Chapter 2

I'd barely come off the bench when Chief Judge Raymond Porter walked into my chambers without knocking.

"Look at what you've done."

He tossed a tablet onto my desk.

On the screen, Evelyn Harrow was announcing that she'd be coming out of retirement to represent Marina herself.

"As a matter of principle, I've practiced for decades because I believe the law exists to keep innocent people from being buried by an accusation. As a matter of family, Marina is my only granddaughter. I know her character, and neither the physical evidence nor the timeline puts her anywhere near that house."

At the end of the clip, Evelyn looked straight into the camera.

Something sharp moved behind those gentle eyes.

"I started out with nothing and no name either. So I'll offer one piece of advice to the young. Guard your reputation. One wrong step, and what's under you isn't a stair."

That last part was for me.

Online, opinion had already gone one way.

"Evelyn Harrow is a legend. Any case she takes, she wins."

"I've followed this from day one. Marina's print showed up on a phone another suspect stole and carried inside. That's it. That's the whole case."

"Good for her for stepping in. That judge made the felony bench before he turned thirty, and now he's picking a woman to make an example of. Men close ranks. Our girl's going to win."

"I want a gallery seat for the day Evelyn takes him apart. I'm applying tomorrow."

The comments went on and on.

Porter was furious.

"She has no motive, she has a witness who accounts for her entire night, and the four other suspects all say she left early. Why are you holding on to her?"

I closed the file in front of me.

"Chief Judge, this case is mine. I'm not required to discuss it with anyone outside the record, and I shouldn't."

My voice stayed level.

"I'll say one thing. Marina Harrow is guilty. This building exists to hold people to account, and I'm not letting her walk out of it."

The anger in his eyes deepened.

"Do you know what this has done to public confidence in us? Every outlet in the state is running your face beside hers.

"Keep going alone and there won't be anything left of you for me to protect."

He handed me an address.

"I'm giving you a way out. I've arranged a meeting with Evelyn Harrow. You'll go and smooth it over yourself. As for the trial in three days, you follow the law and the facts, and you acquit her like anyone else would."

I agreed to meet Evelyn.

Not to apologize.

I only wanted to see it. To see what kind of life the woman had built for herself after she faked her own death to leave her husband wearing the words wife-killer.

Evelyn lived in Alder Heights, the hillside district where Port Halcyon keeps its money.

I'd barely come through the door of the Harrow estate when a lean, well-kept old man came toward me.

He turned up on television constantly. One of the city's celebrated philanthropists.

Victor Harrow.

It was for him that Evelyn had staged her death and put Grandpa in a cell.

Victor had a pair of pruning shears in one hand and was working his way along a shelf of orchids.

Age had gotten to his face, but it was still the face of a man nothing had ever been allowed to touch.

Nothing like Grandpa, whose body was a record of twenty years of prison labor and whose face still carried what the other inmates had done to it.

Three generations of us had worn our hands down to nothing.

At the end of it, one of us was finally standing in front of him.

He sat down without offering me a chair and raised his eyelids a fraction.

"So you're the judge who wouldn't let Marina go. You look young."

He ran a thumb along a stem, then closed the shears on it. The bloom dropped to the floor.

"I won't waste your time. You know what the Harrow name is worth in this city. There are a hundred ways to make a problem disappear."

"Victor. Why are you frightening the boy?"

Evelyn came out of the shadow past the windows, unhurried.

Fifty years had gone by.

She'd softened, filled out.

The warm, grandmotherly smile on her face had nothing to do with the cold, distant woman in the photograph Grandpa kept.

"Sit."

A housekeeper brought in a tray with a decanter and two glasses.

Evelyn poured for me herself, taking her time about it.

"My husband and I spent our young years building careers. We were almost forty when we had our only child, and he had no luck. Car accident, a year into his marriage. He left us Marina and nothing else.

"We spoiled her badly. When she's home, I'll have her come and apologize to you in person."

I pushed the glass back across the table.

"Ms. Harrow. I don't drink."

Something cold passed through her eyes before the smile came back. "Of course. My generation's habit, not yours. Then I imagine this will interest you more."

She lifted a hand, and the man standing behind her set a suitcase on the table.

"Just a few things. Nothing that needs reporting."

"I'm old. I don't have the stomach for anything ugly anymore. I looked into you. Getting out of Pinebarrow can't have been easy, and I understand wanting to climb higher. What's in there would carry you the rest of your life."

I stood up.

"Ms. Harrow, I've got no appetite for it. In three days I'll rule the way the case deserves. I'll see myself out."

Anger came into her voice.

"What is it you want? Name your price."

I stopped.

What did I want?

I wanted her family in ruins.

I wanted her to pay for what she'd done, even fifty years late.

"I want them to get exactly what's coming to them."

This time.

For the law, and what the law is supposed to be.

And for Grandpa, on a debt she'd run up fifty years ago.