Free Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes by Marcia Muller

formulate a reply. “Because I read the transcript and found some loose ends that bear looking into. Because it’s important to Jack and Judy . . . and to you.”
    She laughed dryly. “What’s important to me doesn’t matter to you, Miss McCone. It’s plain you don’t like or believe me. That’s all right: I can live with it so long as you don’t let it get in the way of your job.
    Instead of taking offense at what she’d said, I felt relieved to have everything out in the open. “You’re right, but I don’t have to like my clients in order to investigate them professionally. And as for believing or not believing you, there are enough of those loose ends to make me wonder. I wouldn’t take this on unless I had some doubts about the prosecution’s case.”
    â€œLawyers take on clients they know are guilty.”
    â€œIt’s a lawyer’s job to provide the best possible defense for the client, guilty or not. My job, on the other hand, is to get at the truth. I don’t have any patience with being tricked or lied to. If I find out you’re hoping I’ll prove you didn’t kill Cordy McKittridge when in fact you did, I’ll not only drop the case but make the truth public.”
    â€œSo you’re an idealist, Miss McCone.”
    â€œI’m not sure what I am anymore.” Not after the past few years, I wasn’t. Not after the things I’d seen, been forced to do. And certainly not after the things I’d sometimes had to stop myself from doing.
    Fortunately, Lis Benedict’s focus was inward; she didn’t ask what had caused the uncertainty. “I used to be an idealist,” she said, “but prison cures you of that—rapidly. Our system of justice does, too. I stopped believing in justice the day they arrested me. I stopped believing in compassion the day they took me to Corona—that’s where they kept condemned women in their fifties, until it was time to drive them to the gas chamber at San Quentin.”
    â€œWhat about when the governor granted a stay of execution and then clemency?”
    She laughed derisively. “I knew what was operating there.”
    â€œWhat?”
    She tensed and didn’t reply, as if she’d been voicing random thoughts and now realized she’d said too much. But too much about what?
    I studied her, wondering if I could press for an answer. No, I decided, better to get her talking about something else. “What about prison?” I asked. “Do you ever get used to it?”
    â€œIn a way. At first it’s like being dropped into a whole different universe, particularly for someone who was raised the way I was. The physical surroundings are bad, of course, but the inability to make your own decisions is even worse. And the feeling of being set apart from the other inmates is worse yet. After a while that changes. You learn to make small decisions: What brand of toothpaste will I buy this month? What book will I check out of the library this week? What daydream will I use to put myself to sleep tonight?”
    I thought of Judy’s comment about her daydreams; apparently her mother had similarly eased her pain.
    â€œAfter a while,” Lis went on, “you begin to accept the other inmates and they begin to accept you. It doesn’t matter that for the most part they’re badly educated and poor, or that some are just plain insane. They become your family, because they’re all you have. And to them it doesn’t matter that you’ve had advantages they haven’t. They become proud of you, in fact. ‘That’s my college-lady friend,’ one woman would tell her visitors. As I grew older, the younger ones saw me as a surrogate parent and would tell me their troubles or their mad fantasies. Some of them called me Mom, and in a strange way, I liked that.”
    She paused, then added in a softer tone. “You can