An Imperfect Process (26 page)

The tensions of the evening flared into passion, and in moments they were ripping at each other's clothing. Her lingering distress over the mugging vanished, seared away as she pulled him down on the fireplace rug.

She gasped as his mouth found her breast. She might not be sure about living together or marriage, but this sweet, fierce passion—
this
she was sure of.

* * *

Rob propped himself up on one elbow and studied his sleeping bedmate. Val's curving form was silvered by moonlight and her hair rioted darkly across the pillow. The sex, as always, had been phenomenal, maybe even better than usual because of the scariness of her being attacked.

But dammit, he wanted more than sex. There was more than sex between them, a lot more, but suggesting that made Val skittish. Since she didn't cotton to living together, he had been ready to propose marriage when she had jumped his bones. A most effective means of changing the subject.

Maybe she wasn't in love with him and never would be, or maybe she just needed time to fall in love and get used to the idea of marriage. But he was a computer geek with a lot of experience in solving problems, and Val was definitely a problem, albeit a beautiful, sexy problem who made him feel more alive than he had ever felt in his life.

He smiled wryly, remembering why he had spent so many years buried in computer development. It was a simpler world, where something either worked or it didn't. If it didn't, you fixed it. Problems had solutions, if you worked hard enough.

Maybe the same was true with romance, but he wouldn't bet on it. He whispered, "I love you, Valentine."

Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed that even in sleep, she pulled away a little.

* * *

Vale came awake suddenly. It was still dark, and a glance at the bedside clock showed that it was a little after 3 a.m. Rob slept beside her, one arm over her waist.

Lilith glided up from the foot of the bed to stand on Val's chest and give an almost inaudible
mrowrr
. To a cat, human movement meant it was breakfast time no matter what the clock said.

Knowing she was too tense and uneasy to return to sleep, Val slipped out from under Rob's arm, found her robe by touch, and descended to the kitchen, the cats circling and threatening to trip her. After dividing a can of cat tuna between them, she crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter as she regarded her pets broodingly.

The reason for her disquiet was obvious—her reaction to Rob's words had been straight out of the twilight zone. Why had she come unglued when he suggested they live together? And then cut him off when he seemed on the verge of proposing marriage? She should have cartwheeled with happiness. Instead, she had panicked and used sex to change the subject. Tacky, Valentine, very tacky.

Was she in love with him? Her heart tightened painfully. At sixteen, questions like that had been easy to answer. At her age, everything was more complicated. There were many kinds of love, and she wasn't ready to try to label her feelings for Rob.

But if in doubt, make a list. She sat down at the kitchen desk, pulled out one of her ubiquitous legal tablets, and wrote "Rob: Pro and Con" at the top.

Her felt-tipped pen raced as she listed the pros. Smart, funny, sexy, responsible, compassionate, liked her cats, reliable, wanted to get serious. She could have listed his virtues for pages, but stopped after about twenty, figuring that she'd hit the highlights.

Cons were harder to find. He had major emotional baggage, but he had survived the worst and was dealing with his issues honestly. Professionally he was rather adrift, but his dedication to helping those who were less fortunate touched her soul in a way his earlier commercial success didn't. He was a truly good man, and she found that incredibly, ravishingly, appealing.

She stared at the list, long on pros, short on cons, and came to an inescapable conclusion: The problem wasn't with Rob, but with her. Granted, the relationship was still fairly new, but considering that she was crazy about him, she shouldn't be this skittish. What was going on?

An old anecdote flickered through her mind, about a man who had spent years looking for the perfect woman. Eventually he'd found her, but to no avail because she was looking for the perfect man—and he wasn't it.

She had been looking for Mr. Right, and now that she had found him, she realized that she wasn't Ms. Right. For years she'd been telling herself that she hadn't found the right guy when the truth was she had chosen Mr. Wrongs so she wouldn't have to face what were obviously some major commitment issues. Rob had slid under her defenses almost by accident. Now that he was there, she didn't know what to do with him.

She shivered, suddenly tired and cold. She didn't want to lose Rob, but... marriage? The prospect made her want to flee to the high timber.

Smiling wryly, she stood and headed to her bedroom. When life settled down a bit, she would have to call Rachel and find out what was wrong. Rachel could always explain the twists in her friends' psyche. Better yet, she never did so unless asked.

In the meantime, she returned to her bed and rejoined Rob, burrowing as close to his warm body as humanly possible.

Chapter 18

Cal Murphy's office was a riot of papers gone mad. Val wasn't surprised. Public defenders were notoriously overworked. She knocked on the open door to let the office's inhabitant know she was there. "Cal? I'm Val Covington."

The man at the computer looked up, blinking behind thick glasses. Val said helpfully, "You said I could come by and talk to you about Daniel Monroe."

"Oh, right, right." He stood and offered his hand. Tall and angular, he had thinning hair and an engaging smile. "I'd apologize for the mess, but it's chronic so there's no point."

"Not a problem. You PDs average what, forty cases or so at once?"

He grimaced. "That's when things are going well. At the moment, I have almost a hundred. Pray for more city funding before the OPD goes under for the third time."

"I brought you some fuel." Val had checked with Murphy's secretary beforehand, so she opened a paper bag and produced two steaming containers of coffee. Handing over the larger one she said, "Your preference is for the largest white chocolate mocha latte in the Western Hemisphere, right?"

