'd say I admired her from a distance.' He wondered how suddenly everything had gone so wrong with this interview. 'I'm sorry if I've offended you.'

'Not at all,' she said. 'You're only doing your job. But Elaine is very personal to me. I know who her friends were and it's a little insulting to pretend you were close to her too, so maybe I'd tell you more.'

'That wasn't what I was doing.'

'Really?' she asked with ill-concealed disbelief. 'Then I'm sorry I got that impression. Perhaps I overreacted.' All business now, Treya cut off further inquiry as she stood, signaling – although it was not her place to do so – that the interview was over. 'I'm sure the firm wouldn't object if you got a warrant for her files or to go over her client list. You might find something there that you're looking for.'

Glitsky rarely felt either inept or out of his depth, but he now felt both, and acutely. Perhaps it was a sense of foolishness because he found her so physically attractive and at such an inappropriate time. Whatever it was, he was standing along with her, not willing to risk falling any further in her esteem.

He hadn't gotten anywhere here and, in fact, he'd had little confidence that any real evidence was going to come from this quarter. But it had been the only place he could think of to begin, to connect with someone who had known her.

'Ms Ghent, please.' His shoulders were sagging. He was a pathetic figure – he knew it. Regal, she stopped at the entrance to the cubicle, turned back to face him, challenging, her arms crossed, her color now high in her cheeks.

'I want you to understand that I'm not looking for specific evidence. I'm trying to get a sense of her work, her life, if maybe there was some reason…' Too close to revealing the non-professional truth about why he'd come here, he stood mute and helpless.

Treya Ghent gave every appearance of considering his words, but when she finally spoke, there was no sign of cooperation. 'I really don't think so, but if anything occurs to me, Lieutenant, I'll let you know.'

This time, it was a dismissal.