reached out and delicately touched R.H.’s arm. “Let us do the talking,” he whispered. And then, more audibly, he said, “He does not. But that has no bearing on whether or not this man is somehow involved with the crime my client has been accused of committing.”
“You didn’t try to, I don’t know… take the knife away from the man? You say he had it in a Ziploc bag. He wasn’t brandishing it?”
“It was inside the bag.”
“And you, what—you just looked at it?”
“You’re asking why I didn’t try to take the knife away from him?”
“Well, if he wasn’t brandishing it.”
“Yeah, why the hell didn’t you try that?” asked R.H.
Tim attempted to touch his arm again, but R.H. pulled back.
“Couldn’t you have at least swiped at it?”
Tim directed his answer at the detective. “When you are approached by a complete stranger who brandishes a knife that may be a murder weapon, your first instinct is not to try and take it away.”
“Maybe not your first instinct,” said R.H.
“Fair enough,” the detective said to Tim.
“During the course of your investigation, Detective, did you have a suspect, or perhaps interview someone, who looked like the man in that sketch?”
Detective Roy smiled. He looked directly at R.H. “We only ever had one suspect, Counselor.”
The room turned silent.
“Did you interview anyone who looked like that man?”
“What are you asking us to do, Mr. Farnsworth?” asked the assistant district attorney, whose glasses remained on her forehead.
“Look into who this man might be. He had the murder weapon.”
“Alleged murder weapon.”
“Fine, alleged. All the same, that’s not your everyday occurrence, I think you can agree.”
“Oh, for sure, for sure,” said the detective. “Bizarre-o indeed.”
“Why does he keep saying that?” asked R.H.
Tim had to reach out again. The detective and the assistant district attorney quietly conferred.
“Sure, why not,” said the detective as he stood and put a fresh cigarette in one corner of his mouth. The cigarette bobbed up and down as he spoke. “Terrorism, murdered police, getting guns out of the hands of children. We got all the time in the world for this shit.”
The assistant district attorney returned her glasses to her nose, and they departed.
Tim had had to excuse himself directly after the meeting to visit the men’s room. He returned to discover Mike Kronish inside his office with R.H. Sam Wodica was there, too. Wodica was the firm’s managing partner, overseer of all its departments, perched on the final rung of the invisible ladder. Wodica resembled an aging surfer. His sandy-blond hair, suntanned complexion and year-round seersucker had a way of disarming jurors. They expected him to pour sand out of his shoes during closing arguments and then invite them all to the bonfire afterward, which went a long way toward winning them over.
Kronish’s elbow was on a bookshelf and Wodica’s ass was in Tim’s chair, gently swiveling. Their unexpected presence gave the office a charge. Tim had walked into a voluble silence.
“Oh, I’m in your seat,” said Wodica, standing and gesturing for Tim to sit in his own chair.
Do you expect a goddamned thank-you? he wanted to say.
He walked around the desk as Wodica retreated to the wall. Tim set the backpack in the corner. He sat down. He looked directly at R.H. and said, “What’s up?” R.H. stared at him but remained silent.
Kronish spoke. “R.H. is worried that because of Jane’s health, Tim, you don’t have your head in the game.”
“I feel for you having to deal with she has cancer,” said R.H., “but I’m looking at some serious consequences if things don’t go my way. They’ll take my fortune and I’ll rot in a cell, or I’ll just fucking die who knows, so I need to know. Do I have your undivided attention?”
Tim looked across the desk directly into R.H.’s heavy-hanging eyes, ignoring the two partners, and said, “There’s nobody that can try this case like I can.”
“Everybody here knows you’re working this case hard,” said Wodica. “R.H. doesn’t see it like we do, day in, day out. So he just asked that we talk this through.”
“If he saw what we saw,” Kronish added, “he’d know he doesn’t have a worry in the world. Basically we’re just here to clear up a minor communication problem.”
“My guess is he needs to hear more often from you is all. He needs to hear from you every day the way he did before Jane fell ill and then he won’t have any worries.”
Tim did not once look at his colleagues. His eyes remained fixed on