Lisa Scottoline - Devil's corner

"I wanted to make sure you were okay." Dan held Vicki at arm's length, searching her face with sky-blue eyes, slightly watery from the cold. His gingery hair, layered with longish sideburns, was a sexy rumple. "You must be dying inside. I always thought Morty was like a father to you."

Exactly . Vicki had never felt so completely understood by someone who was so completely married.

"Jesus, he's dead. I can't believe it."

"How did you find out?"

"From TV. It's impossible that he's gone." Dan's eyes went dazed and his voice husky. His eyes clouded with sadness, and the corners of his flattish lips turned unhappily down, his frown so deep that the freckles dotting his forehead clustered together. "He was such a great guy. A hardworking guy, and fun. He could always make me laugh."

Vicki felt a twinge of fresh grief. Dan had really liked Morty, and Morty liked him, too. Of course, everybody liked Dan; he was the Golden Boy of the office. He'd racked up more convictions than anybody in his class, quarterbacked the AUSA football game against the federal marshals, and bought the vanilla sheet cake for the receptionist's birthday. At thirty-five years old, Dan Malloy had been anointed, and everybody knew it but him.

"Morty didn't deserve to die that way," he said.

"Nobody does. Neither did she." Vicki blinked her tears back, postponing them. She didn't know when she'd feel safe enough to cry. She kept getting extensions of time, a lawyer's habit.

"Mariella says she's really sorry. She'd be here if she could but she's on call."

"Tell her I said thanks." Vicki hoped this sounded convincing. Dan's wife, the exotic Dr. Mariella Suarez, was a resident at Hahnemann Hospital; beautiful, willowy, fake-blonde, and constantly on call. She spoke three languages, including her native Portuguese, and was remote even for a surgeon. She was married to the most wonderful man on the planet, to whom she paid no attention, which was why, in the incomprehensible logic of the cosmos, she had him.

Dan was saying, "You must be beat. I brought wine. Come on, it's medicinal." He turned and went into the kitchen, sliding out of his jacket on the way, revealing a gray T-shirt in which he'd undoubtedly been playing basketball. He set the coat on a dining room chair, releasing a subtle odor that gave credence to the pheromone thing.

Vicki breathed deeply and followed him into the kitchen. She stopped before she got there, taking off her stained trench-coat and laying it over another dining room chair. She couldn't bear to look at it again, much less wear it. She entered the kitchen, flopped into the wooden chair at the round table, and kicked off her pumps. "I hate high heels."

"Me, too." Dan set the wine on the tile counter and went into her silverware drawer for the corkscrew. He knew exactly where it was, because he was over so often. They had met a year ago, when she'd become an AUSA and got the office next to him, and they'd become close, sharing gossip at lunch and war stories whenever possible. They had dinner after work, too, when Dr. Bitchy was on call; Dan had probably cooked more meals in this kitchen than Vicki had, which made her feel oddly ashamed. She eyed the room in case there was a pop quiz.

The kitchen measured about twenty feet long and was just wide enough to qualify as a galley. Authentically distressed oak covered the floor, and matching cabinets lined the wall. A halogen light of tangerine Murano glass hung down from the ceiling, casting a soft, if concentrated, glow on the round kitchen table. Dan stood at the indefinite edge of the lamplight in jeans that were too big, which Vicki found secretly charming.

She watched him pour the wine into two glasses, and it washed bubbling against the side. It was a Chardonnay, which Dan knew was her favorite, and his thoughtfulness triggered a wave of longing so powerful that she had to swallow, physically forcing it back down her throat. She wished that she could lose herself in him for just one night, but he didn't think of her that way. Not that it mattered, for those purposes. He could just lie still.

"Here's what the doctor ordered." Dan turned, glasses in hand, and brought them to the table, where he put them down and sat in the other chair. They both lifted their glasses without saying a word, tacitly toasting Morty. Their eyes met, but Vicki broke contact first and took a sip. The cold Chardonnay tingled on her tongue. Cold comfort, but comfort.

"Thanks for doing this," Vicki said.

"What a guy."

"Really, it was nice of you. I know you hate Chardonnay."

"Not true." Dan took another sip and rallied, putting the moment behind them. "Chardonnay is classy. Even the word is classy. Chardonnay makes me feel almost as classy as you."

"Don't start." Vicki smiled. It was a running joke between them. Her parents were prominent lawyers who ran a prosperous firm in Center City, and Dan had grown up in a working-class city neighborhood, Juniata, and his father was a ne'er-do-well who had served time for petty forgery. Dan had a chip on his shoulder about his family, but it didn't matter to Vicki, except that it reminded her of her parents. She fleetingly considered calling to tell them she was okay, but they generally went to bed by ten o'clock.

"So, you want to talk about what happened?" Dan looked at her so intensely, it could qualify as foreplay in most jurisdictions. Just not the Platonic jurisdiction.

"In a minute."

"Fair enough. I was worried about you."

"You'd better." Vicki always shrugged off any nice thing Dan said, even borderline flirting. He would never have cheated, and she wouldn't want an affair with him; frankly, not only because of her morals, which went out the window when he wore those jeans, but because she wanted to be number one. What trial lawyer would settle for number two? The name for number two is loser.

"They said on the TV news that you ‘narrowly escaped with your life.' " Dan made quote marks in the air, but didn't smile. "Is that true?"

Vicki flashed on the guns. It struck her that she had faced two tonight, which should count as narrowly, if not miraculously. "Yes."

"Were you scared?" "My underwear is clean." Dan laughed. "That was an overshare." "I'm proud of that. It wasn't easy." "I try not to think about your underwear." Don't try so hard . Vicki watched him drink his wine, which was almost half gone, and a silence fell between them. She fought her customary urge to entertain him by filling in the conversational gap, but she didn't want to turn Morty's death into another war story. And she knew it was a bad habit, her jumping up and down for him. Always reaching for him, inside. Unrequited didn't begin to describe her feelings for him. Unrequited wasn't even the warm-up act.

"I switched around the channels, to get the story." Dan drained his wineglass. "They had video from outside the house, and interviews. Strauss was on, too, before he went in."

Vicki didn't comment. Dan liked Strauss. "Did you see him?" "The cheese? Yes. Bale was there, too, and he didn't fire me." "How could he? It wasn't your fault." Vicki couldn't say as much. She took a sip of wine, but it didn't help.

"On TV, they showed your picture. The one from orientation. You looked great. One of the anchors said you were ‘attractive' and ‘a rising star.' "

"Did they mention I was single?" "They must have forgotten," Dan said, slurring his words slightly, and Vicki eyed him, amused. "Hey, did you have dinner tonight?" "No. I shot hoops and we went out for a beer after. Why?" "Your mouth stopped working a few words ago." Vicki smiled. It was another running joke. "Face it, Malloy. You're a girl."

"No! I had a few beers is all. Then I saw the TV, I didn't wait for the burger." Dan's freckled skin flushed pink. "I suck at being Irish."