Suddenly he turned and spoke directly to Ms Roake. ‘Could we have a conference, please?’ He looked pointedly at Derek. ‘There’s a reason the court appoints an attorney. The coffee shop’s down on one.’

When he’d gone, Hardy closed the file. ‘Ms Roake. Gina, may I call you Gina? What does he want?’

‘He doesn’t want to lose his job, I think.’

‘Is there an automatic administrative removal on conviction? There’s no question the plea is guilty, am I right?’

‘The question is the charge.’ Gina gave him a tight little smile. ‘Misdemeanor, I don’t think so, but if we’re talking felony, he’s fired.’ Gina seemed to be about twenty, although she must have been older. She bit her lower lip. ‘I really think he just wanted the money to help his family.’

Hardy fairly snapped at her. ‘People rob banks and kill people all the time to get money for their families.’ Gina stiffened visibly, and Hardy backed off. ‘Look, I don’t mean to jump all over you, but let’s not play his game. The guy was growing a good amount of dope, and that’s illegal. How about you think up some heavy misdemeanor that will satisfy me? I mean a good one. He pleads to that, pays a heavy fine, does some community service, I’ll try to sell that to my boss, and your man keeps his job.’

Gina’s dark eyes brightened. ‘You’d do that?’

‘He goes near marijuana again – even a little recreational joint – and we’ll crucify him, clear?’

She nodded her head, holding her hands tightly together in her lap, as though she were congratulating herself. ‘Oh, yes, yes. That’s wonderful.’

She got up from the chair in a shush of nylons, shook Hardy’s hand, thanking him, and went out the door before he could change his mind.

He’d just handed one to the defense. He wondered what Elizabeth Pullios would say about that. On second thought, he didn’t have to wonder – he knew what she’d say.

Thinking on that, he crossed his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling, brown water stains on the acoustic tile. ‘Wonderful,’ he said.

On the way into work Hardy had told Glitsky that his wife was coming downtown to meet him for lunch. Now his friend Abe was sitting in the snack bar, holding Rebecca, Frannie across from him laughing at something.

Frannie’s face, her laughter, still had the power to make him forget the bad things life could dish out – it was more amazing to him that she could laugh at all. Only a little over a year before, someone had shot her husband in the head, leaving her a twenty-five-year-old pregnant widow drenched in the gall of that sorrow.

He stood a moment, one step into the employees’ lunchroom, and took in the sight – Frannie’s glowing face, the life in it.

Somehow, Hardy, who had known his own tragedy when he’d lost his infant son years before, and Frannie had gotten together, and suddenly the backward-looking emptiness had changed its direction and its essence. Now they were together; they looked ahead.

Hardy slid in next to Frannie and kissed her.

‘John Strout is a funny guy,’ Glitsky said. ‘I was just telling Frannie.’

‘When did you see our fine coroner?’

‘I see him too much as it is, but this morning I thought I’d do you a little legwork.’

‘Abe does a great Southern accent,’ Frannie said.

‘Wha thenk y’all, ma’am. Jest tryn’ ketch the good doctuh’s flavuh, so to speak.‘ Abe switched back to his own voice. ’You may have got him mad, Diz, but he looked at the hand. I figured it would be easier for me to ask about it than you. Just routine. Is it a likely homicide or not?‘

‘And what’d he say?’

‘He said the guy might have done some karate, maybe some board breaking. There were calcium deposits on the knuckle of the middle finger and the little finger had two healed breaks. Oh, and the pad opposite the thumb was a little thick.’

‘That all?’

‘That’s a lot, Diz. Plus he did die recently. Rigor had come and gone, but Strout thought it was still a fresh hand.’

‘I love it when you guys talk shop,’ Frannie said.

Hardy took his wife’s hand. ‘It’s a glamorous profession. Nothing else could have lured me back.’ Then to Abe, ‘It wasn’t a cadaver, then?’

Glitsky shook his head. ‘Strout’s checked all the local med schools.’ He looked at Frannie. ‘Every couple years some med students steal a body and play some games. This doesn’t look like one of them.’

‘So it’s a homicide?’ she said.

‘A homicide’s just an unnatural death,’ Abe said. Rebecca was starting to get restless and Glitsky moved her onto his other leg, bouncing her. ‘And we don’t even have that officially until Strout says it is, and he won’t say till he’s positive, which means more tests to see if the hand is really fresh, which he thinks it is. Finally,’ Abe said, ‘even if it’s a homicide, a homicide doth not a murder make, much as our man Dismas here might like to try one. We’ve still got three options on cause of death -suicide, accident and natural causes – before we get to murder.’

Rebecca began to squirm some more and suddenly let out a real cry.

‘Here, let me take her,’ Hardy said. He reached across the table and Abe passed the baby over. Immediately she snuggled up against his chest and closed her eyes.

‘The magic touch,’ Frannie said. ‘I’ll go get some lunch.’

She got up, and the two men watched her for a second as she headed toward the steam tables. Hardy stroked a finger along his baby’s cheek. ‘You want to do me another favor?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘It’s not much,’ Hardy continued, ‘a phone call.’

Hardy cleared seven cases in the two hours after his lunch: three DUI’s with priors, a shoplifting with priors lowered to a misdemeanor for a plea, one possession of a loaded firearm by a felon, and two aggravated assaults – a purse snatching and a soccer father beating up his son’s coach. None of these cases would have to go to trial and further clog the court system, and he was glad about that, but this plea bargaining was demoralizing and tiring.

Glitsky appeared in his doorway just as Hardy finished taking care of the weapons charge – his toughest case of the day. If you were convicted of carrying a gun without a license in San Francisco, you went to jail. So people facing time in the slammer tended to prefer a jury trial where they perceived they’d at least have a chance to get off. But in this case Hardy had persuaded the guy’s attorney to plead nolo contendere and take weekend jail time. A sweet deal for both sides, all things considered.

Glitsky perched on the corner of the desk. ‘So who am I talking to?’ he asked.

Most of the prosecutors shared a room with one of their colleagues, but since Hardy had come on as an assistant D.A., his roommate had been on maternity leave, which suited him fine.

Glitsky got up to close the door behind them and went and sat at the other desk. Hardy got through to Farris’s office, then Glitsky punched in so Hardy could listen. The receptionist told Glitsky to hold, and they waited through five of the beeps that signified the call was being recorded.

Glitsky identified himself, referred to Hardy’s earlier call and told Farris about the new information from the coroner. As soon as Glitsky said the word karate, they knew they were onto something.

Farris was silent a long moment. Then he quietly said, ‘Shit.’

‘Mr Farris?’

Again an interval. ‘I’m here. Give me a minute, will you.’

Glitsky waited, fingers drumming on the desk. Beep. Beep.

‘It might not be Owen. Lots of men do karate.’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘Friday around noon, lunchtime. He wasn’t wearing a jade ring then, just the wedding band. At least, I suppose he had the band on. I would have noticed something different, I think.’

‘But Mr Nash did practice karate?’