Jason Pinter - The Guilty

I nodded, picked at a piece of penne. On many nights I'd told Amanda how proud I was of her-both her work ethic and choice of profession. After graduation, Amanda had passed her bar exam and achieved high enough marks to warrant a position in the Juvenile Rights Division of the New

York Legal Aid Society. The caseload for lawyers working for the Legal Aid Society had increased nearly a hundred percent in the last few years, mainly due to some high-profile cases of child abuse and neglect that resulted in the horrific death of children who had slipped through the cracks. The Legal

Aid Society had taken a beating in the press for their alleged inability to protect children whose parents were already the recipients of numerous abuse complaints. Because of this they were looking for fresh blood, cowboys and cowgirls who wouldn't stand for red tape.

Amanda worked long hours, alongside several other lawyers who were appointed "law guardians" by the court. It was incredibly enriching work for her, I knew. But spending all day every day around troubled and abused children took its toll.

Sometimes she would come home, crawl into bed and appear on the verge of tears. She was too strong for that, though. She knew her tears were trivial compared to the reality of the situation. And her energy was better focused outward than in.

"You know, I sit there sometimes," she continued, "and I want to scream. Not that I really hate the guys I work for, but in these cases you need to throw the book against the wall and just holler. Right and wrong doesn't stem from legal precedent."

I felt her staring at me, waiting for a response. I didn't want to talk about my day, but had to bite my tongue not to erupt. I hated making Amanda feel like my troubles were any more important than hers, but I couldn't focus on anything but this story.

"I have a lot of work for tomorrow," I said. "I'm pretty sure whoever's responsible for these murders is using an antique rifle or a replica, something that hasn't been used in a long time. There are thirty-two gun shops in the five boroughs alone, so I have my work cut out for me."

"You should talk to Agnes Trimble," Amanda said, sighing, wiping her mouth as a tomato spurted juice onto her plate. "She was my American History professor at NYU. Brilliant woman, but she scared the hell out of us during student conferences.

She kept half a dozen model guns in her office, you know, like some people keep snow globes or toy fire trucks. She knows more about guns than Al Gore knows about the environment.

Belongs to the NRA, all that good stuff. I can call her if you'd like, she should be in the city for the next few weeks and I'm sure she'd be happy to talk to you. Who knows, maybe she can help."

"Actually, yeah. That'd be a huge help," I said. "Thanks."

Pinter, Jason – Henry Parker 02

The Guilty (2008)

"No problem."

We sat there in silence as I listened to Amanda chew.

"Did you see him die?" she asked me. There was a corner of lettuce sticking out of her mouth.

"No," I said. "I just saw what happened afterward."

Amanda chewed more.

"You don't want to know," I said.

"No," she replied. "Guess I don't."

As I got up and tossed the rest of my dinner into the garbage, the buzzer rang.

"Are you expecting anyone?" she asked. For a moment, my heart hammered. I could picture Mya waiting downstairs.

"No," I said. Amanda looked at me for a moment, surely knew what I was thinking. We walked to the window.

Though we had no doorman to announce visitors, our apartment overlooked the building's entrance vestibule. Handier than an eye slot.

I grunted and heaved the window open, reminding myself to wipe down the grease and grime later, and poked my head outside. Looking down, I saw a man wearing a gray trenchcoat and hat. He looked up.

"Let me the hell up, will you?"

"Who is it?" Amanda asked.

"It's Jack," I said with more than an ounce of relief. I closed the window and pressed the door release button.

"Doesn't he have his own home? What's he doing here at this hour?"

"I have no idea." I'd worked with Jack for over a year, and never once had we seen each other's apartments. I pictured his clean, full of polished wood and cracked books.

Shelves lined with erudite literature and snifters of amber liquid, a fire roaring as he puffed a pipe and wrote great news of the day.

I looked around my apartment. Wondered if his vision of mine contained empty bottles of Pepsi and a subscription to

Glamour.

"Quick," I said. "Hide stuff."

I picked up all the girly magazines, food wrappers and rubber bands I could find and threw them in the trash. Which was already overflowing with girly magazines, food wrappers and rubber bands.

"What are you doing?"

"Amanda, baby," I said, taking her hands in mine. "I idolized this man growing up. He's probably the only man

I've ever dreamt about. And now he's coming up to my apartment." She eyed me like I'd just insulted her mother. "Okay, forget I said that. Just help."

For the next minute, we scrambled around the room tidying up as best we could. In those sixty seconds, our onebedroom apartment went from resembling a tsunami-affected college dorm room to resembling an apartment lived in by two people who cleaned dishes after using them.

I heard a knock at the door. I looked around, panicked, then threw myself onto the worn polyurethane sofa and crossed my legs. Amanda glared at me.

"You expect me to open the door?"

"Would you mind?" She gave an exasperated sigh.

"Just so you know, you're sleeping on the couch tonight."

She went to the door. Peered through the eyehole for dramatic effect. "Who is it?"

"Now it'd be some coincidence if it was someone other than the guy who was just downstairs," Jack said, his voice muffled by the door.

Amanda unlocked the door and opened it. Jack was breathing heavy, the trenchcoat seeming to weigh him down. He took off his hat, a few loose gray hairs sticking to it.

"You must be Miss Davies," he said.

"That's right."

"Charmed." He took her hand, kissed it as he looked into her eyes. She smiled demurely. "Henry here talks about you nonstop."

"Is that so? Well, at least one man here can call himself a gentleman." She led him into the apartment. "Can I get you a drink, Mr. O'Donnell?"

"Please call me Jack. And I'll take a Jack as well, if you have one, on ice." Amanda and I looked at each other. "It's been a long day."

Amanda disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a glass full of brown liquid over ice. "Seagram's Seven.

All we had."

"Do nicely," Jack replied. He moved over to the couch, let out a groan as he sat down. "How you holding up?"

"Me?" I said incredulously.

"Heard you were at the Franklin-Rees building when…it happened."

"Nearby," I corrected. "I'm holding up fine. Jeffrey

Lourdes is the one who was shot."

"Murder has a ripple effect, gets a lot of people wet," Jack said. "You better than anyone should know that."

Jack took a sip of his Seagram's. His cheeks were red, eyes tinged with veins. I wondered whether he was simply fatigued from taking the stairs, or if that Seagram's wasn't his first cocktail of the evening.

"I'm fine," I said. "Really."

"You know they haven't found a quote at the scene of

Lourdes's murder," Jack said. "The first two were left in such prominent locations, either he dropped the whole thing, or…"

"Or he just didn't have time."

"You have to wonder, really, what kind of person walks up to a man in broad daylight and shoots him in the head."

"Same kind of person who shoots an unarmed woman and a cop from a distance," I said. "They're not dealing with your average run-of-the-mill lunatic. This guy has an agenda."