AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not his lawyer.”
“When did he really leave that night? It’s not something I can use. Just something I need to know.”
Somehow the cold out here is making my neck stiffen up. Or maybe it’s simply the tension of the moment. I move my head from side to side to loosen it. Then do it again.
“What’s wrong?” she says.
“My sister is a pain in my neck. When did he leave?”
“When I said he did.”
“You know Kevin Ahearn isn’t nearly done with you, right?” I say. “He’s going to come back at you again tomorrow, and keep coming, and keep making you tell him why it took this long for you to come up with your latest alibi.”
“You should have worried about Kevin Ahearn coming after me when you were the one who wanted to put me on the stand in the first place.”
I tell her we’re done, then. I’ve got nothing more to say to her, start walking toward the road, the beginning of my walk home.
But then I turn around and come back, straight into the wind. A feeling becoming more and more familiar to me.
“You know that you might be helping get a murderer off, right?” I say to my sister.
“Well, then, Miss High and Mighty,” Brigid says, “that would make two of us, wouldn’t it?”
Jimmy’s waiting for me on my front porch when I finally make it back to the house.
“What?” I ask.
“I had a crazy thought about our client.”
I grin at him. “You’ve come to the right place, then. I’m the mayor of Crazytown.”
Jimmy says, “What if he did them all?”
Ninety-Six
“YOU’RE BLEEDING,” I SAYto Jimmy when we’re inside.
He’s wearing his old leather jacket, his favorite article of clothing, a white T-shirt underneath. His midsection is still bandaged—I can see the bulge from under the shirt—and now there is a small red stain seeping through.
“So I am,” Jimmy says casually, looking down. “No thing. I was always a bit of a bleeder when I was still boxing.”
“Maybe you overdid it today. Have you considered that, tough guy?” I ask. “Your shoulder wound has barely healed from the first time you got shot.”
“I’m starting to lose track, I get shot so often.”
“You want me to change your bandage?” I ask.
“You’re a lawyer, not a doctor. If I popped a stitch, I’d feel it. I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can see you’re in pain.”
“And you’re being one,” Jimmy says.
I grin. “I just told my sister the same thing a little while ago.”
“You wanna play doctor or you wanna talk about our client?” He leans back a little in his chair, as if to make himself slightly more comfortable.
“You honestly think he might have had something to do with what happened to the Carsons?”
