by Jeanne Winer
Running on the last fumes of adrenaline, the student kept going and passed. She bled a lot, cried a little, but kept going. Lee was proud of her. During the awards ceremony, while the students replaced their faded blue belts with stiff new brown ones, Lee slipped out of the room and filled a plastic bag with ice. Afterward, she’d accompanied the student to the dressing room and helped clean her up.
“My first broken nose,” the student told her.
“It won’t be your last.”
The student nodded gravely.
“You did really well, though,” Lee added.
“Thank you. That means a lot. What’ll I look like tomorrow?”
Lee gently removed the bag and studied the student’s face.
“It’s a pretty straightforward break. You’ll wake up with two black eyes but, in a few weeks, only your best friends will know it’s broken.”
“That would be nice. And I’ll still have my brown belt. They can’t take that away from me.”
“No,” Lee agreed, “whoever they are, they can’t.”
They’d both laughed.
After a few minutes, Lee roused herself to take a shower. She’d procrastinated long enough. There was a ton of work to do on her new murder case. Yesterday, after a pre-trial motions hearing on a burglary that wouldn’t settle, she’d stopped by the public defender’s office to pick up Jeremy’s file, which included dozens of crime scene photos depicting the victim’s body curled in a fetal position, covered with blood, the ground around him littered with empty bottles of Southern Comfort and cigarette butts.
Phil handed the thick file over, singing, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
Objectively, the pictures were shocking but, as was often the case, Lee’s reaction was sadness. Whoever coined the term “homo sapiens” had run in very different circles than Lee.
Blood, blood, everywhere, she thought, stepping into the shower stall.
After a quick stop for sushi and an ice pack, Lee settled into her office with Jeremy’s file spread out in front of her. It was quiet and peaceful. Last night, while Charlie dozed on her lap, she’d skimmed through almost a thousand pages, which would no doubt quadruple as more acid reflux-inducing information came to light. She’d also phoned the juvenile detention center and asked them to tell Jeremy she was taking his case and would see him Monday.
Yes, the facts looked bad, but a murder was always bad. A human being, often blameless, had died in an ugly, unnatural way. Initially, the details were appalling, the photographs repulsive. It took a great deal of skill and persistence to defend an accused killer, to personalize someone whom everyone else in the system referred to as “the defendant.” Understandably, people wanted to do the same thing to an accused that he or she had done to a victim: dehumanize him. It was Lee’s job to keep that from happening; to do that, she had to find something sympathetic, or at least pitiable, about her client and then, no other way to say it, exploit it.
Today, she planned to take extensive notes and then draft an investigation request for Carla Romano, the private investigator she used on her biggest cases. She’d phoned Carla the same night she accepted the case. Carla, who’d obviously been drinking, told Lee she wasn’t sure she had the time and to call back in a couple of days.
In the nine years they’d worked together, Carla always played hard to get before accepting a job. It was annoying, but everyone had their quirks. Lee figured it had something to do with Carla’s three failed marriages. Still, despite her personal issues, Carla was an excellent PI who, once committed, worked tirelessly on behalf of her clients. On serious cases, she was always Lee’s first choice.
Actually, it was probably time to call Carla and pin her down. Lee dialed Carla’s cell phone number and waited. Although they’d worked together on at least a dozen murder cases, Lee realized that except for Carla’s status as a triple divorcee, she knew very little about her. Whenever Carla wasn’t working, she always seemed to be trawling for the next Mr. Right.
Carla’s voicemail switched on, inviting the caller to leave a message. Lee simply hung up. Every three or four months, Carla would ask Lee to go bar hopping with her, but of course Lee always declined. “You need a girl’s night out,” Carla would say. “I’d rather have a root canal,” Lee would answer. And then Carla would shake her head and laugh, no offense taken.
