7

 

For eighteen hundred dollars a month, Wu rented a twenty-by-thirty-foot studio apartment on the top floor of a large building on Fillmore Street, north of Lombard. The unit was essentially one large, high-ceilinged room, with a small but functional open kitchen, a tiny toilet and shower-only bathroom in the back corner, a decent clothes closet. The futon she slept on converted into a sofa during the day. She also had an old upholstered reading chair next to an end table where she kept her magazines. The only really nice pieces of furniture, aside from a relatively new, high-tech television set, were a Japanese changing screen and a cherry dining table that her father had bought her when she passed the bar. More often than not this doubled as her work desk.

The best thing about the apartment, and the reason for the ridiculous rent, was the windows— two oversized ones along the Fillmore wall, and another couple over the sink and counter in the kitchen area. From their vantage four stories up, all of these afforded really nice views of Marina Park, with the Golden Gate Bridge off to the left, Marin County just a swan dive and a long swim away.

The built-in bookshelves on the opposite wall were filled to bursting with her CDs and law books and a wide selection of hardbacks, mostly nonfiction— history, biography, political science— but one shelf of novels. A bright multicolored eight-by-ten rug covered most of the hardwood. She kept the place neatly organized and very clean.

Now, wrapped in a heavy turkish nightgown, she sat at her table with her briefcase open and her third cup of morning coffee in front of her. The sun, just up, came in over the sink windows and sprayed the wall to her left. She'd been awake for forty-five minutes, had taken the hottest shower she could stand and gulped down four aspirins. She'd eaten a banana, half a canteloupe, and then three eggs scrambled up with soy and leftover rice. Two cups— not demitasses, but her old cracked mug— of espresso. The throbbing in her head was getting to the manageable state, she thought, but still she hesitated before opening the folder she'd just taken from her briefcase. She had picked it up— newly transcribed interviews, more discovery— from Boscacci.

Last night she'd never gotten to them. Instead, like almost every other night for the past few months, she had gone out to find a party. For a moment there, in the dead of the night with Jason Brandt, it had almost seemed as though it would turn out to be more than that. But by the time the alarm went off, he had gone.

Just as well, she had told herself after the initial stab of realization that he'd left. Probably just as well.

Now that she'd committed her client to admitting the petition against him, she had a long moment of terror imagining that she'd find something among this latest evidence indicating that Andrew had not in fact murdered his teacher and his girlfriend. She didn't believe it was likely, but Dismas Hardy's reaction had brought home to her the seriousness of the situation. She'd leveraged not just herself and her client, but the reputation of the firm.

If she didn't deliver, it would be bad.

Finally, she reached into her briefcase for the folder, pulled it out and set it in front of her, then opened it.

*     *     *     *     *

 

She sat with Hal and Linda at the dining room table again. No sign of the maid this time. The house was almost eerily quiet to Wu after she'd finished acquainting the Norths with the most recent developments in the case. She needn't have worried about finding exonerating evidence. The new discovery was, if anything, more damning than what they'd seen so far— the testimony of Andrew's best friend, motives, more about the gun. Tension between the couple was thick but transparent, and to break it, Wu had asked if there was anything else about Andrew that she might need to know.

"You already know about the joyride," Linda said.

"No," Wu replied. "I mean before that. Did Andrew have any kind of history of misbehavior or violence? Anything like that?"

"No," Linda said. "Nothing serious."

Hal North cleared his throat. "Well . . ."

"I said nothing serious," Linda snapped. "I didn't say nothing at all. Don't give me that look, Hal. I'm not trying to hide anything."

"I'm not giving you a look. We just disagree about what was serious or not."

"Maybe it would be better," Wu interjected, "if you just told me everything and let me decide whether it seems important now or not. I gather there were a few incidents."

"Years ago," Linda said. "Literally, when Hal and I were first together."

"What happened?" Wu asked.

Linda drew a labored sigh. "All right. The one, it was when I told him that Hal and I were getting married. I remember it was a Saturday afternoon, a nice sunny, warm day, and we had the windows open in the kitchen. Andrew was about ten, and still at the age where he liked to sit on my lap, you know?" She sighed again. "Anyway, Alicia— our daughter, Hal's daughter, really— she was there, too, so we could all share the good news." She stopped.

"And what happened?" Wu prompted her.

