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Ms Shi
As Jeff Elliot was typing the last words into his computer, Dismas Hardy was drinking what must have been his twentieth cup of coffee. He sat, no place to go, on a yellow bench in the windowless visitor’s room at the morgue.
Strout was still inside, personally doing the autopsy on May Shi
He was still reliving the scene in Chomorro’s chambers after Struler had come in with the official word.
They were in Andy Fowler’s old office but all vestiges of Andy’s old WASP effects had been decorated away. The gray Berber wall-to-wall had been lifted and hardwood shined up beneath it. Inca or Aztec rugs lay under stuffed furniture in bold Latin designs. Photographs of Reagan, Bush, Quayle, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson shaking hands with Leo Chomorro covered the back wall. The desk was heavy and black and, unlike Andy’s, nearly bare on its surface. Chomorro sat behind it, elbows on it, hands together.
Pullios leaned, arms crossed, against the bookshelves. Struler straddled a fold-up chair, and Glitsky stood by the doorway. Drysdale sat in one of the chairs next to Hardy, who tried to appear calm.
Chomorro addressed himself to Hardy.
‘Do you mean to tell me that you knew Fowler had been to Shi
‘No, judge, not then. He told me at lunch -’
‘And how long were you pla
‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth.
‘You don’t know. Your client is suborning, threatening, possibly killing a prosecution witness -’
‘We don’t know that, Your Honor. There’s no hint of that -’
‘Not yet,’ Pullios said.
‘In any event, you thought you could keep this to yourself? At the very least, Mr Hardy, I’m going to have to report this to the State Bar.’
‘He did not threaten her,’ Hardy said, ‘and Struler here says she killed herself-’
‘It appeared she killed herself,’ Struler said quickly.
‘Fowler didn’t kill her.’
Pullios looked at him. ‘Like he didn’t kill Nash, right?’
Hardy kept his voice flat. ‘That’s right, Bets. How about, as a change of pace, we wait for the coroner’s report? Get a fact or two and find out what we’re dealing with before the accusations start.’
Chomorro broke it up. ‘Regardless of what Mr Fowler did or didn’t do, you’ve got a defendant going to visit a prosecution witness. At the very least, her testimony’s going to be no good.’
‘She’s not giving any testimony,’ Pullios said. ‘She’s dead.’
Chomorro shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I’m inclined to think we’ve got a mistrial here. Maybe we ought to start over fresh.’
‘I’d agree to that,’ Hardy said quickly. He could barely admit it to himself, but the thought still wouldn’t go away… had Andy killed May?
But a mistrial wasn’t to Pullios’s liking – she thought she had the thing won now. Hardy couldn’t say he blamed her.
‘I’m sorry, Judge, I don’t agree.’ She went on to argue that May Shi
‘Not a chance,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you discussed it in his daughter’s presence,’ Pullios said. ‘I’ll call her.’
‘She’d never testify against her father.’
Chomorro’s black eyes glared. ‘She’d better or I’ll hold her in contempt and put her in jail until she does…“
And so it had gone. Hardy couldn’t have Jane get on the stand for any reason – by some incredible stretch she might mention having known – biblically – Owen Nash. What was worse? The jury knowing about Andy’s pre-awareness that May’s gun was on board, or another reason he might have had to want Nash dead?
In the end, Chomorro had decided on his strategy to keep Fowler in custody at least until it had been determined that May Shi
Glitsky finally saw fit to interject a thought – Fowler’s clothes should be tested for fibers, hairs, semen and blood. He was a homicide cop – if there had been a killing he didn’t want the evidence to get thrown away this time. Pullios told him that was a good idea and he told her he knew it was. Investigating murders was what he did when people let him.
55
The door to the visitor’s room opened. It was after ten-thirty and Hardy looked up, half-expecting to see Strout coming in to tell him that May had in fact been murdered, that the knife wounds were inconsistent with what could be self-inflicted. Instead, he looked into the basset face of David Freeman, who asked politely if he could sit down.
‘Ah, Mr Hardy. Just came to pay my respects,’ he said. In the past months Hardy had had two interviews with Freeman in his office regarding the testimony he was going to give for the prosecution. Nominally adversarial, the two men both had maverick streaks, which they recognized in each other and which Hardy felt formed a bond of sorts that, at this point, was still unacknowledged. ‘Strout still in with her?’ Freeman asked.
Hardy nodded, considered a moment, then decided to speak his mind. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I wish you’d taken this case when Andy first asked you.’
Freeman shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’ve lost it. It’s not over until the jury comes in.’
Hardy raised his eyes. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘Particularly if Andy didn’t kill May. I think they’re reaching if they think he did.’
‘He was there at May’s this morning.’ Hardy was testing.
Freeman shrugged. ‘I was there two days ago. Does the jury know it? Do they need to know it?’
Hardy grabbed the nugget. At this point he’d take anything from any source. ‘Why do you think they’re reaching? I mean beyond wanting a conviction.’
In their previous four hours of discussions, Hardy thought he had adequately covered the trial ground with Freeman, but he was begi
‘Because May was depressed, she was suicidal. I spent over an hour last night trying to talk her out of killing herself.’
‘Why was she so depressed?’
‘I think that’s obvious, don’t you?’
‘Not just a coat.’
‘Coat? Oh, that? No, that just might have been the last straw, just another reminder that she couldn’t hope for anything anymore. That’s why she first called me, I guess – upset over it being stolen. But the depression itself -that’s been going on since the summer. She was in love with Owen Nash. Believed she was. After he died she lost what she’d put her hopes in. What had kept her going. Then to be put on trial for his murder…“
Hardy shook his head, still testing. ‘I don’t know what she told you, but she didn’t love Owen Nash.’ Or so Farris had said.