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  He looked at her with puzzled eyes. Lauren’s hair was as close to true black as hair could be. His own was sandy brown. “Blond? Where did that come from?”

  “You’re the psychologist, you tell me.”

  He sat back on his chair and smiled at her. “You’re inviting me to interpret your dreams?”

  “You’re right. Bad idea.” She reached across the table and took his beer and wet her upper lip with foam. “Forbidden fruit,” she said. “So, I’ve been wondering, do you think we should get a regular audio monitor for the baby’s nursery or one of those new video ones?”

  Alan exhaled, “Something tells me that you’ve given this more thought than I have.”

  THE REMAINDER OF the evening proved that they were no closer to agreeing on a crib than they were to agreeing on a name for their baby. Lauren’s view of the nursery was much more romantic than Alan’s. He saw the room as a kid’s bedroom and thought her image of the space more closely resembled a postnatal spa.

  They agreed to disagree, temporarily, and after leaving Kids and Co. they drove east to their Spanish Hills home. Once the garage door had closed on their cars and Emily had been greeted and had peed, Alan and Lauren sat together on the sofa that faced the western windows. The city sparkled below them, and the glacial faces of the Divide radiated below a three-quarters moon. Alan said, “I have a question for you. It’s a hypothetical situation that a prosecutor, someone like yourself, might find herself involved in.”

  “Yeah.” Lauren’s voice was soft and had a husky burr on its edges. Sleep was close.

  “You’re tired. I can ask you tomorrow,” he said.

  “No, now. I’m fine.” She swallowed a yawn.

  “Hypothetically, okay?”

  She murmured something that he took to be an assent.

  “Let’s say you were involved in a prosecution years ago. Maybe eight, ten years back. A second-chair situation for you on a big case, a capital murder. The facts you were working with looked good at the time, not great, but the only suspect you had was excellent for the crime. He was in the neighborhood and could be tied circumstantially to the murders. He’s scum, with multiple priors.”

  “Mm hmm.”

  “You get the conviction after a straightforward trial. Defendant’s defense was adequate, but nothing as imaginative as David Kelley could do. The guy is sentenced to die for his crimes. You feel justice was served and your life goes on—you have new scumbags to prosecute, right? Without much effort, you put the whole case out of your mind. Later, as time passes and you get more prosecutorial experience under your belt, you start to develop some lingering doubts about some of the evidence that the police produced during the original trial.”

  “Yes.” Lauren was growing more alert.

  “The guy’s on death row this whole time, of course, and he’s running through his appeals like a ten-year-old kid goes through his allowance. Soon there’s only one appeal left. But with every failed appeal, your doubts are growing stronger. Truth is, you’re no longer convinced he did it.”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you do?”

  “A couple of questions first. My colleagues? The ones I tried the case with. What do they think?”

  “You don’t know what they think. You don’t work with them any longer, but you’re not convinced that they share your doubts. Regardless, you suspect that they would prefer to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Do I have any evidence that might support my doubts?”

  “You think someone tampered with a GSR, though you’re not sure whether it was the detectives or the lab. Most of the rest of the case was equally circumstantial.”

  “But I have other doubts as well? Not just the GSR?”

  “Correct.”

  “Do I suspect the police?”

  Alan thought for a moment before he responded. “Although you’re reluctant to admit it, you probably do.”

  “Do I suspect my colleagues?”

  “You’re trying not to. You would like to believe that they weren’t involved in tainting evidence.”

  Lauren stood up and said, “Hold that thought. I need to pee.” She walked toward the bathroom.

  Alan stretched himself at an angle to the corner of the sofa, kicked off his shoes, and stared at the Open Space south of the Flatirons, toward Eldorado Springs. Traffic was stopped outbound on the Turnpike. He guessed there was a traffic accident. His eyes tried to find the pulsating beacons of approaching police or rescue vehicles, but he couldn’t spot any.

  Emily’s stomach growled noisily.

