followed whatever young stud crossed our field of vision. I plowed
through the entire Jack Reacher series during our poolside time; Grace
was still working on the same novel on our flight back to Oregon.
"As tempting as that sounds, there's a little too much Oedipal
potential there. Better stay put in the city for now. Check out men
my own age." She gave me that cute little wink she somehow manages to
pull off when she's being cheeky. "Now can we please knock off the
chitchat and get down to business? What have you been working on? I
want every last detail."
Because of my job, Grace's skin has thickened to violence through
osmosis. When I first started handling compelling prostitution cases
in DVD, she saw me through more than a few long nights.
My ex-husband once told me I shouldn't talk about my cases while people
were eating; it wasn't polite dinner conversation, whatever the hell
that is. Down the road, I returned the favor by telling him it wasn't
exactly polite dinner behavior to use our dining room table to screw
the professional volleyball player he picked up at his new job at Nike.
Now, Shoe Boy was a distant memory, and Grace listened to my stories
whether we were eating or not.
I brought her up to speed on the Easterbrook case, then told her about
my unproductive morning reviewing files. She wanted to know how the
police could begin to tackle a case with no weapon, no witnesses, and
no physical evidence. I explained MCT's strategy of following up on
facts that make the case unique.
She was bothered. "I understand what you're saying about the
statistical odds that the murder has something to do with whatever the
victim might have been involved in, but there's still something about
it that rubs me the wrong way. It's like you're investigating the
victim, blaming her for getting killed."
"Right, but would you feel that way if it wasn't someone like Clarissa
Easterbrook? Someone who looks like us and has a good job and does the
kinds of things we do? When the victim's a doped-out street person,
wouldn't you automatically assume that the lifestyle had something to
do with the fact that she happened to show up dead?"
"But then you're talking about someone who you know was involved in
activities that can be dangerous. There's no reason to believe that
this woman was a drug addict or a prostitute or sleeping with someone
else's husband."
"So the police snoop around to find out whether she was. Despite what
people think, the odds of getting swiped off the street by a total
stranger are so slim it would be irresponsible for the police to assume
that scenario without at least looking into the possibility that
something about the victim got her killed."
"Well, do me a favor. If I show up dead, don't let anyone snoop
through my life."
"How about you do me a favor and don't show up dead?"
"OK, but if I do, I'll try to make it somewhere interesting. Then you
could bypass the personal stuff and follow up on the location as the
angle. Maybe some abandoned castle in the Swiss Alps."
"A little outside my jurisdiction," I said. "And stop being so
morbid."
"Said the proverbial kettle."
"We can't both be dark. I need my Grace to balance me out a little."
"Fine, but I want to go back to your case. What's so interesting about
the location?"
I did my best to describe the place where Clarissa had been found and
told her Johnson's theory that it may have been someone familiar with
the construction site. She was conspicuously quiet. "What?" I
asked.
"Nothing. I'm just trying to catch up with you. Your food's nearly
gone and I still have my entire lunch to eat."
"Thanks for pointing that out, skinny girl."
"Don't mention it."
"Seriously, what were you thinking about?"
"I think there are probably a lot more people who know about that
location than you might assume."
"Right, where lots and lots of people live and work. Sam, you've only
lived in northeast Portland and never ventured beyond the city center.
Where do your cops live?"
"Johnson lives up by the University of Portland. I think Walker lives
in Gresham." That put Ray in north Portland, not far from my own
Alameda neighborhood, and Jack out in the county's east suburbs.
"And Glenville's all the way on the southwest edge of the county, which
is why the three of you think the fastest growing city in the State of
Oregon is the boonies. You guys might see it as Timbuktu, but a
hundred thousand people know the land out there as well as you know
Alameda."
"When did you become such a Glenvillean? Grace Hannigan, are you
shopping at Burlington Coat Factory without telling me? Or maybe a new
man one with a minivan and a cul-de-sac?"
"Perish the thought," she said. "If you must know, I was looking into
opening another Lockworks out there. There's a boom right now, and
most of it from people with money who need haircuts."
"So are you doing it?"
