Billy was quiet. Even as a behind-the-scenes litigator, he knew the workings and the working flaws in the system. He also knew that a lawyer can get a leg caught in the machinery and get pulled in, just as a suspect can. I was asking him to risk that chance that he might be pulled into an arena that he had avoided his entire career.
“O’Shea says he has nothing to do with these disappearances, Billy. And he asked me to help him.”
“D-Do you trust him?”
I hesitated, something a good attorney would never do, whether they were convinced or not. People familiar with the working of courtrooms know that truth and justice are only in the eye of the beholder. The best lawyers know that their job is only to convince that beholder of their version.
I knew I could never accept that role and I knew Billy well enough to know how he disdained it.
“My gut tells me he’s not involved,” I said. “But I could be giving him more benefit than he deserves. The guy did save me from a hole in the back ten years ago.”
Diane brought over the coffee, put mine in front of me and then sat next to Billy.
“Do you want to t-tell me that part?”
Even if he did phrase it as such, I knew it wasn’t really a question. While I told the story, I went through the entire pot of strong Colombian blend. Diane got up twice to refill her wineglass. I reconstructed the drug bust on South Street and how O’Shea must have been listening in on the tack channel that night and horning in on the action. But there was also no doubt that he’d kept the drug runner from using the handgun I neglected to frisk him for. I could have been dead in the street, another cop funeral in the family.
I told them of my interviews with O’Shea’s ex-wife and my trip to the IAD office. When I mentioned Meagan’s name, Billy looked up into my eyes. He would let me gloss over it, but I was using truth to base my assumption of O’Shea’s innocence on. When Diane heard that I had been married to an aggressive, type-A personality who was always bent on being the alpha-male of her block, she kept her eyes on the rim of her glass. But I could see the twitch at the corners of her mouth.
I stopped talking and she finally looked up.
“What?”
“It only lasted two years,” I said defensively.
“I’m surprised.”
“At what?”
“That it went that long.”
She waited a beat.
“Any children?”
“No. Thank God,” I said. “She would have eaten her young.”
Diane coughed into her glass. Billy patted her back.
“Sorry,” she finally said.
I smiled and shook my head. Billy brought us back on line.
“OK. If I was his lawyer. If,” he said. “I would obviously argue f-for no crime to begin with. No body. No evidence. But say it m- moves to indictment anyway. Then as an attorney I try to sh-show that someone else could be responsible. Who? What kind of man abducts grown, s-smart single women whose only similarity is their chosen work?”
“Someone who’s a psycho, but a different one,” said Diane, rejoining us. She had switched her drink to ice water in a crystal tumbler.
“If I put myself behind that bar, I see the same group of guys every night waving their dicks around trying to show who can snag the attention of the good-looking bartender. So to be successful, this one’s got to have a different schtick.”
“Your honor!” Billy said in mock horror. “Waving their…”
“And at the risk of sounding shallow,” I interrupted, “he’s good- looking himself. She’s probably got a target-rich environment, if you know what I mean. She knows she’s onstage and can pick from the audience.”
“Someone in their age r-range, I would suspect. M-Maybe a little older.”
“But not Daddy,” Diane said. “You said your friend Richards profiled these girls as being far from home, not necessarily close to family, independent-minded. I see that as a girl running away from Daddy, not to one.”
“Someone who appears stable. Has a job. Isn’t in there scraping change together or begging off a tab. These girls have seen enough of that.”
“Someone s-safe. Or p-perceived to be safe,” said Billy. “They see a lot of quick hit hustle going on b-between pickup and bar stool relationships every night.”
“All right,” said Diane. “We’ve got a good-looking guy with an aura of something out of the ordinary who appears stable,