“Sharon, you clearly have some family money”-Rosario indicated the surroundings with her chin. “You’re one of the few who can afford the dignity of being a public defender without giving up the, um, niceties provided by private practice. And everyone knows you’re a good lawyer. If you’re intent on bailing, find a good firm with a partnership track. You know I’m never going to share the profits of my practice, so why bother?”
“Aren’t you going to retire someday?”
Rosario laughed. “Why not just ask me if I plan to die? Yes, I’m going to retire one day, but not for quite some time. What are you planning to do, sit around like a vulture, in the vain hope you can take over my lease and buy my office equipment on the cheap?”
“I could learn enough from you to set up my own practice. Or I could run for public office.”
“County council?”
“State delegate, more likely. County council is still a boys’ club.”
“It’s a part-time legislature, dear. The jobs don’t pay enough to make it worth your while to spend the three months in Annapolis.”
“But you would pay me enough. And it wouldn’t hurt you to have an associate who was in Annapolis part-time.”
“Perhaps.” Rosario paused, and Sharon wondered if she was jealous. “Assuming you got there. But what would you do for me in the meantime?”
Without realizing what she was doing, Sharon knelt before Rosario Bustamante and took her hands. Rosario’s knees were splayed-she was always careless about how she sat-and her pantyhose were an off shade of amber that made her legs look jaundiced. From this vantage point, Sharon could see the ladder of a run that had opened on the inside of the right thigh, reaching past the hem of the short skirt. Sharon felt as if she were bowing before a queen, waiting to be knighted.
“I know this doesn’t appeal to you, because, if we do it right, there won’t be any publicity. The best-case scenario is a case that never happens. The cops find whoever really did it, and leave Alice alone.”
Rosario looked at her keenly. “But you don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”
“No. I think they’re going to find a way to put a charge on her-or at least get a warrant to search her mother’s home, which will tip reporters that she’s a suspect. If that happens, Alice and her mother are going to need a strong ally, someone who can hold the press at bay, spin the story in their favor. There’s stuff about Alice that no one knows, stuff that would blow people’s minds if we told. I’ll do the work, you can go on mike. But please, please, Rosario, let’s do this. I’ll sign a personal services contract, give you the next five or ten years of my professional life if you’ll just hire me, tonight, and let me work on this case.”
Rosario patted Sharon’s hair with a gesture that was somehow more fatherly than motherly. “Okay. Let’s see where this goes. I hate to say it, but it could be fun. Now”-she shook her glass-“more Scotch, less scooch this time.”
“One more thing-”
Rosario scowled, skeptical of being taken.
“The last time around, there was a sort of gentlemen’s agreement that the two girls would, um-”
“Hang together?”
“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”
“And who were the ‘gentlemen’ who made this agreement?”
“Me, I guess,” Sharon admitted. “Me and the PD for Ronnie Fuller, the other girl. But it was at Helen Manning’s behest. She wanted things to be fair.”
Sharon slumped on the floor, remembering Helen’s bizarre insistence that the legal proceedings must not escalate into a welter of finger-pointing and blame. I don’t care who did what, who thought of what, Helen kept saying. The important thing is that they be treated equally. It’s only fair.
“Sharon?” Rosario actually extended her high heel and prodded Sharon’s midsection with the toe.
“What?”
“My drink?”
The doorbell rang while Sharon was at the bar. She all but ran to it, eager to introduce Rosario to “their” client. But as always, Sharon needed a moment to reconcile the wide-eyed little girl in her memory with the hulking almost-woman with the impenetrable ice-blue eyes.
She hugged her anyway. “Alice, we’ve got something wonderful to tell you. Rosario Bustamante is going to be your lawyer, pro bono, and I’m to help her. The Baltimore County Police won’t be able to harass you now. They won’t dare. You’ve got the best criminal lawyer in the area working for you for free. For free!”
Helen clapped her hands in delight. Alice looked to Helen, as if she couldn’t be sure what to think until Helen showed her the way. And in that moment, in that lumpy moon of a face, Sharon saw the child she remembered, the bewildered little girl who simply could not make sense of what had happened to her life.
Monday, July 6
28.
Midnight had barely come and gone when a fourteen-year-old boy in the county due west of Baltimore crept from his bed, took his father’s gun from an unlocked drawer in the kitchen, and used it to kill his parents and his older sister. He then lifted the keys to his sister’s Jeep Cherokee from the hook next to the kitchen door and managed to drive perhaps thirty miles before he was pulled over on I-70. Thin and small for his age, with large, owlish glasses that gave him a pronounced resemblance to a young actor best known for a series of fantasy films, the boy was still wearing his pajamas. Once the state police made it clear that they did not believe his story about his intrepid escape from a trio of crazed killers who had executed his family-a story taken, more or less, from a cop show he had watched Saturday night-the boy was asked why he had done it.
“I’m not sure,” he said with a small sigh. “I didn’t really have a plan per se.”
“Per se,” Lenhardt repeated, after relaying this privileged piece of gossip to Nancy and Infante, who did not look much refreshed despite having devoted their last sixteen hours to attempted sleep. “Per se. ‘I didn’t really have a plan per se.’ I guess that explains the pajamas. My friend in the state police can’t get over it. He shot Mom and Dad while they slept, but big sister heard the shots and made a run for it. They found her in the hallway outside her room.”
“Did something set him off?” Nancy asked. “A quarrel, a disagreement, some kind of abuse?”
“His statement at the scene is the only thing he’s going to say for quite a while. He’s being charged as an adult, and his lawyer is already hinting that he’ll have all sorts of fascinating revelations to make, when the time comes. The important thing is, come tomorrow, no one’s going to care what we’re doing. We’re already B- 3.”
“Be what?” Infante asked on a yawn.
“B- 3,” Lenhardt said, pointing out the page of that number in that day’s Beacon-Light. “Eight paragraphs on the search, nothing more. Now we can fly beneath the radar for a couple of days at least, try to do some police work. Kid who kills his family trumps missing-and-presumed-dead kid.”
Nancy felt equal parts relief and dismay. “What? The Baltimore metro area can’t stay interested in two crimes at once?”