A Plague of Secrets (18 page)

“No. I cannot.”

“And in fact, aren’t there thousands of other Glock.40s that could have left this casing?”

“Yes, there are.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Hardy kept his face impassive but brought his hands together in muted delight. “Now, as to the bullet itself, the.40-caliber slug that you’ve identified as the bullet that killed Mr. Vogler. Again, you used the words
consistent with
. Sergeant, did you not run a ballistics test on this slug?”

“Yes, we did.”

“And aren’t ballistics tests conclusive?”

“Generally, yes, they can be.”

“When are they not?”

“Well, when the slug is deformed or mutilated.”

“And was the slug deformed or mutilated?”

“No, not too bad. It was embedded in stucco and wood, but it was okay.”

“And so, was your ballistics test conclusive?”

Faro shot a quick, impatient look over to Stier, shook his head at Hardy. “No.”

Hardy put on an expression of mild surprise. “No? Why not?”

“Because like with the casing, this particular bullet lacked sufficient microscopic detail to permit a conclusive match.” Faro seemed to feel obliged to defend his inability to give more conclusive evidence. “This particular type of weapon has a type of unique hexagonal rifling in the barrel that tends not to leave the marks necessary for an exact ballistics comparison.”

“So, again, Sergeant, let me ask you. Is it possible that the slug that we have here did not come from the gun owned by Maya Townshend?”

This time, since it was foreordained, and though he clearly hated the pass to which he’d come, Faro didn’t struggle with his answer. “Yes.”

After a small pause, Hardy went on. “Sergeant, did you and your crime-scene unit get called to the scene of Mr. Preslee’s murder?”

“Yes, we did.”

A confused frown. “Well, Sergeant, it’s true, is it not, that you found not one shred of evidence inside Mr. Preslee’s home indicating that Maya Townshend had ever even been inside the place, much less murdered anybody there?”

As Hardy had anticipated, Stier was on his feet immediately. “Objection. Beyond the scope of direct examination. We’ll get to the Levon Preslee murder scene in due course.”

“Sustained.”

Hardy didn’t care. He knew he’d gotten on the boards first with that crime at least, making his point in front of the jury. Hardy came back to the witness. “No further questions.”

The door to the
jail’s visiting room swung open and Hardy stood as Maya came in. He waited patiently while the female guard asked his permission and then undid Maya’s handcuffs with a gentleness that he found heartbreaking. Maya had proven herself time and again to be much tougher than she looked, but Hardy had found that it was the little personal indignities that often broke people’s spirits when they were in jail. But this guard was solicitous, even going so far as to touch Maya’s arm and give her a confident nod before leaving attorney and client alone in the glass-block-enclosed space.

“I hate this place, you know that?” Maya said as they sat down on their metal chairs. “It’s worse than the cell.”

“I can’t say it’s exactly my favorite either.” Hardy quickly took in their surroundings. He’d been here many times, and the small semicircular room had a certain familiarity to him. At one time, not so very long ago, the building they were in had been the “new” jail and the polished concrete floors and glass walls lent a sense of openness and light to these rooms that at first had seemed far less oppressive than the rectangular, confessional-sized attorneys’ visiting rooms at the old jail.

Over the years, though, this room’s diaphanous warmth, too, had dissipated somehow, perhaps under the psychic toll of its everyday use. Now it was just another old room, somehow colder for its modernity, its sterility, its cruel illusion of openness through the glass. “Maybe I should smuggle in some rugs, a couple of plants,” he said. “I could bring them in my briefcase every time. That’d spruce the place right up, I bet.”

Unable to fake even a stab at levity, Maya simply said, “I’m not sure it would help.”

“No, I guess not.” Hardy tried to maintain an upbeat and easygoing style, since he saw no reason to add to his client’s pain, but sometimes there was no help for it. “Has Joel been by?”

She nodded, swallowed the lump in her throat. “But outside, at the regular visiting place.” This was a long room for friends and relatives-as opposed to attorneys-similar in fact to those seen on television and in the movies, with a row of visitor stations on either side of Plexiglas windows with speakers set in them, rendering any true personal contact impossible. “It doesn’t really work out there. He only comes by because he feels like he needs to.”

“He comes by,” Hardy said, “because he loves you.”

“All right.” Maya clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She bowed her head, lowered her eyes. Then, with a forced interest: “So how’d we do out there today?”

“I was going to ask you.”

“I can’t believe they keep going ahead with it.”

“I know. I’ve had the same thought myself.”

“Especially with Levon. They have nothing at all, do they?”

“Your presence. I guess they feel that’s all they’re going to need, once they convince the jury on Dylan.”

She sat still a moment, hands on her lap. “I just keep thinking that if only he hadn’t been carrying that weed with him.”