People never believed Carla was a PI until she showed them her card. If you had to guess, you’d peg her for John Travolta’s mother in Saturday Night Fever. Besides her obsession with finding future ex-husbands, Carla was extremely inquisitive about other people’s lives. It made her a natural investigator. When she interviewed witnesses, they could tell she was genuinely interested in what they had to say. And so they talked to her for hours, long after Lee had skipped out to sit in the car.
When Lee’s office phone rang, she picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, Carla.”
“Well, you’re lucky. I just finished a big case for Bradley Moore.”
“That rape on the CU campus? How did it go?”
“Morning of the trial, the client pled out. Judge Massey gave him sixteen to life. The guy was nice enough but deep down a real sicko. He kept telling us the girl liked it rough. Bradley told him no sane juror would believe that a girl liked having a bottle shoved up her vagina. The guy kept insisting she did. Finally, I said to him, ‘Joe, I’m probably the most gullible person on the planet, and even I think you’re guilty.’ A few weeks later, he took the deal. Bradley was so relieved.”
“I’ll bet he was,” Lee said, glad for the thousandth time that, as a private attorney, she could pick and choose her cases. If someone showed up in her office accused of a violent rape, she’d ask for a million dollar retainer. It was easier than explaining how she felt about the crime, and a lot more fun. One of the many perks of being self-employed.
“So, your murder case. I’ve been following it in the Camera. Your client’s the juvenile, right?”
“Right,” Lee said and then gave her a quick overview.
“Sounds terrible.”
“Are you in?”
Carla took her time before answering.
“Yes, I’m in.” The courtship was over.
“Great.”
They agreed to meet Monday morning at ten and then go visit Jeremy together.
Lee was about to hang up when Carla said, “Oh, before I forget. I told that lawyer about you and he wants to meet you.”
“What lawyer?”
“You know, the one I told you about. He does personal injury and divorces. He saw you in court last week and he’s definitely interested.”
Lee took a deep breath. This was a relatively new variation on Carla’s hopeless quest for romance, which needed to be nipped in the bud.
“Carla, I know you mean well, but don’t try to fix me up. I like my life the way it is.”
It was impossible to hurt Carla’s feelings.
“So you’re really not interested? I think you’d be perfect for each other. He’s a fitness nut, just like you.”
Lee’s left hand was throbbing. Over the past hour, it had turned the color of an eggplant.
“Carla, no,” Lee said, as if she were addressing a big clumsy dog.
“But what’ll I tell him?”
Lee resisted the urge to hang up the phone. She rarely lost her temper and even if she did, she never let it show.
“Tell him I eloped over the weekend.”
“What? Oh, you’re kidding.”
“Carla, we have a serious murder case that needs our complete attention. I’ll see you Monday.”
“I still think you’d be perfect—”
“Right. Monday at ten.”
“Oh fine,” Carla said, hanging up.
“Food’s almost ready,” Bobby called from the kitchen. “Do you need another drink?”
Lee was tempted. The new ache in her neck—it still cracked when she pressed it—had settled in as promised, and her left hand throbbed.
How pathetic.
“I’m good,” she answered. She was curled up on an oversized leather couch in Mark and Bobby’s living room.
Her friends lived in a lovely, renovated log cabin four miles up Old Stage Road in the foothills west of Boulder. Mark had inherited the house from an uncle when he was nineteen. When he first moved in, the cabin consisted of two dark rooms with hordes of mice and a family of foxes under the front porch. A few years later, when he fell in love with Bobby, the couple began fixing it up. After more than two decades, their home was stunning: airy and modern, yet somehow still cozy. And the view, the reason Mark originally stayed, was breathtaking. From where she sat, Lee could look out the picture window at a number of valleys descending to Boulder and the eastern plains beyond.
“What’s for dinner?” she called.
There was a sudden clatter of pans striking each other, various cabinet doors opening and closing.
“Lasagna,” Mark yelled.
A few minutes later, Bobby appeared carrying a tray of bruschetta, which he put down on the coffee table in front of her. Suddenly, she was ravenous. After wolfing down two bruschette, she stopped herself from grabbing a third.