Linda's lips were pressed tightly together as she fought for control. "He just . . . He just lost his temper."

"Did he hit you?"

When it became obvious that Linda couldn't or wouldn't answer, Hal took over. "He hit her, me, Alicia. He went over to the sink and started throwing the dishes at us. I took a couple of stitches in the face stopping him." He touched a still-visible scar along his jaw, let out a deep breath. "It wasn't pretty."

"But that was seven years ago," Linda said. "And it was my fault anyway. I think I must have just been a terrible mother."

"You are not."

"But I was, before you. You weren't there." Linda turned to Wu. "You should know all this. Andrew's father walked out on us both when he was three, and I needed to work, so I became a waitress, then later a hostess."

"You know Beaulieu?" Hal interrupted with real pride, pointed at his wife. "Hostess at Beaulieu."

This was one of the city's premier dinner destinations, and a magnet for the power elite. Wu wasn't surprised that Linda Bartlett— beautiful, witty, and sophisticated— had wound up with a highly visible job there.

But this was ancient history to Linda, and she waved off her husband's intended flattery. Anyway, I was young and selfish and liked to have a good time. I admit it, though I'm not proud of it. I had . . . opportunities come my way and I wanted to take advantage of them. Anyway, most of the opportunities came with men attached— it's okay, Hal, she probably needs to know this. It's not like a state secret anyway." Linda sighed and continued. "In any event, the men I saw often weren't so nice to Andrew. And I didn't have the strength or understanding or simple will to do much about it. So he came to hate the idea of my boyfriends." She reached out a hand to her husband. "Including Hal, I'm afraid. At first, at least."

"He still simmers," Hal said. "Maybe not at me, specifically . . ."

But Linda remained defensive. "It's just that he's got this mistrust. He has trouble believing in people in general. And that's me, too, my fault. In the early years, I was so bitter and mad at being dumped, at the unfairness of the way my life had turned out, I just wanted to make up for lost time, and I took it whenever I got a chance. Andrew couldn't count on me. So he's always expecting to be betrayed or abandoned or let down."

"Still?" Wu asked.

"To some degree," Linda admitted.

"Though Kevin has helped," Hal added.

"Kevin?"

"Kevin Brolin," Linda said. "He's a psychologist who's been seeing Andrew."

"For how long?"

"All this time," Hal said. "On and off. He's an anger management specialist."

Fantastic, Wu thought. A jury would love to hear about all these anger issues. But she had to press on. Knowledge was power, and she needed all she could get. "Mrs. North, when you started to tell me about the day you and Hal announced your engagement, you made it sound like Andrew's tantrum was the first of at least a couple of incidents."

Linda looked to Hal, who nodded and said, "Alicia's party?" He went on. "This was maybe three years ago, Alicia's twelfth or thirteenth birthday party. She invited five or six kids, and we made her include Andrew."

"They're only a year apart," Linda said.

"Anyway," Hal went on, "all the girls got into some PlayStation thing and evidently they all decided to gang up to beat Andrew." He shrugged. "I came home to a smashed big-screen, pieces of remote all over the place. Alicia's lip was cut, her eye . . ."

Linda came to her son's defense. "He's really passionate about video games. That's normal enough nowadays. But he also reads, and writes beautifully. He's getting solid B-pluses at Sutro, and you already know he'd gotten the lead in the play."

Hal's whole body seemed to slump. His voice was deep, depressed. Obviously he and Linda's respective spin on Andrew's character traits was a festering wound, and now here in front of the boy's attorney, its binding was unraveling. He looked directly at Wu. "He never laughs. The boy's just not happy in his skin. He hates all team sports. He's changed his haircut and color ten times in two years. He wears torn T-shirts with butt-crack shorts and combat boots." The slab of Hal's face was a monolith of sadness.

Persistent, nearly pleading to Wu, Linda started again. "He can play any musical instrument with strings on it."

"But won't ever perform for anyone, or take lessons."

Wu had to call a stop to it. "I think I get the picture," she said. She sat perfectly still with her hands linked on the table in front of her. The Norths were avoiding eye contact with each other, although Hal caught Wu's gaze for a brief instant and rolled his eyes. Finally, choosing her words with great care, Wu started to speak. "This issue we've got to deal with here is the likelihood of what a jury in an adult trial is going to do when confronted with the facts of this case. The negative character issues we can avoid as long as we don't bring up anything positive."

