Trace Of Doubt. Erica Orloff

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СКАЧАТЬ favorite waiter, Huang, came over, and I ordered sake and Lewis ordered a ginger ale.

      “Well?” Joe asked, using his chopsticks to pick up a piece of cucumber from one of the small spicy salads offered in sample-size dishes when customers sat down.

      I told him about receiving the letter.

      “You better be careful,” he intoned. “You know, we nearly lost you on the Suicide King case. Have you thought about—”

      “Don’t say it,” I snapped.

      “I was just going to suggest Tommy Salami.”

      “I know. And I’m not interested in being babysat by Mr. Salami. I think I’ll go to the firing range instead.” I had, after the Suicide King case, gotten a carry-and-conceal permit. But I was still unsure as to whether I really wanted to carry a weapon.

      Joe leaned back. He was dressed in one of his usual custom suits—you don’t find clothes for an NFL physique in a standard department store. He had his shirts hand-tailored by a former Hong Kong shirtmaker, right down to the JRF embroidered on the cuff in elegant script. “This is getting tiring sometimes. Dealing with this shit.”

      “It’s not the penthouse boardroom of some NFL team headquarters,” I said. “It’s the ugly and dirty side of life.”

      “Yeah. Well, I for one am tired of dealing with murderers and prisons. And I miss C.C.” He looked at Lewis. “And not in the way you miss C.C. I just miss her calming presence. She was my anchor, man.”

      “How’s Vanessa?” Lewis asked. He and I hated her. She and Joe started dating three months before. She was an entertainment reporter for a television tabloid show. She was stunning—and ambitious. And Vanessa clearly had no use for Lewis and me. The two of us wondered what Joe saw in her beyond her obvious beauty.

      “She’s after me to shut down the foundation and, swear to God, take a stab at politics.”

      I exchanged glances with Lewis. I could just see Vanessa taking over Gracie Mansion with Joe as mayor of New York City.

      “You wouldn’t do that, would you?” I found I was grateful for my hot sake, which had arrived, and I downed the first cup, then another.

      “I won’t say I haven’t thought about it.”

      “What about Marcus Hopkins? What about men like him?” I asked Joe.

      “I know. I haven’t made any decisions yet, honest. I wish C.C. was here, though, to talk things over with.” He paused. “You going to visit Marcus Sunday?”

      I nodded. “I feel like I have to make the drive. David told me the worst thing in prison when you’re innocent is the lack of hope. You just feel like it’s a never-ending nightmare from which you can’t wake up.”

      The three of us ordered sushi and spent the rest of the dinner discussing the Hopkins case, plus looking at files and applications of other possible cases to take on. I lost track of how much sake I drank. All I know is Lewis kept signaling for another one of those cute little sake bottles, and I kept filling my tiny ceramic cup. By the time dinner was over, I was definitely feeling less pain over the stress of getting the letter.

      Lewis drove me to my apartment. Before I met David, I regularly crashed on Lewis’s couch. Now I made sure I got home most nights. Before I climbed out, he took my hand in his.

      “Be careful, Billie.”

      “I will.”

      “If it’s your mother’s killer, he wants to play some sort of game with you. Cat and mouse. And guess which part you’re supposed to play? The mouse.”

      “Yeah, well, I’ve spent enough time with The Mob that I’m more like a very street-smart rat. You don’t want to mess with a Jersey rat.”

      I exited the car and opened the door to my building and let myself in to my apartment. David was asleep in bed. I sometimes wondered if, after prison, with its inherent lack of privacy, he slept better when I wasn’t in the bed next to him.

      Bo came over to me and accepted a few pats. My cat slunk over and nudged his head against my knee. The two of them got along surprisingly well.

      I flicked on the light in the kitchen and opened the fridge and poured myself a tall glass of apple juice. I was convinced hydration was the secret to avoiding a hangover. I opened a cabinet and took out three Advil. Hydration and over-the-counter pain relievers. I hoped I wouldn’t hate the morning too much.

      But they didn’t have a pain reliever for what was really bothering me.

      Lewis was considering leaving the lab for stardom on the boob tube.

      Joe was considering shutting down the foundation for his ambitious girlfriend’s career plans for him.

      C.C. was still MIA.

      My father was considering selling my childhood home.

      My brother was again dabbling in the same sort of things that got him arrested before.

      And my mother’s killer had decided I would make a nice mouse.

      No, there wasn’t a pill big enough to fix what was wrong with my life.

      Chapter 5

      I trained my gun on the paper silhouette at the end of the firing range. Six shots later I had nailed my target square between the eyes, twice in the heart, once in the belly, once in the shoulder and once pretty close to where his family jewels might be.

      I knew I was a good shot. What troubled me was knowing that if I ever came face-to-face with someone, conditions wouldn’t be like the firing range, where I could concentrate and focus and aim ever so accurately. Guns were my father’s and Mikey’s territory, not mine. When I fired my handgun, I usually pictured myself coolly facing down my mother’s killer, channeling my anguish into something powerful and calculatingly devastating.

      I took off my ear muffs and safety glasses, put my gun in its holster and checked my watch. It was time to go home. David and I had made plans to take Bo to the park.

      As I left the firing range, I thought about Marcus’s case. And my mother’s. DNA isn’t done on every case. Now, more and more, it is, but there just isn’t enough money—particularly if you have a public defender, like Marcus did. Sometimes, in old cases, tests weren’t done simply because they didn’t exist at the time, or because the advances in technology were too new. For instance, now we can test with smaller fragments of DNA than ten years ago. The specimen doesn’t have to be as pure. The tiny drop of blood found in Marcus’s case didn’t belong to him or his victim. It opened a window for his possible release.

      I walked the five blocks to my car. I had parked it down a side street. The neighborhood wasn’t the best; it was a warehouse district, and Saturday left it abandoned. I instinctively shook my head to clear my mind and pay better attention. I walked taller and deliberately appeared more confident. I had been in plenty of seedy bars in tough parts of town with Dad and Mikey. If you don’t look for trouble, but don’t appear afraid, you’re more likely to be left alone.

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