First degree - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,10

has left me a little shaken, which I can attribute to the casual, matter-of-fact manner in which he described committing such a horrible murder.

What I can't figure out is why I'm worried.

MONDAY NIGHT IS TIED FOR THE BEST NIGHT OF my week with Wednesday and Friday. Those are the nights that Laurie and I spend together. We don't often go out; in fact, more often than not we stay at one of our homes and either cook dinner or order in. We each have spare clothes in the other's house, though since Tara is at my house, that's almost always where we sleep.

I admit there is nothing spontaneous about this arrangement, but it works quite well for us. We are in a committed relationship, with all that entails, but we are not ready to live together. This way everything is out in the open, and there are no unmet expectations. We've chosen not to include Saturday night on our list because for some reason we both cherish Sunday morning solitude.

Tonight we're at my house, but it's Laurie's turn to provide dinner. While I can barely manage to order in, Laurie is an absolute master in the kitchen. Anything she finds in the refrigerator, anything at all, can become part of a terrific pasta dish.

Laurie has planted a vegetable garden in the rear corner of my backyard, a testimony to the differences between us. She finds it rewarding to spend her time growing things that the supermarket is already filled with. She seems to believe that if she can't make lettuce rise from the ground, then we'll have to go lettuce-deprived. She's even growing basil, and in a pathetic attempt to curry favor with her, I've forever sworn off store-bought basil.

We're having pasta tonight, some kind of red sauce with things in it. I don't ask what those things are for fear that they'll sound so healthful I won't want to eat them. It's delicious, and with the music and candles and Laurie as company, it should be perfect. It isn't, because I'm still thinking about Geoffrey Stynes and his chilling confession this afternoon.

I move it partially out of my mind, until Laurie mentions that she stopped into the office after I had left. "Edna told me somebody tried to hire you today, but you fought him off."

I try to smile and shrug it off. "You know Edna."

She does know Edna, but somehow that isn't enough to get her to drop it. "She said you seemed upset."

I decide to try honesty. Who knows? Maybe it'll work. "I didn't like him. I didn't like the case."

"Why?"

I shake my head. "It's privileged."

She nods, fully understanding and respecting the meaning of that. It bothers me, not being able to tell her something she would so desperately want to know, but I have no ethical choice.

There are few, if any, things more vital to a defendant's protection in our justice system than the attorney-client privilege. If an accused individual were unable to be honest with his attorney out of fear that his words would be revealed, it would cripple his chances of being adequately defended. I have never breached attorney-client privilege in my life, and I never will.

Ironically, had I accepted Stynes as a client, I could have assigned Laurie to the case as my investigator and told her everything Stynes said. Once I turned him down, I clearly lost the ethical justification to assign an investigator.

Besides, there really is no absolute guarantee that Stynes killed Dorsey. False confessions are amazingly commonplace. Of course, they're usually made to the police, not to lawyers. And the confessors are most often losers and/or lunatics. On the surface at least, Stynes doesn't fit the bill. Even more significant, the fact that he knew the composition of the flammable solution pretty much says it all.

The guy did it.

Laurie drops the issue, though she can tell that something is bothering me. Wild and crazy couple that we are, we decide to do what we often do after dinner: play Scrabble.

Playing Scrabble against Laurie is very difficult for me. We take our glasses of wine and sit on the floor, and I almost instantly find that I can't take my eyes off of her. She is beautiful in a casual, unassuming way, as if it takes no effort. And in her case it doesn't. I have seen her after an exhausting run, after a shower, after making love, after a night's sleep, after a tearful conversation, after a long day in