“Otherwise?” I ask.

“Otherwise I go for the whole nine yards, first-degree murder with special circumstances. I’ll push hard for the death penalty,” he says, “and I’ll get it.”

From the corner of my eye I can see Harry swallow a little saliva as he sits in the chair next to me.

“You’re being more than a little myopic,” I tell him. I convince him to humor me, to play along with my reasoning for a moment.

“Let’s assume, just for purposes of discussion, that she didn’t do it. That the lady’s completely innocent. You’ve offered her a deal she could not in good conscience accept. It may be terribly tempting, a certain result in an uncertain world. How can she deliver up an accomplice who doesn’t exist?”

Nelson has poker eyes, for if this scenario concerns him, the prospect of some innocent man’s being victimized by my client, he doesn’t show it.

“Why are you so insistent that she did it?” I ask.

“You have another candidate?”

I purse my lips as if to say maybe. But I have no one to deliver to him. If I hand him Tod, he will want to know what evidence I have. If I deliver up the Greek, Lama would spend his days until the trial searching out facts to exonerate him. Given the personalities involved, Skarpellos and Lama, I would suddenly discover that Tony was playing cribbage with a dozen elderly matrons the night Ben was killed.

“Suspects are your job,” I tell Nelson.

“I think we’re satisfied with the defendant we have. All we need to know is who helped her. Who carried the body, used the shotgun,” he says.

“It’s an offer made to fail. Even if she were willing to enter a plea to a crime she didn’t commit in order to save her life, she can’t fulfill the terms.”

He looks at me, like “Nice story, but it won’t wash.”

Lama kicks in. “Have you heard,” he says, “we got a photo ID party goin’ down at the office? Seems the lady was a creature of habit. Ended up at the same place every night. A motel clerk from hell says she brought her entire stable of studs to his front door. We got him lookin’ at pictures of all her friends. Only a matter of time. Then the deal’s off.”

Harry meets this with some logic.

“To listen to you, our client already had all the freedom she could ask for. Lovers on every corner, and a cozy home to come home to when she got tired,” says Harry. “Why would she want to kill the meal ticket?”

“Seems the victim was getting a little tired of her indiscretions. He was considering a divorce,” says Nelson. “You have read the prenuptial agreement? A divorce, and it was back to work for your client.”

Harry and I look at one another.

“Who told you Ben was considering a divorce?” I ask.

“We have a witness,” says Nelson.

He is not the kind to gloat over bad news delivered to an adversary.

“You haven’t disclosed him to us.”

“True,” he says. “We discovered him after the prelim. We’re still checking it out. When we have everything we’ll pass it along. But I will tell you, it sounds like gospel.”

Lama’s expression is Cheshire cat-like, beaming from the corner of the couch. I sense that this is his doing.

“I think you should talk to your client. I’m sure she’ll see reason,” says Nelson. “If you move, I think I can convince the judge to go along with the deal.”

“I’ll have to talk to her,” I tell him, “but I can’t hold out much hope.”

“Talk,” he says. “But let me know your answer soon. If we’re going to trial, I intend to ask for an early date.”

CHAPTER 25

Sarah is crawling all over me like I’m some kind of jungle gym.

“It sounds,” says Nikki, “like it’s not going well.” She’s talking about the preparation for Talia’s trial. There has been an uneasy truce between us since our dinner at Zeek’s.

Nikki is beginning to take an interest in Talia’s case. She claims this is merely commercial, just watching her investment and the way I am handling the defense. But I sense something more here. There is a certain softening of her attitude toward me now that I have openly acknowledged my earlier affair with Talia. I am beginning to wonder if in this there may not be the seeds of a new start for us. I do not push it.

“It would be easier if Talia told me everything,” I say. “Last week I find out from the DA that Ben was planning a divorce. Like a bombshell, they dropped it on us during plea negotiations. I don’t even get a hint from my own client.”

Nikki is seated at the kitchen table in front of a small portable computer, a project for work. She hits the keys, and white symbols crawl across a black screen like worms burrowing in loam.

“What did she say, about a divorce?” Nikki’s curious.

“She says it’s garbage, that Ben never said anything to her about any divorce.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I believe her.”

“Intuition?” she says.

“Logic,” I say. “It’s possible Ben might keep his plans for a divorce from Talia, at least until after the senate confirmation of his appointment. But if it’s that big a secret, why would he tell somebody else?” That the DA claims to have a witness, someone so intimate that they had Ben’s confidence on this, doesn’t wash, not to me.

“And this is pivotal,” she says, “his plans for a divorce?”

I look at her and make a face, like “You can believe it.”

The nuance of this latest twist in our case is not lost on Nikki, this despite the fact that I’ve never told her about the prenuptial agreement. It fleshes out the motive. If Ben intended to shed Talia after confirmation, once lifetime tenure on the court was assured, and if she knew this, it could be seen as a prime motive for murder. If she waited, she could lose everything. If he can make out all the elements, Nelson can use this to build a strong case.

“Lately she’s compounding things by little lies and half-truths,” I tell Nikki.

“Like what?”

“Things I can’t talk about without violating privilege,” I say.

Nikki understands this. It was an unwritten rule during our marriage, a limit as to how much I could tell her about the cases I was working on. In Talia’s situation, I can’t talk about the alibi, the story she fabricated for the cops about her trip to Vacaville, or the fact that the police are closing in on Tod and that the two of them were supposedly together the night Ben was killed.

“But you really believe that she’s innocent of Ben’s murder, don’t you?” Nikki is looking me straight in the eye now.

“I do,” I tell her.

“Maybe she has a reason to lie.”

“Oh, she has a reason. She says she was protecting a friend.”

Nikki stops her work and looks at me.

“A lover?”

I’m noncommittal on this. A kind of response that has always been transparent to Nikki.

“Another man.” She declares this with confidence. Nikki hasn’t lost her touch, her ability to read my mind.

“Your client is caught between you and her commitment to another man. If I know her, and I think I do, you’ve got a real problem.” Nikki shares the female perspective with me. “In the war for information,” she says, “you won’t win. Not if she cares about this guy, and if what you’re asking may put him in jeopardy.”

“It sounds like some kind of female jihad” I say. “A holy war that only members of your gender know about.”

Nikki smiles over at me, silent, intuitive, her eyes saying only “Remember my warning.”

“It may cost her her life,” I explain.

Nikki’s attention is back to her work. She’s talking now through the distraction of computer logic.

“Maybe she can’t see the danger as well as you can.”

“I’m sure of that.”

Nikki is busy now, knocking out some characters on the computer, her mind submerged for the moment in her work. Then, for no particular reason, she shifts away from the trial and Talia.

“By the way,” she says, “how is Coop these days? I miss seeing him.” Coop had been a regular at the house every Tuesday night, with Nikki making sandwiches for our weekly poker soirees. I assume she has not seen him since she moved out of the house. Nikki has one of those tender spots common to many of her sex. She had taken a special interest in Coop since the double loss, his wife’s passing and the death of Sharon.