“How come you’re so anxious to go out with me?” she asked.
“Because I find you overwhelmingly attractive,” he replied.
“That’s hard to argue with, I guess.”
He held up the bag again. “It’s really good barbecue.”
Holly’s mouth watered. “I accept,” she said, then smiled.
“That took a long time,” he said.
“What?”
“That smile. First one I’ve seen on you.”
“First one I’ve worn since I came to this town,” she said. “You want a beer?”
“Sure.”
She motioned him off her doorstep, unlocked the trailer door and motioned Daisy inside. “Daisy, bring the gentleman a beer,” she said. Daisy disappeared and came back half a minute later with a Heineken in her jaws, surrendering it to Oxenhandler.
“That,” he said, “is a very valuable dog.”
“I’d like a beer, too, Daisy,” Holly said, and the dog brought her one.
“Did she close the refrigerator door?” he asked.
“You bet.” Holly reached inside the trailer, got an opener and cracked both bottles. She dragged up a couple of folding chairs and they sat and watched the Indian River.
“Hope this isn’t too much of a shock,” he said. “I mean, I hope I’m not being too persistent.”
“I like persistence in a man,” she replied. Involuntarily, she thought of Colonel James Bruno, then dismissed him from her mind. “Up to a point.”
“Point taken. You hungry yet?”
“Let’s finish our beer.”
“Good idea. I hear you’re an army brat.”
“Brat, filly and…older filly. Grew up in it, joined it, stayed twenty years.”
“You don’t look old enough to have done anything for twenty years.”
“I’m thirty-eight and a half, if you’re fishing. How old are you?”
“Forty-one.”
“How long you been practicing law?”
“Six years.”
She frowned. “You have trouble getting out of law school?”
“I had trouble getting in,” he replied. “Once in, I did okay.”
“What did you do before?”
“I was a cop in Miami.”
“What kind of cop?”
“Street, uniformed. I wasn’t suited to it.”
“How long did it take you to figure that out?”
“Oh, about eight years. They finally made it clear to me.”
“Who did?”
“All the other cops, especially my superiors.”
“What were your shortcomings as a police officer?”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
“I was too sensitive. I tended to feel for the people I arrested. I tended not to feel for most of the cops I knew.”
“How so?”
“Too many of them were unnecessarily violent, on the take. I saw them hurt people, lie to their superiors, perjure themselves in court.”
“What percentage of all cops were like that?”
“I don’t know, maybe fifteen, twenty percent of the ones I knew. Trouble was, those were the ones I seemed to get partnered with or put to work for.”
“So you left and went to law school?”
“First I testified against my partner; after that it was easy to leave.”
“I’ll bet. What did your partner do?”
“He beat a man to death with a baton.”
“And you saw it happen?”
“I was driving. He told me to stop alongside a guy walking along the street. I stopped. My partner got out and started hitting the guy in the head. By the time I got there, the guy’s brains were on the sidewalk. I asked my partner why he’d done it, and he said the guy hadn’t paid off. He’d apparently been taking a cut of the guy’s drug sales.”
“What did you do? Immediately, I mean.”
“I arrested him, cuffed him, threw him in the back of the patrol car, took him down to the station and booked him. A crowd gathered at the booking desk—a crowd of cops. The shift was changing.”
“What did they do?”
“They locked me up.”
“On what charge?”
“Murder, of course; my partner fingered me for the killing.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t much fun.”
“And how did you get out of that mess?”
“Fortunately, a lawyer—a public defender—saw them lock me up and called Internal Affairs. I’ve had a soft spot for public defenders ever since. IA got there before somebody killed me. Fortunately, also, there was a witness to the event on the street—a teenaged Cuban girl. She backed me up, and eventually, after nearly a year on administrative leave, I testified, and my partner got a life sentence.”
“What kind of life sentence?”
“The kind that makes parole possible after ten years.”
“And how long ago was this?”
“Twelve years ago. He’s out.”
“Any idea where he is?”
“He’s in Miami, working for a security company run by an ex-cop. Cops take care of their own, you know.”
“They didn’t take care of you.”
“I wasn’t one of their own, and they knew it.”
They were quiet for a little while.
“I’m hungry,” Holly said. “You want another beer?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
She gave him some dishes and napkins, then got them both another beer.
“How come you left the army after twenty? Why didn’t you stay for the whole thirty?”
“I decided my career was pretty much at an end.”
“How come?”
“I accused my commanding officer of attempted rape and sexual harrassment. He was acquitted at the court-martial.”
“He really tried to rape you?”
“He tried real hard. It all started with his asking me out. When I wouldn’t go, the…remarks began, and that degenerated into grabbing. I asked him to stop; he wouldn’t. Finally, one day, he grabbed me and I hit him. I hit pretty good. That’s when he started tearing my clothes off.”
“You fought him off?”
“I got a knee into his crotch, and he seemed to lose interest.”
“So you turned him in?”
“Not until I found out he’d been giving a young lieutenant in the outfit a hard time. I figured, with the two of us to testify, we’d have a case. I was wrong.”
“He got off scot-free.”
“He did.”
“Looks like you and I are sort of black sheep, doesn’t it?” he said.
“You could say that.” They plunged into the barbecue. It was sensational. “This is sensational barbecue,” she said. “Best I’ve ever had.”
“I know a guy,” he replied.
“So tell me about law school.”
“I applied at a dozen places, all out of state. They all liked my academic record—I had a degree from Florida State—but they didn’t like the idea of a thirty-two-year-old first-year law student. I finally got into the University of Georgia Law School, after I hinted that I might sue for age discrimination if I didn’t get in.”
“How’d you do?”
“Third in my class; edited the law review.”
“So how come you’re not practicing corporate law in some glass tower somewhere?”
He smiled sadly. “I like criminals. I mean, I understand them, somehow—what makes them do what they do. It makes it easier to defend them. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever defended an innocent man until today. And, of course, ol’ Sam possessed an unlicensed weapon and some drugs, so I guess he wasn’t innocent, after all.”
“I just said good-bye to Sam,” she said. “Right before I got home.”
“He’s going somewhere?”
“At my suggestion. We don’t need him around here.”
“I can see it’s going to be tough to make a living in Orchid with you around.”