Courting Trouble

over, with Mel tight in her arms. She could see Bennie standing in her living room, a tangle of long blond hair trailing untamed down the back of her blue workshirt, which she wore with faded jean shorts and beat-up New Balance sneakers. Her legs were superbuff from rowing, a sport Bennie seemed to like, despite the exercise required. At present Anne was revising her views on the woman, but not on exercise.

The detective was out of eyeshot, but Anne could hear him explaining, “If it weren’t the weekend this would be easy. We know he was sentenced to twenty-four months and started out in L.A. County, but they transferred him a few times, and we’re not sure where he ended up. He could be on parole.”

“But you would know if he was paroled, or even escaped.”

“Not yet. Paroled, we got the same problem as finding out where he’s incarcerated. Gotta talk to the right people, and they’re not in the holiday weekend. Escaped, it’s still no picnic.”

Bennie snorted. “I can’t believe that. You can’t even find out if he’s escaped?”

“From the joint in California? Believe it. If some knucklehead gets outta state prison in any state, somebody has to enter his name in NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, outta Washington. Nobody knows nothin’ ‘til the name gets entered, and it has to get entered by a person, who has the time and is workin’ the Fourth a July weekend.” The detective paused. “Even if it gets entered, we get about a million of those teletypes a day. We never look through ’em, we don’t have the time, or any reason to.”

“Now you have a reason to.”

“I got a gal goin’ through them right now, but you have any idea how many we’re talkin’ about? There are 75,000 walk-aways in Philly alone, right now. And fifty of them are wanted for murder.”

“What’s a ‘walk-away’?” Bennie asked. “What it sounds like?”

“Yeh. Fugitives at large. Bad guys, who walk away from work release or skip bail. Failures to appear, all wanted on bench warrants. This Kevin Satorno wasn’t even locked up for murder, only ag assault. In the scheme of things, he’s a nobody. And he’s not even one of our nobodies. He’s a California nobody.”

A nobody? Upstairs, Anne felt sick. She knew Kevin had started out in L.A. County Jail but had lost track of him after that, too. She’d wanted to put the past behind her. Only it wasn’t the past anymore.

“So what is the department doing to find Satorno, if he’s out?” Bennie was asking, downstairs. “He clearly intended to kill Anne, and only to kill her. There wasn’t even an attempt at robbery, and no evidence of rape.”

“The department can’t proceed on the assumption that he’s out, Ms. Rosato. We don’t have that luxury. It’s not like we got the manpower. We got only forty uniformed cops total in the Center City District, twenty in the Sixth District and twenty in the Ninth. They got all they can handle with the holiday, that’s why we released the scene. I can’t assign them to look for a guy that may be locked up.” The detective paused. “You wouldn’t know if Satorno has contacted the victim recently, would you?”

“No.” Bennie turned to her left, out of Anne’s view. “Do you guys know? Carrier? DiNunzio?”

Anne peeked farther over the banister, and Mel stiffened. He didn’t want to get anywhere downstairs, near the bloodstained entrance hall. She caught sight of Judy, in her well-loved overalls, a fresh yellow T-shirt, and a lemony bandanna.

Judy was shaking her head. “No. Sorry. I didn’t know anything about Satorno until you told me today.”

Suddenly, a hiccupy sob interrupted the conversation, a sound so emotional that it was almost embarrassing in public. Instantly Bennie turned around on her heels, as did Judy, just as a second sob came from the right, where Mary must have been. Anne couldn’t help but hang over the banister, and the sight made her own throat catch with surprise:

Mary was weeping, making a petite, crestfallen figure sunk into Anne’s sofa. She had buried her face in her hands, and her thin shoulders shuddered with sobs. Her hair was in disarray, and khaki shorts and sleeveless white shirt lacked their usual neatness.

“It’s all right, Mary,” Judy soothed, coming over and looping an arm around her friend. “They’ll catch the guy, you’ll see.”

“I . . . can’t think about that.” Mary’s voice quavered though her sobs. Her cheeks looked mottled and her neck blotchy. “I just can’t . . . believe this happened. It’s so terrible that . . . she was killed. The way she was killed.”

Upstairs, Anne watched the scene, mystified by their reactions as well as her own. Mary DiNunzio, who doesn’t even know me, is crying for me. And, for some reason, I feel like shit.

Bennie went to Mary and placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Mary, maybe we should get you back to the office.”

“That’s all right, I’m all right.” Mary’s sobs began to subside. Pain ebbed from her features and she held her palms against her cheeks as if to cool them. “I mean, there’s blood everywhere. It’s her blood!”

“I know, I know,” Judy was saying, stroking Mary’s back. “You want to wait outside? Why don’t you wait outside?”

Bennie turned briefly to the detectives. “Maybe you could give us a few minutes alone,” she said.

“Sure thing,” they answered, in grateful unison. In the next minute, the front door opened again, a square of light reappearing on the living room carpet and the outside noise resurging. The detectives left and shut the door only partway behind them, and they stood on the stoop. In the next second, Anne smelled cigarette smoke wafting through the open front door. She moved closer to the landing, and her gaze returned to Mary.

“I mean, Bennie, do you see this?” Mary was stretching a small hand toward the entrance hall, and Anne could see the trembling of her fingers. “There’s blood all over it. But we’re standing here, the three of us, talking like it’s a case or something. But it’s Anne we’re talking about!” Her voice rose, thinning out with anxiety. “Anne Murphy was killed here! Not a client, one of us! And she’s gone! Murdered! Did you both forget that?”

Wow! Upstairs, Anne stood transfixed by the outburst. It was so unlike Mary to criticize anybody, much less Bennie and Judy, and they looked completely astonished.

Judy stopped stroking Mary’s back. “We know it’s her, Mary. We didn’t forget that. We’re here trying to figure out who did this, to bring him in.”

“What’s the difference?” Mary shouted. “We can find the guy, but it doesn’t bring her back. She’s dead, and you know what? We didn’t know the first thing about her. We worked with her for a year and we never even got to know her. I dated Jack for two months and knew more about him!”

“We were busy,” Judy said, defensive. “We were working. We had the Dufferman trial, then Witco. Maybe that’s why you’re upset, because of your breakup—”

“That’s not it, it’s Anne! It’s Murphy, whatever she wants to be called. Wanted to be called.”

“Murphy,” Judy supplied, but Bennie was shaking her head.

“No, I think she went by that because I called her that. I think. She introduced herself as Anne, at her interview.”

“Whatever!” Mary exploded. “It’s us! We didn’t make the time for her! We didn’t even try. We don’t even know her name. She told us she had a date tonight. Did she? Who was the date? Is he the killer? We don’t even know! And now it turns out she had a stalker who tried to kill her last year, and who she even prosecuted! We never even knew that!”

Judy looked defensive. “Murphy kept it all a secret, she was so private—”

“What about the motion, Judy? She wasn’t keeping that so private. She brought a stripper into court, and we had to learn it from the news! She probably wanted to tell us when she came to my office last night, but we cut her off!” Mary’s eyes welled up again, but she blinked them clear. “We’re supposed to be an all-woman firm, what a joke! We don’t even support each other. What’s the difference between us, anyway? Men or women, in the end we acted just like lawyers.”

“You’re just feeling guilty, Mare.”

“I agree! I feel very guilty! And you know what, I should! You should, too!” Mary turned on her best friend, beside her on the couch. “You know what the truth is, Jude? You never liked Murphy. Anne. Whatever. You didn’t like her at all. That’s why you’re not upset.”

Whoa. Anne was shocked. She felt like she shouldn’t be watching, but she couldn’t