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Eugene “Yollo” Valence and Anton Pratt were the cops Man had been convicted of killing. They were decorated uniforms who often worked as bodyguards for the mayor and visiting dignitaries.

“Maybe Braun’s telling the truth,” I suggested. I knew too many innocent cops who had been blamed for crimes they didn’t commit. I was one of them.

“Ms. Mudd has disappeared,” Willa said. “I went to talk to her a few days later, after failing to get her on the phone. Her son Rondrew told me that she was missing. He said that she went to meet Stuart and never returned.”

I sighed. It was an unexpected exhalation. This I knew was due to the fact that the prospective client had caught my interest.

She clasped her hands and looked down at the hardwood floor.

“Hi.” Aja was standing at the door. She was smiling, her short hair standing up at various angles like a field of spiky wild grasses. Her blue jeans might as well have been painted on, and her blouse didn’t come anywhere near the waistline.

I wanted to ask if this was within the boundaries of the school dress code, but then Willa looked up, tears streaming from her eyes.

“Oh, baby,” my daughter exclaimed. She rushed to the lawyer’s side, kneeled down, and hugged her.

Between my sudden breath and Aja’s concern I knew that I’d spend at least a day or two investigating Portman’s case.

“Come on with me.” Aja was helping the sad young woman rise from the chair. After lift-off they made their way to the washroom annexed to the outer office.

In their absence I tried to see a connection between Beatrice’s letter and the case of A Free Man. I knew that there was no direct link, but the similarities might be a way for me to solve a case close enough to my own so that I might feel some sense of closure without returning to Rikers.

If Man was innocent and I freed him, then it would be, in some way, like freeing myself.

I was looking out the window again.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Oliver,” Willa Portman said to my back.

“You want me to take notes, Daddy?”

“I want you to go down to the drugstore,” I said, “and pick me up a pack of those little notebooks I use.”

“But I could take notes here.”

“Go on.” I stood up to underscore my directive.

The words between familiars often mean a lot less than tones and looks. Aja saw that I needed her gone from the office and she obeyed.

Through the open door I could see A.D. collecting her bag and going out the front. I waited maybe ten seconds and then sat down again facing the dewy-eyed girl.

“You see how much trouble there is in this,” I said.

“Is that why you asked Aja to leave?”

“She’s my daughter and you’re twelve miles of bad road.”

Willa winced.

“If even one thing you told me is true,” I said, “then there’s bad news and murder to go all the way round.”

“But Manny’s innocent,” she cried.

“I thought he was married.”

“Huh?”

“The way you talk about him. It sounds like you’re his girlfriend.”

“No.”