The Proviso (64 page)

Justice’s pitchfork halted in midair. How did he
know that? It wasn’t like he paid much attention to anything about
her life, other than what chores she needed to do.

“No, he’s not,” she finally murmured before
continuing with her work.

“Look for another job.”

“I can’t.”

The next logical question, of course, was
Well,
why not?
, but he wouldn’t ask it. He wanted her to fail. She
could see his point of view, looking at all this work and not
enough money coming in and needing her.

He’d flip his lid if he knew about her life that was
secret to him only because he didn’t pay attention.

He didn’t know she had any “cachet” at all anywhere.
He wouldn’t understand her political world or her place in it. He
wouldn’t understand why the prosecutor of the second largest county
in the state of Missouri had requested her endorsement of him as a
senatorial candidate. He wouldn’t know why anybody would pay her
money to express her opinion. He didn’t know she
had
an
opinion about anything.

“So what did you do today?”

He didn’t care; he wanted to gauge how long it might
be before she stopped all this lawyer foolishness and came home to
stay and work. “Well,” she grunted as she tossed a pitchfork full
of hay and manure onto the flatbed trailer in the middle of the
barn, “I arraigned and plea bargained and reduced charges.”

There was a long pause. “What’s all that?”

“It’s stuff I shouldn’t be doing for another six
months or so.” Not only that, but her boss hadn’t seen fit to let
anyone guide her through the county’s protocols and culture, so
she’d had to wing it. Some great trainer.

“Like?”

She stopped and sighed. He hadn’t a clue and she
didn’t know how to explain it. “I just . . . I did what lawyers do,
Dad.”

“Well . . . how did you do?”

Justice stood and thought, surprised by the
question. She’d been so busy feeling sorry for herself that she
hadn’t evaluated her own performance. Neither had her new boss,
except to drop another stack of files on her desk and walk away
without a word.

“Okay, I guess,” she finally replied, her work pace
picking back up again. “I didn’t embarrass myself in front of the
judge or anything.”

In fact, Judge Wilson, a kindly old man with half
glasses perched on his nose, had only had to nudge her through a
couple of rough spots and later had complimented her on her first
day’s efforts.

And only a week out of law school, yet. You listen
to Knox, little lady. He’ll turn you into a fine prosecutor, just a
fine litigator. He’s the best trainer in two hundred miles. Of
course, he’s careful to hire bright people—that’s a lot of it. He
may not say much to you at first, but don’t worry about that.

Justice snorted. She’d
pay
for her boss to
ignore her. There was only one reason she was in that office and
that was to keep her from talking about what she’d seen him do the
day before.

If she were honest with herself—and Giselle Cox had
told her explicitly that she
must
be honest with herself—she
had to concede that what her boss had done was in no way murder,
illegal, unethical, or anything else wrong.

But he’d been so blasé about it, with no remorse,
stepping over the body like nothing had happened—that rattled her
badly. Yet there was no crime in that, either.

“Well,” he finally said when Justice didn’t reply,
“if you’re that unhappy, maybe you should just hang it up and come
back to the farm.”

That was his answer to everything.

He ambled off when she didn’t bother replying. She
worked in the stalls long into the night, turning up the Rush and,
when she got tired of that, Nugent, Pink Floyd—things nobody her
age listened to or even knew existed.

It was almost midnight when she put her pitchfork
away and got ready for bed. She opened her laptop and, for the
first time that day, smiled when she read the comments made in
response to one of her random glimpse-of-life blog posts:

*

hamlet writes:

name that quote j- Any property that’s open to
common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it
to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.

JMcKinley writes:

Neal Stephenson. That was way too easy, hamlet. I’m
disappointed in you.

hamlet writes:

doing things the easy way doesn’t give you a sense
of accomplishment - adversity is what makes life worth living - try
this one: is not this the true romantic feeling—not to desire to
escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you?

