Hardy: The Suspect Part 29

"Yes." Suddenly Faro's jokes about garbage weren't feeling so funny.

"But you didn't either save or a.n.a.lyze any of those materials, did you?"

Faro's eyes darted over to Abrams, out to the gallery. This was the crux of the matter-he hadn't collected the most important evidence.

"Sergeant, your answer."

It took him nearly a full minute, which is a long and eerily silent time in a packed courtroom, until finally he shook his head and said, Uh, no.

"And if you had retained that 'garbage,' as you called it, and we had the paper towels used to wipe the bottle, we might be able to know whether my client was the person who'd wiped it down, wouldn't we?"

"Objection. Speculation."

It was, but Gina didn't care what the ruling was. She'd made her point.

From the bench, before Gina had even turned around to go back to her table, Toynbee tapped his gavel and called for the lunch recess. Standing at her place in front of the witness box, Gina let Faro walk by her and turned to watch him stop to say a few possibly uncharitable words to Gerry Abrams.

She waited until Faro had let himself out through the bar rail, then on an impulse she walked the few steps to the prosecution table. Abrams was standing, head down, arranging his folders, but after a moment looked up. "Well," he said, "looks like you drew first blood."

"It's a bad case, Gerry."

He shrugged. "It's what it is. And I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. It's still going to go to a jury."

"Without a murder? You're kidding yourself."

Another shrug. "We'll see. It's still a murder-you got nothing to rule it out, anyway."

"True, but traditionally, you're supposed to be able to prove it."

"I intend to. And a jury will buy it. Your man's guilty. Get used to it." Dismissing her out of hand, he turned and walked through the gate in the bar rail out to the gallery, where he cracked some joke that got the uniformed policemen chuckling.

Gina stood rooted, paralyzed with a sudden spike of anger. These guys, she thought. What were they basing their prosecution on if it wasn't the facts of the case? Because surely the facts as she'd seen them couldn't support anything approaching the bedrock certainty with which Abrams, Juhle, even Jackman obviously felt that they were right. Could it be that it was just a question of arrogance? She had the feeling that the pursuit of Stuart did not spring from any sense of justice, but from a belief that he was vulnerable, convictable, and that was all that mattered-he'd be another notch in the belt, that was all. A career step for Gerry Abrams, a timely closed case for Devin Juhle, proof that Clarence Jackman's administration was equal-opportunity in prosecuting those who broke the law.

Here they were, in the midst of a well-attended, high-profile hearing. The State's apparatus for punis.h.i.+ng the guilty was in full array, the district attorney's position set in stone. And yet she had just shredded their contention that a murder had even been committed at all, and gotten a straightforward admission that they hadn't collected the strongest possible evidence that might have tied Stuart to what had happened, whatever it had been.

And still, obviously, on a fundamental level none of this mattered to the prosecuting team. It wasn't personal, either to them or about Stuart. Nor should it be, she knew. She was fine with that in the normal grinding mill of the legal system, where most of the time there was no real question of the defendant's culpability. But the problem with that was that it seemed to create this mind-set that was literally blind to the concept that someone could get into the system and be innocent.

Perhaps this was really what Wes had been warning her about all along. You don't get involved with people you believe to be innocent, because the fundamental function of the law wasn't to dispense justice. She'd said it herself not long ago: It was about conflict resolution.

You say he's guilty, I say he's not. Let's decide this case and get on to the next one before lunch, because we've got five more of them this afternoon. Justice was nice. Something everyone hoped for and even usually attained. But it was fundamentally a by-product of a system designed effectively to settle disputes short of clan warfare. If a conflict could be resolved by a conviction, and that was apparently the case here, then a warm body who could be convicted was all the system demanded. And once those wheels were set in motion, they inexorably rolled on.

Perhaps Farrell was right after all-it shouldn't matter this much. It was business. The job was to provide the best defense the law allowed, period. But she suddenly saw with great clarity that even the best defense might very well fail, and if that happened, this case might wind up consuming years of Gina's life. To say nothing of Stuart's.

