The Motive

15

Hardy awoke with a start, sweat pouring off him.

Not that it was warm. In fact, if anything, it was unusually cold, not only inside his bedroom but out in the terrible night. It was the third week of January, and the second full day of the Arctic storm that was pounding at the bedroom windows, shaking them with a low rumble.

He threw the covers off and sat up, trying at once to remember and to banish the dream that had shaken him from his sleep. Reflexively, he checked the clock on his nightstand. 2:53. The trial would start in under seven hours. He had to get back to sleep. He couldn't show up on the first day wiped out with fatigue. There would be the gauntlet of reporters, first of all. Not only the local channels, but stringers for every station and cable outlet in the country had been parked in the back lot of the Hall of Justice for each of the motion hearings-to quash the warrant, to exclude Catherine's statements to the cops, admissibility, 995 for dismissal-they'd been there for all of them. And they'd be there this morning, too. The judge had forbidden any communication with them, but they could be relentless and he had to be sharp, get back to sleep. Now.

The dream had been sexual, that much he remembered. He dreamed almost every night now, and they were all sexual, all mouths and legs, switched identities, all frustration and guilt and deception-his subconscious working overtime to process the conflicts and unacknowledged tensions to which he would give no assent in his daily life.

He wasn't in love with Catherine Hanover, but there was no point in trying to deny the attraction. He also ached at her plight, at where her life had gotten to. The physical chemistry between them had always been palpable. As teenagers, to their mutual pride, confusion, horror and shame, they'd gone from untried virgins to lovers without any commitment or discussion on their third date. The care they both took to avoid even the most innocuous and casual physical contact over the past months had been such a constant companion that it felt like a living thing in the visiting room with them.

She'd been in jail for nearly eight months for a crime that with all his heart he wanted to believe she'd not committed. In that time, the weak, circumstantial case against her-which nonetheless had been strong enough to persuade the grand jury to indict her for special circumstances double murder-had only grown stronger. It hadn't helped, either, that with all the fanfare, Chris Rosen had succumbed to his ambition and was now a widely rumored, though unannounced, candidate for district attorney in the next citywide election.

Catherine's own mother-in-law, Theresa, had become the witness from hell. Dan Cuneo had interviewed her for the better part of a week in the first flush of the indictment last May, and she'd done all she could to braid the rope that would hang her daughter-in-law. According to Theresa, Catherine had threatened to kill Paul Hanover and Missy D'Amiens not just once or twice. It had been a running theme. The threats were often given in front of her children and other members of the extended family.

Catherine's position was that this was just the way she talked when the family was gathered together-she tended to be histrionic, to exaggerate for effect, and this Hardy certainly knew to be true from his own experience. From the beginning, she knew she was unwelcome in the Hanover family. Catherine felt that the only path to even modest acceptance within the family was to be entertaining, a personality. Without a pedigree, a past, a bloodline, it was all she had.

So yes, she'd often joked that they all really needed to get together and kill Missy before the wedding, though of course she'd never meant it. They'd all laughed. They couldn't have believed she ever meant it. (Beth thought the repetition ominous enough, though; all the kids considered it unimportant, a joke.)

Her husband piled on as well. In his statements to the police, Will denied that he'd ever had an affair with anyone. He had time cards from his secretary, Karyn Harris, the "other woman" Catherine had suspected, for the days when he'd been fishing, and the records showed that she'd been at the office every one of those four days. Moreover, the captain of the Kingfisher, Morgan Bayley, swore that he'd been out on the ocean the whole time with Will, but that their radio had been on the blink. He had the radio repair records to prove it. They'd also been out of the cell-phone reception zone and hadn't been able to call anyone on shore.

Will told Hardy that his wife had always been jealous. In the past couple of years, she'd become dangerously unstable in a number of ways-accusing him of adultery being just one of them. She'd also, he said, conceived either an affection for his father or a mania for his money. There was a strong and in some ways almost uncanny resemblance between Catherine and Missy D'Amiens- remarked on by anyone who knew them both-and Catherine seemed to believe that if Missy could snag her very wealthy and charismatic father-in-law, she could and should have done it herself. She imagined that Paul had propositioned her when she'd first been married. She should have gone with his father when she had the chance. At the end, Will said that Paul had told him that she'd even come on to him, and he'd had to rebuff her. Finally, she constantly berated Will for his business "failures," his inability to adequately provide for his children's education, for his general lack of acumen and drive-this when he made what he called "strong six figures per year."

Hardy subpoenaed his tax records-his top grossing year was 1999, when he had earned $123,000. Last year he'd earned $91,000.

Catherine's response to all of these claims? A curt dismissal, a refusal to even discuss it. "He's delusional."

For the record, the kids more or less sided with her. But she was in jail and their dad was home full-time, paying her legal bills (out of his four-million-dollar inheritance), peddling the line that he was on Catherine's side, he wanted to help her, he felt sorry for her. She was sick, but a good woman. He would still love her and take her back if she ever got "better." He never, not once, came to visit her in jail.

Then there was Hanover's partner Bob Townshend, who got a call from Paul on the afternoon of the very day that he was killed. Catherine had just come to visit him and he'd felt threatened. She was near hysteria over the imagined infidelity of her husband. She freaked when Paul had told her that he was going to change his will in Missy's favor sooner rather than later. Townshend told Hardy that Paul had made an appointment for the following week to do just that.

Hardy had fought the good fight to keep much of this testimony out of the trial, but Judge Marian Braun had taken it under submission and Hardy couldn't shake the suspicion that she would let some, if not most, of it in. Braun herself was one of the worst possible choices of trial judge from Hardy's perspective (only Leo Chomorro would have been worse). As soon as she'd been assigned, he considered using his 170.6 peremptory challenge-for which no reason need be given and which can't be denied-to get Braun off the case. But then he stood the risk of drawing Chomorro. In fact, he wouldn't put it past the Master Calendar to arrange to assign Chomorro to punish him for his arrogance. In the end, he'd kept her on.

There was more. Catherine's alibi for the night of the murders had been blown by none other than her own youngest daughter, Heather, who kept a diary that Cuneo had discovered during his interview with her. Supposedly out having fast food for dinner with her brother and sister, in fact she'd had "a ton" of homework and she'd had Saul drop her off at the house and "scrounged" something to eat since neither her mom nor dad were home, which was "like, getting to be the norm lately."

Called on this, Catherine admitted to Hardy that she'd lied to him about that. A low point, to say the least. Catherine was sorry. She'd been trying to save face with him. She didn't want him to know that she could be the kind of insecure, snooping bitch who would actually go by the house of Will's illicit paramour, Karyn Harris, to make sure she was still not home. Every day for four days! And Ms. Harris hadn't once been there.

Hardy had subpoenaed the flight manifests of every airline that flew from any Bay Area airport to any Southern California airport on the days in question. No Karyn Harris. The plain truth was that whether or not her husband had been having this alleged affair, Catherine's alibi crashed.

Further, Glitsky, looking under rocks for other scenarios, both because of his own agenda vis-a-vis Cuneo and because of his work at the mayor's request, had come up empty. The "other dude" play, the argument that some mysterious other person had committed the crime, was ever popular among defense attorneys. Indeed, Hardy had used it to good effect during other trials. But if there was another dude in this case, Glitsky with the full weight of his position hadn't been able to unearth him. The Tow/Hold people had lost their contract with the city in June and nobody else had died, or had even caught a cold, as far as Hardy could tell. The mayor abandoned personal interest in the investigation.

With new evidence against Catherine appearing regularly, even Glitsky grudgingly came to consider the possibility that Cuneo had been right. For his own reasons, Glitsky still seemed ready to jump up at the slightest scent of another lead, but they had been scarce to begin with, and dwindled to none. And that left only one alternative-that Paul Hanover's death, and Missy's, had come at the hands of Hardy's client.

There were days Hardy considered the possibility himself.

Now, with his breathing under control, he got up and went into the bathroom where he drank a few handfuls of water and threw some more in his face, then toweled himself dry. Back in bed, he lay on his back, uncovered.

Silent up to now, apparently sleeping, Frannie reached out and put a hand over his hand in the night. "Are you all right?"

"Just nerves," he said, "the trial." "I guessed." "No flies on you." "Can I do anything?"

"It's okay. I'll get back to sleep in a minute." He squeezed her hand. "I couldn't find the car," he said as though the words made any sense.

"The car?"

"In my dream. Missy's car." The one he and Catherine were going to go and make out in, in the dream, as soon as they could find it, but he left that part out.

"What about it?"

"I don't know where it is. I mean, I still don't know where it is."

"You know everything that's possible to know about this case, Dismas. You've lived and breathed it for most of the past year. How many binders do you have?" These were his black, three-ring binders for testimony, evidence, motions, police reports, everything that comprised his records on the case.

"Twenty-six."

"Is that a new record?"

"Close anyway. But I know there's nothing about the car. How could I have forgotten that?" "I don't know. Is it important?" "No. I mean, I don't know why it would be. It's just a question I can't answer. We start in a few hours, Fran. I can't have questions I don't know the answers to. Not now."

Frannie turned onto her side, moved over against him. "If it's important, you'll have it when you need it. But right now, what you need is sleep."

He let out a long breath. "I'm a mess."

"You're fine."

"I can't believe Marian didn't recuse herself."

"That's good news, remember. Grounds for appeal. You told me yourself."

"Or venue? How could she leave the damn trial here? The jury's tainted. I can feel it."

"I've got a question for you."

"What?"

"Are you going to play this whole thing over in your mind before morning?"

"No. I hope not." Then, "You're right. I've got to stop."

"Okay. So stop then. Go easy on yourself." He put his arm around her. "Did I just say you were right?" "Yep."

"You are."

"I know." She kissed the side of his face. "Let's say we go to sleep, okay?"

"Okay." Then, as sleep approached, "I love you, you know."

"I know," she said. "Me, too." And kissed his cheek again.

Within two minutes, Hardy's breathing was deep and even.

Frannie, it took longer.

Hardy was dressed in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and red-and-blue rep tie. It was 6:42 by the clock on his stove. He had poured his coffee first thing as always, taken a drink, then realized that if Treya hadn't gone into labor during the night, Glitsky would be awake and at home.

He answered on the second ring with a cheerful, "This better be important."

Hardy didn't waste time with chitchat, either. "Where's Missy's car?"

"I don't know. Bolivia?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Are we a little wound up this morning? Oh, that's right. The trial…"

Hardy cut him off. "Do you know that? Is the car really in Bolivia?"

"Do I have any idea? I'd be surprised. Bolivia just seemed like a good answer at the time. What's this about?"

"Last night I had a dream and realized I didn't know anything about her car."

"So what?"

"So I don't know what that means. Why did I dream about it if it doesn't mean anything?"

"I give up," Glitsky said. "Because dreams are random?"

"Not as often as you'd think. I realized it's something I've never looked at. I wondered if you had."

"No."

"You know anything about it? She owned her own car, right?"

"Right." Glitsky's ongoing frustration with finding another suspect and his futile investigation to this point made him Hardy's go-to guy for all facts related to the Hanover case. "She drove a black Mercedes," he said, "like Catherine Hanover's."

"Okay, so where is it?"

"Real guess this time? It's parked in a garage somewhere. Where are you going here?"

Hardy took in another slug of coffee. "She comes home from wherever she's been. Where's she been? She doesn't work."

"Is this twenty questions? She was shopping, or hanging out with a friend of hers."

"Anyway"-Hardy running with it-"that doesn't matter. What matters is she gets home and parks…"

"Maybe she took a cab. Or even the Muni."

"I doubt it, but either way her car had to be somewhere around Alamo Square. The Willises both talked about her car."

"Okay. So she had a car parked around Alamo Square."

"Then she's killed in the house. Paul's car is in the garage. There's no second car. So where did it go?" "If it was on the street, it's towed or stolen," Glitsky said. "Mystery solved. Nice talking to you." Glitsky's voice changed, softened. "I've got a pretty little thing pulling on my leg that needs her breakfast, don't you, baby?"

"You don't think it's anything?" Hardy asked.

"Yeah, I do. I think it's first-day-of-trial jitters."

"You'd have the jitters, too, if your client was innocent and you knew it."

A lengthy pause. "Well, Diz," he said, "that's why they have trials. You can prove it there."

"I don't have to prove anything! That's the thing. They've got to prove she did it. The burden of proof is always on the prosecution."

Glitsky's voice was surprisingly gentle. "Oh, that's right. I forgot for a minute there."

Jacked up for the day and realizing he'd overstepped, Hardy started to apologize. "Sorry, Abe, it's just…"

"Hey." Still low-key. "Shut up. I'll find the car for you. Now say, 'Thanks, Abe,' and hang up."

"Thanks, Abe."

"Don't mention it."

Treya had been off work for the week since her due date. In theory she could sleep in every day, but that didn't seem to be in her nature. Hardy's phone call this morning hadn't helped, either.

Glitsky was sharing ketchup with some scrambled eggs, as opposed to scrambled eggs with a little ketchup, with Rachel-"one big spoonful for Daddy, one biggest spoonful for Rachel"-when his wife appeared in the door to the kitchen. "Who was that, this early?"

"Diz. He's having a breakdown."

"Catherine Hanover?"

A nod. "He says she's innocent."

"So do you."

"Yes, but only in the privacy of my own home. I actually think it might be tougher on Diz." "Why is that?"

"It's got to be easier if he thinks his client's guilty, wouldn't you think? That way, they get convicted, on some level you've got to know they deserve it, so how bad can you feel? They don't convict, you win, so you feel good about that. But if you think they're really not guilty… I think it's eating him up."

"Just like with you."

"Well, maybe not eating me up exactly. But somebody's walking around free who shouldn't be."

"You really want him, don't you?"

"Or her. Whoever. Yeah, I want 'em."

Glitsky's face wore a sober expression, and with some reason. After Cuneo and Chris Rosen had ramrodded the grand jury into returning an indictment against Catherine Hanover late last spring, the two of them got wind of the onetime personal connection between Hardy and his client. To the homicide inspector and the assistant DA, this relationship was anything but innocent-not that they cared about sexual involvement (which in the tabloid environment of the San Francisco political scene they both assumed without discussion). Working together on the case, Cuneo and Rosen both immediately took Hardy and Catherine's involvement as another level in their conspiracy theory. Now it wasn't just Glitsky and Hardy and Kathy West. All of those three were now neatly connected to the defendant in a sensational and highly political double-murder trial. They had to be colluding in some kind of cover-up.

Meanwhile, Glitsky had been continuing on his own semiparallel investigations into Tow/Hold and Paul Hanover's other business and political endeavors when, early one evening in his office, he got an unannounced visit from an FBI field agent named Bill Schuyler.

Field officers with the FBI didn't drop in at the office of the deputy chief of inspectors every day, or even every month, so clearly Schuyler had come with a specific purpose. The fact that he'd come after normal business hours was interesting, too. Though they'd always had an easy and collegial acquaintance, neither man wasted any time with pleasantries before getting to it. "I thought you'd want to know," Schuyler began, "that I got a call from Chris Rosen-one of your DAs here-a couple of days ago. He was asking questions about you."

Glitsky, at his desk in the amber twilight, sat deeply back in his chair, fingers templed at his lips. He'd been in a tense state of waiting for the appearance of this discussion for the better part of two years, and now that it was here, it was almost a relief. But he feigned complete ignorance. "What did he want to know?"

"He was following up on a report filed by Lieutenant Lanier, who interviewed you on the day that Barry Ger-son got shot," Schuyler said. "You remember that?"

"Pretty well. What did you have to do with that?"

"Nothing directly. But you mentioned me to Lanier, said you'd called me earlier in the day."

"That's because I did, Bill."

"I know. I remember. You wanted me to round up some of my troops and help you with an arrest. Your friend Hardy's client, if memory serves. But there wasn't enough time."

"That's right. That's what happened. So what's the problem?" Glitsky asked.

"I'm not sure, Abe." Schuyler was a broad-shouldered, always well-dressed athlete with a bullet head covered with a blond fuzz. Now he leaned forward in his chair. "Rosen wouldn't say, of course. But he asked me if I'd followed up with you. With what you'd done that day. If I knew whether you'd gone ahead, anyway, without my guys."

"That would have been stupid and indefensible."

Schuyler nodded. "That's what I told him. But the real answer was no, I hadn't followed up afterward with you. I didn't know what you'd done."

In the darkening room, Glitsky blew on his templed hands.

Schuyler continued. "Your alibi was that…"

Glitsky sat bolt upright. "Whoa! Alibi? He said the word 'alibi'?"

"Your alibi is that you spent the day with Gina Roake, Hardy's law partner, at her apartment."

"That's because I did. Her fiancee had just died. We're friends, Bill, Gina and I. She needed the company. I was with her." This was strictly true, although he hadn't been with Roake at her apartment, but out on Pier 70, where both of them had taken part in the gunfight that had killed Gerson and five others. So what he was telling Schuyler was the truth, but it was also a lie. "What do you want me to say, Bill?"

Schuyler held his palms out in front of him. "Nothing, Abe. You've got nothing to prove to me. But I thought you'd want to know they're asking around."

"They? Who's they, besides Rosen?"

"He mentioned this homicide cop, I don't know him, Cuneo. This case you're on now, evidently Hardy's in it and you've been working with him again and the mayor, too, to undercut him-Cuneo, I mean-since their suspect is Hardy's girlfriend…"

"So we're somehow in this grand conspiracy?"

"He seemed to be thinking that way, yeah."

Glitsky kept his voice low, under tight control. "And what exactly are we or were we conspiring to do? Did he say?"

Schuyler shrugged. "All I'm saying is, he's building a case. I don't know what it's about, but the smart bet is somebody wants to tie you to Gerson."

"I had nothing to do with Gerson. Although I heard he was dirty."

"Cuneo didn't think he was."

"Yeah, and he thinks he's got the right suspect here, too."

"You don't think he does?" "That's why I'm still looking."

Schuyler digested that for a minute. "Well, you want some free advice?"

"Always. Not that I always take it, but I'll listen."

"Bail on this case, the one you're still working on. Cuneo's got a suspect in custody, Rosen's got an indictment, so what the hell are you still looking for? What message are you sending out about these two clowns? They're jerk-offs-that's what. You don't believe they made their case?"

"I don't think they did."

Schuyler shook his head with impatience. "Doesn't matter, Abe. If their suspect didn't do it, odds are she'll walk, right? Your man Hardy's pretty good."

"He's not my man, Bill. He's a friend of mine, that's all."

"Whatever. Doesn't change the fact. The girl's not guilty, she's off. If not…" He shrugged again. If not, Glitsky was wrong looking for another suspect in the first place and he'd be well advised to be rid of the case sooner rather than later. "The point is you take the heat off yourself right now. If Cuneo wants this collar so bad, maybe he fucked up the investigation. Not your problem,

Abe. The trial goes south, maybe you get involved again later, low-key, point out where they fucked it up. But this guy's got a hard-on for you; both of them do. They don't think you're looking for an alternate suspect; they think the real story is that you and Hardy and Kathy West are covering something up, maybe going all the way back to Gerson. That's what I read."

Glitsky simmered for a long moment. By now the room was frankly dark. "Let them look," he said. "There's nothing to find."

"Don't kid yourself." Schuyler lowered his voice. "There's always something to find, Abe. Maybe not what they started looking for, but if you let them get a foothold, start talking to the whole world, get the accountants involved, they'll find a time card you filled in wrong, or a company car you went to the beach in, or some secretary says you felt her up, something. And ifit gets to the politicos sniping at West, once they got the climate established and you're all in some conspiracy together, then the pro liars will just use what Rosen's got and make up other shit. Unless you got a righteous somebody else for the murders…?"

"No. Nobody. Not a hint."

"Then drop it."

But he hadn't dropped it.

He couldn't do that, not while he was a cop and not while he believed that Cuneo had arrested the wrong suspect. Which meant that the real killer was still on the streets, and now-if not for Glitsky-with no one in pursuit. On top of that, Glitsky wasn't about to be chased off by the fear that Cuneo would expose him in some way. Once he let that happen, he might as well resign. He would be useless. No, the most effective way to neutralize Cuneo would be to discover what he'd missed-to be more thorough, more organized, a better cop.

He realized that in fact it would not hurt at all if Cuneo and Rosen believed that he was dropping out of the case. He could use the power of his office as a cover to pursue his own leads under their noses-if he played it right, and he would, he might actually be aided in his interrogations by his witnesses' perception that the police already had a suspect in custody, so Glitsky couldn't possibly be focusing on them.

He did not want this to become a political liability for Kathy West, however. There was no point in that, so he went to her and convinced her that he had to drop the case. He had nothing going anyway, no real leads. Then he told her a little about Schuyler's theories, Cuneo and Rosen, which she'd considered ridiculous and infuriating, but in the end didn't want to pursue. Obviously, the men lived in an alternate universe, but a witch hunt with her as the central figure in an undefined conspiracy theory was something she'd prefer to avoid.

Finally, Glitsky went to Lanier and gave him the news, too, that he was off the case. It was all Cuneo's from here on out. The homicide inspector had done a good job of identifying the defendant, and Catherine Hanover's arrest took Glitsky out of the loop.

So whatever conspiracy he'd been involved in around this case became moot to both Cuneo and Rosen, and he hadn't heard another word about it since.

It was still there, though.

Now, holding Treya's hand, he scratched at the kitchen table. "Maybe I should just call back and tell Diz no."

"I don't think so, hon. This thing has been sticking in your rather well-developed craw for months. If you want to help Diz, just acknowledge what you're doing so you're ready when the shit hits the fan, which it will, I promise." She smiled in her teasing way. "For the record, I apologize for the use of profanity in front of our daughter, too." She looked down at Rachel and said, "We don't say 'shit' in this house, little girl."

Rachel returned her gaze with a questioning, open expression. "What shit?" she asked.

Glitsky hung his head and shook it from side to side.

"Wonderful."

But Treya suddenly sat up straighter. "Oh." Her hand went to her stomach and she blew out a long breath.

Glitsky squeezed her hand. "Trey?"

She held up her index finger, telling him to be patient a minute. Breathing deeply and slowly, she looked up and found the clock on the wall. "We're there," she said.

"Where we?" Rachel asked.

"We're in labor, sweetie," Treya answered gently. "You know the little brother we've been waiting for all this time? He's telling me he's on his way."

₁₆

Hardy parked under his office, in the managing partner's spot next to the elevator. His mind elsewhere, he got in the elevator and rode upward, not realizing that out of force of some long-buried habit, he'd pushed "3." Before he'd become managing partner, this was where he'd worked. Now, his partner, Wes Farrell, worked out of his old office. The elevator door opened and Hardy stepped out into the hall and stood for a minute, wondering where he was.

"Brilliant," he said to himself.

Knocking on Farrell's door and getting no answer as he passed, he descended the steps to the main lobby- Phyllis's station, the Solarium, David's old office, hermetically preserved-next to his own and then Norma, the office manager's. Off to his right ran a long hallway at the end of which was the lair of the firm's third name partner, Gina Roake. Behind the doors and their secre

taries' cubicles, the eight current associates now toiled. Hardy assumed most if not all of them were working already, although it was still a few minutes shy of eight o'clock. You didn't bill 2,200 hours a year if you didn't put in a very full day every day. Phyllis wasn't at her station yet-she came on at eight thirty-so Hardy crossed directly to his own ornate door and was surprised to see Wes Farrell, coat- and tie-less, throwing darts.

"I know what you're going to say," Farrell began.

"You do?"

"I do. You're going to say you're busy and you don't have time for any childish games. Your trial starts today."

Hardy brought a hand to his forehead. "That's today: Yikes!" He crossed around to behind his desk, lugged his triple-thick briefcase up and onto the blotter. "Actually, I knew it was today." He snapped open the clasps, started removing folders. He broke a brittle smile-not very convincing. He liked Wes a lot, but he didn't always work the way Hardy did, and sometimes his presence was more distraction than help. "So what's up, in ten words or less?"

"Today's shirt." He'd thrown the last dart of the round as Hardy had entered and had turned to follow his progress. Now, his grin on, Wes held open his unbuttoned dress shirt. Actually, this was an almost-daily ritual, and Hardy found himself breaking into a genuine smile. Wes prided himself on having one of the world's most complete, ever-growing collections of epigrammatic

T-shirts, which he wore under his lawyer's disguise. Today's shirt read: grow your own dope/plant a man.

"Sam gave it to me," he said, "and that goes a long way toward explaining why I love that woman." He was buttoning up. "Anyway, I thought you might need a little humor running around in your system before you hit the Hall."

"I might at that," Hardy conceded. "Did you drive by there on your way in?"

"No. You?"

Hardy nodded. "Thirty-seven mobile units, if you can believe it. You can't even get onto Bryant. They're diverting traffic around before you get within three blocks." Hardy glanced at his watch. "And we don't even start for an hour and a half. It's going to be a circus."

Farrell sat on the couch, doing up his tie. "You probably shouldn't have dated her. I mean, if you wanted to keep all these scurrilous lies out of the paper."

"Where were you when I was seventeen?"

"I didn't date until I was much older than that, so I couldn't have advised you very well."

"Funny. Frannie says the same thing."

A quick glance. Serious. "She okay with it?"

"Great. Peachy." He settled into his chair. "Although I can't say she's been totally thrilled with the Romeo lawyer angle everybody in the news seems to like so much. But the news jocks don't like it as much as my kids. Vincent's even taken to calling me Romeo in private, which of course just cracks me up. And then if the Beck hears him, she goes ballistic. It's a great time. Or how about last week, our 'Passion Pit' in the jail? Did you see that?"

"I thought it was pretty cool, an old guy like you."

"Yeah. Those Enquirer guys are talented."

"I wondered where that was exactly, the Passion Pit, to tell you the truth. But I was afraid you'd had so many intimate moments there that you didn't want to talk about it. Too private."

"So many. So many. Actually, it's the visiting room downstairs at the jail," Hardy said, referring to the antiseptic, brightly lit, glass-block-enclosed bullpen off the admitting area where lawyers got to meet with their incarcerated clients. "That's where we've 'consummated our love.' But to get to feeling really passionate in there, you've got to use some serious imagination, believe me. More than the Enquirer guys, even."

Wes had his tie on now and stood up, grabbing his coat. "And now it begins in earnest, huh? Can I do anything to help at home? Maybe Sam…"

Hardy shook his head. "No, I told you, we're fine. In fact, it's added a whole new dimension to our marriage, where she pretends it doesn't bother her and I pretend that I appreciate her understanding. It's special, but what am I supposed to do? It's a little late now."

"You could pray for a short trial."

"Prayer is always a solace," Hardy said. "I might go for that."

Twenty minutes later, he left his office to a gaggle of well-wishers in the lobby. This was a major case for the firm, and everyone was aware of its importance. It was still bitter cold outside, but Hardy was damned if he was going to hassle first with the impossible parking around the Hall of Justice, which for twenty-some bucks a day would not get him appreciably closer to the courtroom than he was in his office, and then with the gauntlet of the TV cameras and Minicams. No, wrapped in his long heavy coat and wearing gloves, he would walk the twelve blocks carrying his twenty-pound briefcase and sneak in past at least most of the jackals through the back door by the jail.

First though, there was the jail itself, and the pretrial meeting with his client. Over the months, he'd grown accustomed to seeing Catherine in the familiar orange jumpsuit that was her garb in the lockup, so this morning when she entered the "Passion Pit" in low heels, a stylish green skirt and complementary blouse, earrings, eye shadow and lipstick, he boosted himself off the table where he'd been sitting. He met her eyes and nodded in appreciation. "Okay, then," he said, "that works."

The female guard who'd escorted Catherine from the changing room closed the door behind her. Now the client took a step or two into the room, toward him, and stopped. There was something in her stillness that struck him as a falsely brave front, but she summoned what passed for a smile. "You ever get tired of being a lawyer," she said, "I think you've got a career in women's fashion."

Hardy had pulled a bit of a break with the judge when she'd allowed Catherine the dignity of changing into normal clothes upstairs instead of in a holding cell next to the courtroom. Hardy had contacted the good husband, Will, and he'd sent over three boxes of clothes and underwear, none of which fit her anymore because she'd lost so much weight in jail. So Hardy had her take her measurements and write down her sizes, then had spent the better part of a day a few weeks before buying a wardrobe for her at Neiman Marcus.

As it turned out, this straightforward and practical move had backfired in a number of ways. First off, Hardy really didn't know all that much about women's fashion, but his ex-wife, Jane Fowler, happened to still work in the field-she'd been a buyer at I. Magnin for years. The two weren't exactly close anymore, but they had lunch together a couple of times a year just to keep up. When he asked if she would do him a favor and accompany him on the shopping expedition, she'd agreed.

What happened next he might have guessed if he'd thought about it. But he really wasn't sufficiently paranoid yet, and maybe never would be, to fully appreciate what appeared to be happening around this case. Several tabloid reporters shadowed him on this shopping trip. Not only did someone snap a picture of him holding up a sexy bra, but the article followed up with the news that Hardy had bought the clothes with the firm's credit card, implying that he was paying for it. Although of course he'd just be listing the clothes in his regular bill to Will

Hanover for his hours and expenses, the article made the purchase look suspect.

And the icing on the cake was that Jane appeared behind him in the bra picture. The Romeo not just fooling around with his client, but now caught with his ex-wife. Frannie liked that part almost as much as the picture of her-wearing formless jogging clothes, with her hair in disarray and a somehow distracted and worried look on her face as she carried a couple of bags of groceries. The caption under that one: "Brave But Clueless."

Hardy shook his head to clear the memory. In front of him, Catherine did a little self-conscious pirouette. "I really look okay?"

"Better than okay."

She sighed, then threw a second sigh at the ceiling. When she came back to him, she was blinking. "I'm not going to cry and ruin these eyes today."

"No. Don't do that. That would be wrong."

Nixon's famous line from the Watergate era brought a smile, enough to stem the immediate threat of tears. "It's just," she sighed, "I thought I'd never wear anything like this again."

"You'll do that all the time, Catherine. You wait."

"Do you really think so?"

With more conviction than he felt, Hardy nodded. "You didn't do this. The jury won't convict you. You'll see. The system really does work."

"I want to believe that, but if that's the case, I keep wondering how it got me to here."

Now Hardy feigned his own brave smile. "One little teeny tiny design flaw. A bad cop. This is the version where he gets edited out. You ready?"

"I'm ready."

"All right. I've got to remind you that the next time I see you, we're in front of the jury. Some of them are going to think you and I have something going on, courtesy of our ever-vigilant media. So it's important that you and I appear to have a professional distance. Frannie's going to be out there. So is Will… no, don't look like that. He's got to be there. It's critical that the jury sees that your husband is supporting you through all this, that in spite of everything, he must believe that you're innocent."

"In spite of everything he's said about me. And what he's done."

Hardy nodded. "In spite of all that, he's our witness. He's got nothing to say about the crime itself. He's your husband. They can't make him testify against you."

"I hate him."

"I believe you've mentioned that, but it doesn't matter. He's out there, and it's good for the jury to see him and see that you're with him."

"But I'm not."

"Right. But that doesn't matter."

She closed her eyes and for a breath her structure seemed to crumble. Then she straightened up, opened her eyes, lifted her jaw and flashed a high-octane smile. "I'm innocent," she said. "I've got nothing to be afraid of."

"Correct. Let's go get 'em. I'll see you out there."

They'd been standing a foot apart and now Catherine stepped forward. "Dismas, I just want to say that I know how hard this has been for you. I mean personally. I never meant…"

"It's not you," he said. "It's all right."

She moved closer and leaned her head against his chest, the weight of it against him. Carefully, delicately, he put his arms around her and held her lightly. It was the first time they'd embraced. Catherine brought her arms around his back and tightened her hold on him. Again, her composure broke.

He patted her back, gradually easing her away, kissing her chastely on the cheek. Without another word, he picked up his briefcase, went to the door and knocked for the guard, and was gone.

The courtroom was Department 21 on the third floor of the Hall of Justice. Hardy had been in it on many occasions by now, but never failed to be disappointed by its lack of grandeur. More than twenty years ago, the city had installed extra security for the trial of Dan White, who'd shot Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in their offices at City Hall. Now heavy doors and bulletproof glass separated the gallery from the well of the courtroom in Department 21. Except for these amenities, the room might have been a typical classroom in a marginally funded school district.

In front of the bar, Hardy sat at a plain blond library desk on the left-hand side of the nondescript, window-less, fluorescent-lit room. His counterpart with the prosecution-Rosen, with case inspector Dan Cuneo next to him-sat at an identical table about ten feet to his right. Beyond them was the varnished plywood jury box.

They'd finished jury selection yesterday, and now the box was filled with four men and eight women; with three African Americans, two Asians, two Hispanics, five Caucasians; one dentist, one high school teacher, three housewives, a city employee, a computer repairperson, two salesmen, three between jobs. Hardy had been living with the endless calculations of the crapshoot of the makeup of the eventual panel for nine working days. Now here they were and he'd done all he could. He even felt pretty good about some of the people; but he still wished he could start again. But it was always like this- something you just couldn't know or predict.

He'd entered the courtroom through the back door, coming up the hallway by the judge's chambers, to avoid the reporters and the general madness, and now at his table he ventured a half-turn to catch his wife's eye. Fran-nie was in the first row, the first seat by the center aisle, next to their friend, the "CityTalk" columnist Jeff Elliot. Frannie didn't often come to court with Hardy, but for his big trials she tried to be there for his opening and closing statements. He caught her eye and put his hand over his heart and patted it twice, the secret signal. She did the same.

Behind her and Elliot, it was bedlam.

Every one of the twelve rows, eight wooden, theater-style seats to a side, was completely filled, mostly with media people. Hardy also recognized not just a few people from his office who had come down to cheer him on, but several other attorneys from the building, as well as what appeared to be quite a sizable sampling of regular folks and trial junkies. And now, before the entrance of the judge, everyone was talking all at once.

On Hardy's side, Will Hanover sat with the other adult members of his extended family who would not be called as witnesses for the prosecution-Catherine's two sisters-in-law and their husbands. unbelievably, Hardy thought, given the testimony they'd supplied to Cuneo, Beth and Aaron, like Will, still considered themselves to be on Catherine's side. Despite their comments in police reports to the contrary, none of them actually seemed to believe that Catherine was guilty. Yes, she'd known where Paul kept his gun. Yes, she'd been worried about the inheritance. Yes, she'd repeated many times that somebody would have to kill Paul and Missy. Either they didn't believe in causality or they didn't understand the gravity of their statements, but nonetheless, by their very presence on Catherine's "side" of the gallery, they would be living and breathing testimony to the fact that they still cared about her-and in the great nebulous unknown that was the collective mind of the jury, this might not be a bad thing.

Cuneo, of course, was turned around at the prosecutor's table and sat jittering nonstop, talking to a couple of assistant DAs from upstairs in the front row, down for the show. But then suddenly the bailiff was standing up to the left of the judge's utilitarian desk. "All rise. Department Twenty-One of the Superior Court of the State of California is now in session. Her Honor Judge Marian Braun presiding. Please turn off all cell phones and pagers, be seated and come to order."

Without any fanfare, Braun was seated almost before the bailiff had concluded his introduction. She scowled out at the gallery, as though surprised at its size, then faced the clerk and nodded. The clerk nodded back, then looked over to the second bailiff, who was standing by the back door to the courtroom, on Hardy's right. They'd already called the case number and read the indictment for special circumstances double murder when they'd begun jury selection so long ago. So now, today, there was little of that earlier formality-the defendant merely needed to be in the courtroom so that she could face her accusers.

The back door opened and Catherine Hanover appeared to a slight electric buzz from the gallery. The loss of the fifteen pounds hadn't hurt her looks. Neither had the light makeup, the subtle lipstick, the tailored clothing. In the brassy fluorescence of the courtroom, she seemed to shine, and Hardy was not at all sure that this was a positive. Good looks could backfire. He glanced at the jury for reactions and suddenly wished there were at least eight men on it and four women, instead of the other way around. Or even twelve men, all of them older and self-made.

During jury selection, he'd convinced himself that the women he'd accepted were of a traditional bent, and hence would be deeply suspicious of Missy D'Amiens and her unknown and thus arguably colorful and potentially dangerous past. On the other hand, he suddenly realized-and Catherine's appearance today underscored this-that these same women might have a great deal of trouble identifying with this attractive woman whose husband's six-figure income wasn't enough to support her lifestyle. In the end, he'd gone along with impaneling all the women because women, at least the sort he hoped he had left on the jury, tended to believe that sexual harassment happened. But he shuddered inwardly now, suddenly afraid that he might have outright miscalculated.

