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My sticky eyes jerked open and landed on the digital display of my bedside clock radio. It was 5:05 and the sun was shining brightly. For a moment I pondered how that could be, but there was a heavy pounding on my front door—that’s what had awakened me—and I gave it up. I was a third of the way down the stairs when I realized that I was wearing only blue boxers. I went back upstairs, took a robe from my closet, and wrapped it around me. The pounding continued.

“I’m coming,” I shouted.Advertisement

A moment later I pulled open the door.

Genevieve Bonalay smiled at me.

“Good evening,” she said.

Evening?

“I figured I was pounding loud enough to wake the dead,” she added. “Apparently I succeeded.”

“I didn’t get home until late this morning,” I said.

“You clean up good, though,” she told me. “Nice outfit.”

“Come in,” I said. I pulled the robe tighter around me and stepped back so G. K. could enter. She was carrying a bottle of Krug champagne. It had been opened. She waved it at the empty living room.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” she said.

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Oh yeah, she’s been drinking, my inner voice warned me.

I led her to the kitchen.

“Would you like some coffee?” I asked.

“No, this is fine.” She held up the Krug. “Care to join me? The least I can do is buy you a drink since you’re not getting paid for this fiasco.”

“Satisfaction is my reward.”

I took two crystal champagne glasses from the cupboard. G. K. quickly filled them both. She held up her glass by the long, narrow stem.

“What should we drink to? I know. To justice.”

“To justice,” I said, and drained half the champagne.

G. K. drank all of hers and refilled the glass.

“I thought you didn’t believe in justice,” I said.

“Oh, I do today. That’s why I’m celebrating. Today I’ve seen justice firsthand. Poetic, ironic—McKenzie, will you go to bed with me? Will you go to bed with me right now? I could use some TLC.”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s right. You don’t go to bed with women who have been drinking. No problem. I know plenty of men who don’t have your scruples, who don’t have any scruples at all.” She curled her nose and furrowed her brow. “Come to think of it, most of them are lawyers. Oh, well.”

She drank more Krug.

“Talk to me, Gen.”

“I like that you call me Gen. I wish you would call me Gen more often.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t understand the things people do anymore. I really don’t. Once I thought I did. No more. I can’t, what’s the word? Empathize? I can’t empathize with them. I can’t put myself in their place. People have become such strangers to me.”

“You’ll find as you go along that they get stranger,” I predicted.

“Will they? God.”

Gen was starting to take another long drink. I seized her hand, gently removed the glass, and set it on the counter. G. K. made a small sniffling noise and bowed her head. She brushed away tears with the back of her knuckle.

“There’s no crying in baseball,” I said.

“I’m not usually this emotional. I can’t remember the last time I cried before today. But today . . .”

“Something happened to Merodie, didn’t it?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What happened to Merodie? She should be out by now.”

G. K.’s head came up abruptly. “Out and then back in again,” she said.

“Tell me.”

“It was a fluke. Merodie was being processed out. I was with her. They were taking her—us—down in the elevator. Richard Nye was being processed in. He was waiting for the elevator to take him up to booking. The elevator doors opened. Merodie saw Nye standing there and she jumped him. Bam. Just like that. Nye’s hands were cuffed, but Merodie’s weren’t, and she knocked him down and started beating him and scratching him and trying to strangle him until the deputies dragged her off. All the time, Merodie was screaming that Nye had killed Eli Jefferson and she was going to make him pay for it.”

“That’s why she refused to roll on him,” I said. “Merodie really did believe that Nye had killed Jefferson. She wanted him out of jail so she could get her revenge. See what I mean about people doing strange things.”

“Hell hath no fury . . .” G. K. began to quote, but changed her mind and took a swallow of champagne.

“Did she hurt Nye badly?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“How badly?”

“She scratched out one of his eyes.”

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