"Nah. Too big a risk. When I bought the warehouse, I knew in my gut
that the Pearl was going up. I didn't know just how far up I hit the
lottery in that sense but I knew I was ahead of the market. With
Glenville, the market's already full of people gambling that the
growth's going to continue. It didn't make sense to get in this late
in the game."
"So no Lockworks for Glenville."
"Right. Anyway, getting a second shop off the ground would have been a
major pain in the ass. Who needs it?"
"All that work might get in the way of hanging out with me," I said.
"Couldn't let that happen."
The waitress stopped to clear our plates. I left a token morsel on the
plate, so I could tell myself I didn't eat the whole platter. Grace
took great pleasure in telling the waitress she was still working on
it.
"And how's the rest of the new job? Are you going to share your toys
with the other kids this time around?"
"My problems, Grace, are never with the other kids. They're with the
supposed grown-ups watching over us."
Grace knew about some of the run-ins I'd had with coworkers in the
office, all of whom happened to be my superiors. She says I have a
problem with authority. I say my only problem is that the assholes are
the ones who get promoted.
"And what lucky soul gets to put up with you now?" she asked.
"It's hard to believe, but he seems pretty decent so far. Supposedly
he makes people cry, but I've never actually heard that from anyone
firsthand."
"Does the new boss have a name?" she asked.
"That would be one Senior Deputy District Attorney Russell Frist," I
said, deepening my voice into the best Frist boom I could muster.
"Resident weight-lifting crew-cut-wearing stud muffin."
Grace was smirking.
"What?"
"I can't decide whether to tell you," she said.
"Well, you have to now. You can
't announce that there's something to
be said and then hold out on me."
After the requisite symbolic pause, she said, "Fine," as if I'd dragged
it out of her. "I don't repeat the things clients tell me, but I
suppose there's no harm in telling you that someone's a client. I know
Russell Frist from the salon."
"Big bad butch Russ Frist goes to Lockworks? For a crew-cut?"
"Nope, not the hair. No point paying sixty bucks for that."
"Oh, please tell me that you wax his back," I pleaded.
"Not that good. But he does get a monthly no-polish manicure and pays
extra for the paraffin wrap."
When I got back to the office, I was still in a good mood from my big
food and small secret. The rest of the office might think of Frist as
a mister scary, but I knew he had soft hands. I like people who are
hard to sum up. They make life interesting.
My first stop was to see Jessica Walters.
She was leaning back in her chair with her stocking feet on the desk,
one hand holding the phone to her ear, the other tapping her trademark
pencil on her armrest. The person on the other end of the line was
having a bad day that was getting worse as the conversation
continued.
"You're smoking crack if you think I'll agree to probation.... I don't
care if your guy's in denial, Conaughton. As far as I'm concerned, the
most important part of your job is to smack him out of it. I'm not the
one who needs a talking to, but you'd rather waste my time from the
comfort of your office than haul yourself to county for a much-needed
sit-down.. .. I'm hanging up now, because it's not going to happen.
Either take the forty months or confirm the trial date. Call me back
with anything else and I'll stop talking to you."
She set the handpiece in its cradle as gently as if she'd been checking
the weather.
"Close case?" I asked.
"Typical plea-bargaining bullshit. They're never as close as the
defense wants you to think."
"I got your message earlier. What's up?"
"You believe in coincidences, Kincaid?"
One of my favorite crime writers says there's no such thing, but I'd
never thought much about it. "Sure," I said, "when I need to."
"Honest answer. Well, I do too. They happen all the time, or at least
that's what I'm telling myself on this one. Your vie called me
Friday."
"On what case?"
"The city judge, Clarissa Easterbrook. She called me Friday and left a
message."
"About what?"
"I have no idea. I was in trial all last week. I took the message
down with the rest of them and have been working my way through the
list. The name meant nothing at the time I wrote it down, but when I
got to it this morning it gave me the heebie-jeebies."
"What exactly did she say?"
"All I wrote in my call book was her name and number. If she had said
what she was calling about, I would have noted it."
"You didn't realize this until today?"