He tore his eyes away from the jury and brought them back to his client. He stood and pulled out the chair next to him for her, glad to see that she had apparently found her husband and in-laws in the gallery and acknowledged them.

Then she was seated. Hardy whispered to her. "How are you doing?" "Fine."

The judge tapped her gavel to still the continuing buzz, then turned to the prosecution table. "Mr. Rosen, ready for the people?"

Rosen got out of his chair. "Yes, Your Honor."

"Mr. Hardy?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"All right, Mr. Rosen, you may begin."

Chris Rosen was a professional trial attorney with nine years of experience and a specialization in arson cases. He'd prosecuted three homicides and a dozen arsons in that time, winning four of them outright and getting lesser convictions with substantial prison time on the others. So he could say with absolute truth that he'd never lost a case, which in this most liberal city was an enviable, almost unheard of, record. Maybe Rosen hadn't always gotten a clear win, either, but Hardy knew the truth of the defense bias in San Francisco-indeed, it was one of the factors involved in this case for which he was most grateful-but this was cold comfort as he watched his young, good-looking opposite number rise with a quiet confidence and a friendly demeanor to match it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began. "Good morning. We're here today and for the next few days or weeks- let's hope it won't be too many weeks-to hear evidence about the murders of two people, Paul Hanover, a lawyer here in San Francisco, and his fiancee, Missy D'Amiens." Hardy noticed that Rosen came as advertised-he was playing it smooth. He didn't refer to the dead impersonally as "the deceased" or even "the victims." Rather, they had been real, live people until they had been "murdered." He continued to the jury in his serious, amiable voice. "On Wednesday, May the twelfth of last year, someone set a fire at the home that Mr. Hanover shared with Missy D'Amiens. Firemen coming to fight the blaze found the bodies of a man and woman, burned beyond recognition, in the foyer of the house. Wedged under one of the bodies was a gun. Both victims had been shot in the head. The evidence will show beyond a reasonable doubt that neither wound was self-inflicted. Neither victim killed the other and then him- or herself. These people were murdered in their home, and the murderer lit a fire in the hope of destroying the evidence that would connect him or her to the crime."

Rosen paused to collect himself, as these grisly and dramatic events would obviously upset the psyche of any reasonably sensitive person. Clearing his throat, excusing himself to the jurors "for just a moment," he took a few steps over to his desk, where Cuneo pushed his glass of water to the front edge of the desk. Rosen took a sip, cleared his throat again and turned back to the jurors.

"We will prove to you, ladies and gentlemen, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person who fired those shots into the heads of each of these victims was the defendant in this case, Mr. Hanover's daughter-in-law, Catherine Hanover. She did it for a common and mundane reason-Mr. Hanover was going to change his will and name Missy D'Amiens his beneficiary. When he did that, his inheritance of nearly fifteen million dollars would go to Missy, and the defendant would get no share of it.

"On the very day that he died, according to the defendant's own statement to police, Mr. Hanover told her that he was thinking of changing his will in favor of Missy before the wedding date, possibly as early as the following week. Spurred by this confession of his plans, the defendant resolved to kill Mr. Hanover before he could change his will."

Here Rosen turned and faced Catherine, his body language as well as his tone suggesting that it pained him to make these accusations against a fellow human being. But she had brought it on herself; he so wished that she hadn't. He raised an almost reluctant hand until his arm was fully outstretched, his index finger wavering in controlled indignation. "And shoot him she did. At point-blank range, in the head. And shot Missy D'Amiens, too, because she'd had the bad fortune to come home and be in the house."

Recounting the tale was imposing a great burden on Rosen, and he needed another sip of water. Hardy thought this was overdoing the sensitivity a bit, and he was glad to see something about which he could- privately, at least-be critical. He knew that juries had a way of sniffing out a phony, tactical interruption, and they might resent it. Otherwise, Rosen was presenting a textbook opening statement-recounting the facts the prosecution had and would prove, without any editorializing. He had even avoided the potential minefield of Missy's presence in the house-clearly the killer had intended the scene to look like a murder/suicide, which would have ended the investigation before it began. But Rosen didn't accuse Catherine of that. He steered clear altogether. Hardy, with a grudging admiration, had to let him continue unchallenged.

"The relevant events of this tragic day are relatively straightforward and really began around noon. We will prove to you that the defendant, Catherine Hanover, stopped at a Valero gas station on the corner of Oak and Webster, about three blocks from Paul Hanover's home on Alamo Square. A worker at that gas station will testify that he saw the defendant get out of her car, a black Mercedes-Benz C240, and fill a portable container with gasoline and put it into her trunk.

"According to the defendant's own statement, she went to visit her father-in-law later that same afternoon to discuss the finances of her immediate and extended family. We will show you that the defendant came back to Mr. Hanover's home later in the day. You will hear two witnesses testify that she left Mr. Hanover's home a few moments before the fire broke out. You will discover that the defendant lied to the police about her actions at this time. She said that she was at home alone during these critical hours. But her own daughter's diary disproves her story."

Hardy covered his mouth with his hand, hiding from the jury his displeasure. Heather's diary was perhaps the biggest issue he'd lost in pretrial. Although Hardy had argued bitterly against its inclusion, there was no question ofthe importance and relevance ofthe diary entry. So one way or another, it was going in. And in the normal course of events, that evidence couldn't have been admitted-it wouldn't have had a foundation-if Heather as a prosecution witness against her own mother didn't testify in court that she'd written it. Understandably, this was a scenario that Catherine, in a genuine display of motherly protectiveness, wanted to avoid at all costs. The psychological damage to her daughter could be incalculable. But Rosen needed the evidence, which meant he needed Heather. And no one could stop him from forcing her to testify. The only solution had been for Hardy to cut a deal to allow the diary entry without the foundation. But even without Heather's testimony, it was a bitter pill, and potentially devastating for his client.

Meanwhile, Rosen was gliding easily over the last of the evidence. "Finally, you will learn that the same type of gasoline used as an accelerant to start the fire in Mr. Hanover's home exactly matches that found in fibers of rug from the trunk of the defendant's black Mercedes-Benz C240." He paused for one last sip of water.

"As I said at the outset, this is a straightforward story, and I'm nearly through with it. On May the twelfth of last year, Paul Hanover himself told the defendant that within days, she and her entire family would be written out of her father-in-law's will. That they would lose millions of dollars. She decided to kill him to keep that from happening, and to use his own gun that she knew he kept loaded in the headboard of his bed. She bought gasoline to set Paul Hanover's house on fire to cover her tracks. She had the means. By her own admission, she'd been at the house during the afternoon, and you will hear witnesses place her there again just before the fire broke out. Opportunity."

Rosen let out a little air. "We will show you, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that Catherine Hanover killed her father-in-law, Paul Hanover, and Missy D'Amiens for money by shooting them both in the head. This is first-degree murder with special circumstances under the law of the State of California, and that is the verdict I will ask for. Thank you very much."

In a California murder trial, the defense attorney has an option. He can either deliver his opening statement directly after that of the prosecuting attorney, as a sort of instant rebuttal, or he can deliver his statement at the conclusion of the state's case in full. Hardy was a big fan of the former, believing as he did that the jury made up a great deal of its collective mind-impressions of the players, general believability of the state's narrative, strength or likely strength of the evidence to be presented-in the very opening stages of a trial.

Hardy's experience was that by the time the jury members had heard and seen all the state's evidence, even if the veracity and provenance of every bit of it had been questioned, denied and demeaned by a vigilant defense lawyer, the weight of all of it often just got to be too much to lift. So despite being the defense attorney, Hardy didn't want to fall into a defensive posture. The last thing he wanted was to be passive, parrying the thrusts of his opponent without striking any blows of his own.

No, a trial was a war, and the goal was to win, not simply to defend. And if you wanted to win, you had to attack.

Hardy knew the book on Rosen was that he never objected during open, believing, as did most lawyers, that it ticked off the jury. So he had a hunch he could mix a little argument into a straight recitation of his facts-in fact, his plan was to find out exactly how much argument his counterpart could tolerate.

So after his own low-key and affably gracious greeting to the jurors, Hardy wasted no time bringing out his own guns. "Well, we've all now heard Mr. Rosen's account of the murders of Paul Hanover and Missy D'Amiens, and I couldn't help but be struck by his use of the phrase, 'we will show, and prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt.' Just hearing him use those words creates a powerful impression, doesn't it? He's telling you he's got evidence to support his theory of Paul and Missy's deaths that is so persuasive that it will leave you in a state of virtual certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Catherine Hanover killed them both.

"But let me tell you something. He doesn't have any such thing. He has, in fact, no physical evidence at all that places Catherine at Paul Hanover's house at or near the time of the murders." He stopped as though struck nearly mute for a second by the enormity of what he'd just said. "Can that be right? You must be thinking, How can the State of California have arrested and charged Catherine Hanover with this heinous double murder of her fatherin-law and his fiancee if there is simply no physical evidence tying her to the crime?"

A flummoxed look on his face, he turned first to the prosecution table as though he expected an answer to this very reasonable question. When none was forthcoming, he came back to the panel. "That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a very good question. Because the pure fact is that Mr. Rosen does not have so much as a single fingerprint of Catherine Hanover on any part of the murder weapon. He does not have anything tying Catherine Hanover to the gasoline container that Mr. Hanover's killer used to start the fire at his house. He has, let me repeat this one more time, no physical evidence. Remarkable."

Hardy took a casual stroll of his own now across to the defense table where Catherine sat. Borrowing from Rosen's bag of tricks, he, too, raised his arm and pointed a finger at his client. "This woman is innocent, completely innocent of these crimes. She is guilty of nothing at all, in fact, except for drawing the attention and incurring the wrath of the lead investigating officer on this case, Sergeant Dan Cuneo, by resisting his inappropriate sexual advances and reporting them to his superior."

Out in the gallery, a low roar erupted. This was what all the reporters had come for! Sex and scandal. Salacious accusations and powder-keg secrets.

Hardy took a beat's quiet pleasure in the sight of Cuneo's startled fury, of Chris Rosen's jaw, visibly drooping. Startled and disconcerted, though he must have known that the issue would arise, he simply didn't seem prepared for the accusation so early in open court. Welcome to the big leagues, Hardy thought. He had drawn first blood.

It got better. Cuneo whispered something to Rosen, who belatedly rose to his feet. "Objection, Your Honor. Argument."

"The objection is overruled. He's not arguing, Mr. Rosen. He's telling his version of events, as you did. That's what opening statements are for. Go on, Mr. Hardy."

Hardy nodded respectfully. This was wholly unexpected. Not only had Braun ruled for him, but she'd thrown Rosen a backhanded rebuke in front of the jury. Hardy had to like it, but couldn't dare show any of it. "Thank you, Your Honor," he said.

He moved to the center of the courtroom. Again he turned and looked back over at the defense table. "I said a minute ago that there was no physical evidence tying Catherine to this crime. But more than that, there is no convincing evidence of any kind, physical or otherwise, that she is guilty." The adrenaline was definitely running now, and he was aware of a keen pleasure-almost a thrill-knowing that he was going to let it take him as far as it would.

"The critical prosecution witnesses are inconsistent and contradict one another. My client's statements have been twisted and taken out of context. The so-called motive has been exaggerated and distorted, and the whole foul-smelling mass has been coaxed into the feeble semblance of a case by an overhasty and careless investigation.

"Two people are dead here. And the evidence will show they were shot to death. The prosecution evidence beyond this is simply not clear enough, clean enough, convincing enough to convict Catherine of murder." He paused for a beat, confident now that he'd be able to slip in a last bit of argument. "At the beginning of your service," he said to the jury, "you swore an oath. As Catherine sits there now under your gaze," he said, "you must presume that what I have told you is the truth. You must presume that she is innocent. That is where this trial begins.

"Mr. Rosen would have you believe that she is not innocent. That she plotted and executed this double murder for financial gain. That she is guilty as charged. But no amount of political ambition, no desire to close a high-profile case can make her so. The law of this country presumes the innocence of the accused. It is on that presumption and upon your oath that we will rely."

He met the eyes of several jurors, every one rapt. Up to now, at least, he had them with him.

₁₇

The only witness before the lunch break was John Strout, an ageless and usually uncontroversial figure at every murder trial that Hardy had ever attended in San Francisco. Prosaic as it might seem, usually one of the first orders of business for the prosecution was to establish that a murder had, in fact, taken place. Or, in this case, two murders.

Hardy had studied the forensics and the autopsy until he'd gone cross-eyed trying to find some wedge to cast doubt on the causes of death or, more specifically, to re-introduce the idea of murder/suicide. It certainly didn't look good, knowing all the facts as he did; in fact, the possibility was so remote as to be an impossibility. Still, he didn't see how it could hurt to give the jury a nugget of doubt about that point.

So when Rosen finished his none-too-rigorous direct on what had been the obvious causes of death of the two

victims, Hardy stood and walked up to where Dr. Strout sat with consummate ease in the witness box. As some people grow to look like their dogs, Strout the coroner had over time come to resemble a cadaver. Nearly six and a half feet tall, gaunt and sallow, Strout's many-lined cheeks were covered with a crepe-paper skin that sank into the hollows of his face. A prominent Adam's apple bobbed with every frequent swallow. But for all that, he somehow managed to retain something of a youthful air-a shock of unruly white hair, pale blue eyes that had seen it all and laughed at a lot of it. When he spoke, a Southern drawl cast much of what he said in a sardonic light. Although here, of course-on the witness stand under oath-he would strive to be nothing but professional.

Hardy had known the man for thirty years and greeted him cordially, then got down to the business at hand. "You've testified that both Mr. Hanover and Missy D'Amiens died from gunshot wounds to the head, is that correct?"

"Yes, it is." Strout was sitting back in his seat, arms resting on the arms of his chair, his long legs crossed in the cramped witness box, an ankle on its opposite knee.

In the kindergarten simplicity of the courtroom, Rosen had presented a drawing, mounted on a portable tripod, of the two victims' heads, showing the entry and exit wounds of the bullets and their trajectories. Hardy went first to the location of the wound on Missy's head-verifying that it was in the upper back. "Let me ask you then, Doctor. Could this wound have been self-inflicted?"

Strout's initial reaction, covered quickly, was a twinkle in those pale eyes. He knew Hardy well, and the question was so stupid on its face that he almost didn't know how to respond except with sarcasm. But it stirred him from his complacent lethargy. He uncrossed his legs and pulled himself up straight. "In my opinion"-"In ma 'pinion"-"it would have been well nigh impossible to inflict this wound on herself."

"Im-possible, you say?"

"That's right."

"All right. And turning now to Mr. Hanover's wound. Same question."

"Could he have shot himself there, over his right ear?"

"Right," Hardy said.

"Well, no. I don't rightly think so."

"But unlike the case with Missy D'Amiens, it might not have been impossible?"

"Well, no. If he'd used his left hand, but even so, the trajectory…" He stopped, shook his head with some decision. "I'd have to say no. No."

"No, Doctor? And why is that?"

"Because he had polio when he'd been younger, and his right arm was useless."

Hardy nodded at this fascinating discovery, brought in the jury with his eyes. "So he couldn't have lifted the gun with his right hand to where it needed to be to have fired the shot that killed him? Is that your testimony?"

Strout's eyes were narrowed down now to slits. He famously did not like his medical opinions challenged, either in or out of court. "That's my understanding. Correct."

"Your understanding, Doctor? I take it then that you did not have a chance to examine Mr. Hanover while he was alive, did you?"

"No. Of course not."

"No. Well, then, in your examination of the body after his death, did you find the muscles in Mr. Hanover's right arm to be atrophied or useless?"

"No, I did not."

"No? Why not?"

"Because there was essentially nothing left of the right arm. It had cooked away."

This macabre recital brought a hum to the gallery that made Braun lift her gavel, but it died away before she could bring it down.

"So, Doctor," Hardy continued, "there is nothing about your examination that precludes the possibility that Mr. Hanover shot Ms. D'Amiens and then himself. Is that correct?"

A glint of humor showed again in Strout's eyes. So this was where the apparently stupid questions were leading. He nodded. "That's right."

"In other words, according to your personal examination of Mr. Hanover after his death, you found nothing that would rule out the possibility of a self-inflicted wound?"

"Correct."

"And of course, Mr. Hanover, before he took his own life, could have shot Ms. D'Amiens. Isn't that true?" "Yes," Strout replied.

"Thank you, Doctor," Hardy said. "No further questions."

As soon as Braun called the lunch recess, Hardy gave his client a small pat on the hand before she was led away to her holding cell just behind the courtroom for her own jail-time meal. Most days, Hardy would probably be back there with her, going over issues with sandwiches or sometimes with food phoned in by Phyllis from any one of a number of terrific local eateries. But today-and Hardy had told Catherine beforehand-he had a point to make.

So he gathered his notes and binders into a neat pile in front of his place, then got up and pushed his way through the swinging gate to the gallery. Frannie stood waiting for him, and he slung an arm around her shoulders, drew her to him, kissed the top of her head-the picture of a happily married man casually meeting up with his spouse. He then leaned over to say hi to Jeff Elliot, who'd wheeled himself up next to Frannie before the proceedings began. "I love this woman," he said, "and you can quote me." Then, sotto voce, he added, "In fact, I wish you would."

"It's not exactly news," Elliot said. "Man loves wife. You know what I mean?" He knew what Hardy was talking about, however, and said, "But I'll see what I can do."

The three of them stood chatting in the press of people as the courtroom slowly emptied, the jury first. Hardy noticed Cuneo, who'd nearly bolted from the prosecution table, drumming the back of a chair in front of him. His face was a black mask as he tried to keep his cool, or rather not to show his self-evident fury, as the other people in his row (four rows away from Hardy) patiently awaited their turn to file out. There was only the one center aisle in Department 21, so exiting this courtroom was always a bit like leaving an airplane-slow, slow, slow-While the people in front of you struggled to get their luggage out of the overhead bins, or helped their children or older parents, or just talked and talked and talked, unaware that they needed to keep the goddamn line moving.

And then at last Cuneo was on his way up the aisle, his back to them after a few furtive and angry glances. When Elliot, Hardy and Frannie at last got out into the hallway, there was Cuneo again, in a heated discussion with Rosen. And again, as he saw Hardy, a flash of pure hatred.

"Who's that?" Even through the milling crowd, breaking up in various permutations as people went to lunch, Frannie noticed the directed glare.

Hardy still had his arm over her shoulder, and turned her away. "Cuneo."

"That would be Inspector Cuneo to you." Elliot was wheeling himself along next to them. "He seems a little perturbed."

Frannie turned for another look back. "I'd say scary." "He's just a cop," Hardy said dismissively, "and not a particularly good one." They were waiting with several other citizens for the elevator on the second floor to open. "And speaking of cops, did either of you see Abe around this morning before my brilliant opening?"

"You had a flash of brilliance? When was that?" Elliot asked. "Darn, I must have missed it."

"Come on, Jeff," Frannie said. "He was." She looked up at him, amusement in her eyes. "Or at least, as David used to say, he was 'fairly competent.' "

"You're both too kind, really," Hardy said. "But

Abe?"

Frannie shook her head no. So did JeffElliot. "Haven't seen him."

John Strout shambled over while the three of them were eating their lunch at Lou the Greek's. The medical examiner hovered over the table like a smiling ghost. "Y'all havin' the Special?" An unnecessary question, since Lou's only served one meal every day-the Special-always some more or less bizarre commingling of Asian and Greek foodstuffs. Today the Special came under less bizarre, although still passing strange-a "lamburger," with a bright red sweet-and-sour pineapple sauce over rice.

Strout peered down at the plates through his bifocals. "As a medical man, I'd recommend caution. You mind, Jeff?" He slid into the booth next to Elliot, shot an appreciative glance at Frannie, then held out his hand. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."

In the middle of a bite, Hardy swallowed. "I'm sorry. John, my wife, Frannie. Frannie, John Strout, who gave such a fine performance this morning."

"Thank you," he said. But the smile faded. "Though I must tell you, Diz, that little primrose path you led me down in there don't lead nowhere."

Hardy put down his fork. "Never said it did, John. But now Mr. Rosen is going to have to talk about it. Might put him off his feed, that's all."

"My husband has a cruel streak," Frannie said. "It's well documented."

"I've seen it in action myself." Strout was all amiability. "You going after my forensic colleagues, too?"

"And who would they be?" Hardy asked.

"You know, the teeth people."

"Whoever's up next, John. I'm equal opportunity at skewering prosecution witnesses. But I'm saving the big show for later."

"Who's that?"

Hardy smiled. "You'll have to wait around and find out. Maybe I can get you a special pass to let you back in the courtroom."

"Put me on your witness list."

"That might do it." Hardy's fork had stopped in midair. He chewed thoughtfully for a second or two.

"He's thinking cruel thoughts again," Frannie said. "I can tell."

"Dr. McInerny," Hardy began his cross-examination of Hanover's dentist. "For how long was Paul Hanover your patient?"

"Twenty-seven years, give or take."

"And in that time, how many X-rays of his mouth did you take?"

"I don't know exactly. Usually we do one a year, but if a tooth cracks or… well, really any number of other reasons, we'll do another."

"So it's not a complicated process?"

"No, not at all."

"Would you describe the X-ray process for the court, please?"

Rosen spoke from behind him. "Objection. Three fifty-two, Your Honor." This was a common objection raised when the relevance of the testimony and its probative value was substantially outweighed by the time consumption, prejudicial effect, or by the likelihood of confusing the jury. "We all know how X-rays work."

Braun nodded. "Any particular reason to do this, Mr.

Hardy?"

"Yes, Your Honor, but I'm trying to draw a distinction between how X-rays get taken in a dentist's office and how he took the X-rays of the male victim's mouth at the morgue."

"To what end?"

"What I'm getting at, Your Honor, is that if the picture is taken from a different angle in the morgue, or with a different technique, it will look different than a typical office X-ray, and the identification of the victim might then not be as certain."

McInerny, apparently in his late fifties or early sixties, carried twenty or so extra pounds on a midsize body. Pattern baldness was well advanced, and what remained of his hair was snow white. But his face looked like it spent a lot of time outdoors-open, intelligent, expressive. Now he spoke up, helpful, but out of turn. "Really, though, that's not a concern."

Braun, surprised at his intrusion, swung her head to look at him. "Doctor," she said mildly, "just a moment, please." She looked out at the still-standing Rosen, then came back to Hardy. "I'll overrule the objection at this time. Go ahead, Mr. Hardy."

"Thank you, Your Honor. So Doctor, those X-rays. Is there a difference in the way you take standard diagnostic X-rays at your office, and the way you took them to help identify the victim in this case at the morgue?"

In his element now, enjoying this chance to explain the intricacies of his work, McInerny first walked through the familiar procedure that took place in his office-the film in the mouth, the big machine, the lead-lined sheet. "But of course in a forensic laboratory setting, such as a morgue, we typically don't take a picture at all."

"Why is that?"

"Well, because we can simply look at what's there and compare it to our known sample. Let's say, for example, you look in a victim's mouth and have seven fillings, a crown, and a root canal or extraction site, and they're just where they are in your sample. Well, then, you've got a match."

Hardy, sensing an opportunity, jumped at it. "So you can get a match with only, say, a few matching teeth? Less than a whole mouthful?"

"Sometimes, of course. Sometimes you don't have a whole mouthful. But you work with everything you have. In the case of Mr. Hanover, I compared all of the teeth. There was a one hundred percent correlation."

"And so you positively identified the victim as Mr. Hanover?"

But McInerny was shaking his head. "Not precisely," he said.

"No? Could you explain."

"Sure. I simply verify the match. My dental records match the victim's. And in this case they did."

Hardy, having wasted twenty minutes of the court's time on this dry well of a cross-examination, realized that he let himself succumb to the luxury of fishing. He'd gotten an unexpected and gratuitous, entirely minor victory of sorts from Strout during the morning session and he'd let it go to his head. He was going to alienate the jury if he kept barking up this kind of tree, to no effect.

Acknowledging defeat, he tipped his head to Dr. Mc-Inerny, thanked him for his time, and excused him.

The afternoon passed in a haze of redundancy. Toshio Yamashiru was, as Rosen took pains to point out, not only the dentist of Missy D'Amiens, but one of the top forensic odontologists in the country. As Strout had told Glitsky so long ago, he had assisted in the identification of the 9/11 victims. He had twenty-plus years of experience not only in general dentistry, but in advanced forensics.

No doubt prompted by Hardy's aggressive cross-examination of Dr. McInerny, Rosen went to great lengths not only to establish Yamashiru's credentials, but also the techniques that he'd used in the morgue and then in his own lab to exactly correlate the various fissures, faults and striations of each tooth in the skull he examined with the dental records of Missy D'Amiens.

After an hour and forty-one minutes of this excruciatingly boring detail, he finally asked, "Doctor Yamashiru, what was the correlation between the teeth you examined at the morgue and that of the woman whose records are in court, Missy D'Amiens?"

"One hundred percent."

"You're certain?"

"Completely."

"Thank you, Doctor." Rosen turned to Hardy. "Your witness."

Hardy blinked himself to a marginally higher state of awareness and stood up. "Your Honor, I have no questions for this witness."

With ill-concealed relief, Braun turned to Yamashiru. "Thank you, Doctor. You may step down." She then looked up, bringing in the jury, and raised her voice. "I think we've had enough for today. We'll adjourn until tomorrow morning at nine thirty."

In the holding cell just behind the back door of the courtoom, Catherine, caged, paced like a leopard.

Hardy, who'd endured complaints-many justified, he'd admit-about the family since Catherine had gone to jail, felt compelled to try and tolerate another round. Even if he were wrung out and ready to go home-or really, back to the office for a minimum of a couple of hours where he would check his mail and e-mail, answer urgent calls from other clients and deal with any other outstanding firm business that needed his input-he had to let her get some of her frustration out. Because if she didn't blow off steam back here, out of sight, she might do it in front of the jurors, and that would be disastrous. So he let her go on, unaware that with the tensions of the day his own string was near breaking. "I was just so conscious of them all day long, sitting there in the gallery, watching my back, my every breath, I think, and all of them believing I could have done anything like this. How could they even think that?"

"I don't think they do."

"Ha. You don't know."

"No, I don't. That's true."

She got to one end ofher twelve-foot journey, grasped the bars for a moment, then pushed off in the other direction. "Shit shit shit."

"What?"

"Just shit, that's what." She opened her mouth and let out something between a scream and a growl.

"Hey, come on, Catherine, calm down."

"I can't calm down. I don't want to calm down. I'm locked up, for Christ's sake. I might be locked up forever. Don't you see that?"

She reached the other end, turned again.

"Catherine, stop walking. Please. Just for a second." He patted the concrete bench next to him. "Come on.

Sit. You'll feel better."

She didn't stop walking. "I've been sitting all day."

He sighed, let the words out under his breath. "Christ, you can be a difficult woman!"

She stopped and looked at him. "You're not mad at me, are you?"

"No, Catherine. How could I be mad at you? I make a simple request for you to sit down so you'll feel better and, because I've been working all day every day for eight months already on your behalf, of course you completely ignore what I want and continue to pace. This makes me happy, not mad. And why? Because I need the abuse. I thrive on abuse, if you haven't noticed."

"I'm not abusing you."

Hardy had to chuckle. "And I'm not mad at you. So we're even. You continue pacing and I'll just sit here, not being mad, how's that?"

She stared down at him. "Why are you being this way?"

"What way? Calling you on your behavior? Maybe it's because how you behave in the courtroom is going to have an effect on the jury."

"Okay, but we're not in the courtroom now." Some real anger crept into her tone. "I've been behaving well in there all day and now, if it's all the same to you, Dis-mas Hardy, I'm a little bit frustrated."

"Well, take it out on me, then. I'm a glutton for it. Here." He got to his feet. "I'll stand up, be your punching bag. Go on, hit me."

She squared around on him as though she actually might. Hardy brought a finger up to his chin, touched it a few times. "Right here."

"God, you're being awful."

"I'm not. I'm facilitating getting you in touch with your inner child who wants to hit me. You'll really feel better. I swear. This is a real technique they teach in law school."

In spite of herself, she chuckled, the anger bleaching out of her, her face softening. "I don't want to hit you, Dismas. We can sit down."

"You're sure? I don't want to stem your free expression."

She lowered herself to the concrete bench. "It's just been a long day," she said.

He looked down at her. "I hate to say that it's only the first one of many, but that's the truth. We ought to try to keep from fighting. I'm sorry if I pushed you there."

"No. I deserved it. I pushed you."

"Well, either way." Hardy put his hands in his pockets, leaned against the bars behind him. "This is worse for you, and I'm sorry."

They were in a cell in an otherwise open hallway that ran behind all of the courtrooms. Every minute or so, a uniformed bailiff or two would walk by with another defendant, or sometimes an orange-suited line of them, in tow. The place was lit, of course, but in some fashion Hardy was dimly aware that outside it was close to dark out and still cold. Down the way somewhere, quite possibly in an exact double of the cell in which they sat, but invisible to them, they both could hear someone crying.

"She sounds so sad," Catherine said. "It could be one of my daughters. That's what I'm missing the most. The kids." She took a deep breath. "It's bad enough now, with them having to deal with all that high school nasti-ness, with their mother in jail, what they must be going through day to day. But what I really agonize about is how it's going to affect them in the long run, if I wind up…" She stared at her hands in her lap.

"That's not going to happen," Hardy said. "I'm not going to let that happen."

Down the hall, they heard the crying voice suddenly change pitch and scream, "No! No! No!" and then the clank of metal on metal. From out of nowhere, at the same instant, their bailiff opened the courtroom door at the mouth of their cage. "You want dinner, we better get you changed," he said.

Wordless, Catherine hesitated, let out a long sigh. Then, resigned, she nodded, stood up and held out her hands for the cuffs.

₁₈

The pediatric heart specialist at Kaiser, Dr. Aaron True-blood, was a short, slightly hunchbacked, soft-spoken man in his mid- to late sixties. Now he was sitting across a table from Glitsky in a small featureless room in the maternity wing, his hands folded in front of him, his kindly face fraught with concern.

Treya had been a trouper. They got to the hospital well before nine o'clock that morning, and after eight hours of labor, Glitsky breathing with her throughout the ordeal, she delivered an eight-pound, two-ounce boy they would call Zachary. Crying lustily after his first breath, he looked perfectly formed in all his parts. Glitsky cut the umbilical cord. Treya's ob-gyn, Joyce Gavelin, gave him Apgar scores of eight and nine, about as good as it gets.

In a bit under an hour, though, the euphoria of the successful delivery gave way to a suddenly urgent con

cern. Dr. Gavelin had the usual postpartum duties-the episiotomy, delivering the placenta and so on-during all of which time Zachary lay cuddled against his mother's stomach in the delivery room. The doctor released mother and baby down to her room in the maternity ward, and Glitsky walked beside the gurney in the hallway while they went and checked into the private room they'd requested, where the hospital would provide a special dinner and where he hoped to spend the night. After making sure that Treya and Zachary were settled- the boy took right to breast-feeding-Glitsky went down the hall to call his father, Nat, to tell him the good news and check up on Rachel, who was staying with him. Everything was as it should have been.

When he came back to Treya's room, though, she was crying and Zachary was gone. Dr. Gavelin had come in for a more formal secondary examination of the newborn. But what began as a routine and cursory procedure changed as soon as she pressed her stethoscope to the baby's chest. Immediately, her normally upbeat, cheerleader demeanor underwent a transformation. "What is it? Joyce, talk to me. Is everything all right?"

But Dr. Gavelin, frowning now, held up a hand to quiet Treya and moved the stethoscope to another location on the baby's chest, then another, another, around to his back. She let out a long breath and closed her eyes briefly, perhaps against the pain she was about to inflict. "I don't want to worry you, Treya, but your little boy's got a heart murmur," she said. "I'd like to have one of my colleagues give a listen and maybe run a couple of tests on him. We'll need to take Zachary away for a while." "Take him away! What for?"

The doctor put what she might have hoped was a comforting hand on Treya's arm. "As I said, to run a few tests, shoot some X-rays. Maybe get a little better sense of the cause of the murmur. We've got a terrific pediatric cardiologist…"

"Couldn't you just do it here? Have somebody come down…?"

"I don't think so. We'll want to do an X-ray and an echo-cardiogram at least. And then maybe some other testing." "What kind of testing?"

"To get a handle on what we might be dealing with, Treya."

"But you just said it was a murmur. Aren't murmurs fairly common?"

"Some kinds, yes." "But not this kind?"

Dr. Gavelin hadn't moved her hand, and now she squeezed Treya's arm. "I don't know," she said gently. "That's why I want to have a specialist look at him."

And then, somehow, by the time Glitsky got back from his phone call, Zachary was gone.

Sometime later, the volunteer maternity staff people wheeled in the special dinner that had been ordered for this room and seemed confused that the baby wasn't with the parents, who were both on the bed, silent, clearly distraught, each holding the other's hands. They didn't even look at the food. Finally, when the orderlies came back to remove the untouched trays, Glitsky decided he had to move. He didn't have any idea how long he and Treya had been sitting together waiting, but suddenly he had to get proactive. He needed to get information. Like, first, where was his son? And what exactly was wrong with him?

He told Treya that he'd be back when he'd learned something, and walked out into the hallway. He at once had recognized Gavelin and an older man approaching, heads down in consultation. One of them must have looked up and seen him, because without exchanging too many words, it seems that they decided that Joyce would go back in to talk to Treya, and the other doctor-the stooped, sad and kind-looking one-would break the news to Glitsky.

Too worried to argue the logistics-why weren't they seeing him and Treya together?-he followed Trueblood into the tiny room, but they weren't even seated when Glitsky said, "When can I see my son?"

"I can't tell you that exactly." Glitsky recognized something in Trueblood's voice-the same sympathetic but oddly disembodied tone he'd used numerous times before, when he had to inform relatives about the death of someone in their family. He knew that your words had to be clear and carefully chosen to forestall denial. You were recounting an objective fact that could not be undone, painful as it was to hear. At that tone-by itself-Glitsky felt his heart contract in panic's grip. Trueblood's next words, even more gently expressed, were a depth charge in his psyche. "I'm sorry, but this may be very serious." "You mean he might die?"

Trueblood hesitated, then nodded. "It's not impossible. We're still not sure exactly what we're dealing with."

Arguing, as though it would change anything, Glitsky said, "But my wife said it was just a murmur."

Trueblood's red-rimmed, exhausted, unfathomably cheerless eyes held Glitsky's. His hands were folded in front of him on the table and he spoke with an exaggerated care. "Yes, but there are different kinds of murmurs. Your son's, Zachary's, is a very loud murmur," he said. "Now this can mean one of two things-the first not very good and the second very bad."

"So not very good is the best that we're talking about?"

Trueblood nodded. He piled the words up as Glitsky struggled to comprehend. "It could be, and this is the not very good option, that it's just a hole in his heart…"

"Just?"

A matter-of-fact nod. "It's called a VSD, a ventricular septal defect. It's a very small, pinhole-sized hole that can produce a murmur of this volume. Sometimes."

"So the very bad option is more likely?"

"Statistically, with this type of murmur, perhaps slightly."

Glitsky couldn't hold his head up anymore. They shouldn't have tried for this baby. He shouldn't have let Treya talk him into it. She was already in love with it, with him, with Zachary, as was Glitsky himself. After the long wait to welcome him, in only a couple of hours Zachary had moved into their hearts and minds. And not just the thought of him. The presence, the person.

But Trueblood was going on. "In any event, the other option is called aortic stenosis, which in a newborn can be very difficult to correct." He let the statement hang between them for a second. "But that's what we're testing to see now. We've X-rayed the heart already, and it doesn't seem to be enlarged, which is the most obvious sign of aortic stenosis."

Glitsky, grasping at anything resembling hope, said, "And you're saying it doesn't seem enlarged?"

"No. But at his age, we'll need to analyze the X-rays more closely. A heart that size, we're talking millimeters of difference between healthy and damaged. We'll need to have a radiologist give us a definitive read on it."

"And when will that be?"

"We've got a call in for someone right now, but he may not get his messages until morning. In any case, it won't be for a few hours at best. And the echocardio-gram couldn't be scheduled until tomorrow. We felt we had to talk to you and your wife before then."