“Great supper,” she said.
“Don’t be silly,” Bobby replied, sitting next to her. “These are just the appetizers.”
“I know.” She leaned against Bobby’s shoulder, the closest she came to a hug. “So, how was your week?”
“It was good. National Geographic bought six of our Pakistan pictures, the ones we took in the Karakoram Range approaching K2.” Like their friend Paul, both Mark and Bobby were freelance photographers.
“That’s wonderful.”
“So what happened to your hand?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice,” Lee said, tucking it carefully between her knees.
“I always notice.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Someone has to.”
Before she could respond, Mark yelled from the kitchen.
“Bobby, I need your help!”
“To be continued,” Bobby said. “The Maharaja has summoned me, but I want to hear all about it.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
He shook his head at her and then hurried from the room. Lee eyed the tray of food but decided to wait for the main course. Well, maybe just one more. Paul had been a great cook, but his two best friends, now hers, were brilliant. Chez Mark and Bobby was the best food in the county, bar none.
The two men met Paul in 1984 on a bus tour of Denali National Park and the three of them became instant friends. Back then, Paul lived in Seattle, spending most days rock climbing and taking photographs, and most nights dating men and women with what he called “equal abandon.” Lee hadn’t asked him to elaborate.
Over the next few years, at Paul’s urging, the trio took up high altitude mountaineering. By 1990, their goal was to climb all fourteen of the world’s eight-thousand-meter peaks. Eventually, Paul moved to Boulder, where he met Lee. By 2006, at the time of Paul’s death in an avalanche on Nanga Parbat, the men had climbed ten of the eight-thousanders, including K2 and Annapurna, which Paul thought was the hardest.
After their friend’s death, Mark and Bobby stopped climbing.
“We’re happy just to trek,” they told Lee, and maybe it was true. It would never have been true for Paul.
Since her husband’s death, the two men insisted she come and have dinner with them every Saturday night. For the first couple of months, she resisted, but they’d just show up at her house instead, carrying pots of food, bottles of wine, dishes, cutlery for three, and even a tablecloth. She made up excuses, stayed late at the office, but then they’d wait for her on her doorstep. Eventually, she gave up.
“We’re your best friends,” they told her. “You’re stuck with us.”
She knew (because Paul told her everything) that a few weeks after their successful ascent of Makalu, they’d promised him they would stick by her if anything ever happened to him. She should have been furious at Paul but somehow, as usual, she wasn’t. She’d understood. Her husband wouldn’t have continued climbing without Mark and Bobby’s promise. She also knew that loving her was Mark and Bobby’s way of loving Paul even after he was gone. Surprisingly, it worked like that for her as well.
The lasagna was well worth waiting for—moist but not gooey, like Lee’s would’ve been, and delicately seasoned with fresh basil, parsley, and fennel seeds. Lee, who ate simple salads for dinner at least three nights a week, would have never gone to this kind of trouble, but was grateful that her friends would. As Mark spooned out second helpings for everyone, Bobby asked if she was coming to the vigil the following night at the Justice Center.
“What vigil?”
“To raise awareness about hate crimes. Tomorrow’s the thirteenth anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death. You know, the gay man who was murdered in Laramie.”
“Ah,” Lee said, guessing where this was headed. “Yes, I remember. The two perpetrators beat him, tied him to a fence in the middle of nowhere, and left him. About a week later, he died of head injuries. During the trial, his parents intervened and kept the state from seeking the death penalty. They were beyond admirable.”
“Wow,” Mark said. “For a straight woman, you really know your gay history. I’m impressed.”
“Well, first of all, I’m a criminal defense attorney. It’s my business to know. Second, I was with Paul for ten years. He was half gay. Remember?”
“Vaguely. Until you ruined him.”
Lee grinned like a Cheshire cat.
“And third,” she continued, “Matthew Shepard’s murder was national news and anyone who was a decent human being was shocked by his death.”
