John Lescroart - The Suspect

"It's not believing, don't you understand? I know he didn't do it."

One of the jail's admitting officers glanced over from where he stood behind the counter. "Everything all right over there?"

Gina held up a hand-everything was under control. Turning back to Kymberly, she said, "What does that mean? You 'know' it. How can you know it more than I do? Is there something specific you should tell me?"

The questions stopped Kym abruptly. She looked first down, then across to the admitting counter, then at last back to Gina. "I just know him. I just know him." Shaking her head as though to clear her thoughts, she said, "You've got to keep him out of prison. He can't go to prison! Don't you understand? That can't happen!"

Tears welled up and brightened her eyes. Gina reached out to touch her and offer her some comfort, but suddenly she bolted up and, with an anguished sob, broke for the door. Gina, immediately on her feet, got outside only in time to catch a last glimpse of Kym as she disappeared around the edge of the building.

In the attorney's visiting room, trying to shake off her reaction to Kym, Gina heard the knock from the deputy and a second later was standing up, preparing herself to look strong for her client as Stuart appeared at the door. When she saw him, though, she could feel something go out of her, out of the forced animation in her face. "Where are your dress-out clothes?" she asked, her voice sounding hollow and shaky, even to herself.

"Dressing out" was a courtesy afforded prisoners going into trial. They were allowed to wear their own clothes and shoes instead of the orange jail jumpsuit and paper slippers. The idea was to minimize the bias that jail garb creates for a jury. That wasn't the rule at prelim, where there was no jury to be prejudiced. Nevertheless, Gina had over the years tried to dress out her clients as often as she could, if only for the tiny psychic lift it might give them, the nod to dignity. From time to time, her requests to dress out her client for prelim had been granted.

Expecting the same result with this latest request, she'd gone to Stuart's home over the weekend and brought a couple of changes of clothes down to the jail. She'd never received notice to the contrary, so it really hadn't occurred to her that the courtesy would be denied in this case. But here was Stuart now, not just in the typical jail orange jumpsuit, but a red flight-risk jumpsuit, shackled hand and foot.

She seemed to be taking it worse than Stuart, who actually struck a faux-modeling pose for an instant, flashing a smile at her. "I thought I'd go for something bold in red," he said, then shrugged as though it were of little import to him. "I asked the guards when I should change, and they said it wasn't happening."

"Christ." Gina leaned back against the table.

Stuart came and stood about a foot in front of her. "Hey, it's okay."

She looked up at him. "Not really, Stuart." But all the weight of the morning again bore down on her, and she hung her head. "Christ," she said again.

He touched the side of her arm. "You all right?"

Finally, she looked up and met his eyes. "It's just been a monster of a morning. You're going to want to sit down."

Kelley Rusnak hit Stuart pretty hard. Like Gina, he in no way believed that she had killed herself. She had not been depressed when he'd been talking to her. Quite the contrary, she had been outraged, eager to help right a wrong, ready for a fight. There must be more to the story that hadn't come out yet, that would perhaps be discovered at the autopsy. Gina told him about her call to Jeff Elliott, that he was going to try and follow up on the story if he could. That if they got lucky, it could broaden the case away from him; although since Stuart still stood to gain from any Dryden Socket profits, that effect might be mitigated.

"Of course," he said. "You wouldn't want unmitigated good news."

"Don't worry about that." They were both on the hard wooden chairs at the long table, and Gina knocked on the tabletop. "Okay, that brings us to number two. Again, not pretty."

"How many do we got?"

"Four. First was Kelley. Second, these." She opened her briefcase and took out the photos of the Echo Lake cabin that she'd shown her partner in the Solarium just last night.

Stuart took them, and it seemed to take him a minute to recognize the first picture for what it was. When he finally did, he swore under his breath, then quickly flipped through the bunch of them. "Where'd they get these?"

"Juhle got a warrant and went up to your place."

Stuart took in a deep breath, then let it out in a rush. "I got really drunk," he said. "I've always said I was furious." Then, "Can they use these?"

"I'll try to have them excluded, but if I were the judge…" She stopped.

"You'd say they spoke to my state of mind. I think I would too. Okay," he said, "we're now officially even."

"In what way?"

"Well, the problems with the arrest? We can put that on you. But these pictures? I bet I could have remembered what I'd done up there and had somebody go by and clean up a little."

Gina nodded at him. "I bet you could have too."

"It's just with finding Caryn and all…"

"I get it. And that's going to be my argument back at them. You had all the time in the world to get back up there and clean it up good as new, and it never occurred to you because you hadn't done anything to make you think you needed to clean it up. That's really okay."

"Yahoo." He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "So what's number three?"

"Number three," she said, "is Kymberly."

He showed nothing but perplexity. "Kymberly? What about her?" "She was here this morning."

"Where?"

"Here. At the jail. She wanted to see you, but they wouldn't let her in. It was too early." "Bastards."

"It's a jail, Stuart. There's visiting hours."

He sighed in frustration, then suddenly the obvious question hit him. "Wait a minute. She was down here? What about school? Debra told me Kym just went back up after the funeral. She can't be missing this many classes." He brought his hand to his forehead, squeezed at his temples. "God. I've got to talk to her. Is she coming back later? Will she be at the hearing? I've got to see her."

"Stuart." Gina kept her voice low-key. "The thing is, she just told me she never went up to school in the first place."

The confusion played all over his face. "What? Of course she did. I talked to her up there that first week every day. I mean…" He stopped, stared at Gina, completely at a loss.

"You called on her cell phone, didn't you? Or she called you?"

"She never went up there?"

"That's what she said."

"So what… where is she staying?"

"I don't know. I'd guess somewhere in the city. Maybe a boyfriend's? I don't know." "You didn't ask her?"

"Yes, I did. She told me it was none of my business. She wants me off the case. She says I'm no good for you. You'll wind up in prison. She got very upset. Very upset. Then ran out, crying."

Stuart took it in with his arms crossed, his chin on his chest.

"Evidently," Gina said, "and this is number four, you're keeping me on because you've got some kind of a schoolboy crush on me. And if that's the case, that's a bad reason. I will get you through this hearing and then help you find another attorney."

He sat still for several more seconds before he opened his eyes and looked across at her. "My wife has just been killed, Gina. No offense to you-you seem like a terrific person-but no matter what my daughter says, I'm not in the market. I never said anything remotely indicating that I've got any romantic thoughts about you or anybody else, because I don't. It's just too soon. I don't have any feelings at all, if you want to know the truth, except this… fear over how all this is going to turn out. This is so entirely the kind of thing that Kymberly might imagine and make real for herself. Is she taking her pills? Did you ask?"