Glitsky met the doctor's eyes again. "What if it's the VSD, the hole in the heart? The better option."

"Well, if it's a big hole, we operate, but I don't think it's a big one."

"Why not?"

"The murmur is too loud. It's either a tiny, tiny hole or… or aortic stenosis." "A death sentence." "Not necessarily, not always." "But most of the time?" "Not infrequently."

"So what about this tiny hole? What do you do with that?"

"We just let it alone as long as we can. Sometimes they close up by themselves. Sometimes they never do, but they don't affect the person's life. But if the hole does cause… problems, we can operate."

"On the heart?"

"Yes."

"Open-heart surgery?"

"Yes. That's what it is. And it's successful a vast majority of the time."

Glitsky was trying to analyze it all, fit it in somewhere. "So best case, we're looking at heart surgery. Is that what you're saying?"

"No. Best case is a tiny hole that closes by itself."

"And how often does that happen?"

Trueblood paused. "About one out of eight. We'll have a better idea by the morning."

Glitsky spoke half to himself. "What are we supposed to do until then?"

The doctor knew the bitter truth of his suggestion, but it was the only thing he could bring himself to say. "You might pray that it's only a hole in his heart."

"Only a hole in his heart? That's the best we can hope for?"

"Considering the alternative, that would be good news, yes."

It was eight thirty and Hardy told himself that he should close the shop and go home. He reached up and turned the switch on the green banker's lamp that he'd been reading under. His office and the lobby through his open door were now dark. A wash of indirect light from down the associates' hallway kept the place from utter blackness, but he felt effectively isolated and alone. It wasn't a bad way to feel. He knew he could call Yet Wah and have his shrimp lo mein order waiting for him by the time he got there, but something rendered him immobile, and he'd learned over the years to trust these intuitive inclinations, especially when he was in trial.

The primary reality in a trial like this is that there was just too much to remember. You could have pretty damned close to a photographic memory, as Hardy did, and still find yourself struggling to remember a fact, a detail, a snatch of conflicting testimony. The big picture, the individual witness strategies, the evidence trail, the alternative theories-to keep all these straight and reasonably accessible, some unconscious process prompted him to shut down from time to time-to let his mind go empty and see what claimed his attention. It was almost always something he'd once known and then forgotten, or dismissed as unimportant before he'd had all the facts, and which a new fact or previously unseen connection had suddenly rendered critical.

Once in a while, he'd use the irrational downtime to leaf through his wall of binders, pulling a few down at random and turning pages for snatches of a police report, witness testimony, photographs. Other times, he'd throw darts-no particular game, just the back and forth from his throw line to the board and back again. Tonight, he backed his chair away from his desk and simply sat in the dark, waiting for inspiration or enlightenment.

He hadn't noticed her approach, but a female figure was suddenly standing in the doorway. She reached for the doorknob and started to pull the door closed.

"Hello?" Hardy said.

"Oh, sorry." The voice of Gina Roake, his other partner. "Diz, is that you? I saw your door open. I thought you'd left and forgotten to close it."

"Nope. Still here."

A pause. "Are you all right?"

"First day of trial."

"I hear you. How'd it go?"

"You can flip on the light if you want. I'm not coming up with anything. It went okay, I think. I hope. I even got a little bonus from Strout's testimony, so maybe I should declare victory and go home."

But Roake didn't turn on the room lights. Her silhouette leaned against the doorpost, arms crossed over her chest. "Except?"

"Except… I don't know. I was waiting for a lightning bolt or something."

"To illuminate the darkness?" "Right, but not happening."

"It's the first day," Roake said. "It's too soon. It never happens on the first day."

"You're probably right," Hardy admitted. "I just thought it might this time."

"And why would that be?"

"Because Catherine didn't…" He stopped.

"Didn't what?" "That's it."

"Okay, I give up. What?"

"I told her she wouldn't spend the rest of her life in jail. Spontaneously. That I wouldn't let that happen."

Silent, Roake shifted at the doorpost.

"I don't think she did it, Gina. That's why I said that. She didn't do it."

But Gina had been in more than a few trials herself. "Well, you'd better defend her as though you think she did."

"Sure. Of course. That's about all I've been thinking about all these months. How to get her off." "There you go."

"But it's all been strategy. Get the jury to go for murder/suicide. Play up the harassment angle with Cuneo. Hammer the weak evidence."

"Right. All of the above."

"But the bottom line is, somebody else did it."

She snorted. "The famous other dude."

"No, not him. A specific human being that I've stopped trying to find."

Roake was silent for a long moment. "A little free advice?"

"Sure. Always."

"Defend her as if you believed with all your heart that she's guilty as hell. You'll feel better later. I promise."

But driving home, he couldn't get the idea out of his mind. So basic, so simple and yet he'd been ignoring it for months, lost to strategy and the other minutiae of trial preparation. If Catherine didn't kill them, someone else did. He had to get that message into the courtroom, in front of the jurors. In his career, he'd found nothing else that approached an alternative suspect as a vehicle for doubt. It struck him that Glitsky's failure to get an alternative lead to pursue-another plausible suspect- had derailed him from any kind of reliance on the "sod-dit," or "some other dude did it," defense. He never had come back to it, and he should have, because in this case some other dude had done it.

It wasn't his client. It wasn't Catherine. Somehow, from the earliest weeks, and without any overt admission or even discussion of the question of her objective guilt, Hardy had become certain of that. This was a woman he'd known as a girl, whom he'd loved. They'd met nearly every day for months and months now, and even with all the life changes for both of them, every instinct he had told him that Catherine was the same person she'd been before. He'd been with her when she sobbed her way through The Sound of Music. One time the two of them had rescued a rabbit that had been hit by a car. She'd been a candy striper at Sequoia Hospital because she wanted to help people who were in pain. This woman did not plan and execute a cold-blooded killing of her father-in-law and his girlfriend and then set the house on fire. It just did not happen. He couldn't accept the thought of it as any kind of reality.

Every night as he sought parking near his home he would drive up Geary and turn north on 34th Avenue, the block where he lived. He never knew-once or twice a year he'd find a spot. His house was a two-story, stand-alone Victorian wedged between two four-story apartment buildings. With a postage-stamp lawn and a white picket fence in front, and dwarfed by its neighbors, it projected a quaintness and vulnerability that, to Hardy, gave it great curb appeal. Not that he'd ever consider selling it. He'd owned the place for more than thirty years, since just after his divorce from Jane, and now he'd raised his family here. He felt that its boards were as much a part of who he was as were his own bones.

And tonight-a sign from the heaven he didn't really believe in-twenty feet of unoccupied curb space lay exposed directly in front of his gate. Automatically assigning to the vision the status of mirage, he almost drove right by it before he hit his brakes and backed in.

He checked his watch, saw with some surprise that it was ten after nine, realized that he hadn't eaten since his lunchtime lamburger. In his home, welcoming lights were on in the living room and over the small front porch. When he got out of the car, he smelled oak logs burning and looked up to see a clean plume of white coming out of the chimney.

Home.

Cuneo didn't hear the telephone ring because he was playing his drums along with "Wipeout" turned up loud. He had the CD on repeat and lost track of how many times he'd heard the distinctive hyena laugh at the beginning of the track. The song was a workout, essentially three minutes of fast timekeeping punctuated by solos on the tom-toms. Midway his sixth or seventh time through the tune, Cuneo abruptly stopped. Shirtless, shoeless, wearing only his gray sweatpants, he sat on the stool, breathing heavily. Sweat streaked his torso, ran down his face, beads of it dropping to the floor.

In the kitchen, he grabbed a can of beer, popped the top and drank half of it off in a gulp. Noticing the blinking light on his phone, he crossed over to it and pressed the button.

"Dan? Dan, you there? Pick up if you're there, would you? It's Chris Rosen. Okay, you're not there. Call me when you get in. Anytime. I'm up late."

Cuneo finished his beer, went in to take a shower, came out afterward wrapped in a towel. Armed with another cold one, he sat at his kitchen table and punched up Rosen's numbers. "Hey, it's me. You called."

"Yeah, I did. I just wanted to make sure you were still cool about this Glitsky thing."

"Totally."

"I mean, today, earlier…"

"It just pissed me off, that's all. It still does. But what am I gonna do?"

"Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. What you're going to do."

"Nothing. That's what you said, right?"

"It's what I said, yes, but I've been reconsidering. Maybe we can spin this sexual thing back at them. I mean, everybody already believes Hardy's poking her, right? So she's the loose one, she's easy, get it?" Rosen gave Cuneo a moment to let the idea sink in. "I mean, isn't she the kind of woman who would have made the first move? We didn't want to bring it up before because, well, I mean, what would be the point? Try her on the evidence, not on innuendo or her personal habits. More professional. Blah blah blah. We didn't want to embarrass her. But once they introduce the whole question, the jury needs to hear the truth. I mean, only if it is the truth, of course-I'm not trying to put words into your mouth. But if she did come on to you first, and you rejected her… it's your word against hers. And you're a cop with an unblemished record and she's a murder suspect. If we bring it up first as soon as I get you on the stand… you know what I'm saying?"

Cuneo brought the ice-cold can of beer to his lips. His internal motor suddenly shifted into a higher gear, accelerating now on the straightaway instead of straining up a steep grade. He'd never done anything to harass Catherine Hanover. He knew it. Whatever it was had been her imagination and her lies. Not him. He was sure of that.

Let's see how she liked it.

For the first couple of Hardy's murder trials, Fran-nie had tried to have some kind of dinner waiting for him when he got home. She went to some lengths to try to time his arrival at home to coincide with dinner being done so that they could sit down as a family together-the sacred ritual, especially when the kids had been younger. But the effort turned out to be more a source of frustration than anything else. Try as he might, Hardy couldn't predict when he'd get home with any regularity. It was another of the many things in their daily lives that was out of their control. Aspects not as ideal as they had once imagined it, and yet were part and parcel of this constantly evolving thing called a marriage. Tonight, as Hardy stood at the stove and Frannie, in jeans and a white sweater and tennis shoes, sat on the kitchen counter with her ankles crossed, watching him, neither of them remembered the growing pains of the dinner issue that had led them here. Hardy was in trial, so he was responsible for his own meals. That was the deal because it was the only thing that made any sense.

From Frannie's perspective, the best thing about Hardy's cooking was that it was all one-pot-or, more specifically, one-pan. He never messed up the kitchen, or created a sinkful of dishes. This was because he was genetically predisposed to cook everything he ate in the ten-inch, gleaming-black cast-iron frying pan that had been the one item he'd taken from his parents' house when he'd gone away to college. Ignoring his own admonition to keep the iron from the barest kiss of water lest it rust, she noticed that he was steaming rice as the basis of his current masterpiece, covering the pan with a wok lid that was slightly too small.

Talking about the usual daily kid and home trivia, interspersed with trial talk, and then some more trial talk, and once in a while a word about the trial, she'd watched him add a can of tuna to the rice, then a lot of pepper and salt, a few shakes of dried onions, a small jar of pimentos, a spoonful of mayonnaise, some green olives, a shot of tequila. Finally, she could take it no more. "What are you making?" she said.

He half turned. "I haven't named it yet. I could make you immortal and call it 'Frannie's Delight' or something if you want."

"Let's go with 'something.' Now what are you putting in there?"

"Anchovy sauce."

"Since when do we have anchovy sauce?" "Since I bought it. Last summer I think. Maybe two summers ago."

"What does it taste like?"

"I don't know. I just opened it."

"And yet you just poured about a quarter cup of it into what you're making?"

"It's the wild man in me."

"You've never even really tasted it?"

"Nope. Not until just…" Hardy put a dab on his finger, brought it to his mouth. "Now."

"Well? What?"

"Primarily," he said, "it smacks of anchovy." Hardy dipped a spoon and tasted the cooking mixture. "Close. We're very close." He opened the refrigerator, nosing around, moving a few items.

"I know," she said, teasing, coming over next to him. "Banana yogurt."

"Good idea, but maybe not." He closed the refrigerator and opened the cupboard, from which he pulled down a large bottle of Tabasco sauce. "When in doubt," he said, and shook it vigorously several times over his concoction. He then replaced the cover. "And now, simmer gently."

"Are you taking a conversation break while you eat this," she said, "or do you have more work?"

"If you're offering to sit with me if I don't open binders, I'll take a break."

She put a hand on his arm and looked up at him. "We're okay, right?"

"Perfect." He leaned down and kissed her. "We're perfect," he said.

₁₉

Arson inspector Arnie Becker took the oath and sat down in the witness box. In a sport coat and dark blue tie over a light blue shirt, he looked very much the professional, completely at home in the courtroom. He canted forward slightly, and from Hardy's perspective, this made him appear perhaps eager. But this was neither a good nor a bad thing.

Chris Rosen stood and took a few steps forward around his table, until he was close to the center of the courtroom. After establishing Becker's credentials and general experience, the prosecutor began to get specific. "Inspector Becker, in general, can you describe your duties to the court?"

"Yes, sir. In the simplest terms, I am responsible for determining the cause of fires. Basically where and how they started. If there's a determination that it's a case of arson-that is, a fire that's deliberately set-then my

duties extend to other aspects of the crime as well. Who might have set the fire, the development of forensic evidence from sifting the scene, that kind of thing."

"Do you remember the fire in Alamo Square at the home of Paul Hanover on May the twelfth of last year?"

"I do. I was called to it right away. Very early on, it looked like an obvious arson."

"What was obvious about it?"

"There were two dead bodies in the foyer. They appeared to have been victims of homicide, rather than overcome by the fire. The assumption was that someone started the fire to hide the evidence they'd left."

Hardy raised a hand. "Your Honor, objection. Speculation."

Braun impatiently shook her head. "Overruled," she said.

Rosen ignored the interruption. "Would you please tell us about the bodies?"

"Well, as I say, there were two of them. They looked like a man and a woman, although it was difficult to tell for certain. The burning was extensive, and the clothes on the tops of their bodies had burned away. Under them, later, though, we found a few scraps of clothing."

Rosen gave the jury a few seconds to contemplate this visual, a common prosecutorial technique to spark outrage and revulsion for the crime in the minds of the panel. "Anything else about the bodies, Inspector?"

"Well, yes. Each had a bullet hole in the head, and what appeared to be the barrel of a gun was barely visible under the side of the man. So that being the case, I decided to try to preserve the scene of the crime-the foyer just inside the front door-as carefully as possible, and asked the firefighting teams to try to work around that area."

"And were they able to do that?"

"Pretty much. Yes, sir."

After producing another easel upon which he showed the jury a succession of drawings and sketches of the lobby, the position of the bodies, the location of the wounds-the prosecutor definitely favored the show-and-tell approach-Rosen took a while walking Becker step-by-step through the investigative process, and the jury sat spellbound. According to the witness, the blaze began in the foyer itself. The means of combustion, in his expert opinion, was one of the most effective ones ever invented-ordinary newspaper wadded up into a ball about the size of a basketball. Even without accelerants of any kind, a ball of newspaper this size in an average-size room-and the foyer of Hanover's would qualify as that-would create enough heat to incinerate nearly everything in it, and leave no trace of its source.

"You used the term 'accelerant,' Inspector. Can you tell us what you mean by that?"

And Becker gave a short course, finishing with gasoline, the accelerant used in this particular fire.

"But with all these other accelerants, Inspector, surely they would burn up in the blaze? How can you be sure that this one was gasoline?"

Becker loved the question. "That's the funny thing," he said, "that people always seem to find difficult to understand."

"Maybe you can help us, then, Inspector."

Hardy longed to get up and do or say something to put a damper on the lovefest between these two. Earlier, Hardy had interviewed Becker himself and had found him to be forthcoming and amiable. Rosen's charming act played beautifully here-the jurors were hearing interesting stuff talked about by two really nice guys. Not only were they giving him nothing to work with, if they did get on something worth objecting to, and Hardy rose to it, he would look like he was trying to keep from the jury what this earnest and obviously believable investigator wanted to tell them. So he sat there, hands folded in front of him, his face consciously bland and benign, and let Becker go on.

"All these accelerants, in fact everything, needs oxygen to burn, so whatever burns has to be in contact with the air. But there is only one part of a liquid that can be in contact with the air, and that is its surface. So what you can have, and actually do have in a case like this, is the gasoline running over the floor, sometimes slightly downhill, pooling in places. But no matter what it's doing, the only part of it that's burning is its surface. Maybe the stuff that isn't burning underneath, the liquid, soaks into some clothing fabric, or into a rug. Both of those things happened here, so we were able to tell exactly what kind of accelerant it was."

"And it was?" "Gasoline."

"Inspector, you used the word 'exactly.' Surely you don't mean you can tell what type of gasoline it was?"

Hardy and Catherine were of course both intimately familiar with every nuance of this testimony. Unable to bear his own silence any longer, he leaned over and whispered to her. "Surely he doesn't mean that?" A wisp of a smile played at Catherine's mouth.

"That's exactly what I mean." Becker gushed on, explaining the mass-spectrometer reading, the chemical analysis (more charts) of Valero gasoline, the point-by-point comparison. Finally, Rosen, having established murder and arson-although no absolute causal relationship between the two-changed the topic. "Now, Inspector, if we could go back to the night of the fire for a while. After you told the firefighters to preserve the crime scene as best you could, what did you do then?"

"I went outside to direct the arson team." He went on to describe the members of this team-another arson inspector, the police personnel-and their various functions, concluding with getting the names and contacts of possible witnesses from people gathered at the scene. "And why do you want to do that?"

Becker seemed to have some trouble understanding the question. Suddenly his eyes shifted to Hardy, but he braved a reply. "Well, lots of people tend to come to a fire, and you never know which of them might have seen something that could prove important. Sometimes a spectator might not recognize the importance of something they've seen. We just like to have a record of everybody who was there so inspectors can go back and talk to them later."

The reason for Becker's sudden edginess soon revealed itself. Rosen had obviously rehearsed this part of the testimony to get to this: "Inspector, isn't it true that, in your experience, when arson is involved, the arsonist, the person who set the fire, often comes back to admire his or her handiwork?"

Hardy shot up. "Objection, Your Honor. No foundation. The witness is not a psychologist." This was kind of a lame objection, since the question was more about what arson inspectors observed than what was in the mind of arson suspects, but it sounded good, and the judge went for it.

"Sustained."

Rosen tried again. "Inspector Becker, among arson inspectors is it common knowledge that a person who sets a fire…?"

Hardy wouldn't let him finish. "Objection! Hearsay and speculation."

"Sustained. Mr. Rosen, ask a specific question or drop this line."

"All right, Your Honor." Rosen stood still, all but mouthing his words first to make sure he got them right. "Inspector, in your own experience, have you personally ever identified and/or arrested an arsonist who had returned to a fire he or she had created?"

Hardy was on his feet. "Your Honor, I'm sorry, but I must object again."

But Rosen, this time, had made it narrow enough for the judge to accept. "Objection overruled. Go ahead, Mr. Rosen."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

Hardy caught a bit of a smirk in the prosecutor's face and, suddenly realizing his own blunder, he tightened down on the muscles in his jaw. By objecting time and again to Rosen's questions, he'd fallen for the prosecutor's bait, thus calling the jury's attention to an item they might otherwise have overlooked as unimportant. Now no one in the courtroom thought it was unimportant, and Hardy had no one to blame for that but himself.

Rosen asked the reporter to read back the question, which she did as Hardy lowered himself to his chair.

The answer, of course, was yes. Becker himself had personally had cases where arsonists had returned to or remained at the fire scene at least a dozen times.

"So now you were outside, across the street from the fire? Can you tell the jury what happened next?"

Hardy had seen this coming. He might have objected on relevance with some chance of being sustained this time, but he had a use in mind for the information.

Becker answered. "Yes, a woman saw that I was in a command position and she approached me and told me that she was related to the man who owned the burning house."

"Do you recognize that woman in this courtroom?"

"I do."

"Would you point her out for the jury, please?" "Yes." He held out his hand. "Right there, at the table."

"Let the record show that Inspector Becker has identified the defendant, Catherine Hanover." Rosen gave his little bow. "Thank you, sir." Turning to Hardy. "Your witness."

"Inspector Becker," Hardy said. "In your testimony, you used the word 'sifted' when you talked about recovering evidence from the scene of the fire. What did you mean by that?"

In spite of the time he'd already been on the stand, Becker remained fresh and enthusiastic. "Well, it's not a very high-tech procedure, but what we do is kind of sweep up and bag everything around a body and then try to identify everything that was at the scene, down to pretty small items."

"And you used this technique after the Hanover fire?"

"Yes, we did."

"Were you looking for anything specific?"

"To some extent, yes. I hoped to find the bullet casings, for example."

Hardy feigned surprise. "You mean you could locate and sift out something that small?"

"Sure, and even smaller than that. By the time we're through, we're pretty much down to ash and nothing else."

"And did you in fact find the bullet casings?"

"Yes."

"Two of them?"

"Yes."

"Were there any fingerprints or any other identifying marks on either of the casings?" "Yes. Mr. Hanover's."

"Mr. Hanover's?" Hardy said. "Not Catherine Hanover's?"

"No."

"What about the gun itself? Were there fingerprints on the gun?"

"Yes. Mr. Hanover's and some others."

"Some others? How many others?"

"It's hard to say. There was nothing to compare them with. It might have been one person, or maybe two or more."

"But did you try to compare them to Catherine Hanover's fingerprints?" "Yes. Of course." "And did you get a match?"

"No. And the other stuff in the house was all burned up."

"In other words, Inspector Becker, there is no physical evidence to indicate that Catherine Hanover had ever touched either the gun that has been identified as the murder weapon or the bullets that were used on the victims? Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"No evidence she was ever even near the gun at any time? Ever?" "None."

"In fact, Inspector, isn't it true that in your careful sifting of all the evidence found in the house after the fire, you did not discover any physical evidence that linked Catherine Hanover either to these murders or, for that matter, to the fire itself?"

Becker answered with a professional calm. "Yes, that's true."

Hardy took the cue and half turned to face the jury. "Yes," he repeated, driving the answer home. But he came right back to Becker. "I'd like to ask you a few questions now about the first time you saw Catherine Hanover on the night of the fire. Did you question her?"

"Not really. She came up to me and said she was related to the home's owner. That was about it. There was really nothing to question her about at that time."

"Nothing to question her about. Did anyone else join the two of you at about this time?"

"Yes. Sergeant Inspector Cuneo arrived from the homicide department, which we'd called as soon as we discovered the bodies."

"And did Inspector Cuneo question Mrs. Hanover?"

"A little bit. Yes."

"Just a little bit?"

"A few minutes. As I said, there was no real reason to question her."

"Yes, you did say that. And yet Inspector Cuneo chose to question her?"

"Your Honor!" Rosen said. "Objection. Where's this going? Sergeant Cuneo was a homicide inspector called to a crime scene. He can talk to anybody he wants for any reason."

"I assume," Braun said stiffly, "that your objection, then, is for relevance. In which case, I'll overrule it."

Hardy took a beat. He'd gotten in the inference he'd wanted-that Cuneo basically just wanted to chat up Catherine, and now he was almost finished. "Inspector Becker, on that first night that he'd seen her, did Sergeant Cuneo express to you any thoughts about Catherine Hanover's physical appearance?"

As a bonus, Rosen reacted, snorting, objecting again.

Braun spoke sharply. "Overruled. Inspector, you may answer the question. Do you need Mr. Hardy to repeat it?"

Hardy, with a second chance to put it in front of the jury, wasted no time. "Did Sergeant Cuneo express to you any thoughts about Catherine Hanover's physical appearance?"

"Yes, he did." "What did he say?"

"He said she was a damn fine-looking woman." "Those were his exact words?" "Pretty close."

When Hardy got back to his table, Catherine leaned over and urgently whispered to him, "What about the ring?"

"What ring?"

"Missy's. Paul gave her an enormous rock. If they swept up everything in the room down small enough to find a bullet casing, they must have found the ring, too.

Right?"

"Maybe it was still on her finger."

"Oh, okay. You're right. I'd just assumed…"

"No. It's worth asking," Hardy said, although he couldn't have elucidated exactly why he thought so. "I'll go back and ask Strout."

"Mr. Hardy." Braun stared down over her lenses. "If we're not keeping you…"

"No. Sorry, Your Honor."

Braun shifted her gaze to the other table. "Mr. Rosen, call your next witness."

Rosen got to his feet. "The people call Sergeant Inspector Daniel Cuneo."

Hardy put a hand over his client's hand on the defense table, gave what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. "Get ready," he whispered. "This is where it gets ugly."

₂₀

Glitsky's prayers were answered. It appeared that it was "only" a hole in Zachary's heart after all. It was so small that the doctor thought it might eventually close up on its own, although Glitsky and Treya shouldn't count on that since it was equally possible that it might not. But whether it eventually closed up on its own or not, Zachary's condition required no further immediate medical intervention, and neither doctor-Gavelin nor Trueblood-suggested an increased stay in the hospital for either mother or child.

So Paganucci had come out to the hospital with Glitsky's car, and Abe and Treya were back to their duplex by noon, both of them completely wrung out with the stress and uncertainty of the previous twenty-four hours. Neither had slept for more than an hour or two. And they were nowhere near out of the woods yet with their boy. There was still some likelihood that he'd need open

heart surgery in the very near term-the doctors and his parents would have to keep a close eye on his overall development, heart size, energy level, skin color-turning bluish would be a bad sign, for example. But what had seemed a bad-odds bet yesterday-that Zachary might be the one child in eight born with this condition able to live a normal life without surgery-now seemed at least possible, and that was something to hang on to, albeit precariously. At least it was not the probable death sentence of aortic stenosis.

Rachel was staying another day with her grandfather Nat. By pretending that he was going to take a much-needed nap with her, Glitsky got Treya to lie down in the bedroom with Zachary blessedly sleeping in the crib beside her. Within minutes she, too, was asleep.

Glitsky got out of bed, went into the kitchen, turned in a full circle, then walked down the hallway by Rachel's room. He checked the back door to make sure it was locked, deadbolt in place, and came back out to the living room. Outside, a bleak drizzle dotted his picture window, but he went to it anyway and stared unseeing at the view of his cul-de-sac below. Eventually, he found himself back in the kitchen. Apparently he'd eaten some crackers and cheese-the crumbs littered the table in front of him. He scooped them into his hand, dropped them in the sink, and punched the message light on his telephone.

The only call was from Dismas Hardy, wondering where he was, telling him that suddenly he had many questions, all of them more critical than the location of

Missy D'Amiens's car. They needed to talk. There'd already been a few developments in the first day of the trial that would affect him. But more than that, he needed to revisit what Abe had done to date.

Glitsky looked at the clock on his stove. Ten after one. There was some chance that Hardy wouldn't yet be back in court after lunch. In some obscure way, and despite his pure fatigue, Glitsky all at once became aware of a sharp spike in his motivation. Maybe the sense of impotence he'd experienced while unseen doctors performed tests on his newborn had upset his equilibrium. Or was it the fact that now there appeared to be a reasonable chance that his son would be all right? That sometimes a cause might appear lost, and that this appearance of hopelessness could be a stage on the route to success, or even redemption? All he knew was that it all seemed of a piece somehow. It was time to get back in this game.

And, a critical point, he could do it from his home. And in a way, conducting an investigation from his home would give him another advantage. There would be no reporters, nobody to witness what he was doing, to question who he might talk to. Rosen and Cuneo, busy in trial mode, would certainly never take any notice. Everything he did would remain under the radar, where he wanted it.

He reached for the telephone.

Hardy's pager told him to leave a number. He did that, then immediately placed another call to his own office. If and when Hardy called back, they'd coordinate their actions. In the meantime, Missy's car was a question even Glitsky had failed to ask. In fact, he realized, every strand of his failed investigation up until now had emanated from Paul Hanover-his business dealings, his politics, his personal life. To Glitsky's knowledge, neither he nor Hardy nor Cuneo nor anyone else involved in the case had given the time of day to Missy D'Amiens. She was just the mistress, then the fiancee, unimportant in her own right. But what if…?

At the very least it was somewhere he hadn't looked. And nowhere else had yielded any results. "Deputy Chief Glitsky's office." "Melissa, it's me."

"Abe." His secretary lowered her voice. "How are you? And Treya?"

"Both of us are pretty tired, but all right."

A pause. "And the baby? Tom"-Paganucci-"Tom said… "

Glitsky cut her off. "Zack's going to be fine."

"Zack? Of course, Tom didn't know what you called him." She was obviously spreading the news to the rest of his administrative staff. "His name is Zachary." Now she was back with him. "Thank God he's all right. We've all been sick here wondering."

"Well…" To avoid going into any more detail at the moment, Glitsky switched to business. "Listen, though, the reason I called…"

"You're not working, are you?"

"I'm trying to, Melissa. But you've got the computer. I'd like you to run a name and vehicle R.O."- registered owner-"for me. On a Michelle D'Amiens. D apostrophe…"

Hardy felt the vibration of the pager in his belt, but he was in the middle of an uncomfortable discussion with Catherine's husband. Hardy had originally intended to huddle with Catherine in the holding cell during the lunch recess, but had noticed that Mary and Will were the only family members who'd made it to the courtroom today, and he needed to talk to both of them. Separately. And sooner rather than later.

So he cut his time with Catherine short and was waiting at the defense table when the brother and sister got back from their lunch together. They had nearly a half hour before court would be back in session, so he walked back and said hello and asked Will if he could spare a minute, then Mary when he and Will were finished, if there was time. So, although obviously unhappy about this unexpected ambush-Will thought he knew what it was about, money, and he was right-he accompanied Hardy back up to his table inside the bullpen. Both men sat down.

"So," Will began with a not entirely convincing show of sincerity, "how can I help you?"

He'd given Hardy a retainer of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars eight months before. Between Hardy's hourly rate, the billable time his associates and paralegals had spent drafting motions and preparing briefs, the large and long-running newspaper advertisements to try and locate the girl who'd run out of gas in the Presidio, the fees for filings and his jury consultant and the private investigator Hardy had hired to find out the truth about Will and his secretary (an irony Will would certainly not have appreciated, had he known), the retainer was long gone. Now Will was past due on his last two monthly invoices, nearly forty thousand dollars.

"The point is," Hardy said, after a short recap and overview, "I don't want this billing issue to interfere with my defense, but we discussed this, you remember, when I first signed on. How it was going to get more expensive when it got to the trial."

"Not that it's exactly been cheap up until now."

"No. Granted. Murder trials are expensive. Even at the family-and-friends rates you're enjoying."

Will chuckled. "Enjoying. I like that."

Hardy shrugged. "I'd hope so, since it's saved you nearly sixty thousand dollars so far. But even so, I wanted to ask you if there was a financial problem. Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable to be here in the first days of the trial and have my client so far behind in payments."

"It's not that far, is it?"

"Sixty days." Hardy waved that off. "But that's not the issue. The issue is that I know you've come into quite a large sum of money recently. I'm assuming you've got significant cash flow, so that's not the problem. And meanwhile, I'm going ahead with my defense of your wife and you're not paying your legal bills."

"Well, I…"

"Please let me finish. I find this conversation as difficult as you do, believe me. But I told you coming in that my trial day fees are three times my normal billing rates, and at the time you said that sounded reasonable. It's still reasonable. But I want to tell you, you're going to get whiplash from sticker shock next month if you don't keep up on these monthly payments."

"Are you saying you're raising your rates now?"

"Not at all. It's all in the contract we signed last June. But the trial has started and that changes everything." Hardy leaned in closer and lowered his voice. "You may not realize it, Will, but it's standard practice among criminal attorneys to get the entire cost of the defense up front. You know why that is? Because a client who gets convicted often loses his motivation to pay his lawyer anymore. Now I didn't make that demand with you and Catherine because of the personal connection, but I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I should have."

Will Hanover's eyes were flashing around the courtroom, and when they came back to Hardy, he'd obviously decided to be shocked and outraged. "You've got some balls trying to shake me down at a time like this. I've paid you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars already. Up front. If that's not good faith, I don't know what is."

"It was. Then," Hardy said. "This is now. And I wanted to put you on notice that it's becoming a big issue."

"Or what? You'll quit? You'd abandon Catherine over a late payment? You've got to be kidding me?"

Hardy didn't rise to the question. Instead, he said, "What might be easiest is if you provide another retainer like the first one…"

"You're out of your mind."

Hardy didn't pause. "… like the first one, to cover what you owe and get us through this month, if the trial goes on that long. And then to begin the appeals process, if we need it."

"If we need an appeal! In other words, if you lose."

"That's right." Hardy's voice was calm. "We won't need to appeal if we win."

"Well, I'm not writing you a check for another hundred and fifty thousand dollars on that off chance, I'll tell you that. And you can take that to the bank."

Hardy pushed himself away from the table, draped an arm over the back of his chair, and looked into the callow and handsome face. With an air of sadness, he came forward again. "Will. I know that you're through with Catherine, however this comes out. I appreciate you coming down here to trial and putting on the face of the good husband. But I also think I know why you're really doing it, and that's because you don't want to lose the respect of your kids."

Will shook his head in disgust. "I've had enough of this. You don't know what you're talking about." He started to stand up.

"I'm talking about Karyn Harris, Will. Your secretary."

Sitting back down, he said, "There's nothing between me and Karyn Harris."

Hardy nodded. "That's been the party line, anyway, that you've worked so hard to keep from your kids. You weren't having an affair. It was just Catherine who was crazed, right?"

"Right." Defiant still.

"And so to your kids, you're still the good guy, aren't you? The dad they can trust, who's holding the whole thing together?"

"That's right."

"But what if they found out you've been lying to them the whole time, too? How would they feel about that? About you?"

"I haven't been lying to them. There was no affair."

Hardy stared at him for several seconds. When he spoke, there was no threat to his voice or in his manner. It was more the measured tones of disappointment that things between them had come to this pass. "Will," he said. "Do yourself a favor. Take a look at the statements I've sent you over the past months. You're going to notice payments totaling about five grand to an entity called The Hunt Club. You know what that is? No? It's a private-investigator service."

Will's initial expression of disdain turned to disbelief and then a distillate of fear itself.

Hardy went on. "If you weren't having an affair, one of the things I considered early on was that you had the same motive to kill your father as Catherine did. You'd gone to some lengths to create an airtight alibi. You would have been perfect. So I had to know, you see, if you were really in San Francisco on May twelfth, or down south."

He let the words hang in the air between them. "Understand that I don't have to bring up any of this for Catherine's sake, and really never planned to. For my purposes, it's enough that Catherine believed you were being unfaithful, and suddenly she needed to go see Paul to find out where a divorce would leave her. But if you in fact were having this affair, and the jury knew it, they might view Catherine in a more sympathetic light. And all other things being equal, that's always to the good."

Will's hands were shaking; his color had gone gray. "You're blackmailing me," he said.

"I've had this for four months. If I was blackmailing you, I would have started then."

Will glanced back at the gallery, which had started to fill for the afternoon session. In the bullpen, the popular court reporter Jan Saunders was sharing a laugh with a bailiff. Several of the jurors had wandered back in and taken their seats. "Where is all this stuff?" he asked.

"Locked away," Hardy said. "No one ever has to see it. No one ever will."

Hardy kept his poker face straight. No one would ever see the documentation of Will's affair with his secretary because it didn't exist. The Hunt Club had come to the conclusion that Will and Karyn had spent their four days aboard the Kingfisher. The captain of that boat, Morgan

Bayley, wasn't talking-Hardy's private investigator was of the opinion that the newly wealthy Will Hanover had sent him a quiet bundle of cash to keep his mouth shut. And had given Karyn a nice raise.

Hardy was running a pure bluff, and wasn't one hundred percent sure he was right until Will stood up and growled down at him, "You'll get your fucking check by the weekend."

₂₁

"Sergeant Cuneo, did you have a specific reason to question the defendant on the night of the fire?"

"Yes, I did."

"And what was that?"

"Well, I was called to the scene to investigate a double homicide. The defendant said that she was related to the owner of the house. That alone justified talking to her. But she also admitted that she'd been to the house that afternoon and had talked to Mr. Hanover."

"Did she say what they'd talked about?"

"At first, yes. She said they'd talked about family matters. But when I asked her if she could be more specific, she became evasive."

"Evasive?"

Hardy stood up with an objection. "Objection. Witness is offering a conclusion."

Braun overruled him, and Rosen barely noticed the

interruption. "When you asked the defendant to be more specific about these family matters, what did she say?"

