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  Li allowed a crack in his stern visage, glancing over at the bandaged and splinted victims at the prosecution table. “And did a good job of it, didn’t he?”

  Hardy kept at it. “The point, Your Honor, is that Mr. Trent was pushed to this extreme by three punks who were ganging up on him. For all he knew, they were planning to kill him.”

  This woke up the prosecutor, Frank Fischer, who objected to the use of the word “punk.” “And further, Your Honor, the victims were on the ground at the time of the attack. They posed no threat to Mr. Trent at that time.”

  “They are the reason anything happened at all, Your Honor.” The odds were that he was whistling in the wind, but Hardy felt he had to go ahead. This was San Francisco in the 90s. The ultimate responsibility for any action only rarely got all the way back to a prime mover—there were always too many victims in the path who could claim stress or that their rights had somehow been violated.

  The law said that Jason Trent had gone beyond simple self-defense. Trent himself admitted that he’d been driven to loss of control. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t do it. He’d hurt these slimeballs on purpose because they’d hurt and threatened him first. So whose fault was that? he wanted to know.

  So, law or no law, Hardy felt that for his client’s sake he had to make the point. “Mr. Trent didn’t do anything wrong here, Your Honor. The law recognizes self-defense as a perfect defense. These young men scared and outnumbered him. He felt he had no option but to immobilize them until he could get away.”

  “Even after they were down on the ground?” Li asked.

  Hardy nodded. “He wanted to make sure they wouldn’t get up until he could remove himself from any further danger. He didn’t use anything like deadly force, which he very well could have, Your Honor. He used appropriate force to stop a vicious and unprovoked attack.”

  Hardy noted the vibration at his belt, his silent beeper going off. He glanced down at it—a message from his office. Well, he was almost done here. Finally. The judge had heard his little speech and now would set bail and assign a trial date and then . . .

  But Li, no doubt still simmering in his earlier fury with the DA’s cavalier style, suddenly had a different idea. After he listened to Hardy’s argument, he allowed a short silence to reign in his courtroom. Then he looked over at the prosecutor. “Mr. Fischer,” he said, “do the People concede that Mr. Raintree et al. assaulted the defendant here, Mr. Trent, without provocation of any kind, other than his choice of clothing?”

  Fischer was a nondescript functionary in his mid-thirties. By his reaction, this might have been the very first time that a judge had surprised him, or even spoken to him in the course of a proceeding. Now he stood up slowly, looked down at his notebook, and brought his eyes back up to the judge. “Your Honor, there was an exchange of words and insults. We have witnesses who—”

  Li interrupted. “Who hit who first?”

  Fischer scratched at the table before him. “Regardless of whatever instigated the fight that resulted in . . . ’’

  Li’s face remained placid but his voice hardened. “Excuse me, Mr. Fischer. I asked you a simple question. Would you like me to repeat it?”

  “No, Your Honor. That isn’t necessary.”

  “Then would you do me the kindness to answer it?” Li repeated it anyway. “Did Mr. Raintree and the others start this fight?”

  Fischer looked over at Hardy. Finally, he had to give it up. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Hardy thought he saw a momentary glint in the judge’s eye, and was suddenly certain he knew what the judge was going to do next. He wasn’t supposed to do it, but Li obviously had had enough and didn’t care. A couple more seconds of thought, then he tapped his gavel and stunned the courtroom with the words “Case dismissed.”

  2

  Hardy had no time to savor the triumph. He thought he’d just quickly call his office, pick up his message, and then go have a celebratory birthday/freedom lunch with Jason Trent. Enjoy a rare midday martini. Maybe two.

  But the phone message ended all thought of that. It was the call all parents fear. His receptionist, Phyllis, told him that Theresa Wilson from Merryvale needed him to get in touch with her as soon as possible. Merryvale was where his children—Rebecca and Vincent— went to school, and Theresa Wilson was the principal there. It was one-thirty, a Thursday afternoon in late October.

