And so this lawyer and her vagina would really like to get these cavemen a good outcome.

After we say our good-byes, my associate, Bradley, goes to his office to check his messages. I walk down the hall to Jason’s office and consider asking him to an early lunch. I catch Joel Lightner walking out the door, waving to Marie.

“Fuck!” Jason shouts out as I approach. I don’t usually have that effect on him. “Oh, hey,” he says when he sees me.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Nothing.” He sighs. “Nothing.”

“You just like to yell ‘Fuck’ at the top of your lungs every now and then?”

He shakes his head absently. “Remember that weird guy, James Drinker?”

“The killer-who’s-not-a-killer.”

He looks out the window, his hands on his hips. “He lied to me. He claimed to have an alibi for one of the murders. His alibi was his mother. He said he was talking to her on his home phone. And now I come to learn that mommy is six feet underground.”

“Are you a cop now? It’s your job to solve crimes?”

He gives me a sidelong glance, an evil eye. “This is different,” he says. “A guy comes into my office and says he committed this crime or that—fine, I represent him, I’d never tell his secrets. But four women have been murdered and there’s no reason to believe there won’t be a fifth, and a sixth, and meanwhile I’m holding my dick in my hands—”

“Jason, it sucks, but you can’t turn in a client. You don’t even know if he’s guilty.”

Halfway through my lecture, he is shushing me with his hand, patting the air. “This from the woman who doesn’t practice criminal law because she doesn’t want to help set criminals free. But it’s okay to sit idly by and watch a serial killer run amok?”

That isn’t fair. There isn’t anyone who’d like to see this guy taken down more than me. But Jason, as always, is forgetting that he’s a lawyer with rules to follow. If he disregards them whenever his conscience bothers him, they aren’t rules at all.

“It isn’t a question of ‘okay.’ It’s a question of what you are ethically bound to do and not do. You can’t just go with some gut feeling and throw away your law license.”

“My law license.” He makes a noise, something between a laugh and a grunt.

I raise my hands. “I know this is tough, Jason. I do. It must be agonizing. I don’t work in your area of the law, so this is new to me. But I have to tell you, it seems to me that the rules are pretty clear.”

“I know.” Jason shakes his head. “I know you’re right.”

My eyes drift to the corner of his office where I left the Arangold materials. They still haven’t been touched, not one file.

“Listen,” I say, “I know this is tearing your hair out, but speaking of hair being torn out—are you going to help me on Arangold or not? It’s almost game time. Let’s end the suspense.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and puts out a hand. “I can’t think about that right now. I gotta figure this shit out, Shauna.”

I take a deep breath. Beneath my anger and frustration is something more. Jason looks terrible. Strung out. Sleep-deprived. Skinny. For the first time, I begin to wonder if there is something seriously wrong with him, if something happened to him while I’ve had my back turned these last six or eight weeks.

“Are you okay?” I ask. Normally, this would be the wrong approach. Jason isn’t your sensitive, sit-down-and-talk-about-your-feelings sort of guy. But I sense a dam about to burst.

He runs a hand through his hair. “No, I’m not okay. I spend most of my time trying to get people off for things that they did, for which they are totally and completely guilty. I kick the search on Billy Braden’s case so he can walk out of court and start selling drugs again right away. I’m just delaying the inevitable with these guys. I’m just making money. That’s all I’m doing. And now I find a guy who I know is guilty—I know it. Maybe it’s just my gut, but I know it. He’s killed and he’s going to kill again, Shauna, and he’s making me a part of it. I feel like I’m a coconspirator. And I have to sit here and do nothing?”

He sweeps a desk full of papers to the floor, something out of a movie, the disgruntled employee with the asshole boss who’s just had it! and quits.

“Fuck this,” he says, and he comes toward me, like he’s heading out the door.

“Hey, come on,” I say.

He stops and takes my arm. “I’m sorry about Arangold. I really am. But you’re better off without me. Trust me.”

He releases my arm and leaves the office without another word.

31.

Jason

Thursday, June 20

I look through the magazine rack and settle on the current issue of Sports Illustrated, the cover featuring two brothers, twins from South Korea, Hee-Jong and Seung-Hyun Lee, each of them seven-foot, three-inch centers, one a senior at Stanford, the other a senior at UConn. They are freaks of nature, the Lee twins, expected to go number one and two in the NBA draft next week. The headline beneath the two men: “Is the NBA Ready for the Lee Twins?”

I drop the magazine in front of the clerk, along with a box of plain envelopes, multicolored construction paper, a pair of scissors, Scotch tape, and a pair of rubber gloves. I assume I look like a father buying art supplies for his kid, who also likes sports. The rubber gloves might stand out. Probably should have bought some dishwashing liquid or something.

I pull out my wallet for my debit card. I hardly ever use cash anymore. But then I catch myself, slip the debit card back in my wallet, and pay in cash.

When I was a kid, we used to steal the current edition of Sports Illustrated from the local library. Pete, the more handsome and charming of the Kolarich brothers, would chat up the librarian, divert her attention while I slipped the magazine into the back of my pants after ripping off the stamp sensor—or what I thought was a sensor. When I was in high school playing football, I used to dream about seeing my name in that magazine, maybe a photo of me catching a pass in the Super Bowl. I would imagine some kid in a library just like me, stealing the magazine or ripping out my picture to put on his bedroom wall. I want to be just like him. I want to be Jason Kolarich.

Most of my fantasies, illusions of grandeur, used to involve sports, and almost always football. The acrobatic, impossible catch at a clutch moment, the crowd chanting my name, the announcer singing my praises over the roaring crowd. But as I’ve moved into my mid-thirties, it’s sometimes more about coaching, inspiring a group of ragtag kids, given no chance to succeed, and impossibly winning the state championship or a national title. Occasionally it’s a fantasy related to my profession, usually the innocent-man-on-death-row, a last-minute discovery that compels the governor to call the warden and halt the execution.

Lately, I’d be happy just to feel normal.

I check over my shoulder as I leave the convenience store. I’ve taken lately to suspecting that someone is following me. I can’t place why, just a sensation that something is trailing behind me, stopping when I do, starting along with me, shadowing my every move.

I get into my SUV and drive. With the library on my mind and a local branch in sight, I pull into the parking lot and walk in. Over the main desk, there are signs welcoming me in multiple languages—Bienvenidos, Mabuhay, Suswagatham—and notices in vibrant colors for the “Summer Book Club” and “Rock and Read,” an advertisement for a children’s author appearing next week, a program on “The Secret Language of Peruvian Cuisine” that I would love to attend were it not for having to reorganize my sock drawer that night.