“Here? At the station?”
“We can hold arraignments here, especially with the press outside. I don’t want to fight them off, do you?”
“But where’s the courtroom?”
“There is none. We hold it right here.” Then he opened a door off the room and there were three jail cells side by side. Two of the cells were empty, but sitting on a skinny bed in the middle cell was the Honorable Fiske Harlan Hamilton.
Fiske looked up when he saw me, and I caught a tense expression, quickly masked. “Rita, how good of you to come.”
“Of course I’d come,” I said, taken aback at the incongruity of the scene. I’d seen Fiske most often in his library, now he was in a prison cell. I’d seen him in a judge’s black robes, now he wore a prisoner’s white paper jumpsuit. It seemed unreal.
“Judge Hamilton, you okay in there?” asked Lieutenant Dunstan.
“Fine, sir,” Fiske said. “Will Rita be able to come in with me?”
Lieutenant Dunstan hesitated. “We don’t normally allow that. It’s more a security matter. You understand, the procedures and all.”
“Understood, sir,” Fiske said. “Thank you very much.”
“I’ll come fetch you when the district justice gets here,” Dunstan said, and closed the door with a harsh
We were alone. At a moment like this in the Morrone family, a display of Academy Award histrionics would have taken place, if not some respectable summer-stock hugging and weeping. But the Hamiltons were not the Morrones, there would be no Verdi in the background today. I stepped closer to the bars, but Fiske stood motionless behind an insignia for VAN DORN IRON WORKS. We regarded each other for a minute.
“Do you know
“Was Ann-Margret in it?”
“‘Here’s a pretty mess,’” he sang.
Singing? I searched his face. Close up, he looked grim, in need of cheering up. “I’m gonna bust you outta here, Mr. Big.”
“Yeah?” he said, playing along as well as good breeding allowed. “How?”
I held up my briefcase. “See dis? All you have to do is eat it. I baked a file inside.”
“What a plan.” He dropped the accent, so I did, too.
“You get what you pay for.”
“Does this mean I have a criminal lawyer?”
“No, you’re stuck with me.”
He brightened. “Are you staying on? Truly? I want to pay you, you know. I insist on it.”
“Forget it. I’m yours despite the fact that you called Mack on me.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No perhaps about it, Fiske.”
He paused. “Did he tell you to represent me? Is that why you changed your mind?”
“I’m here on one condition. We have to have an agreement, you and I. You have to tell me the truth from now on. With everything, every detail, no matter how small. The very next lie, I’m outta here and you get a lawyer who knows what she’s doing.” It sounded less threatening than I’d hoped.
“I agree.”
“Pinky swear?” I held up my pinky. “Hold up your finger. I make all my felons do it.”
“I swear to God, Rita.”
“That’ll have to do. Now what do I do at the arraignment? Act like I know what I’m doing?”
“Yes.”
“My specialty. Did you get this affidavit they’re talking about? What’s it say?”
He repeated what Dunstan had told me, about the witness ID, the black Jaguar, and the license plate. Then he mentioned the fingerprints.
“What fingerprints?” I asked him, surprised.
He retrieved some papers from his bed and thrust them at me through the bars. “My fingerprints were found at Patricia’s carriage house. In the living room.”
Shit. I skimmed the affidavit, which stated in general terms what I already knew.
“You know why, Rita, I told you Patricia and I had met there once or twice. But I wasn’t prepared to tell the police why my prints were there. That’s when they decided to charge me.”
Stupid. “Fiske, how could you let them question you without a lawyer?”
He stiffened. “I am a lawyer, and I didn’t commit a murder. I had nothing to be afraid of, I didn’t need anybody to hide behind. And it wasn’t my car either. It couldn’t have been.”
“GARDEN-2? A vanity plate on a vanity car?”
“It’s my plate, but it wasn’t my car. I took my car to work that day. I parked it under the courthouse, in the secured lot. Nobody could have gotten it out but me.”
“But Patricia was murdered at the end of the day and you took it out around five o’clock. The police were underwhelmed by your alibi.”
He faltered. “I went for a drive. I told you that.”
So fucking lame. “Work with me on this, would you?”
“But it’s the truth, I swear it! I went for a drive. I needed to think.” His voice rose, and I considered the wisdom of discussing his alibi here. Or discussing it at all.
“We’ll discuss it later,” I said.
He ran a veined hand through silvered hair. “Does the press know about the witness?”
“I doubt it, but they know you’ve been arrested. They’re outside right now. I tried to run them over but there were too many.”
“So it’s public.”
“Very.”
“I can’t believe this, Rita,” he said, then looked down at his hands. On each fingerpad was a black smudge. “This is a nightmare.”
“Buck up. Your mug shot’s got to be better than your driver’s license. Now, we have to get you out of here. Then I want to cram criminal law. You can quiz me.”
“No. We have to get to the carriage house. I want to see it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We should view the crime scene as soon as possible.”
I knew that. “Wait a minute, Fiske. First I plan to get you out of jail, then I plan to get you acquitted. How I get from point A to point B I haven’t figured out.”
He squeezed the iron bars like a born convict. “But the best way to prove me innocent is to catch the real killer.”
“Take it a step at a time. I’ll bail you out, then I’ll go to the crime scene. You’ll go home and take care of Kate.”
“But I should go with you.”
“Would you take a client with you, in my position? Of course not. At least not initially.”
“But-”