  Lauren returned and settled herself beside him, against his chest. She’d shed her work clothes and was wearing a chenille robe. She reached down and grabbed both of his hands, placing them on the contours of her rounded belly. Then she launched right back into character. “I’m thinking that I may have another problem. In the years since this trial, I may have changed my life, let’s say changed my life dramatically, and I may be reluctant to return to my former life to follow my conscience and do the right thing in this old death-penalty case. Who knows? I may be severely reluctant, even. Does that fit your scenario?”

  “Sure,” he said. His fingertips had found a sharp edge poking at the flesh of Lauren’s abdomen. He was guessing that the protrusion was an infantile elbow or knee. He pressed on it. His child pressed back. He found the interaction amazing and looked for another place to prod.

  “I don’t know what the hell I’d do,” Lauren said. She rolled slightly toward him and made eye contact. “That’s not true. Sure I know what I would do. I just don’t know how I would do it.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I’d do whatever I needed to do to erase my doubts. I’d have to convince myself all over again that this guy was guilty.”

  “How would you go about that?”

  “Reinvestigate. Especially the weakest parts of the case. Talk to the people who were involved with the gunshot residue test. The detective who administered the kit, the lab guys who analyzed it. See who acts squirrelly.”

  “How would you solve your other problem? The not-wanting-to-surface problem?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know the answer to that. That’s not a prosecutor question. That’s a heart-and-soul question.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have one more concern. See, hypothetically, it turns out that I have a child.” She smiled and gazed down at her baby. “A child who might be placed at risk if I make a stink and decide to try to save the life of some lowlife who may or may not belong on Death Row. So I have to make a choice.”

  Alan shifted his weight so that he could more easily caress his wife’s belly. “How hard a choice is that? Try this on: If the situation were different, if you walked into an armed robbery, a bank robbery say, and you found yourself in a position to push this very same criminal into the line of fire to save your child, or alternately to push your child into the line of fire to save him, your choice would be clear, wouldn’t it?”

  “Sure. Of course. I’d sacrifice him to save her. In a second.”

  “There you go, then.”

  “But it’s not that simple. The problem is that in this scenario that you’ve created, the prosecutor—me?—I’m not just the mom, I’m also the bank robber. I’m not only the one pushing somebody to his death, I’m also the one who’s holding the gun that will kill him. That’s what makes my choice so difficult.” She paused and caressed his hands. “The only solution I can see is to put down the gun.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “First? I have to find out how my colleagues feel, see if I have any allies in my doubts. If it turns out that my old colleagues aren’t too fond of my questions, I can use the fact that they don’t know where to find me as a shield.”

  “Okay.”

  “If it turns out that I have an ally, I use that ally to begin to investigate. Cops. Witnesses. Lab. Whatever.”

  “If you don’t have an ally?”r />
  “Things get sticky.”

  “Sticky?”

  “Yes, sticky. Heart and soul, remember? I have that child I’m worried about.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  2

  Late Friday morning, Andrea Archer dropped two coins in the slot of the pay phone outside a Burger King in Sarasota and punched in Dave Curtiss’s office number. The aroma of grilling meat wafting from the restaurant caused her vegetarian stomach to flip in protest. The morning had been gray along the coast, but when she turned her back to the phone to try and catch a sea breeze, she spotted a sliver of sunshine sparkling off the waters in the distant Gulf of Mexico.

  Maybe the day would improve.

  As the connection went through and the phone began to ring, she pirouetted on one foot and gazed at the unfamiliar surroundings near the restaurant and thought to herself that this must be Dave’s Pay-Phone City.

  A receptionist said, “Good Morning. Larkspur, Granita, and Warren.”

  “Dave Curtiss, please.”

  A moment passed before another anonymous female voice said, “Mr. Curtiss’s office.”

  “May I speak to Mr. Curtiss please? This is his sister.”

  A moment later Dave Curtiss said, “This is Dave,” uncertain whether the person on the other end of the phone was his actual sister, Judy, calling from Ohio, or whether it was Andrea Archer using the code he’d asked her to use when calling his office.

