The Second Chair

But Linda remained defensive. "It's just that he's got this mistrust. He has trouble believing in people in general. And that's me, too, my fault. In the early years, I was so bitter and mad at being dumped, at the unfairness of the way my life had turned out, I just wanted to make up for lost time, and I took it whenever I got a chance. Andrew couldn't count on me. So he's always expecting to be betrayed or abandoned or let down."

"Still?" Wu asked.

"To some degree," Linda admitted.

"Though Kevin has helped," Hal added.

"Kevin?"

"Kevin Brolin," Linda said. "He's a psychologist who's been seeing Andrew."

"For how long?"

"All this time," Hal said. "On and off. He's an anger management specialist."

Fantastic, Wu thought. A jury would love to hear about all these anger issues. But she had to press on. Knowledge was power, and she needed all she could get. "Mrs. North, when you started to tell me about the day you and Hal a

Linda looked to Hal, who nodded and said, "Alicia's party?" He went on. "This was maybe three years ago, Alicia's twelfth or thirteenth birthday party. She invited five or six kids, and we made her include Andrew."

"They're only a year apart," Linda said.

"Anyway," Hal went on, "all the girls got into some PlayStation thing and evidently they all decided to gang up to beat Andrew." He shrugged. "I came home to a smashed big-screen, pieces of remote all over the place. Alicia's lip was cut, her eye…"

Linda came to her son's defense. "He's really passionate about video games. That's normal enough nowadays. But he also reads, and writes beautifully. He's getting solid B-pluses at Sutro, and you already know he'd gotten the lead in the play."

Hal's whole body seemed to slump. His voice was deep, depressed. Obviously he and Linda's respective spin on Andrew's character traits was a festering wound, and now here in front of the boy's attorney, its binding was unraveling. He looked directly at Wu. "He never laughs. The boy's just not happy in his skin. He hates all team sports. He's changed his haircut and color ten times in two years. He wears torn T-shirts with butt-crack shorts and combat boots." The slab of Hal's face was a monolith of sadness.

Persistent, nearly pleading to Wu, Linda started again. "He can play any musical instrument with strings on it."

"But won't ever perform for anyone, or take lessons."

Wu had to call a stop to it. "I think I get the picture," she said. She sat perfectly still with her hands linked on the table in front of her. The Norths were avoiding eye contact with each other, although Hal caught Wu's gaze for a brief instant and rolled his eyes. Finally, choosing her words with great care, Wu started to speak. "This issue we've got to deal with here is the likelihood of what a jury in an adult trial is going to do when confronted with the facts of this case. The negative character issues we can avoid as long as we don't bring up anything positive."

"What?" Linda asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's just a rule," Wu said. "Character can't be used by the prosecution except if we bring it up first. After that it's open season. Do you think we want to go there, Mrs. North?"

It took her a minute, but she finally shook her head. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

It was the first time that Linda had acknowledged the basic problem: that regardless of the facts, the situation looked bad for her son. Wu played to that card. "No, I don't think so, either. And that leads me to the really crucial question." A quick glance at Hal, who nodded encouragement. "From what we've seen of the discovery so far- and this means the whole gun question, the pattern of lies to the police, the eyewitness testimony, and so on- do you really think, Mrs. North, we should advise Andrew to run the risk of an adult trial, or try to talk him out of it if he decides to admit?"

Hal reached over and put his hand over his wife's. "It comes down to how it looks, hon. What a jury will probably do with the evidence they see."

Linda sat with it for a long time. Finally, she looked first to Hal, then to Wu. "You don't think it's possible that he actually did do this, do you?"

Wu finessed her answer. "I think that eight years is a far, far better sentence than anything he'd be likely to get in an adult trial. There are no other suspects, Mrs. North. Andrew was the only person that we know was there when the murders happened, and he had a gun and a motive."

Another silence.

"Maybe we should let Andrew decide," Hal's voice was a whisper.

This, of course, had been Wu's goal all along. When Andrew got acquainted with the next round of discovery, which she intended to show him today, Wu believed that he would be a fool to deny the hopelessness of his position, and she did not think him a fool. He would opt to admit. With his mother opposed to that idea, though, urging him to fight for his i

"I'm going up to see him right after I leave here," Wu said.

"Maybe I should go up with you," Linda said. "I don't want to him feel like we think he's guilty. That we're abandoning him."

But Linda's company was the last thing Wu wanted when she made her pitch to Andrew. "It might be better just to leave it to me, Mrs. North. This is really something your son is going to have to come to rationally, and if you're there, it's going to be emotional. If it's just me, his lawyer, explaining that it's not about guilt, it's legal strategy that will give him many more years of freedom, he's at least going to look at it clearly. Then, if he's in fact truly i

Linda hung her head, finally looked back up. "Then that means he probably did it after all, doesn't it?"

Well, yes, Wu thought. That's certainly what the evidence indicates, doesn't it? But she only said, "If he admits, he admits. That's all. It's about strategy, not factual guilt or i

Hal leaned in, his hand still over his wife's on the table. "It's got to be his decision," he repeated. "He's the only one who knows for sure."

Another lengthy silence. Linda said, "But…" and stopped, turned to her husband, shook her head again. Finally, she nodded.

Q: Three two one. This is Homicide Inspector Sergeant Glen Taylor, badge fourteen ten. Case number 003-114279. It is three-thirty in the afternoon, Tuesday, March 4th. I am at the residence of Mark and June Ropke, 2619 Irving Street. With me are the Ropkes and their son, La

A: He was, is I mean, my best friend.

Q: And how do you know him?

A: He's in my class at school. We're juniors at Sutro.

Q: Did you also know a Mike Mooney and a Laura Wright?

A: Yeah. Mr. Mooney was my English teacher, and Laura was Andrew's girlfriend.

Q: Okay. Did Andrew talk to you about them?

A: Yeah. He was a little jealous.

Q: Andrew was? Of Mooney?

A: Yeah.

Q: You want to tell me about it.

A: All right. Him and Laura, Andrew and Laura, I mean, had been going out for about a year, something like that, a long time anyway. Then they got in a fight just before Christmas break and broke up.

Q: Do you know what the fight was about?

A: I think it was sex.

Q: Did Andrew tell you that?

A: Kind of, yeah. I guess he was coming on pretty strong and she told him she wasn't ready for that yet, so he got all pissed off- sorry, mad, I mean- and said she was just being a tease, leading him on, what was she making out with him for if they weren't getting to that? Anyway, it was a big fight and they broke up, but then a couple of weeks later, maybe a month before she got killed, they got back together.