She couldn't let this case be about conflict resolution, a simple verdict. It was going to have to be about the truth.

29.

The medical offices for most of the doctors who worked in Parna.s.sus Hospital, and this had included Caryn Dryden, were on the upper three floors of the six-story building. It took Wyatt Hunt the better part of a half hour, starting with the information booth on the first floor, to wade through the bureaucracy, the hospital administration, and then the various nurses' and scheduling stations upstairs before he finally found himself in the staff canteen and lounge on the sixth floor, stirring a paper cup of coffee, pulling a plastic-and-metal chair up to a table across from a young woman named Cindy Delgado.

Cindy was probably in her early thirties. Short and slightly overweight, she wore a neat blue knee-length skirt and starched white blouse. Medium-length curly black hair framed a lovely face made prettier by the easy and bright smile with which she'd greeted Wyatt when he'd introduced himself to her at her station down the hall a few minutes ago.

She wasn't smiling, though, as she stirred her own coffee and said, "It's such an incredible waste. She really was one of the best doctors, and I'm not just saying that because she's not here anymore. You know, trying to say nice things? With Caryn, everybody acknowledged it right from the beginning. It's so hard to believe that something like this can just happen to somebody like her. Out of nowhere, in the middle of everything, and then boom, your life is over."

"Well, it didn't just happen to Caryn, though. Somebody made it happen."

"I guess that's true." She sipped her coffee. "So. You said you're working for Stuart's lawyer. Does that mean you don't think he's guilty?"

"I don't think much of anything yet, Cindy. We're trying to understand a little more about Caryn's life. Do you think Stuart could have killed her?"

The directness of the question brought her up short. "I don't know. I've just been hearing about it everywhere, you know. From what they're saying, it seems like he might have."

"Do you know him? Stuart?"

She shrugged. "Not really. I've never actually said h.e.l.lo to him or anything that I remember. He didn't come up here too much. If ever, really. So no, I can't say I know him."

"How about when you first heard that Caryn had been killed? Do you remember your thoughts then? Your very first ones?"

She shook her head. "Just that I couldn't believe she was dead, that it had to be some mistake. But of course it wasn't."

"How about when you heard that it was a suspected murder?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry. I guess I didn't really think anything except maybe it was a break-in at her house or something like that. And then they started talking about her husband."

"So you had no reason to doubt it was Stuart?"

"Like what?"

"Like maybe something that was happening here at the hospital. Something you might have heard or seen, or simply known. Were you and Caryn friends?"

"Outside of work? No. I don't think she had too many friends outside of work."

"Okay, then how about here? How long had you worked for her?" "Four years.

"Exclusively?"

"Well, no, but mostly. I kept her book."

"And you got along well?"

"Really well. We just didn't do things together outside of work."

"So in all that time, didn't you ever share any personal stories?"

"Some, I guess. But really, not too many. Her daughter and my son, once in a while."

"What about them? Were they together? Are they?"

Cindy smiled broadly. "My son is seven. Her daughter is eighteen. No. Just mom stuff. But beyond that, she was a very busy person. One appointment to the next, boom boom boom. Then off to surgery. Time is money, you know."

"She'd say that?"

This brought another smile; it wasn't a bad memory. "Every day, I bet."

Wyatt, half finished with his coffee, had nothing. Cindy Delgado seemed to take the world at face value and was clearly not a gossip. If he was going to get any useful information here, he was going to have to push her. Pus.h.i.+ng his cup to the side, he leaned in over the table. "Cindy, let me be honest with you," he said. "Caryn's husband is in trouble. He swears he had nothing to do with her death, and my boss believes him. She thinks Caryn was having an affair."

In a couple of seconds, Cindy's face went through a range of expressions. Initially, immediately after Wyatt's words, the suggestion- the very concept-obviously caught her off guard. Her vivid eyes registered first surprise, then perplexity, and finally some kind of resolution. But, covering well, she only said, "Why does your boss think that?"