"She asked why I wanted to know."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I said I was going to need to know everything that happened in Paul Hanover's last hours, which included what she'd talked to him about."

"And did she then go into the substance of her discussion with Mr. Hanover?"

"No. She did not."

"Did you specifically ask her about this?" "Yes. Probably half a dozen different ways." "And she did not answer?"

"Not the substance of the questions, no. She kept saying, 'It's private,' or 'That was between me and Paul,' or 'I can't think about that right now.' "

"Did you press her on this issue?"

"No, not really."

"Why not?"

"Because she was obviously distraught over the fire. She'd acted like she'd just learned that her father-in-law, her children's grandfather, was probably dead. She became very upset after a while. At the time, I thought she had a pretty good reason. I decided to let it go."

Hardy thought this was pretty good. Rosen letting Cuneo present himself as sensitive and empathetic. And now he was going on. "All right. Now, Inspector, did you have occasion to notice anything specific about the physical person of the defendant?"

"Of course. I'm supposed to notice things. It's my job. I checked out her clothes." "And what was she wearing?"

Hardy squirmed in his chair. He wanted to break this up, object on relevance, but he knew that Braun would overrule him. Catherine had been wearing what she'd been wearing and there wasn't anything he could do about that now.

"A blue blouse under a leather jacket. And jeans."

"Would you please tell the jury why you particularly recall the defendant's clothing that night?"

"Sure." Accommodating, Cuneo faced the panel. Hardy wondered if he might have taken a Valium or two during the lunch recess. There was little sign of the trademark jitteriness he'd exhibited before the break. "When we interviewed witnesses later, someone described a woman who had left Paul Hanover's house just before the fire wearing a blue blouse under a leather jacket and jeans."

"But you didn't know that on the night of the fire?"

"No."

Rosen wore his satisfaction on his sleeve. He paused for a drink of water, then came back to his witness. "Sergeant, we may as well address this question now. Did you make a comment to Inspector Becker about the defendant's attractiveness?"

Cuneo handled it well. They'd obviously rehearsed carefully. He shrugged with an almost theatrical eloquence. "I may have. I don't remember specifically, but if Inspector Becker said I said something of that nature, I probably did."

"Does a remark like that seem out of place to you in that context? At the scene of a fire and double murder?"

"I don't know. I don't even remember saying it or thinking about it. It was a nonevent."

"All right, Sergeant, moving along. On the day after the fire, did you see the defendant?"

"Yes. I went to her house."

"And what was your specific purpose on that visit?"

"I had two reasons. First, she'd mentioned the night before that the victims had been fighting, and I wanted to find out a little more about that. Second, I wanted to get some answers about the family issues she'd talked to him about."

"At that time, did you consider her a suspect?"

Here Cuneo showed a little humanity to the jury, another nice move. "That early on," he said with a smile, "everybody's a suspect." Then he got serious. "But no, the defendant wasn't particularly a suspect at that time."

"Okay, and did you get to ask your questions?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because right after she asked me inside and offered me some coffee, she told me that she'd been talking to Deputy Chief Glitsky."

"For the record, you mean Abe Glitsky, San Francisco's Deputy Chief of Inspectors?"

"That's right."

"How did he know the defendant?" "I don't know."

Rosen threw a perplexed glance at the jury. He came back to his witness.

"Inspector, is it unusual to have a deputy chief personally interview witnesses in a homicide investigation assigned to another inspector?"

"I've never seen it happen before."

"Never before? Not once?"

Hardy raised a hand. "Your Honor. Asked and answered." "Sustained."

"All right," Rosen said. "We may come back to the involvement of Deputy Chief Glitsky in a little while, but meanwhile you were with the defendant in her kitchen?"

"That's right."

"Can you describe for the jury what happened next?"

"Sure. She was in the middle of making homemade pasta noodles and she asked me if I liked them. Her husband, she said, was out of town…"

Catherine grabbed at Hardy's arm and started to whisper something to him. He couldn't let the jury see her react badly, and he all but jumped up, raising his voice. "Objection, Your Honor!"

Braun's voice was mild, merely inquisitive. "Grounds, Counselor?"

Hardy's thoughts churned. He had gotten to his feet to shut Catherine up and to challenge Cuneo out of pure rage because he knew the man was lying, but these weren't grounds for objection. "Relevance?"

Braun didn't have to think about it. "Are you guessing, Counselor? I believe you've made a point about this topic yourself in your opening statement. Objection overruled."

The gallery behind Hardy stirred at the promise of more fireworks. Rosen smiled up at Braun. "Thank you, Your Honor." He went back to Cuneo, all business. "Now, Inspector…"

But Hardy whispered quickly to his client and was again out of his seat, cutting off the question. "Your Honor!"

Making no effort to hide her exasperation, Braun pulled her glasses down and peered over them. "Yes, Mr.

Hardy?"

"Defendant would like to request a short recess at this time."

"Request denied. Mr. Rosen, go ahead."

But Hardy wouldn't be denied. "Your Honor, may I approach?"

Her endurance all but used up, Braun rolled her eyes, then folded her palm upward, beckoning Hardy forward with a warning look. He left the desk, came to the base of the podium, spoke in a low voice. "I'm sorry, but my client urgently needs to use the restroom, Your Honor."

"Urgently. That's a nice touch," she whispered. Furious, the judge paused for several more seconds. "This is beneath you, Counselor." Finally she lifted her gavel and brought it down with a snap. "Court will recess for fifteen minutes."

"I can't believe he's just lying like that." "Actually, it's worse than that. He's not saying anything you can deny."

"But I didn't…"

"You did. You told him Will was gone. You asked him if he liked homemade pasta. You've told me this." "Then I'll lie and say I didn't."

Hardy moved his hands up beside his ears. "Don't even privately say that to me, please. We have got to stick with the truth here. It's all we have."

They were in the holding cell, five minutes to go in the recess.

"But they're going to think I wanted to get him close to me so he wouldn't keep investigating around me."

"That's right. That's what they're going to think."

"So how are we going to fight that?"

"I don't know that yet, Catherine. I don't know. But the most important thing right now, the only thing right now, is that you can't react in front of the jury. Don't let them see you do more than look disgusted."

In the end, Hardy couldn't keep it from the jury. Cu-neo's testimony was that Catherine had offered him at least dinner and maybe more. He'd certainly gotten that impression, anyway. He'd had to rebuff her, reminding her that she was a suspect in a murder investigation. She did not take the rejection well and, scorned, had refused to answer any more of his questions. After a while, he'd decided to leave. For the first time, he began to regard her as a possible suspect.

And then, the damage done on that front, Rosen brought it back to Glitsky. "I'm curious, Inspector, did Deputy Chief Glitsky give you any explanation of why he, too, would be investigating the death of Paul Hanover?"

Hardy stood up. "Objection. Hearsay and irrelevant." "Mr. Rosen?"

"Your Honor, this goes to Deputy Chief Glitsky's bias and motive to skew testimony in this case. If he perceives he's under political pressure to obtain a certain result in this case, his recollection, conduct and testimony are all highly suspect."

"Your Honor," Hardy countered, "the deputy chief hasn't testified-he's not a witness so far, so there is nothing to impeach. This testimony, if relevant at all, only comes in after the witness says something that makes it relevant. If that happens later, then it happens, but it's premature right now." Hardy knew he was going to have to face this sooner or later, but he wanted Abe to bring it up first. Have him explain his status in the case in his own terms first, and not take the stand already burdened with the jury's preconception that he was somehow suspect. Hardy knew he was right-that Braun should have waited until there was a foundation to admit the testimony. But she wasn't having any.

The judge took a breath. "Counsel, given what I've heard so far, I'm going to let this in now, subject to a motion to strike. But you're on a short leash here, Mr. Rosen. Keep this very focused."

Hardy didn't like it, but the order of testimony was something within the court's discretion. Rosen had the recorder read the question back to Cuneo-the gist of which was whether or not Glitsky had tried to explain why he would be investigating Hanover's death.

"Yes, he did. He said that Mayor West asked him to become involved."

Mention of San Francisco's mayor brought a pronounced buzz to the gallery, but it died quickly. No one wanted to miss the next question. "Did he tell you why?"

"No, sir. He was my superior. It was a fait accompli. I just assumed it was something political and didn't worry too much about it."

Hardy objected-speculation-and Braun sustained him. But it was a small and insignificant victory amid a string of setbacks. And more to come. "Sergeant, how did Deputy Chief Glitsky's involvement affect your investigation?"

"Well, the most immediate effect was that he warned me off talking to the defendant."

"Warned you off?" Rosen displayed his shock and amazement to the jury. "What do you mean, warned you off?"

"He said that she was threatening to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against me and if I knew what was good for me, I should leave her alone."

"And how did Deputy Chief Glitsky tell you he found out about this?"

"She called him."

"Did he say why she called him?"

Hardy was up again, this time citing speculation and hearsay. He was sustained again, and he took a breath of relief and sat down.

But Rosen never skipped a beat. "Inspector Cuneo, did the defendant in fact file a sexual harassment complaint against you?"

This, of course, had been something Catherine and Hardy had discussed from the beginning. In the end, they'd decided that to bring the complaint after she'd been charged with the murders would only be seen as frankly cynical and duplicitous. So they'd opted against it. Now, of course, it looked like that might have been the wrong decision.

Cuneo actually broke a tolerant smile. He shook his head. "Of course not," he said.

"She did not?"

"No, sir. She did not." Treya and Zachary still slept.

Glitsky had no luck running down the car. It had not been reported stolen, and it was not listed among the city's towed vehicles. He had called around to nearby public garages, where she might have leased a parking space. Nothing. This, in itself, Glitsky thought, was provocative. Where was the darn thing? He placed a call to traffic and ran a check on the booted vehicles, and struck out there, too. Odd. Although he knew it was entirely possible that someone had boosted the car one fine day and then decided-hey, a Mercedes-to keep it. D'Amiens, being dead and all, wouldn't be likely to report it stolen.

But what Glitsky did get was an address where D'Amiens had lived at one time, when she registered her car. Embarrassed for not having discovered it earlier, when it had always been as close as a computer check with the DMV, he reminded himself that the French woman had never really assumed any prominence in his investigations. She was the invisible victim, an adjunct to Paul Hanover, nobody in her own right.

That's probably what she still was, he thought, but at least here was a trail he hadn't been down. It might take him somewhere. Or maybe it would lead him to 235 Eleventh Avenue and stop there. With something of a start, he realized that the place wasn't four blocks from where he sat at his kitchen table. In five minutes, he'd written a note to Treya, should she wake up. He was just taking a walk around the block. He'd be back in twenty minutes.

Outside, the day hadn't gotten any nicer. A thick cloud cover hung low over the city, and the fine drizzle of an hour before held visibility to a quarter mile or so. Glitsky wore his favorite weathered, brown-leather flight jacket with the faux-fur collar. He walked with his hands in his pockets, taking long strides, his shoulders hunched against the cold.

Like most ofthe other buildings in the neighborhood- indeed, like Glitsky's own-the place was an upper-lower duplex, with D'Amiens's address as the street-level unit. He went to the small covered entryway and rang the doorbell, its gong reverberating. After no one answered, he peered through one of the small glass panes in the door, and could make out some furniture, a rug and a bookshelf in a home that seemed to be very much like his own.

"Hello?" An old woman's tremulous voice with a Brooklyn accent echoed down from above and behind him. "They're not home. They're working. Can I help you?"

Looking up into the stairway that led to the upper unit, he stayed below on the bottom step. As a large black man, Glitsky knew that the welcome mat wasn't automatically out for him. He got out his wallet, opened it to his badge, and said, "I'm with the police department. Do you mind if I come up?"

"They're not in trouble, are they? They seem like such nice people." Then, with another thought. "Or dead, are they? Oy, tell me they're not dead. God, not again."

Glitsky stopped on the fifth step. "Again?"

"My last tenant, Missy. Such a nice girl. An officer comes…" She made a hopeless gesture. "And just like that, he tells me she's gone. Lost in a fire."

Until this moment, Glitsky had been under the impression that Hanover's fiancee had been residing at the house on Alamo Square. But apparently she had kept this address as well. Still, he wanted to be sure. "Missy D'Amiens, you're talking about?"

"God rest her soul."

"Yes." He touched the mezuzah on the doorpost. "You're Jewish, I see. So am I."

She squinted at him, not at all sure she believed him.

"Abraham Glitsky." He extended his hand, which she gingerly took.

"Ruth Guthrie."

"And actually, I was hoping to talk to somebody about Missy D'Amiens."

She was squinting at him. "You're really Jewish?"

"Baruch atah Adonai.. he said. Glitsky had had his bar mitzvah many years before, and he attended synagogue with his father several times a year, the High Holy Days. He could still spout liturgical Hebrew when the occasion demanded. His scarred and weathered face worked its way to a smile.

"Well, come in then out of this soup," Mrs. Guth-rie said. "Can I get you something warm? Some coffee, maybe, tea?"

"Tea sounds good, thank you."

"Go in. Sit, sit. I'm right behind you."

Taking a seat in one of the slipcovered chairs in the living room, he heard her running water in the kitchen, then the "click click click" of the gas starter on the stove. In less than a minute she appeared with empty cups and saucers, sugar and cream, and some cookies on a tray. "When the kettle whistles, you'll excuse me." She sat down.

"So you own this place?" he asked.

"Since 1970, if you can believe. My Nat bought it as an investment."

"Nat," Glitsky said. "My father's name is Nat, too."

She pointed at him. "Now you are teasing me."

He held up his right hand. "I swear to you."

After a second or two, she decided to believe him. She sat back on the couch. "All right, Abraham son of Nathaniel, how can I help you?"

It didn't take him three minutes to acquaint her with where he was. This wasn't really official. She might have even seen something about the case in the newspapers over the past months, but there were some other issues about Paul Hanover's estate that related to Missy D'Amiens. Unfortunately, all efforts to contact her next of kin had been in vain.

"I know. Some of your police colleagues came and asked me about that right after it happened. But I didn't know anybody else who knew her."

"When she moved in here, did she fill out any paperwork?"

"Sure. Nat always said trust everybody, but make sure they sign the papers."

"So she had references?"

Mrs. Guthrie gave a sad little laugh. "For all the good." "What do you mean?"

"Well, they were all in French. She read them to me in English, translated, but you know, she could just as well have made them all up. What am I going to do, call and check references? Anyway, Nat was gone and she seemed nice and she had the money. Ahh, there's the whistle."

She went again to the kitchen. Glitsky got up and followed her. "So she had a job?"

"Yes. Where was it now?" She poured the water into a kettle. "Lipton okay?"

"Fine," he said. "Her job?"

"Just a minute. It's coming." She turned and led him back to the living room. "Ah ha! Here it is," she exclaimed. "What's the name of that place? Arrgh. Ah. Beds and Linens and Things, something like that. You know the one. Almost downtown."

Glitsky did know it. It was a huge warehouse store for household goods, with perhaps hundreds of employees. Glitsky, thinking that this would be the next step in this trail, found himself asking if she paid her rent with checks.

Mrs. Guthrie thought, sipped tea, and said yes. "You wouldn't have kept any of the stubs, would you? She might have had something left in the bank when she died."

She nodded. "Another thing Nat said. You don't throw it away. You store it. God bless him, he was right. Those tax bastards. But wait, it was just last year, right? Her folder would still be right here, in my files."

In the courtroom, Cuneo was still on the stand as Rosen's witness. The fireworks from his earlier testimony were mere prologue. They hadn't even gotten to any of the evidence. But after another recess, that was about to change.

"Inspector Cuneo, were you specifically looking for something when you made your search of the defendant's home?"

"Of course. You can't get a warrant without a list of specific items you're looking for." Cuneo and the jury were already on familiar terms. Now, the helpful instructor, he turned to face the panel. "The list of items you're looking for, it's part of the search warrant."

"Okay," Rosen said, "and what did you list on the warrant for your first search?"

"The clothes she'd been wearing on the night of the fire."

"And you found such clothing?"

"Yes. In the closet and also the hamper in the master bedroom. The tennis shoes she'd been wearing, along with the pants and the blue shirt."

Rosen had the clothing in the courtroom, separated into three plastic bags. After Cuneo had identified each of them, Rosen had them entered as the next People's Exhibits after the gun, the casings, one of the bullet slugs they'd recovered-they'd now gotten to numbers 5, 6 and 7. Then he came back to his witness. "And what did you do with these items?"

"Delivered them to the police lab to look for gunshot residue, bloodstains or gasoline."

"And was the lab successful in this search?"

"Partially," Cuneo said. "There were traces of gasoline on the pants and the shoes."

"Gasoline. Thank you." Rosen didn't pause, but walked back to his table, picked up a small book and crossed back to the witness box.

Hardy knew what was coming next-the diary. He really hated anew Catherine's insistence that Heather be excused from testifying. It might have caused her some temporary pain, true, but on the other hand, Hardy could have made Rosen look especially heartless and perhaps even nasty, forcing the poor girl to testify against her own mother. Jury sympathy for Catherine and her daughter would have flowed.

But there was nothing for all that now. It was going to play out. "Sergeant," Rosen continued in a neutral tone. "Do you recognize this item?"

Cuneo examined it briefly, flipped it open, closed it back up. "I do."

"And would you please tell the jury what it is?"

"Sure. This is Heather Hanover's diary. Heather is the defendant's youngest daughter."

While Rosen had the diary marked as People's 8, the gallery came sharply alive with the realization that this was the defendant's own daughter's diary. Part of the people's case?

"Inspector," Rosen asked, "when did you first see this diary?"

"The Monday after the fire. I was by now considering the defendant my chief suspect, and I obtained a second search warrant for documents in her house."

"What kind of documents?"

"I wanted to look at her financial records especially, but also downloads on the computers, telephone bills, credit card receipts, even Post-its with shopping lists. Anything written, which of course included diaries like this one, that could verify or refute her alibi for the day of the murders. The defendant had said her children were away. We wanted to check records to substantiate that."

"And what did you learn from this diary? Heather's diary?"

Cuneo turned his head slightly and brought his testimony directly to the jury. "Heather unexpectedly decided to come home after school and was home all that afternoon and night."

"And what had the defendant told you?"

"She told me that she came home after her afternoon talk with Paul Hanover and had stayed there all night until she'd seen the news of the fire on television."

"Inspector," Rosen said, "would you please read from the relevant portion of Heather Hanover's diary on the day that her grandfather was killed?"

Hardy stole a rapid glance at the jury. Every person on it seemed to be sitting forward in anticipation. As he'd known it would be, this was a damning moment for his defense; and doubly so now that he had just ascertained to his own satisfaction that Will Hanover had in fact been having an affair with his secretary. If he could at least demonstrate the truth of that assertion, it might lend credence to Catherine's actions on the night of the fire, even if she had originally lied about them. As it was, though, he only had Catherine's lie, no corroboration of the affair, and her own daughter's handwritten refutation.

Cuneo had opened the little book and now cleared his throat. "… for some reason Mom wanted us all out for the night and told us to stay out and get a pizza or something. But the homework this week is awesome- two tests tomorrow!!-so I told Saul to just drop me off here so I could study. Had to scrounge food since Mom was gone again which is, like, getting to be the norm lately."

Cuneo paused, got a nod from the prosecutor and closed the book.

"And did you later talk to the defendant's daughter about the entry?" Rosen asked.

"I did."

"And what did she tell you?"

"She said she was home alone that night. Her mother was not home." Cuneo skipped a beat and added, gratuitously, "The defendant had lied to us."

Hardy didn't bother to object.

₂₂

Cuneo's testimony took up most of the afternoon, and Braun asked Hardy if he would prefer to adjourn for the day rather than begin his cross-examination and have to pick up tomorrow where he'd left off today after only a few questions. Like everything else about a trial, there were pros and cons to the decision. Should he take his first opportunity-right now-to attack the facts and impressions of Cuneo's testimony so that the jury wouldn't go home and get to sleep on it? Or would it be better to subject the inspector to an uninterrupted cross-examination that might wear him down and get him back to his usual nervous self again? In the end, and partly because he got the sense that Braun would be happier if he chose to adjourn, and he wanted to make the judge happy, Hardy chose the latter.

So it was only a few minutes past four when he and Catherine got to the holding cell behind the courtroom.

They both sat on the concrete bench, Hardy hunched over with his head down, elbows on his knees.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I'm thinking that I wish you'd have gone home after you talked to your father-in-law."

"I know."

He looked sideways at her. "So how did you hear about the fire?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if you weren't home, watching the news on television, and you weren't, what made you go back to

Paul's?"

The question stopped her cold. "I don't know. I must have heard it on the radio. Maybe I had the radio on… "

"Must have!" Hardy suddenly was sitting up straight and snapped out the words. "Maybe you had the radio on! What kind of shit is that?"

"It's not…"

"You went to the fire, Catherine. You were there, talking to Becker and Cuneo. What made you decide to go there?"

"I… I'm not sure. I mean, I knew about it, of course. You can hear something and not remember exactly where you've heard it, can't you? I was parked outside Karyn's for I don't know how long that night; then I drove all the way out to Will's office, and nobody was there that late, and after that I was just driving around, not knowing where to go. I'm sure the radio was on then, in the car. I must have had it on, and when they announced the fire…" She ran out of words.

"You told both of the inspectors and me that you heard about it on television."

"I did. I mean I remember…"

"You remember what? What you told them? Or what really happened?"

"No, both. Dismas"-she ventured to touch his arm- "don't be this way."

He pulled away from her, got to his feet. "I'm not being any way, Catherine."

"Yes, but you're scaring me."

"I'm scaring you? I must tell you, you're scaring me." He sat down again and lowered his voice. "Maybe you don't understand, but we're looking at something like five hours between when you left Paul's the first time and when you came back for the fire. You've told me all this time that you went to Karyn's house and sat outside and waited and waited for her to come home, just hoping that she'd come home, which meant she wasn't with Will. Now I'm hearing you drove out to God knows where, maybe-maybe, I love that-with the radio on… Jesus

Christ!"

Standing again, turning away from her, he walked over to the bars of the cell and grabbed and held on to them. It took a minute, but finally he got himself under control, came back and sat beside his client. "You know, Catherine, a lot of this-everything we've been through together on this, it's all felt like the right thing because I've taken so much of what you are, who you are, as a matter of faith. You're the first woman I ever loved and I don't want to believe, and have never been able to believe, that you're capable of what you're charged with here."

She started to say something, but he cut her off. "No, let me finish, please. I believed you before when you lied to me about this alibi and said you didn't want me to think you were the kind of person who would spy on her husband. Now I know you are that kind of person and I can accept it and you know what? It didn't even really change how I felt about you. It was okay. Lots of us aren't perfect-you'd be surprised. But more lies are something else again. Lies are the worst. Lies tear the fabric. I'd rather you just tell me you killed them. Because then I know who you are, and we'd work with that."

Catherine's hands were clasped in her lap and her tears were falling on them. "You know who I am."

"An hour ago I would have said that was true. Now I'm going to sit here until you tell me something I can believe."

The silence gained weight as the seconds ticked. Hardy's whole body felt the gravity of it, pulling him toward despair. He turned his head to see her. She hadn't moved. Her cheeks ran with tears. Without looking back at him, she spoke in a barely audible monotone. "I did see it on the television."

He waited.

"I went to a bar. They had a TV over the bar." "What bar?"

"Harry's on Fillmore. I stayed parked outside at Karyn's until it was dark, and when she didn't come home, I knew she was someplace with Will and I just decided… it just seemed that I ought to go cheat on him, too. Pay him back that way. My kids, my girls especially, they can't know I did this. I don't act that way, Dismas. I never had before. But I was in a panic. The life I'd had for twenty years was over. I know you see that."

"I don't know what I see," Hardy said. "Who picked you up?"

"That's just it. I chickened out. I had a margarita and talked to some guy for an hour or so, but… anyway… the fire saved me."

"On TV?"

"Yes."

"You had to go see the fire because it was your father-in-law's house?"

"Right. And only a few blocks away. I had to go." She touched his arm again, this time leaving it there. "Dismas, that's really what happened. It's what I was doing. It's why I couldn't say. You have to believe me. It's the truth."

More tears, this time Frannie's.

Her face was streaked with them as she sat holding Zachary, Treya on one side of her and two-year-old Rachel on the other, all of them on the couch in the Glitskys' living room. Treya, still wiped out, had nevertheless gotten dressed. Rachel was uncharacteristically silent, picking up the strained atmosphere from the serious adults. She sat pressed up against Frannie, holding her little brother's bootied foot in her own tiny hand.

As soon as Frannie had heard the news, she wanted to know what she could do to help. At the very least, she was bringing dinner over tonight. She called her husband at work, telling him to meet her at the Glitskys' as soon as he could get away-something was wrong with their new baby's heart. They might be taking Rachel to live with them for a while if that was needed.

"But he looks so perfect," she said, sniffling.

"I know," Treya said. "It's just that they don't really know very much yet."

"They know it's not aortic stenosis," Glitsky said, but his voice wasn't argumentative. He and the guys-his father, Nat, and Dismas Hardy-were arranged on chairs on the other side of the small room. Glitsky gave everybody a short course on the cardiologist's initial visit, the two possibilities he'd described for Zachary's condition, with the VSD being the best outcome they could have hoped for. "So we're choosing to believe that we're lucky, although at the moment I can't say that it feels like it."

"But they're sure it's a hole in his heart?" Hardy asked.

"Yes," Treya said. "As of this morning."

"But it could change?" Frannie wanted to know.

"Well, not from being a hole," Treya said. "It's not going to turn into aortic stenosis, if that's what you mean. They don't think," she added.

"Trey." Glitsky trying to keep her accurate. "They're sure of that. It's not aortic stenosis. Right now it looks like a benign murmur. That's what they're saying."

"The hard thing," Treya said, "is that they can't predict anything yet. He could turn blue tomorrow, or today, or in the next five minutes…"

"Or never," Glitsky said, "maybe."

His wife agreed. "Or maybe never, right."

Nat Glitsky, in his eighties, got up and shuffled across the room. "Time to let the kid get to know his grandpa," he said, "if one of you lovelies would scoot over and give an old man some room."

"Who you calling old?" Frannie said, making room.

Hardy gave Glitsky a sign and the two of them went into the kitchen, out of earshot of the rest of them as long as they spoke quietly. Hardy took the large casserole they'd brought out of its brown paper shopping bag, then took the foil off the top. Frannie had made her world-famous white macaroni and cheese with sausages. It was still warm. Hardy slipped it into the oven, then pulled a head of lettuce out of another bag. "Salad bowl?" he asked. Then, when Glitsky got it out of the cupboard and handed it to him. "How you holding up?"

"A little rocky." Glitsky let out a long breath. "It comes and goes. The hospital was pretty bad. When the doc said I should hope it's only a hole in the heart, I wanted to kill him."

Hardy was silent. He'd lost a child once. He knew.

Glitsky was going on. "I just keep telling myself it's good news, it's good news." The scar through his lips was getting a workout, dealing with the emotion. "We go in for some more tests tomorrow. Then we'll see." "Tomorrow?"

Glitsky nodded. "The first days, they like to keep a close watch."

"But they let you go home?"

"He's fine at home, except if things change. I had a few minutes today when I managed not to think about it at all." He went on to tell Hardy about his unsuccessful efforts to locate Missy's car, but getting her address, his talk with Ruth Guthrie.

All the while, Hardy was silently washing the lettuce, rinsing it, tearing it into bite-size pieces and dropping them into the large wooden bowl. After Glitsky had gotten through where Missy had lived, where she'd worked, and that she had paid her rent from her checking account, Hardy dropped the last piece of lettuce in the bowl. "Do you have premade salad dressing or should I whip up a batch?"

"Maybe you didn't hear me," Glitsky said.

"I heard you. I'm glad it gave you something to do and got your mind off all this stuff here, but Missy D'Amiens isn't going to matter."

"Why not?"

"Partly because she never has mattered, but mostly because Catherine changed her alibi today. Again."

"At the trial?"

"No, thank God. Privately, with me." He met his friend's eyes.

"You think she did it?"

"I don't think it's impossible anymore. Let's go with that." He went over and grabbed a dish towel off the handle of the refrigerator. Drying his hands, he said, "So now letting her testify looks like it could be a huge mistake…"

"Why is that?"

"Because they'll ask her about her alibi-they'll have to, since they've already got that she lied about it originally. And to answer them, she'll either perjure herself or change her story again. Either way, a disaster. But if she doesn't testify, there goes the sexual harassment, which was always my theory of why Cuneo got on her in the first place. And more than that, it's one the jury might have believed."

"You don't think they'll believe me?"

"Oh, sure. They'll believe Catherine told you about it. But so what? If I don't have her take the stand and say it herself, then you have nothing to corroborate. Your account is just plain hearsay and inadmissible… you know as well as me. To say nothing of the fact that we've already made a big deal about this and we're committed. So no chance if she doesn't testify. And if she does, we're screwed."

Glitsky was leaning back against the counter, arms crossed, a deep frown in place. "I don't want to believe Cuneo's been right on this all along."

"I don't either. But Rosen's got his eyewitnesses coming up next after my cross on Cuneo, and that's not going to be pretty, either. They all say they saw Catherine, and I'm beginning to think they're saying that because they did."

Glitsky remained quiet for a second or two, then asked, "So you think she's got the ring after all?"

"The ring?"

"Yeah. Missy's ring." At Hardy's questioning look, he explained. "Ruth Guthrie mentioned it today again before I left, and I remembered I'd heard about it way back at the beginning of this thing. And I know it's never showed up in evidence."

"I was going to call Strout about that. You're sure? It wasn't on the body?"

"No possibility. I saw the body, Diz. No ring. No fingers, in fact."

"Okay, but why would I think Catherine's got it?"

"Because if… well, if she's in fact guilty, whoever did it most likely took it off the body. The thing's supposed to be worth, what, a hundred grand? And it hasn't showed up? What's that leave? Somebody took it."

"Or it fell off in the fire."

"Okay, then it would have been in the sweep."

"And maybe Becker or one of his men kept it."

Glitsky didn't like that. "Unlikely," he said. "I've been at some of these things and the arson guys log everything. So why do you think Catherine didn't take it?"

Hardy didn't answer right away. It was a good question. "Mostly," he said, "because she asked about it only yesterday at the trial. I don't think she would have brought it up if she had stolen it. But mostly, it just occurred to her and she blurted it out. That's what it really seemed like. I'm positive it wasn't rehearsed. It was like, 'Where's the ring?' "

"Okay," Glitsky said. "So how bad is her new alibi?"

"No worse than the last one. It's just that it's different. Why?"

"I mean is it plausible? Could it be true? Do you think it's true?"

Hardy brought his hands up to his forehead.

" 'Cause if it's true," Glitsky continued, "even if it's different, she still didn't do it."

Hardy looked up at the ceiling, shook his head, uttered an expletive.

"You need to find the ring," Glitsky said.

Hardy put the little disagreement he'd had with his wife out of his mind. Of course she'd been disappointed that he wasn't coming home after their dinner with the Glitskys, but she knew what trial time was like. She'd get over it, and so would he. But the reality now was that he had to try to talk to Mary Rodman, Catherine's sister-in-law. She'd been in the gallery today, and he'd wanted to get together with her for a few words, but the billing talk with Will had trumped that and taken all of Hardy's time.

But the unusually rapid pace of the actual trial-as opposed to the glacially slow movement of the endless pretrial motions and accretion of evidence over the past months-was outstripping his efforts to keep a step ahead of the proceedings. Now, merely to keep up, he had to effectively utilize every single possible working second in this and the coming days. Even under that pressure, he'd felt he needed to see Abe and Treya tonight, to be there if they needed his support. But now that mission had been accomplished, that message delivered, and he was back on the clock, on his client's time.

He'd made the original appointment, for seven thirty, from his office as soon as he'd come in from his day in court, before he'd even checked his messages. When he got the call from Frannie about meeting at Abe's for dinner, he'd called Mary again and asked if he could change the time to nine o'clock, and at precisely that hour, he rang her doorbell.

The Rodmans lived in a well-kept, brick-fronted house on upper Masonic. Hanover's youngest daughter, Mary, like seemingly every other woman involved in this case, was gourmet arm-candy of a high order. Over the course of his involvement in this case, Hardy had come to realize that Hanover was one of those men who had an enviable penchant for pulchritude. His first wife, Theresa-Catherine's mother-in-law-although in her seventies and with the personality of a domineering tyrant, was still very easy on the eyes, a latter-day Nefertiti. Both of Paul's daughters, Beth and Mary, had carried those genes into the next generation. Catherine, perhaps the best-looking of all of them, had married into the family. And Missy D'Amiens had been about to join it. Beauty everywhere you looked.

After introducing Hardy, again, to her husband, Carlos, and her son, Pablo, she led him back out to a tiny sunken living room, hardly the size of Glitsky's. But what the room, and the house for that matter, lacked in size, it made up for in charm. Comfortable burgundy leather wing chairs and highly placed narrow windows bracketed a functional and working fireplace. In front of it, a dark wine Persian rug covered parquet floors. They'd artfully framed and tastefully hung several original watercolors.

Mary indicated the couch at the far end of the room from the fireplace and sat at the opposite end of it from Hardy. Like the other Hanover women, she wore her dark hair long, a few inches below her shoulders. Unlike Theresa, her mother, though-and Catherine, for that matter-Mary was physically petite, fragile-looking, with somber eyes. She wore the same sweater and slacks that she'd had on in the courtroom today, and little makeup. Catherine had told Hardy that she was the most emotional of the siblings, and the most sympathetic. Somewhat to his surprise, she spoke first. "I have to say, you managed to upset my brother pretty badly after lunch. Is that your approach now that you're in trial? To get everybody all worked up?"

Hardy asked with a mild curiosity, "Who else is worked up? Are you?"

"Well… no. But Will was."

"Will wasn't paying me, Mary. I didn't want to have to abandon Catherine, so I-" "You wouldn't have done that!"

"Maybe not, but let's let that be our secret, all right?"

She flashed a weary smile. "I think he's being horrible-Will, I mean-playing the kids off her. She was always a good mother." She shook her head. "I don't know what to think anymore. I never thought they would arrest her, and then when they did, it just didn't seem real that she would… I mean that it would get to a trial. With all this incredibly weak evidence against her… it just doesn't seem like Catherine could have done…" She trailed off.

Though depressing, it was good for Hardy to hear this from someone who'd been at the trial the whole time. If she was thinking this way, it was a litmus for the jury. "The evidence seems bad to you, then, does it?"

"Well, I know you said that there wasn't any physical evidence, and maybe there isn't too much of that, but the rest of it…"

"The circumstantial evidence?"

"That's it. I mean, that might seem to some people that it points to her, doesn't it?"

"But it doesn't to you." Not a question. "You know Catherine better than that, don't you? She says the two of you are pretty close."

"Why else do you think I'm there in court every day? She's got to know that the whole family hasn't abandoned her." She bit her lip. "I mean, Will and my mother… it just seems so cruel. I don't know why he's doing that."

"Their marriage was on the rocks before," he said. "Now, with this, with her accusations against him, it's a war."

"I don't know why Catherine said all that about Will's secretary and him. She could have just, I don't know, kept it between them. That's one of the reasons Mom is so mad."

"So you don't think Will was having the affair?"

"I don't know. It's just all so sordid, don't you think? I don't want to believe he'd lie to his kids, though. I mean, people have affairs and get divorced all the time."

"Sure, but he doesn't want his kids to think he's the reason for it. He'd rather they think it's her. And especially with this thing now at trial this morning, Cuneo saying she came on to him."

Now the dark eyes flashed. "That was horrible! That man's creepy. You see the way he's always moving, bouncing, jittering, like he's on drugs or something? There's no way Catherine is going to… I mean, just no. But with all these accusations flying, I can see where people might not know what to think anymore."

"Do you believe Catherine?"

"Yes, but I believe Will, too. He's my brother. He's my blood. Thicker than water, you know." She sighed deeply. "It's like this terrible nightmare. I just wish we could all wake up."

"It is like that. I know." Hardy took his opening. "But listen, I've taken enough of your time. I've got a specific question I wanted to ask you if you don't mind."

"No, of course, I don't. I mean, if it will help Catherine…"

"Great." Hardy didn't want to let her think about it.

"Do you remember back on the afternoon of the fire, after Catherine had gone to see your dad and found out his plans about Missy and the family? I was reviewing all of my talks with her the other day, all the details she'd told me, and I came upon the fact that right after she'd left your dad's house-this was long before the fire-she said she called you. Do you remember that?"