"My God, woman," he said reverently as he accepted the latte. "Are you married? Do you want to be?"

For a fleeting moment she thought of Rob's near proposal, and her bizarre reaction. He had not raised the subject since, and she had been embarrassingly grateful for that. "Sorry, I'm just opening my own office. No time for a husband."

"Just as well." He took a deep swallow of the latte, delicately licking whipped cream from his lips. "Not only would Val and Cal be ridiculous, but my wife would probably have something to say on the subject."

"A lot to say, if she's another lawyer. We never lack for words."

"Ginny is an ER doctor. I met her when one of my clients got himself shot in the gut by an angry drug dealer."

Val winced. "Did he survive?"

"Of course. Why do you think I married his doctor?" He grinned for a moment before turning serious. "All right, Val, what do you want to know?"

"Anything you can tell me about defending Daniel Monroe that doesn't show up on the official records."

He sighed and took another swig of coffee. "That was my first capital case where I sat first chair. Will you try to get Daniel a stay of execution based on my failings?"

"The appeals court has already looked into that without finding any problems with Daniel's trial." She sipped her own modest cappuccino. "I'm no criminal lawyer, but it looked to me as if he got a pretty good defense."

"Thanks for that," he said dryly. "It's easy to blame any failures on the public defender, since everyone knows we're all drunken morons who can't hold a real job."

"And corporate litigators like me are greedy beasts with long fangs and no conscience." They shared a smile of lawyerly commiseration before Val continued, "If you had Daniel's case to try over again, would you do anything differently?"

He slouched back in his chair and thought about it. "Not really. There wasn't a single damned shred of physical evidence either for or against Daniel, so it all came down to the eyewitnesses. A single one could have been explained away as mistaken identity, maybe even two, but three?"

He frowned. "If I had then the experience I have now, I could have done a better job of undermining the two male witnesses. At the trial the state's attorney presented them as practically altar boys, but both of them eventually went to prison. That was no use to me at the time of Daniel's trial, though."

"They were not upstanding citizens," she agreed. "Darrell Long got himself shot, and I understand Joe Cady is dying of AIDS."

"No surprises there." Murphy shook his head. "Against the eyewitnesses, all I had was Daniel's girlfriend who swore he was with her. She was a good witness, but it's assumed that girlfriends and mothers will lie to protect even the rottenest criminal, so everything she said was discounted. I wonder what happened to her and the baby. I forget her name, but she was a bright, very together girl."

"Her name is Kendra Brooks now. She's my right-hand woman and the best paralegal in Baltimore. She's also the reason I'm involved in this case. The baby, Jason Brooks, will be starting his second year at the Air Force Academy."

"Well, I'll be damned. My favorite niece is a classmate of his. They might know each other. I'm glad Kendra and the boy are doing well." He sighed. "I see so many broken lives. It's good to be reminded that some people not only survive, but flourish."

She hadn't expected to get any real leads out of Murphy, but she was enjoying this discussion. "Any suggestions as to ways of saving Daniel's life?"

"Since appeals have been exhausted, you need some new evidence that casts strong doubt on Daniel's guilt. If you can find Joe Cady, lean on him. If he lied about the shooter, he might know the real killer, and he might be willing to talk now. If he's convincing, it might cast enough doubt on Daniel's conviction for the sentence to be commuted to life. Apart from that"—he grimaced—"pray for a miracle."

She tilted her head. "You've been a public defender for over twenty years. How do you keep doing what must be heartbreaking work?"

He took off his glasses and began polishing the lenses. "You mean because most of them are guilty and some of them have done truly horrible things? It helps to believe passionately that everyone is entitled to the best possible defense. Besides, sometimes clients who look guilty as sin aren't.

"Everyone deserves a zealous defense, and I've got a thing about wrongful convictions, which is one reason I'm seeing what I can do for Daniel," Val said. "I considered becoming a public defender, but decided I was too much of a wimp to deal with so many cases involving violence."

"That part isn't easy, but someone needs to do it." Frowning, Cal shoved his glasses back into place. "Clients tell some pretty incredible stories, but you sort of have to believe them since truth is so often stranger than fiction. A lot are drop-outs who started life with the deck stacked against 'em, and the streets and dealing drugs are the only road they can see that's open to them. Hope gets consumed and protecting your
honor
is worth your life, 'cause your life isn't worth much anyhow, and at least if you go down people will respect the way you fell."

He leaned forward and started talking faster. "Cops do a tough job and heaven knows we need them, but some are cowboys who figure that if a suspect didn't do this particular crime, he did something else just as bad so he deserves punishment, and beefing up the evidence is really just justice. So maybe a cowboy says he had a clear view when something went down even though he didn't see a thing, or maybe he has some drugs picked up on another bust so why not plant them on this no-good dude who deserves whatever he gets?"

Cal stood, shoving his chair backwards, and began to stalk around the office. "So, by God, the state damn well needs to
prove
every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, not just seventy-five percent. Innocent until proven guilty—it's the American way, because even when the system works perfectly, which it never does, it's an imperfect process and innocent guys go to jail and sometimes they're even executed, and even one wrongful execution is too many.