JMcKinley writes:

Okay, that took me a while. Tom Wolfe.

hamlet writes:

admit it, you googled

JMcKinley writes:

Busted.

*

Going on two years now, that particular fan arguing
with her, challenging her assumptions, encouraging her and making
her laugh so much she felt she knew him. And suddenly, she wished
she had the courage to email him, to lay out her situation for him,
see what he would advise her to do because he’d always displayed a
curious wisdom.

But no. She’d emailed him once and he hadn’t
replied. No matter how much that disappointed her, she had other
things to do, a gazillion other things to think about, and didn’t
have time to indulge in an online . . . well,
anything
with
individuals. As long as she could hold on to hamlet and his little
game of quotes to illustrate his philosophies, she thought she’d be
okay.

She didn’t dare go through the rest of her nightly
routine because then she’d feel the lack of her daydreams all that
much more acutely. She knew that her days of staring mindlessly at
her wall and sending herself off to slumberland by spinning images
of Professor Hilliard gently, sweetly slipping into bed with her in
the dead of night were over.

The Chouteau County prosecutor had killed a man
yesterday.

And he didn’t care.

* * * * *

56:
WALK DON’T RUN

The following few days didn’t differ much from the
first. She doggedly worked her way through the files Eric gave her,
because as executive assistant prosecutor, he controlled
assignments and workload. Nobody paid her much attention or even
seemed to know who she was, especially Knox. He came and went,
spending his days in court, as did half the staff—and that was okay
with her.

Richard Connelly, the man who didn’t wear expensive
suits and who had been kind to her, was the only person who talked
to her more than he absolutely had to. After he had watched her eat
alone her entire first week, he had invited himself over to her
desk to eat with her and tell her how the office worked.

The staff consisted of no more than eight assistant
prosecutors. Four were core staff: Thomas Hicks, the man taken
hostage, was close to retirement. At thirty, Eric Cipriani, the
executive assistant prosecutor and staff manager, was the youngest
member of the core staff by far. Patrick Davidson, affable enough
with everyone else, had not yet seen fit to speak to Justice. And
Richard had become her lifeline.

New law school graduates filled the other four staff
slots, the current attorneys in various stages of their course in
the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office. It ran a bit like a
medical school residency; in fact, those attorneys were actually
called “residents.” They usually left around their second or third
year and went on to do other things. If they wanted to stay they
could, but nobody ever did.

Three residents would leave soon; one had three
years, another two, and the third a little over a year, but he was
a quick study. Justice had replaced the fourth, who’d left to work
for Bryce Kenard, a name she’d heard over and over again since her
first week of law school. If she hadn’t wanted to work for Knox so
badly and had not been tempted by the various other plum offers
extended to her, she might have considered commuting to Kenard, PC
after all the great things she’d heard.

Amongst all these people, nobody said anything about
her work, good or bad, so she had to assume that if she’d screwed
up, somebody would’ve yelled at her by now.

People came and went constantly: victims, witnesses,
defendants; county deputies, state troopers, Kansas City police
officers and detectives; defense counsel. Justice drew a lot of
surprised looks, especially from the female officers and attorneys,
as if she were a mirage; she supposed she could understand that,
since she was the first and only female assistant prosecutor
Chouteau County had ever had.

“Why aren’t there any women here?” Justice asked
Richard, low.

“Because the sheriff is a pig. Raines,” Richard
explained after he caught her puzzled look, “likes to harass
anything with two X chromosomes to call her own and he’s not shy
about it. He got elected during Nocek’s time, did Nocek’s dirty
work, and still gets elected every cycle. Either Knox hasn’t
figured out a way to get him out or doing it will just bring more
heat down on his head. So . . . he doesn’t allow women in the
office. He can’t control the hiring anywhere else in county
government, but he can here.”

Dirk Jelarde, Chouteau County’s most sought-after
defense attorney, popped in and out of the prosecutor’s office
several times a day on various cases, but occasionally to talk to
Eric about a karate studio they co-owned. Justice found it very odd
that two men would own a business together then meet each other as
adversaries in the courtroom.

