A lot of people had liked Amy’s campaign. Small town like this, campaigns for district attorney were usually predictable. The Republican candidate always ran on a law-and-order platform and sounded as if he were actually trying to work up a lynch mob; and the Democratic candidate always talked about squishy soft issues like bad childhood and irresponsible parents, neither of which was much comfort to a sixty-seven-year-old who’d just been mugged by a twelve-year-old. Amy had run as an independent. Everybody at the country club and the union hall predicted disaster. She fooled them all.
She laughed. “You’re not going to ask me about my sex life, are you?”
“Maybe later.”
“Very funny.”
“You prosecute drug cases. That seems like a fair question. I mean, asking you if you take drugs.”
“I’ve smoked approximately ten joints in my life.”
“ ‘Joints.’ Cool. So how long ago did you smoke these ten joints?”
“When I was in college.”
“And not since then?”
“Not since then.”
“Solemn word?”
“Solemn word.”
She glanced at her wristwatch, a piece of silver that complemented the gray suit and the frilly white blouse she wore. There was a good possibility that the verdict would come in today. She wanted to look her best.
When she looked back at him, he was smiling. Smirking, actually.
“All right,” he said. “How about your sex life?”
“Very funny.”
“It’d be pretty cool if we had that in the interview.”
“Yes,” she said, “especially if we had photos to go along with it.”
“Photos!” He laughed. “That’d really be cool!”
They’d had their fun. She had to wrap up the interview and get back to work.
“You know, you haven’t asked me any questions about how the district attorney’s office helps people.”
“Helps people?” Brian looked shocked.
“Yes, believe it or not, Brian, our office was set up so it could actually do some good.”
Brian surprised her by seeming interested.
“Well, some of the people we bring charges against we help get in appropriate programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and foster homes and spousal-abuse programs.”
Brian was writing all this down quickly in his long reporter’s-style notebook.
Telling him about the helpful ways of the DA’s office took up the next fifteen minutes. Brian seemed particularly intrigued by the ways the office helped abused and neglected kids.
While she talked, Amy looked out the window at the hills surrounding the town of Crystal Falls. At twenty-seven thousand population, the place was still small enough to be one with the countryside. Deep forest was no more than seven or eight minutes away from the shopping district.
She wanted to be outside now. Weekend hiking was one of her real passions, and had been ever since her bitter divorce three years ago. She’d come to appreciate the solitary life. Hiking was especially fun at this time of year, when autumn blessed all the trees with fiery beauty.
“This was all Senator Cummings’s idea,” Amy said as she wound up her verbal tour of the office and all it did for people. “He’d heard of a DA’s office in Virginia that was set up to help people, so he told my predecessor about it, and that’s how it got started here.”
“He really helped you, didn’t he?” Brian said. “Senator Cummings, I mean.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to get through college and law school without him getting me the scholarships and the grants,” Amy said. When she was about Brian’s age, her parents had been killed in a car accident. Most people just automatically thought that the daughter of a prominent surgeon would be well taken care of with insurance. Not so. Her father was a kind and decent man but also a somewhat naïve one. A man at the country club had convinced her father, right before his death, that he should put all his available money in buying access land that the state government would need for its new leg of interstate. Unfortunately, this was at the time that the president and the Congress were cutting budgets for the infrastructure. That last leg of interstate never got built. Her father died with only a few thousand dollars to his name. Not even selling the family home helped much. There was a large unsettled tax bill. This meant that Amy had a particularly difficult time raising herself and her younger brother.
“Mr. Slocum, our American studies teacher, was talking about Senator Cummings the other day,” Brian said. “Said he was probably the most popular senator our state’s ever had. Six terms.”
“And he’ll probably run again next time,” Amy said. “I sure hope so anyway.”
“Mr. Slocum said that Crystal Falls probably wouldn’t be half as big if it wasn’t for Senator Cummings,” Brian said. “He really brought the three biggest employers here himself?”
“He really did,” Amy said, feeling a curious pride in the accomplishment, as if she’d played some role in it. This was because the Senator had always made her feel as if she were part of his family. “He’s helped more people than any other person in this state.”
Brian smiled. “You wouldn’t be prejudiced, would you?”
“Probably a little bit,” she said.
Brian stood up. “Well, I’ve got a test right after lunch so I’d better get back to school and do a little studying.”
“You haven’t read the material for the test yet?”
The boyish grin again. “What’s the hurry? I’ve got two hours.”
2
Twenty minutes after Brian left, when Amy was working with the material she’d need this afternoon for a pretrial conference, her phone rang and she picked up.
Midge, her secretary, said, “The courthouse just called, Amy. There’s been a verdict.”
“I’m on my way,” Amy said, unable to keep the tension from her voice.
In many respects, this was the most important case she’d ever tried.
Two
1
A long time ago, when Helen first moved to Washington, D.C., she dated a cop who’d spent a lot of time on the burglary detail in his early years.
He used to say pick a door, any door, I can get it open.
And, in truth, he had been able to open every single door she’d pointed to. Apartment doors, car doors, even doors to businesses. Of course, he locked them right back up again. But he’d made his point. With a few tools and a lot of practice, you could open just about any door you wanted to.
If only he’d been equally skilled in the sex department.
But by the time it was all over — and he’d at least had the decency to be brokenhearted — she’d picked up a number of his techniques. For both the boudoir and burglary.
She hadn’t needed to use her burglary skills in many years.
But thank God she still remembered them.
There was a little task she needed to perform now that she was back home in small-town Iowa. Helen was the sister of Senator David Cummings and, it had long been rumored, the real brains in the family...
Today she was going to do a little breaking and entering...
Wearing the disguise made her sweaty and uncomfortable.
Yesterday, she’d shopped at the Salvation Army, got herself some old, baggy clothes. Then at a theatrical rental place, she’d bought a reddish wig and some oversize reading glasses.
When she looked at herself in the mirror, she was startled to see how well the disguise worked.
She was no longer Helen. She was this new person... one who resembled a bag lady...