"What?" Linda asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's just a rule," Wu said. "Character can't be used by the prosecution except if we bring it up first. After that it's open season. Do you think we want to go there, Mrs. North?"

It took her a minute, but she finally shook her head. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

It was the first time that Linda had acknowledged the basic problem: that regardless of the facts, the situation looked bad for her son. Wu played to that card. "No, I don't think so, either. And that leads me to the really crucial question." A quick glance at Hal, who nodded encouragement. "From what we've seen of the discovery so far— and this means the whole gun question, the pattern of lies to the police, the eyewitness testimony, and so on— do you really think, Mrs. North, we should advise Andrew to run the risk of an adult trial, or try to talk him out of it if he decides to admit?"

Hal reached over and put his hand over his wife's. "It comes down to how it looks, hon. What a jury will probably do with the evidence they see."

Linda sat with it for a long time. Finally, she looked first to Hal, then to Wu. "You don't think it's possible that he actually did do this, do you?"

Wu finessed her answer. "I think that eight years is a far, far better sentence than anything he'd be likely to get in an adult trial. There are no other suspects, Mrs. North. Andrew was the only person that we know was there when the murders happened, and he had a gun and a motive."

Another silence.

"Maybe we should let Andrew decide," Hal's voice was a whisper.

This, of course, had been Wu's goal all along. When Andrew got acquainted with the next round of discovery, which she intended to show him today, Wu believed that he would be a fool to deny the hopelessness of his position, and she did not think him a fool. He would opt to admit. With his mother opposed to that idea, though, urging him to fight for his innocence every step of the way, he was much less likely to come to this obviously correct decision. But if Linda could be convinced not to object, Wu would have a clear field, and convincing her client would be that much easier.

"I'm going up to see him right after I leave here," Wu said.

"Maybe I should go up with you," Linda said. "I don't want to him feel like we think he's guilty. That we're abandoning him."

But Linda's company was the last thing Wu wanted when she made her pitch to Andrew. "It might be better just to leave it to me, Mrs. North. This is really something your son is going to have to come to rationally, and if you're there, it's going to be emotional. If it's just me, his lawyer, explaining that it's not about guilt, it's legal strategy that will give him many more years of freedom, he's at least going to look at it clearly. Then, if he's in fact truly innocent and just won't admit no matter what, we'll go to trial. But if he doesn't think it's worth the risk . . ."

Linda hung her head, finally looked back up. "Then that means he probably did it after all, doesn't it?"

Well, yes, Wu thought. That's certainly what the evidence indicates, doesn't it? But she only said, "If he admits, he admits. That's all. It's about strategy, not factual guilt or innocence."

Hal leaned in, his hand still over his wife's on the table. "It's got to be his decision," he repeated. "He's the only one who knows for sure."

Another lengthy silence. Linda said, "But . . ." and stopped, turned to her husband, shook her head again. Finally, she nodded.

