“You’ll get it when you file your motion.”
“That’s the way it’s going to be, eh?”
“It’s a murder case, John.”
“That’s exactly what it is. And your client is the murderer.”
With that, the line goes dead.
I know the DA’s motion to compel a DNA sample will be filed with the court by morning and granted by the afternoon. My refusal to volunteer David’s spittle is pointless. But, like I said to Tredesco, this is a murder case. I’m going to make the prosecution dot every i and cross every t to get what they want.
I buzz Angie, ask whether Tommy’s called me back. She says he hasn’t, so I dial his cell again. It’s the only phone he has. Voice mail. I’m not happy. I want to hit the ground running, but my investigator’s gone AWOL.
I leave the office at 4:30. In the car on the way home, I call Piper. She asks how it went with David. I pause, then tell her the prosecution is going for murder one, and that it seems Devlin Walker himself will be handling the case. I hear Piper take a deep breath. Before I can say anything else, she tells me she’s tired but that she has long-standing plans to go out with two of her girlfriends. I’m tempted to snipe that I knew nothing about those plans, but it’s just as well that I’ll be on my own for the evening. I need time to think. The Hanson/Yamura thing is going to be complicated. A murder case is an unruly beast under the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances.
By six o’clock, I’m sitting behind the desk in my home office, eating a Primo Italian hoagie that I picked up on my way home. On the wall across the room from me is a large flat-screen TV. I pick up the remote and turn on the local news. The dapper Action News anchor, Jim Snyder, leads off with the handsome millionaire’s brutal slaying of a promising young reporter. The newsman begins with a brief recap of Jennifer Yamura’s budding career, starting with her graduation from college, her brief stints as a field reporter in smaller markets, her jump up to Philadelphia, and her recent scoop in breaking the story about the DA’s investigation into the crooked-cop ring. Then he feeds the audience with background on David Hanson. He tells them that David is forty-two years old, that he was raised along Philadelphia’s Main Line, where he attended Episcopal Academy, an ostentatiously expensive private school attended by the offspring of the region’s wealthiest citizens. That he graduated seventeen years ago from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. That he’s an executive vice president and general counsel of Hanson World Industries, the multi-billion-dollar Philly-based conglomerate David’s grandfather founded eighty years before. Then Jim moves to the juicy stuff. He says the police apprehended David as he ran from Jennifer Yamura’s house, that he appeared to have been trying to clean the house of his fingerprints and hair, and that he may have been having an affair with the young reporter. As the pièce de résistance, the news show’s producer flashes a photo taken of David and Jennifer standing together at a black-tie charity event. Both of them are smiling, and the teleprompter tells Jim to say that the picture was “taken in happier times for both David Hanson and Jennifer Yamura.”
Being early June, it’s still light out at seven, so I decide to drive over to Valley Forge Park for a quick six-mile run. A couple of hours after I get back, Piper returns. She tells me she had too much to drink at dinner and that the lobster isn’t agreeing with her. She makes another early night of it.
I call Tommy’s cell phone once Piper is upstairs but still can’t reach him. I figure he’s hiding out at his trailer near Jim Thorpe, a small town eighty miles north of Center City. He goes there to brood when he’s in one of his funks. Hopefully, he’ll work himself out of it by Monday. I leave a message telling him I need him on the Hanson case. He must have heard about it on the news.
Come on, Tommy. Don’t disappear on me now.
3
SATURDAY, JUNE 2
The weekend passes slowly. On Saturday I play a round of golf at Aronimink, the country club Piper and I joined at the insistence of her father, Thatcher Gray. My foursome includes my next-door neighbor along with two criminal defense attorneys. They pepper me from the get-go about the Hanson case, and I deflect their questions for three or four holes until they get the hint that I’d rather not talk about it.
When I get home, Piper tells me she’s handed Gabby off to her parents for the entire weekend. I’m not happy.
“I thought we agreed to take Gabby to Longwood Gardens tomorrow,” I say. “She was looking forward to it.”
Piper shrugs and says she’s taking a day trip to New York with her friends.
“Don’t you think you should have asked me before you sent our daughter away?” I ask. “You know things will heat up quickly with the Hanson case. I may not have a lot of free weekend days for a while.”
Piper cocks her head. “It’s really not a big deal, Mick. Just go play another round of golf.”
I hear her open and close the back door on her way to the garden. Through the kitchen window, I watch her lay out a dozen or so potted flowers to plant. She arranges them three different ways before settling on a pattern. I close my eyes, shake my head.
I met Piper during my seventh year with the DA, while I was busy with a high-profile murder trial. The defendant was a young neurologist who’d killed his wife to clear the way for a relationship with his married next-door neighbor, with whom he’d been having an affair. The case garnered a lot of news coverage, largely because of the salacious details that came out in the testimony. Quickies in the kitchen. Blow job at the barbeque. It all made for quality journalism. Even Anchorman Jim’s eyes sparkled as they scanned the teleprompter.
I was in the office late one night, working on the case, when District Attorney Ned Hoffman came into my office and ordered me to accompany him to a political fund-raiser at the art museum. Ned’s date had canceled on him at the last minute, and he needed someone to go with him.
An hour later, Ned and I were standing together in the grand staircase discussing my trial when a tall, rail-thin man in his fifties approached us with a stunning young woman in tow. Having attended political functions before, I’d assumed the woman was a trophy wife—or an escort. Then Thatcher Gray introduced himself and his daughter, Piper.
“Thatcher is a partner at Morgenthau Harrison,” Ned told me. “Tom, this is Michael McFarland, whom you’ve probably read about in the papers. He’s trying the neurologist murder case.”
Thatcher Gray nodded his approval. “That surgeon sounds like one rotten egg,” he said. “I hope you get a conviction. Do you think you will?”