Free Last Ragged Breath by Julia Keller Page B

things—of the guts of the law, as Bell called it—and they would nod at the description, enjoying the tough, raw sound of the phrase, even though, to them, it was an abstraction. They’d never dealt with drunk or stoned defendants who threatened to dig out their eyeballs with a rusty spoon and then pee in the empty sockets, or with the relatives of convicted felons who left shoeboxes filled with dog shit in Bell’s home mailbox. Really? Dog shit? her friends would say, shaking their heads, half-amused, half-appalled. Yeah, Bell would reply. Dog shit. Although come to think of it, I suppose it might’ve been human shit or horse manure—I mean, I didn’t get it officially tested. Hard to say. The shit part—that’s all I’m really certain of .
    The get-togethers with her classmates would happen in some fancy bar in Georgetown or Adams Morgan, during one of Bell’s trips to see Carla. Amid the clink of glasses and the sudden uprushes of laughter from nearby tables, against a background of pop songs banging endlessly out of the sound system, Bell would tell her stories to these people, people she had known very well for a brief, intense period in her life—Ginnie, Ron, Pam, Kim, Trevor, Steve, Paula, and Jeremy—but who now listened to her description of a prosecutor’s job in a small, poor rural county as if she were telling them about an expedition to Mars: Everything was exotic and unfamiliar. People with degrees such as theirs didn’t become prosecutors. And prosecutors aren’t cops, Kim would say, challenging Bell. This moment generally came after Kim had finished her third lime margarita and had fluffed up her tawny mane of hair for the fifth or sixth time, hoping to catch the eye of Trevor, whom she’d had a crush on throughout law school and continued to pine for, even though he was now married and had three children.
    I don’t get it, Kim would continue. She’d never liked Bell, and liked her even less now that Bell held the group’s attention, including, gallingly, Trevor’s. You talk about running around and interviewing suspects, Kim said, but that’s not your job. The cops’re supposed to do that. And then they’re supposed to bring you the suspects and the evidence and then you take it to trial. What the hell?
    Bell would smile a small, knowing smile. Yeah, she’d reply. That’s how it’s supposed to work, all right. In theory . In reality, she explained, the county was poor, the caseload was out of control, and the sheriff’s office was short-handed, and thus she ended up participating in the gathering of facts and the interviewing of witnesses and the culling of suspects. She could, she supposed, say something like, That’s not my job, but she would only be making more work for herself in the long run. Moreover, those people—the sheriff, the deputies, the coroner—were her friends. Better friends, she was tempted to say to her classmates, than any of you . Which was not a slam against the witty, well-dressed, highly successful people gathered around the table in this very nice bar, ordering another round of expensive drinks. It was, rather, an indication of how far away from all of them that Bell had traveled—in terms of physical distance, yes, but in other ways, too. More important ways.
    â€œShe’s right in here,” Deputy Mathers said.
    At the sound of his voice, Bell’s mind snapped back to the present. Mathers stepped to one side. He’d walked with Bell and Sheriff Harrison to the lobby of the courthouse. Mathers had taken the lead, flipping on row after row of lights in successive corridors as they passed through them. The lights had all been turned off on Friday afternoon and, minus this incident, would’ve stayed that way until early Monday morning. In the sudden swoop of illumination, the ancient building with its water-stained plaster walls and