Wyatt shrugged. "When they found her, she was naked in her hot tub. There were two winegla.s.ses. Caryn knew Stuart wasn't going to be home that night. My boss thinks she invited somebody over."

"So you're saying that person came and killed her?"

"That's our working hypothesis, yes." He lowered his voice. "Cindy, when I first mentioned this, you thought of something. I saw it in your face."

"No, I-"

"For what it's worth, some of the other doctors who knew her thought Caryn was seeing someone too. Starting sometime in the past few months. Did you notice any change in the way Caryn was acting, or seemed to feel about herself, back then?"

Cindy's coffee cup was on the table in front of her and now she reached out and started to turn it slowly, staring at it as if it were a crystal ball. Without looking back up at Hunt, she said, "One day I opened the door to her office to deliver some X-rays. I thought she'd gone out to her new clinic, otherwise I wouldn't have just gone in. Anyway, she must not have heard me come in and I heard her say 'I love you too.' And then she hung up and turned around and saw me standing there, and it was like all of a sudden she was scared to death. She actually went white, saying I'd startled her, and then she blurted out, all panicked like, 'That was Stuart.' And I kind of made a joke of it and said, 'I would hope so.' " Now Cindy looked straight at Wyatt. "But maybe, I'm thinking now, it wasn't."

"So who, thinking now, was it?"

She thought another minute, biting her lip. Stopping herself, she went on. "But no, that would mean . . ." The perplexity was back in her eyes as she stared across the table at Wyatt.

"It would mean he killed her."

"No! I didn't say that!"

"No, you didn't. I did. Cindy, this is too important to fool around with. Who are you talking about?"

"I can't imagine that. I mean, Bob's got a family and-"

"Bob McAfee? I thought he was divorced."

"Yes, but the three kids. He's still in their lives. He couldn't have killed anybody."

"Guys with children kill people every day, Cindy. How well do you know him?"

"To talk to, you know. Like all the doctors here, maybe a little better because he was around more, setting up the new clinic with Caryn."

"Would they have had an opportunity to get together here?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean physically get together. Conduct an affair. Here in the hospital."

Maybe Wyatt was going too fast, but he had Cindy talking about an uncomfortable topic and he didn't want to give her time between his questions to think about whether or not she should answer them. She kept twirling her paper cup in front of her, avoiding Hunt's eyes. "Well ... I mean, it's a building full of rooms with beds in them. What do you think?"

"So did you notice a change in Caryn's behavior over the summer?"

"A little bit, maybe. But mostly I just thought she was feeling all gung ho about her clinic and her invention-you know about that?"

Hunt nodded.

"Except then both those things got complicated again."

"She talked to you about them?"

"A little bit. The last couple of weeks she was pretty uptight, so I asked her."

"And what did she say?"

"That it was just business stuff. Maybe she'd spread herself too thin."

"Did she say anything specific about McAfee?"

"Not that I remember."

"How about Doctor Pinkert?"

"No," she said.

"No what, Cindy?"

"No, I don't think they were personally involved. Bob, maybe. Doctor Pinkert, I'd have to say no." With that, Cindy broke out of her uneasy trance. She stopped turning her cup, she glanced at the clock on the wall, double-checked it with her watch. "Uh-oh. I really should be getting back to my station." She pushed her chair back and started to get up.

"Could you do one or two more questions?"

With a small sigh, she settled back into her chair. "Just a couple, though. Okay?"

"Okay. Thank you. You kept her book. Was that just for her medical appointments and surgeries?"

"Mostly."

"But you'd have to know about her other activities so you avoid scheduling conflicts, right?"

"Sure. Of course."

"So is there anybody else she saw on a regular basis? That was in her life, if you will."

"Well, you mean all that stuff down the Peninsula? There was Mr. Blair at PII, the president, you know. And Kelley, her lab a.s.sistant, and Mr. Furth, who was her broker. She liked him, I know."

"Mr. Furth?"