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He grabbed my hand and helped me step around the splatter before shutting the door. Then he returned to the stairwell, and I followed him to the car.
“Are you going to tell me what we just did?” I asked. “Or are questions off limits at the moment?”
“We helped our client, Miss Tanner.” He pulled onto the street.
“Is our client amurderer?”
“I don’t defend murderers.”
“The man on the floor in there might think otherwise if he were still alive.”
“He’s been dead for four hours.” He paused. “Someone hit him in the head with a baseball bat.”
“Our client, right?”
“The prosecutor will probably think so.”
Sirens sounded behind us, and I watched blue and white lights dancing in the rearview mirror.
I shook my head as the cop cars pulled in front of the same building we’d left. Within seconds, dozens of uniformed officers rushed inside.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not sure why you have a client list full of shady people, but I draw the line at doing stuff like this.”
“Stuff likewhat, Miss Tanner?”
“Lying.”
“So, only lies about fake recommendations are acceptable in your world?”
“That’s a victimless crimes.”
“Tell that to the person who might’ve deserved your spot,” he said. “Everyone is willing to break the law the moment it benefits them.”
I held back a sigh. “We just walked all over a crime scene and took away what looked like evidence.”
“I don’t remember doing that.” His voice was deadpan.
“It’s obvious that whoever you were talking to did this and they deserve to go to prison.”
“Maybe.” He made a right turn. “Sometimes the guilty people win and the innocent people lose. I’m trying to never lose.”
“But how can you sleep at night if you ever have a hand in putting an innocent person away? Or letting a guilty person walk free?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mr. Hamilton’s legacy is thatno oneis above the law,” I said. “So, if our client is responsible for the scene I saw in there, I’m legally obligated to—”
“Our client is a rape victim who wasn’t aware that her ex-husband made parole this week.” He looked over at me. “He came over yesterday and beat the hell out of her with a pistol, then he sodomized her with a baseball bat, all before telling her he was coming back to finish the job in the morning. So, she decided to beat him to it. What would be justice in this situation for her, Miss Tanner? Should we work hard to get her sent to prison?”
I said nothing.
“I thought so.” He switched lanes. “The law isn’t black and white. It’s an ugly hue of grey.”
Damien leanedover and unbuckled my seatbelt around midnight.
We were sitting outside a luxury hotel in the West End for another stakeout. Besides him asking me if I was too hot or cold, we hadn’t said much of anything to each other.
I was still silently mulling over his earlier words, and his phone was practically a never-ending hotline for clients.
