“TV news was much more entertaining than the law for sure. It’s just that it felt incredibly shallow. Leading newscasts with ‘South Florida: It’s Always Bikini Season’ somehow left me feeling dirty and depressed. And I felt like it was so reactionary. We were always chasing after something that had already happened. I actually felt pretty powerless . . . but then again, I feel pretty powerless now.”

It was as though I hadn’t spoken in years, the quickness with which the words came spilling out. And wow, I’d never quite articulated that before. I’d left a coveted job as a news producer in Miami for this. Perhaps the law wasn’t quite as reactionary, but hell, I’d take a nuclear reaction at this point if I could trade in the loneliness and insecurity brought on by patronizing pedigree whores. At least the other journalists, including my former bosses, never sat around talking about where they went to college and what honor societies they’d been (or not been) in.

Had I made a colossal, life-destroying mistake? Kevin had just passed out sitting up. Definitely yes, in terms of the final final.

One meatball sub and a particularly sad Celine Dion song later, I was sound asleep on top of the covers, tomato sauce smeared on the pillow.

Chapter Five

Peter Nussbaum had JFK Junior’s looks, Einstein’s brains, and Mother Teresa’s spirit—a chiseled, philanthropic wunderkind. At least that’s what the commonwealth of Pennsylvania would have had you believe. The deputy attorney general (“AG”) painted such a glorious picture of the guy, you’d think that had he not been gunned down, Peter Nussbaum would probably be a senator, if not the president or the pope, by now. His death was tragic and premature, no doubt. Then again, wasn’t death always those things? I, for one, had never heard someone say: “She died not a moment too soon and it was downright joyous.”

Maybe it was because Peter was a young, attractive, Ivy League student that his death seemed particularly tragic. Also, because he had been shot at such close range, you could imagine the terror preceding his untimely demise. Nobody deserved that. By the time his body was discovered by a little kid who’d strayed from the housing development’s playground, pigeons and rats had already feasted. I had to hand it to the deputy AG—he was a master of the macabre, inserting ghastly, gripping (and legally inconsequential) details wherever possible. It served him well, since twenty pages into the state’s brief, I experienced a visceral reaction and yearned to throw the book at the demon who’d done such a thing to poor, defenseless, gorgeous Peter Nussbaum. But the death penalty?