Bobby uncorked a bottle of Merlot and looked questioningly at Mark, who nodded yes to another glass. Lee had already reached her limit—a margarita and a small glass of Chianti.
“What’s really shocking,” Bobby said as he poured the wine, “is that it happened again, thirteen years later, in a progressive town like Boulder.” He was clearly referring to her murder case.
“Supposedly progressive,” Mark said.
“Well, if it’s any consolation,” Lee told them, “everyone, including the victim, was from Denver.”
“How do you know?” Bobby asked.
Mark set down his glass and sighed.
“Because she represents one of the killers. We should have guessed.”
“You do?” Bobby asked.
He was fifty-two years old, but there was something about his soft handsome face that made him look perpetually young and innocent, a Boy Scout ready to escort an older woman, like Lee in the not too distant future, across a busy intersection. She shuddered at the thought.
“I’m afraid so.”
“It’s what you do,” Mark said. “He’s lucky to have you.”
“Definitely,” Bobby agreed. “The newspapers said there were four of them. Which one do you represent?”
She rubbed her eyes. Suddenly, she was tired. She’d spent six hours that afternoon reading and highlighting police reports.
“The juvenile. Is there any dessert?”
“What’s he like?” Bobby asked, ignoring her feeble attempt to change the subject.
Lee never liked to talk about her ongoing cases. It wasn’t just a confidentiality thing. When she agreed to represent someone, especially if the crime was heinous, she agreed to be loyal, to take his part, because usually no one else would, including his family. Ninety percent of the time, it was just Lee and her client versus the world.
“He’s just a kid,” she finally said.
“Huh,” Bobby uttered, and for the millionth time she remembered why she loved him. Lee’s dream jury consisted of twelve Bobby clones, each one saying “huh,” each one inherently kind, open to surprise, ready to listen. Mark was another story, more pragmatic than liberal. Trickier. In the right case, he might even be better than Bobby. If he had a reasonable doubt but thought t
he defendant was dangerous, he’d convict him. On the other hand, if he believed the guy was guilty but felt bad and would never do it again, he might just let him go. She smiled to herself, then looked up and realized both men had started clearing the table.
“Hey, wait for me,” she said, jumping up.
After clearing the table, they took their usual places at the kitchen sink. While Lee washed the wine glasses and the pots and pans by hand, Bobby rinsed everything else and then handed them to Mark, who stacked the dishwasher. They worked quietly and efficiently. When they were done, Mark announced there was homemade pecan pie in the living room.
“You guys are killing me.”
“No,” Bobby said, taking her good hand to escort her to the living room, “we are indulging you because—”
“You’re a puritan,” Mark said. “And we—”
“Are the devil,” Lee muttered, eyeing the pie from the doorway.
Luckily, she could afford to pig out occasionally. Thanks to great genes—her father weighed the same now as he did at thirty—she had what most martial artists considered the perfect karateka’s body: tall, lean, and muscular, not an ounce of extra fat to slow her down or put unnecessary strain on her joints.
Like actors in a well-rehearsed play, all three headed for their respective seats in the living room, Lee and Bobby dropping side by side onto the leather couch, Mark settling into the sturdy mission-style rocking chair facing them. Seconds later, they were divvying up the dessert, acting as if they hadn’t eaten for days. It was delicious.
Lee had never baked a pie in her life and never would. You could only excel in so many things and in fact, as time went by, in fewer and fewer. Lately, as Lee approached the big 6-0, she felt like Alice in Wonderland, running hard just to maintain what she had. To get somewhere else, like Alice, she would have to run at least twice as fast. Alice, though, was a lot younger.
Lee ate most of her slice before managing to put her plate down. In the meantime, her friends polished off the rest. They were big guys.
“Well, I think we’ve outdone ourselves,” Mark said, licking his fingers.
“No question,” Lee agreed. “Plus, I won’t have to eat until Wednesday.” She placed her hands together and bowed to him. “Thank you.”