Chapters (64)
- PART ONE
- One
- Two
- Three
- PART TWO
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- PART THREE
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- PART FOUR
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- PART FIVE
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
- Forty-nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-one
- Fifty-two
- Fifty-three
- PART SIX
- Fifty-four
- Fifty-five
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY
Now the pain entered her eyes, like the shadows of clouds on the ocean.
“But I’m still working on it, baby,” I said quickly. “We just have to take it one day at a time. I’m trying to show her that we should be a family again.”
She didn’t respond. She looked down at her plate.
“Okay, baby?”
“Okay.”
“Did you decide what you want to do?”
“I think I just want to go home and watch TV.”
“Good. That’s what I want to do.”
We packed up her schoolbooks and I put money down on the bill. On the drive over the hill, she said her mother had told her I had gotten an important new job. I was surprised but happy.
“Well, it’s sort of a new job. I’m going back to work doing what I always did. But I have a lot of new cases and one big one. Did your mom tell you that?”
“She said you had a big case and everybody would be jealous but you would do real good.”
“She said that?”
“Yeah.”
I drove for a while, thinking about that and what it might mean. Maybe I hadn’t entirely blown things with Maggie. She still respected me on some level. Maybe that meant something.
“Um…”
I looked at my daughter in the rearview mirror. It was dark out now but I could see her eyes looking out the window and away from mine. Children are so easy to read sometimes. If only grown-ups were the same.
“What’s up, Hay?”
“Um, I was just wondering, sort of, why you can’t do what Mom does.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like putting bad people in jail. She said your big case is with a man who killed two people. It’s like you’re always working for the bad guys.”
I was quiet for a moment before finding my words.
“The man I am defending is accused of killing two people, Hayley. Nobody has proved he did anything wrong. Right now he’s not guilty of anything.”
She didn’t respond and her skepticism was almost palpably emanating from the backseat. So much for the innocence of children.
“Hayley, what I do is just as important as what your mother does. When somebody is accused of a crime in our country, they are entitled to defend themselves. What if at school you were accused of cheating and you knew that you didn’t cheat? Wouldn’t you want to be able to explain and defend yourself?”
“I think so.”