Free The Hearing by John Lescroart Page B

someone who had known her.
    “Ms. Ghent, please.” His shoulders were sagging. He was a pathetic figure—he knew it. Regal, she stopped at the entrance to the cubicle, turned back to face him, challenging, her arms crossed, her color now high in her cheeks.
    “I want you to understand that I’m not looking for specific evidence. I’m trying to get a sense of her work, her life, if maybe there was some reason . . .” Too close to revealing the nonprofessional truth about why he’d come here, he stood mute and helpless.
    Treya Ghent gave every appearance of considering his words, but when she finally spoke, there was no sign of cooperation. “I really don’t think so, but if anything occurs to me, Lieutenant, I’ll let you know.”
    This time, it was a dismissal.

6
     
    A t high noon, Hardy walked into the small lobby for the segregated jailing rooms at the hospital. It was a depressing and cold room, dimly lit, with high barred windows and a strong smell of antiseptic, sweaty yellowing walls and a couple of battered wooden benches, although no one was using them at the moment. To his left, a uniformed female officer sat at a pitted green desk equipped with a computer terminal and a telephone. She looked up at Hardy’s arrival with a kind of relief. He went across to her and stated his business.
    “You know he’s already got a visitor. His mother.”
    It didn’t take phenomenal cosmic powers to realize that Jody Burgess had made a poor impression on this woman. Hardy gave her a sympathetic smile. “Her poor baby isn’t a criminal, he’s sick. There’s been some terrible mistake. You can’t keep him here and it’s all your fault and she’s going to sue.”
    The officer smiled back at him. “You’ve been reading my mail.”
    “Maybe I can calm her down.”
    “Maybe.” She pushed a button on her desk and an instant later another uniformed officer—this one a large white male—pushed open the door at the other end of the room. Hardy thanked her and she gave him a shrug. “Have fun,” she said.
     
    When the guard unlocked the door to Cole’s room, Hardy understood why seasoned jailbirds might try to pull some kind of scam to get a few days here. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was far better than a shared cell at the jail behind the Hall of Justice—a private room with a window and a television set, now blessedly dark and silent, suspended from the ceiling.
    Cole was propped halfway up in a hospital bed, a clean sheet covering him to the waist. Wearing a standard hospital gown, he might have been any badly beaten-up patient except for the handcuffs which shackled him to the bed’s railing. An older, slightly more corn-fed but not unattractive version of Dorothy Elliot sat holding his free hand on the window side of the bed.
    “Knock if you have any trouble,” the guard said, and closed the door. Hardy took a step forward and introduced himself—Dorothy’s friend.
    “Thank God,” Jody Burgess exclaimed, standing up, coming around the bed with a kind of buoyantly expectant expression and both arms outstretched. “Mr. Hardy,” she enthused, “Dorothy told me what you did and I don’t know how we’ll ever be able to thank you.”
    She wore an expensive-looking, baggy, dark green jogging outfit with an unfamiliar logo over the left breast. As she came closer, Hardy noted the carefully applied makeup, dyed blond hair and a lot of baubles, costume jewelry—earrings and bracelets, rings with large colored stones on both hands. He pegged her at sixty-two or -three, going for forty without great success.
    “I didn’t really do much.” Hardy felt that he had, in fact, done nothing. From what he’d been told, Cole had been here in the hospital by the time Hardy had arrived at the Hall of Justice yesterday afternoon. He assayed a polite smile. “They would have gotten to testing your son, Mrs. Burgess, but . . .”
    “Don’t be so humble. If you hadn’t stepped in, Cole would still be