"Almost made the team. Maybe next time."
"Maybe next time," I said. "Is Kingsley a good boss?"
She shrugged. "He's kind enough. Gives big bonuses."
"What more could you want?" I asked cheerily.
She shrugged and turned her attention to her food. I tried another approach. "Do you like your job?"
She shrugged again and I decided to let my attempt at idle conversation drop. Maybe she needed more fried wontons.
While we ate, we worked from a long list of all of Kingsley's closed files from the past six years. Seven hundred and seventy-six in all. Kingsley was a busy boy. From these files, I removed all those Kingsley had personally litigated. Now we were down to three hundred and fifty-three. Still too many to work with. From those, I removed all violent crime; in particular, murder defense cases. Now we were down to twelve files.
I told Sara I would need copies of all twelve files. She promptly rolled her eyes.
While we made copies, Sara decided to open up a little to me. Okay, maybe she hadn't decided so much as gave in to my constant barrage of questions. Anyway, I gleaned that she had come here to Kingsley's firm straight from college. Initially, she had loved working for her boss, but lately not so much.
"Why?" I asked, hoping for more than just a shrug. I had the Chinese restaurant's number in my pocket should I need an emergency order of fried wontons.
Turns out I didn't need the number. Rather heatedly, Sara told me in detail the story of the rapist who had been freed because Kingsley had discovered evidence of tampering at the crime scene. She finished up with: "Yes, Mr. Fulcrum's a good man. But he's a better defense attorney. And that's the problem."
I was sensing much hostility here. We were standing at the copier, working efficiently together, passing folders back and forth to each other as we copied them. Sara was very pretty and very young. Any man's dream, no doubt. She was taller than me and her breasts appeared fake, but in Southern California that's the norm and not the exception. She, herself, did not seem fake. She seemed genuine and troubled, and I suddenly knew why.
"You dated Kingsley," I said.
She looked up, startled. "Why? Did he say something to you?"
"No. Just a hunch."