“You mean when he defended you twenty years ago?”

Cade snickered. “Can’t call what he did a defense, not by any stretch. The asshole cost me twenty years.”

“It could have been worse,” Louis said.

Cade didn’t blink. His eyes seemed darker now, the color the gulf had been after the storm.

“The rape and murder,” Louis said. “Tell me about it.”

Cade pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not important.”

“Tell me or this is over now.”

Cade shut his eyes slowly, like he was tired to the bone. Or bored. His right foot kept up its steady jerking. “I was sent up for raping and killing this girl. There were things that should’ve been brought up, motions and shit like that. Duvall didn’t do any of it and I got fucked. That’s why I was going to sue him.”

“How old was ‘this girl’?”

Cade shrugged. “Fifteen. Sixteen.”

“How did you kill her?”

“I told you-”

“How was she killed?”

“Who cares?”

“How was she killed?” Louis demanded.

“She was stabbed.” Cade dragged his foot off his knee and turned away, rubbing a hand over his rough chin.

“Mr. Cade-”

Cade spun back. “What the hell difference does it make? This is about Duvall. This is about today.”

Louis stared at Jack Cade, his fingers working gently against the metal clip on the ballpoint pen. Man, get the hell out of here. You don’t need this loser or the five-hundred dollars. But he wanted to know.

“Did you do it?” Louis asked.

“I didn’t kill that cocksucker lawyer.”

“I mean the girl. Did you kill the girl?”

“Why you digging up old stuff no one cares about?”

“Did you kill her?”

Cade leaned forward, the pupils of his eyes barely visible under the heavy lids. “The only thing you need to know is that I didn’t kill Duvall.”

Louis was amazed to see a small smile creep into the corners of Cade’s mouth.

“You know what?” Cade said. “I should answer your question just because I find your need to know. . amusing.”

“This isn’t funny, Cade.”

The tipped corners of his mouth grew into a grin. “That depends on your vantage point.” He tapped on the plexiglass between them. “You ever looked at anything through six inches of plastic? You ever seen the world through greasy hand prints and scratches and dried spit? Try it sometime. Try it for twenty years. It kind of. . clarifies things.”

Cade’s smile faded.

“Answer the question,” Louis said.

Cade dropped his head, picking again at his ravaged cuticles.

“What you say your name was again?” he asked, without looking up.

“Louis Kincaid.”

“How you spell that?”

Louis spelled his last name and when Cade looked up he was grinning. “Thought maybe we had a distant relative in common for a minute there. Kin-CADE. . get it?”

“I asked you a question, Cade,” Louis said. “Did you kill her?”

But Cade ignored him again. “Ronnie said he offered you five-hundred bucks,” he said. “That’s barely enough to put macaroni on your table, right?”

Louis didn’t answer him.

“Would you be so curious about whether I killed that girl if I paid you five thousand?”

“Yes, I would.”

“What if it was ten thousand? Or a hundred thousand?”

Louis just stared at him.

“At what dollar amount does my value as a human being reach the defendable level? How much would it take for you not to be so curious?”

Louis closed the notebook. Cade’s eyes flitted to it and back up to Louis’s face.

“I didn’t kill that girl,” he said finally.

Louis locked on Cade’s chameleon eyes, hoping to see some hint of the truth there. There was nothing.

A steel door on Cade’s side opened and a guard emerged. Cade glanced at the guard and smiled. “Well, I guess the maids are finished with my room.” He unfurled his body from the chair.

“So,” he said to Louis, “you staying for the macaroni?”

Louis rose, slipping the notebook in his back pocket. “I don’t know yet. I need to do some research on your case.”

“Yeah, you do that.” Cade turned away.

Louis started back toward the steel door at the other end of the room.

“Kincaid.”

Louis looked back. He could see Cade’s face at the plexiglass again.

“Don’t ever ask me about that dead girl again,” Cade said.

He disappeared from view. Louis walked back to the steel door and hit a buzzer. Back out in the hall, Louis drew in a deep breath.

“Hey, your name Kincaid?”

Louis turned to the deputy who had called out. “Yeah.”

“Zach says there’s someone downstairs who wants to know who’s seeing Jack Cade.”

“Who is it?” Louis asked.

“Cade’s lawyer. And she’s mad as hell.”

There were only two women in the lobby when Louis got out of the elevator. One was an old blue-hair with a grandkid in tow. The other was a black woman in a dark red suit carrying a slim briefcase. Her eyes immediately lasered onto Louis and she came forward.

“You’re Louis Kincaid?”

“Yes, and you are-?”

“What was your business with my client?” she asked.

“His son wants to hire me-”

Her brows knitted. “Ronnie? Ronnie hired you to do what?”

“I’m a private invest-”

“What?”

“I-”

“He hired a PI? Damn it!”

Louis glanced at Zach behind the glass; he was watching intently. Louis knew he had keyed the mike so he could hear every word.

“Look,” Louis said, holding up a hand, “maybe we should-”

“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I told him to stay out of this, to keep his damn mouth shut.” Her dark eyes shot suddenly to Louis’s face. “What did my client tell you?”

“Nothing. Look, lady-”

“Nothing he told you can be used against him-”

“Hold it, I’m not even sure I’m going-”

“How much is he paying you?”

“How much is he paying you?” Louis shot back.

She pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Nothing. I’m his public defender.”

Louis gave her a wry smile. Her expression remained icy.

“Let’s start over,” Louis said. He held out his hand. “Louis Kincaid.”

She hesitated, then gave him a curt handshake. “Susan Outlaw. Now what exactly did my client tell you?”

Louis looked again at Zach. His face was practically pressed against the plexiglass.

Louis glanced at her. “Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk in private?” he said.

She looked at the slim watch on her wrist. Louis could tell she was mulling something over. What? Whether he was going to waste her time? Shit, what was it with lawyers? They all thought they were the only ones with schedules to keep. Not that he had anywhere else to go today, except to see Mobley, and he wasn’t in any hurry to do that.

“All right. Let’s go,” she said, pivoting to the door.

“Yes, ma’am,” Louis said.

She led Louis to a wood-and-fern bar near the courthouse called The Guilty Party. Susan left to make a call. Louis waited, stirring three packets of sugar into his coffee. He glanced around the cramped room. It was packed with blue-suited lawyers and grim civilians wearing jury buttons.

When she came back to the table, she sat down with an irritated sigh and took a quick drink of her coffee.

“Problem back at the office?” Louis asked politely.

“Look, Mr. Kincaid, I don’t have time to sit around in cafes sipping cappucinos.”

“It’s just bad bar coffee.”

“Let’s just get to the point,” she said. “What did Jack Cade tell you?”

Louis sat back in his chair. “Not much. That he didn’t kill Spencer Duvall.”

“Anything else?”

“That he didn’t rape and kill that girl twenty years ago either.”

She was sitting with her back to the window and he couldn’t make out much of her features in the glare of the sun-except for her frown. That he could see clearly.

“Why would you ask him about that?” she asked.