"What do you want?"
"I want to finish my work."
"And what's that? Your work?"
"I believe you legal types would call it redress of grievances."
"Then it can't have anything to do with me. I haven't done anything to you."
"No, that's true. Not to me personally. In your case, maybe it's more that I want to keep you from doing more harm."
"Than what? I haven't done anybody any harm."
"Amy, Amy, Amy, please. I hope you don't really feel that. What about Andrew Bartlett?"
"What about him? He got out of detention today. Did you know that? How is that harming him?"
"Are you forgetting his attempted suicide already? Did it really make that little of an impression on you? You don't call that harm?"
"But I didn't-"
He slapped his free hand down on the arm of the chair, bared his teeth in a snarl. "The fuck you didn't! Don't you think he did that because you made him believe he'd never get out? But no, you don't think that way, do you? Nothing's really your fault, is it?"
"No. That's not true. Some things are completely my fault. Please don't point that thing. I'm sorry," she said. "Whatever it is, I didn't mean…"
"You don't understand what I'm saying. I don't care what you mean, what you meant. You play the same game they all played with my father, don't you see that? You're just like Allan Boscacci was twenty years ago- arrogant, self-righteous, pigheaded and wrong." He lifted the gun again. "Don't you move!"
"I wasn't. I was just…"
He kept his arm extended, the gun with its silencer pointed directly at her chest. "I don't care. I say something, you don't deny it. If I say 'Don't move,' you don't move."
"I'm sorry. I won't anymore. I promise. But I'm nervous. I've got to pee."
"So pee."
She started to stand, but he barked again, came halfway out of the chair with the gun trained on her. "Sit down!"
"But you just said…"
"I said you can pee. I didn't say anything about going anywhere."
She stared across at him, squeezed her legs together. "What do I have to do with Allan Boscacci?" Anything to keep him talking, to buy time, even a few precious seconds more.
"You're just like him."
"You said that. But how?"
"You really ask how? As if you don't know. All right, I'll tell you how." He sat back in the chair, rested the gun on his knee. "I saw you that first day with Bartlett, so sure he was guilty, ready to send him away for half his life, no concern at all for the truth, for what might be right. Just like Boscacci did with my father. Sent him up for life when he didn't do it."
"Your father?"
"That's right. My father."
"Didn't do what?"
"Rape and kill my mother, that's what."
She clutched her hands together against her stomach. "I'm sorry, but I really don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about my father, goddamn it! My father!" Again he'd come forward, lifted the gun. He held it on her for five seconds, ten. Again he collapsed back. "My father," he said, his voice now going to dead calm.
"What about him? I don't know about your father."
"Lucas Welding. His name was Lucas Welding."
"All right," she said. "Please. Tell me about him."
Jason Brandt got to the landing and thought he heard voices upstairs. He stopped and listened, almost turned around and went back down, but then decided since he'd come this far, he'd just say he was in the neighborhood and thought he'd stop by and see if she wanted to go out for a drink, or maybe meet him later at the Balboa. Surely, that was harmless enough. Or if whoever was with her turned out to be just a friend or a neighbor, she'd invite him in, they'd finish their conversation, then she'd tell the friend good-bye. After that, the two of them could let the night take them where it would.
When he got to the door, he paused a moment and listened. Yes, two voices, one male and one female. When he knocked- three quick raps- the voices stopped abruptly within. He waited through a lengthening silence, perplexity growing on this face. Then all at once the truth of what he must have been hearing dawned on him.
He blinked a few times, nodded, bit at his lower lip. He wasn't aware of it, but his shoulders fell.
What a fool he was.
He turned back toward the steps.
Then heard her voice through the door behind him. "Who is it?"
For a second, he considered not answering, getting to the stairs and out of sight before he brought any more embarrassment to himself. But she had asked him to believe her, believe in the kind of person she was. At least, he thought, he owed her that. To give her a chance to be straight with him. "Amy. It's me, Jason."
"Jason." He thought he heard a kind of relief in her voice, but it disappeared with her next words. "This isn't a good time. I'm sorry."
"Are you all right?"
"Fine. I'm fine. But really, it's not a good time."
"Okay, but if I could just-"
"Jason, go away! Leave me the fuck alone, all right! Get out of here! Now! Or you're in trouble! I mean it!"
"Good," he said. "That was all right. Nobody stays around after that."
"No. He's a jerk," she said, turning around. "Well, you know that. But please, could I go to the bathroom?"
Brandt stood below, in the gathering dusk, looking up at her window. Her outburst against him had punched him in the gut. Even now, frozen in his spot, leaning against the wall of a building across the street, he held his hand there.
He couldn't seem to make himself move. He stared up at the window, saw no shadows, no sign of movement.
Maybe they were lying together in her bed?
That thought came like another kick to his stomach, but suddenly, all at once, he couldn't accept it. That wasn't what was happening up there. And his certainty wasn't a matter of rational thought. It was on another level, a bone-deep conviction. She was up there with somebody, yes, but even if she was being romantic with another man, there was no way she would have gone off on him that way. Beyond the connection he felt that they'd established, that wasn't who she was. She wouldn't have treated him like that, not now.
It made no sense.
And then, suddenly, her words came back at him. "You're in trouble." That private, powerful, ambiguous code word between them, and now Amy had screamed it at him through her locked door. "You're in trouble." A little out of place, even in that context. Off-key.
A warning? Or a cry for help?
Christ, he thought. What an idiot. She's just dumping me. Let it go.
But he was already crossing the street, going back up.
"Boscacci was so sure," he said. "All the jurors were so sure. They polled them one by one afterward, you know. Every one of them."
He'd followed her into the bathroom, stood in the doorway while she'd gone, walked her back to her chair and now was finishing his story.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't know that."
"Yeah? Well, here's something else you don't know. You don't know what it's like having your home taken away from you when you're seven years old. You don't know what it's like when your mom's murdered and they blame your father for it and then try him and take him away and put you in foster care. Do you know what that's like?"
"No, I don't," Wu said. "I'm so sorry." And she was, but mostly she was afraid that she was going to die, and thought maybe she could get him to spare her. "It must have been terrible for you."
"Terrible doesn't begin to cover it. And taking away my own name, talking me into taking my mom's maiden name. I didn't want to have people knowing I'm the son of that murderer, did I? Wouldn't I be happier with a different name? Don't you understand- they took away my life!"