*     *     *     *     *

Q: Three two one. This is Homicide Inspector Sergeant Glen Taylor, badge fourteen ten. Case number 003-114279. It is three-thirty in the afternoon, Tuesday, March 4th. I am at the residence of Mark and June Ropke, 2619 Irving Street. With me are the Ropkes and their son, Lanny, caucasian juvenile aged seventeen. Lanny, would you describe your relationship with Andrew Bartlett.
A: He was, is I mean, my best friend.
Q: And how do you know him?
A: He's in my class at school. We're juniors at Sutro.
Q: Did you also know a Mike Mooney and a Laura Wright?
A: Yeah. Mr. Mooney was my English teacher, and Laura was Andrew's girlfriend.
Q: Okay. Did Andrew talk to you about them?
A: Yeah. He was a little jealous.
Q: Andrew was? Of Mooney?
A: Yeah.
Q: You want to tell me about it.
A: All right. Him and Laura, Andrew and Laura, I mean, had been going out for about a year, something like that, a long time anyway. Then they got in a fight just before Christmas break and broke up.
Q: Do you know what the fight was about?
A: I think it was sex.
Q: Did Andrew tell you that?
A: Kind of, yeah. I guess he was coming on pretty strong and she told him she wasn't ready for that yet, so he got all pissed off— sorry, mad, I mean— and said she was just being a tease, leading him on, what was she making out with him for if they weren't getting to that? Anyway, it was a big fight and they broke up, but then a couple of weeks later, maybe a month before she got killed, they got back together.
Q: Did Andrew tell you why?
A: He didn't have to. It was obvious. But he did tell me he couldn't stand not being with her, sex or no sex. He was really in love with her.
Q: So what happened with Mr. Mooney? How'd he get into this?
A: He was directing the play, and Andrew and Laura were both in it. They're . . . I mean she was, both of them were into drama. So they started going over to his place together at night to do their lines and rehearse, you know. Mooney's. Anyway, one night Laura told Andrew that she wasn't driving back with him. She was going to stay on awhile and do some more rehearsing and Mr. Mooney would take her home.
Q: And what was Andrew's reaction to that?
A: At first, you know, not much. But after it happened again a couple of times, pretty bad. Really bad, I guess.
Q: In what way?
Q: (female voice) It's okay, Lanny. There's no hurry.
Q: (male voice) Just tell him what you've told us. It's all right.
A: He brought a gun to school.
Q: Did you see it?
A: Oh yeah, he showed it to me. It was in his backpack. It was a real gun, and loaded.
Q: Did he tell you what he was planning to do with it?
A: Yeah, but he wasn't sure exactly.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Well, he was carrying it around for a week, maybe two, I think just seeing how it felt, you know. He talked about killing himself mostly at first.
Q: But that changed?
A: It just . . . I don't know. He told me he was going to find out for sure if something was going on with Mooney and Laura. This was while they were broken up. And meanwhile, he sees her and Mooney goofing at school, all these little jokes they had with each other. So basically, it was this jealousy thing. It was eating him up, the thought of her maybe having sex with him, after only teasing with him for so long. I mean, Mooney's a grown-up and Andrew didn't believe they'd only be making out. So he decided he had to find out for sure.
Q: And how would he do that?
A: He was going to hang around after he told them he was leaving, maybe make up some excuse, and come back and catch them at it.
Q: And then what what was he going to do?
A: Well, he said he hoped he'd find out Laura wasn't lying, but if he caught them at something, he hoped he could handle it. He said maybe it would be a good idea if he didn't have the gun with him. If he didn't, maybe he wouldn't kill them on the spot. He hoped he wouldn't do that.
Q: He said he hoped he wouldn't kill them?
A: That's what he said.

*     *     *     *     *

 

Although it was clear and sunny outside, it wasn't warm by any stretch. The small visiting room at the YGC felt to Wu like a refrigerator. She was gauging her client's reaction to his friend's testimony, and it seemed to have hit him pretty hard. Andrew was sitting back, slumped in one of the hard wooden chairs at the table this time, one elbow on the chair's arm and his hand over his mouth. Now he wearily dropped the hand, shook his head.

"This is bad."

She nodded. "Correct."

"He told me the cops had come and he'd talked to them, but he never mentioned anything about the gun. You think Lanny would have been smart enough . . . Nobody had to know about the gun. It's makes it look . . ."

Wu knew what it made it look like. She asked, "You want to talk about the gun?"

"What about it?"

"Well, the gun's kind of an issue. You bring it to school and show it around . . ."

"Not around. Just to Lanny."

"Okay, just to Lanny, although he's enough. He'll testify that you said you were thinking about killing Laura and Mooney, and maybe yourself. The gun is what you presumably would have used to do that. So what were you thinking when you took it? It was Hal's gun, is that right?"

His expression grew sharp. "I never said that."

"No, I know you didn't. But another one of the interviews in here"— she patted the folder that held Lanny's transcript—"is a discussion with your stepfather about when Sergeant Taylor asked him if he owned a gun and he said yes, then went to get it and couldn't find it. Didn't Hal ever ask you if you'd taken it?"

"Yeah, he did."

"And what did you tell him?"

Andrew gave her the bad eye.

"Okay, then," she said, "let me tell you. You denied it, maybe even pitched a little fit of indignation that he'd accuse you of anything like that. Am I close?" She leaned in toward him over the table. "Let me ask you this, Andrew. Why didn't you just put it back from where you'd taken it? If you'd done that, and if you in fact hadn't committed these murders, don't you realize that you wouldn't be here right now?"

His eyes weren't quite to panic, but they flicked to the wall behind her, then to the corners of the room before they got back to her. "Why is that?"