“They went to college together,” Richard said when
she’d questioned him about it. “They’re sparring partners and they
balance each other out.”

“I understand sparring partners; they do that in
court. It’s the
business
partners I think is weird.”

“This is Chouteau County, Alice,” Mr. Davidson said
as he passed by, the first thing he’d ever said to her. “Welcome to
Wonderland.”

Richard laughed, and Justice did have to smile.

“JELARDE!” Knox bellowed from his office, then
appeared in his threshold, glaring at Dirk, his hands on his hips
and his suit coat gathered back and over his wrists. “You’re
representing Rachel Wincott now?”

“Yeah. Too bad Nocek kicked the bucket. Now she has
a lawyer who isn’t terrified of the Badass.” Knox’s expression
darkened and Dirk’s pretty white smile flashed in his pretty black
face. Dirk was just . . . pretty . . . and Justice realized she had
never seen a
pretty
man before. “Sucks to be you.”

“Get your punk ass out of my office, Jelarde. You
want to talk about the dojo, do it on dojo time.”

Dirk did leave, but not without a healthy laugh
floating after him.

“That wasn’t about the dojo, Boss,” Eric intoned,
but Knox snarled at him before slamming the door behind him.

Everyone found that hilarious, but Justice only
thought the whole exchange very strange. “Dirk,” Richard told her
between chuckles, “likes to poke at lions. Rachel Wincott is the
thorn in Knox’s paw and Dirk took her as a client just to push it
in a little deeper.”

“Why?”

“Probably because he was bored. He does a lot of
crazy things when he’s bored.”

“No, I mean, who’s Rachel Wincott and why is she a
thorn?”

“She is a woman Knox put in prison for armed
robbery. She also almost became Knox’s stepdaughter.”

Justice blinked.

“Oh, he wasn’t happy about it, but he loved her
mother, so . . . ” Justice’s gut tightened. “And if it hadn’t been
for Rachel, he’d have never met Leah in the first place.”

“Why almost?”

Richard suddenly speared her with an odd look. After
a moment’s hesitation, he finally said, “Leah . . . died.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

“On their wedding day,” he added carefully.

Justice’s eyes widened. “Oh, how
sad
.”

Richard continued to stare at her with that strange
expression for a moment longer, then released his breath in a
whoosh while shaking his head. He said nothing more and Justice
figured that topic was closed.

Justice wondered what it would mean to be loved by
Knox Hilliard. She couldn’t imagine it would be easy to be with
him; in fact, now that she’d worked in the same office with him a
week or so, she couldn’t imagine him with anyone at all,
particularly anyone who might need a little tenderness once in a
while.

Actually, no, she couldn’t imagine that Knox
Hilliard could love
anyone
.

Knox was . . . cold, cruel. She should’ve understood
that her third day in law school, when he’d defended her, touched
her, but she had assumed it to be righteous anger, noble in its
purpose. Never had it occurred to her that his kindness might be
the true anomaly. Betrayed by her naïveté, she felt vulnerable
because now she couldn’t trust anything she saw, felt, or
deduced.

The only thing she knew she could trust her eyesight
for: the money.

Endless streams of crisp banded bills, all thrown
around like candy. On Wednesday of her second week in the
prosecutor’s office, Mr. Hicks tossed Justice a banded pack of
fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. She caught it reflexively, but
dropped it like a hot potato and stared at it as it lay on her
desk. The office grew as quiet as it ever did and she looked up to
see him, Eric, Richard, Mr. Davidson, and the residents all
watching her expectantly.

“Um . . . ” She gulped and her chest felt like it
had collapsed as her gaze returned to all that money. She thought
about the things it could buy: Better feed for the cattle, repairs
for the tractor, seed to sow. She thought of all the things it
could go toward: shoring up the foundation of the house and a new
roof, a new car . . .