Page 81 of The 1 Lawyer

Rue went to the coffeemaker to refill her mug. Leaning against the counter, she said, “I’ve been thinking.”

I rubbed my eyes; they burned from sleeplessness. “Yeah? What about?”

“It wasn’t Dr. Caro who broke into her house.”

I slid down in my chair so I could rest my feet in the opposite seat. “I agree. He didn’t.”

“Right? She’d know him, even in the dark, because she put in a lot of hours on the trial prep, was at meetings with him at your office. Was Jenny able to tell you who did that to her?”

The question sent a stabbing pain through my head. “The police took her statement. There were two men, wearing cloth gaiters over their faces. One of them had a hood over his head. She didn’t recognize them, didn’t know the voice of the man who did all the talking. But if one of them had been Caro, Jenny would certainly have known.”

Rue took a sip from her mug. “We’ve been working on this project with the cold cases. Talking to people, including the police. You know how news travels in this town.” She paused. When I didn’t respond, she continued. “Out of nowhere, you got that crazy message at your office telling you not to dig into stuff, to walk away. And then they went after Jenny, and when they were done, those men brought her to your house. So we’ve got to figure the attack on Jenny must have something to do with you.”

When she spoke those words, I gripped the handle of the mug so tightly that it broke off. As I dropped the shard of pottery on the kitchen table, Rue said, “Stafford Lee? Are you okay?”

I couldn’t meet her eyes; I was too busy wrestling with the guilt that had worn me down over the past nine hours. “The attack had to be related to me. The cops asked me about it at the hospital.”

“What did they say?”

“The last thing the thug said to Jenny after he dumped her on my porch, she told the cops, was something like ‘Tell your buddy we said hello.’”

Rue turned away from me, so I couldn’t read her reaction. Briskly, she washed her mug with a soapy rag and set it upside down in the dish drainer. She stayed silent as she dried her hands with a kitchen towel. We needed to address the elephant in the room, the clear possibility that associating with me was hazardous to people’s health. I said, “Rue, did you ever hear that Caro’s father has Mob connections? That he was part of the Dixie Mafia?”

She finally turned my way and gave me a weary look. “On my side of Biloxi, everybody knows what Hiram Caro’s capable of. And he has an army of thugs who follow his orders.”

“You need to consider that. For your own safety.” I’d thought about that all night after I’d heard about the message they’d delivered to Jenny. It made sense that the old man was behind it. He had access to the manpower, the kind of criminals who dealt in brutal intimidation tactics.

“I’ll be keeping that in mind, I promise you that,” she said.

Rue was smart. She understood the danger inherent in working with me, living in my house. She might start packing up her stuff. Anyone else would have. I should’ve insisted on it.

But she just said, “I need to head out now. If I’m late, she docks my pay.”

The words set off an alarm in my head. “Where are you going? Who are you supposed to work for today?”

She grabbed her bag. “There’s no point in fussing about it.”

I followed her out of the kitchen. “Rue! You can’t go to Caro’s house, not today.”

She slung the bag over her shoulder and strode to the front door. “Get real. It’s my job, Stafford Lee.”

“Call in sick.” When she kept on walking, I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Hey, I’ll do it for you. I’ll call the agency, tell them you’re running a fever, and you can’t come to work, you don’t want anyone to catch it.”

She pulled the front door open. “I never get sick.”

“Rue, please, just listen to me. You can’t risk further association with the Caros. You’re a target, you understand? You fit the profile.”

She sighed and turned around, her car keys held firmly in her hand. “Forget it. Just stop.”

“You saw what they did to Jenny. You’re not immune, Rue. People know you’re working in my office, living in my house. There’s already courthouse gossip. People are speculating that we’re romantically involved. If the women associated with me are being attacked, it’s probably best if you distance yourself from me, at least for a while.”

Her face was stony. “I don’t think you understand my situation—probably because you can’t relate to it. I have to go clean that house. If I don’t work, I can’t pay my tuition, make my car payments. And don’t even think about backing out on our internship-for-rent deal.”

Without looking back, she ran down the front steps and out to her car. I wanted to follow, but despite all my years in the courtroom, I couldn’t find a way to rebut the argument she’d made. Because she was right—I’d never walked in her shoes.

So I watched her drive off. And then I shut the front door and wandered over to the couch.

I figured I’d sleep, but I couldn’t drift off. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought of Hiram Caro.

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