She noticed that he didn't bother with the pro forma denial of the crime this time. She let herself begin to believe that her strategy was working— he was getting used to admitting the basic fact of his guilt. "Because if we had the gun, we could test ballistics with the slugs they recovered from the scene and prove that it wasn't the murder weapon." She gave him a minute to digest this critical information, then pressed on. "You told me you got rid of the gun."

"I did."

"Do you think you could find it again?"

"No. I dropped it off the bridge."

"That would be the Golden Gate?"

"Yeah."

Wu checked a laugh. Perfect, she thought. "I don't understand, and I don't think a jury will understand, why you did that if you didn't kill anybody with it."

"I freaked out, is all. I told you. When I got back to Mike's— Mooney's— and saw it there, I figured the cops would be able to trace it back to Hal and I'd be screwed."

"And why is that?"

"I mean, if it was the murder weapon." His miserable look seemed to plead for her to understand. "I had to get rid of it."

"But it wasn't the murder weapon, was it?"

"I don't know. I mean, it might have been."

Wu straightened up in her chair and faced him head-on. "Let me get this straight. Your theory of the crime, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that while you were out taking a stroll and memorizing your lines, somebody— you don't know who or why— knocked at Mooney's door, saw your father's gun conveniently sitting out on a coffee table, grabbed it and shot anybody who happened to be standing around. That's it?"

"I don't think that."

"Good. That would be a dumb thing to think. But otherwise, why get rid of the gun?"

"I told you!" Andrew again cast his eyes around the walls. Wu could almost feel his panic, searching for escape, any escape. Finally, he exploded, slamming the table between them with the flat of his palm, coming to his feet, turning around, trapped. "I already told you that!" he screamed. Don't you get it? Aren't you listening to me? I was freaked out. I knew it was a mistake the minute I let it go."

Suddenly, his voice broke into an uncontrolled and wrenching sob. He was crying, pleading with her. "I mean, there's Mike and Laura shot dead on the floor. They're dead. My mind goes blank and I can't think of anything except to call emergency." He gulped now for a breath, tears streaking his face. "After that . . . I don't know what I did, except finally I turn around and there's my gun on the coffee table. I can't leave it there, can I? I didn't think it out, what I was doing. I just did it. Didn't you get that at all?"

Andrew stood across the table from her, hands limp at his side, staring at her. His breath still came in jagged gasps.

It was all she could do to keep from coming around the table and hugging him.

A knock at the door interrupted and Wu crossed to it. The unpleasant bailiff from the detention hearing, Nelson, had heard a noise and was wondering if everything was all right. She noticed he had a grip on his mace, and she held up her hand, palm out. "We're fine."

When the door had closed and she turned around, Andrew was back in his chair, leaning over, his face down by his knees, his fingers laced over the back of his head. She went to his side of the table, boosted herself onto it, folded her own hands in her lap, and waited.

He was still taking deep, labored breaths, but gradually they slowed, and eventually he looked up. Seeing her so close, nearly hovering over him, he pushed the chair back six inches, then hung his head again, perhaps in shame. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry." He brought his hands to his face, said "Oh God," and broke again, a sob that seemed to sound the death knell to all the hopes of his childhood.

Someone else witnessing the breakdown, hearing the same words, might have reached a different conclusion, but to Wu it ratified all of her preconceptions— she'd been expecting something like this, Andrew's show of remorse for what he'd done. To her, the apologetic words sounded exactly like an admission of his guilt.

She pushed herself off the table and went up beside him, put a hand on his opposite shoulder and pulled the close one against her hip. "It's all right," she whispered. "It's okay."

Through the wired windows, steep shafts of sunlight mottled the floor, struck the backs of both of them. The tableau held for nearly a minute, an eternity in that setting. Andrew's breath became more regular. Wu herself was nearly afraid to breathe, hyper-aware of the possible implications of the scene. This proximity was unprofessional. Prompted at first by a genuine sympathy, she remained out of an awkward desire to appear natural. Some small despicable part of her was also aware that even such a slight physical gesture, a hand on his shoulder, her hip against him, might work to her advantage in the next phase of their negotiation.

Finally, he raised his head. "So what am I going to do?"