Mary nodded. "Sure, I remember that very well. She was really upset."

"And what about you?"

"I was upset, too, I suppose, but we're doing okay here, Carlos and I. I mean, I didn't like what Dad was doing, but didn't see any way that we could stop it." Then, perhaps realizing what she'd said, she put her hand to her mouth. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Nobody was going to try to stop anybody. It was just a shame, that's all. Dad being so gullible."

"With Missy, you mean?"

Nodding, she said, "But he'd made his own money and I guess he could spend it however he wanted. The minority opinion in the family."

"But you didn't believe Missy loved your father?"

"Not for a minute."

"Okay, let's go back to the phone call for a minute. Why did Catherine call you?"

"Well, I guess because we're friends. We talked all the time. Our boys are about the same age, too, so there's that. And after she left Dad's, she wanted everybody to know, the whole family, so we could decide what we were going to do. But she and Beth aren't all that close-Beth's really serious and not much of a chatterer, like me-and there was no way Catherine was going to call Mom." "So did you call them then?"

"Yeah. Mom right away, I remember, but not Beth. She hates being bothered at work. I should have called Catherine back, too, I realize now, and maybe invited her to come out to Pablo's soccer game and we could have just talked and gotten everything calmed down. If I'd have done that…" She shook her head. "Anyway, I didn't. Is that all you wanted to ask me about? That phone call?"

"Pretty much," he said. "It's part of Catherine's alibi and I wanted to make sure I had the chronology straight before I put her on the stand." This was not even close to true, but it sounded plausible and, more important, Mary bought it. "There is one other thing, though."

"Sure."

"What can you tell me about the ring?" She shook her head. "That stupid ring. What do you want to know?"

"Anything you can think of."

She thought a minute. "Well, it was the dumbest thing Dad ever did, buying that for her. Then telling us, of course, what he paid for it. Six figures, he said, like he'd finally gotten into some exclusive club. But that's really what started all the… I mean that's when everybody started taking Missy seriously. And Mom! I thought she'd die. 'He spent over a hundred thousand dollars on a rock for her finger?' He never even gave her, my mom I mean, an engagement ring at all. They could only afford a couple of gold bands in those days. But then, when Dad got this, this monstrosity for her…" She shook her head at the memory, blew out a sharp breath. "Anyway, that's the ring. Why?"

"It's come up a couple of times lately. No one seems to know where it's gone to."

The fact seemed to strike Mary as odd, and her face clouded briefly, but by then Hardy was getting to his feet. Two minutes later, the two of them shook hands outside in the cold night at her front door, she closed it behind him, and Hardy jogged down to where he'd parked.

In his living room, at his reading chair, the lone light in the house on over his shoulder, Hardy reviewed his notes on talks he'd had long ago with Catherine's family. He was happy to see that his memory hadn't completely deserted him. From the outset of this case, he'd realized that every member of the Hanover family had the same motive to kill the patriarch, so he'd questioned Mary, Beth and Will as to their whereabouts at the time of the fire.

Will, of course, had been out on the ocean somewhere off the coast of California, with or without Karyn Harris. Beth, a consultant with an environmental insurance firm, stayed at her office crunching numbers with a team of four other colleagues until nearly eight thirty. Mary worked in investment banking downtown, where she'd taken Catherine's call. She'd checked her calendar and found that her husband had picked her up from work at quarter past five, and the two of them had gone together out to Golden Gate Park to take in their son's six o'clock soccer game.

At the time he'd done these interviews-early in the process, late last summer-Hardy hadn't fully appreciated the degree to which Theresa remained involved with her offspring and with the lives and futures of their kids, her grandchildren. Still, to date, he hadn't ever talked to Theresa about what she'd been doing on the night of May 12. Among the various other dudes he'd considered, she'd somehow never made the list. She was merely Paul Hanover's ex-wife, long estranged from him. But evidently still connected enough, either to him or to his memory, to become enraged about the size and expense of his new fiancee's engagement ring. And what Hardy did finally know, now, again thanks to his conversation with Mary tonight, was that Mary had called her mother right after she'd heard from Catherine, in the late afternoon of the day Paul and Missy had been killed, about three hours before the fire started.

Hardy closed up his notes binder, turned off the back light and walked to his little tool room behind the kitchen where he kept his maps. There, he looked up Theresa Hanover's address, which was on Washington Street at Scott, in Pacific Heights.

Fifteen blocks in a straight line from Alamo Square.

₂₃

Hardy was up at five o'clock, showered, shaved and dressed in a half hour. Opening the door to his upstairs bedroom, he was surprised to see light from the kitchen, more surprised to see his daughter, Rebecca, up and dressed for school. She sat writing at the dining room table with her schoolbooks spread around her. Looking up at him, she smiled. "Howdy, stranger." "Not you, too."

"What?"

"You know what. I'm in trial. It's how I support us financially, and unfortunately it involves putting in long hours once in a while, which is not something I enjoy as much as everyone here at home seems to believe. Have you eaten?"

"No." "Plan to?"

She shrugged.

"I could make you something." "What are you having?" "Just some coffee." "I'll have that, too."

"No food? You know, protein to see you through those grueling school hours."

She stopped writing, smiled up at him again. "Are you having any?"

"I'm an adult," he said. "I have no needs."

"Well, I'm eighteen."

"I'm vaguely aware of that. I was there for your birth. But what's your point?"

"Just that I'm an adult, too. In many states."

"But here, as a full-time student with energy needs, you still need food."

"But not breakfast."

"It's the most important meal of the day." "That's what everybody says, but if I eat it every morning, I'll get fat."

"You'll never get fat. You work out every day." "I might stop."

"When you do, you can stop eating."

A pause. "Okay, I'll have something if you do."

Hardy felt his shoulders relax. He walked over and planted a kiss on the top of his daughter's head. "The way you argue, you ought to be a lawyer. I'd hate to face you in court."

Abstractedly, she reached an arm up and put it around his neck. "I love you, you know, even when you're gone a lot. But I do miss you."

"I love and miss you, too. But it can't be helped. I'm going to make hash and eggs."

She gave him her arch look, held up three fingers, then turned her hand sideways. Still three fingers out.

Hardy, translating the sign language, effortlessly picked up the "W" and the "E" and, proud of himself, said, "Whatever."

An approving glance. "Not bad," she said.

Hardy shrugged. "For an adult."

While breakfast cooked in his black pan, he went out to the front porch, down the front steps and out into a steady dark rain. He picked up the Chronicle out by the gate, then hurried to get back inside. In the kitchen, he shook the paper out of its plastic wrap and checked under the lid of his pan, where the eggs hadn't quite set.

Thinking he'd give them another minute or two, he dropped the paper on the counter and opened it up. Though the trial had provided a great deal of sleazoid fodder for the tabloid press, as well as a steady if less-than-sensational flow of ink as local hard news, it hadn't been getting front-page play to date in the local newspaper, so the headline on the front page stopped him cold: conspiracy alleged in Hanover trial. Then, in smaller but still bold type: mayor's ties to defense team questioned.

Leaning on the counter with his hands on either side of the paper, Hardy read: "The double homicide trial of Catherine Hanover took an unexpected turn yesterday when one of the prosecution's chief witnesses and the lead inspector on the case, homicide sergeant Dan Cuneo, testified that Mayor Kathy West personally enlisted the aid of Deputy Chief of Inspectors Abraham Glitsky to direct and perhaps obstruct the police department's investigation of the murders of lobbyist/socialite Paul Hanover and his fiancee, Missy D'Amiens.

"Questioned after his appearance in the courtroom yesterday, Sergeant Cuneo expanded on the conspiracy theme, saying that Glitsky and, by extension, Mayor West herself had repeatedly undermined his efforts to apprehend his chief suspect, Catherine Hanover, in the slay-ings last May. 'They cooked up sexual harassment charges against me, they told me to keep away from her, told me not to do any more interviews, tried to direct me to other potential suspects. It was a full-court press.'

"Several groups in the city have already expressed outrage over the allegation, although the mayor herself has thus far declined to comment. Marvin Allred, spokesperson for the Urban Justice Project, a police watchdog group, has called for a full-scale investigation into the mayor's relations with senior police officials. 'The mayor's arrogance and sense of entitlement undermine the very basis of our system of justice. This peddling and trading of influence in our political leaders is a cancer on the body politic of this city and has to stop,' he said."

Another half dozen quotes spun the story the same way. It wasn't just an accusation anymore. Strongly implied was proof of a conspiracy.

"Cuneo's allegations also implicate Catherine Hanover's defense attorney Dismas Hardy, whose cozy relationship with top cop Glitsky and the mayor has long been a subject of conjecture and discussion among Hall of Justice regulars. Cuneo went on to say that 'Everybody knows that he dated Catherine Hanover when they were both in high school. They've been friends since they were kids. When it was obvious that she would be my chief suspect, he went to his friend the mayor and asked her and their friend Glitsky to use all of her influence to keep me away from her. Luckily, it didn't work.'

"Deputy Chief Glitsky has not been at work for two days and did not return calls to his office, and Hardy, likewise, could not be reached for comment."

"Dad? Are you all right?"

Still leaning on his hands, the paper spread open under him, Hardy stood immobile. "If any of the jury saw this or heard about it, we're going to ask for a mistrial. I've got to or I'm incompetent." Now he straightened up, pressed a hand to his eyes. "I'm going to have to do this all over again. And Catherine in jail all that time. Lord."

His daughter moved up next to him, put an arm around his waist. He turned back to the front page so she could read the article from the top. When she finished, she rested her head against him. "But none of it is remotely true."

"No. What makes it so effective is that most of it is true. The mayor and Abe and I are friends. She asked Abe to look into the investigation. I used to date Catherine. The facts are fine. It's just all twisted. I especially love where it says that Abe hasn't been in the office for two days, implying that he's ducking questions, when in fact he had a baby born with a hole in his heart. You think that might account for it?"

"How about your relationship with Uncle Abe being a source of discussion…"

"My cozy relationship. And it's discussion and conjecture. Don't forget conjecture."

"I never would. But what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we're somehow up to no good."

They both stood over the paper, staring down at it. "So what are you going to do?" Rebecca finally asked.

"Well, first, let's see if I can get the judge to ask if any of the jurors saw this or heard about it."

"Do you really want that?"

"I don't have a choice. It's too big to ignore. I think I can convince Braun." "To declare a mistrial?"

He nodded. "If any of the jurors read this, and I'm almost certain at least three of them can read, then it's extremely prejudicial. They get kicked off just for ignoring Braun's instructions. If they discussed it with the other jurors, the whole panel goes." Suddenly, he let out a little yelp of alarm and reached over to uncover his black pan and flick the heat off under it.

"I like a nice crust on hash." Rebecca squeezed his waist. "Don't worry about that."

But Hardy's lapse in timing bothered him. "I've never ruined anything I cooked in this pan before," he said miserably.

"And still haven't," his daughter responded. "Besides, it's not ruined. It's well done."

"Same thing. It's got to be an omen."

"No, it's a sign. Besides, I hate runny eggs."

Hardy stuck the corner of his spatula into one of the hard yolks. "Well, they're not that. And what would it be a sign of?"

She gave it a second. "Perseverance. Staying in the frying pan even when it's too hot."

The lighthearted, feel-good words resonated on some level, although Hardy couldn't put his finger on it. "You think?" he asked.

"Positive," she said.

In the "Passion Pit" two hours later, the attorney and his client sat on either end of the library table that served as the room's only furnishing. "This is unbelievable," Catherine said as she put down the paper. "What's it going to mean?"

"It means we might be able to start over if you want."

She threw a terrified glance across at him. "You don't mean from the beginning?"

"Pretty close."

"I can't do that, Dismas. I couldn't live here that long."

Hardy wasn't so sure that she was exaggerating. He'd known a lot of people who'd gone to jail-including some who more or less called it home-and most of them went through the original denial of their situation, hating every second of the experience, but then came to accept the surroundings as the reality of their life. Over these eight months, if anything, Catherine had come to hate her incarceration more and more each day. She'd lost the weight because she'd all but stopped eating. Another eight months, or more, preparing and waiting for another trial, might in fact kill her. If she didn't kill herself first. The year before Hardy had had another client try to do that very thing.

"Well, Catherine, after we find out if any of the jury has seen this, and they have, then if I don't move for a mistrial-regardless what Braun rules-it's damn close to malpractice."

"I'd never sue you for that."

"No. But an appellate court might find me incompetent."

She couldn't argue with that. "I don't want to stop, though. I think we're doing okay." "That's heartening."

"You don't?"

"Honestly, Catherine, I don't know. Cuneo has…" He stopped.

"What?"

An idea had occurred to him, but he didn't inadvertently want to give Catherine any false hope. "Nothing. I'm just thinking we've still got some rocky ground ahead of us. You testifying, for example." He explained his problem with her old and brand-new alibi, how the discrepancy would sound to the jurors.

"But I have to testify if I'm going to talk about Cuneo. Isn't that our whole theory about why he kept coming after me?"

"Yes. Initially, anyway."

"Would a second trial be any different?"

"Maybe. Slightly. I don't know. A venue change might make a difference."

"Are you still mad at me?"

The question took him by surprise-talk about irrelevant-but he nodded. "Yep."

"I didn't kill anybody, Dismas. I know you don't like to talk about that. You've told me not to go on about it, but it's the truth. It really is. And I can't stay in here too much longer. I've got to see the end in sight."

"Don't do anything stupid, Catherine."

"I won't. But I can't start all this over again."

Hardy boosted himself from the table and walked across to the glass-block walls of the jail's attorney-client visiting room. He couldn't remember the last time he'd let a trial get so far away from him, and now he wasn't sure how to proceed. Most defense attorneys spend a great deal of their time trying to get delays for their clients-to put off the eventual day of reckoning and the finality of the sentence. But Catherine didn't want delay, couldn't accept it. She wanted resolution. But if he'd tried to deliver on that at the expense of a winnable strategy, a shortchange on the evidence issues, or a blunder in his refusal to press for an obvious mistrial, he stood the very real risk of condemning her to life in prison.

But maybe, he was beginning to think, there was another approach-legal but rarely invoked-that could change everything. If he could get Braun to rule that Cuneo's statements to the press were a result of deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecution-i.e., Rosen- she might give him a mistrial for prosecutorial misconduct. In this case, Catherine-having once been placed in jeopardy by the state-would under the theory of double jeopardy walk out of the courtroom a free woman. They couldn't try her again for the same crimes, even if they were capital murder. But of course, this made it a potentially huge decision for the judge, since it would undo the efforts of the grand jury that had issued the indictments, as well as those of the district attorney and the police department. And there would be an immediate uproar from the conspiracy buffs that somehow the fix was in.

But Catherine cut him off midthought. "Can I ask you something?" she said from behind him.

He turned.

"Is this true, what Cuneo says? That the mayor asked Glitsky to intervene?" "Yes."

"Why did she do that?"

"Because she was afraid of your father-in-law's enemies. She thought it might have been about business somehow. The city's towing contract."

"And Glitsky followed that up?"

" 'Til it ended with nothing."

"And all the other leads?"

"Every one he could find, yes."

"How about the political one?"

"You mean with the mayor?"

"No, with the president. You know, the cabinet thing."

In the endless reams of newsprint leading up to the trial, the nascent potential cabinet appointment naturally got its fifteen minutes of spin and conjecture. But no one-reporters, private investigators or administration officials-had uncovered or revealed anything remotely approaching a connection to Hanover's murder. Many people, including Hardy's investigator, had looked, and all had concluded that Hanover hadn't been involved in anything controversial on the national scene. Beyond that, the nomination process itself had not even formally begun-Hanover's vetting by the FBI was still at least weeks away when he'd been shot.

Hardy shook his head. "I don't know if Glitsky has looked at that specifically. Why? Has something occurred to you?"

Hardy was more than willing to take anything she could give him. A little ripple of concern ran through him. Here he was, nearly a year into his defense of this woman, on the third day of her actual trial, and in the past two days she'd given him not one, but two, potentially important facts-the ring and the nomination- which he'd previously given short shrift. It brought him up short.

Were his own personal demons-his concern over Cuneo's conspiracy theory, allowing the personal element inevitably to creep into his representation of his old girlfriend, the media madness, Abe's personal and professional issues-were these concerns threatening his ability to conduct a competent defense, blinding him to other critical facts? The basic rule of trial strategy is that you didn't want to be surprised by anything once you got to the courtroom, and now in two successive days he realized he'd been vulnerable to broadsides twice! Luckily, it had not yet happened in the courtroom, but he'd obviously been so sloppy in his preparation that it would only be a matter of time.

It was unconscionable-he ought to go in to Braun and get a mistrial declared today and then bow out entirely. In waves of self-loathing, he realized that he'd failed Catherine and even failed himself. He was unprepared. She would go down.

But Catherine was still on the nomination. "That's what they were fighting about, you know. The nomination."

"I'm sorry," Hardy said. "Who was fighting?"

"Missy and Paul."

"When?" Hardy, all but babbling.

"Dismas. That day. Don't you remember I said they'd been arguing?" Though it didn't eradicate the disgust Hardy was feeling with himself, he did realize that he'd reread this bit of information, the arguing, while reviewing his binders last night. Though he hadn't recognized its relevance, if any. And didn't even now.

But Catherine was going on. "That's why Missy wasn't there when I was. She'd left all upset that morning."

"Why was she upset?"

"Because she didn't want Paul to go for the nomination." "Why not?"

"I think mostly it was the house. She'd just spent over a year redecorating the place. The thought of moving to Washington, D.C.? I don't really blame her."

"Is that what Paul told you?"

"What? That she didn't want to move? No. He said she was paranoid about the government and their background check, which he thought was ridiculous. She didn't even want them to start. She thought they'd be prejudiced somehow because she was foreign. She just didn't want to be involved. It scared her, he said."

"But Paul wanted it? The nomination."

"Did he want it? Did Paul Hanover want national recognition for a lifetime of public and private service? Does the pope shit in the woods? Of course he wanted it. Missy would come around, he said. They weren't going to break up over it. They loved each other. She'd see there wouldn't be anything to worry about. He told her that morning that he was going ahead anyway, and that's when they'd fought and she'd walked out."

"And then come back," Hardy said, "in time to get shot."

This sobered Catherine right up. "I know. Great timing, huh?"

In the end, though, Hardy thought with some relief, this at least was an example of a fact to be filed under interesting, even fascinating, but irrelevant. Paul and Missy's argument on the day of their deaths didn't lead either one of them to kill the other. Someone else had killed them both. Which left Hardy only with the ring, and the question of Theresa Hanover's alibi for the night of the fire.

But the bailiff now knocked at the door and announced that it was time to go over to the Hall. Hardy, in a dangerous emotional state in any event, had to bite his tongue to keep from telling the bailiff not to cuff his client, that she didn't need that indignity.

But he knew that this would have been wasted breath.

The cuffs clicked into place.

₂₄

Marian Braun was a Superior Court judge when Barry Bonds was still playing baseball for Serra High School down in San Mateo. Her chambers reflected that longevity with an unusual sense of homeyness. She'd had built-in wooden bookshelves installed all across the back wall, put down a couple of nice large rugs to cover the institutional linoleum floor, hung several pleasant California landscapes here and there. Drapes under sconces softened the two window areas, and the upholstered furniture for her visitors marked a significant departure from the typical judge's chamber setting of a few metal chairs in front of an often imposing and distancing desk.

But the comfortable physical setting wasn't making anybody in the room more relaxed at the moment. To no one's surprise, Braun had summoned Cuneo and counsel for both sides here as soon as her bailiff told her they

were all in the courtroom. At the same time, she'd had the bailiffs bring in a copy of the morning's Chronicle and told them to instruct the jurors not to speak with each other, even casually, until she came out into open court.

Now Hardy leaned against the bookshelf, hands in his pockets, and Chris Rosen held up the wall next to him. Jan Saunders had pulled in her portable chair from the courtroom and was setting up her machine on the coffee table in front of the couch. Braun, silent as a stone Buddha, sat at her desk sipping coffee and pointedly ignoring everyone's entrance as she turned the pages of the morning's paper. She was waiting for Saunders to be ready to record the discussion, and didn't seem inclined to make small talk to cut the tension until that moment arrived. In fact, to Hardy, the gathering tension seemed to be her point.

Saunders hit a few keys, then cleared her throat-a prearranged signal-and Braun glanced at her, took a sip of coffee, put down her newspaper. She looked first at Rosen, then over to Hardy, then over to Cuneo and finally back to the prosecutor. "Mr. Rosen, do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we were starting with jury selection and I said I didn't want anybody talking to the press about this case?"

Rosen pried himself off the wall into a respectful stance. "Yes, Your Honor. Of course."

"Here in the legal world, we call that a gag order. Does that phrase ring a bell?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"And since Inspector Cuneo has been in the courtroom, sitting next to you at the prosecution table since the formal start of these proceedings, do you think it's unreasonable of me to assume that he is part of the pros-ecutorial team? And that therefore the gag order would apply to him as well?"

"Yes, Your Honor, but…"

Braun held up a hand, stopping his reply, and turned to Cuneo. "Inspector," she began, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

But Rosen rushed to his inspector's protection before Cuneo could say a word. "I don't think Inspector Cuneo quite recognized the sensational nature of his comments, Your Honor. Or how they would be taken."

"Oh? Since when does a gag order mean say whatever you want as long as it's not sensational? And just by the way…" She turned to Cuneo. "Inspector, you didn't realize that naming the mayor as a coconspirator to obstruct justice in the case before this court would hit the news cycle?"

Cuneo had both hands in his pockets, patting his legs inside them. "Judge," he said, "I'm sorry if it's caused a problem, but nobody ever told me not to talk to reporters."

"No, but I'll wager that no one ever told you to wear your trousers here to court today either, and yet you did. How long have you been a cop? Two weeks? You were sitting there when I imposed the gag order. Did you figure I was talking to myself? The gag order told you not to talk to reporters about this trial while it was going on."

"But, Judge…"

"How about 'Your Honor'?"

"Okay, Your Honor. But in this case, there's reporters all over this trial."

"Thank you," Braun said, "I've noticed. Which was the point of the order." She shifted her gaze to the prosecutor, came back to Cuneo, shook her head.

Into the pause, Rosen ventured an excuse. "You didn't formally call it a gag order at the time, Your Honor, if you recall, and I'm sure Mr. Hardy would agree with me. You said in the interests of fairness, you'd like to see us refrain from discussing the case with the media."

Braun stared for a second in frank disbelief. "That's what a gag order is, Mr. Rosen. And in any case, as soon as we go back outside, assuming we proceed with this trial at all, which is not at all certain, I'm issuing a formal gag order and sequestering the jury, which I'd very much hoped to avoid."

Shifting at her desk, she brought her steely gaze to Hardy. "If we hear what I expect we will hear, Mr. Hardy, I'm assuming you're going to request a mistrial. Perhaps review your change-of-venue motion."

Like Rosen, Hardy came to attention when the judge addressed him. "That was my intention, yes, Your Honor. Originally."

Braun narrowed her eyes, a question.

"But my client is opposed to simply beginning again. She doesn't want to spend more time in jail."

Cocking her head, Braun frowned. "Is that some kind of a joke?"

"No, Your Honor."

"Did you explain to her the prejudicial nature of Inspector Cuneo's remarks? How they could affect the jury, even if I query each of them individually, which I will do, and they deny they read the papers?"

"I think I did. Yes, Your Honor."

The judge couldn't seem to get her mind wrapped around Catherine's objection. "Does she know what prejudicial means? That, to some perhaps quantifiable degree, these comments make it more likely that she'll spend the rest of her life, and not just a few more months, in jail?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"And yet she still might want to proceed?" "It depends, Your Honor."

Before things went much further, Braun wanted to poll the jury, see where they stood. Out in the courtroom, Hardy learned that he was one off on his estimate of the jury's literacy-not three, but four of them had read the article. One claimed to have read only the headline. A second said he'd only read a couple of lines. Incredibly, two others admitted that they'd read half of the article before realizing that it was about this case. No one admitted talking to anyone else about it. There were four potentially excludable jurors. And only three alternates.

Now they were back in chambers, Braun talking. "So it's down to you, Mr. Hardy. What are you asking the court to do?"

"We're asking for a mistrial, Your Honor, with a finding of deliberate prosecutorial misconduct that will bar any further trial because of double jeopardy."

Rosen exploded in true wrath. "Get out of here!" Turning to Hardy, "That's the most outrageous…"

"Mr. Rosen!" The judge's voice cracked in the room. "You will address the court only! Any more of this arguing with opposing counsel and I'll hold you in contempt." She pointed a shaking index finger at him. "And don't think I won't." Without waiting for any response from Rosen, she whipsawed back to Hardy. "If memory serves, that provision only applies if the prosecution did this on purpose to cause a mistrial. Is that your contention?"

"Yes, Your Honor." Hardy knew what she was going to ask next-why would Rosen deliberately screw up the case at this point so he could get a mistrial?-and he rushed ahead to tell her. "Mr. Rosen obviously wasn't sufficiently prepared. The real story of Inspector Cuneo's sexual advances to my client, which is going to have a huge impact on the jury, comes out in my cross-examination today. And suddenly his case, weak to begin with… "

But Rosen interrupted. "Your Honor, this is absurd. I've got eyewitnesses."

Braun nodded with some impatience. "Which is the main reason why I denied Mr. Hardy's nine-nine-five. Don't get me started." But she wanted to see where Hardy was going with this, and turned back to him. "And so because Mr. Rosen's case may become potentially more difficult, you contend he's trying to…?"

"To get me to ask for a mistrial. Yes, Your Honor."

"And why would he want to do that? So he can start again fresh, more aware of your strategy? That's a reach, Counselor."

"That's not exactly what I'm saying, Your Honor. He wants a mistrial because he can't take the chance of a not guilty verdict in a case this big. Not if he wants to be DA someday."

"My God, Your Honor! I don't believe…"

Braun held up her hand, stopping Rosen without saying a word. "Mr. Hardy?"

"What I'm proposing," Hardy said, "is a hearing on the issue. The court needs to know who talked to whom and when. Particularly Mr. Rosen and Inspector Cuneo, but possibly other witnesses and maybe some reporters as well. At the end of that hearing, defense may ask for a mistrial, but I don't want to do that until I've heard the evidence on prosecutorial misconduct."

"And what would this misconduct be specifically?"

"Breaking the gag order, Your Honor, and perjury."

Rosen was beyond fury, Cuneo looked ready to take a swing at Hardy. Braun hated the whole thing.

Hardy kept talking. "There is no mention anywhere in the record going all the way back to Inspector Cu-neo's grand jury testimony-not in any of his reports, nowhere-that my client made any inappropriate advances to him. I think the court needs to see whether he mentioned these alleged advances to any of his colleagues, or anyone else, previous to the other day, or whether, perhaps after a discussion with Mr. Rosen, he just made up a new story. And then got encouraged to speak to the media to further discredit Deputy Chief Glitsky…"

"Your Honor," Rosen cut Hardy off. "This is an obscene accusation that will be impossible to prove one way or the other anyway. It's up to Mr. Hardy to ask for a mistrial. If he doesn't choose to do that, fine, perhaps we replace some jurors who might have read today's articles, but then we take our chances out in the courtroom. That's what trials are about."

But Braun was mulling, sullen. "I don't need you to remind me how to conduct this case, Mr. Rosen." Now she bit out her words. "It's your witness who's caused us this problem because you obviously failed to keep his enthusiasm in check. Meanwhile, on an issue of this magnitude, I won't be ready to make any kind of ruling on Mr. Hardy's question until tonight or tomorrow. I'd like to keep this ship afloat if I can, but I'll be damned if I'll let it go on and get reversed on appeal. And while we're talking about appeal, Mr. Hardy, perhaps you'd best tell us the tactical reasons why you will only accept a mistrial with a finding of deliberate misconduct. Seems to me that even without that, you've got ample grounds."

"That may be, Your Honor," Hardy said, "but it may also be that Inspector Cuneo's intemperate comments will work in my client's favor."

This was the crux, and for a second, Braun's fuse blew. "They shouldn't work at all, goddamn it." She whipped on Saunders like a snake. "Strike that last." Then back to Hardy. "Cuneo's comments to the press weren't made in the courtroom under oath. They should have no bearing on this case. None. That's the issue."

"Yes, Your Honor."

Braun sat back in her chair, stared into the middle distance for a beat, came back to Hardy. "I'm curious. How might these allegations help Mrs. Hanover?"

"She thinks the conspiracy idea is too far-fetched to believe on the face of it. The jury's going to think Cu-neo's a press-hungry hot dog." He brought both other men into his vision. "Which, by the way, he is."

Cuneo took a threatening step toward Hardy while Rosen snorted and said, "We'll see about that."

"Yes, we will."

But this small exchange riled Braun even further. She straightened her back and raised her voice to a crisp, schoolmarmish rebuke. "You gentlemen will not address each other on the record, but only the court. Is that clear?" Coming forward in her chair, she said, "Just so we're completely unambiguous here, Mr. Hardy, the defense isn't requesting a mistrial without a finding of misconduct?"

"That's correct, Your Honor."

"Meanwhile, you're both prepared to proceed today?"

Both counsels nodded. The judge nodded, drew in a deep breath and released it. "All right," she said, rising and walking to where her robes hung. "Time to go back to work."

Braun herself had a very tough morning, and it didn't measurably improve her already charming disposition. After reiterating her gag order to the participants on the record in front of the disgruntled media assembled in the gallery, she then nearly set off a riot among several members of the jury when she announced her decision that they would be sequestered for the remainder of the trial until they had reached a verdict or announced they were unable to do so. Hardy had to like the suggestion that a hung jury was a possibility. Every little bit helps. She wound up dismissing three of them-those who had admitted reading any part of the article, though she retained the juror who had only read the headline-and substituted them with two men and one woman, none of whom had read the article, thus exhausting all the alternate jurors.

Braun didn't want to inadvertently inform the remaining jurors who hadn't read the article what it was about, but she cautioned them again that the deliberations and conclusions they would eventually reach in this case must be based only on statements given under oath in the courtroom and evidence submitted to the court.

They must disregard anything they heard on the news or read in the newspaper before, and must not read or listen to anything new. And to that end, she would be allowing neither television access nor newspaper delivery to the jurors for the duration.

And this really nearly sparked a mutiny among the panel. Several days without a television! What would they do? How could they live? One panel member, DeWayne Podesta, even asked for and received permission to speak to the court as a representative of the whole jury, and he argued that the jurors were good citizens doing their civic duty, and didn't the Constitution forbid cruel and unusual punishment? And if so-Podesta really thought it did-certainly deprivation of television qualified.

Eventually, Braun restored order to the courtroom. But the machinations, cautions, pronouncements and simple business consumed the whole wretched morning. When they resumed in the afternoon, Braun announced, they would begin with Hardy's cross-examination of Sergeant Cuneo.

Until then-she slammed her gavel-court was adjourned.

Glitsky and Treya were having opposite reactions to the boulder that had settled on each of their respective hearts with the concern over their baby's life. In Treya's case, it might have had something to do with the physical exertions of the birth itself. She had been sleeping nearly around the clock since they'd brought Zachary home, only waking up to feed him and for a couple of hours last night when the Hardys and Nat had been by. Glitsky, on the other hand, hadn't slept for more than a few hours.

Now it was nearly ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning, and he'd been awake since first light, finally having dozed off sometime a little after two twenty, or at least that was the last time he remembered looking at the bedroom clock. Rita, their nanny/house-sitter, God bless her, had made herself available and was back with Rachel now, and the two of them were watching the television down the kids' hallway, the sound a barely audible drone. Their cardiology appointment with Zachary was in three hours, and sitting at the kitchen table, a cold mug of tea untouched in front of him, Glitsky stared at the clock and wondered how long he should let his wife sleep. If she needed another hour, maybe more, he was inclined to let her take it.

In the four or so hours since he'd gotten out of bed, Glitsky had of course read the morning paper and made calls to Jeff Elliot at the Chronicle, to the mayor, to Hardy at his office and to his own office. The first three had not yet called him back at his private home number. His voice mail at work was clogged with reporters and even a few colleagues-including, he was happy to see, Chief of Police Frank Batiste offering his encouragement and support. But for the most part, nothing that happened outside the walls of his home was having much of an impact on him. Nothing was as important, even remotely as important, as the immediate health of his son.

The stark and terrible reality from his perspective, all the hopeful talk of "best-case scenario" notwithstanding, was that the boy likely faced open-heart surgery in the next few days or weeks, as soon as he was old and stable enough to possibly survive it. That possibility hung over him and Treya like a thick cloud of dread.

They might still lose their baby.

The thought was paralyzing and at the same time acted like a narcotic, a numbing agent that worked as a barrier to whatever reaction the events in the real world might otherwise have caused-whether anger or hurt or betrayal. Clearly, the city was getting itself worked up over this alleged conspiracy between himself, Kathy West, Dismas Hardy and Catherine Hanover, but Glitsky felt no sense of urgency to refute any of it, or even to respond to the half dozen requests from reporters in various media. It was as if it were all happening somewhere else, already on television perhaps. Just another story that would fade when all the facts had come out because it simply wasn't true.

What was true was that they were taking Zachary to the doctor's at one o'clock to check his progress, or lack thereof. That, as far as Glitsky was concerned, was the whole world.

He went to the darkened bedroom for the fifth or sixth time this morning. Zachary was still swaddled, sleeping peacefully. Treya, completely covered in blankets, didn't so much as stir. Coming back into the light, he went out to the living room and stood at the windows, looking down at the street. He was wearing the same clothes he'd worn all day yesterday.

Hands in his pockets, he stood and listened to the faraway drone of the children's channel on the television down the hall, and watched the rain fall and fall.

When Glitsky first pulled the piece of paper out of his pocket, its origin and significance eluded him for a second or two. On it was a woman's handwriting, in pencil, barely legible. Then it came back to him. Ruth Guthrie. She'd written down the name of the store where Missy D'Amiens had worked, and her bank and account number. Last night, Hardy had said that he doubted that Missy D'Amiens was going to matter in the trial, and with this morning's blowup in the paper over the conspiracy nonsense, it appeared that the case was moving in an entirely new direction, one that would further remove either of the victims from the center of attention. To say nothing of the missing ring, which seemed a much more promising avenue of inquiry.

Still, Glitsky had discovered something they hadn't known before yesterday, and after all the time he'd spent on the investigation so far, that was provocative in its own right. He could follow it up in five minutes and get the last niggling tidbit off his plate, at least to his own satisfaction. God knew, he'd worked every other angle of this case trying to break Cuneo's lock on the apparent facts and he'd come up empty. A quick phone call or two would close the circle on D'Amiens, and then at least he would have been thorough, even if, as Hardy said and Glitsky believed, it was probably unimportant.

So he sat on the couch, picked up the phone and punched up information. Not identifying himself as a police officer, he finally got to the human resources office at the housing goods warehouse store and said he was an employer checking the reference of a woman who'd applied to work for him.

Replying that she was only allowed to verify the dates of employment, the woman went on to explain that she wasn't allowed to comment on the quality of the previous employee's work, or attendance, or anything else. "We have to be very aware of the potential for lawsuits," she said. "If we say anything, you wouldn't believe, it comes back to bite us."

"That's all right," Glitsky said. "I understand that. I'm just verifying the dates of employment."

"All right. The name please."

"Michelle D'Amiens. It says on her resume that she calls herself Missy."

There was a short silence; then the woman spoke again. "Did she say she worked at this store? This location?"

"Yes." Glitsky read off the address. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I have personally approved the hiring of everybody who's worked here for the past six years, and I don't recognize that name. I'll check my files, of course, if you'll hold on. But does she say she worked here for a long while?"

Glitsky knew roughly when she'd moved into Ruth Guthrie's duplex, and he took a stab. "A couple of years, starting three years ago."

"So she just left, like a year ago?" Now the officious voice reeked with skepticism. "Just one moment please."

"Yes."

A minute later she was back. "I'm afraid it's not good news," she said. "Nobody by the name of Michelle or Missy D'Amiens has ever worked here."

Some part of Hardy thought it was the stuff of comedy-Podesta's notion that asking someone to live without a television for a few days was cruel and unusual punishment would stick with him for a while-but somehow he failed to find any of it amusing. Too much was at stake. He had too little time.