"Watch it, Kincaid. That sanctimony's better spent on the rest of the
fuckups around here. All I had was a name and number. I don't think
she even said she was calling from the city hearings department."
I could see how that could happen. "Can you think of any reason she
might have been calling? Are you in any groups together? The Women's
Bar Association, maybe?"
"Sure, along with forty-three percent of all the other attorneys in
this town. Did she call you?"
"Good point. Whatever it means, thanks for telling me. I'll pass it
on to MCT and see if it connects up with anything else. Do you have
the number she left?"
On the way back to my office, Alice Gerstein stopped me in the hall and
announced that Clarissa Easterbrook s sister was waiting for me in the
corner we call the reception area.
"When did she get here?"
"Right before noon."
I had checked my voice mail around then, but no one had left a message
about the pop-in.
"Did she say what she wanted?" I whispered.
"Just to talk to you about the case. I offered to have you call her to
set an appointment, but she insisted on waiting."
Tara Carney had finished the crossword during her wait and moved on to
the jumble. I apologized for making her wait and explained that I was
out of the office and didn't know she was planning to come in.
"I really didn't mind. I've been running out of things that make me
feel useful, so waiting here to talk to you .. . well, at least it was
something."
Apparently Susan Kerr wasn't the only one who was trying to stay busy.
I offered Tara the best we had around here, a Dixie cup of water. Don't
knock it. Until a few of us pooled our own funds for a cooler, the
only water we had was brown.
Once we were in my office with the door closed, I asked her why she'd
come in.
"There's something I haven't told the police yet, and it's been
weighing on me. If I tell you, can it remain confidential?"
People hear about the sacred attorney-client privilege on TV and assume
it's going to apply to me. It doesn't. I did my best to explain to
Tara that I represented the State, not her. I'd do my best to be
discreet, but if she told me something that related to the case, I'd
almost certainly tell the police, and I might have to disclose it
eventually to a defendant.
"That's the thing," she said. "I don't know if it relates to the
case."
"If you have any reason to think it might, you really do need to tell
me, Tara. I can't promise to keep it confidential, but I will treat
the information with respect. We'll use it for the investigation, but
it's not like I'm going to issue a press release or gossip about your
sister."
She looked into my face and must have decided to trust me. "I think
Clarissa was cheating on Townsend."
I couldn't hide my frustration. How could she not have mentioned this
before? I'd let Grace make me feel bad about the police poking around
in Clarissa's life, and it turns out there was something to discover
after all.
"I didn't know what to say earlier. That first night, he was standing
right there and was so upset; I couldn't mention it. Then when the
police told us they found Clarissa's body, I was with my parents. I
know the police were asking about her marriage, but I didn't want to
say anything in front of them."
"So whom was she seeing?" I asked.
"That's the thing. I don't even know. She never told me. But she
told me a few weeks ago and she made me swear up and down I would never
tell anyone that she had fallen in love with someone else. She said
she wanted to leave Townsend. I was shocked."
"Do you know if she actually started the process of leaving him? Did
she tell Townsend or go to a lawyer?"
"I don't know. I think I made her angry. She wanted me to support her
and be happy for her, and I was crummy."
"How so?" I asked.
""What about your marriage? How could you cheat on Townsend? Why
don't you
try counseling?" That kind of stuff. I felt really bad when
she said she only told me because she thought she could depend on me. I
tried to stop being judgmental after that, but I think the damage was
already done."
"She didn't tell you anything more?"
"No. I tried to get her to tell me who he was, but she refused. She
wouldn't even tell me where she met him. We mostly talked about how
she was afraid to be alone. She wanted to leave Townsend to be with
this other person, but she wasn't sure he was prepared to be with her.
I got the impression he might have been married too, like he wasn't
necessarily in a position to live happily ever after with her. But she
didn't want to keep living with Townsend when she was in love with
someone else, so we talked about how she felt about being on her
own."
"And did she come to any decision?"
"I think her mind was already made up; it was just a matter of when. We
talked about how I adjusted after my husband left me. That was
different, though. I have two kids, so my hands were too full to
permit a meltdown. She was picturing herself alone at night with