"How much is he offering?"
"Not enough."
"What did he do?" I asked.
"Electoral fraud."
"Boring."
"I thought so." He sat at his desk. "I came in here to check my schedule and see whether I can fit him in."
"Doesn't look like you can."
"Terribly vexing." He glanced at me, lying on the chaise lounge. "Are you all right?"
I put a hand to my forehead. "No. Defeated, I have collapsed on the fainting couch, to softly cry, 'Woe is me.'"
"Didn't find anything useful on the Nansen case?"
"Not a damned thing. Terribly vexing."
He walked over and sat beside me. "And by not finding anything, you mean no connection between the Nansens and Keith Johnson?"
"Exactly." I straightened. "I'm lost here, Gabriel. If Johnson walked in today, asking you to represent him, I'd say hell, yes. Take the case. Because I cannot even fathom how the police would have enough evidence to charge him let alone convict."
"Yet you are being asked to convict."
"I am, and that's the problem. I'm not being asked to defend or prosecute. I'm being asked to judge with no prosecution or defense arguments. Here's this man. We believe he is responsible for this other man's death. What say thee?"
I shook my head. "I screwed up, Gabriel. I agreed to help the Cwn Annwn, and I thought I understood what that meant, but I didn't. I really didn't."
"You couldn't. Not until you had a case like this, one where guilt isn't obvious. Where it isn't even apparent."
"So what do I do?" I slid off the lounge. "No, sorry. I won't ask you that. My mess, my decision."
"Your decision. Not your mess. It's everyone's mess, including mine. Like you, I presumed that if the Cwn Annwn saw guilt, then their quarry was guilty. That they bore the most elusive of judicial devices: a foolproof lie detector."
I looked at him. "Maybe they do. They're supposed to, and I have no proof that they don't. Yes, Heather is the one who pulled the trigger, but there was another party involved. Someone who put the pieces in motion. And if Johnson did that with malicious intent, and the result was that an innocent woman now has to deal with having murdered her husband? Then I'm not going to split hairs over the quality of justice. The Cwn Annwn say they know Johnson is responsible. There is no evidence to the contrary. Therefore, I--"
A rap at the door.
"Yes?" Gabriel said.
Our office administrator, Lydia, walked in.
"Let me guess," I said and motioned toward the meeting room and the abandoned politician.
Lydia shook her head and shut the door. "I just received a phone call. Heather Nansen has been charged with murder."
An hour later, we were in a police station, sitting across from Heather Nansen.
"I did not kill my husband," she said.
Gabriel didn't reply. He just sat there, his gaze on her, his face expressionless. Under that stare, she squirmed at first. Then her cheeks blossomed red, in humiliation and anger as her dark eyes blazed her thoughts.
You asshole. You cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch.
I wanted to jump in and play good cop, and I don't know whether that was to make her feel better or to defend Gabriel, but I did neither.