Abandoning Catherine to the holding cell and another jailhouse lunch, he ducked out the back door of the Hall and took a cab to his office on Sutter Street. On the ride over, he'd considered calling Glitsky-he'd even punched in the first few numbers of his pager-but then stopped when he remembered that his friend was bringing his son in to the doctor for tests today. He wasn't going to be available to do legwork, and legwork was what Hardy needed.

He got out of the cab in front of his office, stood still a moment, then abruptly turned and entered the garage. Next to the managing partner's spot, the elevator allowed him to bypass the main lobby. And Phyllis. And

Norma, his office manager. And any and everyone else who would clamor for his attention or, in the wake of the article, for simple news of what was going on. Instead, he could ride straight to the third floor, where his partner Wes Farrell had his office.

"I'm afraid I can't, Diz. I'm busy, I really am."

Farrell didn't look busy. When Hardy had barged into his office after a perfunctory single knock at the door, Wes was in one of his milder trademark T-shirts-"Don't Use No Negatives"-and shooting a yellow Nerf ball at the basket he'd mounted on his wall.

"What are you busy doing? That's a fair question under the circumstances."

"Some people shoot darts to meditate. Your humble servant here shoots hoops."

"You're meditating?"

"Fiercely. I'm surprised you have to ask."

"Wes, listen to me." Hardy sat down on the overstuffed sofa. "I need to know what Catherine Hanover's mother-in-law-her name's Theresa-was doing on the day and night Paul got killed."

"Why don't you just call and ask her?"

"I don't want anybody to ask her directly. I'd prefer she didn't know I was interested in that. She's a prosecution witness and…"

"Wait a minute-your client's mother-in-law is testifying for the prosecution?"

Hardy nodded. "Sweet, isn't it? I don't know if Rosen actually plans to call her, but she's on his list."

"Against somebody in her own family?"

"Just the hated daughter-in-law."

"Jesus. And I thought my mother-in-law was bad."

"You don't have a mother-in-law, Wes. You and Sam aren't married."

"No, my first one. We weren't exactly close, but even so, I don't think she would have testified against me to put me in the slammer for life. What's she going to say, this Theresa?"

"Well, that's the thing. I haven't talked to her personally. When I saw her name on the list, I asked Catherine and she said Theresa and she just never got along about anything. She wasn't good enough for Will. She ought to get a job and help support the family. She was too strict with the kids. You name it."

"Wait a minute. Whose kids are we talking about?"

"Catherine's. Her own kids."

"What did Theresa have to do with them?"

"Evidently a lot. She expected to be a hands-on grandma. If you can believe it, she came close to suing them over grandparents' visitation rights."

"One of those, huh?"

"At least. The woman's a piece of work. And of course she's pretending to be a reluctant witness. Rosen or Cuneo just happened to ask her if she'd ever heard Catherine threaten Missy or Paul, and it just so happened she did. It was the truth. So what could she say? If they called her as a witness, she had to tell the truth, didn't she?"

"It's a sacred thing," Wes said.

"I couldn't agree more," Hardy replied. "But the real truth is that Theresa wants Catherine out of her life, out of her son's life, out of her grandkids' lives. And if a few words about Catherine's motive in front of a jury can help get that done, she's on board for it."

Farrell plopped into one of his stuffed chairs. "Okay, where would I come in? If I did, not saying I will."

"You make an appointment to see her as my representative. You're helping me out with the trial and wanted to get some sense of her testimony before she got to the stand."

"I thought you said you knew what she was going to say."

"I do. But tell her you want to hear it from her, and maybe coach her a little. Maybe we can throw the prosecution a curve ball. You know that she needs to tell the truth, of course, but if there's any way she can somehow help Catherine's defense, she'd want to do that, too, wouldn't she?"

"And why exactly, when she asks, didn't you get around to talking to her before this?"

"Tell her I really didn't think she'd get called. And still don't, but Rosen had talked about some motive witnesses, and I thought just to be safe… you get the idea."

"So what are you really trying to get at?" Hardy broke a grin. "I thought you'd never ask."

₂₅

"Sergeant Cuneo, you testified in front of the grand jury before this, did you not?" "Yes, sir."

"And you were under oath?" "Yes, sir."

"And where was that?"

"Upstairs in the grand jury room."

"How long did that testimony last?"

Cuneo was bouncing already, slight but visible tremors erupting through his shoulders every three to five seconds. "I don't know exactly. I'd guess something like three hours."

"Now, Sergeant, in this three-hour testimony, did you talk about your initial visit to Catherine Hanover's house?"

"Yes."

"Did you make any mention of Catherine making it clear to you that she wanted you to stay for dinner?"

"No. I don't believe I did."

"No, you don't believe you did." Hardy went back to the defense table, gave a confident nod to Catherine, and picked up some sheets of paper that had been stapled together. Walking back up to the witness box, he handed the stack to Cuneo. "Do you recognize these documents, Sergeant?"

He flipped quickly through the pages. "These are copies of my reports on this case."

"Of your interviews with Catherine Hanover and others, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"All right. Now, Sergeant, how long have you been a policeman?"

Hardy's change in direction caused Cuneo a moment's pause. His eyes flicked over to Rosen, then back to Hardy. "Sixteen years."

"So you've written reports such as the ones you now hold in your hand many times, yes?"

"Yes, of course."

"And the purpose of these reports is to memorialize evidence, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, when you write up these reports, you try not to leave out important facts, isn't that true?"

Cuneo's shoulders seemed to be closing in around him, his neck sinking down into them. He was closing down defensively. His next answer came as a brusque nod.

"I'm sorry, Sergeant," Hardy said. "Was that a yes? You would never knowingly leave an important fact out of one of your formal police reports?"

Another nod.

This time Braun leaned over from the podium. "Answer the questions with words, Sergeant. Do you need the question read back again?"

"No, Your Honor." He leveled a malevolent glare at Hardy. "Yes, I try to make my reports accurate."

To keep the press on, Hardy ignored the answer. Instead, he repeated his exact question, using the precise same rhythm, tone and level of voice. It highlighted the fact that Cuneo had not answered the question the first time. "You would never knowingly leave an important fact out of one of your formal police reports?"

"No."

"Thank you. Now. Did you know that you were going to testify in this case?" "Of course."

"And did you know that you would be asked about the reports you submitted?"

"Yes."

"And that others would rely upon the accuracy of these reports?"

"Yes."

"So, as you've testified was your habit and inclination, you tried to make your reports both accurate and complete, is that right?" Cuneo continued to wilt. If Hardy wasn't having such a good time, he might have let a little sympathy creep into him and let up a bit. But the thought never occurred to him. "Accurate and complete," he said, "and never more so than in the case of a homicide, correct?"

"Yes."

Pulling a page from Rosen's book, Hardy went to his table and drank some water. Returning to his position in front of Cuneo, he started in again. "Sergeant, when you conducted your interview with my client, did you tape-record it?"

"No, I did not."

"So the only record of your conversation with my client is in these reports? These complete and accurate reports, is that so?"

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"All right. Then, please point out for the jury where in your report you state that Catherine asked you to dinner, or came on to you in any way."

Cuneo's shoulders twitched. He stretched his neck, flicked his eyes to Rosen's table, cleared his throat. "I did not include it in the report."

"No, sir," Hardy said. "No, you did not."

Hardy went back to his desk, returned to the witness stand with another bunch of papers-Cuneo's grand jury testimony. Same questions, same answers. No, Cuneo hadn't mentioned anything about Catherine Hanover coming on to him, asking him to dinner, making inappropriate small talk. Hardy allowed surprise to play about his face for the jury to see. He hoped that by now that the word had spread to the panel that this witness was the reason that they wouldn't be watching any television for the next few days, why they would be locked up in their hotel rooms. He hoped they were primed to hate him. And he was going to give them more.

"Detective Cuneo," he said, "when Deputy Chief Glitsky conveyed to you my client's complaint about your conduct, you denied that any such exchange ever took place, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. I didn't want to…"

"Thank you. In fact, Sergeant, the very first time you ever claimed that my client made an improper sexual advance to you was after she made her complaint to Glitsky, isn't that a fact?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure of the exact timing."

"All right, then, how about the first time on the record that you mentioned her invitation to dinner? Wasn't it when you were on the stand here just before this cross-examination?"

"It may have been."

"Yes or no, Sergeant."

"I believe so."

"I'll take that as a yes. When you were on the stand under oath. Like you were under oath at the grand jury."

"Your Honor. Objection! Badgering the witness."

Braun nodded. "All right. Sustained. Mr. Hardy, I'm sure Sergeant Cuneo realizes when he is under oath."

"Thank you, Your Honor. I just wanted to make sure."

"Your Honor!" Rosen again.

"Sustained." Braun glared down from the bench. "Don't get cute, Mr. Hardy. I'm warning you."

Hardy, straight-faced. "I apologize, Your Honor." He came back to the witness. "So, Sergeant, did you remember the alleged invitation before you took the stand?"

"Of course I remembered it."

"And yet you did not mention it? Why was that?"

"I didn't think it mattered."

"You didn't think it mattered?"

"I didn't think it would be part of the case. Besides, nobody asked me about it."

"That might explain why it didn't come up in your three-hour testimony. By the way, there was no defense lawyer at the grand jury, was there?"

"No."

"No one to ask you the sort of questions I'm asking now?" Hardy didn't wait for the answer. "No one to challenge your account of what took place?"

"No."

"Would it be fair to say, Sergeant, that you could talk about anything you wanted to the grand jury and no one would hear the other side of the story? Could it be, Sergeant, that you never brought up the incident because Catherine Hanover did not, in fact, extend any such invitation?"

"No. She did."

"She did? Can you recall her exact wording?"

"I don't think so. It was almost a year ago. She asked me if I liked homemade pasta and said her husband wasn't going to be home."

"Ah. Her husband. Since he was the son of the deceased, weren't you interested in his whereabouts?"

"Yes, of course."

"Since you've told the jury that everyone was a suspect at the time, was Will Hanover a potential suspect as well?"

"Yes."

"And did you ask his wife where he was?"

The questions were flying fast now, in a rhythm, and Cuneo answered without any forethought. "Yes."

"And wasn't it this, Sergeant," Hardy continued, "your question about her husband's whereabouts, and not an improper advance, that prompted Catherine's admission that her husband was gone and wouldn't be home for a few more days?"

Suddenly Cuneo straightened up in the witness box. "I took it as an improper advance."

"Obviously you did. Was that because this kind of thing had happened to you before?"

Rosen must have been waiting for his chance to break it up, and this was it. "Objection!" His voice had taken on some heat. "Irrelevant."

But Hardy wasn't going to let this go without a fight. "Not at all, Your Honor," he jumped in. "This jury needs to hear if other female witnesses have found Sergeant Cuneo irresistible."

"Your Honor!" Rosen was frankly booming now, outraged anew. "I object!"

Bam! Bam! Bam! Braun's gavel crashed down again and again. "Counsel! Counsel, come to order! Both of you approach the bench." When they were before her, she fixed them with a frozen gaze. "That's it from both of you. Last warning. Clear?"

It might be clear, but that wasn't the point to Rosen. "Your Honor," he began, "this line of questioning…"

"I heard you, Mr. Rosen. I'm going to sustain your objection and instruct the jury to disregard any innuendo contained in the question. Mr. Hardy, this is my second warning to you in the last ten minutes. There won't be a third. Now we're going to take a short break and let everybody calm down." She looked over the lawyers' heads to the gallery, slammed down her gavel again. "Five-minute recess," she said.

Hardy hated to leave off on the sexual harassment, but he knew he'd be able to come back to it. Meanwhile, he'd soon be talking to eyewitnesses who'd identified Catherine, and the jury needed to understand how Cu-neo's methods in securing those identifications had been flawed. So he walked back to his table and picked up a small manila folder.

It looked like the kind you could get in any office-supply store, but one side had six holes cut in it. Through the holes you could see six color photos, three on top, three on the bottom. Each was a front mug shot-style color likeness of a young woman's face. The women were all brunette, all of a similar age and hairstyle. None wore jewelry, none were smiling or had their mouths open. There was no writing. Nothing distinguished one photo from the others except the facial features of the women depicted. One of the women was Catherine.

"Now, Inspector," he began, "I'd like you to take a look at what I'm about to present to you and describe it for the jury."

Taking the folder in his hand, Cuneo opened it, glanced at the plastic pages inside, then closed it up and faced the jury. "It's a folder used to hold photographs."

"Have you ever used something like this in your work, Inspector?"

"Sure. All the time."

"In fact, this sort of display is used so commonly that it has a nickname, doesn't it?" "We call it a six-pack." "Why is that?"

"Because each page holds six pictures in the slots." "Not just six pictures, Inspector, but six photos as similar as possible to one another, right?"

"Yes."

"Sergeant, in your career as a homicide inspector, in roughly what percentage of your cases have you employed the use of a six-pack to assist you in obtaining identifications?"

Cuneo again looked at Rosen, but this time there was no help. "I don't know exactly," he said.

"Roughly," Hardy repeated. "Fifty percent, sixty percent?"

"Maybe that much, yeah."

"More than that? Eighty percent?"

"Your Honor! The witness says he doesn't know."

But Braun shook her head. "Overruled. Give us an estimate, Inspector."

"All right. Say eight out of ten."

"So a great majority of the time. And a hundred percent of the time when the ID is in doubt, correct?"

"Yes."

"Now, Inspector, can you explain to the jury why, in the great majority of cases, you would use six photographs of similar-looking individuals to positively identify a suspect, as opposed to simply showing the eyewitness a picture of that suspect and asking if it's the same person they saw commit the crime?"

Cuneo hated it and was stalling, trying to frame some kind of response. Hardy jumped him. "It's to be sure the witness can really make an ID, right? That he can pick out the suspect from similar individuals."

"That would be one reason."

"And another would be to protect against the witness feeling pressured by police to agree that the one photograph they're shown is, in fact, the suspect?"

"That might be one reason."

"Can you give us another, Inspector?"

Cuneo rolled his shoulders, crossed his legs. "Not off the top of my head."

"So at least one good reason that the police, and you yourself, commonly use a six-pack is to avoid the witness feeling pressure from police to identify their suspect?"

"I guess so."

"So an eyewitness who identifies a suspect from a six-pack would be more reliable than one who was only shown one picture and asked to verify its identification?"

This time Rosen stood. "Objection. Speculation. Calls for conclusion."

Hardy didn't wait for a ruling. "Let me ask it this way, Inspector. You've had lots of training, including preparation for the examination to become an inspector, that taught you that this is precisely the function of the six-pack, to avoid mistaken identification, right?"

Cuneo hesitated. Hardy pressed on. "That's a yes or no, Inspector. Haven't you had literally hours of classes about the identification of suspects, where you learned that the six-pack is one way to avoid mistaken identification?"

Cuneo ducked. "I've had hours of training on IDs, yeah. I don't recall how many involved six-packs specifically."

Hardy felt the lame answer made his point better than either yes or no, and sailed on. "Inspector Cuneo, at any time in your investigation of Catherine Hanover, did you use a six-pack to assist eyewitnesses in their identifications?"

Cuneo didn't answer. Braun looked down at him. "Inspector?"

"Should I repeat the question?" Hardy asked, all innocence.

This earned him a glare from the judge, who repeated, "Inspector?"

"No, I did not."

Cuneo just couldn't let it go, so he made it worse. "We use this to confirm an ID when the witness doesn't know the person. When you know somebody, we might use a single photo just to be sure that we're talking about the same person. I mean, if you say you saw your cousin, we might show you a photo of your cousin just to be sure we got the right guy." Shoulders twitching, Cuneo tried an evasion. "It's pretty obvious."

"I'm sorry, Inspector. What's obvious? That witnesses can make mistakes, or that you shouldn't coach them to make an identification?"

Rosen was up in a second, objection sustained. Hardy didn't even slow down.

"When there is a question, Inspector, you use a six-pack to be sure there is no mistake. Correct?"

"Yes."

"And you never, ever tell a witness ahead of time who you think should be ID'd, or even give vague hints of what they look like, correct?"

"Yes."

Just a hint of sarcasm entered Hardy's voice-too little to object to, but just enough for the jury to discern. "And you, as a professional, intent on making sure that the wrong person doesn't get accused, you would always do what you could to make sure an ID was correct, wouldn't you?"

Cuneo got a bit heated now. "Yes, I would."

"So your failure to use a six-pack was not designed to bolster your preconception of who was coming out of Mr. Hanover's house, was it?"

"No! It was not."

"But the first time you showed a photo, you thought the person coming out was Missy D'Amiens, right? So you showed the witnesses a single photo and got your ID, right? And then, when you decided it must have been Catherine coming out of the house, you went to the same witnesses and used another single photo, and again got the ID you wanted, right?"

"It wasn't a question of what I wanted; it was what the witnesses said."

Cuneo's eyes went to Rosen for an instant, but the prosecutor could do nothing to help him. Just this side of surly, he turned to face the jury box. "No, I didn't use a six-pack for these IDs. These witnesses all said they had seen this woman before."

"Which woman was that, Inspector? Missy D'Amiens? You remember her? The first woman they ID'd for you? Or Catherine, the second woman whose single photo got you an ID, too? In both cases, you told the witnesses who you thought they had seen, then showed them a single photo, and surprise! You got the ID you wanted, right?" Hardy, on a roll of adrenaline and anger, kept piling it on. "You said that you use a six-pack when the

ID is in question, didn't you, Inspector? Can you think of anything that might put an ID in question more than a previous ID of someone else's photo?"

Another shrug, another glance at Rosen-Do something! Rosen tried to help. "Your Honor, objection. Vague."

"Not vague, but compound and argumentative. Do it a piece at a time, Mr. Hardy, and perhaps a bit less…"

"Sure, Your Honor." Then, with a slow and thoughtful cadence, he began again. "Inspector, you showed a single photo of Missy D'Amiens and got IDs, right?"

Cuneo couldn't disagree. "Correct."

"And after that, Catherine accused you of harassment, right?"

"I don't know what she said."

"Inspector, after you got the ID on Missy, and before you got the ID on my client, Deputy Chief Glitsky told you Catherine had complained of harassment, right?"

"Yes, that's what he told me."

"And with this information in mind, you took a single photo of Catherine, went back to those same witnesses, and said words to the effect of 'You made a mistake last time. Here's the woman you really saw.' Correct?"

"That's not what I said."

"The bottom line, Inspector, is that knowing these witnesses had already identified somebody else, you took a single photo of my client, showed it to them, and asked if this was the person they saw, not the other person they had ID'd, right?"

Cuneo had nowhere to go. "Yes." "Tell me, Inspector, in all your hours of training, has anyone even hinted to you that this was a proper way to make an ID?"

"Not that I recall."

Hardy bowed from the waist. "Thank you."

But even after all this, there was one more nail to be driven into the inspector's coffin. He pressed ahead. "Sergeant Cuneo, during your visit to Catherine Hanover's house for your first interview, did you touch her?"

"No, I did not."

"Did you shake hands?"

"I may have done that. I don't remember."

"But to the best of your recollection, you did not touch her otherwise?"

"No."

"In passing perhaps?" "Your Honor. Asked and answered." "Cross-examination, Mr. Rosen. I'll allow it." Cuneo: "No."

"Aside from the handshake, did any part of your hand come into contact with any part of Catherine Hanover's body at any time?"

"Objection."

"Overruled."

Cuneo: "No."

"Were you standing close enough to Catherine Hanover to touch her during any part of your discussion?" "Objection."

This time Braun, obviously irritated by the needless interruptions, paused briefly. Hardy hoped the jury caught the signal. "Overruled. Sergeant, you may answer the question."

Cuneo obviously didn't want to, but he couldn't refuse, although first he looked at Rosen for a cue. By now he had the whole imaginary drum kit going, his eyes slits at Hardy. "Maybe."

"Maybe? You were or you weren't close enough, Sergeant. Which is it?"

"Yes, then, I was."

"Standing close enough to touch her?"

"Yes."

"But in fact you touched neither her arm nor her shoulder?"

Rosen, from his table. "Your Honor!"

But Cuneo, thoroughly worn down, replied before the judge could rule. "I don't know." Behind him, the gallery, which had obviously been closely following the testimony, made itself heard even through the security screen, as Cuneo mumbled. "Maybe I touched her once or twice by mistake."

Hardy stood stock still, then delivered the coup de grace. "I'm sorry, Your Honor. I missed that. Could I have it read back?"

Jan Saunders read Cuneo's words again, playing it straight. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe I touched her once or twice by mistake."

Glitsky and Treya kept getting what they were told was good news, but it didn't seem to give them much relief. The great news was that the echocardiogram ruled out aortic stenosis. Today's X-rays on Zachary's heart also showed no abnormality or sudden growth in size. The EKG-wires and leads stuck all over the infant's body while he lay exposed and cold on the gurney sheet-also indicated that the heartbeat was regular. Through it all, the baby didn't cry, but endured it with a stoicism that would have done his father proud.

All the tests took the better part of an hour. In his office when they were done, Dr. Trueblood walked a careful line between optimism and realism. "I have to tell you that Zachary's condition as of today is the best that we could possibly have hoped for just a couple of days ago. Of all the children that I see in here, he's in the top one percent. And this is really terrific, terrific news."

These wonderful tidings were delivered, however, in a funereal tone. The old hunched man sat behind his desk with his shirt undone, his tie askew and his mottled hands linked in front of him. The light in the office itself was muted, the shades drawn against the dreary wetness outside, while the pitter of the constant rain provided the only soundtrack. "All that said, I feel I need to caution you that, though this is far better than aortic stenosis, it's still something to take very seriously. Sometimes a VSD can change quickly, especially in the early months. We'll want to keep a very close eye on Zachary."

"What does that mean?" Treya asked.

"Well, first I mean just watch him. If he shows any marked or dramatic change in color, breathing, feeding or energy level, you can call me at any time, day or night.

You've got all my numbers, right? But then beyond that, it would be a good idea to bring him in here every week for the next four to six weeks for the same kind of tests… "

Treya interrupted. "Every week?"

"Yes. For the next month or month and a half. Then, if there's no change, we'll go to once a month and see how that works out."

"What then?" Holding his wife's hand, Glitsky didn't want to betray his own fear. Treya needed him to be calm and even optimistic, and his voice reflected that. He wasn't relaxed, but they were moving into a routine, one they'd grown used to. He just wanted to know where they were now.

"Then," Trueblood said, "say, when he's a year old, we'll go to once every six months, and then once a year."

"For how long?" The Glitskys asked it simultaneously.

"Well, assuming the hole doesn't close up by itself- and it may do that because it's so small-but assuming that it doesn't, once a year certainly until he's a young adult. Maybe longer."

"Forever," Glitsky said.

Trueblood nodded. "Possibly, yes. But remember, they've found these VSDs in autopsies of ninety-year-olds."

"So you're saying Zachary could have a normal life?" Treya asked, barely daring to hope.

"He could. You'll have to be aware of his situation, of course. He'll have to be premedicated for any dental work or surgery, but other than that it's possible that it may never affect him at all. Maybe he'll be able to run, play sports, do anything. Maybe he'll need heart work in the short term, or in five years. We just don't know yet at this stage." Reading the agony in their faces, Trueblood broke out of his professional voice. "I realize that it's difficult not knowing," he said, "but please try to remember that it's better than almost any alternative we had just a day ago. It's entirely possible that Zachary's going to grow up to be a fine, normal, healthy child."

Treya squeezed Glitsky's hand, forced a smile of sorts. He knew her, knew that she didn't want to hear any false or possibly false cheer. She wanted to know what to do so that they could be prepared for it and do it right. "So I guess we'd better set up an appointment for next week, then. That's the next step?"

They got home by three o'clock, and Treya said she didn't want the two of them moping around together until it got dark, so Glitsky called his driver, Paganucci, thinking he would go check in at work for a few hours, maybe catch up on his mail, answer some of the more legitimate urgent calls, perhaps even talk to Batiste or Kathy West about the conspiracy and the various issues it raised.

But the normally taciturn driver hadn't taken him a block when he said, "Excuse me, sir."

He'd been looking at the slow continuous rain, his mind on his wife and new son, wondering how long it would take for this oppressive weight to lift, for life to begin to feel real again. In the backseat, arms crossed, he cleared his throat. "What is it, Tom?"

"Well, sir, it's the Hall. You know they're having the Hanover trial there, and the place is a circus, way worse than usual. Even going through the jail door, you're going to have to break through a line of 'em to get in. And then upstairs, there's probably a dozen in the hall just outside your office. They've been there all day since the morning, waiting for you to show up." Paganucci, depleted after the lengthy string of words, glanced into the rearview. "Knowing what you've been going through at home, I didn't know if you were really feeling up for that."

Glitsky was silent for a beat. "That bad, huh?"

"A zoo. Plus, look at the time, the trial's going to be getting out about when we get there or a little later, and then we're talking maybe three times as many of the vultures. I wouldn't normally say anything, you know, sir, but I just thought you ought to get a heads-up."

"I appreciate it, Tom. Thanks." They were moving east on Geary. "Why don't we take a detour and think about it?"

"You got it." Paganucci hung a right onto Fillmore Street. "Anyplace in particular?"

"I don't know. My wife doesn't want me home. Says I'm too morose. You think I'm morose, Tom?"

"No, sir."

"Me, neither. It's just most people don't have my sense of humor. Not that I've had a lot to laugh about lately."

"No, sir."

"We're close enough. Why don't we swing by the Painted Ladies? See how they're doing." "The Painted Ladies, sir." "Let's kick it up, Tom. Lights and sirens."

"Sir?" "Joke."

"Ah." Then, "Good one."

"There you go."

Hanover's old place was now a gaping hole, still shocking even after most of a year. Especially since its sisters-cousins? daughters?-had been resuscitated and now preened with all or more of their former glory on the 700 block of Steiner. Paganucci, back to his habitual silence, drove the long way around Alamo Square and pulled over to the curb in front of the empty lot.

Hat on, in full uniform, Glitsky opened the door and let himself out into the steady drizzle. Walking up the steps to the front landing, he stepped over onto the earth in the footprint of the old building. Though soaked with the constant rain, the site still crackled with broken glass and the remnants of cinders. Glitsky thought he could still detect a slight burned odor. Walking through the vacant space, he got to the back of the lot and turned around due west to face the park across the street-a grassy knoll topped by windswept cypresses-deserted now in the awful weather. Crunching back the way he'd come, he made it back to Steiner, turned and looked at the row of lovely houses one more time.

He had no idea why he had come here. Could it have been as random as Paganucci's suggestion that he might want to avoid his office downtown today? He didn't think that was it.

Something nagged at him.

The house next door had a small sign in the front window that read: another quality remodel by leymar construction. The health issues with his son had buried any other thoughts for the better part of the past few hours, but now suddenly he found that the loam had heaved as an idea mushrooming to the surface of his consciousness. No, not one idea exactly. More an accumulation of related inconsistencies.

What did it mean that Jim Leymar of Leymar Construction said he hadn't charged Hanover anything near a million dollars?

Why did Missy D'Amiens, apparently, lie to her landlady about where she worked?

For that matter, what had happened to her car? or to the ring?

At the outset, Glitsky had of course considered from several angles the possibility that Missy D'Amiens, and not Paul Hanover, might have been the primary intended victim. But she had never assumed a prominence. Always cast into semiobscurity by Paul's huge shadow, and then lost in the swirling maelstrom of events and media insanity that had seen Catherine charged and arrested, Missy's death came to feel to Glitsky like a kind of unfortunate footnote in an unsung and unknowable life. In some ways, she had become to him just another one of San Francisco's homeless, albeit a wealthy one, who one day merely disappeared, never to be mourned or missed.

But even the homeless, he knew, were sometimes-in fact, depressingly often-killed for their meager possessions, for their shopping carts, for their prime begging turf, for half a bottle of Thunderbird. As a more or less random human being walking around in San Francisco, Glitsky suddenly began to appreciate how tempting a target she might have been on her own, without reference to the Hanovers and their politics or money.

She wore a very visible diamond worth a hundred thousand dollars or more, and drove a Mercedes with a hefty price tag as well. Anyone could have seen her, an apparently defenseless woman alone, followed her home and broken in (or simply knocked at the door on some pretense). Many people who kept guns for their personal protection kept them in the headboard of their beds, and this might simply have been a bonus for the burglar and thief. After he'd killed them both, he removed the ring from her finger, probably rifled the house for other valuables. There might have been gasoline in a container in the garage, and he'd used that to torch the place, then driven off in D'Amiens's car.

on its own terms, it wasn't impossible. But it didn't explain the other discrepancies in Missy's story-the construction business, the false employment.

Back in his car, Glitsky sat with his arms folded over his chest. Paganucci saw him reflected in the rearview mirror and decided not to ask him where he wanted to go. Glitsky's natural authority was forbidding enough. When he scowled as he did now, his jaw muscle working and the scar through his lips pronounced, he was truly fearsome.

After a few moments, he shifted in his seat, searched in his wallet, then in the little book he kept. "There's a Bank of America branch at Twelfth and Clement, Tom. Let's go see if they're still open."

₂₆

With full darkness outside and the rain still falling, Hardy stood at the window of his office looking down on Sutter Street and spun around at the knock on his open door.

"Anybody here?"

"I am, Wes."

"What are you doing standing around in the dark?"

"Thinking. You can turn the lights on if you want."

"Fiat lux." The room lit up. "You know that Theresa was at the fire?"

"You talked to her." Hardy got to his desk, sat in his chair.

"At length. I think she developed a little bit of a crush on me."

"From what I hear, she's not exactly the crush type." "Well, as the song says, Diz, 'There's someone for each of us they say.' " "What song is that?"

"I think a bunch of 'em say it. You ought to listen to more country music, you know that? I mean it. Sam got me into it and now I don't listen to anything else."

"I'll put it on my list," Hardy said. "She was at the fire?"

Farrell plopped himself into one of the upholstered chairs in front of Hardy's desk. "This is going to sound familiar, but she saw it on TV and drove over. Got her name and address taken by one of the arson guys and everything. She didn't see Catherine, but that's not really surprising given the number of spectators. She said there were probably a couple of hundred people out there that night, maybe more."

"Okay." "What?"

"I'm wondering if it means anything. Did you ask her what she was doing before that?" "Watching television."

"Wes…" Hardy's patience, sorely tried throughout the long day, was all used up.

Farrell held up a placating hand. "I'm getting there, I promise. She works in real estate, you knew that, right? And she does okay, pays the bills, goes on a vacation every couple of years. But not much extra. Anyway, the point is she was home, alone. She remembers specifically because… well, it was that day, mostly, but also because… I think you'll like this… she remembers the call from Mary."

Hardy was, in fact, glad to hear this. For Theresa to be any kind of a convincing alternate suspect-for the jury's benefit if not in actual fact-he had to be able to establish that she had found out on the same day as Catherine that Paul was going ahead with his marriage to Missy, and that he was possibly changing his will in the very near future, perhaps the next week. She had to be strongly motivated to stop him immediately, and without the phone call from Mary to spur her to act, the theory would have had no traction.

"So she was home, got the call from Mary, then what?"

"Then nothing. She and Mary talked about it for a while, and she was extremely pissed off and upset, enough so that she canceled a date for dinner."

"That night?"

Farrell nodded, pleased with Hardy's enthusiastic reception. "I know. It's almost too good to be true, but there it is. She got a stomachache."

"Who was she going out with?"

"one of her girlfriends. I've got the name and we can talk to her if we need to."

"We might. But meanwhile, Theresa's so sick she can't go out to dinner, but a couple of hours later she's at the fire?"

"Right. But I mean, remember, this is her ex-husband's house burning down, maybe with him in it. of course she's going to go."

"All right, I know. But still…"

"Still, no alibi. I get it."

Hardy scratched at his desk blotter. His partner often took a humorous and low-key approach, but he didn't miss much, which was why Hardy had thought to send him on this errand. "Anybody ever question her about it? Her alibi?"

"I didn't get that impression. Cuneo glommed onto her over Catherine, but he never thought about her as a suspect. And you're right, by the way, that they're not close, Catherine and Theresa. She should have stood up against her when Will said he was going to marry her."

"But she didn't?"

"And he's been paying for it ever since." "Did she say that?"

"More or less verbatim." Farrell paused. "If you haven't gathered by now, Diz, she doesn't particularly want to help us out on the defense. She's finally got Catherine out of the family and wants to keep it that way. Will's happier."

"Will's a jerk," Hardy said.

"Well, at least he's a happier jerk."

"Four million dollars'll do that. Did she say anything about the money?"

"I believe the subject came up." Farrell stood up and walked over to the wet bar, opened the refrigerator and took out a bottled water. "You drinking?"

"No."

"Probably smart." He closed the refrigerator and turned. "Okay, money," he said. "She seemed slightly bitter about the whole Missy thing, to put it mildly. She and Paul split up before he got super rich, and after the kids had moved out, so she fell into the crack there between alimony and child support."

"Yeah, but the community property…"

"Peace, my friend, I'm ahead of you. So she took away about three hundred grand from the marriage, grew it up to a million some, all invested in guess what?"

"I bet I can. High-tech?"

A nod. "So now it's considerably less, the exact figure not forthcoming. But the smart guess is a lot, lot less."

"So she needed the money for herself, too. Not just the grandkids."

"It wouldn't kill her. Hasn't, in fact. Each of the kids has already cut her in, again no exact figures."

Hardy whistled. "So she's made out like a bandit here."

"She's better off than she was. Let's go that far."

"And no alibi?"

Farrell nodded. "No alibi. And one other interesting tidbit."

"I'm listening."

"She bought a new car."

Hardy cocked his head to one side. "With the estate money?"

"Uh-uh, before that. Early last summer." "How did that come up?"

"I told you. She likes me. I have my ways. But the fact is, she traded in her… you're going to love this… her black C-type Mercedes…"

"… for a red Lexus convertible, and paid cash for the difference," Hardy said.

Frannie brought her wineglass to her lips. It was Wednesday-trial or no trial, the traditional Date Night- and they were at Zarzuela waiting for their paella and sharing a plate of incredible hors d'oeuvres-baby octopus and sausages, anchovies, olives and cheese. "How much are we talking about?"

"Maybe as much as forty, fifty thousand dollars."

"And this means?"

"It means she got a lot of cash from somewhere late last May or early June."

"How about from her savings?"

"Maybe. But also, maybe, from pawning a ring."

Frannie looked carefully at a baby octopus she'd picked up with her fork. She put it back down on the plate and went for an olive instead. For his part, Hardy didn't appear to see or taste any of it, which didn't mean he wasn't putting away his share.

"You're seeing how this plays for me, aren't you?" she asked.

He smiled, nodded, reached across the tiny table and touched her hand. "A little bit."

"You think she might have done it?"

"No idea. But she could get the jury thinking it might not have been Catherine. Reasonable doubt."

"But what do you really think?"

"I think she had motive to spare. She hated Paul and Missy. She has no alibi."

"What about the eyewitnesses who say it was Catherine?"

Hardy hesitated for a long moment, then broke a rueful grin. "I'm hoping they die of natural causes before they testify."

All at once the bantering quality went out of Frannie's voice. She put down her fork and looked squarely at her husband. "Let me ask you something, really," she said. "How do you handle them?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the eyewitnesses. What do you tell yourself?"

His wineglass stopped halfway to his mouth. He set it back on the table. "I think they must have made a mistake."

"All three of them? The same mistake?"

He scratched the side of his neck. "I know."

"You think they mistook Theresa for Catherine?"

"No. Though the Hanover men seem to go for the same basic physical type. But Theresa's got fifteen years or more on Catherine. I can't really see it."

"How about Missy, then?"

"That's a better call if she wasn't dead."

"Except she is."

Again. "I know."

"So who's that leave?"

One last time. He twirled the stem of his glass, met her eyes. "I know. I know."

Glitsky entered his duplex dripping. He hung his wet raincoat on the peg by the front door, then his hat over it. In the little alcove, the light was dim and the house quiet. There was a light on in the living room to his right, but assuming that everyone else was asleep-it was nearly nine o'clock-Glitsky turned left into the dark kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Nothing appealed.

He decided he'd go check in on Treya and Zachary and then come back out and fix himself something to eat when he heard a suppressed giggle from the living room. In a couple of steps, he was in the doorway, and Rachel jumped from the couch, finally yelled "Da!" and broke into a true, delighted laugh, running across the rug at him to be gathered up. But the real cause of the baby girl's hilarity and surprise was Glitsky's son orel, a sophomore now at San Jose State about fifty miles south of the city, sitting on the couch next to Treya and holding his little half brother easily in his arms. "Hey, Dad." The boy was beaming. "I'd get up, but…"

"We thought you'd never wander in here," Treya said. "What were you doing in there?"