  “Did you hear?” asked Andrea, her voice urgent.

  “No. What? You found her? You know where she is?”

  “No, I still don’t know where she is. I’m calling because the decision came down earlier than we expected. Khalid’s final appeal was denied. The date’s been set for his execution.”

  “Shit! We need time, Andrea. Shit, shit, shit.” He paused. “When is the execution?”

  “Beginning of next month.”

  “We can’t wait another day. We can’t. We have to know where Kirsten stands on this.”

  Andrea said, “I’ve been thinking, Dave. Maybe she doesn’t care one way or the other what happens here. You know, her own problems are pretty severe. She can’t exactly take a public position on this.”

  “She’s too damn moral, Andrea. She’s the original Miss Law and Order. These death penalty issues are big deals for her. You know I’m right—you know her better than I do. Before this goes any further, we have to be certain where she stands or we could go down, too. If she decides to publicly disagree with us, we’re sunk.”

  “What do you suggest we do, Dave? Call the Witness Protection people and ask for her address?”

  “She hasn’t called you again since that day I was in your office?”

  “No. But she might call now. Remember, she told me she’s been reading USA Today, trying to keep up with the Florida news. Hopefully a story about the Khalid Granger appeal will be in tomorrow’s paper.” Andrea felt something rough against her ear and examined the earpiece of the pay phone. Someone had filled most of the holes with yellow mustard. Andrea thought shower. No, even better, sauna.

  While she was examining the phone she’d missed something Dave was saying. She picked it up in time to hear, “… that’s the way I see it. When she calls, you need to find some way to press her for information on how she feels about the decision on the appeal. We need to know what she thinks. Then we’ll make a decision about what to do next.”

  “Have you thought this through, Dave? Have you actually considered what you’re going to do if you discover she’s not on the same page that we are?”

  “What we’re going to do. Last I looked, we’re in this together, right? I’m a hopeful man, Andrea.”

  “Yeah, and I’m a supermodel. You, a hopeful man? I’ve known you since law school at Penn, Dave. Who are you kidding?”

  3

  Carl showed up a few minutes late for his Monday morning appointment with Dr. Gregory. As always, he sat on the far end of the sofa, closest to the wall.

  “I want to go back to what we were talking about before. Me and my ideas for a business. Remember? But my inspector, Ron? I ran them by him, and he’s not too hot on any of my ideas. He wants me to come up with something portable, something he says I can just walk away from, need be, or take with me. He says he’s wary of bricks and mortar with someone in my situation.”

  Dr. Gregory asked, “What do you think? Can you see where he’s coming from?”

  “Sure, I guess. Being a protected witness doesn’t always mean security, you know? If I open a coffee bar over on the Mall over there—and I mean a real Italian place, no mochas and shit, that’s one of my ideas—and someone from my old life shows up and makes me and I gotta run, then what happens to my investment? The damn espresso machine alone costs as much as a late-model Lincoln. What happens to all that shit? I think that’s Ron’s worry.”

  “So his position seems reasonable to you?”

  Carl shrugged. “I don’t know. I know I gotta do something, Doc. I mean what can I do that doesn’t take some investment? Write songs, maybe? Twenty, thirty years ago I used to write songs that I wanted Sinatra to sing. I wrote dozens of them for him and for that other guy, Engelbert something. Just lyrics, though, not the music. Yeah, and Robert Goulet. I liked Goulet. You liked Goulet? Is he dead? I think he’s dead. I could write songs again I suppose. But who listens to ballads anymore? You know, I think all three of those singers are dead. But that’s what I like to write—ballads. But they’re all dead. All the guys who sang them and half the guys who listened to them. Dead.”

  Dr. Gregory wasn’t sure the crooners were all dead. But he didn’t argue. He waited to see if Carl wanted to talk more about music and songwriting and ballads. It seemed he didn’t.

