“And did you hear who started this alleged argument?” the defense attorney questioned on cross-examination.
“No.”
“So for all you know, Mr. Willis may have provoked the argument?”
“Objection. Calls for speculation.”
“Withdrawn. And did you see who threw the first punch in this so-called attack?”
“No.”
“Might it have been Mr. Willis?”
Willis trembled and twitched beside Kate. “I didn't!”
“Shhh!”
Merced sighed. “Your honor . . .”
The judge frowned at the defense attorney, who had come costumed as a bad used-car salesman. He looked seedy enough that he might have been Zubek's cousin. “Mr. Krupke, this is a hearing, not a trial. The court is more concerned with what the witnesses saw than with what they did not see.”
“Not exactly the Richmond Ripper case, is it?” Quinn murmured in Kate's ear. She gave him the evil eye over her shoulder. The stiffness in her jaw began radiating down into her neck.
Merced's second witness corroborated the testimony of the Slurpee mechanic. Krupke went through the same cross, with Merced voicing the same objections, and the judge getting crankier and crankier. Willis fidgeted and recorded copious notes in tiny bold print that said frightening things about the inner workings of his mind. Merced entered into evidence the security surveillance tape showing much of the fight, then rested his case.
Krupke had no witnesses and put on no defense.
“We don't dispute that an altercation took place, your honor.”
“Then why are you wasting my time with this hearing, Mr. Krupke?”
“We wanted to establish that events may not have taken place exactly as Mr. Willis claims.”
“That's a lie!” Willis shouted.
The judge cracked his gavel. The bailiff frowned at Willis but didn't move from his post. Kate put a vise grip on her client's arm and whispered furiously, “Mr. Willis, be quiet!”
“I suggest you listen to your advocate, Mr. Willis,” the judge said. “You'll have your turn to speak.”
“Today?”
“No!” the judge snorted, turning his glare on Merced, who spread his hands and shrugged. He turned back to the defense. “Mr. Krupke, write me a check for two hundred dollars for wasting my time. If you had no intention of disputing the charges, you should have waived rights and asked for a trial date at the arraignment.”
The date for the trial was set and the proceedings were over. Kate breathed a sigh of relief. Merced got up from the table and collected his papers. Kate leaned across the bar and whispered, “Can't you get this guy to cop, Ken? I'd rather gouge my eyes out than sit through a trial with this man.”
“Christ, I'd pay Zubek to take a plea if it wouldn't get me disbarred.”
Krupke asked someone to lend him a pen so he could write out the check for contempt of court. Willis looked around like he had just awakened from a nap and had no idea where he was.
“That's it?”
“That's it, Mr. Willis,” Kate said, standing. “I told you it wouldn't take long.”
“But—but—” He swung his blue-casted arm in the direction of Zubek. “They called me a liar! Don't I get to defend myself?”
Zubek leaned over the rail, sneering. “Everyone can see what a shitty job you do of that, Willis.”
“We should leave now,” Kate suggested, handing Willis his briefcase. The thing weighed a ton.
He fumbled with the case and his notepad and pen as she herded him toward the aisle. Kate was more concerned with what she was going to do about Quinn. He had already moved into the aisle and was backing toward the door, his gaze on her, trying to get her to look at him. Sabin must have called him the second she was out of the office.
“But I don't understand,” Willis whined. “There should have been more. He hurt me! He hurt me and he called me a liar!”
Zubek twitched his shoulders like a boxer and made a Bluto face. “Weenie wuss.”
Kate saw Quinn's reaction the second the war cry curdled up out of David Willis. She spun around as Willis launched himself at Zubek, swinging. The briefcase hit Zubek in the side of the head like a frying pan and knocked him backward across the defense table. The locks sprung and the contents exploded out of the briefcase.
Kate hurled herself at Willis as he drew his arm back to swing again. She grabbed both his shoulders, and the two of them tumbled headfirst over the bar and into a sea of table legs and chairs and scrambling people. Zubek was squealing like a stuck pig. The judge was shouting at the bailiff, the bailiff was shouting at Krupke, who was screaming at Willis and trying to kick him. His wingtip connected with Kate's thigh, and she swore and kicked back, nailing Willis.
It seemed to take forever for order to be restored and for Willis to be hauled off her. Kate sat up slowly, muttering a string of obscenities under her breath.
Quinn squatted down in front of her, reached out, and brushed a rope of red-gold hair back behind her ear. “You really ought to come back to the FBI, Kate. This job's going to be the death of you.”
“DON'T YOU DARE be amused at me,” Kate snapped, surveying the damage to herself and her clothes. Quinn leaned back against her desk, watching as she plucked at a hole in her stockings that was big enough to put her fist through. “This is my second pair of good tights this week. That's it: I'm giving up skirts.”
“The men in the building will have to wear black armbands,” Quinn said. He held his hands up in surrender as she shot him another deadly glare. “Hey, you always had a nice set of pegs on you, Kate. You can't argue.”
“The subject is inappropriate and irrelevant.”
He gave her innocence. “Political correctness prohibits one old friend from complimenting another?”
She straightened slowly in her chair, forgetting about the ruined tights. “Is that what we are?” she asked quietly. “Old friends?”
He sobered at that. He couldn't look her in the eye and be glib about the past that lay behind them and between them. The awkwardness was a palpable entity.
“That's not exactly the way we parted company,” she said.
“No.” He moved away from the desk, sticking his hands in his pants pockets, pretending an interest in the notices and cartoons she had tacked up on her bulletin board. “That was a long time ago.”
Which meant what, she wondered. That it was all water under the bridge? While a part of her wanted to say yes, there was another part of her that held those bitter memories in a fist. For her, nothing was forgotten. The idea that it might be for him upset her in a way she wished weren't so. It made her feel weak, a word she never wanted associated with her.
Quinn looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Five years is a long time to stay mad.”
“I'm not mad at you.”
He laughed. “The hell you're not. You won't return my phone calls. You don't want to have a conversation with me. Your back goes up every time you see me.”
“I've seen you what—twice since you got here? The first time you used me to get your way, and the second time you made fun of my job—”
“I did not make fun of your job,” he protested. “I made fun of your client.”
“Oh, that makes all the difference,” she said with sarcasm, conveniently forgetting that everyone made fun of David Willis, including her. She stood, not wanting him looking down on her any more than their height difference allowed. “What I do here is important, John. Maybe not in the same way as what you do, but it is important.”
“I'm not disagreeing with you, Kate.”