Free Prosecution: A Legal Thriller by D.W. Buffa

anything everybody
just assumed it was some rich guy and once they were married she'd
be gone."
     
    Crossing one foot in front of the other, I stared
down at my shoes.
     
    "I almost asked her out once," I confessed.
     
    Horace laughed. "Why didn't you?"
     
    "I don't really know," I said, glancing up. "Maybe
because she seemed just a little too sure of herself."
     
    "Maybe, when it came to her, you weren't so sure of
yourself. I remember some of the women you've been with. Most of
them weren't all that shy."
     
    "I had the feeling that with her everything was a
game."
     
    "She may have gotten herself into a pretty dangerous
game this time," Horace said, frowning.
     
    "Maybe she just thought she was delivering a packet
of information to a witness," I suggested. "She was working for
Marshall, remember."
     
    "It's possible," he replied, without conviction. With
one last glance at her face in the framed group photograph, I
walked back across the room. The clouds bunched together, and the
glow that had burnished the side of Horace's dark face disappeared.
Dim shadows enveloped the room, and the whites of his eyes seemed
to hover, ghostlike, in the air.
     
    For a brief moment I had the strange, disquieting
sense of being watched by someone I did not know. I started to sit
down again and changed my mind. It was getting late and I had to
go. "I need a little more time. There are some details I'd like the
police to follow up on."
     
    The sun shot through again, and Horace turned toward
the light, slowly rubbing the tips of his fingers back and forth
against each other. "It might be too late," he said.
"Gilliland-O'Rourke called late yesterday. I haven't returned it
yet."
     
    As he motioned for me to sit down, Horace picked up
the phone. "Why don't we find out what our old friend wants...
     
    "Gwendolyn!" he exclaimed, as if the sound of her
voice was the best thing that had happened to him all day. "How
nice of you to call. Should have called you back before this, but
I've been in court all day, and you know how that goes."
     
    He pulled the telephone away from his ear and rolled
his eyes."There's no reason for you to get so upset," he said,
wincing. "There was no way they were going to take that chance...
It wasn't a question of whether anyone trusted you.
     
    You have to understand—" His mouth still open, he
looked at me and then, shaking his head, hung up the phone. "It's
like I was saying, some things never change."
     
    "She was upset?"
     
    His head bobbed back and forth, his eyes filled with
amusement. "Let's just say she was a little annoyed. Goodwin told
her, two days ago, right after he had lunch with you. He had
to."
     
    I had not thought about it, but as soon as Horace
said it, I knew he was right. If Goodwin had waited until he was
formally charged, it would have looked like he had tried to hide
something. Whatever the reality, by going to her right away, he
could keep up the appearance of outraged innocence. And now
Gilliland-O'Rourke was outraged as well.
     
    I looked at Horace. "What do you think she's going to
do?"
     
    With a caustic grin, he replied, "You know as well as
I do what she's going to do. She's going to do something so far
beyond the pale, something that after she does it is going to seem
so obvious, we're going to wonder why we hadn't thought of it
before. Right?"
     
    "There isn't anything she can do," I objected.
     
    With his eyes opened as wide as they would go, Horace
looked at me and started to laugh. "You think?"
     
    It was nearly five o'clock and I was already late. I
left the courthouse wondering what Gilliland-O'Rourke could really
do, and by the time I arrived at the hotel I had almost convinced
myself that she would try to turn things around by charging me with
subornation of perjury in the murder trial of Leopold Rifkin.
     
    * * *
     
    Old habits die hard, and some habits do not die at
all. I lived alone, but I had not yet acquired any serious interest
in celibacy. In the