Lisa Scottoline: Daddy's Girl

"So why don't we go, after the prison?" Angus shifted gears around a curve, and his hand accidentally bumped her knee.

"I can't. I should get back to work."

"We can get back by two, even if we grab lunch."

Did he just ask me out? "I don't have time. I'm working on an article."

"But how can you pass up the chance to see it? You teach it."

"I teach The Merchant of Venice without going to Italy. That's why we have books."

"No, that's why we have clinics," Angus shot back with a grin. "How about Saturday? We can take in the Wyeth museum, find the meetinghouse, and then have dinner. A day o' fun!"

His hand bumped her knee again, and this time, Nat wondered how accidentally. She stole a glance at his left hand. No wedding band, but maybe he didn't wear one. She had thought he was married. For school gossip she always relied on a colleague, who'd gone on sabbatical this year. Maybe delegating your social life wasn't such a hot idea.

"I can't go. I have plans."

"What about Sunday?" Angus hit the gas, and Nat shifted in her seat so her knee wouldn't get bumped. She didn't want her bumpage to lead him on, and, anyway, enough was enough.

"Aren't you married?"

"Not anymore. We divorced about a year ago." Angus kept his eyes on the road, and if he was upset, it didn't show.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"I didn't advertise. She dumped me for a Republican." He smiled, then it vanished. "So how about it? Would you like to go out?"

"Thanks, but I'm seeing someone."

"I should have known." He braked at the stop sign, his lower lip puckering somewhere inside his beard. "Cool move by me, huh? Am I rusty or what?"

You're fine," Nat said, touched by his openness. He really was a nice guy. Then she thought of something. "Is that why you asked me to go to the prison?"

"No. I thought my class would benefit from what you had to say. But I admit I was looking forward to the drive-way too much." He glanced over. "I thought what you did in your class was so cool, and it's too bad we don't know each other, even though we have so much in common."

"We do? Like what?" Nat asked, keeping the incredulity from her tone.

"For one, we're both outsiders at school."

"Are you kidding?" She scoffed. "No one is more inside than you. I saw your students gazing at you adoringly."

"Those are my clinic members, and the clinic is its own little world, didn't you notice?"

"No, I'm in my own little world."

Angus smiled crookedly. "We have the same problems. The truth is it's tough to attract students to the clinic. How do you get a kid to go into public interest law when he has student loans of a hundred grand? It's a lost cause."

"Which is what you love about it."

"Exactly. Like you and your class. Don't you like the idea that you're doing something important, even if no one else recognizes it?"

Nat understood. He was right; they did have that in common. She let an awkward moment pass.

"My clinic needed marketing, too. I had to explain to the students what's so great about what we do, so they would see the benefit to them. I told them that they could get into court and actually represent people." Angus paused. "In our situation, I would explain to you the many benefits of dating me."

"You'd market yourself?"

"If that's what it took."

"It's not happening," Nat said with a smile, and Angus laughed, which broke the tension.

"Are you and this lucky guy serious?"

"Yes." But don't tell my mother.

"So, okay, Professor Holt strikes out. If you two break up, will you take me off the wait list?"

Nat flushed, flattered. "Yes," she answered, and they took off through the countryside. She could have been imagining it, but he seemed to drive faster after she turned him down. They traveled up and down hills, through forest and pasture and over the Brandywine Creek, and in time, rounded a sharp curve. On the right was a brick building with a bright green roof behind a Youth Study Center sign, but they drove on. Tucked uphill behind a grove of tall evergreens appeared an older wooden sign that read, Chester county correctional institution in white-painted letters that were oddly rustic for a penitentiary.

"End of the Wyeth part." Nat instantly regretted that she'd come. She should have been back at school, teaching class. Her students needed sleep.

"I know, right?" Angus said matter-of-factly. They drove up to a tall, white guardhouse, and out of its skinny door stepped a young, blue-uniformed guard with a black rifle slung over his shoulder. The guard leaned into the car window, which Angus had rolled down. "Hi, Jimmy."

"Hey, Teach!" the guard said, grinning broadly. He had brown eyes under the patent-leather bill of his cap and sported a small, dark mustache over unevenly spaced teeth. "You brought a new student? Hi, honey."

"Keep it classy," Angus said, mock-stern. "This is Professor Greco. She's lecturing here today."

"Oh, jeez." The guard shifted his cap up, instantly sheepish. "Sorry-It's okay." Nat waved him off, and Angus thanked the guard and hit the gas. Nat asked, "Don't we have to show him any ID?"

"Nah. He knows me."

"I have to show ID in a store, when I use a credit card."

"Like I said, minimum security." Angus shrugged, but Nat didn't get it.

"More minimum than J.Crew, yet not so minimum that the guard doesn't carry a gun."

"Exactly." The VW traveled up a single-lane paved road to a small, elevated parking lot. Freshly plowed snow sat piled around the perimeter of the lot, decreasing the number of spaces. Angus continued, "Inside, none of the guards is armed. I should say C.O.s. Corrections officers. They don't like when we call them guards. They're nice guys, most of em."

"They don't have guns inside?" Nat's tone said, You told me it was safe.

"No. It's standard in prisons. Most of the C.O.'s treat the inmates with respect, but still as a group. Like a lower caste, not like each one is an individual. The C.O.s have to, to manage them. But in my class, I try to make up for that."

Nat sensed that Angus was climbing a soapbox, but she didn't mind. Passion did that to people. She'd sound the same way if anybody asked her about Abraham Lincoln. She loved reminding her students that he was a lawyer. Nobody believed her.

"Rehabilitation is essential here. These men are inside for only two years, so they're getting out again. They're in for misdemeanors and nonviolent offenses. Petty larceny, burglary, fraud. Chester County offers drug and alcohol counseling, and job training like heating and air conditioning, auto repair, even haircutting."

Bad to worse. "With scissors?"

"Sure, and the inmates who work in the kitchen use knives."

"Great."

"Don't worry." Angus steered the car into the parking lot. "They hang up the scissors and knives in glass cases, on pegboards painted with the shape of the tool, and when the inmates are finished, a CO.

locks the cases." He found a space, and Nat noticed that many of the cars were idling, with white plumes of exhaust puffing from their tailpipes.

"What's up with the cars?"

"They're inmate families, waiting for visiting hours to start." Angus put on the emergency brake and looked over at Nat with a smile. "Let's rock. Bring your driver's license but leave your handbag. Only legal papers are allowed. Do you have lecture notes?"

"Yes." Nat retrieved her accordion file, and they got out of the car. She stepped into the cold and clasped her file to her chest like a security blanket, surveying the scene.

The prison complex was situated on a large, flat tray of snow-covered land, which looked as if it had been created by cutting the top off of one of the hills. A tall blue water tower stood behind the compound. The prison itself was a sprawling brick edifice shaped like a T, with a public entrance and largish windows at the bottom of the T, in front of a circular driveway. The no-joke end of the prison was the body and top of the T, where the windows were ugly slits. Double rows of cyclone fencing topped with razorwire surrounded that section. The compound was discreetly screened from the surrounding neighborhood by a man-made forest of tall, full evergreens, encircling the entire property.