Karen stared at her young attorney, unresponsive for so long that Diane began to wonder if she had even heard the question.
"Mom?" Daisy asked, standing up and cautiously approaching her mother.
Finally, Karen blinked, a tear falling from her lashes and trailing down her cheek. "No," she said. "No. No. I did not shoot my husband!" Her voice rose in volume and octave with each word until she was shouting. "What is wrong with you people? The police, the state's attorney, and now my own fucking lawyers! Why is everyone focusing on me, when you need to be figuring out who actually killed John? My god, this is insane!"
Daisy had made her way to Karen's side, and laid her hand on her mother's back, rubbing gently. "Mom," she said. "They have to ask; it's their job, that's all. You know you and dad fought sometimes, and…"
"What? You too, Daisy? I can't believe it; even my own daughter…" Karen stood and pushed past Daisy, running from the room.
The other three occupants of the room stared at one another in stunned silence.
"I...I'm sorry," Daisy said after a moment. "This is what I was trying to tell you. She's not doing well. I think she needs to see someone...a psychiatrist, I don't know. But I didn't think I should take her without talking to you first, if it would look bad, or… I don't even know if she'd go." She looked around helplessly, wrapping her arms around her midsection and blinking furiously.
Cary stood and walked over to her, putting his arm over her shoulders and leading her over to the couch. "Sit," he instructed gently.
"I'll go see to Karen," Diane said, standing.
"Oh, no, Ms. Lockhart, I should…" Daisy protested, but Cary stopped her with a hand on her arm.
"Let Diane go," he suggested. "Sometimes someone less emotionally involved is better."
Daisy still looked doubtful, but Diane didn't give her another opportunity to object. She wasn't thrilled with leaving Cary alone with the distraught young woman, but a pointed look over her shoulder would have to suffice as warning for now.
She found Karen in her bedroom, staring out the balcony doors into the backyard. Diane ignored the chill that rippled up her spine at the sight of the dense expanse of trees bordering the lawn, and moved to stand beside the other woman.
"I didn't kill my husband," Karen said, continuing to look out the window. Her voice was quiet, no longer hysterical, but just as firm. She stood ramrod straight, arms at her sides, chin slightly raised as if in defiance of any accusations her lawyer may decide to throw her way. The thick swaths of purple under her eyes, starkly visible in the afternoon sunlight, belied her show of strength.
Diane was not there to accuse. "I believe you," she told her client. And she did. Clients lied all the time, perhaps even more often than not, and Diane wasn't vain or naive enough to think she could tell every time it happened. But she hadn't gotten to where she was today by not trusting her own instincts and right now those instincts were screaming at her that Karen was innocent. She was not a murderer. She didn't shoot her husband in cold blood and then rearrange the crime scene to make it look like the shot had come from deeper within the woods. She knew that like she knew her own name. She just had to prove it.
"I don't know where these stories about John and I are coming from," Karen continued. "Of course we disagreed from time to time; all couples do, but we were happy. We loved each other."
"Okay," Diane said, touching her arm reassuringly. "We'll find another angle."
"So you really believe her?" Cary asked. The two lawyers had returned to Stern, Lockhart and Gardner after a long conversation with both Karen and Daisy, in which they went over every detail of the day of the murder again, in the vain hope that some new avenue would crop up. None had.
"I do. I'm interested though, in where those rumors…" Diane stopped speaking when Kurt McVeigh came into view on the other side of her glass wall. He stopped at her assistant's desk and she could see the two converse briefly before he ambled over to a chair and sat down to wait, slumping over with his elbows resting on his knees.
"Diane?" Cary prompted. "You were saying?"
"Oh, ah…nothing important. You're going to have to excuse me, Cary. I have another appointment." In actual fact, she did not. Kurt hadn't called ahead as far as she knew, and she didn't imagine his unexpected presence was indicative of any kind of good news.
"Oh. Sure." The young associate rose. "I'll find Kalinda, see if she found anything in the stuff Lily O'Donnell gave us.."
"Yes, good," she replied distractedly, watching as Kurt sat completely still, staring at the floor in her small waiting area.
Cary shrugged and exited her office without comment. Through the glass she saw him exchange greetings with the ballistics expert as he passed by. Kurt stood and gestured toward her office and Cary nodded in the positive, presumably indicating she was now alone.
Her assistant stood as he strode past and Diane quickly slapped the intercom button on her phone. "It's okay, Melissa," she said, just as Kurt entered her office and closed the door behind him.
"Hello," she said, her stomach sinking as he turned around.
He looked tired, ragged around the edges, with deep lines around his eyes and stubble on his chin. His normally neat plaid shirt was creased and limp. Nodding quickly in greeting, he crossed the room to stand in front of her desk, his right arm extended. In his hand was another manilla envelope similar to the one he brought her the day of their first meeting. Had that really only been a few days ago? It felt like decades.
"What's that?" she said, not taking it from him.
"My withdrawal from the Patterson case," he said. "And a cheque refunding your retainer."
"Oh, Kurt." She shook her head and slid her glasses off, tossing them on the desk and rubbing her temple. It was about what she expected, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. She gestured to a chair, which, after a long moment's hesitation, he took, setting the envelope on the desk and folding over in the chair to stare at the floor as he had been doing in the waiting room.
"She's innocent, Kurt. I promise you, she is."
His head jerked up. "You put the business partner at the scene?"
"Well, no," she admitted. "That's probably a dead end; he has an alibi, but..."
Kurt raised his hand to stop her. "It doesn't matter, Diane. I'm out. I just...I'm out." He started to stand, but she beat him to it, rising quickly herself and walking around her desk to block his route to the door.
"This isn't about my client at all, is it?" she accused. "This is about what we saw last night."
He took a step closer to her, speaking quietly but firmly. "We didn't see anything last night but moonlight and shadows."
She shook her head, and when she spoke, her tone matched his. "You know that's not true. There was something out there. Don't you want to know what's happening here? I don't understand how you can just run away from this."
"I'm not running away from anything, Diane. I told you upfront that if I thought the client was guilty, I wouldn't continue with the case. That's all this is."
"But the client is innocent, Kurt! She's innocent, she's lost the love of her life, and she could spend the rest of her life in jail. I know you're a man of honor; you can't just walk away and leave her to hang!"
"We've know each other for less than a week," he said. "Don't pretend you know anything about me." He took another step towards her, but she stood her ground, reaching out and grasping his forearm.
"Look, Kurt. There's something going on here, something we don't understand yet and I know it's frightening, but we can't back away now. We owe it to Karen Patterson to figure this out."
He moved his arm back until her hand fell away. "No, Diane, maybe you owe it to Karen Patterson, but the only person I owe anything to is you, and that debt will be erased when you deposit the cheque in that envelope. Then we can both forget any of this ever happened.
His words stung on some level that had nothing to do with Karen, the case, or whatever happened in the woods. "Is that what you really want?" she asked. "To forget the whole thing, forget we ever met?"
Their eyes met in stubborn silence, neither one able to move even one more inch to find some sort of common ground. Fear, attraction, conscience, respect, and self-preservation all warred in the vast space between them. Nobody was going to win.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, looking away.
What else could she do? She stepped aside, and he walked out the door.