'I'm just here to keep an eye on the help.'
'Kate's in, too. She wanted to talk to you about something.'
Amanda carried the latte and the bag with the scone down the hall to the investigator's narrow, messy office.
'What have you got for me?' Amanda asked as she pushed papers away from the edge of Kate's desk and put her food on the cleared space. As Kate told her about her meeting with Billie Brewster, Amanda munched on her scone and sipped her latte.
'So, what's your conclusion?' Amanda asked when Kate was through.
'If this 'Vaughn Street Glee Club' exists, and Wendell Hayes was part of it, he could have been sent to the jail to kill Dupre.'
'Why?'
Kate shrugged. 'Beats me. Did Dupre have any idea why Hayes was after him?'
'No.'
Amanda finished her scone and washed the last piece down with a sip of her latte.
'What are you doing next?' she asked Kate.
'I set up a meeting with Sally Grace to go over the autopsy report on Michael Israel to see if there's any evidence that he was murdered.'
Amanda stood up. 'Let me know what you find.'
'First thing.'
Amanda shook her head. 'This case isn't getting any easier.'
Amanda was still awkward about her visits to Ben Dodson and she'd told no one--including her father--that she was seeing a psychiatrist.
'I've been reading about you in the papers,' Dodson said when Amanda was seated in his office.
'The reporters won't leave me alone,' Amanda answered self-consciously.
'Have you had any trouble handling the pressure?'
Amanda nodded. 'The first two times I met with Jon Dupre I was terrified.'
'I don't think that's an abnormal reaction given the fact that he'd killed his previous lawyer.' Dodson smiled. 'I guarantee you, I'd have been pretty nervous if you asked me to evaluate him.'
Amanda laughed and felt her anxiety ease a bit.
'I guess you're right.'
'See, not every fear reaction is irrational.'
'I didn't let my fear paralyze me,' Amanda said proudly. 'I was scared to death, but I forced myself to sit in the same room with Jon.'
'That's good. What I want to know is whether you've had any more flashbacks--the kind of feelings that are unexpected.'
'Seeing the autopsy photographs of Senator Travis and Wendell Hayes upset me, and that was unusual. I mean, you see those kinds of things all the time in my line of work.'
Dodson flashed Amanda a reassuring smile.
'Anyway, the photos did get to me, and my fear of meeting with Dupre was much more intense than the normal tension I always experience when I'm in close quarters with my more dangerous clients.'
'But you dealt with it.'
Amanda nodded.
'When we talked during your first visit, you expressed some anxiety about continuing to work as a criminal defense attorney. How are you feeling about that?'
'Pretty good, actually.' Amanda paused. 'There's something funny about Dupre's case. I can't get into the facts . . .'
'Of course.'
' . . . but Jon may be innocent, and that made me remember why I got into this business in the first place--to protect people who couldn't protect themselves. So, the case is making me feel better about what I do.'
'That's good. What about the nightmares? How are you sleeping?'
'Not too well. I don't have nightmares every night but it happens a few times a week. And it's hard for me to fall asleep. I think I'm afraid to go to sleep because of the nightmares. I've been exhausted a lot since I took on Jon's case.'
'Maybe we should consider medication.'
'I don't know,' she said, even though she'd planned on bringing up taking a sleeping pill. For some reason, this idea embarrassed her.
'Why don't you think about it and tell me what you want to do the next time we meet.'
As Amanda rode the elevator to the lobby of Dr. Dodson's building, she thought about The Vaughn Street
