‘Andy, we’re not talking embarrassment here anymore.’

‘I know, I’ve accepted that.’ The judge stared out the window, looked back to the closed door. ‘They do like to bring down the mighty, don’t they?’

‘That’s not the issue either, Andy.’

Fowler pointed a finger. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Diz. That’s the issue.’

‘Let’s get back to the facts, Andy. So where did these notes come from?’

Fowler pulled the binder over in front of him. ‘That’s my calendar, my desk at the office here.’ He thought a moment. ‘The day I retired, when the story about May’s bail came out. I stayed away from the office to let things blow over. Remember?’

Hardy remembered.

‘They must have moved awfully fast. I went in and cleaned out my stuff the next week. Somebody must have had an idea back then I’d killed Nash.’

‘Pullios,’ Hardy said. ‘Sounds like her. Get a theory and find the evidence to back it up. Somebody ought to tell her she’s doing it backward.’ Hardy pulled the binder back in front of him, getting an idea. ‘This means they went into your office without your permission, maybe without a warrant?’

Fowler shook his head. This was familiar ground for him. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Diz. It’s probably admissible. In California employers own their offices. In my case, the City and County had a right to enter my room in the Hall of Justice at any time. That’s why I had my own desk brought in. It’s my personal property. If I lock it, they need a warrant to get inside. But anything on top of it is fair game.’ He brightened up. ‘It’s not a disaster, Diz. We can make the point I didn’t take anything with me, I had nothing to hide.’

Hardy knew the prosecution could counter that the judge was so arrogant he thought no one would dare look in his office, though it was technically public property. But he didn’t say that. ‘So, assuming it’s admitted what does it mean, Andy? “ O.N. – tonight. The Eloise”?’

‘A guy at the club,’ he began.

‘What club?’

‘The Olympic. One of the guys said he was invited to this fundraiser on Nash’s Eloise, this was back around March or April sometime, I think.’

Hardy checked. ‘May sixteenth.’ Just about a month before the murder.

The proximity didn’t faze Fowler. ‘Okay, May. Anyway, I thought I might go along, see the famous son of a bitch.’ He shook his head. ‘I decided against it.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure. A mix of things, I suppose. I thought May might be there and I didn’t think I could handle seeing her with him.’

Hardy went back to the window. Under the fluorescent glare at the table his head had started to throb again. He stood there a minute, then turned back. ‘Andy, this might offend you, but I want you to take a polygraph.’

The judge pursed his lips. The request clearly annoyed him. ‘Polygraphs don’t work, Diz. They’re inadmissible.’

‘I know that.’

The silence built. Hardy stood by the window. Fowler leaned back in his chair. ‘I told you I didn’t kill him.’

‘I know you did.’

‘And you don’t believe me?’

Hardy let his silence talk.

The judge pushed. ‘It’s that one lie, isn’t it, not knowing Nash? I told you about that. I didn’t think you or anyone else needed to know. I didn’t think it would come out.’

‘Well, it’s out now, and it’s not need-to-know anymore. I’ve got to know everything, and I’ll decide what to hold back. You want me to defend you – I do that or I do nothing.’

‘And you need a polygraph for that?’

‘To tear a page from the Pullios notebook, “One lie speaks to the defendant’s character, Your Honor.” ’

‘You think I’ll agree to take a polygraph?’

Hardy drummed his fingers a moment, looked around at the walls, the barred window. ‘You know, Andy, I’m afraid this isn’t a request.’

‘Diz, they’re inadmissible!’ Fowler repeated. He took a beat, slowing down. ‘You know why they’re inadmissible? Because they don’t work. They don’t prove a damn thing.’

Hardy nodded. ‘I know that.’ In a courtroom, at least, they were certainly suspect.

Fowler stared at him. ‘Then why?’

Hardy found himself biting back the words – out loud they would sound priggish, self-righteous. Because the reason was that he wanted something that would let him, for his own conscience’s sake, continue defending Andy, something that, if it didn’t clear him, at least left open the probability that in spite of his untruths and peccadillos, he wasn’t guilty.

For many legal professionals this would be irrelevant. The issue wasn’t the fact, it was whether the fact could be proven. But Hardy used to be a cop, then a prosecutor. His mind-set was getting the bad guy and he wanted no part of defending a guilty man, even an old friend like Andy Fowler.

‘I’ve got my reasons,’ he said at last, ‘and you either accept them or get yourself a new lawyer, Andy.’

Fowler’s gaze was firm, composed. ‘I didn’t kill him, Diz.’

Hardy spread his hands. ‘Then it ought to be no problem, right?’

Finally the judge nodded. ‘All right, Dismas. I don’t like it, but all right.’

Glitsky was wearing green khakis, hiking boots, a leather flight jacket. He stood about six-foot-two-and-a-half and weighed in at a little over 210 pounds. His black hair was short, almost Marine cut. When he was younger, partially to hide the top of his scar, he sported a Fu Manchu but he’d been clean shaven now for six years.

Elizabeth Pullios had worked with him on at least fourteen cases since she’d become a homicide prosecutor three years earlier. Their relationship had been mostly cordial and open. They were on the same side. It shouldn’t, therefore, have filled her with any foreboding when Abe’s substantial form appeared in her doorway. But it did.

He didn’t say anything. She’d been reviewing testimony for a case she was taking to trial in two months, memorizing as she liked to do. And then he was there. She had no idea for how long.

‘Hi, Abe,’ she said. She closed the binder and flashed him some teeth. ‘What’s up?’

Glitsky was leaning against the door, hands in his jacket pocket. As though changing his mind about whatever it was, he shrugged himself off the jamb and inside. Jamie Jackson, her office mate, had gone home an hour ago. Glitsky closed the door behind him. He didn’t sit down, and Pullios pushed her chair back slightly to get a better angle.

‘How long you been a D.A.?’ Abe asked.

Pullios still tried to smile, the charm that worked so well. ‘You’re upset with me and I can’t say I blame you.’

Glitsky really wasn’t much of a smiler. He’d seen too many cons and too much phoniness introduced by the glad hand and the ivory grin. Smiling set his teeth on edge. ‘About, what? Six, seven years?’ He was a trained interrogator, and what you did was you zeroed in, you ignored the smoke until you got the answer to your question. ‘Since you got here?’

Pullios nodded. ‘About that, Abe. Just over seven.’

‘You know how long I been a cop?’ It wasn’t a question. ‘We’ve worked together a long time and I don’t think you know anything about me at all.’

She was still staring up at him. He was wearing the face he used on suspects. It was a look.

‘I did four years at San José State on a football scholarship. Tight end. Actually, it was before they called it “tight end.” It was just plain old “end” back then. But I wasn’t just a dumb jock, mostly because I was smart enough to realize I was a step too slow for the pros, so I kind of studied and pulled a three-point-four grade-point average. My counselor told me I could get into law school with that.’

Now his mouth stretched, a caricature of a smile that stretched the wide scar that ran through his upper and lower lips. ‘Imagine that,’ he went on, ‘law school.’

‘Abe…’

He didn’t acknowledge her. ‘But I was recruited into the Academy – yeah, they did that then – after I graduated, and I thought it looked like more fun, more action than the law, you know? I was twenty-three then. I’m forty-one now. Eighteen years, and the last seven I’ve been on homicides.’