“They probably would have found the stash at his house anyway, and the garden, and maybe the computer records too.”

“But if he wasn’t selling the stuff out of the shop…”

“We can’t just keep doing ‘if,’ Maya. He was.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” She paused. “So what about Kathy and Harlen coming down today? Does that help us?”

“I think so, though I wish she’d run it by me first.”

Another silence. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything you want.”

“The other person who you said did it. Is anybody looking for him?”

“Well, the cops aren’t. That’s a safe bet.”

“So how about us?”

“How about us what?”

“We look for him.”

“Or her. Don’t forget her.”

“No. I never would. But really.”

This gambit, or suggestion, or whatever it was, was heartening in some small way, but Hardy kept his emotional guard up. Though technically it didn’t matter what he actually thought about Maya’s guilt or lack thereof, she might think it would give him a psychological boost at the trial if she somehow got him believing she was innocent. And this question clearly telegraphed
her assumption
of another murderer, without her having to directly lie to her attorney by saying she hadn’t done it.

The problem was, he knew that she’d done something. Something damn serious, about which she obviously was carrying an enormous load of guilt. And he also knew, or thought he knew, what she’d been blackmailed about-robberies or perhaps worse that she must have committed with Dylan and Levon. So unless she’d committed murder in the course of one of those…

Whoa, he told himself. Therein lies the path to madness. But then he thought, why not? They’d come this far. And he came out with it. “Maya, yes or no, were you involved in the robbery that got Dylan and Levon sent to prison?”

She straightened her back. “Nobody can prove I was.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She hesitated. “No.” A beat. “Not that one.”

“So that is in fact what the blackmail was about?”

She didn’t answer, turned her face to look at the wall.

“I ask,” Hardy pressed on, “because you should know that unless you committed murder or some other heinous crime during one of these robberies, you can’t be charged with anything. Anything else, and the statutes of limitations have tolled.”

Her eyes came back to him. They bore a shine that he thought might presage tears. “Why are you so sure they were blackmailing me?”

“For one reason, it’s the thing that makes the most sense. You were involved in robberies with them in college. Yes?”

Finally, her shoulders gave an inch. “I’ve already told you. I did some bad stuff.”

“Bad enough for life in prison, Maya? Bad enough to never live with your kids or your husband again?”

She stared through him.

“You want to tell me what it was? Just put it out here between me and you. It’s privileged. Nobody else will ever know.”

“Don’t bully me.” Her words had a sudden calm edge.

“I’m not bullying you. I’m saying you can tell me anything you’ve done.”

“What for? So you’d do something different? I don’t think so. I think you’d do all the same things, make the same arguments in court, whatever it is you believe I’d actually done, isn’t that true?”

Angry now, Hardy did not answer.

And then suddenly, Maya came at him on another tack. “What you don’t seem to understand is that I’m being punished,” she said.

“For what? By who?”

“God.”

“God.” Hardy felt his anger start to wane, washed away in a wave of pity for this poor woman. “God’s punishing you? Why?”

“The same reason he punishes anybody.”

“Because of what they’ve done?”

She sat mute, facing him.

“Maya?”

“If it’s unforgivable, yes.”

“I thought his forgiveness was supposed to be infinite.”

She answered in a small voice. “No. Not for everything.”

“No? What wouldn’t it cover?”

“How about if what you harm is truly innocent-” Abruptly she drew herself up and stopped speaking.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Hardy came forward in his chair. “Maya,” he said, “are you talking about something that happened with you and Dylan and Levon?”

A dead, one-note bark of laughter didn’t break the harsh set of her mouth. “If you even can ask that,” she said, “you don’t have a clue what
innocent
means.”

“So tell me.”

“Like the unborn. That kind of innocent. How about that?”

That answer called to mind Hardy’s discussion with Hunt about whether the blackmail had been about an abortion early in her life, so he asked her point blank. “Is that it?”

But she shook her head decidedly no. “I would never do that. Not ever. But I’ve already said too much. The point is that whatever happens, however God decides all this has to go, I’ll deserve it. I’m good with that now. I’m at peace with it.”

“Well, I’m not.”

She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “I’m sorry about that.” She gestured around them. “About all of this.”

“I am too.”

“But… so, can we go back to what I was saying before?”

“What part of it?”

“Looking for who did this?”

A black, throbbing bolus of pain came and settled in the space behind Hardy’s left eye. He brought his hand up and pressed at his temple. What was this woman getting at? Hardy could think of several ways to interpret all that Maya had said to him here this afternoon as a kind of confession. And now she was urging him to look for the real murderer.

Who, he believed, very probably did not exist.

He looked across at his client’s troubled face and entertained the fleeting thought that she might be legally insane. Should he hire a shrink and do some tests? Would he be negligent if he didn’t?

