“My plan,” Tyler said, his voice still even and unruffled, “is to bring in an expert.” He smiled for the first time, paused for effect, and then said with great relish, “Jacob Brilstein.”
“Oh,” Katrina said, and for a moment, all the rage drained out of her. Jacob Brilstein was far and away the most brilliant, flamboyant defense attorney in the tristate area. Many times he had taken on an apparently hopeless case and somehow won his client acquittal. “Has he really never lost a case?”
“Oh, I think he may have lost one or two,” Tyler said. “He just doesn’t get those splashed all over the front page. But damned few losses, Katrina.” His smile grew. “Damned few losses.”
* * *
—
K atrina perched on the edge of a glove leather sofa. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, and it begged her to lean back and relax into its soothing embrace. But Katrina could not possibly relax. She was still numb with shock and completely bewildered by all that was happening—and the speed at which things were moving. Just yesterday morning her husband had been murdered—and she had been blamed for it and put in jail, for God’s sake. And now she sat in Jacob Brilstein’s midtown office, with a view through his large window of the sun setting over Manhattan. It was a large room that seemed cramped with all the piles of folders and books, and the assortment of bizarre objects strewn around the room: a ball-peen hammer with a red ribbon on the handle, a bowling ball with a chunk missing, five or six toy guns and knives—they had to be mementos of memorable cases. There were also some quiet, reassuring paintings on the wall—the kind Katrina called “motel art”—and a glass coffee table holding a crystal vase with fresh-cut flowers in it. The whole effect was of sitting in an eccentric uncle’s odd but comfortable room, an ambience designed to put you at your ease, and that was impossible for Katrina. Murder—jail—interrogation by detectives—! She had been flung savagely into a world she could never have imagined entering, and now she was stuck there! Katrina could no more be at her ease right now than she could fly.
And everybody just assumed that she had killed Michael! Which was completely crazy—even if he really was a pedophile like the detectives said. Or maybe especially if he was a pedophile! Because if that was true, killing him would have been stupid—she could have divorced him quickly and kept the house, the yacht, whatever she wanted. Pedophiles did not get a good break in divorce court.
But since she knew she didn’t kill Michael . . . who did?
The obvious answer was Randall. It seemed unlikely—Katrina felt sure she knew Randall. After all, she wasn’t stupid; she knew how to judge people, and she couldn’t sleep with a man so many times without learning his true character. And Randall was a sweet, mild-tempered, cultured guy—he wouldn’t hurt a fly, and she was absolutely sure he couldn’t kill another human being.
But she had heard Michael confront him—and she was certain Randall had feelings for her, strong feelings, beyond just the sex. Wasn’t it possible that Randall was full of adrenaline from being discovered, and then Michael yelled at him—she had heard that—and Randall just lost it, just for a moment? Wasn’t it conceivable that he would give in to a moment of weakness and kill Michael out of love for her?
No. It just wasn’t even thinkable. Randall was a lamb, a gentle and sweet man. It was out of the question. He couldn’t possibly have killed Michael.
Which left Katrina herself. Or . . . who?
And so she fretted, and sweated, and fidgeted. And Brilstein himself did not help. After a cursory introduction, he had spent over an hour grilling her—worse than the detectives!—asking her very sharp questions, making her go over everything that had happened several times, all the improbable, unbelievable events that had led to this meeting. And now, for the first time, he seemed to relax, and Katrina longed to do the same but could not.
“Well, well,” Brilstein
said softly as he glanced over the copious notes he’d taken. “Well, well, well . . .” He flipped through a few more pages, nodding, twice adding a quick note, and finally he dropped the legal pad into his lap and looked up at her. “So you may think I’m being jocose if I say, good news and bad news?” Jacob Brilstein said. “But . . . ?” He raised one carefully groomed eyebrow and looked at Katrina with a half smile. “I am actually saying it?”
“I suppose I—I mean, what’s the, um, the good news . . . ?”
His smile widened. “Based on what you’ve told me, it’s not nearly as complete a case as they think it is.” He lifted one hand and turned it over, back, over.
“That is good,” Katrina said.
“Like I said. But the bad news . . . it is very close to being complete, and based on what I have already heard from the district attorney’s office, the other side thinks it’s open-and-shut.” He smiled briefly. “They like to say things like that, ‘open-and-shut,’” he said with more than a hint of mockery.
“Oh,” Katrina said. “So, um . . . and what do you think, Mr. Brilstein?”
“Please, call me Jake,” the attorney said. “We are going to be spending a lot of time together, so . . . I hope I can call you Katrina as well?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“Well, Katrina,” Brilstein said, “there are one or two holes here—holes I could drive a truck through.” He nodded, then frowned. “Don’t get me wrong, the district attorney is very good, for somebody who isn’t Jewish. Smart. And she will be working her tight little WASP ass off to plug these holes.”
“Oh,” Katrina said. “Is there a—I mean, um . . .” She trickled to a stop, not really sure what she meant to say.
It didn’t faze Brilstein. “Of course there is,” he said. “This whole business with the alarm system, for instance, the timeline. You say it was off when your husband came home, right?”
“Yes,” Katrina said. “Randall had to—I mean, he usually just left quietly, when—um . . .” And oddly, Katrina found herself blushing.
“Naturally,” Brilstein said, ignoring her discomfort. “But it was on when the cops got there, and nobody knows the code except you and your husband. So the DA is going to hit that hard because there was no one in the house except you and Mr. Hobson.” He shook his head. “Which is what they want us to think, right?”
Brilstein stood up abruptly, causing his legal pad to fall to the floor. “But,” he said loudly, beginning to pace as though addressing an imaginary jury, “you heard him argue with your boyfriend. And then you heard the boyfriend leave, the alarm came back on—” He spread his arms dramatically. “Yes, of course, that means your husband was still alive when the boyfriend left. BUT”—he lowered his voice—“the DA also wants us to forget,” he said, stopping and pointing a dramatic finger, “that before Mr. Hobson turned the alarm on, when it was off for several hours—absolutely anybody could have come in, any enemy of Mr. Hobson. And once inside, they could easily hide in the office and wait. Isn’t that right?” And he spun and looked at her.
Katrina nodded.
“Of course it’s right. And in that hours-long period, with the alarm off, that is exactly what happened! An unknown person, with bad intentions toward Mr. Hobson, came into the house, hid themselves, and waited!”