"Foraging."

Treya seemed transformed-whether by the reasonably good news of the afternoon about Zachary or by Orel's appearance Glitsky couldn't say-but the change was dramatic. She'd put on some makeup, brushed her hair back, donned a nice maroon blouse tucked into some prepregnancy jeans. Most important, there was life in her eyes again.

Glitsky went down on a knee in front of her, shared a kiss with her and Rachel, patted orel on the leg. "It is so good to see you," he said. "How did you…?"

"Nat," he said. "What, you weren't going to tell me I had a brother?"

"No. I mean, yes, of course. We just… we didn't think you could get up midweek anyway," Glitsky said.

" To see my new brother? Are you kidding me?"

"Plus, there was…" He looked to Treya for help.

But orel, obviously, had heard. "Chill, Dad," he said, "it's all right."

"All wight," Rachel echoed.

And Glitsky kissed her again and said, "I know it is."

Frannie and Hardy had just gotten back from their dinner when he got the call from Braun's clerk at ten fifteen. Apologizing for the late hour, she informed him that her honor had denied his motion for a hearing on deliberate prosecutorial misconduct, but that she would reconsider a motion for a mistrial if Hardy cared to renew it. Might that be his intention now?

He told her no.

Well, in either case, the judge wanted him to know that she would entertain such a motion until nine thirty the following morning, when court went into session. After that, a mistrial would be off the table and the trial would continue with the eyewitness testimony.

Now, at Glitsky's, the two babies were asleep, and the two adults and one near-adult sat at the kitchen table with cups of tea sweetened with honey. The pizza carton still covered most of the table in the middle of them, but none of them paid any mind. The mood was still far from euphoric-in the circumstances, how could it be otherwise?-but the sense of imminent doom was gone.

They were catching up, family news and gossip. Treya's daughter, Raney, had just been back home for winter break from Johns Hopkins in December, along with all of Abe's boys-Isaac from L.A., Jacob all the way from Milan, and Orel from San Jose. And of course Nat and Rachel. A full reunion. By now a large extended family, the Glitskys had celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas before the diaspora had flung people to the far corners again.

"I'm just glad Nat got to see everyone one last time," Glitsky commented, "especially."

"What do you mean, one last time?" Leaning back on two rear legs of his kitchen chair, Orel's face clouded over. "Nat's okay, isn't he?"

"I think so. Why do you ask?"

"Because you just made it sound like he's dying of something."

"Not that I know of. But he's in his mideighties, Orel. He's not going to live forever, you know."

Orel brought his chair down, leaned into the table. "Jeez, Dad. You kill me."

"What?"

"What. Things don't always turn out bad. That's what."

"I don't think they do."

"Yes, you do. Look at me. Remember when I was thirteen or fourteen after Mom died and I started to stutter and you thought I wasn't ever going to stop?"

"Okay. So? Nobody else really thought you were going to stop, either."

"Yeah, but I did, didn't I? And then you weren't ever going to meet anybody else good enough again after Mom, were you?" He turned to his stepmother. "And look right here at this very table. Voila. Good enough, and that's saying something."

Treya inclined her head with a small smile. "Thank you."

"Yes, but…"

"But then, if you remember, you had a heart attack and somehow got completely better enough to be walking around and actually get shot a year later. oh, after having your great little baby girl who's sleeping down the hall even as we speak."

"Wait, wait. Time out." Glitsky made the signal. "In all fairness, let's acknowledge what really happened over that time, aside from my miraculous recoveries. All right, you got over your stuttering. But your mom did die. I did have a heart attack, and then got shot and then had a few minor complications after that for a year or so, if you remember."

"I do remember, Dad. But here's the deal. You got better after the complications. You didn't die."

But Glitsky wasn't going to give up his worldview without a fight. "Yeah, I got better in time for them to demote me down to payroll."

"From which, I might point out, you got promoted over half the guys with your seniority and now you're deputy chief. Way farther than you ever thought you'd go."

"Or wanted to."

Orel, shaking his head, turned to Treya. "Am I the only one who sees this?" Then, back to his father. "Sometimes-I really do think and you might consider- sometimes it's half full, Dad. On the way to full. You know? Not half empty."

Glitsky took a breath, sipped at his tea. "Everybody does die, Orel. That's a fact."

"I'll grant you that, but they live first. That's the part that counts. The living part. You can't wait around doing nothing because everybody's going to die. I mean, in a hundred years, we're all dead, right?"

"Do we have to talk about dying?" Treya asked.

Orel sighed. "I'm not talking about dying. I'm talking about living." He seemed at a loss for words for a moment, twirling his mug on the table. "Guys, look. I know it's been a tough few days…"

"You don't know," Abe said.

"Okay, right. Not as much as you, I admit. But didn't you tell me that already the kid's beaten the odds you heard at first? I mean, wiped them out? Top one percent of heart irregularities, right?"

He looked at the two parents, who looked with heavy-lidded eyes at one another.

orel lowered his voice. He didn't want to browbeat. "Didn't your doctor even say he could have a normal life?"

"But might not," Glitsky said.

"Yeah, but I might not, either. You might not. okay, so maybe the odds are slightly less for Zachary right now… "

Glitsky interrupted, putting his hand across the table over his son's. "O," he said gently, "you don't know what you're talking about. It's not all roses with the prognosis, believe me."

"I do believe you. obviously, it's hard. obviously, I don't feel it as much as both of you. But my question is what does it get you to always keep expecting the worst? That Nat's going to die before the next time we're all together. That Zachary won't get a chance to live? Look at what you've got right now, Dad. Look where you are. In spite of it all, things have worked out pretty good, haven't they? I mean, doesn't that count?"

In their bedroom, later. Glitsky getting out of bed, leaning over the bassinet, picking up Zachary for basically the first time.

"What are you doing?" Treya asked.

"Just holding him."

He sat on the side of the bed, the baby in his lap. Behind him, Treya shifted closer to him. Her hand rubbed his back, came to rest on his leg.

"I'm thinking orel's right," he whispered. "I never believe things are going to work out, and then they do, and I still don't believe it."

"I wouldn't beat myself up over that. You're fine the way you are."

"No, I miss things. I haven't held this guy yet-I don't know if you've noticed…"

"I noticed, sure."

"Well, that's because I thought he'd die and then if I'd never held him, it wouldn't be as bad. I wouldn't feel it as much. Of course, then I also wouldn't have felt this while he's here."

"Right. I know."

A small night-light glowed dimly near floor level at the door and provided the only light in the room. But it was enough to see by. Glitsky moved the blankets out from around his baby's face. "He's got your eyes," he said.

"I think so. Your nose."

"Poor kid." Glitsky scooched himself up and around so he was leaning up against the bed's headboard. Then, after a while, "I'd better enjoy every minute."

"I think so. Both of us."

The night settled heavily around them, Glitsky still holding the boy in his lap. "Out of the mouths of babes, huh?" he said.

"Orel's a good boy," she said. "Reminds me of his dad."

"Except for that rogue positive streak." "Not a bad thing, maybe."

"No."

Another extended stretch of time in the shadowy dark. "Trey?" "Yeah, hon."

"The reason I got home so late. I found something out today. Completely off topic."

"off topic's okay. What was it?"

"Hardy's case. This Missy D'Amiens. The dead woman."

"What about her?"

"She had a bank account-our branch of Bank of America, if you can believe it. You know Patti, the manager?"

"uh-huh."

"I asked her if I could look it up. The account. Completely illegal, of course. I need a subpoena. I need to go through their legal department. But she knows me…"

"okay." Treya, now up on an elbow, interested. Even cloistered as she'd been, she'd been aware of the latest news stories, the conspiracy theory. The Hanover case, like it or not, was part of their lives, and probably would be for some time. "What?"

"She had a checking account and a safe-deposit box, a big one." He drew a breath. "She closed the account and the box on May seventh, five days before she was killed."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know." He looked over at her. "Eighty-eight hundred dollars, plus whatever was in the box."

₂₇

Hardy was in his kitchen with Glitsky. The overhead light was on-it was still black out through the window over the sink, though the rain seemed to have stopped. The clock on the stove read 6:24. From the back ofthe ground floor came the muted sounds of Hardy's children knocking around, using the bathroom, getting ready for school. From upstairs, the shower. The house waking up.

Hardy, awakened by Glitsky's call forty-five minutes earlier, was in one of his dark gray courtroom suits, white shirt, muted tie. He blew over his mug of coffee, took a sip. "Missy signed it out herself?" he asked.

"There's no other way to get it."

"Wire transfer."

"She'd still have to sign something." "Yeah, but she could have done that months ago." "But somebody would have had to place the order, right? Either way, it doesn't matter. She signed the with

drawal form, took it in cash. They had the hard copies still there."

"How'd you get a look at them without a subpoena?"

Glitsky considered, hesitated for a second. "That's a state secret that could get the manager fired. I know her. But forget the logistics for a minute. She got her hands on more than eight grand. Maybe a lot more. No way to tell. Five days before she got killed."

Hardy put his mug on the counter, boosted himself up next to it and picked it up again. "Where'd she get that much money?"

"Hanover. She inflated the remodel costs and skimmed. I'm thinking she might have had as much as a few hundred thousand dollars in her safe-deposit box."

"A few hundred thousand? You've got to be kidding."

"No."

"If that's true, she was leaving him." Not a question.

"Had to be."

"He didn't have a clue, though." "You know that?"

"According to Catherine. They'd evidently been arguing about this cabinet appointment, and that's why she was gone during that last day, but Paul told Catherine it would blow over. Missy wasn't leaving him. No way."

Glitsky's frown was pronounced. "So he didn't know."

"I hope it's true and he didn't just lie to Catherine to rile up the family. That might have been what got them both killed." Suddenly Hardy brought himself up short, a palm against his forehead. "Lord, what am I thinking? I'm sorry, Abe, trial time. The focus is a little narrow. How's your boy?"

"He's all right," Glitsky said evenly. "Top one percent of kids in his boat."

"There's a relief."

"A bit." But Glitsky didn't trust himselfwith optimism too long if they kept talking about Zachary's health, so he went right back to business. "I thought I'd do it legal today. Get your sorry signature on a subpoena so we can have copies of the records by next week."

"You mean Missy's bank records?"

Glitsky nodded. "I thought you could help me get 'em as essential to this case. Tie it into Hanover's estate and missing money. You sign a subpoena, the records just come to court. Rosen won't care that we've got them."

"I've got one for you," Hardy said. "How'd you get on this in the first place? Missy."

"You got me on it," Glitsky said. "The car." Mirroring Hardy, boosting himself on the counter by the stove, he told him about the series of unusual findings he'd happened upon as he had followed up leads on Missy, from the address he'd gotten at the DMV site, to Ruth Guthrie her landlady, to the bed and bath store where she hadn't worked, which had led to the checking and other accounts and the bank.

"Wait a minute," Hardy said when Glitsky had finished. "So you're telling me that before she showed up here in San Francisco when? Three years ago? You still don't know anything about where she came from?"

"No. She came from somewhere they speak French, apparently. But how she got here? She dropped out of the sky. Although there's a social"-a Social Security number-"on her Bank of America accounts, and I was going to run that, too. If you'll sign off on the subpoenas." In fact, it was no big deal for Hardy to request Missy's bank records, and both men knew it. Preparing the subpoena wouldn't take Hardy five minutes. "I'm just saying it might help, Diz."

Hardy felt a wash of fatigue-the coffee wasn't kicking in quickly enough. He brought his hands to his eyes, then grabbed his mug and tipped it up. "I know it might," he said. "Sorry. I'm thinking about eyewitnesses. If I could just see how I can use this D'Amiens thing. If she had all that cash on her, plus the ring, and Catherine knew about it… but if anything that only strengthens her motive."

"I'm not guaranteeing any of this is going to help your case," Glitsky said. "I'd just like to know more."

"So would I," Hardy said, "perennially. Sometimes it's just not in the cards."

"True, but it'd be dumb not to look."

"Not if it doesn't help my client, which is pretty much all I'm thinking about right now."

Glitsky shrugged. "Your call. I'm going to do what I can anyway."

Hardy threw a veiled and vaguely malevolent glance over his coffee mug. "There's a surprise," he said.

When Hardy came around the corner in the hallway and saw Catherine in the holding cell behind the courtroom, she was sitting hunched over almost as if she'd been beaten, as though huddled against further blows. When he got to the cell door, she looked over quickly but, smoothing her hands down over her face, didn't get up, didn't change position. When the bailiff let Hardy in, he went and sat beside her. Her face hadn't completely dried. Putting an arm around her, he drew her in next to him, and she broke down.

He let it go on until it ended, just allowing her to lean against him until she'd sobbed it all out. When her breathing finally slowed, he gave her the handkerchief he'd learned always to have with him, then gave her a last buck-up squeeze with his arm and stood up. He walked over and stood by the bars, giving her some space while she got herself back together. He consulted his watch. They weren't due in court for another twenty minutes, plenty of time. Finally, he went back to her and sat.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I don't know what…"

"It's all right."

She nodded. "I've been trying to keep myself from thinking about my kids, but today's Polly's birthday." She took a shaky breath. "Now I've missed every one of them since I've been in here."

"I know."

"I still don't know where to put any of this. How this can be happening to me." She gestured at the surroundings. "None of this is in my life, Dismas. Even after all this time, I can't understand how I've gotten here. I keep telling myself to just be strong and bear up and don't give them anything they can use. But then I think, so what? It's already been too long. I'm not their mom anymore."

"You're still their mom, Catherine. They visit here every chance they get."

"But I can't… I mean…" Again, she bowed her head, shaking it slowly side to side, side to side. "This isn't getting us anywhere. I'm sorry."

"First, one more apology and I start pulling out your fingernails. You've got every right to be miserable and lonely and afraid and have all of this get to you. Second, we don't always have to be getting anywhere. That's for in there." He indicated the courtroom. "Here we can just sit if we want."

She nodded again, then reached over and took his hand. "Can we do this for a minute?"

"I'm timing it," he said.

Seconds ticked by. At last her shoulders settled in a long sigh. "I've been wondering if I could have seen the seeds of all this back when Will and I first started, if that wasn't my original mistake. And everything followed from that."

"You got your kids out of it," Hardy said, "so maybe it wasn't all a mistake."

"I know. That's true. But I also knew it was a different thing with him than I had with you. You know what I'm saying?"

Hardy nodded. He knew.

"But I'd finished college and worked almost ten years and pretty much given up on dating because of all the losers, and then suddenly here was this kind of cute guy who could be fun in those days. But I knew, I knew, Diz, in my heart, that it wasn't… well, the same as I'd always wanted. But I also thought there wouldn't ever be anything better. So I settled. I settled. So, so stupid."

"You did what you did, Catherine. You made a life that worked for almost twenty years. That's not failing."

A bitter chuckle. "Look around you. Getting to here isn't failing?"

"It's not over yet."

"It isn't? It feels like it is. Even if they let me go. That's what I'm saying."

"I understand what you're saying. But I can't have you bail on me now. The first job is to get you acquitted. After that, when you're back outside…"

She was shaking her head and let go of his hand. "Dismas. Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't give me the standard pep talk. We both know I might not get back outside."

"I don't know that!" Hardy's tone was firm, nearly harsh. He turned on the bench to face her directly. "Listen to me." Taking her hand back almost angrily, holding it tight with both of his. "I believe you're innocent, and because of that the jury will not convict you. I'll make them see it. And you need to hold on to that thought. I need you to do that for me."

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out all at once. "All right," she whispered, nodding her head. "All right. I can try."

Moving on to news and strategy, he told her of Far-rell's interview with her mother-in-law, the remote but arguable possibilities presented by the missing ring, combined with Theresa's purchase of a new car for cash. While acknowledging without much enthusiasm that it might be something Hardy could introduce to the jury, she really didn't show much interest until he got to what Glitsky had told him about this morning. "You mean Missy was stealing from Paul? When she was going to get all the money anyway?"

On the slab concrete bench, the two of them might have been coaches huddled on the sidelines, conferring in intimate tones. "She wouldn't have gotten any if she left him," Hardy said.

"No, I know. But that much… I mean, if that's true, she must have been planning to leave for quite a while, and I don't understand that at all. They only got formally engaged six months or so before they died, and the remodel had already been going on long before that."

Hardy's shoulders went up an inch. "Maybe she wasn't sure they'd ever really get married and she wanted to make sure she got something out of him for the time invested. Then, by the time they actually started making plans, she'd already socked all this money away."

"Maybe. But I don't know what it means. Why did she take it out?"

"You said it. They were arguing. Paul might have thought it wasn't a major issue, but maybe she didn't agree. She was leaving him."

Catherine sat straight up. "Maybe I'm stupid, Dis-mas, but that doesn't make any sense. She wasn't going to leave him over some possible minor subcabinet appointment. Paul told me. That day. Remember? That's what the fight was about. He was going to tell them to go ahead and start the vetting process. But beyond that, there were other candidates. He might not have even gotten the nomination, and if he had, he still would have had to be confirmed. The whole thing was months away at least, if it happened at all. I can't see Missy deciding to leave last May over it."

"I'm not arguing with you. But the fact remains that she did take out the money. If she wasn't leaving him, what was she doing?"

"Maybe giving it back to him?"

Hardy tossed her a get-real look. "Maybe not." In the hallway in front of them, two bailiffs led eight jailhouse residents in their orange jumpsuits to another holding cell down the long corridor. The chains that bound them together rattled and echoed, then died, and Hardy said, "Now if somebody was blackmailing her…"

"What for?"

"I don't know. But that's kind of been the mantra around Missy, hasn't it? Nobody knows anything about her. Even the tabloid guys never printed any dirt, and if they couldn't find anything, I've got to believe that if something was there, it was well hidden. But now I wonder if somebody found some nasty secret of Missy's and threatened to tell Paul. So Missy would have had to pay to keep it quiet."

Catherine barely dared say the words. "Are you thinking Theresa?"

"She's the ex-wife," Hardy said. "She hated Missy more than anybody. She'd be motivated to look for dirt on her." He didn't add, though they both knew, that Theresa had no alibi, that she'd paid cash for a new car soon after Missy had withdrawn the money. Hardy didn't want to overplay it, but the suddenly very real possibility that Theresa might have killed Paul and Missy was there in the cell between them. "Did anybody else in the family ever talk to Missy about her life?" Hardy asked. "Even when you all were first introduced to her?"

"It wasn't like we all got together and played parlor games, Diz. She and Paul ran in different circles than all of us. We'd see them both at holidays or sometimes at some social thing, but we weren't doing sleepovers and trading intimate secrets, I promise you."

Out of the corner of his eye, Hardy saw the bailiff appear in the small, wired-glass window to the courtroom door. They heard the keys, and the door swung open.

Showtime.

They were just back from the first morning recess, and so far Hardy felt he was doing very well on the eyewitness front. He was delighted with Rosen's decision to call Jeffrey (Jeffie) Siddon, since the young gas station attendant's demeanor was unsympathetic, to say the least. Flat of effect and subtly hostile to if not bored by the entire proceeding, his mumbling responses surely didn't inspire any confidence in the jury.

Further, his identification of Catherine was not exactly emphatic. Yes, he'd picked her out of a photograph, then out of her booking mug shot. Hardy had already made his point about IDs from a single photo, but the fact is that other people were saying they recognized Catherine, and this guy would be just one more. But facing her in person, he seemed to hesitate. Rosen had to ask him twice if he recognized in the courtroom the person who had bought the gasoline in the container from his station. Could he point out that person to the jury? Jeffie had raised his hand an inch or two, nodded, and pointed briefly at Catherine. Hardy thought, from the performance, that it was almost as if he had pantomimed the words "I think" afterward.

Even beyond all that, though, and far more important, was the legal nicety that even if every word Siddon said were completely true in all respects, and if his identification of Catherine had been firm and convincing-even given all of that, his testimony did not put her at the crime scene at any time. There was simply no connection.

Hardy had argued in a motion to exclude this testimony before the trial, but Braun had allowed it for God knew what reason. The inference that because Catherine may have bought gasoline in a container somehow implicated her in the arson was, Hardy thought, absurd. He could tell that the judge and most of the jury thought the same thing. Still, he rammed the point on cross-examination, reestablishing that Jeffie hadn't picked Catherine out of a six-pack of photographs-Cuneo had only shown him one at a time; he hadn't even seen Hardy's client leave the station, hadn't noticed the direction she'd driven in when she left, hadn't ever seen her again afterward. And then Hardy had completely destroyed him on the question of what day, even what week, he had noticed the woman in the blue shirt. The station records showed that someone had purchased two gallons of gasoline on that Wednesday afternoon, and Jeffie had finally admitted-in his defensive manner-that he figured it must have been her. He remembered her, and therefore she was the one who had come by that day.

Maxine Willis would be rougher, but still, Hardy thought, manageable.

Unlike Jeffie Siddon, she had no trouble pointing out Catherine as the woman she'd seen leave the Hanover home a half hour before the discovery of the fire. Fortunately, though, Hardy had interviewed both her and her husband at some length. In the course of these talks, he had discovered a foothold from which he was confident he might pick his way through cross-examination.

"Mrs. Willis," he began. "Your initial identification of the woman who left the Hanover home a few houses down from yours on the night of the fire was made to an arson inspector on the night of the fire, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Could you tell the jury about that?"

Cooperative, she turned to face the panel. "There really isn't much to tell. My husband and I live three houses down from Mr. Hanover's house and were evacuated the night of the fire when it looked as though our place might catch fire as well. We were all standing outside when a gentleman came up and identified himself as being an arson inspector with the fire department. He got our names and address and asked if we had anything we'd like to report about the fire."

"Did the man have identification?"

"Yes."

"And did that identification say that his name was Sid

Bosio?"

"That was it, yes."

Hardy went back to his desk, pulled a sheet of paper from his open binder. He showed it to Rosen and the judge and had the clerk enter it as the next defense exhibit, then came back to the witness. "Mrs. Willis, do you recognize this document?"

"I do."

"Would you tell the jury what it is, please?" "It's a statement I wrote for the arson inspector after he talked to me on the night of the fire."

"All right. And is this your name and address on the top of the paper and your signature on the bottom of this piece of paper?"

"Yes, it is."

"Indicating that the statements are true and correct?"

"That's right. As I knew them at the time."

No surprise, Mrs. Willis had been coached since the last time Hardy had spoken to her. Now she looked out into the courtroom, over to Rosen, finally back to Hardy. She knew what was coming, even gave him a confident smile.

"Mrs. Willis, will you please read for the jury what you signed off on?"

"Sure. The whole thing?"

Hardy smiled back at her. "After your name and address. The highlighted area."

"All right." She studied the document for a minute. " 'Saw occupant of house, Miss Damien, exit structure shortly before fire.' "

"And by 'Miss Damien,' you actually meant one of the victims in this case, Missy D'Amiens, isn't that right?"

"Yes. I got her name a little bit wrong."

"Thank you. That's fine." Hardy took the paper back from her, placed it back on the evidence. "So, Mrs. Willis, just to make this absolutely clear, you gave this statement to arson inspector Bosio on the night of the fire?"

"Yes."

"All right, then, moving along. The next time you had an opportunity to identify the person leaving the Hanover home a short while before the outbreak of the fire, it was by photograph, was it not?"

"That's right."

"A photograph shown to you by Inspector Cuneo, correct?"

"That's right."

"Now, did you pick the photograph of the person you saw leaving the Hanover home that night out of a group of photographs?"

"No, there was just the one."

"Inspector Cuneo showed you only one photograph and asked you to identify who it was, is that right?" "Correct."

Nodding amiably, Hardy cast a casual eye over to the jury. He strolled easily back to his table and took from it both the newspaper picture of Missy D'Amiens and the original he'd subpoenaed from the Chronicle's files. After having them marked as the next defense exhibits, he showed the glossy of it to the witness. "Do you recognize this photograph?"

"I sure do. That's the picture I saw the first time Inspector Cuneo came by."

"All right. So Inspector Cuneo showed you this picture. Now Mrs. Willis, do you know who this is a picture of?"

"That's my ex-neighbor, Missy." "The same Missy D'Amiens who is one of the victims in this case, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And the same Missy D'Amiens you identified to arson inspector Bosio as the woman who'd left the Hanover house just before the fire, is that right?"

"Yes, but…"

"And you identified her to Inspector Cuneo as well, is that correct?"

She hesitated. "Well, that was before…"

"Mrs. Willis, I'm sorry." Hardy cut her off in his most respectful tone. "Is it correct that on this first occasion with Inspector Cuneo, you identified the woman in that picture, Defense Exhibit F, as Missy D'Amiens? Yes or no."

"Yes, but…"

Hardy held up a palm. "And it was only later that you ID'd the photo of Catherine, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And each time you were shown-Sergeant Cuneo showed you-a single photo, correct?"

"Yes."

"Just to be clear, he never showed you a variety of photos from which to choose, correct?"

"Right."

"And when Sergeant Cuneo showed you the first photograph, Exhibit F, you had already said it was Missy coming out of the house, right?"

"Right."

"And so he clearly expected you to ID the person he named?"

"Yes."

"And you did identify the woman in Exhibit F as Missy D'Amiens on that occasion, did you not?"

"Yes, I did."

Hardy took a breath. "All right," he said. "Now let's talk for a minute about the next time Sergeant Cuneo asked you to identify the person who'd left the Hanover home that afternoon. On that second occasion, did he also show you one photograph of a single person?"

"Yes."

"And he told you that you must have been wrong the first time, since Missy D'Amiens was dead?" "Yes, that's right."

"So it couldn't have been Missy that you saw?" "Right."

"Okay. And next he told you, did he not, that he thought the person whose photo he now showed you was the person you must have seen?" Hardy didn't give her a chance to answer. "And again, you ID'd the person whom Inspector Cuneo clearly expected you to ID, isn't that right?"

"Yes, I suppose that's true, but that doesn't mean…"

"Let me ask you this, Mrs. Willis. Did Sergeant Cuneo ever give you an opportunity to view several photos of different people?"

"Well, no, he…"

"Did he ever ask you to consider the possibility of a third person?"

"No."

"Thank you, Mrs. Willis. That'll be all." He spun on his heel and took a step toward his table. "But…" She started again.

He whirled on her. "Thank you," he repeated with slightly more emphasis. "No more questions."

But Rosen was already on his feet, moving forward. "Redirect, Your Honor." A nod from Braun. "Mrs. Willis, did you know Missy D'Amiens well?"

"No. Hardly at all."

"Hardly at all. Had you ever had a conversation with her?" "No."

"Spoken to her at all?" "No. Never."

"All right. So you could easily have been mistaken in identifying her?"

"Your Honor!" Hardy said. "Speculation."

But Braun was already ahead of him. "Sustained."

Rosen stood in the center of the courtroom for a moment, then came at it another way. "Mrs. Willis, did you have occasion to change your mind about the identity of the woman whom you'd earlier identified as Missy

D'Amiens?" "Yes, I did."

"And when was that?"

"When Inspector Cuneo brought a picture of another woman and I realized it wasn't who I'd first said."

"And that is the picture of the defendant, Catherine

Hanover, People's Exhibit 12, that you identified earlier, is that correct?" "Yes, it is."

"And did you subsequently identify the defendant as the woman who'd left the Hanover home minutes before the fire from the booking photograph, People's 11?"

"Yes."

"Did you also identify the woman who'd left the Hanover home minutes before the fire from a police lineup held on or about July eleventh of last year? A lineup that included five other women?"

"Yes, I did."

"And would you please tell the members of the jury once again if you see the woman you saw leaving the Hanover home minutes before the fire in this courtroom today?"

"Yes, I do."

"You have already pointed her out to the court, but may I ask you to please do so once again?" She pointed and Rosen said, "Let the record show that the witness has once again identified the defendant, Catherine Hanover. Mrs. Willis, thank you. No further questions." He turned to Hardy. "Recross."

Hardy was in front of her before Rosen had sat down. "Mrs. Willis, when you ID'd the first photo of Missy D'Amiens, you were telling the truth, were you not?"

"Of course I was."

"Of course. And you were as sure of that first ID as you later were of the second, true?"

"Well, at the time…"

"Let me rephrase. Did you express any hesitation or reservation with that first ID?"

"No."

"And that's because you were sure. Correct?"

She didn't like it, but she had to admit it. "At the time, yes, but…"

"So you were sure. As sure as you are now that it was Catherine, correct?"

She didn't answer, and Hardy didn't wait. "But of course you were wrong."

₂₈

Glitsky wasn't going to deal with any part of the media. He was laying low on this mission. He hadn't done much more than check into his office early in the morning, then disappeared to move on these D'Amiens questions. He wasn't carrying his cell phone and had turned his pager to vibrate.

In the Bank of America's eponymous polished granite building downtown, he now sat in an enclosed cubicle office in the legal department on the eleventh floor. Outside his windows, an immovable cloud blocked any view. Five attorneys and their secretaries worked in the space just outside-the lawyers in their own cubicles about the size of the one Glitsky was using, their slaves at desks against the opposite wall.

Glitsky's guide for his tour of the D'Amiens financials was a serious young woman with mousy brown hair, in a beige suit and Coke-bottle eyeglasses. Probably not yet

thirty, her name was Lisa Ravel and she was the right person to sit with him while they searched. Diligent, knowledgeable about the bank's systems, enthusiastic for the work. She had already printed out the final statement that Glitsky had gotten a look at yesterday at his local branch (they only kept physical records in the branches for two years). Now she suggested that they review deposits over the nearly three-year course of the entire account, moving toward the present.

Glitsky remembered that he wanted to run Missy's Social Security number-find out something more about her-and he called back to his office and asked Melissa to get on it, to page him when she had something. Then he and Ravel began in earnest.

The opening deposit had been in cash for exactly $9,900. Glitsky, who by now was disposed to see a sinister pattern emerging, found that interesting if only because banks were mandated to report any cash transactions of over ten thousand dollars, and this was just under that threshold. At the beginning, now more than four years ago, there'd been very few checks and all of them predictable-to Ruth Guthrie every month for rent, for phone, utilities and the like. Over the next five months, the account had almost gotten down to zero when regular deposits in the thousand-dollar range began turning up. Glitsky, who'd given Ravel an overview of the situation at the outset, said, "I think by now this must be when she's seeing Hanover."

After a while, the deposits started averaging-again, that threshold figure-around nine thousand dollars per month. D'Amiens started making monthly payments on the Mercedes in February of the year before she'd died. Regular deposits and checks started turning up-one every month for twenty months in the six- to eight-thousand-dollar range, but three of them greater than a hundred thousand dollars-to Leymar Construction. Then more standard-size monthly payments to a Macy's credit card, a Nordstrom card. She got a Visa card and started making regular payments on it. Here was a check for $885 made out to the offices of Dr. Yamashiru. Another similar check for $1,435.

Glitsky pointed to the screen. "This guy. He was her dentist," he said. "She must have had teeth problems."

"Looks like bad ones," Ravel said. "And no insurance."

This struck Glitsky. No insurance?

They kept scrolling. "I ought to go get a subpoena for Hanover's accounts while I'm at this," he said. "Compare the construction bills. I think she was taking cash out of her deposits and putting them in her safe-deposit box."

"Well, wait a minute," Ravel said. She hit a few buttons on the keyboard. "There you go." The screen revealed that Glitsky's theory, at least insofar as the deposits went, was correct. The backup record of several of the more normal deposits indicated the cash disbursements from the amount of the checks she'd cashed and deposited. Hanover evidently had written her regular monthly checks to cover both her living expenses (these perhaps unwittingly) and Leymar's contracting fees. The three that were over a hundred thousand dollars were neatly paired with checks she'd written to Leymar in the same amounts less that critical nineteen thousand dollars. The other Leymar checks, though, came in at nineteen thousand dollars per month. Glitsky surmised that she took this money, deposited half in her checking account and the other half-ninety-five hundred dollars a month-into her safe-deposit box. Over the twenty or so months of Hanover's regular payouts to her, this would have come to roughly two hundred thousand dollars.

"So he was supporting her, too," Ravel said.

"Look at what she was stealing," he said. "She wouldn't have needed him to."

"I can't believe the IRS didn't get wind of this somehow."

"I don't know. She kept everything under ten thousand dollars, you notice."

"Okay, but the income."

"Maybe she didn't file."

Ravel shook her head. "Playing with fire."

"She wasn't American. Maybe she didn't get it."

"Well, she may not have been an American," she pointed at the screen, "but that's a real Social Security number."

"Which reminds me."

Glitsky called back to his office, where Melissa had gone to lunch. Leaving another message, he got back to their computer.

Finally, at it for almost two hours now-printing out pages as they went, the two of them getting along, theorizing-they got to the last month's closing statement again. At his belt, he felt his buzzer. "That's my secretary." But checking the number, it wasn't. It was Hardy.

Glitsky called him right back.

"I just thought of something you said this morning," Hardy said. "You know the car?"

"I know the car."

"We still don't know where it is."

"Yes we do. Somebody stole it."

Disappointment sounded through the line. "You know that for sure?"

"No. I deduced it since it's nowhere else. Somebody must have taken it, and there wasn't anybody to complain."

"So it's not been reported stolen?"

"Good, Diz. I think I just said that. What's your point?"

"My point is where did you look?"

Glitsky fought the rise of impatience. "You want a list? I looked. Traffic and parking, warrants, booted vehicles, towed vehicles…"

"Where? What towed vehicles?"

"At the tow lots."

"Yeah, but for both companies?"

A hint of anger leaking through now, Glitsky began, "What do you…?" Then stopped, realizing in a flash that if the car had been towed in the first few weeks after the fire, it would have naturally gone to the Tow/Hold lot. But less than six weeks later, Bayshore AutoTow had taken over, and since that's where the city now towed its cars, that's where Glitsky had checked. The transition after the contract change to the city's new towing company had gone anything but smoothly, with records lost or mislaid, cars dismantled or stolen. With Tow/Hold dragging its feet supplying anything that would help Bay-shore become efficient and productive, the city's computer hadn't come close to catching up and didn't look like it would for a while. "Tow/Hold," Glitsky said. "Just a thought," Hardy said.

Joseph Willis was the last eyewitness, and presented the most significant challenge, which was of course at the same time a golden opportunity.

Erudite, soft-spoken, nattily dressed in a soft camel-hair sport coat, light blue dress shirt and red bow tie, Maxine's husband didn't have any uncertainty whatsoever surrounding his identification of Catherine. Rosen had walked him through his testimony, which was unambiguous and delivered with great confidence. Unlike his wife, on the night of the fire he had never told arson inspector Bosio that it had been Missy leaving the house. He'd only ventured that it had been a woman. He hadn't been home for Inspector Cuneo's first visit when he'd brought around the newspaper photo of Missy, either, and so he hadn't tentatively identified her first. He, too, had picked Catherine first from Cuneo's photo, next from her booking mug shot, and finally from the July lineup.

Hardy, rising to cross-examine, knew that he had his work cut out.

"Mr. Willis, I'd like to go over your testimony about the woman you saw leaving the Hanover home on the night of the fire, and whom you've identified as Catherine Hanover."

"Certainly." Like his wife, Joseph knew he was key to the prosecution's case, and he, too-and with more justification-seemed to revel in the role. "I thought you might."

This brought a titter to the gallery, and Hardy let himself appear to smile. He was a swell guy able to take a little good-natured ribbing.

"Splendid," he said. "Then we're in accord." He paused for an instant. "Would you mind telling me about what time you saw the woman leave the Hanover home on that night?"

"I don't know exactly. I didn't check my watch."

"Could you hazard a guess?"

"Well, our friends had come by and we'd made cocktails. The show we hoped to attend started at nine and we wanted to get there by eight thirty, which meant we'd have to leave by eight. So I'd say we were in the living room between seven fifteen and seven forty-five."

"And what kind of evening was it?"

"As I recall, it was cool with a breeze, and then got foggy later." He looked over to the jury, and added,

"As usual in May and June." Meaning to be casual and friendly but coming across to the jury, Hardy hoped, as pedantic and even condescending.

"All right. Cool with a breeze. And you've testified that you noticed the woman's dark blue shirt because it was shiny, some kind of silklike material, is that right?"

"Yes?" Joseph Willis shifted in the witness box, crossed one leg over the other. From his expression, he didn't understand where this line of questioning was headed.

