Free Blind Justice by James Scott Bell

looking?”
    “Not particularly, but she made every effort to make herself look . . .”
    “How?”
    “Sexy, provocative.”
    “I still don’t know how Howie gets involved.”
    Lindsay shook her head as she looked at the table. “It may be a wild thought, but I think Howie was an experiment for her.”
    “Experiment?”
    “Yeah, like her guinea pig. She wanted to see just how much she could control a man, and Howie was the one she picked.”
    “She had a child with him.”
    “That’s another thing, the way she was with Brian. It was like she had him, then didn’t want him around. She proved she could have a baby, but she didn’t want him to get in her way.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Whatever she wanted to do. Howie was working like crazy in construction, trying to give her everything she wanted. But she’d gotten all she wanted out of him. She started talking about divorce. Howie got desperate. Then he got this crazy idea that if he went to Alaska and got a job up there, it would make everything all right.”
    “Why Alaska?”
    “Probably because it represented a fresh start, a totally different world.”
    “Did Howie ever talk to you about any of this?”
    Lindsay nodded. “I was the only one he could talk to. And never once did he say he wanted to kill Rae or wished she would go away or any of that. She was all he lived for.”
    The waiter arrived with our drinks. As I picked up my beer, I said, “I’ll look into this, Lindsay. But I can’t promise you anything. You’ve got to believe that I’ve got Howie’s best interest in mind.”
    She looked at me, this time with a softer expression than ever before. “I know,” she said. “Thanks for listening.”
    And at that moment I fell even deeper for her, desperate about it, wanting her like I’ve never wanted anything or anyone else before. Disturbed, I tried to shake it off with a long sip of beer. I didn’t want her to see anything of this in me, so I switched gears and started talking about other things, trivial matters.
    Finally, toward the end of lunch, I took my shot. “I wonder if we might do this again sometime,” I said.
    “Lunch?”
    “Or dinner. How about dinner next time?”
    She blushed just a little and smiled. “Thank you for asking, -but . . . I don’t think so.”
    I wasn’t about to shrug this off. “And why’s that?”
    “I . . . it’s difficult to explain.”
    Now I was more intrigued than ever. “Try me.”
    She looked at me half apologetically, which gave me reason to hope. “I’m just not ready.”
    “Wait a second. Did you just give me the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ routine?”
    “You think it’s a routine?”
    “I––”
    “Objection,” she said, with a slight smile. “Sustained.”
    “I’ll have you know you can’t sustain your own objection.”
    “I’ll have you know this is an Italian restaurant,” she said. “If you don’t like the rules I can call Mr. Amato’s two-hundred-and-fifty pound brother to come talk it over with you.”
    “Maybe I should get the check.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

    THE FIREWORKS STARTED popping early Monday morning.
    I arrived at the Hinton County Courthouse for the preliminary hearing, which was being held in the realm of Judge Armen Abovian. I knew nothing about him and didn’t intend to find out. My goal was to settle the case on the best possible terms I could get for Howie and then get out of town and out of the lives of the Patino family once and for all.
    I admit I had taken some pains to shake Lindsay Patino out of my mind. I did it with a combination of Jim Beam and frustration. She didn’t want to see me, fine. Two could play at that game.
    Except the game got a little more complicated when I walked into the courtroom and saw Janet, Fred, and Lindsay Patino sitting there waiting for me.
    Naturally, Janet and Fred wanted to know what was going to happen. I danced around the question, saying this was merely the first big stage of a felony proceeding, where a