Free Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth by Joel Goldman

his jailhouse office hours short and meetings with his clients shorter.
    He worried about innocent clients who were guilty of nothing except bad luck. He worried about clients who were innocent of the charge that landed them in jail, but were guilty of other offenses. He worried about clients who were guilty as charged. For each of these clients, he had cards to play, deals to make. Mason knew what to do with them. But a client who confessed to a crime Mason believed in his gut she hadn't committed was the client he worried about the most.
    Jordan Hackett had spent the night in jail, long enough to drain her reservoir of anger and refill it with the sullen realization that she would spend the rest of her life wearing government-issued clothes and eating with a spoon she had to turn in after every meal. Her brown hair was grimy and she was wearing a dirt tattoo around her neck. She must have come straight from digging fence posts to surrender, Mason decided. He knew that took a lot of nerve, but not as much as taking her first prison shower. They'd let her stink for a few days, but force her to wash before her first court appearance.
    They sat across from one another at a metal table scarred with initials and bolted to the floor. Jordan looked past Mason to the small window in the door, big enough for the eyes and nose of the deputy sheriff on the other side. She looked at her feet, clad in paper slippers, her heels sticking out past the outer edge of one-size-fits-all. She stuck her hands in her armpits, covering them with the billowing sleeves of her orange jumpsuit. She looked everywhere but at Mason, who watched and waited.
    "What?" she said at last. "Is this the silent treatment from my lawyer? I don't have to go to jail for that. I can get it at home."
    Mason said, "Why did you do it?"
    Jordan tightened her grip on herself. "It's all in my confession. I thought you would have read it." She finally looked at him. "What happened to your eye?"
    "I ran into a door," he said. "I'm not talking about the murder. I'm talking about the confession. Why did you do it without talking to me?"
    "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," she answered, tucking her chin to her chest, giving a cigarette butt on the floor her undivided attention.
    "Cut the crap, Jordan. We made a deal yesterday. You don't talk to the cops without me. What happened?"
    She stood, paced, sat back down. Assumed the position again. "After you left, I had my session with Terry. I told him what was going on. He told me I had to clear the decks if I was going to deal with my issues. Confessing was the way to do that, the way to get everything straight in my mind."
    "Did he tell you what a great psychotherapy program they have in prison?"
    She grabbed the edges of the table, whitening her knuckles before taking a breath and relaxing her grip. "Centurion says it was involuntary manslaughter at the worst. He says I may even get off with careless homicide and that I'll get probation."
    "Did Centurion tell you that there's no such crime as careless homicide? Did he tell you that waiting three days after you had your argument with Gina Davenport to kill her is a textbook example of premeditation and a short course in first-degree murder? Did he tell you that you could get life without parole or death by lethal injection, depending on what the jury had for breakfast? Did he tell you that you should talk to a real lawyer, not some jailhouse lawyer like him, before you throw your life away?"
    Jordan's cheeks hollowed with instant aging, her eyes bleeding tears. "Centurion said you would talk me out of it so you could drag the case out and plea-bargain after you collected your fee from my parents. He said this was better. He said it would come out the same and be over a lot faster."
    "Jordan, yesterday you were digging postholes and making plans to sneak off with me for pizza and beer.
    You were full of enough piss and vinegar to sterilize a swamp. You told me you were innocent,