“That’s one of the Ten Commandments in my line of work. I’m here to get you through this as best I can. What other people say about you doesn’t matter to me.”

He didn’t say that he would get Gavin acquitted, but simply promised to help him through the process. Gavin appreciated that Reecey wasn’t a man prone to overpromising. It also suggested Reecey understood that he was a glorified seat warmer. It was a terrible sales pitch, but an honest one.

“Attempted murder, kidnapping, and first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Those are some serious charges.” Reecey spoke as though he was the first person to deliver this bad news to Gavin. “It’s going to take a lot of work to put together a good defense.” He was prepping Gavin for the price tag, an amount almost sure to be well below what Gavin was prepared to pay. Gavin let Reecey prattle on.

“I don’t think that lineup they did was kosher. Looks to me like they were trying to get her to pick you out—with that whole lisp thing. We may need to bring in an expert to talk about different kinds of speech impediments. By the way, the cost of an expert is separate from my fee. But the lineup is the key to your defense, and that’s where we’ll put up our biggest fight. Even if we win, though, we have to deal with her pointing you out at trial.”

“She’ll have to testify, right?” Gavin knew the answer to his question but wanted to hear Reecey say it.

“You have the right to face your accuser. It’s in the Constitution. If they don’t meet that threshold, they don’t have a case.”

“And what if I have an alibi? How do we present that?”

“Well, that’s about as good as it gets—as long as the alibi has legs. I’d want to shore it up—you know, make it airtight, maybe get an investigator to take the stand and explain it to a jury. Do you have an alibi?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Like you said, it has to be shored up.” Gavin liked Reecey’s choice of words, and the ethical gray area they implied. Shoring up an alibi sounded an awful lot like creating one.

“The thing is,” Reecey said, “that kind of thing takes resources, especially in a case like this.”

Resources—lawyer code for money. Reecey was bringing it in for a landing.

“I have resources,” Gavin said.

“We’re talking significant amounts here.” Reecey had probably done enough homework to know that Gavin had the means to pay “significant amounts.” Gavin could almost see Reecey juggling the numbers in his head—set the amount high enough to sound upscale but not so high that it might scare Gavin off. “Probably…I’d say, I’d need…fifty grand?”