Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver

from outer space. Holding Pitkin's eye, Williams continued, 'I've seen people play 'em and it doesn't seem that hard. I mean, that's just my opinion, you know.'

'Mr. Williams, one more question…'

Tony Vincenzo pushed outside into the night, where the fog was gone and the rain had finally started to fall — steadily and chill but oddly quiet. The night was still peaceful. Jean Marie would be asleep, but he still wanted to get home. Have a beer, put on a CD. Tony knew what he wanted to listen to. Mozart was good. Smokey Robinson was better.

Lesser-Included Offense

'You're gonna lose this one.'

'Am I, now?' asked Prosecutor Danny Tribow, rocking back in his desk chair and studying the man who'd just spoken.

Fifteen years older and forty pounds heavier than Tribow, the defendant Raymond Hartman nodded slowly and added, 'On all counts. Simple as that.'

The man next to Hartman touched his client's arm to restrain him.

'Ah, he doesn't mind a little sparring,' Hartman said to his lawyer. 'He can take it. Anyway, I'm just telling it like it is.' The defendant unbuttoned his navy suit jacket, blue and rich as an ocean at night.

The truth was that Tribow didn't mind sparring. Not one bit. The man could say whatever he wanted. Tribow wasn't going to prosecute the case against Hartman any more vigorously because of the man's arrogance than he would've held back if the man had been tearful and contrite.

On the other hand, the thirty-five-year-old career prosecutor wasn't going to get walked on either. He fixed his eye on Hartman's and said in a soft voice, 'It's been my experience that what looks pretty clear to one person may turn out to be the opposite. I'm convinced the jury's going to see the facts my way. Which means you're going to lose.'

Hartman shrugged and looked at his gold Rolex watch. He couldn't've cared less about the time, Tribow suspected. He was simply delivering an aside: that this one piece of jewelry of mine equals your annual salary.

Danny Tribow wore a Casio and the only message a glance at that timepiece would deliver was that this meeting had been a waste of a good half hour.

In addition to the defendant, his lawyer and Tribow, two other people sat in the office, which was as small and shabby as one would expect for a district attorney's. On Tribow's left was his law clerk, a handsome man in his twenties, Chuck Wu, who was a brilliant, meticulous — some said compulsive — worker. He now leaned forward, typing notes and observations about this meeting into the battered laptop computer he was inseparable from. The keyboarding was a habit that drove most defendants nuts but it had no apparent effect on Ray Hartman.

The other one of the fivesome was Adele Viamonte, the assistant DA who'd been assigned to Tribow in the violent felonies division for the past year. She was almost ten years older than Tribow; she'd picked up her interest in law later in life after a successful first career: raising twin boys, now teenagers. Viamonte's mind and tongue were as sharp as her confidence was solid. She now looked over Hartman's tanned skin, taut belly, silvery hair, broad shoulders and thick neck. She then turned to his lawyer and asked, 'So can we assume that this meeting with Mr. Hartman and his ego is over with?'

Hartman gave a faint, embarrassed laugh, as if a student had said something awkward in class, the put-down motivated solely because, the prosecutor guessed, Viamonte was a woman.

The defense lawyer repeated what he'd been saying all along. 'My client isn't interested in a plea bargain that involves jail time.'

Tribow echoed his own litany. 'But that's all we're offering.'

'Then he wants to go to trial. He's confident he'll be found innocent.'

Tribow didn't know how that was going to happen. Ray Hartman had shot a man in the head one Sunday afternoon last March. There was physical evidence — ballistics, gunpowder residue on his hand. There were witnesses who placed him at the scene, searching for the victim just before the death. There were reports of earlier threats by Hartman and statements of intent to cause the victim harm. There was a motive. While Danny Tribow was always guarded about the outcomes of the cases he prosecuted, this was as solid as any he'd ever had.

And so he tried one last time. 'If you accept murder two I'll recommend fifteen years.'

'No way,' Hartman responded, laughing at the absurdity of the suggestion. 'You didn't hear my shyster here. No jail time. I'll pay a fine. I'll pay a big goddamn fine. I'll do community service. But no jail time.'

Daniel Tribow was a slight man, unflappable and soft-spoken. He would have looked right at home in a bow tie and suspenders. 'Sir,' he said now, speaking directly to Hartman, 'you understand I'm going to prosecute you for premeditated murder. In this state that's a special circumstances crime — meaning I can seek the death penalty.'

'What I understand is that I don't see much point in continuing this little get-together. I've got a lunch date waiting and, if you ask me, you boys and girls better bone up on your law — you sure as hell need to if you think you're getting me convicted.'

'If that's what you want, sir.' Tribow stood. He shook the lawyer's hand though not the suspect's. Adele Viamonte glanced at both lawyer and client as if they were clerks who'd shortchanged her and remained seated, apparently struggling to keep from saying what she really felt.

* * *

When they were gone Tribow sat back in his chair. He spun to look out the window at the rolling countryside of suburbia, bright green with early summer colors. Tribow played absently with the only artwork in his office: a baby's mobile of Winnie-the-Pooh characters, stuck to his chipped credenza top with a suction cup. It was his son's — well, had been, when the boy, now ten, was an infant. When Danny Junior had lost interest in the mobile, his father didn't have the heart to throw it away and brought it here to the office. His wife thought this was one of those silly things he did sometimes, like his infamous practical jokes or dressing up in costumes for his son's parties. Tribow didn't tell her that he wanted the toy here for one reason only: to remind him of his family during those long weeks preparing for and prosecuting cases, when it seemed that the only family he had were judges, jurors, detectives and colleagues.

He now mused, 'I offer him ten years against a possible special-circumstances murder and he says he'll take his chances? I don't get it.'

Viamonte shook her head. 'Nope. Doesn't add up. He'd be out in seven. If he loses on special circumstances — and that's likely — he could get the needle.'

'How 'bout the answer?' a man's voice asked from the doorway.

'Sure.' Tribow spun around in the chair and nodded Richard Moyer, a senior county detective, into the room. 'Only what's the question?'

Moyer waved greetings to Viamonte and Wu and sat down in a chair, yawning excessively.

'So, Dick, bored with us already?' Wu asked wryly.

'Tired. Too many bad guys out there. Anyway, I overheard what you were saying — about Hartman. I know why he won't take the plea.'

'Why's that?'

'He can't go into Stafford.' The main state prison, through which had passed a number of graduates of the Daniel Tribow School of Criminal Prosecution.

'Who wants to go to prison?' Viamonte asked.

'No, no, I mean he can't. They're already sharpening spoon handles and grinding down glass shivs, waiting for him.'

Moyer continued, explaining that two of the OC — organized crime — bosses that Hartman had snitched on were in Stafford now. 'Word's out that Hartman wouldn't last a week inside.'

So that was why he'd killed the victim in this case, Jose Valdez. The poor man had been the sole witness against Hartman in an extortion case. If Hartman had been convicted of that he'd have gone