“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, “What
ever.
”
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 fiancée, 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 slayings 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 incar-ceration
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 mid-thought. “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.