“Technically, he’s not retained to represent them as defendants, to my knowledge,” Nina said. “Naturally I will cooperate fully with him when I’m notified that he will be involved in that capacity.” She turned back to her main point, adding urgently, “We have to find out who did this. The murder of Chelsi Freeman is an affront to the court. It’s an attempt to intimidate us into not pursuing the complaint. It’s the one thing, the one thing, Judge, we can never permit. Our justice system can’t flee from intimidation.”

Betty Jo said, “Your Honor, we see the steamroller and we would like to step to the side in time. Please. Let us out. We’re just a building, a series of room numbers. We don’t want to go two-dimensional during whatever attack Ms. Reilly has in mind.”

“Two-dimensional?” Flaherty said. “Oh, flattened.”

“That’s tough,” Nina said. “You could almost feel sorry for the Ace High clerk, E-mailing her boyfriend while a mother-to-be lost her life. She should have been at her desk. She should have called 911 sooner. Or how about that cul-de-sac, that tight vending-machine space, isolated and unsafe, set up by the Ace High. Or the three robberies in the past year on the premises.”

“Whatever our culpability,” Betty Jo said, “it’s not worth more than the settlement we have already offered. A failure to accept the settlement at this late date will amount to bad faith.”

“Then bad faith it is,” Nina said. “The case has changed. It’s about two deaths now, and nobody skates.”

“We’re good for fifty thousand, Your Honor. I thought Mr. Hanna took our offer. Where is Mr. Hanna, by the way? Hmm?” She turned toward Nina, her eyes narrow. Betty Jo was as aggravated as hell, and Nina didn’t blame her.

“Tell me again. What’s the problem with letting this party out of the case?” Flaherty asked Nina.

“We don’t know enough yet. We don’t know if someone from the Lodge might be involved somehow,” Nina said. “Mr. Hanna told me on the phone this morning that he understands we cannot go forward with a settlement right now.”

Betty Jo folded her arms and looked over the top of her specs at the judge. In a hard tone that Nina hadn’t heard before, she said, “Well, then, the settlement offer’s withdrawn, Your Honor. It’s off. It’s as off as three-day-old chicken left in a hot car trunk. We’ll stay in and request our attorney’s fees at the right time.” She didn’t look at Nina.

“Then there’s nothing before the court with regard to the settlement,” Nina said.

“I can still dismiss the case next week based on the court’s discretion, since two years will have passed,” Flaherty said.

“And let the whole world know this court bows to a killer?” Nina asked. Her words seemed to resound through the courtroom. The clerk looked scandalized and the lawyers lounging in their chairs, waiting for their own arguments to be heard, shifted and whispered.

“No need to grandstand, Counsel,” Flaherty said. “You still have another week. The court will consider any additional documents filed during that time that tend to show progress in bringing the matter to trial.”

“Very well,” Nina said. “Then I assume the court will execute the subpoenas requiring the newly named defendants to be deposed pursuant to our papers?”

“Any objection?” Flaherty asked Betty Jo.

“We’re just the sacrificial lamb on the side altar, Your Honor,” Betty Jo said. “Let’s get on with the immolation.”

“Immolation?” Flaherty said. “Do you object or not?”

“No objection. Bring ’em on.”

“Then it is so ordered. The signed papers will be available from the clerk’s office in an hour or so, Ms. Reilly.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Reilly-”

“Yes, Your Honor?”

“Be careful.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Nina went out to the hall, Betty Jo at her heels. She tapped Nina on the shoulder. “Wait,” she said. “I have a question for you.”

“You should have raised it in front of the judge.”

“I thought about it. Thought about asking if your own client approved you throwing away fifty grand. Then I realized, no way did he approve this. You’re here blowin’ off the settlement, and your client’s in jail, ’cause he’s a sick alcoholic. Who’s backin’ you? That’s the question. Well, it’s none of my business. Bottom line, you’re never going to get a dime out of the Ace High now. I warned you.”

“It’s worth it, to have everybody still sitting together in the pot.”

“And you’re the little cannibal, stirrin’ it all up with a big wood spoon.”

“Sorry, Betty Jo.”

Betty Jo shrugged. “I’ll just tell Jimmy you’ve gone crazy. He’ll understand.”

Nina felt a rush of anger. She said, “A friend was shot to death three feet away from me. I am going to find and take down the shooter. I want you and your client with me on this. We can find the shooter and deal with him together. He’s caused you as much harm as he has me.”

“You want to ride piggyback on the Lodge,” Betty Jo said, unmoved. “That’s not an option. I won’t let Jimmy crouch down so you can take a ride on his money and his business. You’re on your own.”

“I would think you’d like to find the guy who shot up the Lodge.”

“You’d think wrong. The best strategy for the Lodge is to end all this. Every time you make a move, the Tribune reports it and Jimmy gets cancellations.”

“I thought you were-” Nina turned away.

“What? Your mama?” This stung.

“No. An honorable… an honorable lawyer.”

“You’re a funny one,” Betty Jo said. “Look, nothing personal. You’re causin’ me a lot of trouble, but I forgive you because you can still use the word honor in a court of law. I’m startin’ to figure you out. You’re an idealist, and you’re a romantic, and you have some ideas about lawyers being gentlemen champions on white horses.”

“I do not,” Nina said.

“White horses with gold stirrups, and a world just beggin’ to be saved.”

“I’m starting to figure you out, too,” Nina said, “and it’s too bad. A bright mind, a lot of life experience, and a strong desire not to rock the Good Ship Lollipop you find yourself sailing on. I was thinking you and I might become friends. It’s too bad, it really is.”

Betty Jo gave her a measured look. “No, I don’t think we’d ever be friends. You take things too personally.” She gave her umbrella a firm shake and opened it as they reached the portico.

“Yeah. And you don’t take them personally enough. I’ll let you know when I depose the three kids, so you can attend.”

“Do that.” They had reached the parking area. Rain fell straight down, mercifully free from wind. Betty Jo drove a Porsche Cayenne SUV, burgundy, water beading on its expensive hood. It let out a discreet burp as she used the remote to unlock it, and she swung into it. “Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” she said with a trace of her former joviality. She closed the umbrella and tossed it into the back seat, then slammed the door.

Nina went to her beat-up white Bronco a few stalls away and got in. Betty Jo purred past her onto Johnson Boulevard, her profile vague behind the water-smeared driver’s-side window. But it seemed to Nina that on her way past, she gave Nina the finger.

Thus ended a beautiful friendship, which had barely begun, immolated, as Betty Jo might have said, on an altar to a blind Greek goddess who holds a set of scales. At least Flaherty had given her what she needed. Nina drove off, depressed because she liked Betty Jo, thinking about her unexpectedly rich vocabulary.

She had said Nina was trying to “ride piggyback.”

That word again. Nina remembered the dream of a couple of weeks before, when the case was just starting up. How had it gone? A scary old lady trying to climb on Nina’s back. All she wanted was a piggyback ride.

Some of her most important cases began with dreams, dreams that somehow meshed later with the case. They didn’t exactly provide clues-she didn’t believe in premonitions or any of that other New Age magic-but they sometimes did seem to pull something from her subconscious about the dynamics of the case.