The first day of trial had already been too long, too stressful. It seemed to Hardy that he’d been in constant combat since early in the morning.

And now this.

He squeezed at his forehead. “Maya,” he said, “are you telling me straight out now that you didn’t kill these two guys?”

Her eyes widened, closed down, widened again, and to his astonishment, she broke into a genuine, if short-lived laugh. “Of course not.” Leaving it as ambiguous as ever. Of course not, she was not telling him such a thing straight out. Or, alternatively, of course not, she hadn’t killed Dylan and Levon. After which she added in all seriousness, “How could you even say such a thing?”

Hardy left the jail shaken and confused. When he’d gone in to visit Maya, a February ball of pale egg yolk in the western sky was still dripping its feeble light onto the city. When he came out, his head still pounding, it was full night, and that added to his disorientation. The neighborhood around the Hall of Justice felt more than ordinarily bereft of humanity, but the emptiness seemed to go deeper.

A cold, hard wind was kicking up a heavy, dirty dust along with fast food wrappers from the gutters. Hardy had a walk of a few blocks ahead of him to get to where he’d parked his car, but when he got to Bechetti’s, the traditional comfort-food Italian place at Sixth and Brannan, he stopped long enough to consider going inside and having himself a stiff cocktail or two-although he knew it was a bad idea when you were in the first days of a murder trial.

Reason won out.

But he hung a left and walked a hundred yards down the street and knocked at a purple door set in the side of a gray stucco warehouse and waited about ten seconds in front of the peephole until the door opened and then he was looking at Wyatt Hunt.

“Trick or treat,” he said.

Hunt didn’t miss a beat. “I hope you like Jelly Bellies. That’s all I’ve got left.” He opened the door and stepped back. He was wearing black Nike-logo running pants and tennis shoes and a tank-top Warriors shirt and there was a shine to his skin as though he’d been working out. He certainly lived in the right place for it.

He’d converted an ancient decrepit flower warehouse into a one-of-a-kind environment. The ceiling was probably twenty feet high. The back third he’d dry-walled off into his living quarters-bedroom, bathroom, den/library, and kitchen. Which left an enormous open area, perhaps sixty by eighty or ninety feet, in front. Hardy had been here a few times before but every time was surprised by the fact that Hunt parked his Mini Cooper inside his domicile, just this side of the industrial slide-up garage-door entrance in the same wall as the front door. The other unique feature was the actual half-basketball-court floorboard Hunt had bought from the Warriors the last time they’d upgraded, for the fire sale price of four thousand dollars.

In the space between the court and his rooms on the other side of the court, he had several guitars, both acoustic and electric, out on stands. Amps, speakers, his stereo system. There was also a desk against the wall with a couple of computer terminals glowing with beach-themed screen savers.

But Hardy hadn’t gotten too far inside before Hunt called out, “You might as well come out now. I think the jig’s up,” and Gina Roake-barefoot, wet hair, running shorts, blue Cal sweatshirt-appeared from the back rooms, holding up a hand in greeting, a sheepish smile on her face. “Yo,” she said.

“Yo yourself,” Hardy replied. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. If this isn’t a good time…”

“Half hour ago,” Gina said, no shilly-shallying around, “wouldn’t have been a good time. Now the timing’s fine.”

“You can still have those Jelly Bellies if you want,” Hunt said, “but I think I’m good for a beer if you’d rather go in that direction.”

“If you’re going to twist my arm,” Hardy said.

“I’m starting to think she might actually be crazy.” Hardy, with his beer, was sitting on one of the tan stressed-leather easy chairs in the den-lots of books and magazines, CDs and DVDs, on built-in white shelves and a large TV. “Now she wants us to go after the killer.”

“Us?” Hunt asked. “With our huge investigating team and unlimited resources?”

“That’s kind of what I told her,” Hardy said.

Gina, next to Hunt, said, “I thought she was factually guilty.”

“Didn’t she tell you she did it?” Hunt asked. “I thought I’d heard that.”

“Not in so many words, but she never really denied it, and then she’s been acting all along like if she’s convicted, she deserves it. Not exactly an overt confession, but…” Hardy sipped from his bottle. “Anyway, so today she tells me she wasn’t with Levon and Dylan on the robbery either. Though maybe it was another one.”

“Another robbery?” Gina asked. “A different one?”

“Again ambiguous, but apparently.”

“Well, then,” Gina asked, “what would they have been blackmailing her about?”

“I asked her that. She said God was testing her.”

That struck Hunt funny. “Not just her,” he said.

Hardy nodded. “Tell me about it. So then she tells me she can’t believe I think she did this stuff. I mean, here we are almost a half year into this, and suddenly not only don’t we have what she’s being blackmailed about anymore, or what we thought it was, but now she wants us to find who really did these guys.”