57

Near midnight, an officer entered the CJC and went to Sophie’s room, nudging Lazarus awake from the hallway floor and telling him he would take over. Piper, asleep in her chair, stirred. Lazarus gave the officer a nod as they both got to their feet. “Go home, Danes,” he said.

“What are you going to be doing?”

“Visiting someone.”

Lazarus exited the building and headed to his car.

The sky was clear, with the moon casting a pale glow. He drove aimlessly for some time, eventually finding himself on the streets leading to Judge Dawson’s hilltop home.

He parked, went to the door, and knocked. Judge Dawson answered in silk pajamas. She looked wide awake but had no makeup. He thought she looked better without it.

“Are you drunk?” she said.

“No.”

She opened her door. He stepped inside the home and went to the kitchen. A bar was there, and he poured himself some whiskey and took it outside to her patio. The city lights burned as bright as the moon.

Sin don’t sleep —a sergeant of his in New Orleans had told him once. Lazarus had later heard the sergeant had hanged himself in his garage.

“You should stop coming here like this,” she said, joining him on the patio with a glass of red wine. “People will say you’re in love with me.”

“People say lots of things.”

He studied her under the moon’s glow, noticing the shimmer in her eyes, her flawless nails, the gentle sway of her hair. “You look beautiful in the moonlight.”

“Thank you,” she said casually, as if he’d commented on the weather.

“You don’t care about compliments, do you?”

“I don’t care all that much for words. Most people have no insight into themselves, so the words they say are meaningless.”

He moved closer, intending to kiss her, but she subtly averted her face. Settling into a chair, he took a sip of his whiskey, his gaze drifting to the railing her husband had fallen from. “You miss him at all?” Lazarus said.

She noticed where he was looking. “No.”

“You know, me and you never talked about it.”

“Why would we?”

“Seems odd that I didn’t care, and that you didn’t care that I didn’t care.”

“Don’t overthink it,” she said before taking a drink of wine. “We can talk about something else. I’ve given enough interviews to the police on this subject, I think.”

“This ain’t a cop askin’.”

“A friend then?”

“If people like us can have friends, then you and I are as close as we’re gonna get.”

She gave a half smile. “How interesting it would be to find out who you think ‘people like us’ actually are.”

She sipped her wine, eyes fixed on him above the glass’s edge. “I told Charles I wanted a divorce that night.”

“Why?”

“He was a terrible husband. I married him for expedience. My father thought it would be a good marriage. Never mind that he had a history of physical and mental abuse to all his girlfriends going back to high school. He had the pedigree and the right family name, so that was a mild issue to my father.”

“You don’t strike me as the type that can be bullied into anything.”

“I was young. I hadn’t learned yet that the most important word to be able to say to family is no. That lesson only comes after heartache I hadn’t yet experienced.”

“What happened when you told him you wanted a divorce?”

“He stood at the railing and said he would kill himself if I left him. I thought he was being dramatic, trying to manipulate me. I told him to go ahead and do it ... and he did.”

Lazarus thought about this for a while.

Judge Dawson was staring out over the city.

“Owen Whittaker escaped,” he said, finally breaking the silence.

“I know. The warden called. How do you feel about it?”

“How do I feel about it? I feel like I wanna put my fist through the warden’s teeth.”

“Rather extreme reaction, isn’t it? You’re assuming it’s over and that he’s gotten away.”

He finished the whiskey and put the glass down. “He hid in walls and crawl spaces for weeks. If he doesn’t want to be found, I won’t find him.”

“You did once. You can again,” she said. “What would you do if you were him? How would you describe yourself at this moment?”

“Off balance.”

“So what would you do?”

“Go somewhere familiar to get my balance back. Somewhere I could hide out and think.”

Cradling the wineglass with both hands, her nails gleamed under the moon’s glow. “That sounds like a suitable place to begin.”

“Better than blacking out at the saloon, I guess.”

Despite the lingering dizziness and fatigue, he had some motivation he could use now, at least for a while.

Lazarus rose and looked out over the city from the railing. It was a sheer drop all the way down with jagged rocks on the way. “Why keep this house after somethin’ like that?”

“Because to hell with him. That’s why.”