"I mean, is there anything else you think might be relevant to Inspector Juhle's ongoing investigation of you, Stuart, that your lawyer, if she wanted to protect you, might need to know?" Gina's tone had by degrees become more confrontational. Now she glared expectantly across the room and watched her client pretend to think until she could stand it no more. "You need a hint?" she snapped. "I could give you a hint."
He sat there, frowning. "Let me ask you something. Why are you being so hostile all of a sudden?" he asked. "What's that about?"
Gina couldn't come up with an answer right away. She sat back in her chair, gathering herself for a moment, before she finally said, "I read one of your books last night."
"The whole thing?"
"In one sitting, yes. Healed by Water. I liked it a lot." Stuart's mouth turned up at the corners. "I didn't realize you knew that I wrote books."
"I'm your lawyer," Gina said. "I know everything. Get used to it."
"And that's what's bothering you? That you liked my book?"
"Not exactly," she said evenly, "but since you asked, I'm mad if your beautiful book conned me and you're really guilty. I feel personally abused when I find out an eyewitness saw your car coming and going just about when Caryn was killed. I can't figure out why you've got all these anger issues when you write about such spiritual, holistic stuff. I'm really pissed off if you're in fact sleeping with your wife's sister. I'm furious if you're as good a liar as you are a writer. I'm confused about your lack of reaction to your wife's death. I'm baffled and confused by cops coming to break up fights at your house when you say you've never hit your wife. Is that enough?"
"I can explain-"
"Not just yet, please." Her jaw jutted. "So yes, I think we can say that something is bothering me, that I'm a little bit hostile. And while I'm on it, I'm not in the habit of letting myself get fooled by men. I had a damn fine man for a good while there and I got used to it. So I'm afraid my guard might be down, and that makes me mad too. How's all that?"
"I didn't kill Caryn."
"Right. Okay, you've said that. Thank you." "You don't believe me?"
She shrugged. Suddenly, and very much to her own surprise, she slammed her palm flat down on her computer table-a shockingly loud report, almost like a pistol shot in the closed-up room. "Jesus fucking Christ, Stuart! Do you think this is some kind of game, or what? Do you have any idea of how much trouble you're in right now? You don't think it matters, somehow that I don't need to know, that you got yourself arrested for domestic violence five years ago? Or that you threatened a Highway Patrol officer last Friday night just before you told him you were getting out of the house so you wouldn't kill your wife? What are you thinking? This is serious shit, and you are hip deep in it."
"But how did they…?"
Finally, the last of her reserve broke and she was on her feet. She'd made no plan for it-it wasn't part of her usual repertoire or strategy- but she was yelling at him. "Goddammit, Stuart! It never happened is not the same thing as they won't find out. Because they always find out! What have I been telling you? It all comes out! Always! That's the way it works" Hovering over him, she straightened, then whirled and crossed over to one of the windows. She parted the blinds, though she wasn't really looking out at anything.
Gina had to get her anger under control. Letting out a breath slowly, she closed her eyes, concentrated on the beat of her heart. When she looked over at him again, Stuart was forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees, looking at her as though he were pleading for something-and maybe he was.
She summoned what calm she could and turned to face him. "I'm sorry I raised my voice. That was unprofessional. I apologize."
He made some conciliatory gesture. "It's all right. People get mad."
She nodded. "Yes," she said. "They do." Gina crossed all the way back to where he sat and lowered herself onto the opposite end of the couch. She glanced at her watch, then over to him. When she spoke, all the fight was out of her voice. "All right, Stuart," she said. "Inspector Juhle's going to be here in no time. Do you want to tell me about the first domestic disturbance call? The one five years ago."
He was facing her, face drawn and pale, the fatigue around his eyes almost painful to see. "It was just another fight. The first bad one, really." He lowered his voice, ducked his head away from the admission. "I guess some dishes got thrown. One of them cut her a little. She was bleeding when the cops came."
"That's your version. So what's the police report going to say, Stuart? What's the version the cops got?"
He inclined his head an inch. "I don't know. I never saw any report. I'm not sure what Caryn told them." "But they took you downtown?"
"Yeah. Then Caryn came down and eventually they let me go back home with her. I took some anger management classes. The problem went away."
"Until last summer?"
Perhaps embarrassed, he looked down, shrugged. "I never did hit her. Not last summer, not before. Never."
"Okay." Gina was fairly sure that the distinction between Stuart hitting his wife and throwing a plate at her would not make much of a difference to a jury, if it came to him being in front of one, but if the exact type of domestic violence he'd committed mattered to Stuart, she'd let him live with his own conscience. For the time being, at least. "So what about this Highway Patrol guy?" she asked. "Did you threaten him?"
"No. I was pissed off, getting pulled over." A self-deprecating half-smile. "That anger thing again, I know. Every other driver on the road was speeding, and he pulls up behind me. So I mentioned that minor point when he got to the window. Probably I could have phrased it better, okay, but I didn't threaten him. I gave the guy my autograph at the end, so how bad could it have been?" He leaned in toward her. "Gina, listen, I've got a temper, okay. I work on it. Living with my two girls could try the patience of a saint, but the way I deal with it is to get away when I can. I'm not a violent guy, and I didn't kill Caryn, and that's God's truth. It'd do wonders for my peace of mind if I thought my own attorney believed me at least."
She just stared at him, unable and in any event unwilling to give him even a small part of what he wanted from her. The truth was that Stuart's peace of mind was about the last thing she cared about at this moment. There were much more pressing issues than her client's tender feelings, and they were rushing at her from all directions.
Finally, she checked her watch, crossed her legs, and sat back.
"We've got forty more minutes, Stuart, before Juhle gets here. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and we'd better get to it. You ready to tell me something I don't already know?"
After the interview, when Juhle and Stuart had both gone, Gina thought the knock on her door was probably Stuart coming back to fire her, or more specifically, to rescind her hiring. She wouldn't blame him if he didn't want to work with her after her attitude today. Although he would need some lawyer, that was for sure. The interview they'd just had with Juhle should have removed any of Stuart's doubts that his wife had been murdered and that he was the prime suspect.
Or maybe in the ten minutes since he'd left Gina's office, he'd had a chance to think about it and decided he didn't want to fork over her retainer of sixty-five thousand dollars in cash. This was a serious hunk of change. Other lawyers were both cheaper and less hostile, and maybe he'd decided to hire one of them. She almost hoped that he had.
She walked to the door and opened it, her game face on. Her two partners were standing in the hallway. Dismas Hardy said, "No arrest?"
Gina nodded. "No arrest."