  “Are the kids all right?” He blurted it out. Hardy had lost a son, Michael, twenty-five years before and that wound still hadn’t completely healed—it never would. Now any threat to his children blanked his mind, brought his stomach to his throat.

  “They’re fine.”

  He closed his eyes and let out a breath of relief.

  “But no one’s come to pick them up.”

  “Frannie hasn’t called?” No, of course she hadn’t. That’s why Mrs. Wilson was on the phone with him. He flicked a glance down at his watch. “How late is she?”

  He knew it sounded lame. He wasn’t in charge of taking care of the kids—that was Frannie’s job—so he wasn’t certain what time school got out. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled that they had one early-dismissal day every week. It must be Thursday.

  “About an hour.”

  An hour without even a call? Frannie liked to say that if a punctual person was a lonely one, then she was one of the loneliest people on earth. “Have you heard from Erin? I mean Mrs. Cochran? She’s on the call list.” This was Rebecca’s grandmother, who often spelled Frannie with the kids.

  “That was my first call, Mr. Hardy, to Erin. But I just got an answering machine. I thought I’d wait a few more minutes before calling you at work—maybe somebody got caught in traffic.” She hesitated. “Your son’s pretty upset. He wants to talk to you.”

  Hardy heard his third-grader, Vincent, trying to be brave, but his voice was cracking, frayed. He responded with a hearty confidence. “It’s okay, bud. I’ll be down to pick you up in no time. Tell Rebecca it’s all right, too. Everything’s fine.”

  “But where’s Mom?”

  “I don’t know, Vin, but don’t worry. I’m sure it’s just a communication mix-up. That or she’s running late from something.” He was selling himself as well as his son. Maybe Frannie had arranged for another parent to pick up the kids and that person had forgotten. “She’ll probably show up before I get there.”

  Although he didn’t really believe that. Frannie would have told the children if someone else other than Erin was going to pick them up. They had strict rules about not going home with anybody other than Mom, Dad, or Grandma unless the arrangements had been approved in advance. “You be a big guy,” he said. “Everything’s okay, I promise.”

  Hardy made a quick call back to his reception desk and questioned Phyllis—was she sure Frannie hadn’t left a message earlier? But Phyllis was an efficiency machine. If his wife had called, she told him icily, she would have told Hardy. As she always did.

  He checked his watch again. It had been less than five minutes since he’d talked to Mrs. Wilson.

  Undoubtedly there was a simple explanation. Even in this day of ubiquitous communication, there were places that didn’t have phones, or access to them. Frannie might be at one of them, stuck, trying to reach him.

  He got the answering machine when he tried at his home. Where could she be? If she was not picking up the children, something was wrong.

  Perhaps she’d been in an accident? Hardy’s fertile brain played with the possibilities of what might have happened, might be happening, to his wife. He didn’t like any of them.

  A few minutes later he was in his car, negotiating the downtown traffic. He tried to remember something about Frannie’s day, her plans. For the life of him, he couldn’t retrieve anything, if in fact she’d told him.

  Truth was, lately she probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything about her daily schedule and even if she had, it might not have registered with him. More and more, the two of them were leading separate lives. Both of
them knew it and admitted that it was a problem, but it was the toll of day-to-dayness and neither of them seemed able to break the cycle. Hardy knew about as much of his wife’s routines as he did of his children’s schoolday, which was precious little.

  Though it was cold comfort, he told himself that it was just the way things had evolved. The family dynamic had changed, gotten more traditional. He was overwhelmed with the simple mechanics of making a living. Frannie volunteered for everything, never said no, was always there to support the other moms, her circle of friends. And all of it—Frannie’s very existence, it seemed—revolved around their children. As he supposed it should—that was the job she’d wanted. He made the money and helped with discipline. That was the deal.

  Finally, beyond Van Ness the traffic started to move along out toward the Avenues. With luck now he’d be to Merryvale in ten minutes.

