Touch Of The White Tiger
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“How did you guys catch him?” I asked. Cops as a rule stayed clear of Emerald City.
“From what I hear, it wasn’t hard,” the officer replied. “He’s blind.”
“Blind?” I sat up for a closer look as we drove out of sight, so to speak. Hunched over and scowling, he looked not unlike Shakespeare’s Richard III, whom he was fond of quoting. “I thought he had one good eye.”
“Yeah,” the cop said, “some chicks wandered down in Emerald City and poked his eye out. Ain’t that a bite?”
“Yeah,” I replied without enthusiasm. The chicks just so happened to be me and my mother. Lola had stabbed Cy in the face with a stick during our fight. It was the coup de gr^ace that enabled us to escape from his prison. It must have left him totally sightless. Somehow I felt bad about it. Roy always told me I was a sucker for the underdogs of the world.
With a tug of guilt and the loss of Roy squeezing my heart, my numbness began to fade and I felt shaky by the time we arrived at the interrogation wing of the station. My chauffeur deposited me, still handcuffed, into a windowless rectangle and locked the door. If this tactic was meant to make me brood over the evening’s events, it worked.
I would miss Roy terribly. And Victor had been cheated out of his future. I felt for his father’s loss all the more because Mayor Alvarez was a friend of Henry Bassett, my foster father. Both men would grieve, and it killed me that I had to be associated with Victor’s death in any way.
And, as always, I felt abandoned. It was my natural reaction to everything. Marco could have come to my defense at the crime scene, but he hadn’t. I wasn’t even sure if he thought I was innocent. Now, that really hurt.
I’d refused to let Lieutenant Townsend, not to mention Marco, see me cry, but now a tear escaped down my placid face. I cried silently, a trick I’d learned during a two-year stint in an abusive foster home before I’d been mercifully rescued by the Bassetts. It was a trick I hoped Lin would never have to learn. God, I had to get out of here and get back to her.
The door opened with a brisk whoosh and a nerdy little man bearing an underarm full of electronic files, a coffee-stained tie and a suit he must have purchased at the local print shop. I could recognize the unnatural creases of a reconstituted paper suit a mile away. Was this a law student intern? I wondered as I surreptitiously wiped my face.
“Miss Baker?” he inquired, flashing a row of neglected teeth with his overly exuberant smile.
“Yes?”
“I’m your lawyer.”
“I don’t need a lawyer.”
He nodded patronizingly as he dropped his load of files on the table. “I’ve heard that before, Miss Baker. And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re—”
“Innocent. Damned straight.”
He looked up, startled, I presume, by my lack of remorse for the crime he clearly thought I’d committed. “Innocent,” he repeated, clearly speculating on the credibility of my reply, adding doubtfully, “Okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Terrence Murray.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Mr. Murray. I’ve already got one, and I don’t need another.”
His eyes rounded and he pursed his wet lips. “Look here, Miss Baker, you’re lucky to have me. This is a busy place, as you may have noticed. Most people have to wait days for a chance to meet with a public defender.”
“Lucky me.”
He shook his head and opened the top file, muttering, “You’re awfully confident for someone who has caught the interest of Q.E.D.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked up from his papers. “Q.E.D. is the police department’s latest effort to reestablish law and order and polish its tarnished image. If the members of this elite force were willing to go under the knife just to increase their odds of nailing criminals, they won’t back down easily in a case involving a CRS. You’re the competition.”
“But I’m innocent.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why are you here?”
“To represent you during your interrogation with Lieutenant Townsend.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk to that inhuman son of a bitch. I’m going to face the Diva.”
Murray’s nondescript, pale features formed into a nebulous look of confusion. “Are you crazy? You’re better off with Townsend than with the Diva. If she finds fault with your story, you’ll be facing the maximum charges with no chance of a plea bargain. You’ll be stuck in the system for years.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Let me put it to you another way, Miss Baker. I know of serial killers who are walking the streets because there was no DNA evidence to keep them locked up for more than two years, in spite of solid convictions. If they’d faced the Diva when they were first brought up on charges, she would have detected their guilt. With no chance of bail, they would have spent longer in jail just waiting for a trial than the time they ended up serving for murder.”
I just looked at him for a long moment. “That’s pathetic.”
“That’s the system. That’s why you can’t face the Diva.”
“I know you think you know what’s best for me, but I have a little girl waiting for me at home. If I don’t go back to her soon, she’ll think…” Why was I telling him this? He wouldn’t understand. “I have to go home. When I tell the Diva I’m innocent, they’ll let me go.”
The lawyer’s agitation turned to disdain. “Very well, Miss Baker, but he’s not going to like this one bit.”
“Who?”
He looked down at me with a superior smirk. “Detective Marco. Why he’d bother with someone as ungrateful as you, I have no clue.”
“So he sent you to me?”
“How else do you think you were lucky enough to see an attorney so quickly? Didn’t you see the gallery of rogues rotting away in glass booths waiting for a chance at representation? And people like you have the audacity to be ungrateful.”
The thought of Marco throwing me this bone was too much to bear. “Did Detective Marco, by any chance, tell you that he and I are involved?”