Her eyebrows fly. "True"
"So what comes after that?"
She lifts me and puts me on the edge of the sink. The countertop is warm where the blow-dryer has been sitting; it just might be alive. For a minute, she thinks hard. "The next thing after love," she tells me, "is being a mom"
FIVE
At one point in my life, I had wanted to save the world. I'd listened, dewy-eyed, to law school professors and truly believed that as a prosecutor, I had a chance to rid the planet of evil. This was before I understood that when you have five hundred open cases, you make the conscious decision to plead as many as you can. It was before I realized that righteousness has less to do with a verdict than persuasion. Before I realized that I had not chosen a crusade, but only a job.
Still, it never entered my mind to be a defense attorney. I couldn't stomach the thought of standing up and lying on behalf of a morally depraved criminal, and as far as I was concerned most of them were guilty until proven innocent. But sitting in Fisher Carrington's sumptuous paneled office, being handed Jamaican coffee, $27.99 per pound, by his trim and efficient secretary, I start to understand the attraction.
Fisher comes out to meet me. His Newman-blue eyes twinkle, as if he couldn't be more delighted to find me sitting in his antechamber. And why shouldn't he be? He could charge me an arm and a leg and knows I will pay it. He has the chance to work on a high-profile murder that will net him a ton of new business. And finally, it's a departure from your run-of-the-mill case, the kind Fisher can do in his sleep.
"Nina," he says. "Good to see you." As if, less than twenty-four hours ago, we hadn't met each other in the conference room of a jail. "Come back to my office."
It is heavily paneled, a man's room that conjures the smell of cigar smoke and snifters of brandy. He has the same books of statutes lining his shelves that I do, and somehow that is comforting. "How's Nathaniel?"
"Fine." I take a seat in an enormous leather wing chair and let my eyes wander.
"He must be happy to have his mother home."
More than his father is, I think. My attention fixes on a small Picasso sketch on the wall. Not a lithograph-the real thing.
"What are you thinking?" Fisher asks, sitting down across from me.
"That the state doesn't pay me enough." I turn to him. "Thank you. For getting me out yesterday."
"Much as I'd like to take the credit, that was a gift horse prancing in, and you know it. I didn't expect leniency from Brown."
"I wouldn't expect it again." I can feel his eyes on me, measuring. As compared to my behavior at yesterday's brief meeting, I'm under much greater control.
"Let's get down to business," Fisher announces. "Did you give the police a statement?"
"They asked. I repeated that I'd done all I could do. That I couldn't do any more."
"You said this how many times?"
"Over and over."
Fisher sets down his Waterman and folds his hands. His expression is a curious mix of morbid fascination, respect, and resignation. "You know what you're doing," he says, a statement.
I look at him over the rim of my coffee mug. "You don't want to ask me that."
Leaning back in his chair, Fisher grins. He has dimples, two in each cheek. "Were you a drama major before you got to law school?"
"Sure," I say. "Weren't you?"
There are so many questions he wants to ask me; I can see them fighting inside of him like small soldiers desperate to join this fray. I can't blame him. By now, he knows I'm sane; he knows the game I have chosen to play. This is equivalent to having a Martian land in one's backyard. You can't possibly walk away without poking it once, to see what it's made of inside.
"How come you had your husband call me?"
"Because juries love you. People believe you." I hesitate, then give him the truth. "And because I hated going up against you."
Fisher accepts this as his due. "We need to prepare an insanity defense. Or go with extreme anger."
There are no different degrees of murder in Maine, and the mandatory sentence is twenty-five years to life. Which means if I am to be acquitted, I have to be not guilty-(difficult to prove, given that the act is on film); not guilty by reason of insanity; or under the influence of extreme anger brought on by adequate provocation. That final defense reduces the crime to manslaughter, a lesser charge. It's somewhat amazing that in this state, it is legal to kill someone if they piss you off enough and if the jury agrees you had good reason to be pissed off, but there you have it.
"My advice is to argue both," Fisher suggests. "If-"
