Lone Wolf

Yeah, it’s cheesy. And Ng of course doesn’t really stand for Not Guilty, but I don’t mind it when law clerks high- five me and call me that. I am the first kid in my family to go to college, much less law school. My father was a Cambodian fisherman and my mother a seamstress, and they moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, just before I was born. Me, I was the golden boy, the American dream swaddled in disposable diapers.

I have been lucky my whole life. I was born at 9:09, on 9/9, and everyone knows that nine is a lucky number in Cambodia. My mother tells a story about how, when I was a toddler, she found me holding a snake in the backyard, and never mind that it was a common garter snake, the fact that I could kill such a creature with my chubby bare hands surely meant that I was special. My father is convinced that the reason I made law review was not because I had straight A’s but because he had prayed to Ganesha to remove all obstacles from my rise to greatness.

Like everyone else in America, I remember when Luke Warren stumbled out of the forest looking like some sort of missing link, and terrified a group of Catholic schoolgirls whose bus stopped for a lunch break at a highway rest stop along the St. Lawrence River. I watched the interviews he did with Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper and Oprah. I probably even skimmed the profile of him in People magazine, which had a picture of Georgie in it, sitting with Luke on the front steps of a house he hardly ever slept in, their kids flanking them like bookends.

Still, when Georgie came into my office in Beresford asking if I could represent her in the divorce, I didn’t recognize her by name or by face. I just thought that, even after I’d paid an interior designer named Swag fifty thousand dollars to give my office feng shui, it wasn’t until Georgie walked through the door that anything really looked like it belonged there.

The divorce was a nonevent; all Luke wanted was shared custody and some crappy trailer on the grounds of Redmond’s Trading Post. I managed to get Georgie a portion of the proceeds he’d earned doing the Animal Planet specials on wolf behavior, too. I called her Ms. Warren, and was a hundred percent professional, until the day the divorce decree was handed down. And then I called her cell phone and asked if she wanted to go out sometime.

I didn’t really believe that someone who had fallen in love with Luke Warren would ever even look twice at a guy like me. It’s not that I’m a hideous beast or anything, but I am certainly not the kind of fellow who’d be a dead ringer for the bare-chested heroes sculpted onto romance novel covers. I have a little bald spot that I try to ignore, and at five six, I’m a half inch shorter than Georgie. But she didn’t seem to care.

I have to admit, every night before I go to bed I wing a little prayer to Luke Warren. Because if he hadn’t been such an asshole, I might never have looked so good to Georgie by comparison.

Something is bugging the crap out of me.

Even though Georgie manages to hold it together through dinner, I know she’s thinking about Edward. She begs off reading the twins One Fish Two Fish and instead says she has a headache. She goes up to our bedroom, but even with the door closed, I can hear her crying.

After the kids are tucked in, I knock on Cara’s door. The lights are out, but I can hear music playing. When I come in I find her sitting on the bed with her laptop open. She immediately clams it shut. “What?” she asks, challenging.

I shake my head. There’s a very fine ethical line I’m skating here, as Edward’s attorney, even if he happens to be related to my stepdaughter. Technically I shouldn’t be here, much less asking her about the circumstances that led to Edward’s arrest.

“Just wanted to make sure you’re feeling okay,” I say. “The shoulder doesn’t hurt?”

She shrugs. “I’m tough.”

This I know. I had to work hard to break through her defenses when Georgie and I were first a couple. She was convinced that I was after the money I had won in the divorce settlement for Georgie. It was because of Cara that I actually drew up a prenuptial agreement-not to protect her mother from me but to reassure the daughter that I was in this for the right reasons.

“You know I can’t talk to you about what happened at the hospital, Cara. But if you volunteer the information, that’s a different story.” I hesitate. “You might actually be able to save your brother.”

Her eyes shutter, suddenly dark and unreadable. “I have no idea why Danny Boyle decided to pick Edward for a witch hunt,” Cara says.

I hesitate, my hand on the doorknob. “Maybe I’ll go over his head to Lynch,” I muse out loud.

“Who?”

I look at her and shake my head. “Nobody.”

But as I pull the door shut again, I think how incredibly normal it would be for a modern teenage girl to have no idea that John Lynch is the governor of New Hampshire.

Which makes it even more odd that, without me mentioning it first, she referred to the county attorney by his given name.

That night I place a phone call to Danny Boyle and arrange to meet with him first thing in the morning.

It’s only 7:30, and since it is Saturday, Boyle’s secretary isn’t in the office. He meets me with his hair still wet and a faint odor of chlorine clinging to his skin. “Whatever you have to say, Joe,” he tells me, leading me back to his office, “you can say in front of the judge.”

He gestures to a seat, but I stand. I pick up one of the framed photos on his desk. A girl about Cara’s age smiles back at me, her cheeks flushed with sun. “You got kids?” I ask.

“No,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I keep pictures of random young girls on my desk just for the hell of it. Come on, Joe. I don’t really have time to shoot the breeze right now, and neither should you.”

“I have twins. And two stepkids, too,” I say, as if he hasn’t spoken. “And the thing is, this whole nightmare is just eating away at my family. My wife’s practically torn in two, and I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know how to make this right, without hurting someone else.” I look up at him. “I’m appealing to you not as a lawyer, but as a father and a husband. I need my discovery before this arraignment happens.”

“The grand jury was sitting yesterday,” Boyle says. “I’ll get you the transcript as soon as I can.”

“You could give me the recording of the proceedings now,” I reply.

The county attorney looks at me for a long moment, and then reaches into his desk drawer and passes over a CD. “Family’s everything,” he says. “That’s why I’m giving this to you.” I grab the disc and head out of his office. “And Joe?” he calls after me. “That’s also why this charge is gonna stick.”

I hurry out to my car and listen to the CD on the stereo system. There’s some discussion with the grand jury; and Danny’s voice, asking the witness his first question.

And then, clear as a bell, I hear Cara answer.

It goes without saying that the security guards running the metal detector at the entrance to the jail do a double take when they see me, a forty-six-year-old lawyer, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a toy Sing-A-Long Karaoke player in the other. I can’t exactly carry a car stereo into the building, and the CD drive on my computer is broken, and I need Edward to hear this. I was weighing the location of the nearest Best Buy and the cost of a crappy boom box when I spied the toy we got Elizabeth for Christmas, sitting in the backseat. You pop in the karaoke CD, and the kid grabs the attached microphone and starts to sing along to Yo Gabba Gabba! or the Wiggles.

I feel like a moron, but it works. I put the brightly colored, chunky plastic toy on the conveyor belt and empty my pockets of change and electronics. The security guard who waves me through snickers. “Now, Luther,” I say genially. “I know for a fact that I’m not the only closet Hannah Montana fan.”

Edward has already been brought to a client-attorney meeting room. When I walk inside, I do a quick assessment: I know Georgie will ask me how he’s fared overnight.

His eyes are bloodshot, which isn’t extraordinary-I wouldn’t imagine he’d sleep well in jail. But he’s clearly jittery, on edge. “Joe,” he says, the minute we are alone, “you have to get me out. I can’t stay in there. My cellmate is the poster child for the Aryan Brotherhood.”

“I’m going to do my best,” I promise. “There’s something you need to hear.”

I set the CD player on the table between us and hit the Play button. Edward cocks his head closer to the speaker. “What is this?”

“The grand jury proceedings.” I hesitate. “The witness is Cara.”

Edward pushes the Pause button. “My sister sold me out?”

“I don’t know how she got to the county attorney. Or why he decided to listen to her. But yes, it seems that