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Brilstein paused, and then looked around as if surprised to find he was only in his office. He smiled and sat back in his chair, retrieving the legal pad from the floor. “Once I get the whole True Mentor thing into the record, I can sure as hell make the court believe your husband had enemies.” He nodded to himself, glancing down at the legal pad and tapping the pencil again.
And then, just as abruptly, he frowned. “But the boyfriend,” he said. He looked up at her, and to Katrina he seemed worried. “Your boyfriend is the wild card here, Katrina. In the first place, just having a boyfriend does not look good—to some of these people, adultery is halfway to murder.”
Katrina felt a lump growing in her stomach. She swallowed but said nothing. Until she’d met Randall, she would have agreed.
“Worse than that—apparently, he walked into the police station and confessed that he killed your husband.”
“Oh my God!” Katrina said. Her heart and stomach seemed to collide, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t even thought of it before—but it made a kind of terrible sense. Randall would think he was protecting her, and . . .
“He didn’t,” Brilstein said.
Katrina blinked at the attorney. “. . . What?” she managed.
“He didn’t kill your husband,” Brilstein said patiently. “For whatever reason, they’re pretty sure of that.”
“Of course not—oh, that idiot . . .” Just hearing what he had done made her more certain than ever that he couldn’t possibly have killed Michael. She found that she was actually smiling. It was so sweet of Randall—to try to take the blame for her.
“It’s not a good thing, Katrina,” Brilstein said. “Now that they have him, they’re not going to let go of him. They’ll want him to testify, and we don’t know what he’ll say on the stand. And the DA will put him on the stand, I’d bet my life on it.”
“He won’t—I mean, Randall would never—”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Brilstein said, and for the first time he sounded irritated—with her. “Until now. You have no idea the kind of pressure they can put on somebody—and if it’s a question of testify or take fifteen years in the slammer, you can bet even Vito Corleone would sing like a lark. No, you better get used to the idea that he will testify against you.”
The lump in Katrina’s stomach lurched upward and then settled back down twice as big as it had been. She would have bet her life on Randall, but when Brilstein explained it like that . . . And after all, how well did she really know Randall Miller? She knew he was gentle and cultured—and wouldn’t a man like that do anything to avoid the horrors of prison life?
“So there’s that. And in addition, we may have something sudden and unexpected thrown at us, and there’s no way to stop it or be ready for it.” He closed his eyes, sighed deeply, opened them again. “Still, there’s hope here.” He gave her a reassuring half smile. “I have won cases that were a lot worse, and that’s the truth. But this one—” He shrugged. “I won’t lie to you. It’s an uphill fight.”
Katrina: “But that’s—I mean, I really am innocent—”
Brilstein waved that away as if it were an annoying plume of smoke. “Of course you are. All my clients are innocent. That has nothing to do with this case, or any case.” He looked at her like he was studying her for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s like this, Katrina. The court will want to believe you killed your husband.” He raised a hand to cut off her automatic objection. “Because you are rich, good-looking, have a lot of money—and on top of that, you’re rich.” He shrugged. “For some reason, that never gets any sympathy. And it makes reasonable doubt a lot harder.”
“I give a lot to charity,” Katrina said meekly.
Brilstein laughed. “And we will absolutely keep that off the record.”
“What? Why? I thought that would be good!”
“Oh, it’s splendid,” Brilstein said in a voice rich with irony. “But the moment we tell them, ‘My client gave $4 million to charity last year!’ every single person on the jury will think, ‘More than I make my whole life. And that bitch can afford to throw it away like it’s nothing.’”
“. . . Oh . . . ,” Katrina said.
Brilstein sighed, ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I have a feeling it all hinges on the security system. We can create reasonable doubt by underlining that it was off and some bad actor got in. But if the DA finds a way to counter that, to make the court believe that it was actually turned on the whole time—” He took a deep breath. “Well, in that case, we hope for the old Brilstein Luck to kick in.”
“Jesus Christ,” Katrina blurted. “We’re going to depend on luck?!”
“Yes,” Brilstein said quite seriously. “One of the cops breaks the evidence chain. One of the witnesses says something contradictory. The prosecution asks the wrong question.” He waved a hand to indicate an infinite number of possibilities. “A lot of things happen in the course of a trial. Wild cards. You just have to recognize them when they turn up and be ready to take advantage.”
“Jesus Christ,” Katrina said again. She found it hard to believe that Brilstein was admitting that her life—her actual, literal life—depended on blind chance. If he didn’t have the reputation of being the best, she would have fired him on the spot.
“It’s not so bad as that,” Brilstein said, sensing her despair. “When I say ‘luck,’ what I really mean is ‘instinctive intelligence based on experience.’” He patted the folder and nodded. “There will be an opening. And I will see it and jump in. This I promise.” And he raised his right hand as if swearing an oath. Then he dropped his hand, paused, and shook his head. “But the boyfriend . . . ,” he said.
As if it had been a cue, the phone on Brilstein’s desk buzzed, loud and annoying, and Brilstein glared at it. “For the love of— I said no interruptions, and—” He took a breath and picked up the receiver. “This better be good,” he said.
Apparently, it was good. Brilstein looked startled, glanced at Katrina, and then snatched up a pencil and legal pad and began jotting down notes. “Uh-huh . . . Okay—and what time was this? . . . Where is he now? . . . Okay, all right, good. Get me the contact information, will you please, Caitlin? Thanks.”
Brilstein hung up the phone and looked thoughtfully at his notes. Katrina watched him, feeling only an anxious uncertainty. She was half sure the call had been about her, about her case—she would have to get used to thinking of it that way. But there was no way to tell from Brilstein’s expression whether it was positive or very bad.
“Well, well,” he said at last. “Well, well, well . . .” He put the pad down in his lap, looked up at Katrina, and oddly, he smiled. “In fact,” he said, “very well.”
