39

The Porsche raced along the highway, the wind loud in Russo’s ears.

The county jail was a monstrous building that tried to appear less monstrous on the outside. Russo had been here so much over the decades that it felt like a second home.

The public defenders had “jail days,” where they were assigned to go to the jail that day. Usually, it meant your friends in the office would send you to explain to the clients what’s going on with their cases, sometimes with the files and sometimes with nothing but bullshit. It wasn’t the public defender’s fault: the police and prosecutor’s offices had huge says in what the budgets would be for the public defender’s office and how many attorneys she could hire. Who would vote for more money and resources for their opponents?

She used to dread the jail days when she was a trial defender because all she wanted to do was be in court making arguments. Now, as director of the Clark County Public Defender’s Office, she barely got to do that. It was all bureaucracy and lunacy and backstabbing. Because the PD’s office continued to grow, given how much crime had been jumping recently, it was now a noticeable part of the county budget. Which meant most of Russo’s job was fighting off politicians from reducing it.

She checked in and had to be wanded after going through the metal detectors.

“Do you wand the prosecutors too?” she said to the guard.

“Yeah. I don’t trust no lawyers.”

“Smart man.”

She went into the private attorney-client room and took a seat at a steel bench. The room’s floor was bare cement with white outlines indicating where visitors could stand and where they were too close to the barriers.

The door unbolted and opened, and Owen Whittaker was brought in. The media piece didn’t capture accurately how small he really was. Short, but more thin. Emaciated. Like a snake standing on two legs.

The guard sat him down in front of her and left.

She noticed that his injured eye had patches of milky white and deep tar-like blackness. He moistened his lower lip with his tongue and fixed his gaze on her.

“The media doesn’t do justice to how unique you look,” she remarked, extracting a cigarette case of Italian imports and a lighter from a specially lined compartment in her bag, designed to avoid setting off metal detectors or security wands. “They’re calling you the Creeper,” she said, lighting the cigarette and putting the case and lighter back. “It fits.”

He watched her with an uneven gaze, his blinks creating an unsettling rhythm.

“What?” she said. “D’you expect me to come in here and piss myself like a teenager reading about you in Cosmo ? Please. I’ve lived too long and seen too much to care about you. Honestly, I don’t like you. But here’s the thing, Owen, if I was your lawyer, I wouldn’t want you to go to prison. Do you know why? Because I love winning more than I dislike you.”

She allowed the smoke to whirl around her. “That moment when the jury foreman glances at me with a little grin, like we’re old friends, like we really know each other ... that’s when I know I’ve won. And Owen, there’s no feeling in the world like it.”

The two watched each other in silence a moment.

“Even though you belong in prison, I’m going to do everything I can to see you don’t go there. Because it’s about me, not you. So keep your mouth shut and do everything I tell you. First time you don’t listen to me, I drop you. Then I assign your case to whatever new law school graduate can utter two words in front of a judge without passing out. We understand each other?”

She reclined in her chair, drawing on her cigarette and exhaling the smoke through her nostrils.

He watched her a long time, and then gave a slow nod.

“Good.” She crossed one leg over another and retrieved a yellow legal pad and pen from her bag. “Start from the beginning.”