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The silver bell sounded again and I roused myself, turning away from the glare of the happenstance pedestrian. I ambled into the receptionist’s room, which my daughter occupied every day after school.

The front door to the office was locked, of course. I only ever felt secure behind locked doors.

The electronic eye above the hall-side doorsill transmitted an image to the small monitor panel on the wall. It was a slender young white woman, dressed in blues and whites. Her dress was only vaguely businesslike. She was carrying a brown leather briefcase and pulling a carry-on gray fabric travel bag.

Looking up at the lens, she had the beauty of youth…and the sorrow too.

“Who is it?” I said into the speaker system.

“Willa Portman. Is this the detective Joe Oliver?”

I pulled the door open and she gasped as if something shocking had happened.

“We had a four o’clock, right?” I said.

“Y-yes. I’m a few minutes early.”

“I have a friend who always tells me that whenever he gets there he’s right on time.”

She smiled and, pulling the wheeled travel bag, walked into the office.

“Right this way,” I said, gesturing toward my private door.

“Where’s Aja?” my prospective client asked.

“She’s a high school student, should be in any minute.”

Willa gave me a worried look but then went through the door to my office.

My workplace is a fairly small room with a high white plaster ceiling and one huge floor-to-ceiling window. The walls are brick and the floor dark wood. My desk is an ash table with no drawers. I don’t keep supplies or records in my office; Aja’s much larger room is the repository for files and office materials.

“Have a seat,” I said to the nervous girl.

She considered the request a moment, then sat on one of the ash chairs set out for visitors.

“It’s an unusual office,” she said, her head moving from side to side.

“Why are you so jumpy?”

“Um. I don’t know, I mean, I guess being here means that I’m really going to do this. You know when you just think about doing something it still isn’t quite real.”

“I know what you mean,” I said with more feeling than I intended.

Willa, I believe, heard the honesty in my tone, and this seemed to relax her.

“My name is Willa Portman.”

“You said that already.”

“I’m an intern doing research work for Stuart Braun.”

“Stuart Braun. Now, that’s a big deal.”

“Yeah,” she said through a sneer. “He is a big deal, a very important lawyer for those people no one else cares about.”

Stuart Braun was the radical lawyer-celeb who was representing A Free Man, a black militant journalist who had been arrested for the killing of two police officers three years earlier. Born Leonard Compton, Man was found seriously wounded a few blocks from the shoot-out, in the Far West Village. The gun he had on him was the one used in killing the officers. The bullets had passed clean through his body, so the guns that shot him could not be identified.

Man refused to implicate anyone else who might have been with him that night and denied having anything to do with any murders. He was facing the death penalty, which New York State provides for cop killers. He showed no remorse and, in general, refused to cooperate with the police or prosecutors.