For half a second he considered downing a couple of shots of something, put himself into creative mode, and out of his linear head until some great idea presented itself. Except that those great wet ideas, and he’d had plenty, never seemed to make the cut after the hangover.

Lou was silent with a surly edge this morning, and that suited Hardy to his toes. He pushed his mug toward the side of the table and got it topped up just as David Freeman slid into the booth across from him. ‘Hey Lou, give me one of those fast, would you? Three sugars, black. Christ, it’s dark in here. You ever notice that, Diz?’

‘The food looks better that way. What did Braun say?’

Freeman wasn’t in any hurry to get to it. He fiddled with his jacket for a minute, and squirmed down into the leatherette seat. ‘Marian. You know I took her out a couple of times when we were both starting out. Everybody called her Marian the librarian of course. Great legs.’ Freeman sighed, remembering, then clucked sympathetically. ‘She used to be a lot more fun.’

‘We all did, David.’

‘Not true. Take me, for example. I’m in my prime. Have been for a while, actually.’

‘I’m happy for you,’ Hardy replied. ‘What’s the opposite of prime? That’s where I am. What did Marian say about my wife?’ Freeman had his hands folded on the table between them. Lou was back with his coffee and Freeman pulled it over in front of him, blowing on it, stalling. ‘David?’

A glance over the mug. ‘Truth is, and she didn’t make any bones about it, she’s not too happy with her.’

‘Truth is, I’m not so much either.’

A pause. ‘So I gather she didn’t tell you the big secret?’

Hardy shrugged that off – he didn’t even want to start trying to explain this mess to David Freeman. If he got even a taste of the bone he’d gnaw it to dust. ‘She says it’s a matter of honor. She gave her word and she can’t tell.’ He made a face. ‘But that wasn’t the issue with Braun anyway.’

‘No,’ Freeman agreed. ‘Though that might have been better. If it was only a matter of law…’ He let it hang there.

‘She’s pissed?’

‘Very.’

Hardy swore. ‘Would it help if I talked to her? Got Frannie to apologize? Did you tell her there are young children involved here?’

‘I brought out the heavy artillery, Diz. She doesn’t – how can I put this? – give a shit. She said Frannie’s done it to herself. Braun’s never in her career had anybody show such disrespect for the bench.’

‘That’s got to be an exaggeration.’

‘It doesn’t matter if it is if that’s how the judge feels.’ Freeman shrugged. ‘The two of ’em got into a cat fight, Diz, that’s what happened.‘

‘But Frannie didn’t do anything, David. She’s going along living her life, our life. She’s not a criminal, not even a suspect for anything-’

‘Material witness.’

‘Not even that, not really.’

Again, Freeman’s maddening nonchalant shrug. The law was the law. You could rant about it all you want, as people complained about the weather, and to about as much effect. ‘It’s the grand jury, Diz. You know as well as I do. Hell, you’ve even used it.’

Hardy couldn’t deny it. Grand juries had awesome power. When he’d been a prosecutor, going before the grand jury had been one of his favorite pastimes. He would take a recalcitrant witness, put him in front of the panel without his attorney present, no judge to keep things on point, and keep that poor sucker up there for hours, often without a food or water or bathroom break, asking leading questions, doing whatever it took to get his evidence on to the record, because that’s what the grand jury was for.

And though Scott Randall was certainly abusing it now, Hardy had to remember that the grand jury had come into existence, and still functioned, as a vehicle to protect civil rights. Because of its secrecy provisions and the teeth with which infractions against them were enforced, the grand jury was the only place where prosecutors could get answers from scared or recalcitrant witnesses, where the truth could come out. Nobody could ever know you were even there or what you might have said. You were safe – from your enemies, from corrupt officials, from the prying media.

In theory, anyway.

But now Frannie. He would not have dreamed this could ever happen to someone in his personal life. And never to his wife. Frannie wasn’t living on the edge of the law. She wasn’t like the others. Except that now, to Marian Braun and Scott Randall, it appeared that she was.

Even after all of his experience with the law, this perspective hit him with almost a concussive force. The law could happen to anybody. Again, Freeman’s analogy with the weather. A hurricane had just swept Frannie up, and now she was in it.

But Freeman was resolutely moving ahead, as he did. Problem-solving. ‘Have you talked to anybody yet who’s found the husband, what’s his name?’

‘Beaumont. Ron Beaumont. No, Glitsky wasn’t around. I left him a note. I’m going back up after we’re done here. But let’s not leave Frannie.’

‘I’m not leaving her. I think we ought to go to the newspapers with this after all. Even if Randall and Pratt don’t fold, Marian might be responsive to that kind of pressure. At least it’s worth a shot.’ He drank some coffee. ‘But I think we need to consider cutting our losses.’

‘Which are?’

‘The four days. Unless they locate Mr Beaumont and can get him to talk, she’s got herself a bigger problem than four days.’

Scott Randall was sitting in a folding chair, his legs crossed comfortably. With him in the large but spartan expanse of Sharron Pratt’s office were homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, homicide sergeants Tyler Coleman and Jorge Batavia, and Randall’s own DA’s investigator Peter Struler. Randall was having himself a fine morning. At last, things were moving along on Beaumont, and all because of this Frannie Hardy woman.

Sometimes, he reflected, you just had to take prisoners.

And if it got to that, as it had here, then invariably you alienated some people. In this case, it was Glitsky and his sergeants. Well, Randall thought, maybe next time they got a hot homicide they would try to keep their investigation alive even if there happened to be a crisis in the department. For now, they just had their noses out of joint because Randall and Struler had actually made progress on a case they considered all but closed. Turf wars. Too bad for them.

But Glitsky, as head of the homicide detail, naturally had to put a different face on it. Now he was barking at Pratt. ‘I know this woman, Sharron. She is a close personal friend. She watched my kids for a month after my wife died. She should not be in jail.’

‘Evidently Judge Braun doesn’t agree with you, lieutenant. I’m not sure I do, either.’

Pratt didn’t like Glitsky. She thought the police were out to undermine her authority, and make her look bad whenever and wherever they could. For her part, the DA took every opportunity to criticize the force. She’d run for office on a platform of stomping out police brutality – nowhere near the greatest of the city’s many problems. The Police Department union had supported her opponent and she wasn’t likely to forget it.

She would often choose not to have her office prosecute a suspect that the police had already arrested because she didn’t believe in so-called victimless crimes. So at least every week or two she’d simply set free suspected prostitutes, druggies, and other assorted misunderstood persons.

But she wasn’t going to release Frannie Hardy. No siree. There were legal principles involved here. She was standing her ground. ‘Isn’t this woman,’ she asked, ‘isn’t her husband the attorney? He used to work at this office, didn’t he?’

Randall spoke up. ‘Until he got fired.’

Glitsky shot him a look. ‘He quit.’

Randall didn’t rise to it. ‘Check the record,’ he retorted mildly. Back to Pratt. ‘Dismas Hardy, and he was fired.’