John Lescroart - The Second Chair

"A beer?" Cecil held up a bottle of Jack Daniel's. "I see you walk in the door, my hand automatically goes to the JD. Double, rocks."

"Not today," Brandt said. "Beer."

"What kind of beer?"

"Wet and cold. I'm looking for Amy Wu. She been in?"

"Not yet." He started pulling a Sierra Nevada from the tap on the bar. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen her in a while. Since she went out of here with you, if I remember. You think she's all right?"

"Yeah. I was with her in court today. She's fine."

"She is fine. You seeing her?"

"No. We've been in trial together. Opposite sides. It's against the rules."

"Shame," Cecil said.

"Yeah." Brandt brought the beer to his lips, drank off an inch.

Cecil moved down the bar, served some customers, changed the channel on the television set. When he came back, Brandt was staring into his beer, turning it around and around on the bar in front of him. "You all right?" Cecil asked.

"Yeah, great."

"You don't look great. You look unhappy."

"It's Wu," Brandt said. "I think I'm kind of in love with her."

"You say that like it just occurred to you."

"It did."

"Are you still in trial?"

"I don't think so. Not after today."

"Well, if you're in love, bro, you better make a move or somebody else will snag that babe first for sure. I wouldn't be sitting my poor ass on a stool waiting for her to come in here. I'd go find her where she is, stake my claim."

His glass halfway to his mouth, Brandt stopped and lowered it back down to the bar. Then he was up off the stool and moving.

"Hey, your change!"

"Keep it."

He was sitting in her reading chair, having moved out from behind the changing screen where he'd been waiting when she came in. He held a gun on her- a gun with a long and very heavy-looking tube attached to the barrel. She sat at her table, hands in her lap. The grocery bag remained on the floor by the door she'd locked. "How did you know where I live? How'd you get in here?"

His laugh was guttural, humorless. "I've gotten real good at finding people. And getting in is the same as it was when I was a kid. The point is that I'm here."

"What do you want?"

"I want to finish my work."

"And what's that? Your work?"

"I believe you legal types would call it redress of grievances."

"Then it can't have anything to do with me. I haven't done anything to you."

"No, that's true. Not to me personally. In your case, maybe it's more that I want to keep you from doing more harm."

"Than what? I haven't done anybody any harm."

"Amy, Amy, Amy, please. I hope you don't really feel that. What about Andrew Bartlett?"

"What about him? He got out of detention today. Did you know that? How is that harming him?"

"Are you forgetting his attempted suicide already? Did it really make that little of an impression on you? You don't call that harm?"

"But I didn't-"

He slapped his free hand down on the arm of the chair, bared his teeth in a snarl. "The fuck you didn't! Don't you think he did that because you made him believe he'd never get out? But no, you don't think that way, do you? Nothing's really your fault, is it?"

"No. That's not true. Some things are completely my fault. Please don't point that thing. I'm sorry," she said. "Whatever it is, I didn't mean…"

"You don't understand what I'm saying. I don't care what you mean, what you meant. You play the same game they all played with my father, don't you see that? You're just like Allan Boscacci was twenty years ago- arrogant, self-righteous, pigheaded and wrong." He lifted the gun again. "Don't you move!"

"I wasn't. I was just…"

He kept his arm extended, the gun with its silencer pointed directly at her chest. "I don't care. I say something, you don't deny it. If I say 'Don't move,' you don't move."

"I'm sorry. I won't anymore. I promise. But I'm nervous. I've got to pee."

"So pee."

She started to stand, but he barked again, came halfway out of the chair with the gun trained on her. "Sit down!"

"But you just said…"

"I said you can pee. I didn't say anything about going anywhere."

She stared across at him, squeezed her legs together. "What do I have to do with Allan Boscacci?" Anything to keep him talking, to buy time, even a few precious seconds more.

"You're just like him."

"You said that. But how?"

"You really ask how? As if you don't know. All right, I'll tell you how." He sat back in the chair, rested the gun on his knee. "I saw you that first day with Bartlett, so sure he was guilty, ready to send him away for half his life, no concern at all for the truth, for what might be right. Just like Boscacci did with my father. Sent him up for life when he didn't do it."

"Your father?"

"That's right. My father."

"Didn't do what?"

"Rape and kill my mother, that's what."

She clutched her hands together against her stomach. "I'm sorry, but I really don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about my father, goddamn it! My father!" Again he'd come forward, lifted the gun. He held it on her for five seconds, ten. Again he collapsed back. "My father," he said, his voice now going to dead calm.

"What about him? I don't know about your father."

"Lucas Welding. His name was Lucas Welding."

"All right," she said. "Please. Tell me about him."

Jason Brandt got to the landing and thought he heard voices upstairs. He stopped and listened, almost turned around and went back down, but then decided since he'd come this far, he'd just say he was in the neighborhood and thought he'd stop by and see if she wanted to go out for a drink, or maybe meet him later at the Balboa. Surely, that was harmless enough. Or if whoever was with her turned out to be just a friend or a neighbor, she'd invite him in, they'd finish their conversation, then she'd tell the friend good-bye. After that, the two of them could let the night take them where it would.

When he got to the door, he paused a moment and listened. Yes, two voices, one male and one female. When he knocked- three quick raps- the voices stopped abruptly within. He waited through a lengthening silence, perplexity growing on this face. Then all at once the truth of what he must have been hearing dawned on him.

He blinked a few times, nodded, bit at his lower lip. He wasn't aware of it, but his shoulders fell.

What a fool he was.

He turned back toward the steps.

Then heard her voice through the door behind him. "Who is it?"

For a second, he considered not answering, getting to the stairs and out of sight before he brought any more embarrassment to himself. But she had asked him to believe her, believe in the kind of person she was. At least, he thought, he owed her that. To give her a chance to be straight with him. "Amy. It's me, Jason."

"Jason." He thought he heard a kind of relief in her voice, but it disappeared with her next words. "This isn't a good time. I'm sorry."

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine. But really, it's not a good time."

"Okay, but if I could just-"

"Jason, go away! Leave me the fuck alone, all right! Get out of here! Now! Or you're in trouble! I mean it!"

"Good," he said. "That was all right. Nobody stays around after that."

"No. He's a jerk," she said, turning around. "Well, you know that. But please, could I go to the bathroom?"

Brandt stood below, in the gathering dusk, looking up at her window. Her outburst against him had punched him in the gut. Even now, frozen in his spot, leaning against the wall of a building across the street, he held his hand there.

He couldn't seem to make himself move. He stared up at the window, saw no shadows, no sign of movement.

Maybe they were lying together in her bed?