"Was that a question, Mr. Willis? Or an answer."

"I'm sorry. Yes. The shirt was shiny."

"And so are we to assume that the sun was out?"

"Your Honor!" Rosen spoke from his table. "Calls for speculation."

Braun looked down over her podium. "Mr. Hardy?"

"Let me rephrase." He came back to the witness. "I'd ask you to close your eyes if it would help you to remember, sir. When you first saw the woman leaving the Hanover home, was the sun shining?"

Much to Hardy's surprise, Willis actually complied. When he opened his eyes again after a couple of seconds, he nodded. "I believe it was, yes."

"Good. Now when did you first notice the woman?"

"Coming down the steps at Hanover's."

"Three houses up the street from your own?"

"That's right."

"About a hundred feet, would you say?" "About that."

"And at that time, the very first look you got, you told Mr. Rosen that you thought the woman was Missy D'Amiens?" "I did."

"And why was that?"

"Well, primarily I think because it was her house. She lived there. I'd seen her in similar clothing. I would have expected it to be her."

"All right. And where were you standing in your own home?"

"By the front window."

"A jutting bay window, is that right?"

"Yes."

"All right. Now, after this woman came down the steps, you said she crossed the street, is that right?"

"Yes."

"On a diagonal, or directly across?"

"I wasn't really watching that closely. I couldn't say."

"You weren't watching her?"

"No, not specifically. I was having cocktails with friends, as I said…"

"That's right. How many cocktails had you had by this time, by the way?"

For the first time, Willis's affable manner slipped. Clearly affronted, he flashed an angry look at Hardy. "One," he answered with no expression.

"In other words, you were on your first cocktail? Or you'd already had one and were on your second?"

"Your Honor." Rosen trying to come to the rescue. "Argumentative."

"Not at all, Mr. Rosen," Braun said. "Overruled. Mr. Willis, you may answer the question. Janet."

Jan Saunders read it back and Willis straightened his shoulders. "I don't recall exactly. I believe it was my first one."

"All right," Hardy said. "And for the record, what kind of cocktail was it?"

"Your Honor!" This time Rosen stood up with the scraping of his chair.

But before he could even state his grounds, Braun overruled him.

"It was a Manhattan," Willis said.

Hardy gave him a cold grin. The men were enemies now, punctiliously courteous in direct proportion to their growing hatred for one another. "That's two shots of good bourbon and a shot of sweet vermouth, is that right?"

"That's right."

"All right, now let's go back to the woman, who is now across the street, correct?"

"Yes."

"The woman you initially thought was Missy D'Amiens?"

"I thought she must have been Missy D'Amiens. I didn't think she was."

"Ah." Hardy brought in the jury with a look, then went back to the witness. "What made you change your mind?"

"She walked differently."

"She walked differently? How do you mean?"

"I mean, she had a different walk. I think it's rather clear. She didn't walk the same."

"So you'd studied Ms. D'Amiens's walk?"

This brought another rolling round of laughter to the gallery, and Willis glared out at it with nearly the same intensity as Braun.

"I noticed it. As one notices things. I didn't study it."

"All right, then. So this evening you simply noticed Ms. D'Amiens's walk?"

"Yes."

Hardy heard a sound behind him, a dull thud. He guessed it was Rosen letting his hand fall in frustration to the table, but he didn't dare slow down enough to turn and look. He didn't know ifWillis realized what he'd just said, but he was certain some members of the jury had.

"All right," he said. "But let me ask you this. If you were looking at Ms. D'Amiens's walk, how did you see her face?"

"I just," he stammered. "I just saw it."

"As she came abreast of where you stood in your bay window?"

"Yes."

"Directly across the street?"

"Yes."

"So you only saw her in profile?" This stopped Willis for an instant. "Yes," he said with a resurging bravado. "Yes, I guess I must have, mustn't I?"

"I believe so," said Hardy. He wasn't going to push on Willis any harder now. He'd already wounded him badly and the jury would resent him for it. Instead, he took a beat, a breath, then asked quietly. "Mr. Willis, your bay window is on Steiner Street, facing due west, is that true?"

"Yes."

"So it faces the sun as it sets, right?"

"Yes."

"And the sun was out on the day of the fire, correct?"

"Yes."

"Low in the sky, since it must have been at least seven fifteen and possibly as late as seven forty-five when the woman came out of Hanover's house? Mr. Willis," Hardy continued, "to review for the jury, you saw a woman whom you initially took to be Missy D'Amiens leave the Hanover home at around seven thirty. You saw her again in profile only across the street from your bay window, looking directly into a setting sun, in the course of which you were in the middle of an alcoholic beverage made with two shots of spirits and one of fortified wine. Is all of this correct?"

"Yes," Willis said. "As far as it goes."

"I think it goes pretty far, sir," Hardy said. He turned and walked back to his table and sat down next to Catherine, who reached over and gripped his arm.

"Redirect, Mr. Rosen," Braun intoned. "No? All right, Mr. Willis, you're excused."

In Farrell's office, Hardy was prepared to beg if need be. "Wes, I need this."

"You needed her missing alibi, too, Diz. Which I dutifully provided, if you recall. But even assuming the lovely Theresa Hanover would see me again…"

"I thought she had a crush on you."

"I may have overstated that slightly. But as I say, even if she would see me again, Sam and I have a date tonight."

"You have no children. You can have dates every night."

"We do, in fact. And every one a treasure. But this one is actually planned. We've got reservations with some pals at Farallon."

Hardy grimaced. And Farrell, horizontal with a legal brief open on his chest up until now, straightened up on the couch with a deep, theatrical sigh. "For informational purposes only, what do you want to know this time?"

"How much she knew about Missy D'Amiens. If she ever dug to find any dirt on her. If she might have been blackmailing her."

Farrell nodded. "Just the kind of stuff I might easily work into a casual conversation. You realize she'll understand pretty quick what's going on? Didn't the cops ask her any of this?"

"Cuneo didn't, no."

"And you expect me to find this out in a couple of hours?"

"Sooner if you want to make your dinner."

"How do I do that?"

"Your usual, Wes. Charm, brains, psychology. Whatever it takes."

"You really think she did this?"

"I really think it's not impossible. I'd like to have some kind of song I can get the jury to dance to."

Farrell threw his abandoned brief down onto the floor at his feet. He swore in resignation, then looked up at Hardy. "All right, I'll give her a call."

"Thank you. And do me one other favor, would you?"

"Of course. It goes without saying. I live to perform favors for all and sundry. What is it?" "Be careful."

₂₉

The money got Glitsky nowhere. The Social Security number, or SSN, turned out to be valid, although inactive because of the death of the person to whom it was issued.

He'd spent three hours with Lisa Ravel and learned that Missy D'Amiens was a careful and perhaps sophisticated money mover-over a twenty-odd-month period, and with the exception of the straight pass-throughs of large sums to Leymar Construction, she had never moved a sum of money, either to cash or to another account, greater than ten thousand dollars. Occasionally, when the balance in her checking account wouldn't be completely depleted before the next deposit was due, she would withdraw all the cash down to a few hundred dollars, and sometimes this would be as much as four thousand more dollars destined for her safe-deposit box. In all, Glitsky's rudimentary math revealed that she might have squirreled away nearly four hundred thousand dollars.

And that meant that, for at least a few days before she died, she'd had access to that much money in cash. Maybe she'd even carried it with her, on her person, somewhere-in a backpack, a briefcase, a shopping bag. If the wrong person even caught a glimpse, then this, Glitsky knew, was plenty to get yourself killed over. What he didn't know and couldn't figure out was why, other than Hardy's theory that she had been planning to leave Paul Hanover, she'd withdrawn it just when she had. He was beginning to think it had to be some sort of blackmail. A payoff had gone wrong in the Hanover home, and the witnesses/victims hadn't survived.

Coincidence, he believed, was not an option.

But there was something he'd clearly overlooked and that now beckoned as the next, maybe the only, logical step left for him to take, although the specific destination remained murky. Why did he care so much about Missy D'Amiens? Was it just a desire to prove that Cuneo had been wrong all along? Or was it that his gene for justice wasn't being served? He kept discovering more facts about her, only to learn that in some ways he seemed to know less. But he couldn't stop himself. All of this money, her sophistication, the duplicity about where and whether she worked, her exotic and unknown background-all of these factors contributed to the fascination. She was the key to something significant; he was certain of that. Maybe it wasn't the key to her own murder as well, but her story begged for a resolution, and Glitsky felt that if he could provide one, it might help to close a circle for him as well.

And, not incidentally, though he couldn't predict exactly how, he believed it might have an impact on Hardy's trial.

He called Paganucci while he waited for Lisa Ravel to finish her xeroxing, then thanked her for her time and expertise. When he exited the building, his driver was waiting on the Kearny Street side, heading downtown. Even with the late-afternoon rush hour, it didn't take them fifteen minutes to get back to the Tow/Hold headquarters a few blocks south of the Hall of Justice on Townshend.

A large brownish brick warehouse that now screamed desertion-from the street the place looked as though it hadn't seen any sign of life in a decade. The large auto bay doors were closed at both the front and sides. Several windows, high up, on all three visible sides, were broken black, jagged holes, and the others, covered with cobwebs, dust and soot, were opaque. Paganucci pulled up in front of the entrance with its peeling white paint and faded logo and lettering. He put the car in park, turned it off, got out and opened Glitsky's door to the gritty and wet wind.

Much to Glitsky's surprise, the door was open. He entered and turned into the administrative office that had been drywalled into the semblance of a planned room. A dozen or so gray metal desks squatted in the bullpen behind the counter. The tops of each of them were bare except for a computer terminal, a telephone, a blotter and a two-tiered metallic in/out basket. He saw no one, but heard a radio somewhere, and walked by the counter, then behind it, following the sound. Within the larger office, a smaller unit sulked in one corner, and here Glitsky found two slightly beyond-middle-aged men playing cards-it looked like gin rummy-on another desktop, this one completely bare.

"Who's winning?" he asked.

The fat man facing him raised his eyes and showed no surprise at the sight of a large uniformed black police officer filling his doorway. "Glen," he said, his breath rasping with the exertion. "But not for long."

"Ha!" Glen didn't even turn around to look.

Glitsky stepped into the room. "I'm trying to locate a car."

"Got a license for it?"

"Yes."

"Welp." The fat man put a "p" on the end of his "well," punctuating it further with a little pop of breath, as though the syllable had nearly exhausted him. He placed his cards facedown in front of him. Wheezing, he lifted himself out of his chair, squeezed his way out from behind the desk. He extended a hand as he passed, said, "Horace" and kept going into the outer office. "Stay here, you don't mind. Watch him he don't cheat," he said.

"Ha!" Glen said again.

Horace got himself situated behind one of the outer desks, fiddled with the mouse, waited for the screen to brighten. "What's the number?"

Glitsky gave it to him. 4MDC433.

Horace's fingers moved. He waited, staring at the screen, each labored breath the sigh of a bellows. After a bit, he nodded. "Yep. Mercedes C-130?"

"That's it."

"Your lucky day," he said. "They took it here. Space N-49. Your car?"

"No. A crime victim's."

Horace made a sympathetic clucking sound through the rasping. He leaned in closer and squinted at the screen. "Mitchell Damien? He okay?"

"She," Glitsky said. "And she's dead."

From the other room. "Hey, Horace! You playing or what?"

"I'm what is what. Keep your pants on." He shook his head in displeasure at his opponent's impatience, then came back to Glitsky. "Welp"-a deep breath-"so what do you want with the car?"

"I just want to look at it. See if she left anything in it that might identify her killer." He left the doorway of the smaller room and got close enough to Horace where he could see the screen. "Does it say where you picked it up?"

"Sure. Two hundred block of Eleventh Avenue." "That's where she lived."

"There you go." Horace leaned back, ran a hand around his florid face. "There's nothing in it-that don't mean nobody stole nothin'. Means there wasn't nothing in it when it got here."

"Okay," Glitsky said. "Could I trouble you to print out a copy of the record for me?"

"Sure. Take two seconds."

For whatever good it would do, Glitsky thought. Already today, he had added sixty-some pages of Bank of America records to the D'Amiens folder he'd been developing. Just being thorough. But it would be foolish to abandon the practice now.

Horace pulled the page from the printer by the counter and handed it over. Taking Glitsky's measure one last time and seemingly satisfied, he walked with great effort all the way back across the outer office, to a large white panel, about six feet on a side, that swung out to reveal a numbered grid of eye-hooks, most of which held sets of keys. He picked the one off of N-49, walked back and handed it to Glitsky.

"You've got the keys?" Glitsky asked. "She left her keys in the car?"

"No. Car sits in the lot this long unclaimed, generally it's going to auction, so we need keys. We used to have a couple of locksmiths on staff, even, but those days are gone now. Still"-he pointed-"those ought to open the thing up. It's inside, about two-thirds of the way back. They're numbered. You can't miss it. I'll flick on the lights for you. Bring the key back when you're done. I'm off at five thirty, so before then. Or come back tomorrow."

Glitsky looked at his watch. He had forty-five minutes. "Today ought to do it," he said. "Thanks."

"What if he doesn't call her as a witness?" Glitsky, referring to Theresa Hanover, was in Hardy's office throwing his darts. Hardy, weary but still rushing with adrenaline and elation-he thought he'd basically kicked ass with all of the eyewitnesses-sat crossways on the love seat perpendicular to his desk.

"He's got to call her. She's the motive. The jury's got to hear how badly Catherine wanted the money, and from her own sweet reluctant mother-in-law. It ought to break hearts."

"And then what?"

"And then I introduce our alternate theory on cross. Theresa's own motive, every bit as good as Catherine's, her own lack of alibi, her attendance at the fire itself, the ring and paying the cash for the car, plus whatever Wes might be finding out even as we speak."

"And the judge will let you do all that?"

"Maybe not the cash for the car. But the rest, maybe, at least the beginning of it. I'll be subtle. Besides, I think her honor is beginning to thaw. The eyewitness testimony was Rosen's case and, if I do say so myself, it took a pretty good hit today. I'd hate to jinx my good fortune, but if I'm Rosen, I'm a worried man about now."

"And Theresa's his last witness?"

"She might be. Close to it, anyway. Which is why I'm going to need you around. You're next up after I call Catherine."

"For the defense. I love it." Glitsky threw the last dart in his round and was walking to the board. Halfway there, he stopped and faced his friend, his expression black. "Starting tomorrow? All day?"

Hardy nodded. "Most of it, anyway. But look at the bright side, like you always do. I ask you questions and the answers eviscerate Cuneo."

But Glitsky was shaking his head. "I don't like him any more than you do. More than that, between you and me, this whole conspiracy thing he's on about terrifies me. He's too close, and maybe he's got other people thinking. I go up on the stand against him, it's going to look personal, and he's going to itch to pay us both back personally if he can. Tell me you haven't considered this."

"Of course. As things now stand, he's a threat, I grant you."

"A big threat. And I'm not just talking careers."

"I get it, Abe, really. But what's the option? I've already creamed him on cross. He can't hate me worse than he already does. Or you, probably."

"But above all, he's a cop, Diz. Cops don't testify against cops, maybe you've heard. So you think Theresa's a reluctant witness? Wait'll you get me up there."

"You really don't want to go on? Get the son of a bitch?"

"I'd rather get the murderer." "And that's not Catherine."

Glitsky wasn't going to fight him on that. "All right," he said, "but I hope you're real aware that my friends in uniform are not going to double their love for me after I snitch out a cop on sexual harassment." Glitsky got to the dartboard and slowly, pensively, pulled his round from it.

Reading the body language, Hardy came around square on the love seat, sitting up. He spoke quietly, with some urgency. "All you'll be talking about is what Catherine said to you, Abe. That's not you accusing Cuneo of anything. Catherine will say what happened. You'll simply say she reported it before she got arrested."

Glitsky barked a bitter little laugh. "That distinction might not sing to the troops."

"It'll have to. I need the testimony."

"I know. I know. I just wish…"

"You'd found something else?"

A nod. "Almost anything. God knows I looked. I thought between the banking and the car something would have popped, but nothing."

"Really nothing? At all?"

Glitsky indicated the folder of D'Amiens's stuff he'd brought up with him. "You're welcome to look at all the fascinating details, but I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"I won't. But if it's any consolation, maybe I won't need it."

"For your client, maybe not. But there's still the murders. And whoever did them is still walking around on the street."

"Yeah, but there's a lot of that, Abe. It happens."

"Granted, but that's no reason to accept it." The words came out perhaps more harshly than he'd intended. "I don't mean…" Glitsky let the phrase hang, then laid Hardy's three darts on the polished surface of the desk. "I'm going home," he said. "I'm done in."

Hardy knew lawyers who couldn't get to sleep until nearly dawn for the duration of their trials, others who crashed after dinner and woke up at three thirty in the morning. The one constant seemed to be the disruption of sleep patterns. For his own edification and amusement, Hardy played it both ways, which tended to wreak havoc on his life and psyche. Two days ago, up at five a.m., asleep at one a.m. Then, this morning, Glitsky's call again around five. Now here he was at his office, no dinner inside him, eight p.m. He'd called home an hour ago and told them he would be late. Don't wait up.

Hardy had been going through the D'Amiens folder Glitsky had delivered. The precise relevance of all this continued to be elusive, although Hardy couldn't escape the same conclusion that Glitsky had reached. It may not have been what killed D'Amiens and Hanover, but some other intrigue was definitely going on in her life. Blackmail, extortion, money laundering. Something. He'd been surprised enough to learn about the siphoned money, but even the smaller details rankled. He hadn't known that she'd kept up her rent on the place on Eleventh Avenue, for example. Not that it mattered, but still… or why she would have lied about her employment. The fact that she'd written the Leymar checks out of her own account.

If any kind of significance came to attach itself to these details, and so far none did, he'd have to try to find out from Catherine. Maybe she knew how Missy and

Paul had specifically connected. There had to have been a mutual friend or acquaintance. Hardy didn't believe Paul had just picked Missy up somewhere, although, of course, that was also a possibility. Maybe Missy had in fact set her sights on Paul, just as his ex-wife and children suspected, for his wealth and standing.

The galling thing was that he didn't even know why he was continuing with the exercise. Studying numbers, going over the monthly statements page by agonizing page. Deposits, withdrawals, deposits, withdrawals. At one point he looked up and said aloud, "Who cares?" But he kept up the routine. Halfway through, he made himself a double shot of espresso and brought it back to his desk.

No word at all yet from Wes Farrell.

When he finished he checked his watch again and saw that it was nearly nine. He stood and closed the folder, leaving it on the center of his blotter. All that work, like so much of trial preparation, to no avail. The worst thing about it, he thought, was that you very rarely knew what you'd need, so you had to know everything.

Cricking his back, he brought his coffee cup over to the sink, then crossed to the door and opened it. He vaguely remembered a knock on that door in the past hour or so, one of the associates telling him she was leaving, he was the last one left in the building if he wanted to set the alarm on the way out.

In the lobby, dim pinpoints of ceiling lights kept the place from being completely dark, but it was still a far cry from the bright bustling business environment it assumed during the day. Off to his right, through its immense windows, the Solarium's plants and ferns and trees cast strange, shape-shifting shadows that seemed to move, which made no sense in the empty space. Hardy had once had some bad luck in the supposedly empty office, and now curious, he walked over and opened the door to the room. A small bird-sparrows got in through the side door from time to time-swooped down out of one of the trees and landed in the center of the conference table, where it eyed him with a distant curiosity.

Hardy flicked on the lights and walked around the outside of the room. At the door that led out to the small patch of ground that held the memorial bench they'd installed in honor of David Freeman, he stopped and turned. The sparrow was still watching him, too. Hardy opened the door all the way and went outside.

The sides of buildings rose on three sides around him. The "memorial garden" existed thirty-six feet above the Sutter Street sidewalk, with a grilled fence along the parapet on the open side. Hardy sat down on the Freeman bench. It was very still here, and quite dark, with only the barest of muffled sounds coming up from the city below.

He let his burning eyes go closed. His breathing slowed. The passage of time ceased.

And then, suddenly, wide awake, he sat up straight, hyperaware of the silence and emptiness around him. He brought his right hand up to his forehead, whispering,

"Wait." Staring unseeing for another several seconds into the open space in front of him, his head pitched slightly to the side, he sat as if turned to stone. He dared not move, afraid that the still-evanescent thought might vanish with as little warning as it had arrived. He looked at it from one angle, then another, trying to dislodge the force of it. There was the fact itself, and then, far more important, there was what it meant. What it had to mean.

What it could mean nothing else but.

When it appeared that the idea had set-unnoticed by Hardy, the sparrow had flown out to the bench, then off into the night-he went back inside, closing the door behind him. Back at his desk, he hesitated one more moment before opening the folder again.

It was still there, the fact that had finally penetrated. The only significant detail in the mass of minutiae. Just where it had been before, and not a mirage at all.

₃₀

"It's not a trick question, Your Honor." Hardy was in Braun's chamber first thing in the morning, on three hours of sleep, and was aware that a bit of testiness had found its way into his voice. It didn't bother him too much. "I'm trying to accommodate my witnesses, some of whom, Mr. Rosen might admit, have lives outside of the courtroom. If they are not going to be needed until tomorrow or even next week, I'd like to let them go home or back to their jobs."

"Reasonable enough, Mr. Rosen," Braun said. "Let's answer Mr. Hardy's question, shall we? Is Theresa Hanover your last witness?"

"I don't know how long she'll be on the stand, Your Honor," Rosen said.

"Then it'll be a surprise for all of us. What's your problem here?"

"No problem, Your Honor. I like to keep my options open."

Hardy knew that Braun was not a fan of sarcasm, and so tried with some success to keep the irony in his tone to an acceptable level. "If he changes his mind and calls another witness, Your Honor, you have my word I won't appeal."

Braun's reaction showed that he'd come close, but after the quick squint at him, she directed her words to Rosen. "Defense counsel will not hold you to your statement here, all right? Now, barring last-minute decisions that you'll have every right to make, do the people currently plan to rest after Theresa Hanover's testimony is complete?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Thank you. That wasn't so hard, now, was it?" But she didn't wait for him to answer. Instead, she said, "Mr. Hardy, you've got your witnesses here, I take it."

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Good, then…" She started to rise from her couch, pulling her robes around her.

But Hardy interrupted. "There is one other small point we need to discuss, though."

With a frown and a grunt of disapproval, the judge lowered herself back onto the cushions. "And that is?"

"Before I begin my case in chief, I'd like to recall one of the state's witnesses for further cross-examination."

Rosen didn't want any part of this, and shaking his head in disbelief at his opponent's gall, he immediately spoke up in both outrage and indignation. "Your Honor! Mr. Hardy has had his fair chance to cross-examine every one of my witnesses, and now because perhaps he's remembered something that he's overlooked or should have asked the first time, he shouldn't be allowed a second chance. He can just call the witness during his case."

Hardy simply stood at ease, a bland expression on his face, his eyes on the judge. "Your Honor," he said, "further cross-examination of this witness may materially change the way I present my defense."

Rosen didn't believe it. "Sure it will. So first we're supposed to let you know who I'm calling today so you can accommodate your witnesses, and then I tell you and you're stalling anyway." Though he'd addressed Hardy directly, and not the court, Braun didn't seem to notice this morning. "I don't have any other witnesses in court today except Theresa and Sergeant Cuneo. Anybody else we'll have to subpoena again. It could take weeks. Is it one of them?" Rosen asked.

"Do you want to play twenty questions?" Hardy asked. He turned to the judge. "This is ridiculous, Your Honor. I've already spoken to the witness just last night and he told me he'd be happy to come down and talk on the record. He is in fact in this building right now. I didn't need a subpoena to get him to do it. He's interested in the truth."

This brought a guffaw from Rosen. "I bet."

Braun turned on him. "Now that will be enough, Mr. Rosen. Mr. Hardy, who is this witness?"

"Dr. Yamashiru."

"And you say he's here now?"

"Outside in the hallway, Your Honor. I talked to him just before we came in here. There will be no delay at all."

"And your cross-examination will focus on what he's already testified to?"

"Yes, Your Honor. In light of these new facts. His testimony is of course central to the people's case, and I believe these new facts will be critical if the jury is to reach a just verdict."

"Would you care to share these facts with the court back here?"

"If it please the court, Dr. Yamashiru's testimony will speak for itself."

Rosen couldn't hold back from addressing Hardy directly. "So now you're withholding discovery?" Turning to the judge, "Your Honor, this is both blatant and outrageous."

"But," Braun countered, "legal. If he calls his own witness, he has to give you his statements, as you know. If he recalls one of yours, it's just further cross and he doesn't." She turned to Hardy. "This had better be further cross, Counselor, and not new material."

Braun wasn't sure that she liked it, but Hardy's motion specifically excluded questions that he might have neglected to ask through oversight or error the first time Yamashiru had testified. She knew that new facts sometimes did get discovered in the middle of a trial, and when they were legitimate, should be admitted. Braun let out a heavy sigh, gathered her robes around her again, and this time stood all the way up. "How much time are we talking about, Mr. Hardy?"

"A half hour, I'd say, at the most."

"Mr. Rosen, any objection if he goes first? Get it out of the way."

At last Rosen seemed to understand the way the wind was blowing. "If it's really a half hour, Your Honor, I have no objection."

It didn't even take half of a half an hour.

Braun succinctly explained the situation to the jury, and then Hardy called back up to the stand the forensic odontologist who'd identified Missy D'Amiens by her dental records.

The clerk reminded Yamashiru that he was still under oath, and he said he understood that and sat erect in the witness box. He was a medium-sized, wiry man in his early fifties, well dressed in a dark gray suit and a modern-looking, multicolored tie. His attitude was of expectancy, even eagerness. Recognizing his patient Catherine Hanover at the defense table, he gave her a friendly, though discreet, nod.

Hardy noticed it and hoped some of the jurors had seen it as well. Anything to humanize the defendant. He held some loose papers in his hand-the "dailies" from the day earlier that Yamashiru had been on the stand testifying for nearly two hours. He'd studied them this morning at his dining room table just after he'd gotten up an hour before dawn. Now, in the courtroom, he stood six feet in front of his witness and bowed slightly. "Dr. Yamashiru, since it's been a while since you gave your testimony, I wanted to review for a moment the thrust of what you said the last time you were here. It is true that Missy D'Amiens had dental work done at your office on several occasions between…"

Keeping it concise but detailed enough to jog the memories of the jurors who, like Hardy, had possibly slept through parts of Yamashiru's earlier testimony, he brought the witness up to the present. "And you concluded, did you not, Doctor, based on your expertise and experience, that the dental records identified in your office as those of Missy D'Amiens correlated exactly with those of the female victim of the fire in this case?"

"Yes, I did." "Exactly?"

"Exactly. There was no doubt whatever."

"Thank you, Doctor." Hardy took a surreptitious deep breath as he walked back to the defense table where Catherine sat staring at him with a laserlike intensity, a mixture of fear and faith. He hadn't had time to meet with her before they got to the courtroom today, and even if he'd found the time to talk to her in the holding cell, he wasn't completely sure he would have told her his plans. Until it was done, it wasn't done, and he was loath to raise her hopes.

Walking back to his place in front of the witness, he said, "Doctor, did you yourself do any dental work on Missy D'Amiens?" "No."

Even through the security doors, Hardy was aware of the expectant buzz in the gallery. But he dared not pause. "No, you were not her dentist?"

"Not personally. She came to my office, but the work was done by my associate, Dr. Kevin Lee."

"And is Dr. Lee still with your practice, Doctor?"

"No. He opened his own shop in San Mateo about a year ago."

"Think back carefully, Doctor. Do you recall if you ever actually met Missy D'Amiens yourself?"

It took Yamashiru twenty seconds, an eternity in a courtroom. "No, I can't say that I did."

"And yet you identified her records?"

"Yes, well, I had the records. I examined the records. They were in her name."

"Thank you, Doctor." Back at the defense table, Hardy reached over and squeezed Catherine's hand, and then straightened up and turned back around. He walked to the table off to the right of the jury box that held the prosecution and defense numbered and lettered exhibits. There he picked up the eight-by-ten original photograph of Missy D'Amiens that he'd introduced for his cross-examination of Maxine Willis as Defense Exhibit A. Turning again, he faced the judge. "May it please the court," he said, "I am holding in my hand a photograph earlier designated as Defense Exhibit A. I'd like to pass it around the jury if I may."

Hardy waited in suspended tension as the photograph made its silent way down the front row of six, then to the back row-man, woman, man, man. And at last it was back in his hand.

Taking another breath to calm his nerves, now jangling, he advanced right up to the jury box. "Dr. Yamashiru," he said, "would you please take a careful look at this picture and tell the members of the jury who it is a picture of?"

"Yes, it's Missy D'Amiens."

"Doctor, if you never met her, how do you know that?"

"Well, I guess first because Inspector Cuneo told me it was her when he showed me the picture, and then of course I saw her picture in the papers, too."

"Please think back, Doctor. When Inspector Cuneo showed you this photo, it was a single photo, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I'm sure it was."

"And he didn't ask you if it was Missy D'Amiens. He told you it was, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"So, Doctor, you merely confirmed what the inspector already knew, correct?"

"Yes."

"Doctor, if I told you that your former associate, Dr. Lee, who actually worked on the patient, told me just last night that this was not the person whom he knew as Missy D'Amiens, would you have any reason to doubt him?"

Yamashiru paused again. "No."

Behind Hardy, an audible gasp rippled through the courtroom. He heard Catherine's restrained "Oh, God," and one of the jurors swore under his breath. Up on the bench, Braun looked for a moment almost as though she'd been struck.

But Hardy didn't savor the moment. He needed to nail it down for the record. "Dr. Yamashiru," he said, "I'd ask you to please take another moment to look at this picture. And once again I'd ask you, outside of what you've read or been told, do you know who this woman is?"

"No."

"Have you ever seen her before?" "I don't think so."

"Has she ever personally been a patient of yours?"

"No."

Suddenly, Hardy felt the strain go out ofhis shoulders. He drew a breath, let it out, and addressed the judge. "Your Honor, the defense will be adding Dr. Kevin Lee to our witness list."

Catherine gripped his hand as he came back to the defense table. "How can that be?" she asked. "What does it mean?" She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed it. "Oh, thank you, thank you." Hardy brought both of their hands back down to the table, covered hers with both of his, firmly. "Easy," he said. "Easy. It's not over."

All around them, in the gallery as well as the jury box, pandemonium had broken loose and Braun was gaveling to get her courtroom back under control. To Hardy's left, Rosen was on his feet as though he were going to ask some questions of Dr. Yamashiru, but he hadn't yet moved from the prosecution's table. Beside him, Cuneo slumped, head in his hands. Their case was suddenly in shambles and everyone in the courtroom knew it.

Rosen threw a look over to Hardy, then brought his eyes back front. Gradually, as order was restored, Braun seemed to remember that she still had a witness on the stand. "Mr. Rosen," she intoned, almost gently, "redirect?"

Shell-shocked, Rosen opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't manage a syllable.

Hardy saw his opening and decided to take it. Normally, in a largely pro forma gesture, the defense would make an oral pitch for a directed verdict of acquittal at the close of the prosecution's case in chief. This 1118.1 motion asked the judge to rule that as a matter of law the prosecution hadn't presented a sufficient weight of evidence to satisfy its burden of proof. Therefore, without the defense even having to present its case, the defendant should be released. In practice, the release of a defendant in this manner was a rare event indeed.

But it did happen on occasion. There was ample precedent, and Hardy thought that if ever a directed verdict were called for, it would be now. After all, Catherine was charged with killing Missy D'Amiens. If she wasn't the victim in this case, if Missy wasn't in fact even dead for certain, and that now appeared to be the case, then that charge against Catherine became moot. Even more satisfyingly, the botched identification of one of the victims underscored the ineptness and even prejudice of the original police investigation. If they couldn't even get the victim right, how was the jury going to believe anything else they proposed?

So Hardy was standing now and the judge was nodding, indicating with her hand that counsel should approach the bench.

In the relative calm of Lou the Greek's, Hardy and Glitsky sat in a darkened back booth about a half hour before the lunch crowd would arrive in earnest. Hardy was dipping pita bread into the Lou's version of tsatsiki, which incorporated soy sauce and hot chili oil into the standard yogurt, garlic and cucumber mix, and somehow the resulting glop managed to work.

"I blame you," Hardy said. "If you hadn't whined so much about having to testify…"

"I wasn't whining."

Hardy put on a voice. "If I testify against a cop, the other uniforms won't like me anymore." He popped some bread. "So if I wanted to save you all the embarrassment and worse, I figured I had to come up with something."

"All right, but how did you get it?"

"The car."

"The car?"

He nodded. "I always said that was the key. Now if you'd only have found it earlier… but I guess better late than never, huh? I'm sure you did the best you could."

Glitsky wasn't going to rise to the bait. "What about the car, though?"

"It was towed from in front of Missy's apartment."

"Yes, it was. So?"

"So she drove it there."

"Right. And?"

"And if she died in the Steiner Street house, it would have still been somewhere near Alamo Square, where she had parked it, where the Willises had seen her get into it."

"No. They said it was Catherine."

"That's what they said, but they were wrong. It was Missy all right. At least I assumed it had to be. It couldn't have been anybody else, really. But I wasn't completely sure until I talked to Yamashiru, then found Dr. Lee and went by his place last night and showed him the picture. Actually, I had some more family snapshots of Missy, too, and Yamashiru didn't recognize any of them. I just wanted to pin Yamashiru down before Cuneo got him to 'remember' seeing Missy around the office."

"And if she wasn't the one in the fire," Glitsky said, "she couldn't have been the one he identified from the dental records."

"Exactly right."

"So she did it. Missy."

"That's the money bet," Hardy said. "Then she split with the money."

"You have any idea why?"

"I thought I'd leave something for you to figure out. That's police work. As you are no doubt aware, I deal only in the realm of exalted and abstract thought."

Glitsky couldn't fault him for crowing a little. He figured he'd earned the right. "So where's it at now?" he asked. "The directed verdict?"

"Braun's deciding. Technically, she shouldn't grant it. The motion only goes to the people's case, and whether that evidence alone could support a verdict. Yamashiru has only said he doesn't really know if the photo belongs with the records in his office. Those records are in the alleged victim's name and Dr. Lee hasn't testified yet. But everybody knows what's coming, and Braun's so pissed at Rosen and Cuneo she might just pull the trigger. And whether she grants the motion or not, the jury's got to believe the police investigation was totally inept if not completely contrived."

CityTalk

by Jeffrey Elliot

The big news around the Hall of Justice this week was the bombshell dropped by forensic odon-tologist (read "dentist") Toshio Yamashiru in the double-murder trial of Catherine Hanover. Dr. Yamashiru had previously testified about the identity of the female victim in the case, whose body had been discovered burned beyond recognition with that of Paul Hanover at his Alamo Square mansion last May. Hanover's girlfriend, Missy D'Amiens, had been one of the patients in Dr. Yamashiru's practice, and he compared D'Amiens's dental records with those of the deceased woman and pronounced them identical.

On Thursday morning, however, defense attorney Dismas Hardy recalled the dentist to the witness stand for cross-examination. During the questioning, Hardy showed him a Chronicle file photograph of Missy D'Amiens and inquired if Dr. Yamashiru could identify the woman in the picture. He could not, stating that he'd had no real contact with the woman. His patient, who had called herself Missy D'Amiens as well, was still clearly the deceased, but evidently she was not the person who'd been engaged to Mr. Hanover.

Dental records are often the only way to identify a body that is otherwise unidentifiable. Outside the courtroom after the stunning testimony, Dr. Yamashiru emphasized, however, that the forensic odontologist only verifies that the teeth of the victim match those of his sample dental records. "The actual identification of the individual is left to the detective in charge of the case," Yamashiru explained, "Sergeant Dan Cuneo. And he got it wrong."

Judge Marian Braun called a halt to further proceedings today while she mulls over her ruling on Mr. Hardy's motion to dismiss all charges against his client, who-because a double murder mandates the charge of special circumstances-is facing life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Which of course leaves two related questions: assuming Hardy is right and the dead woman is not Missy D'Amiens, who is the dead woman? And where is Missy D'Amiens?

In the end, the district attorney himself-Clarence Jackman-appeared before Braun could rule on the 1118.1 motion. "Your Honor," he said, "in light of the new evidence we've seen in this case, the people move…"

For Catherine, the ordeal was over.