“Burned by a bullet,” I explained before taking a big drink. The smooth brew washed down my throat and settled, warming and easing me more than it should. Alcoholics ran in my family, and I never wanted to be dependent on alcohol. On anything, really. “Second time this week.”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “You sound like a badass.”
“Right?” I agreed, settling more comfortably on the cardboard. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Do you feel like a badass?”
Such a shrink question. “No,” I said honestly. I liked her. She reminded me of Donna. “I feel scared and lost and like there’s a monster coming for me out of the darkness.”
“Well.” She set her beer down. “I guess that gives us a good starting place.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”
Chapter 10
Both of my sisters stayed the night, probably figuring that my getting shot at required double protection. Tess kicked me at various intervals, mumbling about dogs and men, and Donna shifted restlessly on the sofa outside the bedroom, so none of us got much sleep. Escaping to the office early on Saturday was almost a relief. While my talk with the shrink had been necessary, I was still feeling a little raw from it, and escaping into work probably wasn’t the way to deal with stress.
But as I entered my office, the quiet of the empty building surrounding me, I finally took a full and deep breath. Okay. I might not be able to steer much in life right now, but I could investigate Aiden’s case. This, at least, was under my control.
I grabbed a newspaper off the floor, wincing at the front-page picture of Nick with his arm around me at Scot’s house. We looked pretty friendly.
Wonderful. All I needed was that type of gossip.
I started with some misdemeanor case files just to get into the flow of litigation. Two minor burglaries, several drug charges, and a trespass case. All pretty easy to schedule and plan. My guess was that only the trespass case defendant would go to trial and the others would plea out.
Then I opened the too thin case file for Aiden Devlin, and my heart rate automatically quickened. I’m not sure what I was magically hoping to find, but the only documents secured inside were the arrest warrant and the Notice of Arraignment sent from the court. No notes on why or how Aiden was arrested, no trial plan, no evidentiary documents. Only ineligible notes on one piece of yellow legal paper that had been ripped unevenly off the pad. No wonder I hadn’t been able to decipher it in the stressful situation of District Court. Swirls and clouds all attached by jagged lines from a pen that had apparently lost most of its ink.
And now Scot was dead.
I bit my lip and squinted, trying to understand the odd diagram.
It looked like ‘ice cream’ was in the center cloud. What legal words looked like ‘ice cream?’ I couldn’t think of any, and now I was hungry.
Scot had scrawled Aiden’s name and phone number at the top left corner. Since it appeared that Aiden hadn’t hired an attorney as of yet, that made sense. Scot could speak directly with Aiden.
As could I.
At the realization, I leaned back in my chair. It made no sense for Aiden to talk to me, and in fact was an incredibly bad idea for him to do so, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t ask. First, I had to figure out what was going on. They taught us in law school to never ask a question in court that we didn’t know the answer to, and this wasn’t court, but I still needed some sort of background before I could talk to the defendant. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready to see him again.
I leaned over and studied the paper closer. A barely legible scrawl on the bottom right corner caught my attention. I frowned and partially turned the paper, squinting to read better. The name took shape, coming together like a Captiva Code on a website. Melvin Whitaker.
Wait a minute. I lifted my head and shut my eyes, trying to attach facts in my brain. Why would Melvin Whitaker’s name be on notes in Aiden’s case file? Whitaker supposedly had supplied the pot that Randy Taylor had been caught with and that the elderly ladies had been trying to find.
Just who was this guy? The connection for every drug case in the darn county?
The DEA had gone through my computer, and having found