Page 67 of Two Kinds of Stranger

‘It wasn’t for nothing. His wife saw us out there every day. Looking for him. She felt the community’s arms fold around her. That’s what really mattered.’

This woman he had seen who had so intrigued him was now sitting enjoying his company. She had an easy manner, but it was more than that. When Logan was growing up, his family lived upstate, and there was a lake surrounded by woods not far from their house. When his dark thoughts seemed overwhelming, he would ride his bike through the trail in the woods until he found the lake, and he would sit on an old tree stump and watch the autumn breezes rippling the water’s surface. It was quiet and peaceful, and it soothed his troubled mind. After an hour at the lake, Logan’s thoughts of murder were dulled. His desires cooled.

He had not been back to that lake in many years. He had missed it.

Being with Grace, he felt the same soothing sensation as when he had sat on that old stump by the lake. He didn’t want to kill her. Not yet at least. For now, he wanted more of this feeling. She was a cool balm on his wounded soul.

But more than anything else, for the first time in his life, Logan didn’t feel alone.

‘Do you want to go somewhere and get some food?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said Grace with a smile, ‘as long as it isn’t noodles.’

22

Kate

Kate held her cell phone to her ear, and listened to the dead silence as Elly ended her call.

It was late. Everyone else had left the office. She was alone, panicked and had no idea what the hell to do. Elly would be calling her back in ten minutes. Kate had told her she needed a little time to think.

She got up from her desk, took a breath, put her hands on top of her head.

They don’t teach this shit in law school. You learn case law. Statute. The basics. How to prepare for a trial. How to write a legal brief. How to stand up and speak in court.

There’s no class on what to do when your client is about to get stabbed in jail.

She called Eddie, relayed Elly’s conversation.

‘They stabbed her cell mate Suze so Elly would have no protection tonight. The COs told her Suze is stable in the hospital wing, but she won’t be back in that cell for a long time. There’s a woman in her cell called Nance who has a shiv. She thinks Elly has money. Elly thinks she’s going to get cut up in her cell tonight. She’s in real danger, Eddie. We don’t know anyone in her house who can protect her.’

‘Goddamn it, all this because of Busken. There’s no way we can get anyone friendly transferred to her house. Not this fast,’ said Eddie.

‘What if she tells the COs about Nance’s shiv and the threats? Or I could try and get hold of the governor and tell him?’ asked Kate.

‘That’s the worst possible thing that could happen. If we do that, or, even worse,shetells the CO, then Elly becomes a snitch. That makes her a target foreveryinmate in that jail. They won’t just hurt her or threaten her, they’ll kill her.’

‘Then what the hell are we gonna do?’

‘There’s only one thing she can do. You’re not going to like it. She’s not going to like it, but there’s no alternative. . .’

Kate listened, began to make notes on her legal pad, then stopped.

She didn’t want to write this down, not anywhere.

‘Eddie, I can’t do that. I can’t tell her this. I’m a lawyer.’

‘You’reherlawyer, but the law won’t keep her safe in Rosie’s. I know there’s risk in this for both of you. But it’s way less risky than Elly spending a night in a pitch-black cell with someone who is going to cut her up or worse. There’s no other way.’

Since Kate began working with Eddie, she noticed pretty quickly that her partner didn’t have much respect for the law. Eddie stepped over the line when he needed to, but always to help someone else. She had looked the other way so many times when her professional duty as an attorney was to abide by the law. In many ways, Eddie had never really left his con-artist life behind. He’d never left those streets where he had plied his trade.

But she took no part in his schemes. That wasn’t the way she was brought up. Sure, she was different now to when she first started. Sometimes, she had to push right up to that dividing line of what’s legal and what’s not, but she never crossed it.

This situation was crystal clear. There was only one way to help Elly make it through the night in Rosie’s. And if she did what Eddie suggested then Kate would be jumping over that linefor the first time. Whether she got caught or whether anyone could prove what she had done were other questions, and in many ways the answers to those questions didn’t matter.

Because Kate would always know what she had done.

‘There’s really no other way, is there?’ she asked.