Free Defensive Wounds by Lisa Black Page A

she told him what he could do with that .”
    A breeze wafted around the curve of the deck. Theresa had not heard the heavy outer door or a single footstep, but suddenly the woman from the front desk stood there. She did not speak but swept each kid with an evil eye worthy of an old-country grandmother. Then she walked away, and one by one the now-silent kids carefully removed themselves from the scaffold and went back to work, or home, or at least they stopped discussing the internal workings of the Ritz-Carlton hotel.
    â€œThat’s Karla,” Rachael hissed to her mother.
    â€œOh, I see. She’s had a hard day.”
    â€œNo,” Rachael said as they crowded into the elevator. “She’s always like that.”

CHAPTER 7
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    Theresa left Rachael in the lobby of the medical examiner’s office to be cooed over by the night receptionist and hung Marie Corrigan’s clothing in the drying room. Only the blood on the shirt needed such treatment, and the light smears had already dried, but procedure had to be followed—and besides, it allowed her to get in and out in five minutes. Then she hustled Rachael back into the car so they could finally call it a day.
    â€œSo that’s what it’s like when a body turns up, huh?” Rachael mused as they drove up Cedar.
    â€œThat’s what it’s like.”
    â€œIt’s so … I don’t know, disruptive. Everyone’s life goes on hold. Like when there’s a tornado and you have to stop what you’re doing and go down in the basement.”
    â€œYes. And also that sometimes the damage isn’t immediately visible.”
    â€œAt least it was a defense attorney.”
    There are things you won’t admit, Theresa thought, not even to yourself. And definitely not to your children . “Don’t say that.”
    â€œMom, you hate defense attorneys.”
    â€œNo I don’t. Not really. Defense attorneys can sometimes seem like the bane of my existence, yes. But I understand them, too. I get that a lot of people—most of the people—in the criminal-justice system are not hardened, soulless monsters. They’re just Joe Schmo who drove too fast because he was mad at his boss, who took too many drugs and got addicted to them, who just couldn’t resist dipping his hand into the till. Do they deserve to answer for their crimes, yes, but are they a permanent danger to society, no. They need someone to advise them and walk them through the system. Serial rapists, child molesters, drug kingpins with eight executions under their belts— they’re a permanent danger to society. Attacking me to get those people off easy, that’s what I object to.”
    Rachael stared out the window, watching a plane land at Cleveland Hopkins as they took the narrow curve over I-480. “What do you mean, you understand them?”
    Theresa braked for a slowdown at the Bagley exit. “People think I’m a ghoul because I can walk up to a brutally murdered body and not blink an eye. But I do that because I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I have to photograph, then sketch, and then get out the markers, and I can’t forget to take that cigarette butt and that drop of blood.’ I don’t want to make a mistake, because other people’s lives are involved.”
    â€œUh-huh,” Rachael prompted.
    â€œI figure it’s the same way with attorneys. When they’re assigned to someone who committed some awful crime, they don’t have time to sit there and think about the poor victim and what sort of human being would do something like that. They think about what they have to do: find out when the arraignment will be scheduled, file a motion to suppress, interview the witnesses, meet with the prosecutor and feel out the possibility of a plea. I can see how that very quickly becomes a habit, so that after a while the human suffering involved doesn’t even register.”
    â€œ You