has feelings for Adrian Wall, perhaps very strong ones.”
“Did you convince her to stay away?”
“Keeping Adrian Wall alone and isolated is in both our interests.”
“I don’t know anything about your interests,” Beckett said. “You wanted to talk to her. I made that happen.”
“And the rest of it?”
“I’ll do what I said.”
“He really is broken, our Mr. Wall.” The warden touched the television, the pixelated eyes. “Either that or he’s the hardest man I’ve ever seen. After thirteen years I’m still unsure.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I should explain myself, why? Because we were friends, once? Because I am so generous with my time?”
The warden stopped talking, and Beckett said nothing.
They weren’t friends at all.
They weren’t even close.
* * *
If Elizabeth was looking for further insight into Adrian, she didn’t find it in the first moments of court. He entered in full restraints, the nineteenth inmate in a row of twenty. He kept his eyes down, so she saw the top of his head, the line of his nose. Elizabeth watched him shuffle to his place on the long bench and tried to reconcile the man she saw with the video from the warden’s office. As disturbing as he’d appeared, he looked ten times better, now—not filled out but heavier, troubled but not insane. She willed him to look her way, and when the brown eyes came up, she felt the same shock of communication. She sensed so many things about him, not just willfulness and fear but a profound aloneness. All that flashed in an instant, then the din of court intervened, and his head dipped again as if weighted by all the stares heaped upon it. Cops. Reporters. Other defendants. They all got it. Everybody knew. Crowded as the room was—and it was packed—nothing brought the thunder like Adrian Wall.
“Holy shit. Look at this place.” Beckett slid in beside her, craning his neck at the double row of cameras and reporters. “I can’t believe the judge allowed this kind of circus. There’s what’s-her-face. Channel Three. Shit, she’s looking at you.”
Elizabeth glanced that way, face expressionless. The reporter was pretty and blond in bright nails and a tight red sweater. She made a call-me gesture and frowned when Elizabeth ignored it.
“Did you see the warden?” Beckett asked.
“You know what? Outside.” Elizabeth pushed against his shoulder and followed him off the bench. Eyes tracked them, but she didn’t care what Dyer or Randolph or any of the other cops thought. “You know, your buddy the warden is a real asshole.”
They rounded into the hall, a sea of people milling around them, parting at the sight of Beckett’s badge. Elizabeth crowded him into a corner beside a trash can and a tattooed kid sleeping on a bench.
“He’s not exactly my buddy,” Beckett said.
“Then, what?”
“He helped me once when I was in a bad place. That’s all. I thought he could help you, too.”
“Why was he at Nathan’s?”
“I don’t know. He just showed up.”
“What were you arguing about?”
“The fact I didn’t want him on my fucking crime scene. What’s going on here, Liz? You have no reason to be angry with me.”
He was right, and she knew it. Moving to a narrow window, Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her chest. Outside, the day was too perfect for what was coming. “He showed me the tape.”
“And the people Adrian killed?”
“The people he might have killed.”
“You don’t think he’s capable?”
Elizabeth stared through the glass. Adrian had been gentler than most, but like all good cops he had steel in his spine and an unflinching will. Could suffering such as his twist those things into something deformed and violent? Of course it could. But, had it? “People are rushing to judgment, Charlie. I feel it.”
“That’s not true.”
“Come on. When was the last time you saw so many cops at first appearance? I counted twenty-three, including the captain. What is it normally? Six or seven? Look at that.” She gestured at the crowd gathered at the courtroom door. It was twice as large as one might normally see: spectators and press, the angry, the curious.
“People are scared,” Beckett said. “Another woman. The same church.”
“This is a witch hunt.”
“Liz, wait.”
But she didn’t. She pushed through the crowd and found another seat in the area reserved for cops. People were still staring, but she didn’t care. Could Charlie be right? What was the path when your heart said one thing, and facts hinted at another? Adrian was tried in a courtroom very much like this, convicted by a jury of