I’ve always considered myself a disciplined deliberate person, a long-suffering, patient, logical, unemotional scientist but obviously I’m not patient enough, nowhere near patient enough, and my thoughts race as images flash. I keep seeing Carrie Grethen’s face, the stoniness of her skin as pale as paper, and the way her eyes changed color and shading during her lecture, her soliloquy. Deep blue then aqua then icy pale like a Siberian husky and next her irises were so dark they looked almost black. I was seeing what was going on in her psyche, the shadings of her monster, of her spiritual malignancy, and I take another deep breath and blow out slowly.

The video and its abrupt ending had the effect of a triple shot of espresso or maybe a large dose of digitalis. My heart is about to beat its way out of my chest. I feel poisoned. I feel so many things I can’t begin to describe them, and I take deep slow breaths. I open up my lungs and breathe in and out deeply, very slowly and quietly as I wait for Donoghue. Finally I hear a click on the line and the Muzak stops.

“What’s happening, Kay?” Jill Donoghue gets right to it.

“Nothing good or I wouldn’t be calling like this. I apologize for interrupting.” I move a few steps, and my right thigh reminds me it’s there.

“What can I do for you? And what’s the noise? Is that a helicopter? Where are you?”

“It’s an FBI helicopter most likely,” I reply.

“I take it you’re at a crime scene …”

“I’m on Lucy’s property which is being treated like a crime scene. I would like to retain you as my attorney, Jill. I’d like to do so immediately.” I watch Lucy sitting some distance away on a bench pretending she isn’t interested in my conversation.

“Certainly we can talk about that later but what’s happening …?” Donoghue starts to say.

“For the record we’re talking about it now,” I interrupt her. “Please make a note of it. On August fifteenth at ten minutes past eleven A.M., I hired you as my attorney and asked you to represent Lucy, too. Assuming you’re amenable.”

“So the three of us are protected by attorney-client privilege,” she considers. “Except you aren’t protected if you talk to Lucy without me present.”

“I understand. I’m about to believe nothing is privileged or private anyway.”

“That’s probably a smart attitude to adopt this day and age. For now the answer is yes about representation. But if there’s a conflict I’ll have to withdraw from representing one of you.”

“Fair enough.”

“Can you talk now?”