  By the time he got home with the children and searched the house for some kind of a note, he was really worried. His wife didn’t simply disappear with no explanation.

  He sent the kids to the backyard and got on the phone. His first call was to Erin Cochran, but he got another answering machine. Next—a flash of insight—he called Moses McGuire, Frannie’s brother, bartending at the Little Shamrock.

  “She probably left you. I would have long ago.”

  “She wouldn’t have left the kids, Mose.”

  “Well, that’s probably true, you’re right.”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  Moses took a minute. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Diz. She’ll turn up.”

  “Well, that’s heartening. Thanks for the input.”

  He hung up. Big help from the brother front. While he sat at the kitchen table contemplating his next call, the phone rang and he snatched at it.

  “Are you really worried?”

  “Some.”

  “You really don’t know where she is?”

  “No. I’m kidding you. Actually, she’s right here next to me. We just thought it would be fun to call you and say she was gone, see how you react.”

  Moses got serious. “When did you last talk to her?”

  “This morning.”

  “You guys fight or anything?”

  “No.”

  The line hummed with silence. Then, “I’d try Erin.”

  “I already did. She isn’t home.”

  “Maybe they went somewhere together and got hung up.”

  “Maybe,” Hardy agreed. He didn’t want to alarm her brother any more than he already had. Moses had raised Frannie. He often said that of the ten things he cared most about, Frannie was the first eight. “Either Erin or one of her other friends.”

  “But she didn’t call you?”

  This, of course, was the nub of it, but Hardy played it down. “Phyllis might have lost the message. Happens all the time,” he lied.

  “I’ll call Susan,” Moses said, referring to his wife. “Maybe she’s heard something.”

  “Okay.” Hardy looked at his watch. 2:50. “I’m sure she’ll be home anytime. I’ll call.”

  Forty-five minutes later, the phone had rung twice more, but neither one was Frannie.

  First had been Susan, checking to make sure that Moses had not misinterpreted what Hardy was saying. Was Frannie really missing? Hardy didn’t want to say that, not yet. She just wasn’t home yet. He’d call Susan back when he heard from her.

  The second call was Erin Cochran, home from a long weekend that she and her husband, Ed, had spent in the Napa vineyards. No, she hadn’t talked to Frannie in a week. Mrs. Wilson’s call on her machine had told her that Frannie hadn’t gone to pick up the children, then she’d gotten Hardy’s message. What was going on? Was Frannie back yet?

  She tried to hide it, but the worry was unmistakable in her voice. It was now nearly two hours since Frannie should have picked the kids up at school and Hardy still hadn’t even heard from her? Did he need help at home? Erin could be right over.

  Hardy admitted that maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  He’d put off making the next call for as long as he could, but now—nearly four-thirty, with two red-eyed children at the table listlessly pushing around some graham crackers and milk—he punched in a number he knew by heart.

  “Glitsky. Homicide.”

  Lieutenant Abe Glitsky, the chief of San Francisco’s homicide department, was his best friend. Being in the criminal justice system, Glitsky could circumvent a lot of bureaucracy.

  “Abe, it’s Diz.”

  This was so different from their usual obscene or ironic greeting that it raised Glitsky’s red flag. “What’s the matter?”

  Hardy told Abe to hold a minute, then stood up with the portable phone, and told Rebecca and Vincent he was talking to Uncle Abe—adult stuff—he was just going into the living room for a little privacy. He’d be right back. They should keep eating their snacks.

  “Frannie’s running about three hours late,” he whispered from the front of the house. He cast his eyes up and down the street out front. No Frannie.

  “Three hours?”

  “I thought you might check around.”

  Hardy’s casual tone didn’t camouflage much for Glitsky. He knew what his friend meant by check around—accidents, hospital admissions, or the worst, recently dead Jane Does.

  “Three hours?” Glitsky repeated.

