Moses piped in. ‘It might explain why he ran.’

Hardy was desperate for answers, but he didn’t think this was one of them. ‘We don’t know that he did run, Mose. He might be staying at Grandma’s house for all we know.’

‘Well, how can we find that out?’

Hardy was done in. ‘I’m working on that,’ he said.

On his best day, David Freeman would never qualify as debonair and charming, and this wasn’t close to his best day. He sat now in the pre-dawn at his ancient kitchen table which was laden with yellow legal pads, pencils, wads of Kleenex, open and closed lawbooks, and a dozen or more unwashed (perhaps from the look of them never washed) coffee mugs. He wore the frayed remains of a maroon bathrobe that had been new during the Nixon years. Gray chest hairs peeked out the top of a similarly graying T-shirt. Of course he hadn’t shaved – Hardy had buzzed him awake only five minutes before. His jowls hung, his hair rioted, and for good measure he was chewing the stub of last night’s cigar.

‘You know, David, if the law business ever fades out on you, I think you could go into the movies, become a leading man, maybe marry Julia Roberts-’

‘Who?’

Hardy shook his head. ‘Never mind.’ If it didn’t have to do with the law, Freeman probably didn’t know about it and certainly wasn’t interested.

And Hardy wasn’t much in the mood for witty banter himself. He’d slept less than three hours before rolling out of his bed, which last night had been his front-room couch. He’d given his bed to Ed and Erin – and God bless Erin. She was taking care of the kids, getting them to school, covering all those essential bases. This was a great relief even though the situation filled him with guilt.

But Hardy couldn’t waste energy thinking about the time he wasn’t spending with his children. Frannie was still in jail. ‘So I thought you’d talk to Braun.’

Freeman’s lugubrious face didn’t offer any solace. ‘It’s always a pleasure to chew the fat with Marian, Diz, but if you think she’s going to let anybody out of jail on my personal say-so, you’ve got our relationship wrong. How did your sweet wife get herself in so deep?’

Hardy outlined it briefly. David shifted the cigar butt to the other side of his mouth. Hardy started to say something, ready to stand up for Frannie’s integrity, to explain away her insult to Marian Braun, but the old man held up his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter what she did, Diz, or why. You ought to know that by now. Just wait. Let me think a minute.’

Freeman was justly famous in San Francisco as much for his courtroom theatrics as for his knowledge of the law. The point was that he got results in an extraordinary number of cases and he didn’t care how. As a defense attorney, his legal mandate was to provide the best defense the law allowed, and whether that included arguing some arcane legal point or standing on his head and spitting wooden nickels, that’s what he’d do. He was damn proud of the fact that he had no pride.

And now he was thinking strategy. Frannie might not be his client, yet, but he’d gotten lots of folks out from behind bars in his time, and at base that’s really what Hardy was asking him to help with.

‘It seems to me that we’ve got two separate contempt charges – the secret, then getting smart with the judge. Am I right?’

Hardy nodded.

‘OK.’ Freeman pondered. ‘I don’t think we’ve got a habeas on the secret. Randall’s got every right to throw her in jail if she won’t spill it. Talk to Susan McDougal.’ Hardy thought it was typical of Freeman to show no interest in Ron Beaumont’s secret. ‘But if she’d apologize to Marian, say maybe they were both having a bad day – would she go there?’

Hardy wasn’t sure – a lot of things involving Frannie were in doubt lately – and he said so.

‘Well, if she would that might get us to first base. Then maybe we hit Randall, or Pratt, but that’ll be a tough nut, too.’

‘Glitsky’s already working on that.’

Freeman shook his head. ‘You think a police lieutenant is going to persuade Randall to let somebody out of jail? A lieutenant, I might add, who somehow got himself out of the loop on this particular homicide, and didn’t even know the grand jury had convened over it? I think you’re whistlin’ Dixie. Obviously something’s going on here between the DA and the police. Glitsky’s not the way. Randall will stonewall him.‘

‘How do you know? You know Randall?’

‘I caught a couple of his closing arguments for fun. He’s a hell of a trial lawyer, but I don’t know what he’s made of inside. I can’t imagine jailing an otherwise good citizen over this unless he knows it’s the key to a murder conviction. It wouldn’t be trivial. It would help to know if he’s got political ambitions.’

‘Why’s that?’

Freeman regarded Hardy as though he were a slow five-year-old. ‘If he is, we use the media. Call a press conference and make him look like an unreasonable, detestable, miserable son of a bitch keeping a good mother from her loving family. But there’s a flaw with that, too.’

‘Which is?’

‘Your typical prosecutor, it makes his day to keep mothers from their families. As you know.’

Hardy used to be a prosecutor and he remembered. It wasn’t exactly that he had wanted to separate mothers and children, but he’d never shed a tear over sending someone he’d convicted off to jail, even if a relative or lover was sobbing horribly behind him in the courtroom, which happened quite frequently. So Freeman was right – Hardy shouldn’t put any hope in a media campaign with Scott Randall. ‘But Pratt might be different,’ the old man said. ‘She’s got to care about public reaction, about votes, right? We’ve got an election here in a couple of weeks.’

‘Unfortunately, not Pratt’s. She’s got two more years no matter what we do now. Still, we can try it,’ Freeman conceded, though it was plain he considered it a long shot. ‘Of course, after her night in jail, Frannie might have decided that this precious secret of hers isn’t the hill she wants to die on. Especially when she learns her friend may have left town.’

Hardy was at the jail at six forty-five, and they let him inside at seven sharp. Freeman was going to talk to Marian Braun, and try to make some apology with which Frannie would go along. He hoped. He also knew that Glitsky would light a fire under the homicide inspectors working the Beaumont case to find Ron.

But first there was Frannie. He had to see her again, get some sense of what was happening, and to that end he was here.

The door to the visitors’ room opened and she stood still, as though afraid to move forward, perhaps afraid of him. The guard shot a questioning look at Hardy. ‘This OK? You ready?’

And as the door closed behind her, Frannie took one step into the room.

‘He wasn’t home.’ Hardy was using his ‘I’ve got bad news’ lawyer voice, uninflected and neutral. Reciting facts. ’Ron wasn’t there. He’s moved out.‘

She didn’t look any better than she had the night before, but she didn’t look worse, either. Maybe she’d slept a little. The worst thing was this tension that seemed to keep her from moving forward. Hardy had spent so much time punishing himself for his inability to get her sprung out of jail that it had never occurred to him that she might be harboring similar self-loathing feelings for what she’d put him and the kids through.

Something in her look – and that thought struck him now. He would take the first literal step, reaching for her. With a heart-rending sob, she fell into his arms.

‘I couldn’t tell you last night, Dismas. Abe was there, remember. He came in just as we got to it, or started to.’

‘So tell Abe, too.’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t do that. I told Ron that I couldn’t promise not to tell you, that I told you everything, but Abe wouldn’t be the same thing at all.’