“I—”
“How many times have you said you can’t understand why I keep giving Jen more chances? Why we let her on the militia? She’s a pain in my ass, the first to snarl an insult my way, but I still argued her case for an extension because she’s turned out to be a valuable member of the militia. You told me you wouldn’t be able to look past her insults, and yet you turned around and accused me of railroading Conrad because I don’t like him? Of framing him as revenge for speaking out against Will?”
“I—”
“Sure, it’s a valid legal tactic, but then we loop back to why the hell you agreed to represent Conrad in the first place. You aren’t a lawyer here. What was he going to pay you in? Credits? You’ve said before that you don’t need a better-paying job because you don’t spend the credits you have.”
“Yes, but—”
“You interfered in our investigation and made the overall situation worse, Marissa. Which is not like you. Not at all.”
“I was taking a leaf from your book, Casey. Trying to see past Conrad’s flaws and realize he was entitled to representation.”
“In a town that doesn’t use lawyers? That has no real court system because it has no real punishments? The worst that could happen was that he’d get shipped out. If there was no evidence he was the one who hit you, he’d be assigned to shit duty for a few weeks. Hardly ten years of hard labor.”
She doesn’t answer that. She can’t.
“Speaking of Conrad,” I say. “When you took him on, you could have mentioned you’d been drinking buddies.”
“I never hid the fact that I knew him.”
“Maybe not, Counselor, but you seemed to engage in a little bit of creative obfuscation. I get that you moved on from their friend group. I get that you realized they were toxic and therefore might not want to let on you’d hung out with them, especially if you were dating the deputy and realized they’d caused some problems for us.”
“Right, so—”
“So you wouldn’t feel the need to volunteer that you’d been drinking buddies. At least not until I found it odd that you agreed to represent Conrad. That was the time when you’d use the past connection. Sure, he’s a jerk, but you’d been friends at one time and therefore you felt obligated. I’d have understood that. Yet you preferred me to just think it was suspicious.”
“I—”
“And yet, after feeling obligated—I presume—to represent him, you did a half-assed job of it. You went in blazing, but when he was nearly murdered, you disappeared. Didn’t insist on being there when I interviewed him. Didn’t give me shit for interviewing him without his lawyer present. You shrugged and wandered off.”
“Maybe because my client turned out to be the guy who exposed Will. We might not be together anymore, but I still care.”
“Except you didn’t care when you agreed to represent Conrad knowing he was at the head of the mob against Will. Also, you didn’t know what Conrad had done when we first brought him back to town. But you failed to so much as check in on him.”
No response. She’s realized she should take the best advice a lawyer can give: stop talking.
“I’ve been trying to speak to you about Jolene’s death,” I say. “I’ve been chasing you down since yesterday, and you’ve been dodging me.”
She meets my gaze. “I want to go home, Casey. I’ve made a mess here, and I just want out.”
“Well, if that mess involves murdering Jolene, I’m not sure I can help you.”
“I didn’t kill Jolene. Didn’t bury Gloria. I’ve just … I made a mess that started the first time Gloria invited me to have a drink with them. I felt like the new kid in school looking for a place to eat lunch. Here was someone offering me a seat at her table. Everything in Rockton was so different and overwhelming. Part of me wanted to hide in my apartment for two years, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I’d go stir-crazy. So I jumped at the first offer of friendship, and I made a terrible mistake.”
When I don’t comment, she continues, “Then one night, they’re drinking at Conrad’s place, and I can’t take the grumbling anymore. I go into the Roc, thinking I’ll grab a beer to go, and instead I end up drinking it with Will. Just a beer and conversation. Then he says you guys will all be there the next night, and I’m welcome to join you.” She gives me a wan smile. “So I traded up. Found a social group more to my tastes and got a boyfriend in the bargain. Look at me. New girl to prom queen in a month.”
She shifts in her chair, gaze going to the window. “Then it all crashed down. I overreacted seeing you with Will, and when he told me about the sign, that just carried over. Like I was still upset about you two, so I used the sign as an excuse for pushing him away. By the next evening, I’d already come to my senses and went to Will’s place hoping to work it out. Instead, I was attacked, and before I can even talk to Will, guess who shows up on my doorstep, demanding my help … or else?”
“Conrad.”
She gives a bitter laugh. “No, Conrad is a buffoon who lacks the brains to properly blackmail anyone. Look how he screwed up with Brandon. Conrad suffers from the white-dude delusion of thinking that because life has been a little easier for him, it’s proof that he’s a little better than everyone else. It almost got him killed. No, he didn’t blackmail me into representing him. Jolene did.”
“Jolene?”
“Oh, she made it sound as if she was playing errand boy for Conrad. Passing along his message. That’s how she operates.” Marissa pauses. “How she operated, I guess. Past tense. Jolene liked to keep to the shadows. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was behind the whole Will thing.”
“Conrad’s covering for her?”
She snorts. “Taking credit from her, more like. Anyway, she came to me and said that Conrad told her if I didn’t help him, I’d be next on the hit list.”
She waits. Seconds tick by. Then she says, “You aren’t going to ask what I did?”
“Does it matter? Whatever you tell me could be a lie. I can’t look it up online. The council certainly won’t confirm it. As far as they’re concerned, we’re already closed. What matters is that Jolene allegedly blackmailed you into representing Conrad.”
“Allegedly?”