Stone Cold

Chapter Six

“You won,” Bonnie said to Alex, “but you look like you lost. I’ve seen longer faces on a funhouse mirror. What’s up with that?”

They were in their den in their matching easy chairs, feet on their ottomans, a wedge-shaped table stacked with books and magazines between them. Quincy, their Wheaten terrier, was asleep in his dog bed in front of the fireplace. Bonnie was still in her scrubs. Alex had taken off her suit jacket. It was their winding-down ritual, chasing the highs and lows of their day with a glass of wine.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, turning on her side, facing Bonnie. “Guess it’s just the post-trial letdown.”

“The last time you got a not-guilty verdict, you wanted to go dancing. You saved a man from death row today. How can you possibly have a letdown after that? If anyone should be moping, it’s Tommy.”

She had introduced Bonnie to Tommy early in their relationship, telling him that she was the one. It wasn’t long before Tommy told Alex that she was right.

Alex swung her feet onto the floor. Quincy stirred, stretched, and trotted to her side, his tail wagging. She buried her hand in the fur behind his neck.

“Tommy’s last witness was the money,” she said, and told Bonnie how she’d dismantled Jameer Henderson. “I talked to the jurors after they came back. They all said that Henderson’s testimony created reasonable doubt. They had to acquit.”

“But. .”

Alex looked at Bonnie, loving how the lamplight bounced off her hair and the way her eyes sparkled. She loved everything about her. Top to bottom, front to back, inside out, she liked to tell her. They’d been together seven years, long enough for Bonnie to know when there was a but at the end of her sentence.

“But they didn’t want to. They were ready to convict before Henderson ever opened his mouth. They said Tommy blew it by putting him on the stand. They were mad at Tommy and they were mad at me.”

“Mad at you? For what? Doing your job?”

Alex rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “Yeah. Some of those people live in my client’s neighborhood. Every time they see Dwayne Reed on the street, they’re going to think he got away with murder.”

Bonnie sat up and scooted onto her ottoman. “I’m more interested in what you think. Did he get away with murder?”

“I’ll never know for sure.”

“Are you going to be okay with that?”

Alex shook her head. “What choice do I have?”

Bonnie folded her arms across her middle, eyebrows crunched, studying her. Alex recognized the look as the one she reserved for the patients who stumped her.

“You think I have a choice?” Alex asked. “And why are you giving me your what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-this-patient look?”

“No, I don’t think you have a choice. But there’s something else you’re not telling me. What is it?”

Alex rose and paced the room, Bonnie and Quincy watching and waiting. She stopped at a portrait hanging on the wall that they had posed for a year ago. The photographer had taken it in their backyard. They were on a bench beneath a sun-dappled tree, hands intertwined, Quincy between them, sitting on his hind legs.

Bonnie’s makeup and nails were perfect, her outfit a designer’s ensemble. Alex had consented to a light dusting of makeup at the photographer’s insistence but had refused to wear anything other than chinos and a polo shirt. The photographer, a gay friend, told them to face the camera as he joked that Bonnie looked like a debutante and Alex looked like her escort. They both laughed, the photographer catching the moment.

Alex loved the portrait. It showed them for who and what they were-a family. She brushed her fingertips across the image of Bonnie’s face, unable to imagine ever losing her, certain that she’d do anything to protect her.

“Judge West said that Jameer Henderson asked the best question of the whole trial,” she said, telling Bonnie about their conversation in his chambers. “He made it sound like I was responsible if anything bad happened to Henderson and his family.”

Bonnie crossed the room to Alex, taking her hands. “That’s not right. You were doing your job. He shouldn’t put that on you.”

“I know. I know, but I can’t stop thinking about them. What if something horrible does happen to them because of me?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them, and if it does, it won’t be because of you. It will be because of the choices Jameer Henderson made and the actions of other people over whom you have no control.”

Bonnie wrapped her arms around her and Alex rested her head on Bonnie’s shoulder. They stood like that until Quincy nosed his way between them, reminding them he hadn’t eaten. They didn’t talk about it again, fixing dinner, turning on and ignoring the television until they went to bed.

Bonnie fell asleep right away, while Alex replayed her conversation with Judge West, parsing it for meaning. She kept coming back to the same conclusion. Justice required that the guilty be punished. No argument there. The trick, Judge West had told her, was figuring out what steps she should take. To do what? Represent her client? No, that wasn’t what he’d meant. And then she knew-to protect the innocent, even if that meant protecting them from her guilty clients.

Could he really mean that? Did he truly expect her to throw her clients under the bus to make certain the guilty didn’t go free? She could no more imagine a judge suggesting that she do so than she could imagine doing it. That would violate everything she believed in, not to mention innumerable laws and ethical standards.

And Judge West hadn’t said that, at least not directly. Nor would he have if that were what he’d really meant. Plausible deniability was critical just in case she filed a complaint against him or, worse, did what she though he had suggested, got caught, and claimed it was all the judge’s idea. Deciding she’d had too long a day and too much wine, she dismissed the whole notion as a product of an overly tired mind and soon was asleep.