on the water.”
“They were right.”
“But I wasn’t sure you’d speak to me if I just showed up at your door,” she said. “So I’m sorry for ambushing you like this.”
“Sorry enough to just paddle away?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Not that sorry.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“I’m a lawyer,” Darcy said.
“Congratulations.”
“You’re a private investigator, correct?”
“Yep. But I’m not for hire.”
“Why not?”
I dipped my hands into the water and then ran them along my arms, goose bumps forming on my skin. I thought about throwing out all my reasons, but she hadn’t done anything to earn that knowledge. “Because I’m surfing at the moment.”
She stared hard at me for a moment, the intensity of her eyes matching the looming clouds above us. Then she made a face like she didn’t care. “That’s fine.”
“Now will you swim away?”
“In a minute,” Darcy said. “If you’ll answer one question for me.”
“One question and you’ll leave me alone?”
“One question.”
I didn’t believe her, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. “Alright.”
“How do you feel about the death penalty?” she asked.
I looked at her like she’d grown a dorsal fin. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
I squinted into the blue-gray sky to the west. “That’s your one question?”
“Yeah.”
I laughed, then shrugged. “Okay. I’m in favor of it. Goodbye, Darcy Gill.”
“Why are you in favor of it?” she asked.
“No, no. That’s two questions.”
“Come on,” she said. “You already told me you aren’t for hire. Just answer me.”
I resented her interrupting my quiet afternoon, but I wasn’t ready to get off the water yet. And drowning her would have been too obvious.
“Fine,” I said. “I support the death penalty because I believe that there are some people who simply don’t belong on the planet. They aren’t here to do anything other than damage the world.”
“I agree that some people aren’t fit for this world,” she said, “but it doesn’t mean killing a person is correct.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “But that’s the way the world works, and that’s my opinion.”
“I have a client on death row,” she said. “His execution date is in a month.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, watching the water spill off the jetty. “But I’m gonna assume that your client may have done something that justified his current position.”
“He did,” she said. “He killed two other men.”
“There you go.”
“The problem for me, Mr. Braddock, is that my client won’t talk to me,” she said. “He’s willing to accept the punishment. But I’m not.”
“Isn’t that his choice?” I said.
“Maybe,” she answered. “But I don’t believe in the death penalty, and it’s my job to see if I can change his sentence.”
I sat there, the last of the sun beating down on my shoulders, knowing there was more to this conversation.
“You said you didn’t care that I wasn’t for hire,” I said.
“I lied,” she said, smiling, exposing a slight gap between her two front teeth.
“Then you’ve wasted your time,” I said as I lay down on the board.
“I think I can change your mind,” she said.
I started paddling in. “Then you’re wrong.”
