A message, delivered along with the kill.
15
I met Tori outside Deere Hall, the primary building in the city campus of St. Margaret’s College. She was wearing the same long white coat, a gray wool cap, and a backpack slung over her shoulder. She appeared amid a flood of students through the Gothic arched doorway, caught my eye, and bounded down the stairs. She didn’t smile-I hadn’t yet seen her smile-but it wasn’t an unpleasant expression, either. Guarded, in a word.
Daylight was evaporating, and it was growing cold as we walked down the street. There were still patches of ice mixed with dirty slush on the walk.
“What do you study?” I asked.
She looked at me. “Math.”
“What do you do with a math degree?”
“You teach. At least, I will.”
“What age?”
“Oh, probably young kids,” she said.
“You like kids?”
She didn’t answer. It was a dumb question. Why would she want to teach kids if she didn’t like them?
“You have any kids of your own?” I tried.
“No kids.”
I took a breath. It hit me that there could be a return volley, the same question put back to me. But she didn’t ask. She just looked me over for a moment as we walked.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“What kind?”
“I represent criminals. Sorry, people accused of crimes.”
“Is that hard?”
“It can be. The prosecution has a lot more resources at its disposal. It’s usually a lopsided fight.”
She was quiet for a moment. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. You meant does it bother my conscience?”
She turned to me again. “You like to tell people what they’re thinking, I’ve noticed. That’s a very male thing. Very alpha male.”
“Is it? Am I asserting control?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Maybe you should be majoring in psychology, Tori.”
“I was thinking the same thing about you.”
“Experience is the best psychoanalysis,” I said.
“Who said that?”
“I just did. I’m the only one walking next to you.”
“That’s not what I m-”
“I know. You meant who was I quoting?”
She shook her head in bemusement. She had just passed a test. The test was whether she could tolerate my bullshit. For at least a couple minutes, apparently, she could.
It was the time of year when the weather couldn’t make up its mind, and people took advantage of any halfway warm and clear day to get out and enjoy themselves before the gloomy blanket of winter took over. Parents were hustling their children across busy streets. Students were loitering like the aimless souls they were, laughing and smoking and chatting into their cell phones. I felt like an outsider, an observer, in every way. I didn’t have anyone to shop for, and I had little in common with young people, with their egocentric cluelessness about the world.
But I wished I did. I wished for all of that. Even the part about being clueless. Sometimes I wished I didn’t understand people.
“You like being a lawyer?” Tori asked me.
A fair question. Should be an easy answer.
“He pauses,” she noted.
“I like competition,” I said. “I liked prosecuting criminals more than defending them. But defending them is harder. More of a challenge. I like the challenge.”
She thought about that for a moment. “It’s not about helping people?”
“That can be a fringe benefit.”
We stopped at an intersection, waited for the light. She probed me with those big brown eyes. Her dishwater-blond hair was curling out of her cap. Cute, which didn’t really fit her. She was older than most college kids, probably late twenties, which meant there was a story there. Usually that story’s not a happy one.
“Have you ever defended a killer?” she asked.
“I’ve handled some murders, yeah.”
“Were they guilty?”
I nodded. “Most of the people I represent are guilty, Tori.”
The light changed. Everyone else entered the crosswalk. Tori didn’t move. She turned and looked up at me. This would be the moment in a movie where she kissed me. Or told me what a swell guy she thought I was. Or told me to fuck off.
“Who sits at a bar all night drinking alone?” she asked.
“You,” I said.
“I did that once. You did it at least twice, and you and the bartender seemed to know each other pretty well.”
“I don’t sleep well. The vodka helps.”
“You don’t have to go to a bar to drink vodka.”
“But if I drank at home, it would feel pathetic,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“More pathetic,” I clarified.
Her eyes narrowed to a squint. She was studying me, psychoanalyzing me. I’m not a big fan of that kind of thing, generally speaking, but for some reason it didn’t bother me with her.
She let out a sigh. “I think you’re an interesting guy,” she said. “I think it would be fun to hang out with you. But I’m not looking for romance. That’s just not happening with me right now.”
“What a coincidence. It hasn’t been happening with me, either.”
She threw me a look. “Is that your macho way of saying you agree to my terms? Because I’d understand if you didn’t.”
“I agree to your terms, Tori. On one condition.”
She raised her eyebrows again. “Let’s hear it.”
“You entertain the possibility down the road-just the possibility-of a hand job.”
For the first time, Tori let out a real, honest laugh.
16
“Tom,” I said. “Tom, we have to talk about this.”
I’d spent the last ninety minutes with my client, trying in vain to get him to consider the list of witnesses we planned to call at trial. Thus far, I had obtained from him an in-depth recitation of the entire week of meals served by the Department of Corrections, including last night’s disappointing chili-disappointing, in his eyes, because it had
