Penance Read Free Page A

the prisoner, although she seemed to use his name a lot. She talked to him for what seemed a half hour, but when I glanced at my watch, I realized it was only a few minutes. After a few minutes more, the man slid back into the room and slumped in a chair next to the conference table. He was crying and shaking quite a bit. Cynthia closed the window and turned her back to it.
    “Trust me, James,” she told the man. He nodded and covered his face with his hands.

    I waited for Cynthia in the back of the courtroom. James had composed himself well enough to enter a guilty plea to misdemeanor domestic assault charges, but broke down again when the Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies laid hands on him to take him back to the detention center across the street.
    “You said I wouldn’t have to go back to jail,” he shouted at Cynthia as the deputies led him away.
    Cynthia packed her briefcase without comment while a trio of suits crowded around, waiting to take her place at the table.
    “Buy me a drink,” she said as she went through the courtroom doors, brushing by me without stopping.

    Cynthia Grey ordered a double Scotch, neat. She stirred it with her finger and turned the glass slowly clockwise, widening a circle of moisture on the table top, but did not drink; she dried her finger on a napkin.
    “You did well, getting that guy off the ledge,” I told her.
    “Thank you.”
    “What did you say that convinced him to come in?”
    “I told him we would work things out,” Cynthia said. “I told him it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. He has a lot of criminal things pending, including a felony assault charge, and he’s spent a lot of time in custody—over two weeks. Some people can’t take jail. Not even for a day.”
    “Did you tell him he wouldn’t have to go back to jail?”
    “That’s what he wanted to hear.”
    “I would have wanted to hear the truth.”
    “You would have wanted to hear anything that would have gotten you off that ledge.”
    Cynthia picked up her glass, regarded the contents thoughtfully, then returned it to its place.
    “What exactly do you want, Taylor?”
    “Are you going to drink that Scotch?”
    “I haven’t had a drink in seven years and two months,” she replied.
    Yeah, I figured it was something like that. I hailed our waitress and asked her to remove the Scotch and bring the lady a designer water with a twist of lime. Cynthia did not protest. I felt slightly guilty for staying with my Summit Ale and slightly superior for having conquered my own drinking problems without resorting to abstinence.
    “You still haven’t told me what you want,” Cynthia reminded me.
    “I want you to tell me what you know about John Brown’s activities since he got out of the joint.”
    “So you can kill him?”
    “I don’t know quite how to tell you this except to come right out and say it: John Brown is dead. He was murdered Saturday night.”
    Cynthia fell back against her chair like someone had pushed her there, mouth agape, eyes wide. I knew what she was thinking.
    “Yeah, the cops thought I did it, too. Only I didn’t. To prove it, I’m going to find out who did.”
    Enough time passed for me to finish my Summit Ale while she worked it through. Finally she said, “Brown’s dead?”
    “So they tell me.”
    “And you’re going to find his killer? You of all people?”
    “I thought I’d give it a day or two, until a paying customer comes along.”
    She thought about it some more.
    “I guess it wouldn’t do any harm,” she sighed and then said more clearly, “I was informed by Corrections three months ago that Brown was paroled to a halfway house in Minneapolis. That’s all I know. I haven’t seen or spoken to him in four years. He wouldn’t answer my letters or return my phone calls. Apparently he thought I should have done better by him. He’s probably right. I didn’t have enough experience back then. If I defended him today, I’d probably get him off—at least get him a