  “What about getting a job, Carl? Just a simple nine-to-five?”

  “Two problems, there. One, what could I do? I got no references. And like I already told you, I got no real skills, so I do what? I could be a bouncer in a nightclub, maybe. Second problem is that I’m used to getting my own way. That’s a serious problem. I don’t think I’d make a good employee. If a boss gave me a hard time, I’d probably intimidate back a little. I don’t think that would work to my advantage. I think it’s best that I find a situation where I’m the boss. I’m thinking maybe something on the Internet. That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Dr. Gregory waited. When Carl spoke again, he was glad that he had waited.

  Carl raised his chin and briefly averted his eyes. He said, “I met somebody. You know, a girl. She’s nice.”

  To Alan Gregory it appeared that Carl was on the verge of saying something more, but he didn’t. He just shrugged. Dr. Gregory composed a welcoming look on his face, thinking that Carl Luppo might actually be at a loss for words. The psychologist was eager to witness the process of Carl trying to find his place.

  Carl said, “The girl? She’s younger than me. By a lot, maybe twenty years or so. I don’t know, I’m not that good at ages. But younger than me. Not that that matters much cause my interest isn’t romantic or anything.”

  Carl was sitting on the edge of the sofa. His elbows rested heavily on his knees. “It isn’t. I’m married, you know? Still married. Being in the program doesn’t change that. Vows are vows.” Carl’s voice trailed away with the thoughts of his wife. Dr. Gregory was left to wonder whether he was witnessing his patient’s longing for his marriage or his patient’s lament over the fact that he was still burdened with a wife. In the few therapy sessions thus far, Carl hadn’t spoken much about his family.

  Carl looked up, shrugged again. “So you gonna say something, or what? You just going to sit there? In case you’re wondering, I don’t find that particularly helpful.”

  “When I have something useful to say, I’ll say it.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact. Certainly not petulant. Not with this guy. “I’m not sure where you’re going yet. I don’t want to get out in front of you. I’d just be in the way.”

  “You think I’m going somewhere? I don’t know
about that. I’m just telling you I met somebody I’ve been spending some time with. I don’t have too many friends since I came here, you know what I mean?” Carl smiled, swallowed a little laugh, as though he found the thought of having friends amusing.

  “But you like this girl?”

  “Yeah. Met her at that tea place across Broadway. What’s it called? Dushan something. It’s from Tibet, I think. No, no, not Tibet, one of the ’stans. Uzbekistan. Afghanistan. Whatever, some gift to the city from someplace in Asia. I read about it in the tourist guide.”

  “Dushanbe.” Alan knew it was from Tajikistan.

  “Yeah. Dushanbe. You seen the place? The carving and the painting? Almost as pretty as something done by Michelangelo or Bernini. You close your eyes a little bit and soften the focus, it almost looks Italian. Like a little Sistine Chapel or something. Not that I’ve been there in a long time. Hear they cleaned it up since I was there.” He paused for ten seconds, maybe fifteen. “Anyway, it’s nice. I’m guessing that she’s lonely, too. The girl? Like me in some ways. She has… what do you say? Issues. She has issues.”

  “Issues?”

  “Yeah. Issues.”

  “What do you like about her, Carl?”

  “One thing is, I like that she’s not scared of me. Not so much, anyway. We talk.”

  “Why would she be scared of you?”

  Carl shrugged again. “I’m told I’m a scary kind of guy. When people on the outside smell wiseguy, even if they don’t recognize the odor, they tend to cross the street.”

  “You think she smells wiseguy?”

  “Look at me. Listen to me. What else you gonna think? I have to wear a sign around my neck or something?”

  Alan eyed Carl from his head to his toes. He said, “I see a guy with a friendly face. A man wearing boat shoes, Dockers, and a nice polo shirt. I don’t see or smell anything that says wiseguy.”

  “You stupid or are you pulling my leg?”

  “Hopefully, neither.”

  “She does. She smells wiseguy.”