The sixth book in the Dismas Hardy series, 1999

The research experience involved in this project has been singular. Although I interviewed close to twenty sources in the oil and ethanol industries, including lobbyists, engineers, lawyers, consultants, environmental toxicologists, and other professionals, not one individual consented to have his or her name mentioned in connection with this book. I thank these anonymous donors for their generosity and time.

Many other fine people were no less helpful, and I owe them a debt of gratitude. These include, first and foremost, my friend and agent Barney Karpfinger; my pals Al Giannini and Don Matheson, who were continual stalwarts throughout a long, and I’m sure tedious, writing process; Peter Dietrich, MD, MPH; Davis (California) Fire Marshal Bill Greene; Mark Detzer, Ph.D. and his wife (my sister) Kathy.

A really terrific group of friends helps more than they know: Karen Kijewski and Tom lessen; Dick and Sheila Herman; Bill Wood; Dennis and Gayle Lynds; Max Byrd. I’m also grateful for the generosity of Nelson DeMille, T. Jefferson Parker, Jon and Faye Kellerman, Richard North Patterson, Debbie Macomber, and Dixie Reid.

Anita Boone is a wonderful assistant and great person. Nancy Borland’s tireless enthusiasm keeps the spark alive. Jackie Cantor and Anne Williams are great friends as well as the best editors a writer could have.

Finally, JR and JS: you guys are, like, totally awesome.

At the tail end of a dog of a morning, Dismas Hardy was beginning to fear that he would also be spending the whole stiflingly dull afternoon in municipal court on the second floor of the Hall of Justice in San Francisco.

He was waiting- interminably since nine a.m. – for his client to be admitted into the courtroom. This would not have been his first choice for how to celebrate his forty-eighth birthday.

Now again the clerk called out someone not his client – this time a young man who looked as though he’d been drinking since he’d turned twenty-one and possibly for two or three years before that. Maybe he was still drunk – certainly he looked wasted.

The judge was Peter Li, a former assistant district attorney with whom Hardy was reasonably friendly. The prosecuting attorney was Randy Huang, who sat at his table inside the bar rail as the defendant went shuffling past. The public defender was a ten-year veteran named Donna Wong.

Judge Li’s long-time clerk, another Asian named Manny See, read the charge against the young man as he stood, swaying, eyes opening and closing, at the center podium. The judge addressed him. ‘Mr Reynolds, you’ve been in custody now for two full days, trying to get to sober, and your attorney tells me you’ve gotten there. Is that true?’

‘Yes, your honor,’ Donna Wong declared quickly.

Judge Li nodded patiently, but spoke in a firm tone. ‘I’d like to hear it from Mr Reynolds himself, counsellor. Sir?’

Reynolds looked up, swayed for a beat, let out a long breath, and shook his head.

‘Mr Reynolds,’ Judge Li raised his voice. ‘Look at me, please. Do you know where you are?’

Donna Wong prodded him with her elbow. Reynolds looked down at her, up to the judge and his clerk, across to Huang sitting at the prosecution table. His expression took on a look of stunned surprise as he became aware of his surroundings, of the Asian faces everywhere he turned. ‘I don’t know.’ A pause. ‘China?’

But the courtroom humor, such as it was, mingled uneasily with tragedy and the sometimes cruel impersonality of the law. Twenty-five very long minutes after the drunken Mr Reynolds had been removed from the courtroom, another case had been called, another defendant – not Hardy’s – brought in. He was beginning to think that his own client wouldn’t get his hearing and that another entire day would have been wasted. This was not all that unusual an occurrence. Everyone bitched about it, but no one seemed to be able to make things better.

The new defendant was Joshua Bonder, and from the Penal Code Section read out by the clerk, Hardy knew the charge was dealing amphetamines. But before things got started, Judge Li wanted to make sure that the three material witnesses in the case were in the building and ready to testify.

Hardy was half nodding off, half aware of the jockeying between Judge Li and the attorneys, when suddenly the back door by the judge’s bench opened. At the sound of rattling chains – shades of the Middle Ages – Hardy looked up as a couple of armed bailiffs escorted three children into the courtroom.

The two boys and a girl seemed to range in age from about ten to fourteen. All of them rail-thin, poorly dressed, obviously terrified. But what sent an almost electric buzz through the courtroom was the fact that they were all shackled together in handcuffs and leg chains.

Joshua Bonder, whose own handcuffs had been removed for the hearing, screamed out, ‘You sons of bitches!’ and nearly knocked over the defense table, jumping up, trying to get to the kids. ‘What have you done to my children?’

Hardy had seen many murderers walk into the courtroom on their own, without any hardware. He thought he’d seen most of everything here, but this shocked him to his roots.

And he wasn’t alone. Both of the courtroom bailiffs had leapt to restrain Mr Bonder, and now held him by the defense table. But Judge Li himself was up behind the bench, his normal calm demeanor thrown to the winds at this outrage.

‘What the hell is this?’ he boomed at the guards. ‘Uncuff those children at once!’ His eyes raked the room, stopping at the prosecution table. ‘Mr Vela’ – the assistant DA who’d drawn Joshua Bonder – ‘what is the meaning of this?’

Vela, too, was on his feet, stammering. ‘Your honor, you yourself issued the body attachments for these children as witnesses. We were afraid they would flee. They wouldn’t testify against their father – he’s their only guardian. So we have been holding them in youth guidance.’

‘For how long?’

Vela clearly wished the floor would open up and swallow him. ‘Two weeks, your honor. You must remember…’

Li listened, then went back to shouting. ‘I remember the case, but I didn’t order them shackled, for God’s sake!’

Vela the bureaucrat had an answer for that, too. ‘That’s the mandated procedure, your honor. When we transfer inmates from juvenile hall and we think there’s a flight risk, we shackle them.’

Judge Li was almost stammering in his rage. ‘But look at these people, Mr Vela. They’re children, not even teenage-’

The father’s attorney, a woman named Gina Roake, decided to put in her two cents worth. ‘Your honor, am I to understand that these children have been at the YGC for two weeks?’

Vela mumbled something about how Ms Roake shouldn’t get on her high horse; it was standard procedure. But Roake was by now truly exercised, her voice hoarse with disgust. ‘You locked up these innocent children in the company of serious juvenile offenders? Is that what you’re telling me, Mr Vela?’

‘They are not innocent-’

‘No? What was their crime? Reluctance to testify against their father? That’s all? And for this they’re shackled?’