As soon as I said it, I realized that I had lied. I should have been looking for another car, but like a number of other things in my life, car shopping had been put off for another time.
Newly’s house was spacious. If I had lived alone in it, as he did, I might have felt a little overwhelmed by its size. But as we ventured farther into it, I began to have the impression that he didn’t spend much time in most of the rooms. There were no footprints on most of the carefully vacuumed carpets.
He took me to what was obviously his favorite room; a combination den and library. A few bookshelves stood along the walls, as did a stereo and a big-screen television. Across from the TV, two overstuffed chairs were positioned near a low table. Most of the books in the room were paperbacks, although one section held a lot of hardcover books. Popular fiction, for the most part. Not a weighty law tome in sight.
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating one of the big chairs. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Thanks. A glass of water would be great,” I said.
“Water? Nothing stronger?”
It was two in the afternoon, but it could have been last call, and I would have answered as I did. “Just water, thanks.”
He left the room to get it, and I began to look at the objects on the low table. They included his GPS receiver, a fancy mechanical pencil, a ruler, some loose papers on which some numbers had been scribbled, a handheld calculator, and beneath several small piles of books, a topo map.
When I realized what type of map it was, I looked away from it, then, angry with myself, forced myself to pick up one of the stacks of books and read the map’s legend.
Southern Sierra. The section where we had looked for Julia Sayre’s grave.
I heard Phil returning, and set the books back down. It was then that I noticed the title of the hardcover on the bottom of the stack:
I only had time to glance at the titles of the other books stacked on the table, but that was enough to see that they all had two things in common: they were true-crime stories, and their subject was serial killers.
“I find myself caught up in a strange fascination these days,” Phil said, handing me a tall tumbler of ice water, then twisting open a bottle of beer as he sat in the other chair.
“Oh?”
“You’re a reporter, Irene,” he chided. “If you haven’t taken a look at everything on this table, I’ll be disappointed in you.”
“Not a really good look,” I said. “And technically speaking, I’m not sure I’m a reporter at the moment.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you here to interview me about my most infamous client?”
“No.” I explained what had happened at work.
To my surprise, he laughed and said, “If only you had aimed more carefully at your boss! But nevertheless — oh, that’s great!”
“Not really.” I explained that the consequences were that I was forced to take a leave of absence and seek counseling.
“Hmm. I know that at times labor law and criminal law might seem to be natural extensions of one another, but I really can’t help you—”
“I’m not here to see you as a lawyer, Phil. I understand that you’re closing your practice, anyway.”
“That’s right,” he said, then took a long pull from the beer bottle.
“A little young for retirement, aren’t you?”
“I’ve made the money I need to make. I’ll probably sell this place, go to live near my sister, up north. She invited me to come up there after I broke my foot, and while I was there, I had a little time to think. As much as I love the law, I believe I’m through associating my name with those of people like Nicky Parrish.”
“Nicky?”
He smiled. “The diminutive helps me to see him on a proper scale.”
“I’ve had trouble with that lately, too. I have to tell myself that he’s not invincible.”
This gradually led to a discussion about our lives since that journey to the mountains; I was surprised to learn that Phil felt that his life had gone out of control since then, too. “It’s the guilt,” he said. “It eats at me.”
“Guilt? What do you have to feel guilty about?”
“I allowed him to talk me into pursuing that deal with the D.A.! If I had taken charge of the case as I should have done, as I would have done with anyone else—”
“He would have fired you,” I said.
“That’s what I tell myself, but instead look what happened! When I think of those men — when I think of their families, and you — and Ben Sheridan! My God, Ben!”
“Ben’s doing very well,” I said.
“I heard through the grapevine that he’s staying with you and Frank.”
“He was. But now he’s in his own place and back at work.”
“Already? He’s made remarkable progress, then!”