She moved away, a gentle extrication. Leaning back now against the table, she didn't answer right away. "I don't mean to put you through any more agony, Andrew. God knows you've got enough to deal with as it is. But I needed to make you see, and see very clearly, some of the really powerful and convincing evidence that they've got against you."

"But it's still . . ."

"Please. Let me go on." She paused. "Count the ways," she said. "They've got an eyewitness, someone who saw you at Mr. Mooney's that night both before and after. They've got motive and lots of it. Your gun was there. You were there, walk or no walk. They've got the testimony of your best friend, showing premeditation. They've got the gun that you threw away, when if you'd saved it, it could have proved you innocent. All this, and then there's all the rest of their discovery we haven't even seen yet. Laura's mother's testimony, Mr. Mooney's colleagues and associates, forensics and medical reports. Your lies to the police . . ." She stared fixedly at him.

"What if a jury doesn't believe all that?" he asked.

"They don't have to believe all of it." She kept her tone soft. "But let me ask you one, Andrew. What part of it isn't true?"

He bit at his lip, ran his hand back through his hair.

Wu drove home another point. "And even if a jury drew a slightly different conclusion from all this evidence, say they came back with some lesser offense, say second degree murder or even some kind of manslaughter, you're still, best case, looking at a minimum of ten and maybe up to thirty years."

"But none, if I got off."

"No," she agreed. "Not then. But think about what we've just been over in the past two days. That's just a part of what the prosecution is going to present. Think of how you'd feel if you were on your own jury and heard what they were going to hear."

"So you're saying it doesn't matter whether I actually did it or not."

"Of course it does. It's critical to who you are, to the person you'll be when you get out. I'm just asking you to consider your alternatives with great, great care. We've got a hearing tomorrow, and I have set it up so you can be done with all this and out of custody with your whole life ahead of you in no more than eight years. I know that seems like forever right now, but you'll still be a very young man, believe me, with everything to live for."

"But . . . eight years . . ."

She nodded. "No one's pretending this is an easy call. I understand that. Talk to your mom and to Hal, if you want, get their opinions."

"My mom and Hal," he said with withering dismissal. "My mom and Hal. What are they going to tell me? And whatever it is, why should I listen? They live their own lives, if you haven't noticed. They're not interested in mine."

"That's not true, Andrew. Your mother's been in here to visit you every day so far, hasn't she? She loves you. She wants what's best for you. I've just come from seeing them."

"Yeah? And what did she say?"

"She said this was your decision."

Andrew snorted. "See? She'd love it if somebody else took care of me for eight years. It'd leave her and Hal freer to party."

Wu sat back, shook her head. "I don't think that's true," she said, "but it's really neither here nor there. What's important is that you've seen how hard it is to control the way evidence comes out, what it looks like. Your friend Lanny, your own . . . mistakes in talking to the police."

"So you really don't think you can win?"

Wu empathized with his despair, but it would be a disservice to sugarcoat his predicament. "I will try with everything in me, Andrew. You're free to get another lawyer if you want, but I promise you that I will live and breathe this case for as long as it takes if you decide to go as an adult. But I want you to have a clear understanding of what we're looking at. It will be a long haul, with no guarantees."

"How long?"

She drove in yet another nail. "It might go as long as two years before we can get to trial, maybe eighteen months if we're extremely lucky. And all that time you're in custody anyway. There's no bail, so you're right here until you're eighteen and after that probably at the county lockup downtown."

"Two years?" He swallowed, his eyes pleading. "Two more years?"

"I'd try to speed it up, of course, but that's about the average wait."

"Even if I didn't do it? Even if they found me innocent?"

"I'm afraid so. Either way. I'm sorry."

*     *     *     *     *

 

Bailiff Nelson again picked up Andrew at the door to the visitor's room. If Judge Johnson had reprimanded him over his conduct in the courtroom after the detention hearing, or even discussed it, Nelson gave no sign of it. Wu watched the two of them trundle off to wherever Andrew's cell was located back in the confines of the building. She thought that having a goon like Nelson monitor— hell, shadow— your every move must be one of the most debilitating things about confinement here.

