Lost Souls (Cainsville 3.6)

"I didn't kill anyone. No one's claiming I did. But I'm still going to prison. How exactly can Lou's death be my fault?"

Possibly because you paid the person who did pull the trigger? Paid him to pull it?

"It's not my fault," Pryce said. "Not at all."

And with those words, Gabriel finally saw the problem. Not with Pryce, who had too many problems to note, but with the ghost of Christina Moore.

"Culpability," he murmured.

The client's face screwed up. "What?"

"You feel you were not responsible," Gabriel said, as if by rote. That's what they wanted to hear. Well, no. They wanted to hear "You are not responsible," but even Gabriel had limits to what he could say with a straight face.

"Damn right I'm not responsible. I don't understand how I'm even being charged with this. Like I said, I didn't actually want this guy to kill Lou. It was... What do you call it? Entrapment. I thought he was kidding. And if he says otherwise, well, he's a killer. He lies. Look at me. I'm an educated, successful businessman. A pillar of my community. You're going to tell the jury that, right? Pillar of my community?"

Gabriel made another noncommittal noise. Those were four words he would never utter in front of a judge. It might as well be shorthand for "My client sponsored a little league baseball team to hide the fact he's a murdering scumbag."

As his client continued, Gabriel mentally reversed to the concept of culpability. That was what bothered him about the ghost case. What did her victims do to deserve an apparent death curse? A man who considered cheating on his wife was in need of either a wakeup call or a divorce lawyer. But death? That was like punishing a first-time pickpocket with double amputation.

Moreover, Lambert's case did smack of entrapment--offering an enticing possibility and seeing if Lambert would take the bait. And it had absolutely nothing to do with Christina Moore's fate. Yes, a ghost's revenge could be unconnected to her death, but why change her modus operandi from panicked tears to cold-blooded murder? Was there an inciting event? Or some missed connection between her death and her curses?

His client was still expostulating on the terrible unfairness of his situation. Gabriel was still pretending to listen. When he caught a break in the rant, he murmured, "Yes," accompanied by a solemn nod, and received a grunt of satisfaction in reply.

Your outrage has been noted. In billable hours.

"You are going to get me out of here, right?"

Eventually.

"As I've said, Mr. Pryce, the charges against you, while"--fair--"reprehensible, are grave, and since, under psychological duress, you made the"--idiotic--"understandable mistake of confessing to hiring"--some lowlife thug who kills for beer money--"a professional assassin, the task of setting you free is contingent upon"--divine intervention--"an exceedingly favorable jury, which we are unlikely to get in light of that confession. Our hope is that the jury will"--be equally idiotic and possibly sociopathic--"see the unfairness of your situation and reduce your sentence accordingly."

Count on four years. Possibly three, if I decide you're worth the extra effort.

Pryce stared at Gabriel, running on a thirty-second delay as he struggled to process all that. After a few moments, he nodded and said, "I get it. Sure. Thanks."

"Be assured, I'm doing my best." Or a reasonable facsimile of it.

Gabriel strode to his car and took his phone from the locked glove compartment. Earlier he'd e-mailed Olivia the results of Lambert's photo lineup, and now she'd just gotten back to him with: Okay, so we have a ghost. If I say that's cool, you won't roll your eyes at me, right?

Never.

And if you do, I'm not there to see it, so I can pretend it never happened :) Give me a shout if you get a minute. We'll be back on the road soon. Almost home!

He checked the time stamp against the clock. She'd sent it ten minutes ago. He called her. It rang three times. Then a male voice answered with, "Hey, Gabriel."

"Ricky..."

"Yeah, Liv ran to the restroom. I was going to ignore the call. Then I saw it was you. So, ghost, huh? That's cool."

There was no sarcasm in his voice. Gabriel wished there were--that little twist that said Ricky couldn't believe Liv found this interesting. Perhaps the eye-roll she'd expected from Gabriel. But Gabriel didn't need to see Ricky's face to know the sentiment was genuine. As was the rest--answering the phone to be sure Liv got his message, never thinking to click the Ignore button, perhaps finding a way to hide any trace of the call. In other words, never considering everything Gabriel would if the situation were reversed.

Because Ricky was "a nice guy." A decent guy. A good person. Pick your platitude. All those hackneyed phrases that should make Gabriel curl his lip and dismiss Ricky with contempt and disgust. Nice. Good. Decent. Synonyms for weak, foolish and ineffectual. Unless you were Ricky.

Ricky Gallagher was a biker. And an MBA student. At least one of those things should make him an asshole. The combination should make him an insufferable lout.

But Ricky Gallagher was not an ass. Or insufferable. Or weak, foolish or ineffectual. He rose above all that, naturally, to be tough and smart as well as likable and charming.

Worse, Gabriel could not even muster a good dose of jealous hatred. Which had not stopped him from watching Ricky dangle, injured, from a bell tower and thinking how easy it would be to let him fall. It had, however, stopped Gabriel from doing so. And left him reflecting on that dark impulse with the most uncomfortable of emotions: shame.