  Hardy looked at his watch, hating to say it. “Maybe a little more.”

  Glitsky got the message. “I’m on it,” he said. Hardy hung up just as Vincent let out a cry in the kitchen.

  The Cochrans—Big Ed and Erin—were the parents of Frannie’s first husband, Ed, who was the biological father of Rebecca. Their son had been gone a long time now, but Ed and Erin still doted on their granddaughter and her brother, Vincent. They loved Frannie and her husband. Hardy and his wife, with no living parents between them, considered them part of the family.

  Now, after getting the word about Frannie’s absence, they had come to Hardy’s house. Erin was shepherding the kids through their homework at the kitchen table, trying to keep their minds engaged. Hardy and Ed were making small talk, casting glances at the telephone, waiting.

  Hardy was on the phone before the ring ended. It was Abe Glitsky with his professional voice on. “She back yet?”

  Hardy told him no, endured the short pause. “Okay, well. The good news is nobody’s dead, not anywhere. I checked Alameda, Marin, Santa Clara”—the counties surrounding San Francisco—“and it’s a slow day on the prairie. Barely a fender-bender. No reports of anything serious. Nothing in the city at all.”

  Hardy let out a long sigh. “So what now?”

  “I don’t know. We hang. She’ll—” He stopped. Glitsky, who’d lost his own wife to cancer a few years before, wasn’t one for stoking false hopes. “She driving the Subaru?”

  “I’d guess so. If she’s driving.”

  “Give me the license and I’ll put it out over the dispatch, broaden the net.”

  “All right.” Hardy hated the sound of that—broaden the net. It was getting official now. Objective. Harder to deny, even to himself.

  Where was his wife?

  3

  Earlier that morning, Scott Randall was hosting an informal bull session with some law clerks in his tiny cubicle of an office on the third floor of the Hall of Justice. Even his most ardent admirers among these clerks would admit that Scott was the near embodiment of well-dressed, post-gen-X arrogant disdain. But none of them viewed this as a negative. Indeed, the trait had allowed Scott, though only thirty-three, to rise to homicide prosecutor in the DA’s office, an eminence to which they all aspired.

  This morning Scott had a theme, and he was rolling. “Listen up,” he told the acolytes. “You are looking at someone who has gotten convictions on his first three murder cases—and I don’t need to tell you how difficult that is in our compassion-driven little burg.” No false modesty for Scott Randall.

  “But do you know what those three convict
ions have done for my career? Or what the same kind of cases will do for yours?” The question was rhetorical, and he breezed ahead. “Zero, zilch, nada. You know why? Because no one cares about the people in them. Look.” He held up a finger. “One, a motorcycle gang brawl over one of their common-law women; two”—another finger—“a drug dealer killed by an addict he’d tried to cheat; three, a bum stabbed after he’d stolen another bum’s grocery cart. This is not stuff over which newspaper readers salivate, believe me.”

  One of the young men spoke up. “So what do you do?”

  “I’ll answer by way of an example. I think you’ll all have heard something about the murder of Bree Beaumont. ” He reached for a manila file that sat atop his desk, from it extracted a couple of eight-by-ten glossy photographs, and held them up.

  “Exhibit A, on the left,” he began—Scott spoke a precise legalese even in private—“is a picture of the deceased. Bree Beaumont, very pretty, a player in the big-money oil business. Also married, two kids, and”—he paused for effect—“rumored to be dating Damon Kerry.”

  This was a trump that had been kept from the media, and Scott enjoyed the reaction. “Perhaps our next governor, that’s right.”

  Scott raised the picture in his right hand. “Exhibit B is Bree Beaumont’s body lying in the enclosed patio area underneath her penthouse apartment, where she landed after a long fall. As you’ve read in the papers, there were shards of glass in Bree’s hairline. They didn’t find glass where she landed, none in her apartment. So someone conked her on the head and threw her over. She was six weeks pregnant too.”