In the women's room down in the main admin building, she fixed her makeup, then found she had to gather her emotions for several minutes. Andrew's disaffection with his parents had bothered her more than she could allow herself to show— it so closely mirrored her now forever unresolved ambivalence about her own father. How much had he really cared about her? Now she would never know. Maybe, she thought, Andrew's approach was healthier— just go on the accumulated evidence of absenteeism and benign neglect and admit that there is no profound connection. If you really believe that there is no parental love at all, you don't spend any time searching for it, either in your parents or in surrogate and successive sexual partners. You don't keep trying to please them, to live off the crumbs of praise or approval that you can then falsely interpret as a proof of their affection for you, their esteem.

Her next stop, Jason Brandt's office, added to the volatility of the emotional mix. She knew that she had to have a talk with the prosecutor and didn't want to acknowledge their physical intimacy of the night before in any way. And though she might have preferred to believe for a moment last night that they actually had potential to connect as people, Brandt had put the lie to that by getting up and leaving soon after the sex. Proof positive, she knew— she'd done the same thing herself— that all it had been was physical. Two consenting adults, thank you very much. In fact, rather than signal any kind of openness to see each other again, she thought this might be a good opportunity to score a few professional points, a payback for the grief she'd taken from him in the courtroom yesterday.

Brandt's work space was a reconverted closet that held his desk and chair, a bookshelf and nothing else. The door could only be closed because somebody had sawed several inches off the corner of the desk. One window, high up and tiny, provided neither light nor view. A bare lightbulb hung from a cord four feet above his desk.

Brandt was behind the desk, crammed amid his books and filing cabinets. The place was literally overflowing with binders, case files, periodicals. For a moment while Wu stood in the doorway, he didn't look up. When he finally did, in the first two seconds his face contorted through several iterations of arrangement— he was glad to see her; he wasn't sure why she was here; some kind of hope that they might get together again?

If it was that, Wu moved to quash it immediately. "Don't worry, I'm not stalking you. I was just up visiting my client and wanted to ask you if you thought I could get a little more time to plead him out."

Brandt's face instantly grew stern. "Why?"

Wu had decided upon a plausible explanation. "I'm having a slight problem with the parents. I doubt Boscacci would mind."

"He would. I talked to him just before the hearing yesterday and he was the soul of inflexibility."

"Really? That's funny, because when I talked with him, he didn't seem awfully concerned about timing."

"Provided Andrew admits."

"Right. Which he will."

"Shouldn't that be 'has'?"

"Tomorrow. That's 'will.' Beyond that, I'm talking only a few days' grace."

"Grace?"

"Courtesy. Whatever word you want."

Brandt leveled his gaze at her. "The word I want is 'now,' Amy. Anything beyond now— meaning tomorrow at the hearing, first thing, he admits— anything else makes me nervous as hell."

"Why?"

"You're kidding, right?" He stood up abruptly, coming out from behind his desk. "Excuse me," he said, squeezing past her, looking both ways down the hallway.

"What are you doing?"

His voice was quiet yet urgent. "I'm making sure nobody's out here to hear us, that's what." He turned and faced her. "You ask me why I'm nervous if we get delayed? Do you remember anything about last night?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He lowered his voice still further. "It means that when I walked into the Balboa last night and saw you sitting at the bar, you were a woman I had wanted to get to know for a long time. The case we were both handling was settled, so we wouldn't be squaring off in court anymore. We could do whatever we wanted. Now you're telling me it might not be settled? And you knew this last night? And still you let us go ahead?"

"It wasn't just me, if you remember, Jason."

"No, it wasn't. But you're the one who knew we might not be finished in court. If what happened with you and me gets out at all, and/or if this thing with Bartlett gets delayed, it's my ass. Don't you realize that? It's my job. And you knew it all along?"

The strength of Brandt's reaction caught Wu off guard. "No, but if I did, could you blame me, after how you treated me in court . . ."

He stared at her in shock. "I don't believe this. You're telling me you set me up on purpose? What's next? You blackmail me for your silence about us?"

"Come on, Jason. You're overreacting. It wasn't like that."

Brandt said aloud to himself, "I've got to call Boscacci. I'm out of this right now." Then he looked at her with a new flash of insight. "But if I do that, then you win, too, don't you? You get your delay. You knew this going in, didn't you? You've just been playing me."

"No, that's not true. I . . ."

But he wasn't going to be listening to any more excuses. In a fury, he put a finger to her face. "Don't you dare try and sell me on what's true or not, not after last night. You may have gotten me, okay, you win one. But that's the last time, I swear to God. The last fucking time."

He stepped back into his office and closed the door in her face.